Transfigured by Scripture

St. Paul never ceases to amaze me. He is a theologian, a pastor, a logician, a missionary, a rhetorician–and all of these in spades. What has been most striking to me as of late—as I am currently teaching a course working through his letters—is what we are learning from Paul as a master interpreter of the Old Testament. It is little wonder that the Holy Spirit worked in and through Paul to compose the many works that would eventually be received by the Church as inspired Scripture.

One of the ways this was made apparent to me recently was in our reconsidering Paul’s line at the end of 2 Corinthians chapter 3 in class this past Monday evening:

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (v. 18)

I was eager to land on this passage in our session on 2 Corinthians, as this is one of the great lines of Scripture that reveal the heart and goal of the spiritual life. That is, in the Christian life we are constantly being reformed, conformed, and ultimately transformed by the presence of the Lord. St. Peter teaches something similar:

[The Lord’s] divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, ⁴ by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. (2 Peter 1:3-4, emphasis added)

Paul reveals the process, Peter reveals the final form. Paul says that we are gradually being transformed, one degree at a time, into the image of the Lord—to partake in the divine nature of the Lord, to use Peter’s words.

To be transformed implies a change into something we currently are not—that is, our very nature will be taken up into something new, something other. Additionally, the word employed by Paul is a form of the Greek verb metamorphoō, from which we derive the English “metamorphosis.” In the Bible, this is the word used to depict the event of Jesus’ transfiguration on Mt. Tabor (cf. Matt 17:1; Mark 9:2; Luke 9:28).

Peter and Paul teach us that just as Christ was transfigured beside Moses and Elijah, so we too are transformed, or transfigured, from one degree of glory to the next—from our lowly human nature to one that is divine. This process of Christian transfiguration is what the Church fathers would call theosis (in the east) or deification (in the west). As Athanasius plainly put it:

God became man so that man might become god (De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, 54:3).

By this punchy line, most do not take Athanasius to mean that a person is now able to become a god—much less God himself, but rather that one is made able to enjoy communion with God in God. With Paul, we profess that this mystery is profound (cf. Eph 5:32). It lies at the heart of Christian hope for what we will one day become (cf. 1 John 3:2). This has long been a favorite principle of mine to teach and contemplate.

What I didn’t realize until recently was how profoundly linked this act of transformation is to the act of reading Scripture. It would be helpful now to revisit Paul’s teaching in the context established by the of its chapter. In 3:1-11, Paul compares the glory of the new covenant to the fading glory of the old covenant, leaning especially on themes drawn from Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36. The final verses, vv. 12-18, continue this trajectory of interpretation considering especially the role of the Holy Spirit:

¹² Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, ¹³ not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. ¹⁴ But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. ¹⁵ Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts.¹⁶ But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. ¹⁷ Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. ¹⁸ And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

While we can isolate v. 18 and encounter a wealth of depth there in its own right, I argue that the verse read in context of the chapter makes an even more powerful claim. At first, Paul explains that the glory which Moses possessed upon meeting the Lord on Mt. Sinai had to be veiled (cf. Ex 34:29), and that this represented the veil over Israel’s minds when they would read the “old covenant”—that is, the Scriptures that we would now call the Old Testament.

This is precisely the concern of our Lord with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. He said to them, “‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the [Old Testament] Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:26-27). Similarly, a few verses later when the risen Lord appeared to the Eleven, he “opened their minds to understand the [Old Testament] Scriptures” (24:45).

It appears, then, that the Old Testament Scriptures (the “old covenant”) had a supernatural, revelatory power that Israel could not yet encounter or understand without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But, as Paul teaches, Christ has now ushered in a new covenant (2 Cor 3:6), surpassing the old in glory (3:7-11), enabling us to be inhabited by God’s Spirit and to understand the Scriptures as they were intended to be read (3:16-18).

It is in this context that the famous line of 2 Cor 3:18 now appears. In the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Christian is transformed “from one degree of glory to the next” because of the “unveiling” that he enables. But what is this special act of unveiling? It is not a generic, over-spiritualized term. Rather, it has a specific meaning rooted in the previous verses:

¹⁵ Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts.¹⁶ But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed . . . ¹⁸ And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (emphasis added)

The Holy Spirit, now given to us in the new covenant, lifts the veil that once shrouded the Old Testament, so that in it—that is, in the inspired, powerful, revelatory words of the Old Testament—we may behold the “glory of the Lord” as it is laid bare before us; and in that very act of meeting the glory of the Lord in his inspired Word, we are “transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”

How marvelous! What was already on its own a verse of sheer mystery and power (3:18) is now magnified in its meaning and clarified in its scope. St. Paul is teaching us, step by step, that it is the act of encountering the Lord in the reading of Scripture that transforms, transfigures, the Christian soul to become a partaker of the Triune Godhead.

Here, once again, we stand in awe of St. Paul and of the mysteries of our salvation. Let us be faithful respondents to Paul’s invitation by taking up our Bibles—especially the often overlooked texts of the Old Testament—and experience therein the transformational power of the Holy Spirit through a prayerful investigation of God’s Word.