From “Let There Be Light” to “Lumen Christi”: Created and Uncreated Light in Scripture, Patristics and Liturgy
This article traces the biblical, patristic, and liturgical trajectory of the motif of light, from the first creative command to the Nicene confession “Light from Light” and to the sacramental actualization of Baptism as “illumination.” The guiding question is how the biblical motif of light moves from created reality and sign of God’s saving presence to christological, sacramental, and ecclesial predication, without conflating created light with God himself. The thesis defended is that the canonical arc from Genesis 1:3 to Revelation 21 does not establish a physico-metaphysical identity between cosmic light and God; rather, it reconfigures the symbol of light christologically and liturgically: what functions as a created gift in the Old Testament finds its personal fulfillment in Christ, while the created–uncreated distinction safeguards both divine transcendence and the possibility of human participation in grace. The method combines theological exegesis of representative biblical texts with their patristic reception and liturgical actualization, integrating, as an element of novelty, four recent studies by the theologian Gabriel-Iulian Robu on the phenomenology of gift, the iconic, and the hermeneutics of Genesis. The article’s contribution lies in joining, within a controlled argument, four registers usually treated separately: the exegesis of Genesis, the christological concentration in the Johannine and Pauline writings, the Nicene patristic reception, and the paschal liturgical actualization.
DOI: https://doi.org/
