Twentieth-century scholars looked at the concept of light through the lens of classical metaphysics and deferred to the narrow apical spectrum between Plato and Scripture. This book attempts to address the question, ‘What is Light ?’ something the author proposes classical debate, over the metaphysics of light, failed to answer. The use of light language, be it analogical, literal, or metaphorical, was the problem for modern scholars who pursued theological metaphysics and neglected to address the theoretical underpinning of light nomenclature, the notion of light itself. The author proceeds to draw the attention of the reader to the hexaemeral convention from Philo and Origen to the Cappadocians Basil and Gregory as these writers were seeped in Alexandrian tradition of Torah and familiar with the Timaeus, that encompassed the principium of Plato’s philosophy of nature. With deference to Philo and Origen, Basil and Gregory ignited further exposition from the likes of Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus of Constantinople, John Damascene, Ambrose, Augustine, Eriugena — covering the gamut of Byzantine and Latin theology and culminating in the medieval luminaries of the East and West, respectively Palmas and Aquinas. For the hexaemeral authors, God is the author as evidenced in the works of Philo to Basil. In his response to Platonists, Origen posited that matter functioned as an ancillary cause which empowered the divine Demiurge to demonstrate his logos. Central to his argument against the Platonists is the very act of contemplating nature — the contemplation of the divine logos in action, from the most basic of elements to the zenith of nature, man. This dovetails into the biblical creative narrative (the six days of creation — Moses’ contemplation of nature), the hexaemeron. Light being created first becomes the first expression of the divine logos. By examining the very nature of light, the biblical reader contemplates God and this very act of reading Scripture is the act of hexaemeral contemplation of nature. Aristotle tackles the nature of light in this manner : A quick glean and paraphrase of Aristotle’s De Anima : It was clearly more of an enquiry into the “perception” as opposed to the “nature” of light. This led to the perceived problem of science historians who differentiated between theories concerning oculocentric and luminocentric — the functional and the physical ; the former a function of vision, the latter the physical properties autonomous from their effects on vision. Aristotle’s approach was indeed oculocentric in contrast to the luminocentric representation of Empedocles or of the Timaeus, the eye expounded as a function of light and by extension to a lamp (where vision is the exchange between the internal fire of the eye and the external fire of any source of illumination). By attaching the ancient theories to Aristotle’s, later writings overlooked the Timaean interpretation and subsequent thinking of other authors. In premodern sources we had multiple meanings of the term “light” and the term was interchangeable with “fire”. The physics of light was that of the elemental fire. The foundation of the hexaemeral light is based on the principle of light on Day One of Creation — a fiery element. In the ancient sources light would mean any one of the following : an elemental fire, an ambient activity, an extraordinary flame, or a radiant power. The author argues that the hexaemeral literature allows us to break the ancient terminological barrier and unravel the meaning of light in its various manifestation. In fourth-century Christian metaphysics, the first hypostasis of light is the flame, the second hypostasis is radiant light, the third and final hypostasis is ambient light. Gregory …
