transfiguration The transfiguration is a concept in Christianity which is central to the understanding of Christ as joining the human and the divine. The notion of transfiguration marks the historical event when God became present in Christ's body, which occurred as Christ left his followers to pray. Both because of its theological importance and because of the centrality that it had in narratives of Christ's life, the transfiguration was heavily glossed within the early Church. It is the only time in the Gospels where Christ's divinity is revealed to the apostles.
The notion of transfiguration gained centrality in Christian religion because it marks both the appearance of Christ's divine form in his human body and the time when God names him as the Messiah. On the road to Jerusalem, Christ left the apostles Peter, James, and John to pray (Matthew 17: 1–8; Mark 9: 2–8; Luke 9: 28–36). As he did so, his body underwent
metamorphosis in which his ‘face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light’ (Luke 9: 29). For the first time in the gospels, God spoke to the apostles, recognizing his son (Matthew 17: 1–8). Christ appeared in conversation with Elijah and Moses, two figures before whom God had revealed himself in the
Old Testament, confirming his divinity. Christ told the apostles not to speak of this event until after he had risen from the dead; they offered little description of the event, although the narrative significance in the gospels is implicit: the event strengthened the apostles for the coming passion, and prepares the reader for Christ's resurrection.
Because the passage describes the simultaneous presence of humanity and divinity in one body, it was the subject of extensive exegesis for early Christians. Church Fathers returned to the event as an explanation of the difference of flesh and spirit, and an illustration of the humanity of God. The feast of the transfiguration was commemorated within the Church, and Mt. Tabor became a colony of religious orders and a site of pilgrimage. As an occasion of transcending the physical body it gained metaphorical significance in daily religious practice in Greek Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant religion. The metaphorical use of transfiguration extends from the Christic narrative to explain the revelation of religious truth. Catholic theologians describe the partaking of Christ's body as an occasion of individual transfiguration, and speak metaphorically of the transfiguration of the Church to mark its spiritual invigoration. Transfiguration gains the quality of a prophetic reading, and extends to the entire Church, as, in taking the sacrament, the Christian prepares for the final revelation of the second coming.
The concept of religious transfiguration gained different significance as a revelation of religious truth in Catholicism, Greek Orthodox, and Protestant churches. In the Byzantine church, images of the transfiguration were among the most common that were used to decorate reliquaries, vessels that contained body parts that joined the spiritual and physical worlds; their popularity suggests the strong link drawn between the transfiguration and the elevation from the body in the Last Judgment. The long tradition of images of the transfiguration that existed in the Greek Orthodox church was paralleled in the West; from the fourteenth century, Italian artists returned to the transfiguration as a dramatic revelation of the glory of Christ. This tradition culminates in Raphael Sanzio's
Transfiguration. The dramatic construction of the transfiguration in Raphael's fresco returns both to the duality of the Christian god and the confirmation of his divinity through his transcendence of physical form; depicting the concept of transfiguration indeed posed the significant pictorial challenge of illustrating transcendence of the body. Raphael depicted Christ flanked by the Old Testament figures of the prophet and lawgiver, bathed in divine light. Raphael's conflation of Christ's curing an epileptic child with the metamorphosis of his own body juxtaposes an uncontrolled body with transcendence of physical form. The scene was returned to so often because it illustrates a central concept of Christianity: the physical juncture of Christ's humanity and divinity, the human manifestation of God's presence in the world.
The concept of transfiguration gained new significance as a revelation of religious truth to the individual in the reformed churches. The reformer Martin Luther appropriated the concept of transfiguration to emphasize the power of the written word, rather than transfiguration of the worldly body, and linked the concept to the power of individual prayer and inner reflection, to join man and God without mediation. But if transfiguration became the end of an interior journey of self-exploration among Protestant groups, the metaphorical significance of the transfiguration often remained embedded in the transcendence of the bodily form. Protestant theologians often use the metaphor of transfiguration of the individual to draw attention to the embodied state of a man who receives grace; transfiguration becomes a conceit for describing a physical relation to the written word. If the transfiguration of the individual was linked by Catholics to partaking of Christ's flesh or as a spiritual invigoration of the Church, Protestant orders describe a physical preparation as a precondition to transfiguration through reading of the Scriptures. Pietism and Puritanism emphasize disciplining the body in preparation to reading the Scriptures.
The religious concept of transfiguration has broad significance as it illustrates the relation of the physical world to the revelation of divine truth.
Daniel A. Brownstein
Bibliography
Brown, F. B. (1983). Transfiguration: poetic metaphor and the legacies of religious belief. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Carlston, C. F. Transfiguration and resurrection. Journal of Biblical Literature, 80, 233–40.
McGuckin, J. A. (1986). The Transfiguration of Christ in scriptures and tradition. Lewiston, New York.
See also
Christianity and the body.
