In the Shadow of the Incarnation: Essays on Jesus Christ in the Early Church in Honor of Brian E. Daley, S.J.

From Doctrine of Christ to Icon of Christ St. Maximus the Confessor on the Transfiguration of Christ

13 From Doctrine of Christ to Icon of Christ St. Maximus the Confessor on the Transfiguration of Christ Andrew Louth Throughout the Eastern Christian theological tradition—from its first flowering with St. Irenaeus in the second century to the gathering up of the tradition by St. Gregory Palamas in the fourteenth century , and beyond—the mystery of the transfiguration has been central.1 We find Irenaeus’s most famous utterance in the course of a series of re- flections focused by the mystery of the transfiguration: “gloria enim Dei vivens homo: vita autem hominis visio Dei” (for the glory of God is a live human being: and human life is the vision of God).2 Origen pondered on the transfiguration long and frequently.3 In the Makarian Homilies, the transfiguration of Christ is seen as a prefiguration of the precisely bodily transformation that the saints will finally experience.4 Patristic homilies generally dwell on the way in which the transfiguration reveals the doctrine of the Trinity and the mystery of the incarna260 From Doctrine of Christ to Icon of Christ 261 tion and foreshadows—both in what is said and who is there—the mystery of the agony in the garden and the paschal mystery of death and resurrection; but they also see it as prefiguring the future hope—a hope that embraces both soul and body—of those who follow Christ. The mystery of the transfiguration in these homilies concentrates the whole of Christian faith and hope in a single image.5 Depictions of the transfiguration in sacred art are important and striking as well: one thinks of the apse of S. Apollinare in Classe in Ravenna, where the transfiguration is depicted symbolically as bordering on paradise; or the spare and arresting apse in the monastery of St. Catherine on Sinai, which has been so illuminatingly interpreted by Jaś Elsner as the culmination of a spiritual ascent modeled on that of Moses, who appears— standing before the burning bush and receiving the Law in the cleft of a rock—in roundels on either side of the apse.6 Beneath this apse worshipped John of Sinai, the author of the Ladder of Divine Ascent (hence called John Climacus), the most influential work in the Byzantine monastic tradition. As John reaches the final step of the ladder, he says, with a plausible allusion to the mystery of Mount Tabor (maybe even an allusion to the depiction in the apse): And now, for the rest, after all that has been said, there remain these three, binding tightly and securing the bond of all: faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love, for God is so called. But I, so far as I can understand, see one as a ray, one as light, one as a disc, and all as one radiance and one brightness . . . .7 The transfiguration is also central to the vision of St. Symeon the New Theologian at the turn of the millennium.8 For the Byzantine hesychasts—monks who claimed that in their prayer the Uncreated Light of the Godhead was revealed to them—the transfiguration became a central symbol of the reality of that transfiguring vision of the Uncreated Light, defended by St. Gregory Palamas.9 This is the dominant tradition concerning the transfiguration in the Byzantine East. And it is easy to think that it is the only tradition, but this would be a mistake. In Origen there is another interpretation of the transfiguration with a rather different emphasis. In his Contra Celsum we read: 262 Andrew Louth Although Jesus was one, he had several aspects; and to those who saw him he did not appear alike to all. That he had many aspects is clear from the saying, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” (Jn 14:6) and “I am the bread,” (Jn 6:35) and “I am the door,” (Jn 10:9) and countless other such sayings. Moreover, that his appearance was not just the same to those who saw him, but varied according to their individual capacity, will be clear to people who carefully consider why, when about to be transfigured on the high mountain , he did not take all his disciples, but only Peter, James, and John. For they alone had the capacity to see his glory...