Perfection and the Transfiguration

Robin Gill

doi:10.1017/9781009476775.011

Chapter 7 - Perfection and the Transfiguration

from Part III - Transfiguration and Global Perfection

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 May 2024

Robin Gill

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Robin Gill: Affiliation:
University of Kent, Canterbury

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Summary

Chapter 7 discusses how the Transfiguration is seen within the Synoptic Gospels – and especially in the careful New Testament and Patristic scholarship of Daniel Kirk, Teresa Morgan and Peter Anthony-- as the principal occasion when the moral and spiritual perfection of Jesus received divine affirmation. Alongside the patriarch Moses and the prophet Elijah, Jesus is glimpsed in the Transfiguration narratives, falteringly, as someone immensely special and divinely endorsed, by three of his disciples, who (in Luke and two sixth-century church mosaics) are themselves included within the cloud (perhaps even theösis) that envelops Jesus, Moses and Elijah. This chapter examines both Aquinas’ and recent Eastern Orthodox accounts of the social implications of transfiguration. It also notes that transfiguration has been deeply disfigured by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on the Feast of the Transfiguration in 1945.

Keywords

the Transfiguration Jesus Moses Elijah Daniel Kirk Teresa Morgan Peter Anthony theösis Aquinas Eastern Orthodoxy Hiroshima atomic bombing

Type: Chapter
Information: Human Perfection, Transfiguration and Christian Ethics , pp. 147 - 168

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009476775.011 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2024

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