A. Mitchell Hunter.
DARKNESS The word ' dark ' is used in the
sense of the absence of natural light in Jn 6" 20'. The darkness that lasted for the space of three hours at the crucihxion is referred to in Mt 27^*, Mk \S^, Lk 23«- «. For a brief summary of the views held as to the nature of this darkness, see Hastings' Z)i?, art. 'Darkness.' It may suffice to remark that, the Passover falling at full moon, there can be no question here of a solar eclipse.
Generally ' darkness ' is used in a metaphorical sense, but with slightly diflerent signiflcations. Darkness is the state of spiritual ignorance and sin in which men are before the light of the revelation of Jesus comes to them (Mt 4'*, Lk 1'", Jn 8'- 12**- '"'). This darkness the presence of Jesus dispels, except in the case of those who love the dancness and who therefore shrink back into the recesses of gloom, when the light shines, because their deeds are evil. Those who have a natural aftinity to the light, when Jesus appears, follow Him and walk no longer in darkness.
But there is the deeper darkness that comes through incapacity of sight (Mt 6=^, Lk 11"). This state results from long continuance in evil { Jn 3'*). It is the judgment passed upon the impenitent sinner. To love the darkness rather than the light is to have the spiritual faculty atrojjliied, and this is the Divine penalty to which he is condemned. The light that is in him has become darkness. The gospel contemplates for the human soul no more dire calamity.
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And the final fate of the impenitent sinner is to be cast into outer darkness ( Mt S'- 22'^ 25^). There is a kingdom of darkness wliich wars against the light, and which has power at times to prevail (Lk 2053J This is the darkness of sin, chosen and loved as sin, the instinctive hatred, inwrought with what is radically evil, of the Divine purity and light. It is the negative of all good — outer dark- ness, the darkness that has ceased to he permeated or permeable by any ray of light.
Darkness is twice used of secrecy or privacy <]Mt 10^, Lk 123). In these cases, however, a metaphorical use of the word is also implied. In the former passage the reference is to the dark- ness of perplexity and sorrow ; in the latter, to the
also Light, Unpardonable
darkness of sin, Sin.
In the later mystical theology there is a use of the terra that may be here referred to. There is a 'Divine darkness ' which is the consummation of the experience of the purified soul — the darkness that comes from excess of lif^rht. The pseudo- Dionysius speaks of the ' luminous gloom of the silence' which reveals the inner secrets of being, and in which the soul is raised to the absolute ecstasy. It is an attempt to express the in- finitude of the susceptibility of the human soul to emotions of either joy or anguish. From the outer darkness to the light which is above light, and therefore inconceivable, the soul of man is capable of responding to every shade of experience.
Literature. — Creraer, Bih.-Thcol. Lex. s.vv, irxoToty trxarix; Martineau, Endeavours ajter the Christian Life^, p. 403(1.; Phillips Brooks, Candle of the Lord, p. 74 £f.; Expositor, u. iii.
[iss2]32iff. A. Miller.
DATES. — The chronological sequence of the Gospels is quite as important as that of the Epistles to the student of tlie beginnings of Christianity, and forms an essential branch of the study of the development of our Lord's revelation and His Messianic consciousness. The difficulties in the way of forming an exact time-table of the dates in the Gospels are due (1) to the indifierence of the early Christians, as citizens of the heavenly city, to the great events that were taking place "in the world around them ; (2) to their lack of means of ascertaining these events, and their obliviousness of the important bearing they miglit have on the evi- dences of the faith ; (3) to tlie fact that, tlie early Christian traditions being recorded in the interest of religion and not of history, the writers confined tlieir attention to a few events, which were arranged as much according to subject-matter as to time sequence. The result is tliat there are many gaps which can be only approximjitely filled up by strict inference from casual remarks. The author of the Third Gospel is the only one to give parallel dates of secular history in the manner of a true historian, and to profess to relate tilings ' in order' (Kade^rj?, Lk P). There are many inferences as to time to be drawn from statements in Mt., but they are of an accidental character. St. John marks points of time of significance in his own and in his Master's life, but liis purpose is to trace the de- velopment of the drama of the Master's passion, not to suggest its chronological relation to the history of the world.
The early Fathers, Irenjevis, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Africanus, and Hippolytus, were the first to attempt to arrange the events of the Gospel in chronological sequence. But these attempts are not always to be relied upon, owing to the difficulties of ascertaining many of the dates of secular history, to which reference has already been made, and wliich were still further increased in their case by the different ways of reckoning the years of reigning monarchs and of calculating time in the diti'erent eras. For example, Lk 3^ ' in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius ' may be reckoned from Augustus' death, Aug. 19 A.D. 14, or from the time wl;en Tiberius was associated with Augustus in the empire by special law ; but that law, again, is variously dated, being identified