Lecture by Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia

2. “A glory brighter than light.”

Let us begin by considering the nature of this glory disclosed on Tabor, and then explore the relationship between the two hills, Tabor and Calvary. What, first, is the nature of the radiance that shone as lightning from the Saviour’s face and clothes at his transfiguration? And what, second, is the connection (if any) between the glory of the transfiguration and the kenosis of Christ at Gethsemane and Golgotha?

As regards the light of transfiguration, in the Gospel narrative it is said that Christ’s face shone “as the sun” (Matthew 17:2). Here the Greek Fathers and the Orthodox liturgical books are more explicit and emphatic. The Lord’s face, says St John Chrysostom, shone not merely as but more than the sun. The glory of Tabor, so the Fathers teach with striking unanimity, is not merely a natural but supernatural light; not merely a material, created luminosity but the spiritual and uncreated splendour of the Godhead. It is a divine light. Already in the late second century Clement of Alexandria explains that the apostles did not see the light by virtue of the normal power of sense perception, for physical eyes cannot see the light of the Godhead unless transformed by divine grace; the light is “spiritual” and is disclosed to the disciples, not in its entirety, but only so far as they are capable of perceiving it. Exactly the same is stated in the Troparion (apolytikion) of the feast:

Thou wast transfigured upon the mountain,
Showing the glory to Thy disciples as far as they were able to bear it…

It is, says St Gregory the Theologian, a light “too fierce for human eyes,” a light, in the words of St Maxim the Confessor, that “transcends the operation of the senses.”

Similar statements recur throughout the liturgical texts for the feast. The light of Tabor, it is said, is “non-material,” “eternal,” “infinite,” “unapproachable,” “a glory brighter than light.” In short, it is nothing less then “the glory of the Godhead;” “it is a radiant and divine splendour.” As St Dionysios the Areopagite affirms, the light is “supraessential” or “beyond being” (hyperousios). When in the fourteenth century St Gregory Palamas insisted that the light of Tabor is identical with the uncreated energies of God, he was doing no more than summarize the existing tradition of the Fathers, extending back more than a thousand years before him.

Concerning this uncreated, non-material light that shines from the transfigured Saviour, at least four things may be affirmed:

It reveals to us the glory of the Trinity;
It reveals to us the glory of the Christ as God incarnate;
It reveals to us the glory of the human person;
It reveals to us the glory of the entire created cosmos.

First, the light of Tabor is a light of the Holy Trinity. As the Church sings at Vespers of the feast:

Christ, the light that shone before the sun,
This day has mystically made known upon mount Tabor
The image of the Trinity.

Seen as a Trinitarian celebration, the feast of the Transfiguration is closely similar to the feast that occurs exactly eight months previously, Theophany or Epiphany (6 January), the celebration of Christ’s baptism. Both are feasts of light: indeed, Theophany is commonly called in Greek as Ta Phota, “The Lights.” But the parallel extends further than this: both are occasions in which is plainly manifested the joint action of the three persons of the Godhead. At the baptism of Jesus the voice of the Father speaks from heaven, bearing testimony to the beloved Son, as the Spirit in the form of a dove descends from the Father and rests upon Christ (Mark 1:9-11). Precisely the same triadic configuration is evident on Mount Tabor: the Father speaks from heaven, testifying to the Son, while the Spirit is present on this occasion not in the form of a dove but as a cloud of light.

Viewing the transfiguration, then, in this Trinitarian perspective, we proclaim at Matins in the exaposteilarion:

Today on Tabor on the manifestation of Thy light, O Logos, …
We have seen the Father as light
And the Spirit as light,
Guiding with light the whole creation.

While Trinitarian, the glory of the transfiguration is, in the second place, more specifically a Christological glory. The uncreated light that shines from the Lord Jesus reveals him as “true God from true God… consubstantial with the Father,” in the words of the Creed. But at the same time on Tabor the Lord’s human body, although radiant with non-material glory, still remains genuinely material and human; his created flesh is rendered translucent, so that the divine glory shines through it, but it is not abolished or swallowed up. As the hymnography of the feast expresses it, employing the language of the Calcedonian definition and the Fifth Ecumenical Council, Christ is revealed upon the mountain as “one from two natures, and in both of them complete.”

Interpreting the Christological implications of the transfiguration, we may say: nothing is taken away, and nothing is added. Nothing is taken away: transfigured on Tabor, Christ still remains fully human. Yet equally nothing is added: the eternal glory revealed on Tabor is something that the incarnate Christ possesses always, from the very first moment of his conception in the womb of the Holy Virgin. This glory is with him throughout his earthly life: even during the moments of his deepest humiliation, as at the agony in the garden of Gethsemane or at the cry of dereliction upon the cross, it still remains true that “in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). The difference lies simply in this: at other points in his life on earth the glory, although truly present, is hidden beneath the veil of the flesh; on the mountain-top, for a brief instant, the veil grows transparent and the glory is partially made manifest.

At the transfiguration, however, no change occurred in Christ himself; the change came rather in the apostles. In the words of St John of Damascus, “He was transfigured, not by assuming what he was not, but by manifesting to his disciples what he was, opening their eyes.” “He did not at that moment become more radiant or more exalted,” says St Andrew of Crete, “far from it: but he remained as he was before.” As Paul Evdokimov expresses it, “The Gospel story speaks not about the transfiguration of the Lord, but about of the apostles.”

The feats of transfiguration, then, sets before us the saving paradox of our Christian faith: that Jesus is entirely God and at the same time entirely human, yet he is one single person and not two. Each year, on 6 August, we do well to reflect with the utmost vividness and humility upon this double fullness in the incarnate Saviour: upon the perfection of his Godhead and the undiminished integrity of his manhood.

Thirdly, the transfiguration reveals to us not only the glory of the Trinity, not only the glory of Christ, one person in two natures, but also the glory of our own human personhood. The transfiguration is a disclosure not simply of what God is but equally of what we are. Looking at Christ transfigured upon the mountain, we see human nature – our created personhood –, taken up into God, filled entirely with uncreated life and glory, permeated by the divine energies, yet still continuing to be totally human. We see human nature as it was at the beginning, in Paradise before the fall; we see human nature as it will be at the end, in the age to come after the final resurrection – and this last state of human nature is incomparably higher than the first. Transfiguration is in this way eschatological in character; it is, in the words of St Basil the Great, “the inauguration of Christ’s glorious parousia.”

The transfiguration of Christ therefore shows us, according to St Andrew of Crete, “the deification of human nature.” If we wish to understand the true meaning of the doctrine of theosis, then let us attend a vigil service for the feast of the transfiguration, and listen attentively to what is said and sung. Christ, transfigured on the mountain, reveals to us the full measure of our human potentialities, the ultimate capacity of our human nature at its truest and highest. In the words of the kontakion for the forefeast:

Today, in the divine transfiguration,
All human nature shines forth divinely
And cries aloud with gladness.

Nor is this all. Fourthly, – and this has a particular significance for the contemporary world – the transfigured Christ reveals us the glory not only of the human person but equally of the whole material creation. “Thou hast sanctified with Thy light all the earth,” as we sing at vespers for the feast. The transfiguration is cosmic in its scope; for humanity is to be saved not from the world but with the world. Mount Tabor anticipates the final state foretold by St Paul, when the creation in its entirety “will be delivered from boundage to corruption,” and will enter into “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). It is the inauguration of the “new earth,” of which the Apocalypse speaks (Revelation 21:1).

On the mountain, that is to say, we see not only a human face transfigured with glory; the radiance shines equally from Christ’s clothes (Matthew 17:2). The light of Tabor transforms not only the body of the Saviour in isolation, but also the other material objects associated with him, the man-made clothing that he wears; and so, by extension, potentially, it embraces all material things. Not only each human face but also each physical object is capable of transfiguration. In the light of that one face which was altered, of those particular clothes that were rendered white and glistering, all human faces have acquired a fresh radiance, all common things, have been given new depth. In the eyes of those who truly believe in the transfigured Christ, nothing whatever is mean or despicable; all created things can become a vehicle of God’s uncreated energies. The glory of the burning bush is all around us, wanting to be unveiled. The feast of the transfiguration is par excellence an ecological celebration.