The Radiance of God: A Review

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Tom Oden never forgot his theological conversion. After years wandering in the desert of liberal protestantism, Oden found good soil when he finally read his own tradition. Challenged by a Jewish colleague at Drew to read his theological tradition, Oden was transformed by his encounter with Augustine, Jerome, Chrysostom, John Damascene, and others. As he put it, “The maturing of my change of heart took place only gradually through quiet reading in early mornings in a library carrel, allowing myself to be met by those great minds through their own words.”

After that encounter, Oden devoted heroic energy to making those early Christian minds accessible and available to theologians, pastors, and students for generations to come, most notably through the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. His labor is bearing much fruit among evangelical Christians in general, though its impact on his own Methodist tradition remains muted. Unfortunately, the same decadent academic fixation on novelty remains a major hurdle for United Methodist theologians and seminarians.

Many of us remain committed to Oden’s vision of renewal through encounter with historic christianity. We insist our students engage early Christian fonts of Christian wisdom. Admittedly, it is no easy task. When students encounter early Christian texts, often for the first time, they are frequently surprised by the ways in which early Christians read Scripture. This is true not only regarding allegorical interpretations, which often led to rather speculative meanings for texts, but also regarding the “literal sense” of Scripture.  When Paul says that Sarah and Hagar should be read figuratively, or better yet, allegorically, in Galatians 4, early Christians saw an invitation to discover deeper meanings in the text, beyond the “literal sense.” These two ways of reading were not opposed, but integral. The literal sense, the letters of Scripture itself, invites the allegorical. So it is that when early Christians encountered the letters of Scripture (literal derives from littera, “letters”), the letters sent them across and through the Biblical text in a manner unlike most of what my students have encountered. This pattern of reading shows students, among other things, that there are greater depths to this book, and to ourselves in the encounter with it, than we often imagine. And if a student has the wherewithal to remain patient with the encounter, to hear out these saints from the past, they discover there is much more to the God revealed in Scripture than they had come to expect.

All this came to mind as I read Douglas Koskela’s The Radiance of God (Cascade, 2021). Here, in a brief 115 pages, Koskela demonstrates the power of an encounter with Scripture in light of the church’s historic teaching. He traces the theme of light throughout the major topics of the Creed: Father, Creation, Jesus, Salvation, Holy Spirit, Church, and Christian Hope. On each topic, Koskela arranges his reflection along a threefold movement: from allure (that first moment whereby God attracts our attention), to movement (wherein we are drawn to the Lord), to the final joy (which accompanies those who are finally and entirely in Christ). The result is a theological reflection shaped both in content and structure by the divine call to holiness that is fundamental to Christianity and manifest in Wesleyan, Catholic, and Orthodox traditions.

Back to the classroom for a moment. One major thing I try to do when I teach doctrine is to show students how historic Christian doctrine enlivens their engagement with Scripture. To read the Scriptures Christianly means to look upon them in light of the church’s historic teaching (doctrina, the Latin term from which we derive “doctrine,” means “teaching”). As Oden discovered, to read the Scriptures Christianly means to read them through the wisdom of the great teachers of the past. Commitment to doctrine flows from this insight; it is grounded in a sure faith that Christ’s promise in John 15, that the Spirit will guide the church into all truth, will be fulfilled. It is for this reason that careful reflection upon the fundamentals of Christian doctrine, like the Trinity and hypostatic union, often opens up the biblical text.

The Radiance of God ably demonstrates the power of such an approach. For instance, Koskela’s book gives us a glimpse of just how deep a mystery is unveiled in the Transfiguration of our Lord. Koskela shows us that the Transfiguration is a central moment in both Scripture and doctrine. Transfiguration, recounted in all three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), and referenced in 2 Peter 1 and John 1, synthesizes several doctrines, drawing forth from creation, revealing the mystery of Christ, and pressing on to what God will make of us: deiform humans. 

But Koskela also shows us that doctrine enlivens Scripture when it trips us up a bit, causing us to pause and ponder the text. For instance, when Koskela turns to the Holy Spirit, and considers it under the theme of light, he pauses to consider his prior observation of the classical Christian commitment that light is “appropriated” to the Son. By “appropriated,” classical Christians meant that the idea tells us something about the unique qualities of the second Triune person, the Son. In other words, pondering the concept of light can help us to grasp, intellectually and spiritually, the unique character of Christ.

This claim is, of course, thoroughly scriptural. “I am the Light of the world,” Jesus says in the Gospel of John. And, if you’re reading carefully, you will know that any time you encounter Jesus saying “I am ____” in the Gospel of John, it’s an invitation to stop, listen, ponder. Koskela, like the early Christians he has read and followed, wisely asks, “What could it mean to say that the Spirit is light?” If the Son is light, how is that related to the claim that the Spirit, too, is light? Faced with this question, Koskela points out that the Spirit’s humility is manifest in that He directs us to the Son. The Spirit is the light by which we perceive the light who has come into the world. This is, of course, precisely what Christ reveals in John 15. Moreover, just as the Spirit reveals the Son, so too we are called, as those who live by the Spirit, to make manifest the Son in this world. Again, Scripture read in light of doctrine provokes us, as it does Koskela, to ask the right questions of the text. And Koskela proves a most able guide.

In fact, Koskela’s book is not simply structured by the three movements of allure, movement, and joy. Koskela’s book is most remarkable in that it shows us that theology itself, when done suitably, traverses this path toward our final hope. Revelation allures our minds. It then moves by faith in divine teaching. And it attains its final rest in the joy of the happiness that awaits in the life to come. For sharing this journey with us, and helping us see that theology can serve us in traversing the way, we should be most grateful to Koskela.

The Radiance of God is a brief, immensely readable, challenging-yet-approachable work of Wesleyan theology. It is one of, if not the finest recent work of theology by a Wesleyan theologian that I have encountered in years. Koskela’s thought is thoroughly orthodox and caught up in the pursuit of holiness. This is the sort of theology that Wesleyans should pray will flourish into the future. It is exactly the sort of work for which Oden labored and prayed. I too hope and labor and pray, as Oden did, that the Spirit will bless the Methodist tradition with a generation of theologians similarly devoted to the wisdom of the Christian past.

Justus Hunter is Associate Professor of Church History at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. His most recent book, co-authored with Dr. Philip Tallon, is The Absolute Basics of the Wesleyan Way .