In this post, we’re moving on the the third of the seven statements about the Son made by the writer in Hebrews 1:2b-3. Christ, the writer tells us, is the radiance of the glory of God. Athanasius used this statement in his fight against the Arian heresy because he said that it showed that Christ was co-eternal with God the Father. Just what exactly does it mean that Christ “is the radiance of the glory of God,” and how did this help Athanasius prove that Christ was without beginning in the same way that the Father is without beginning?
- The Radiance
The word translated radiance can be understood in two ways. It can refer to the shining forth of brightness like the rays of the sun shine forth from the sun; or it can refer to the reflecting of brightness like a mirror reflects light.The Message takes the word in this second way, saying that the “Son perfectly mirrors God.” A few commentaries interpret it this way, too, explaining that the Son reflects God’s glory. Most translations and commentaries, however, seem to understand radiance in the first way—that Christ shines forth with God’s glory. Commonly, the word effulgence, which means “the quality of being bright and sending out rays of light,” is used to describe this sort of radiance. God’s glory is in Christ, we might say, and he beams it outward. One way to express this idea might be to say that Christ expresses the glory of God to us in the same way that the brightness of the sun shows forth the sun itself.As you can probably tell from how much space I’ve given to explaining the second way of understanding radiance, this is the meaning that I think is the most likely. But either way, the statements tell us that we see the glory of God in the Son. -
The Glory of God
The phrase “the glory of God” is almost synonymous with God himself in all his majesty. All of what God is, taken together, is the glory of God. Wherever God is present, his glory is present, too; and God’s glory is inseparable from God.
We are told in Colossians 2:9 that “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” in Christ, and I’d think that the phrase “the whole fullness of deity” used in this verse is very close to the idea of the glory of God. In Colossians 2:9, then, we have the fullness of deity dwelling in Christ; in this statement from Hebrews 1, it’s God’s glory (or his majesty) radiating or reflecting from Christ. If the the first statement from Colossians is a claim of deity for Christ, so is our statement from Hebrews.
To summarize, we can understand the statement that Christ is the radiance of the glory of God to mean that God’s majesty (or his deity) shines forth in Christ. It is another way of saying that he is God.
This is the way Athanasius understood it, too, and he argued for Christ’s full and eternal deity from this statement in ATHANASIUS, Against Arius:
But these men dare to separate them, and to say that He is alien from the substance and eternity of the Father; and impiously to represent Him as changeable, not perceiving, that by speaking thus, they make Him to be, not one with the Father, but one with created things. Who does not see, that the brightness cannot be separated from the light, but that it is by nature proper to it, and co-existent with it, and is not produced after it?According to Athanasius, this statement in Hebrews showed that Christ is of the same nature as God; that he is eternal in the same way God is; that he is both inseparable from God, and yet distinct from him.
So what does the statement that Christ is the radiance of the glory of God mean for us?
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Just like the previous statement in this series, this one is also a strong affirmation of Christ’s deity and co-eternality with the Father, and should be useful as biblical evidence for the full eternal deity of Christ
- That Christ is the radiance of the glory of God compels us to worship him.
- Because of this statement, you can sing Shine, Jesus, Shine guilt-free, since it is not without at least one morsel of theological meat: Jesus does indeed shine with the Father’s glory, and that tell us some important things about him.