By For those who aren’t familiar, the transfiguration (Matthew 17.1-13, Mark 9.2-13, and Luke 9.28-36) is an event recorded in the gospels where Christ, Peter, James, and John go up onto a mountain and Christ is “transfigured.” The event is clearly meant to indicate the divine approval of Christ’s mission on earth. But there seems to be much more going on that a cursory glance does not reveal. To start to probe the depths of this passage in the gospels, we can turn to a great theologian and philosopher – Maximus the Confessor.
In his Ambigua, Maximus lays out his thought on the transfiguration, and thinks that this event contains deep philosophical and theological implications, and even goes so far as to claim that it is the model for how to do theology. I’ll divide Maximus’s insights into two broad categories. On one hand, Maximus uses the transfiguration account to probe into the NT portrayal of Christ, and on the other hand, he uses it to teach us about the proper way to do philosophical theology.
Maximus on Christ
With regard to the first, Maximus correctly points out that Christ is a type of Moses and Elijah. Let’s first understand what saying this means. Typology is a method of interpreting the Bible where parallels between the OT and NT are elucidated. More formally, it can be roughly defined as, ‘a hermeneutical method based on the position that the Bible is a unified Christocentric whole; as the fulfillment of the OT, Christ is prefigured in the OT due to the salvation history being made evident to God’s people through divine providence which places Christ in a textual-hermentuical relationship to people, places, things, or events in the OT.’
For those unfamiliar with the technicalities allow me to flesh that out a bit more. The Bible itself is a narrative that is focused on the history of salvation and has Christ at the very center. Because Christ is the fulfillment of the OT, and at the very center of the text, his presence is pre-contained in the OT. Even Christ testifies to this in the Road to Emmaus passage in Luke. In that passage, Christ reveals to his disciples his presence in the OT since the very beginning, as his incarnation was pre-ordered by God to save mankind. After the passion, the OT prophecies and plan for salvation have been fulfilled, and the ‘preview’ of things in the OT can be seen in their full light. It’s kind of similar to the movie Karate Kid when Daniel is fighting and finally looks back on his training and sees the full reason why Mr. Miyagi trained him in the way he did.
God can order things in the OT to prefigure Christ in this way because of his great providential power, and his love for us, in which he desires that we come to a fuller understanding of the events of history to draw closer to Him.
Typology is not an arbitrary application of textual parallels. In fact, it has rigid principles that govern its application. One such principle is that it requires clear textual warrant on the side of the type and anti-type. I.e., to establish that there is typology, one must first establish with sufficient clarity that the antitype and type have clear textual parallels between each other. To see this, consider two basic examples.
A bad use of typology would be the claim that Christ is the new Adam, and because Adam had a wife, so did Christ. This fails because textual warrant on the side of Christ is not established – there is no textual evidence for Christ having a wife. On the other hand, a good use of typology would be the claim that Mary is a type of the Ark of the Covenant, because she ‘carries God’s presence’ on earth. This claim has textual warrant on the side of the antitype (Ark) and type (Mary.)
So in short, typology is a hermeneutical method for understanding the Bible in a deeper way, and it requires textual warrant, among other principles.
With that brief account of typology given, let’s take a look at Maximus’s use of it in his reading of the transfiguration. In Ambigum 10.31, Maximus gives ten typological relationships between Christ and Moses & Elijah. I will only discuss two of these, but for those interested I highly recommend turning to the text.
Maximus claims that in being a type of Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets testify to Christ and will always be with him. Just as Moses was given the Law from God, and Elijah was given his mission and power from God, Christ’s actions in the NT showcase a parallel bestowal from the Father. The textual warrant thus indicates that we can affirm Maximus’s conclusion and say that Christ has been given his mission from the Father and the Law and Prophets affirm him.
Further, Maximus makes the stunning claim that in Christ we see the unity of the intelligible and sensible creation. “Moses corresponds to the sensible creation,” Maximus says, ‘since it is clear that his life was subject to change and corruption, for in Scripture we read of his birth and death.” Moses’s generation and corruption symbolizes the sensible creation which is also subject to corruption and death following the Fall. Elijah, on the other hand, corresponds to the intelligible creation, “for Scripture says nothing about his coming into being, or even if he was born at all, or if he was subject to the corruption of death, or whether or not he died. For such is the intelligible creation: it has no beginning discernible to man, neither is it obvious to us that it was brought into being from out of nothing, or that it awaits a definitive end determined by a process of decay and corruption.” Elijah’s lack of generation and corruption corresponds to the sensible creation, which is not only mysterious to man, but by nature imperishable since God created it in such a way.
Christ, as a type of both Moses and Elijah, is seen in the NT to be a man born of a woman in a manger, thus indicating his entry into the changeable and perishable world, yet also prior to all creation and co-extensive with the Father, thus indicating the sensible creation. Christ can thus be said to be the unity of the sensible and intelligible creation, since he is the unity of Moses and Elijah.
Aside from those two examples given by Maximus, I wish to point out that Christ stands as a type to Moses and Elijah, and in so doing represents the law and the prophets. Moses, as is well-known, was the giver of the Jewish Law, revealed when he went up on Mount Sinai. Elijah was a famous prophet who led the Jews in times of desperation. In the same manner Christ is the fulfillment of the law, and ushering in a new covenant is the new lawgiver, or new Moses. And just as Elijah led God’s people and stood against the false god Baal, Christ will lead God’s people and stand against the false gods of all ages. Both of these conclusions have textual warrant on the side of the OT, and the new, which indicates that the typological reading is a legitimate one.
As you can see, a typological interpretation of the Bible has unbelievable power in helping us to grasp the meaning of Christ and the text.
Maximus on Theology
I’ll keep this section short for those who are busy contemplating the mystery of Christ after discovering typology. Don’t let reading the rest of this essay hold you back, but realize that Maximus helps here too! He follows up his typological interpretation by pointing out that the account of the transfiguration also gives us a method for doing theology. He does this by looking at what the symbols indicate. The light, it would seem, indicates to the disciples the total ineffability and transcendence of God. They are blinded by the white beyond white, and struck by the inability to comprehend God, just like us now, who see through a glass darkly, as Paul says. In this sense, the transfiguration teaches us to do theology with respect to divine transcendence, recognizing the ineffability of God, yet gazing upon the mystery with our natural capabilities assisted by Christ, e.g., reasoned investigation, prayer, and study of the Scriptures. The divine transcendence is to be our guide to using our natural capacities to investigate the Godhead.
The presence of Moses and Elijah also seem to indicate how we are to proceed in doing theology. Moses, as the one who brought God’s people out of Egypt signifies God’s providence, which “lovingly rescues from deception those who have been apprehended by evil, an in its wisdom provides them with diverse ways for their passage from what is material, corrupt, and bodily to what is divine…” Elijah, as the one who judged the unbelievers seems to signify God’s final judgment, or plan for the end of salvation. In the presence of Moses and Elijah then, we see that theology can be done with respect to reliance on God’s providence, and with the contemplation of his final plan for salvation.
Conclusion
In Maximus the Confessor we see a beautiful mode of interpreting the Bible. Not only does he present a typology that is consistent with principles, he lays out a mode of doing theology. It is no wonder that he is venerated as one of the greatest eastern theologians of all time, and was so filled by the spirit that he even stood up to persecutors who tortured him. I think that today we would all be better off it we took some time to fill our minds with the insights of the Confessor.
The Reluctant Philosopher 