Transcript
I shall not take your time or his in a lengthy introduction of the very Reverend Professor Thomas F. Torrance. Let me say to him what a joy it is to welcome him back to Princeton and to be able to present him as our chapel preacher this morning. And then tomorrow afternoon in his lecture on the resurrection, which will be given in the main lounge of the campus center. Dr. Torrance has served as moderator of the Church
of Scotland. Two years ago was the recipient of the Templeton Foundation prize for progress in religion. His numerous books in the field of doctrine, science, and theology have enriched many, many persons, including all of us here. I extend a warm welcome to you. Dr. Torrance will read his scripture and then will deliver the homily. Hear the Word of God from the Gospel According to St. John, chapter 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came for a testimony to bear witness to the light that all
might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light. The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who
were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth, and we have beheld his glory, the glory as of the only Son of God. No one has ever seen God, the only Son who is in the bosom of the Father. He has made him know. Amen. And God bless this reading of his
Word to us. Especially those words at the opening. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was with God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Last year, 1979, we commemorated
the death of James Clark Maxwell in 1879, and in the same year we celebrated the birth of Albert Einstein, 1879. In these hundred years, there has taken place the greatest explosion of scientific knowledge, which has entirely altered our understanding of the universe, and indeed the whole structure of physics and our natural science. We owe to Clark Maxwell in his discovery of the mathematical properties of radiation almost everything we use and rely upon in communication systems and
locomotion systems in the modern world. The bringing together of light with electromagnetic field and the discovery that light propagates itself like waves in that field laid a foundation for the work later on of Lorentz and Einstein, and the whole relational thinking that he developed has meant a move away, a radical move away from a mechanical to a profoundly dynamic and relational understanding of the world. Now Maxwell was fond of speaking about analogies, physical analogies in nature,
in which one aspect of nature shows light upon another aspect of nature. But he was a profound believer, and he thought that here we have created analogies that in some measure reflect the uncreated light of God. And so I thought we would start by thinking of the fact, as Maxwell himself did, of the difference between the uncreated light of God and the created light, which occupies such a marvelous and an integrating place in the creation. And
first of all think of the constancy of light. If the light, the physical light, were not constant, if somehow the speed of light varied and there were arbitrary changes in it, the whole universe would be in a muddle. We would be in chaos and confusion and disorder. It's because light moves with a constancy that ultimately order is in the universe. For after all, all bodies in motion are defined in relation to space and time, and space
and time is defined in relation to light and the speed of light. And because that is constant, and light is not defined as reference to anything else, we have the ultimate factor upon which all else is ordered and understood. Now God is constant. He is a supreme constant factor. The Bible speaks of God as the faithful one. It speaks of his covenant faithfulness by which he upholds the creation. And it is due to his constancy, his
fidelity, his unchanging nature that all things in the created universe, of things visible and invisible, have their final order, so that in a remarkable way, the light that we now have cast to scientific investigation upon the unique role of physical light in the universe is even more meaningful. And it's in relation to that that we can see again in a profoundly relevant way the biblical emphasis upon the fidelity and the constancy, the invariance of God's light
that lies behind all truth and all justice and all order. But second, let us remember that light is essentially invisible. Now the ancients realized, something that we reflected in our first hymn, that light is really unapproachable. They saw that you can't look into the sunlight. Light is so fierce in itself that you cannot see the light in itself. You can see things that are lit up by light. And as you see things in the light of
light, that you are able to understand something of the light itself. And some of them went even further. The great Christian physicist in the fifth century, John Philoponus, was the first to deal with the speed of light and develop a physics of light in relation to space and time, which staggeringly he defined relationally. They hadn't yet calculated the speed of light. But there they saw that the light that we cannot see, nevertheless, is something that orders
our world. But of course they drew the analogy that as the sun is unapproachable, so God is unapproachable. He dwells in inaccessible light. But they even glimpsed the idea that light is itself invisible. Take much later St. John of the Cross describing the light that goes through his cell from one window to the other window. He's pondering about the fact raised by the Pseudo-Dionysius, the astonishing relation between light and darkness. And there's a kind of
darkness that comes from an excess of light. He says that if the light shone through one window to the other and didn't touch the wall and didn't touch a speck of dust, you wouldn't see it. It's because the light lightens something that somehow you see the sunbeam, but you don't really see the light. You see that which is lit up by it. Now that is something we understand today in the modern world. We cannot see light.
For example, one day I was visiting a satellite tracking station, one of these weather stations that produced these satellite pictures, and I asked the scientist there to show me the jet where the light signals came through from the satellite. You couldn't see anything. I took a bit of paper and I put it into the jet, and immediately a spot of light appeared on the paper. The light was invisible, but you can see what is lit up
by the light. Now God is invisible like that. You cannot see God. Not only because light is invisible, but because in God, as the ancients said, we have an excess of light over our created light. And if it is difficult to know God, it is because God is not less than rational, but supremely rational, who transcends our little minds. But we see his light as that created light is reflected throughout the universe. But look at it
in this way. We can't see light because, as a matter of fact, our eyes cannot keep track with its speed. You can't see a bullet because your eyes aren't adapted to the movement of the bullet. The eyes of a bird or the eyes of an insect are much more quickly adapted to movement. That's why if you're a beekeeper, you don't move quickly in front of a hive, otherwise they dart out at you. But our eyes are
not adapted to speed like that, and that's why we split space and time, actually. But nevertheless, we cannot see light because it moves too quickly. But what of the infinite, uncreated light of God? So to speak, the speed, the movement of divine light is too quick for us to grasp. If you're going to see a bullet in its movement, somehow you've got to move along with the bullet. You've got to keep pace with it, to catch
up with it, to move with it. And of course, that's how we know things in the world of science. We have to track the speed of light and determine things in terms of the speed of light. But although we cannot see God, God's light has come into our world in Jesus Christ. God has embodied His eternal light in our humanity in such a way that we can see this light if we are prepared to keep pace
with the movement of Jesus. If we are prepared to follow Jesus, and it's as we follow Him that we find that His light creates in us the capacity to see it, to understand it. But now, let us think of a difference. Maxwell used to say that the analogies you have always have fundamental differences in nature, and the differences are highly illuminating. And the differences between the created analogies and the uncreated analogies are also highly illuminating. Now,
here is a fundamental difference. Let me put it this way. In astrophysics, we try to receive the signals that come from the outermost parts of the universe, like signals. But we have to decipher these signals, and we have to convert them to word. Now, that's what science is about. Science is an attempt to explore the order in the universe with ultimate reference to this unique metaphysical status of light, to bring it to order and to convert
it all into word. You couldn't have science without language. You have to relate number and word together in order to understand nature. But we have to convert the light signals into language, into word. But that's not the case of uncreated light, because the light of God is already word, and the word of God is already light. Now, it is that inheritance of the light and the word of God that is so profound, and it is that
kind of light, that kind of word, who became incarnate in Jesus Christ. That is why when we know Jesus Christ, the light of God in him, when he calls us to follow him with the light of the world so that we may apprehend the light of the God in him, we do not have to convert that light into word, as though the Bible or theology were simply man's mythological creations and projections into Christ. The opposite is
the case. Here, the word that is itself light and the light that is itself word interprets itself, it communicates itself to us so that we apprehend it as our minds are taken hold of by the creative light and word of God in Jesus. And we understand him out of his own inner light, his own inner logos, his own inner rationality. That is the kind word and light that is incarnate in Jesus. But in Jesus Christ we
have not only the uncreated light, we have the created light. You see, there are people who say, yes, we don't see the light, we only see what is lit up by the light. Take my illustration. I put the bit of paper on the jet of light and a spot of light appeared. But they said Jesus is the spot of light, not just a spot of light, but the spot of light, whereby we may see God. He
reflects the light. He is a witness to the light. But he is not himself that light. He is only, so to speak, the moon reflecting the sunlight, but he is not himself the sunlight, the ultimate light. But no, the truth is the other. In Jesus we have the uncreated light of God come to us in such a way that it unites to himself our created light. So that the eternal word of God comes to us, by
which all things were made, comes to us in the form of created creaturely word. And we have this profound union between the eternal and the temporal, the divine and the human word, the uncreated and the created light. And it's in that unity that we have the staggering significance of Jesus, God and man, in one indivisible person. But we are told in the prologue that this light came and penetrated our darkness. And if you want to see
the course of this light, you've got to trace the light from the virgin birth of Jesus, right through his passion, his ministry and passion to his resurrection, as the fathers used to say, from the virgin tomb. And it's as you see that light penetrating into our darkness and breaking out in the creative light of the resurrection that you are able to apprehend God in his own eternal being and light. You know God as he is in
himself, in terms of his own inner logos and word, and you are illuminated with the light that God is. That is the staggering claim of the Christian gospel. This light shone into our darkness and it is not suffocated or overwhelmed by it, but in the darkness we may apprehend the light. And so Jesus says, if you're going to follow me, take up the cross and follow me. So we have to follow this incarnate light and incarnate
word all through his earthly life, through the passion of his cross, through the atoning and reconciling action of God. And it's there that we break through to the ultimate light of the resurrection in the light of which Jesus himself is to be understood. And there we find the love of God, finally triumphant, which is the supreme power of order in our life and in the whole of creation. As Maxwell was dying, he said all these attempts
I have tried, I tried to understand electromagnetic field, they are ultimately unworkable. We can understand up to a point, but they do not really reflect the kind of order we see in nature. But he said beyond all that, there is a supreme truth, the supreme light, which is the love of God. And it's in that love which is embodied in Jesus that we are able even to grasp the created reality which we study as scientists. But
how much more in that love do we know and grasp something of God in his own self? It is to that light and that love we are called to follow and to give our allegiance. And now unto him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood and has made us kings and priests unto God and his father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.