The latest attempts have more interest, as discovering a certain measure of independent fact in the event. One finds the substratum of real history embodied in it in the confession of Peter made previously, which was elaborated by idealizing tendency into a vision and attributed to the disciples (Bacon, AJTh, 1902, pp. 236-265). A second regards as the reality underlying the occurrence an inner revelation made to Jesus alone, a short time before Peter's confession and in his pre- sence ; Peter had discernment enough to recognize its effect on the Master's mind and intuiti\'elj- grasped its meaning (R6ville, Ji^sus de Nazareth, ii. 204-206). A third holds that the story reflects the crisis when Jesus became convinced that He was the chosen heir of God. The event admits very easily of being regarded as having taken place in the inner consciousness of Jesus ; probably in the company of the three, who, after awaking from sleep perhaps, received a powerful impression of the wondrous majesty with which Jesus came to meet them after He had heard the heavenly voice, the terms of which He after- wards made known to them (Schmiedel, EBi 4571). A fourth sees in the scene a report by men who were confessedly in great agitation when they witnessed it, who yet were well aware that what they saw was not reality but vision. It is to be regarded as symbolic, and consequent on the determination of Jesus to go to Jerusalem and possibly encounter a fate which, to the ordinary Jewish mind, would entirely destroy His claim to be the Messiah, or in any way a chosen instrument of Deity. It is at this moment that He juits on, to the eyes of His most intimate friends, heavenly radiance, and appears as One whose true nature is not to be judged by His human mien or His outward fortunes. It is then that His figure becomes framed to His friends' eyes in the same picture with the principal figures of the sacred his- tory of Israel : Elijah, because of his prominence in Messianic thought, and Moses, the founder of the Old Covenant : their presence indicating that He is not to destroy their work, but
* Tertullian is the most outstanding exception, t One writer, Venturini.identifies them with Joseph of Arima- thaea and Joseph father of Jesus.
'44
TRANSFIGUKATION
TRANSFIGURATION
to carry it further. The Transfiguration is the enthronement of the Apostolic Christology (Menzies, Earliest Gospel, p. 174). Akin in one respect to the foregoing is the theory of Wimmer and Holtzmann, that we have here Dichtung, truth in a picture. The glorified conception of Christ reached by His followers after His death is transferred to the time of His ministry, and in this picture represented as foretold then. The attractive aspect of these efforts is that they seek to identify the Transfiguration of Christ with a fresh increase of His self-realization. The event centres in His Person, and for it marks a period. All the foregoing hypotheses prove inadequate in failing to recognize the super-terrestrial powers which are represented as appear- ing, and as communicating a sense of their presence, to the disciples.
The lacuna is filled by Spiritualism, which finds a congenial theme in the very facts which ration- alism would dissipate. The super-terrestrial is its special delight. It sets forth principles which are alleged to account for the unaccountable features of the light, the visitants, the voice. The exist- ence of a ' spiritual body ' is asserted, by means of which man may pass out of his ordinary mode of being, of sight and of hearing, into the spirit- sphere or unseen world which is everywhere around him, and there be and see and hear, in the unusual conditions subsisting in that sphere, what he never can in this. The notion seems to be that in each man there is a ' spirit,' made of a sort of thin matter, existing within the outward body, but having a purer existence.
' Deep within, Some say, the spirit has another frame, Invisible, magnetic, beauteous, thin. And fine as any ether, scent, or flame.'
(J. C. Earlr, Light leading unto Light). In the Transfiguration the ' spiritual body ' in Christ shone forth in its native might and splendour, overpowering the dim- ness of the flesh which He had assumed. And by the ' spirit- body ' in them, the disciples were enabled to contemplate His and those of Moses and Elijah.
Scarcely so materialistic, yet quite in the same plane of thought, are the ideas of the spiritualization and subtilizing of the bodily frame until it became luminous by some inherent law connecting the physical radiance with the ripened image of God in man * (cf. e.g. George Macdonald, Miracles of our Lord, xii.). The error of such theorizing springs from imagining the two as existences of the same kind, and from not realizing the conception of spirit as mind or self-consciousness, which is the onlj' way of conceiving its actual presence in our world. Spirit exists in the medium of consciousness, not in a peculiar kind of matter. The spiritualization of the natural body is not to be looked for in an astral or angel-body, but in the gesture, dignity, and noble mien that make the body of the civilized man the outward image of his soul. When we leave this track we land in vulgar mysticism,— and ' that way madness lies.'