“The Transfiguration, Christian Orthodoxy and Jung”

James Lamev  11/02/20204

“And he was transfigured before them, and his garments became an exceedingly brilliant white, a white such as no fuller on earth can produce”.   Mark 9:3

Today we will be partly delving into Christian theology, something that I don’t really like doing.   

I know we don’t do heavy theology here, so I’ll keep the theology brief - but for some reason it seems important for us, today, to know…

The emphasis in the West is on the resurrection rather than the Transfiguration .  In the Eastern Churches, it’s the other way round, they emphasize the Transfiguration over the resurrection – when they celebrate the Transfiguration, they put aside their usual liturgy, and the Transfiguration liturgy takes its place – such is its central-ness.

The term Transfiguration, is hardly ever used in everyday speech – it seems to be almost exclusively used in a religious setting, and usually only for a person who has attained perfect union with something called God, or whatever word people want to use to explain this concept.    We might think that only one person has achieved this perfect unity.

So what did Transfiguration mean back then… 2000 years ago?

As we have said many times before, this was the way to signify the immense importance of the Christ to the people of the time.

Whether it happened, or is a myth, is not really the point. 

The point is that something really important happened and this person was deified in the most significant manner possible, for people at that time, and in a manner so they could understand momentous news - for a people that were mostly illiterate and uneducated - but far from stupid (some scholars say we moderns are missing the point because of the way it was conveyed - how people thought and conveyed meaning 2000 years ago is very inaccessible to us).

Jesus is transfigured before his disciples and the Old Testament figures Moses and Elijah appear, and the Christ speaks with them.  

Above: Apse mosaic of the Transfiguration from Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, 565–66, the earliest version of the Eastern iconography that has remained to the present day. (Wikipedia).

In Christian theology, these figures symbolize the Law and the prophets. Jesus is then called "Son" by the voice of God just as he was at his baptism.

At the Transfiguration, God assigns to Jesus a special "honour and glory" and it is the turning point at which God exalts Jesus above all other powers in creation, and positions him as ruler and judge.

 Saint Gregory Palamas - a 14th Century Eastern Orthodox cleric and Theologian - considered "true knowledge of God" to be a transfiguration of a person by the Spirit of God 

In Orthodox Christianity this event is called metamorphosis, which conveys more importance to us than “Transfiguration”, even though they mean the same thing – we know the story of the  caterpillar and we know what a dramatic metamorphosis that is – into something completely different.

In theology, the transfiguration is on a mountain which represents the point where human nature meets God: the meeting place of the temporal and the eternal, with Jesus as the connecting point, acting as the bridge between heaven and earth.

Embedded in this passage is the meaning that the Christ should be listened to as he surpasses the laws of Moses by virtue of his divinity.

The transfiguration not only supports the identity of Jesus as the Son of God, but the statement, "listen to him", identifies him as the messenger and mouth-piece of God.

In Orthodoxy, this forms the foundation for much of its theology and spirituality – which I remind you, assigns more significance to the Transformation than the resurrection, and many of their key themes are centred on this understanding.  [I acknowledge the paper by Sister Ioanna (M.Th., M.A., Ph.D.) “Why The Transfiguration Is So Important For Orthodoxy”, St. Innocent Monastic Community, Redford, MI, August 2017, for explaining the differences between “East” and “West”.]

We are not going to go into all of it, but we will make a few key points.  Remember that the Eastern church existed for hundreds of years before it come to the West.

In the Transfiguration Christ’s human, material, and bodily form was made visible in a transformed or transfigured way, that radiated the Divine Glory.

The divine glory and radiance of the Kingdom of Heaven is encountered in the Orthodox icons as “windows into heaven,” (as icons are frequently described).

The icons describing this event existed before there were words for this understanding.  And when you think about it this is how humans’ work.  We can’t have a word until we have a concept.

The take-out is that humans can experience heaven on Earth.

Orthodoxy maintains that the material world is good, the material world fell along with humankind, but that it is meant to be restored to its original glorified state, along with human beings.   

In this icon Christ’s Body and the entire surrounding nature is transformed.   Orthodoxy says we  can be restored to original divine glory.

The take-out is that our world and we can be transformed to a virtuous state. 

For Orthodox Christianity, it is more the Transfiguration than the Passion and suffering of Christ that reveals to us what our salvation is all about.  For Orthodoxy, salvation is ultimately the sharing and participating in the glory of Christ’s Transfiguration.  Salvation and Atonement are viewed as the restoration of the glorious divine character of human nature. and not as “paying off” a debt to a vindictive God, who needed to have his own Son crucified to “ransom” sinful humankind.

The take-out here is “we can become like God by grace, which God is by Nature.”

God became human, so that humans might become God.

The view is that the Transfiguration is the one and only time during His earthly life that Jesus’ Divinity was fully revealed and made manifest.

At this point I think you have heard enough about the history and the theology of the Transfiguration…

We now turn to Jungian Psychology to give us one explanation of what this means for us now in the 21st Century.

Why?  Because this branch of psychology can provide some answers about human spirituality. 

Because of time, I will have to summarize.  Some of this will sound as inaccessible as the theology we have just heard.

Basically it says that the passage is about evolving of Consciousness.

It is called a passage because it is a pathway through which we travel, and when we emerge, we have a different understanding from what we had when we first entered.

And if we are really lucky, we have been transformed, and really really lucky, transfigured.

In Jungian psychology 3 is the level of human consciousness that most modern people live in.

Level 3 is about where most of the modern world live now with no roots in the instinctive world and no connection to heaven.

Wherever we look we see 3 in cultures across the world.

In Christianity we have:

·      The Trinity

·      Saint Peter thrice denied Jesus and thrice affirmed his faith in Jesus.

·      The 3 Magi –from Persia – gave Jesus three gifts.

·      There are three Synoptic Gospels.

·      Paul went blind for three days after epiphany.

·      Three people were crucified – the Christ and two others.

In Judaism, there are too many “threes’ to relate here.

In Islam there are three core principles in the Shia tradition.

In Buddhism, The Triple Bodhi, The Three Jewels

In Hinduism

·      The Trimurti

·      The three guṇas

·      The three paths to salvation.

In Norse mythology three is a very significant number

In Esoteric traditions:  The Theosophical Society has three conditions of membership.

Ok, so three seems to be very significant in human culture across pretty much the whole world, so we go back to Jesus’s transfiguration.

Jesus takes three disciples?  Why?  There were more than three disciples.

There are 3 holy people on the mountain, why three? there were more than three prophets.

There is something universal in Christianity (and these other religions).

In Jungian psychology the transfiguration represents the evolution to a higher consciousness – represented by 4.

These numbers are symbols intended to convey meaning.

This analysis is basically saying that we are evolving to a higher level of religious consciousness.

And it’s saying that the Jesus transfiguration message is showing this.

That heaven is down here and not up there, that we can be part of God here on Earth in a way that we cannot yet fully understand. 

Everyone has glimpses of God  (Even if this is not a word that resonates with you, maybe mystery is a better word).

To touch heaven is a very difficult state for any ordinary person to attain for very long – and perhaps it’s best to only have fleeting glimpse of it – unless you are very very special.

Yet all of us – even if it’s for one brief ephemeral moment, even if it’s just a fleeting feeling that we get when we – say - look up at the stars or look at something we perceive as beautiful, or in some unexpected moment – have had a glimpse of heaven.

And then, we have experienced a transfiguration of our own.