The Transfiguration of Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Reading

By Patrick Schreiner

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Feb 27, 2024
• ISBN: 9781493445424

Patrick Schreiner

Patrick Schreiner (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is associate professor of New Testament and biblical theology and endowed chair at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. He is the author of The Kingdom of God and the Glory of the Cross; Matthew, Disciple and Scribe; The Ascension of Christ; and The Visual Word.

Book preview

Patrick Schreiner deftly integrates exegesis, biblical theology, and systematics in a work that brilliantly rescues the transfiguration from its undeserved obscurity and second-class status in both biblical studies and dogmatic theology alike. Here is a contribution to Christology that is as edifying as it is scholarly. I can only describe what he has achieved by using the same term the disciples might have used to describe Jesus’s shining face: glorious!

—Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Christ’s transfiguration is a relatively brief scene in the Synoptics, and yet it offers a breadth of theological and exegetical potential. In this book, Patrick Schreiner helps to unlock this potential by drawing out the transfiguration’s canonical, christological, and churchly significance. The result is a primer that is sure to benefit many.

—Brandon D. Smith, Oklahoma Baptist University; co-founder, Center for Baptist Renewal

"Jesus’s transfiguration is a fountain of rich theology and a wellspring of joyous hope for contemplation. In The Transfiguration of Christ, Patrick Schreiner excavates treasures of glory, blessing the church with a sure guide to this momentous and oft-neglected event in the life of our Lord. His book will lead you to the summit of revelation to behold the eternal light of the Triune God in the face of Jesus Christ and the unveiling of God’s infinite love for his people. Read it, and long for the beatific vision."

—L. Michael Morales, Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary

The transfiguration: The Bible proclaims it. The church celebrates it. The Son reveals himself through it. Why, then, would we neglect it? In this fine contribution, Patrick Schreiner encourages us to gaze anew upon Jesus’s glory on the mountain—his future glory as one of us and his preexistent glory as one of a kind with the Father. If you’ve ignored the transfiguration, you’ll do so no longer. If you’ve loved the transfiguration, you’ll come to love it still more.

—Michael Kibbe, Great Northern University

© 2024 by Patrick Schreiner

Published by Baker Academic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

Grand Rapids, Michigan

www.bakeracademic.com

Ebook edition created 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4934-4542-4

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.

Scripture quotations labeled ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2016.

Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Baker Publishing Group publications use paper produced from sustainable forestry practices and post-consumer waste whenever possible.

To my Mom,

who always shines with Christ’s light

and will one day shine even brighter

when she sees him face to face.

Come now—if you trust me—as I spread out before you a spiritual banquet of words: let us ascend with the Word today, as he goes up the high mountain of the Transfiguration.

—St. Andrew of Crete

Let us climb the mountain, and join in contemplation, and let us be changed along with him, and radiate light along with him.

—Leo the Wise

Come, let’s go up to the mountain of the LORD.

—Isaiah 2:3

Contents

Cover

Endorsements

Half Title Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Abbreviations

Preface

Introduction: A Two-Level Christology

A Refresher on the Transfiguration

The What: Jesus’s Double Sonship

The Why: Hope by Revelation

1. The Necessity of the Transfiguration

Five Reasons We Neglect the Transfiguration

Five Reasons Not to Neglect the Transfiguration

2. The Glorious Setting

A Hermeneutical Grammar

Six/Eight Days Later

Up the Mountain

The Three Witnesses

Purgation—Spiritual Ascent

3. The Glorious Signs

A Trinitarian Grammar

Jesus’s Shining Face and White Clothes

The Bright Cloud

Moses and Elijah

Illumination——Divine Sight

4. The Glorious Saying

A Christological Grammar

Peter’s Inglorious Saying

This Is My Beloved Son

Listen to Him

Union—Partaking in the Divine Nature

5. The Transfiguration and Theology

Creation

The Incarnation

Jesus’s Baptism

Gethsemane

The Cross

The Resurrection

Jesus’s Ascension and Return

The New Creation

Conclusion: Restoring the Transfiguration

A Brief Biblical Theology of the Transfiguration

Appendix: Light from Light

A Transfiguration Bibliography

Books and Dissertations

Articles

Historical Resources

Chapters or Sections in a Book

Systematic Theologies

Name Index

Scripture Index

Back Cover

Abbreviations

Preface

The principle of transfiguration says nothing, no one and no situation, is untransfigurable.

—Desmond Tutu1

The words transfigure and transform are not used interchangeably in our English Bibles, and therefore we distinguish them in our Christian vocabulary. Transfigure refers to what happened to Jesus on the mountain, while transform is employed for the spiritual change Christians undergo in Christ. However, the Greek term behind both is the same: metamorphoō.

We do employ the Greek word in English but not so much in the religious sense. The sciences have taken it over. When we hear the word, we probably think of the organic development in insects and other animals.2 From a scientific perspective, metamorphosis is the process of transformation from an immature form to an adult form. A butterfly morphs from an egg to a caterpillar to a chrysalis to a butterfly. Metamorphosis refers to physical change.

However, in the ancient world, the term had a resilient religious dimension. Two Roman writers even composed works with the term in their titles.3 It was used of gods who temporarily assumed human or animal form and of humans who were changed into animals or gods.

In this book I will attempt to recover this religious use. For Christians, metamorphosis refers both to the physical unveiling of Jesus on the mountain (Matt. 17:2; Mark 9:2) and to the change that progressively occurs in Christians (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 3:18) as we behold God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6) and eventually see him as he is (1 John 3:2).

The relationship between Jesus’s metamorphosis and our own metamorphosis is essential. In Jesus’s metamorphosis we see how the divine can penetrate the human without destroying it. In our metamorphosis we see how the human can be conformed to the divine without ceasing to be human.4

As you begin this journey up the mountain with me, I want to note the structure of this book, as it may vex some. Those who come to this book for biblical theology might be irritated by the dogmatic sections, and those who come for the dogmatic parts might be confused by the spiritual formation sections.

Apart from authorial incompetence—perhaps a justified accusation!—one possible source of this discomfort may be our tendency to read the Scriptures one-dimensionally. We are taught to read in one mode and are tempted to think that our way is superior to those of our fellow travelers. To put this in the words of Paul, we tend to think we are the interpretive all-seeing eye that says to the foot, We have no need for you! But this is not how most Christians have read the Bible over the centuries. It is a lamentable development.

The body of this book (chapters 2, 3, and 4) is written to intentionally confront this one-dimensional reading. In it, I place side by side three subjects that are sometimes divorced.

First, I will develop a theological grammar for how to speak about different aspects of the transfiguration. There are dogmatic rules for exegesis—hermeneutical, trinitarian, and christological—that enlighten rather than suppress interpretation. Presuppositions rooted in the Scriptures and in Christian tradition are our friends, not our foes. I am increasingly convinced that one cannot understand the depth of the transfiguration without the aid of dogmatic categories.

In fact, we might say the transfiguration functions as a revealing test of an exegete’s presuppositions and methodology.5 As G. B. Caird writes, The transfiguration is at once the commentator’s paradise and his despair.6 Classical doctrines of the Trinity and Christology function as a well-stocked keychain that can open exegetical doors that otherwise have remained shut in accordance with modern exegetical conventions.7

R. B. Jamieson and Tyler Wittman are right to distinguish between extrinsic and intrinsic rules for exegesis. Extrinsic rules are imposed from without, while intrinsic rules are derived from the material itself. My grammar will intentionally be intrinsic, being derived from Scripture and therefore regulating our reading of Scripture.8 Hermeneutical, trinitarian, and christological grammars are resources that help enable better exegesis rather than projections forced onto texts.

Second, I will trace the themes of the transfiguration through the storyline of Scripture. Jesus’s transfiguration on the mountaintop draws together various biblical narratives into one vibrant image. It is a verbal icon that fuses storylines like an intertextual tapestry. Key events like Adam’s glory in the garden, Israel’s exodus from Egypt, Moses’s visions, and Elijah’s ministry foreshadow the transfiguration. These events need to be connected to render a full picture of the meaning.

If systematic theology draws a circle around Scripture, then biblical theology draws a line through it.9 Or using another metaphor, Michael Horton compares the different approaches to different kinds of maps. If systematic theology is more like a street map, in that it points out the logical connections between various doctrines spread throughout Scripture, then biblical theology is a topographical map that traces the terrain, development, and evolution.10

The transfiguration needs to be viewed in terms of both its connection to the major thoroughfares of Scripture and its topography—in relation to both doctrines and the storyline. Jesus’s transformation is part of the Bible’s story; we would be imprudent to neglect the events that prefigured it. But we will also fall short, and risk unassumingly adopting unorthodox beliefs, if we turn a blind eye to orthodox trinitarian and christological doctrines, which give us guardrails for thinking about Jesus’s transformation and which help us articulate what Peter could not (Matt. 17:4; Mark 9:5–6; Luke 9:33).

Finally, I will end chapters 2, 3, and 4 with brief reflections on our own transfiguration or metamorphōsis. Jesus’s transfiguration is not an impractical or ethereal event. It calls for participation, for action. Shining atop the mountain is our future, for we will all be changed (1 Cor. 15:51). The transfigured Christ is the hope of the church.

Too often we do the work of biblical and systematic theology and think our task is done. But in doing this, we have only started our journey. The most important undertaking is to ask how this forms us into the image of Christ, how we can progress in sanctification, and how we become partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4 ESV).

The stages of spiritual formation have been labeled by some throughout church history as purgation, illumination, and union.11 These stages move us from separation from God to a transfigural relationship with God and fit particularly well with the transfiguration narrative. If we do not meditate on how we are transfigured, then we really have missed the point. The transfiguration is a pledge of the perfectibility of the human person.12

divider

I began thinking more earnestly about the transfiguration on spring break in March of 2022. Our family traveled to Washington and Oregon for some speaking engagements. There I read my first book on the subject, Light on the Mountain, edited and translated by Brian Daley. It remains to me the best book on the transfiguration and the place I would recommend everyone start. In fact, the richness of the patristic commentary in this work is such that a preacher could skip all modern commentaries in sermon preparation and simply read those homilies. They without a doubt display the superiority of precritical exegesis. I only hope this book follows in their footsteps.

In Washington we were allowed to stay at the Bachman-Turner Overdrive mansion in Lynden. (Bachman-Turner Overdrive is famous for the songs Takin’ Care of Business and You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.) My five-year-old, Canaan, will sometimes ask when we can stay at a mansion with a pool inside the house again. I will fondly remember reading homilies and then jumping in the pool with the kids.

I turned in the first draft of this book in February of 2023, during my sabbatical from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Thank you to all who read the manuscript and helped to improve it. Quinn Mosier and Tom Schreiner were the first to see the document, and they pointed out places where my argument wasn’t clear, where I had over-argued, and where I had uncritically adapted Eastern Orthodox terminology. Quinn also helped me with the bibliography. Mike Kibbe kindly sent me many of his resources on the transfiguration, including those by John Gatta, and provided significant feedback.

Sam Parkison read an early version and was an interlocutor on the beatific vision. Kevin Vanhoozer, who was working on his own book on how the transfiguration informs hermeneutics, offered helpful feedback. Chad Ashby helped me improve my writing mechanics and made exegetical recommendations. He took the fluff out of much of the manuscript, reducing the word count by close to twenty-thousand words. Bryan Dyer encouraged me to shorten the book and to make sure I wasn’t trying to do too much. I put the finishing touches on the manuscript during my stay at Tyndale House in Cambridge, England, in June 2023.

Most of my early readers recommended that I abandon the term allegory in favor of spiritual reading. They are probably right, but this was a difficult step for me to make because allegory was the term of the early church. Vanhoozer said the term is likely beyond redemption. Yet all can be saved.

The soundtrack for this book includes Steffany Gretzinger, Jensen McRae, Novo Amor, Bonny Light Horseman, and the Wanderlust playlist.

My gratitude also goes to Thou Mayest and Rochester, two downtown Kansas City coffee shops where I wrote significant portions of this book. Their atmospheres were perfect for writing. I fine-tuned the book in my new home office during my sabbatical.

I’m also appreciative of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, President Jason Allen, and Provost Jason Duesing for granting me a sabbatical in 2022–23 to work on this book and other projects. In a turbulent time in higher education, their constant support, generosity, and outlook for the good of God’s people is unique. They make decisions for the long-term good rather than having only temporary goals. This perspective ought to be emulated by other institutions.

1. Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 3.

2. The word transfiguration might make modern people think of the classes Harry, Ron, and Hermione attended at Hogwarts with Professor McGonagall.

3. Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. David Raeburn (London: Penguin Classics, 2004); Apuleius, The Golden Ass: The Transformations of Lucius, trans. Robert Graves (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009). Ovid’s work is a lengthy poem concerning the history of the world up to the death of Julius Caesar, wherein he describes Caesar’s deification. Lucius Apuleius’s work is a novel about a man being turned into a donkey before being returned to a human form by the Egyptian goddess Isis.

4. Hywel R. Jones, Transfiguration and Transformation (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2021), xvi.

5. W. L. Liefeld, Theological Motifs in the Transfiguration Narrative, in New Dimensions in New Testament Study, ed. R. N. Longenecker and M. C. Tenney (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974), 163.

6. George B. Caird, Expository Problems: The Transfiguration, ET 67, no. 10 (1956): 291.

7. R. B. Jamieson and Tyler R. Wittman, Biblical Reasoning: Trinitarian and Christological Rules for Exegesis (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2022), xxii.

8. Jamieson and Wittman, Biblical Reasoning, xxi–xxii.

9. Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1975), 15–16.

10. Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2011), 29.

11. These stages are attributed to Pseudo-Dionysius, Thomas Aquinas, and St. John of the Cross.

12. Dale M. Coulter, The Taboric Light, First Things (blog), August 15, 2014, https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2014/08/the-taboric-light.

Introduction

A Two-Level Christology

Now, Father, glorify me in your presence with that glory I had with you before the world existed.

—John 17:5

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Western church has overlooked the transfiguration.

However, the Eastern tradition has consistently put the transfiguration front and center. The Feast of the Transfiguration (August 6) continues to loom large on the church calendar. In the Western tradition, this day passes by unsung, unhonored, unacknowledged.1 Consider: How many sermons have you heard on the transfiguration? How many songs do you know that sing about the transfiguration? The transfiguration is a curiosity in want of practical significance.

The lack of work done on the transfiguration became apparent when I started research for this book. I went to my school’s library and perused the Jesus section. Books abounded on the historical Jesus, his birth, his death, and his resurrection. Only three books on Jesus’s transfiguration sat on the shelves. N. T. Wright’s 741-page work on Jesus mentions the transfiguration only once, and somewhat apologetically in passing.2 It is difficult to find any significant comment on it in the standard systematic theologies. Maybe some modern scholars have shunned it because they are suspicious of the supernatural.

Maybe scholars have also neglected it because we don’t know what to do with it. We have become like Peter, befuddled (Mark 9:6). It seems like an unimpressive magic trick: a shining person who does the disciples little practical good. Jesus’s other miracles make sense—feeding people, healing them, and raising the dead—but the transfiguration is confusing. One author begins his book by stating, It has not been found easy to give a satisfying interpretation of the transfiguration story.3 Another mentions how many get lost in the maze of scholarly speculations.4

If I were to ask you what difference it would make if Jesus had not died on the cross or been raised from the dead, the answer would come quite quickly. But what if Jesus had not been transfigured? An answer to that question is not so forthcoming. This is not to assert that the transfiguration deserves the same prominence as the cross or the resurrection, but it does reveal how little attention we give it. Would the story of Jesus be any different if the transfiguration hadn’t happened? Or to put it another way, would your reading of the Scriptures change at all if you Thomas Jeffersoned the transfiguration out of the Bible?5

I’m afraid these questions are harder to answer. This might be because we don’t think the transfiguration is central to the gospel or reveals anything unique about Jesus’s identity. We assume that the salvation of humankind could have been accomplished without it and that other texts resource our Christology. Because of this, the transfiguration has had little impact on our reading of the Scriptures.

However, the transfiguration is one of those events we can never seem to plumb the depths of. The simplicity of the story conceals it profundities. It leaves its fingerprints on every major doctrine: the Trinity, Christology, anthropology, soteriology, and eschatology. The light of the transfiguration refracts over all these core beliefs.

The transfiguration is a revelatory tour de force. It brings the past into unison with the present. The one who said Let there be light is now shrouded in light. It is a microcosm of the gospel.6 It reveals the great mystery of Christianity, the uniqueness of Jesus. As one scholar states, in the transfiguration the diverse elements in the theology of the New Testament meet.7 However, both systematic and biblical theologians have still largely ignored this event in their writings.

This book is an attempt to raise the profile of the transfiguration in the Western tradition. I will do so by examining this event from three main perspectives: (1) the glorious setting, (2) the glorious signs, and (3) the glorious saying.

As one can see, the concept of glory is key. The English name for the event is the transfiguration, in reference to the Greek term metamorphoō and the Latin transfiguratus. However, the significance of the event may be better expressed by its German name: die Verklärung—the glorification.8 Though only Luke employs the word glory in his transfiguration account, both Matthew’s and Mark’s accounts radiate with glory. In addition, when Peter retells the event in his second epistle, he says that Jesus "received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory" (2 Pet. 1:17).9 Glory is an important concept for the transfiguration, maybe even the fundamental concept.

In this introduction I will offer a brief refresher on the transfiguration and then examine the what and the why: What happened in the transfiguration? And why did the transfiguration occur?

A Refresher on the Transfiguration

The transfiguration refers to Jesus’s trip up on the mountain with three of his disciples where his figure was transformed: his face shone, his clothes turned bright white, Moses and Elijah appeared alongside him, and a voice came from heaven declaring that Jesus is God’s beloved Son.

This event is recounted in full in Matthew 17:1–8, Mark 9:2–8, and Luke 9:28–36 and briefly in 2 Peter 1:17–18. The word transfigured (metamorphoō) occurs only four times in the New Testament (Matt. 17:2; Mark 9:2; Rom. 12:2; and 2 Cor. 3:18).

The transfiguration takes place at the conclusion of Jesus’s Galilean ministry, just before Jesus heads toward Jerusalem. It occurs a week after Peter confessed that Jesus is the Messiah, and it fulfills the prophecy that there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God come in power (Mark 9:1; see also Matt. 16:28; Luke 9:27).

The Synoptic Gospels’ accounts of what took place on the mount are extraordinarily parallel. While there are differences in the resurrection and crucifixion stories, in stories about Jesus’s healings, and in his teachings, the transfiguration seems to have been largely tamper-proof in the memories of Jesus’s followers. In other words, it had a big impact on them—a bigger impact than it has had on us.

The Synoptic accounts agree on all the essential details: Jesus goes up the mountain and takes with him Peter, James, and John. A glorious transformation of his physical appearance takes place. Moses and Elijah appear next to Jesus, and they engage in conversation. Peter responds by saying it is good they are there and offers to build three tents. A cloud overshadows them, and

Reviews for The Transfiguration of Christ

[Jeremy McEntire · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Schreiner provides a very helpful and thought-provoking study of a topic that has been neglected for too long. What could be more important than beholding the glory of our Lord!