Transfiguration

Revision of the author's thesis (Th.D.)--Harvard University, 2008.

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In fifty pithy and engaging daily reflections from Ash Wednesday to Easter and beyond, Rob Marshall leads us on a pilgrim journey to the Mountain of the Transfiguration. The story of Jesus displaying the overwhelming glory of God to three chosen disciples is one of the most potent yet mysterious stories in the gospels, and a prelude to all that will occur in Jerusalem. Popular broadcaster Rob Marshall explores the many layers of the Transfiguration and relates them to ordinary human experiences – journeying, prayer, revelation, tiredness, sleep, fear, doubt, waiting, questioning, listening, suffering, vision and much more. Mountaintop encounters with the divine are transformative, but like the disciples we are not meant to stay there. Instead, we return to the realities of daily life, changed forever by glimpsing the glory of the God. Transfiguration will help you take the power of divine revelation into your ordinary daily Christian life.

Transfiguration explores the work of John Ruskin, Robert Browning, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Walter Pater, treating in particular the ways in which they engaged with the Christian content of their subject, and, in Pater's case, how the art of Christianity was contrasted with classical sculpture. Stephen Cheeke examines two related phenomena: idolatry (a false substitution, a sexual betrayal), and the poetics of transfiguration (to elevate or glorify subject matter not thought of as conventionally poetic, to praise). Central to the book is the question of the 'translation' of religion into art and aesthetics, a process which supposedly undergirds the advent of the museum age and makes possible the idea of a 'religion of art' as a phenomenon of late century Aestheticism. Such a phenomenon is prepared for, however, through the engagement with Christian painting and classical sculpture in the work of these four writers. All four thought carefully about the ways in which a particular mimetic impulse of 'making-live' in artworks could be connected to religious experience. This meant exploring the nature of the link between seeing and believing—visualising in order to conceive, to verify, but also in the sense of being acted upon by the visible. All four wrote about the great power of artworks to transfigure the objects of their attention. In each case, there emerges the possibility of a secret sexual knowledge hiding within, or lying on the other side of the sensuous knowledge of aesthesis. All four wondered whether this was inherently hostile to Christianity, or whether it may, finally, be an accommodation within it.

To read and visualize the transfiguration of Christ is to enter its mystery and encounter its hope. Like the Gospel writers and the disciples who climbed the mountain with Jesus, we struggle to tell the story and explain its meaning. Yet this astounding event reveals God’s ultimate purpose in sending his Son—the complete restoration of humanity and all creation—our transfiguration in Christ. The light and glory of that moment reveal a destiny that is infinite and eternal, made possible by the power of grace. Transfiguration is the trajectory and goal of our spiritual journey. Across time and space, Christians have reflected on the mystery and hope epitomized in the transfiguration, yet their voices have been heard primarily within their own cultural and ecclesiastical contexts. This study gathers many of those voices from the panorama of Scripture and church history and finds in them the common theme of radical transformation in Christ. The point of this theological conversation is spiritual transfiguration and hope for each of us as we reach toward the future Christ has shown us in himself.

All three Synoptic Gospels tell the story of Jesus's transfiguration. Yet there has been surprisingly little written about this key event, and many readers struggle to understand its significance and place in redemptive history, let alone how it might be applied. Here, Patrick Schreiner provides a clear and accessible study of the transfiguration with an eye toward its theological significance and practical application. Namely, this event points to Jesus's double sonship, revealing the preexistent glory of the eternal Son and the future glory of the suffering Messianic Son. Further, the transfiguration points to Christians' own formation and transfiguration. Schreiner traces the transfiguration theme through Scripture and employs hermeneutical, trinitarian, and christological categories to assist his exegesis, thus challenging modern readings. This enlightening study will be of interest to students, pastors, and serious lay readers.

Peter Anthony explores how visionary elements in Luke's Gospel had a particular influence on early interpretation of the Transfiguration, by examining the rich hermeneutical traditions that emerged - particularly in the Latin West - as the Transfiguration was first depicted visually in art. Anthony begins by comparing the visual and visionary culture of antiquity with that of the present, and their differing interpretations of the Transfiguration. He then examines the Transfiguration texts in the synoptic gospels and their interpretation in modern scholarship, and the reception of the Transfiguration in 2 Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter and the Acts of Peter, Tertullian and Origen. Proceeding to look at interpretations found in the Greek East and the Latin West, Anthony finally discusses the earliest visual depictions of the Transfiguration from the sixth century onward, drawn from a wealth of different art forms. Anthony concludes that early commentators' and artists' understanding of how we see and visualise, and therefore, how the Transfiguration was apprehended, is closer to that of the writers of the New Testament than many modern interpreters' is.

The biblical story of Jesus' Transfiguration on a high mountain bristles with meanings germane to present-day concerns and spiritual longings. Together with its later artistic representations, this episode from the synoptic gospels seizes the imagination as an icon of mystical hope, beauty, and possibility. What might such an iconic episode, long honored liturgically in the Eastern church, disclose not only about Jesus, but also about the prospect of seeing our human nature transformed? And as interpreted by Christian tradition since the patristic era, what might it tell us about the worth of envisioning not just a conservation or preservation of natural resources but a transfiguration of all creation, and about how this feast of beauty could re-energize current discussions of Christianity's relation to environmental attitudes and policy? Such questions are addressed in this book through an original blend of personal reflection with commentary on relevant theological and scriptural texts, literary works, music, and art.