Summa III, Q.45: The Transfiguration of Christ – Its Brightness, Witnesses and the Father's Voice

Orientation #

He opens directly on the Transfiguration (“Then we ought to consider about the transfiguration of Christ”), prompted by seeing Raphael’s Transfiguration on an EWTN program about the Vatican museums — “I said, Ah, this is a sign now.” At the end he says the next part deals with the Passion, “the third part of that fourfold division,” and that they must “wait till the fall to take this up again.”

The class, in order #

1. The plan of the question (“about these four things are asked”) #

Four articles: (1) whether it was suitable for Christ to be transfigured; (2) whether the clarity of the transfiguration was the clarity of glory; (3) the witnesses; (4) the testimony of “the paternal voice” — though Thomas will also treat the cloud and the Holy Spirit there.

Aside: in Raphael’s painting Christ is aloft with Elias and Moses, apostles below, and at the bottom the disciples failing to cast out the demon — which is why Christ comes down the mountain.

2. The three objections of article 1 (“figure is in the fourth species of quality”) #

• Obj. 1: changing into diverse figures belongs not to a true body but to a fantastic or imaginary one (“we’re not Manichaeans”). He glosses: this takes “figure” to mean shape. Examples of that sense: Circe turning men into beasts in the Odyssey; Moses’ staff becoming a snake.
• Obj. 2: figure is in the fourth species of quality, clarity in the third (sensible qualities); so taking on clarity should not be called trans-figuration. He stresses this is a question of the use of the word.
• Obj. 3: the glorious body has four gifts — impassibility, agility, subtlety, clarity. Why transfiguration by the assumption of clarity alone rather than the others? Asides: agility — “I need a little bit of that, go to Europe now”; subtlety — going through a wall; impassibility related to passio, being acted upon, suffering.
• Sed contra: Matthew 17, Jesus was transfigured before three of his disciples.

3. The body of article 1: knowing the end of the road (“just as the archer… unless first he sees the target”) #

His argument as Thomas gives it:

1. Having foretold his Passion, Christ wanted to lead the disciples to follow it (taking up the cross).
2. But whoever goes straight forward on a road must in some way foreknow the end — as the archer does not shoot straight unless he first sees the signum, the target. He connects this to Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I: knowing the end or purpose of man, we are like the archer with a target and far likelier to hit; not knowing it, we shoot at random. He stresses seeing the target does not guarantee hitting it — only “tremendously better.”
3. This is especially necessary when the road is difficult and rough and the journey laborious, but the end joyful (jucunditas). Thomas’ “Lord, we do not know where you are going, and how can we know the way?”
4. Christ by his Passion reached glory — not only of soul, which he had from conception, but of body (Luke 24: “These things were necessary for Christ to undergo, so you might also enter into his glory”); and he leads us who follow in his footsteps (Acts 14: “through many tribulations it is necessary to enter the kingdom of heaven”).
5. Therefore it was fitting to show the disciples the clarity of his brightness — which is to be transfigured — to which he wants to configure his own (Philippians 3: “he will reform the body of our humility, making it configured to the body of his clarity”). Bede on Mark: by pious provision it was done, that by contemplation of ever-abiding joy, delayed a brief time, we might more bravely tolerate the adverse things of this life.

Aside on “a brief time”: years seem to pass faster as one ages because of the ratio — at one year old, a year is your whole life; “now that I’m 74, one year is a drop in the bucket.” Also an aside about not knowing his way around Worcester.

4. Replies of article 1 (“figure is considered around the extremity of the body”) #

• Reply 1 (Jerome on Matthew): no one should think Christ lost his pristine form and face, or the truth of his body, taking on a spiritual or airy body. The evangelist shows how: his face was splendid as the sun, his garments white as snow — the substance is not taken away, the glory is changed. He notes Thomas will later use the sun/snow difference for face vs. clothes.
• Reply 2: figure is considered about the extremity of a body — Euclid: “a figure is that which is contained by a limit or limits.” Example: a large square and a large circle are indistinguishable at the centre; they differ at the outside. So whatever is considered about the extremity pertains somehow to figure; colour, and likewise the clarity of a non-transparent body, is noted on its surface. Hence assuming clarity is called transfiguration. His verdict: “Okay, we’ll let you get away with that, Thomas.”
• Digression on transformatus / morphē: the fourth species of quality (shape, form, figure) gets extended to the other species — “you’re in good shape,” “in good form,” science as a form of the mind — and then to substance: the soul is the form of the body; Boethius, divina substantia forma est. The Greek is metamorphosis, and morphē is even more extended than “figure.”
• Reply 3: among the four gifts, clarity alone is a quality of the person in himself; the other three are perceived only in some act, motion or undergoing. Christ showed signs of the other three: agility in walking on the sea, subtlety in going forth from the closed womb of the Virgin, impassibility in evading the Jews who wanted to throw him off the cliff or stone him. But he is not said to be transfigured on account of these, only on account of clarity.

5. Article 2: was it the clarity of glory? (“as regards the essence… not as regards the way of being”) #

Objections: (1) Bede’s gloss on Matthew 17 — in his mortal body he showed not immortality but a clarity similar to future immortality; the clarity of glory belongs to an immortal body. (2) Bede on Luke 9 — a glorification of the body in an imaginary representation of future beatitude; but an image of a thing is not the thing. (3) The clarity of glory is only in the human body, but this clarity appeared also in his clothing and in the lucid cloud. Sed contra: Jerome — such as he will be at the judgment, so he appeared to the apostles; and on Matthew 16, he wished to show the glory in which he would come, “so that neither would they sorrow at the death of the Lord.”

Body: it was the clarity of glory as regards the essence, not as regards the mode of being.

1. The clarity of the glorious body derives from the clarity of the soul (Augustine, Epistle to Dioscorus); so Christ’s clarity derived from his divinity (Damascene) and from the glory of his soul.
2. That from conception the soul’s glory did not redound to the body was by divine dispensation, so that in a passible body he might fulfil the mysteries of our redemption.
3. But this did not take away his power to derive that glory to the body, which he did as to clarity.
4. In the glorified body clarity redounds as a permanent quality affecting the body, so shining is not miraculous there; in Christ it came per modum passionis, as a passing passion. Examples: air illuminated by the sun; blushing — is redness a new quality in my face, or something transient? (Aristotle’s distinction of habit and disposition, first species of quality.) Hence Christ’s brightness was miraculous, like walking on the water. Dionysius, Epistle 4 to Caius: he did what is of man above man — the Virgin conceiving supernaturally, the unstable water sustaining material and earthly feet.
5. Hence one ought not say, as Hugh of St. Victor says, that Christ took on the dotes (gifts) of clarity, agility and subtlety; those name permanent qualities of the glorious body. He had these miraculously, though they pertain to the gifts.

Before that correction he interjects a defence of Hugh: he is baptized “Hugo Duane Berquist,” his father was Reno Victor Berquist, Victor his confirmation name, so he is attached by name to Hugh of St. Victor. Hugh’s Didascalicon already has the division of human knowledge by the order reason considers (the order reason does not make; the order it makes in its own acts, in the acts of the will, and in exterior matter) that Thomas gives at the start of the commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics — though Hugh counts four kinds of philosophy, including the mechanical arts, which Thomas does not call philosophy. He uses this division as a sign confirming the definition of reason by before and after, by order.

Comparison he calls “beautiful”: as regards the soul, the vision in which Paul was rapt to the third heaven. Augustine first said, and Thomas follows, that Moses and Paul saw God as he is, face to face — the beatific vision as to essence, but not as a permanent gift, rather per modum passionis. “I don’t know if this is official church doctrine, but… those are pretty big names.” And Paul, coming back to earth: “I chastise my body, lest preaching to others I lose my own soul.”

Replies: (1) it shows not that it was not the clarity of glory, but that it was not the clarity of a glorified body — by dispensation the gift of clarity redounded, but not impassibility. (2) Imaginaria comes from image: it was a true clarity of glory, but also a likeness representing the perfection of that glory as it belongs to a glorified body. (3) The clarity of his body represents the future clarity of his body; the clarity of his vestments the future clarity of the saints, excelled by his own as snow’s whiteness is excelled by the sun’s — “we’re not going to be as bright as he will be.” Gregory, Moralia XXXII: the just who cling to Christ are signified by the vestments (Isaiah: “by all these, as by an ornament, you are vested”). The lucid cloud signifies the glory of the Holy Spirit, or the paternal power (Origen), or suitably the clarity of the renovated world, the tent of the saints — whence, as Peter proposed to make tents, the lucid cloud overshadowed them.

6. Article 3, objections: the witnesses (“more ought to have been the angels than men”) #

(1) One best witnesses what he knows; future glory was then experienced only by angels, so angels should have been the witnesses. (2) No fiction befits witnesses of truth; a gloss on Luke 9 says neither the bodies nor the souls of Moses and Elias appeared, but forms in some subject creature, done by angelic ministry. A student notes this contradicts objection 1; he agrees, and calls it “an attack upon Moses and Elias.” (3) Acts 10: all the prophets give testimony to Christ, so not only these two. (4) The glory is promised to all the faithful, so all the disciples should have been taken. He notes 3 and 4 are parallel, prophets absent and apostles absent.

Aside: the genie-and-one-wish story — the queen who asks a man for his dog, then must grant him his one wish: “I want my dog.” And a joke about what one or two questions you would ask Thomas on a late-night show.

7. Article 3, body and replies (“of those going before… of those following”) #

Body: Christ wished to be transfigured to show his glory and provoke men to desire it. Men are brought to beatitude through Christ, both those after him in time and those before him — whence at the Passion the crowds that followed and those that preceded shouted Hosanna (he suggests this is the spiritual meaning of the text). So fittingly witnesses of those going before (Moses and Elias) and of those following (Peter, James, John): “in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word stands.”

• Reply 1: the transfiguration manifested the glory of his body, which pertains to men alone — angels have no bodies. He calls this “a marvelous answer.”
• Reply 2: that gloss comes from On the Marvels of Sacred Scripture, not authentic, falsely ascribed to Augustine, so one need not stand on it. Jerome on Matthew: to the scribes and Pharisees asking a sign from heaven he refused, but here, to increase the apostles’ faith, he gives one — Elias descending from where he ascended, Moses rising from the depths (inferno). Moses’ soul appeared through an assumed body, as angels do; Elias appeared in his own body, not taken from the empyrean heaven but from some eminent place to which he was carried in the fiery chariot. He adds that Elias is to come back before the second coming.
• Reply 3 (Chrysostom’s six reasons why Moses and Elias): (i) because the crowds said he was Elias or Jeremiah or one of the prophets — he brings the chief prophets to show the difference between the Lord and his servants; (ii) Moses gave the law, Elias was zealous for God’s glory, so their presence excludes the Jews’ calumny that he transgressed the law and the charge that he usurped God’s glory; (iii) — “this is very interesting” — to show he has power of life and death and is judge of dead and living: Moses already dead, Elias still living, brought together: “That’s marvelous”; (iv) Luke says they spoke of the excessus he would complete in Jerusalem, his passion and death, so he brings in those who exposed themselves to death for God — Moses to Pharaoh, Elias to Ahab; (v) that the disciples imitate the mildness of Moses and the zeal of Elias — a pairing you would not expect, compared to John Paul beatifying John XXIII (aggiornamento) and Pius IX (condemning the errors of the world) together; (vi) Hilary adds: to show himself preached by the law Moses gave and the prophets among whom Elias was praecipuus.
• Reply 4: high mysteries are not to be expounded to all at once, but through those who are greater in their time they reach the others — “God loves order.” He recalls Thomas’ sermon on Scripture where the mountains are the doctors and the sunlight strikes their tops first, and his old teacher Kasurik’s “God hates equality,” against what he calls “the objection of democracy.” Chrysostom: he took three more powerful ones — Peter excelling in love of Christ and in the power committed to him; John in the privilege of being loved, on account of his virginity, and of his gospel; James on account of his martyrdom, the first martyr among the apostles (under Herod, John’s brother). But he did not want them to announce it before the letter [ed.: Thomas’ ante resurrectionem, unclear in recording] lest, as Jerome says, it seem incredible, and lest after such glory the scandal of the cross be more foul, or he be impeded by the people; when they were filled with the Holy Spirit, then they were witnesses.
  • Aside: whether they celebrated Matthias today; the only apostle not a martyr is St. John.

8. Article 4: the paternal voice (“This is my beloved son”) #

Objections: (1) Job 33, God speaks once and does not repeat; the voice already spoke at the baptism. He counters in passing: “repetition is the mother of learning,” and Empedocles — “what is worth saying can be said twice.” (2) At the baptism the Holy Spirit was present in the species of a dove, not so here. (3) Christ began to teach after baptism, yet no voice then said to hear him; so not here either. (4) One should not say to men what they cannot bear (John: “I have other things to say which you cannot bear yet”); the disciples fell on their faces in fear. He calls this “kind of an audacious objection,” and recalls Job arguing with God — “where truth is concerned, there is no respect for persons.”

Body: adoption as sons of God is by a conformity of image to the natural Son, coming about in two ways: (a) by the grace of the road in this life, an imperfect conformity; (b) by glory, a perfect conformity — 1 John: “now we are the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be; we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” Since we get grace through baptism, and in the transfiguration the clarity of future glory is shown beforehand, in both the natural sonship of Christ was fittingly declared by the Father’s testimony.

Replies:

• 1: that word of Job refers to the eternal speech by which the Father brings forth a Word unique, equal and co-eternal to himself. Still, the same may be said twice, not on account of the same thing, but to show the diverse ways men share the likeness. Comparison: “just like Mozart repeats himself sometimes, variations on a theme, but they’re not the same.”
• 2: in baptism, where the mystery of the first regeneration is declared, the whole Trinity appears — the Son incarnate, the Spirit as dove, the Father in the voice; so also in the transfiguration, “the sacrament of the second regeneration”: Father in the voice, Son in the man, Holy Spirit in the shining cloud. As in baptism he gives innocence, designated by the dove’s simplicity, so in the resurrection he gives clarity of glory and refrigerium from every evil, designated by the lucid cloud. He notes the English translation before him drops the clause about the dove: “each translation’s missing something.”
• 3: Christ actually gave grace and promised glory by word; so fittingly at the transfiguration men are induced to hear him, not at the baptism. “Okay, it’s subtle, huh? And when it comes to Scotus, Doctor Subtle — this is what they’ve got. Thousands of subtle ones.”
• 4: it was fitting the disciples be terrified and prostrated by the Father’s voice, that the excellence of that glory be shown, exceeding every sense and faculty of mortals — “too good to be true” — Exodus 33: “man shall not see me and live”; Jerome: human fragility cannot sustain so great a glory. But from this fragility men are healed by Christ bringing them to glory, signified by his saying “Get up, do not be afraid.”

His words #

• “transfigured” / transformatus — the assumption of clarity; connected to Greek metamorphosis, morphē.
• “clarity” — brightness, one of the four gifts of the glorious body [ed.: claritas].
• “the four gifts” / dotes — impassibility, agility, subtlety, clarity [ed.: the dowries of the glorified body].
• “subtlety… spirituality, I can go through the wall.”
• signum — here “target,” what the archer aims at.
• jucunditas — the joyfulness of the end.
• “way of being” / per modum passionis — a passing passion, not a permanent quality.
• “clarity of glory as regards the essence, not as regards the mode of having it.”
• imaginaria — “which comes from image,” a likeness representing, not a fiction.
• “the sacrament of the second regeneration” — his phrase for the Transfiguration.
• “the objection of democracy” — his name for the objection that all should be equal.
• “God loves order” / “God hates equality” (Kasurik, his old teacher).

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 45, aa. 1–4 (whole question, objections, bodies, replies)
• Matthew 17; Matthew 16; Luke 9; Luke 24; Acts 14; Acts 10; Philippians 3; 1 John (inferred: 3:2); Job 33; Exodus 33; John (“I have other things to say to you”)
• Euclid’s definition of figure (as quoted by Thomas)
• Jerome on Matthew; Bede on Mark and on Matthew/Luke (glosses); Chrysostom on Matthew (six reasons); Hilary; Gregory, Moralia XXXII; Origen; Dionysius, Epistle 4 to Caius; Augustine, Epistle to Dioscorus; Damascene

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I (the archer and the end of man); Aristotle on habit and disposition, first species of quality; the categories (third and fourth species of quality)
• Homer, Odyssey (Circe)
• Boethius, divina substantia forma est
• Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon; Thomas, prologue to the commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics
• On the Marvels of Sacred Scripture (pseudo-Augustine), rejected as inauthentic
• Thomas’ sermon on Scripture (mountains and sunlight)
• Raphael’s Transfiguration

His questions #

• Why is Christ said to be transfigured, when figure is in the fourth species of quality and clarity in the third? Because clarity, like colour, is seen on the surface, the extremity of the body, and whatever concerns the extremity pertains to figure (Euclid).
• Why must one who walks a road foreknow its end? Because like the archer without a target, otherwise you shoot at random; and especially when the road is rough and the end joyful.
• Why is transfiguration said of clarity alone and not of the other three gifts? Because clarity alone is a quality of the person in himself; the others appear only in act, motion or undergoing.
• Was the clarity of the Transfiguration the clarity of glory? Yes as to its essence, no as to its mode: it came as a passing passion, miraculously, not as a permanent quality.
• Did Moses and Paul see God as he is? Augustine and Thomas say yes, face to face as to the essence, but per modum passionis, not as a permanent gift.
• Why men as witnesses rather than angels? Because what was shown was the glory of the body, which pertains to men alone.
• Why Moses and Elias, and why only three apostles? Moses and Elias for the six reasons of Chrysostom and Hilary; three apostles because high mysteries come to the rest through the greater ones — “God loves order.”
• Why does the Father’s voice speak twice, at the baptism and here? Not on account of the same thing: baptism gives grace, the imperfect conformity; the Transfiguration shows glory, the perfect conformity.
• Why “hear him” here and not at the baptism? Because he actually gave grace in baptism, but glory he promised by word, so we are told to listen.