The author of the present study deals in the innovative manner with the ten centuries of the Early Christian interpretation of the synoptic narrative about Christ’s transfiguration on the mountain (Mt 17:1-8; Mc 9:2-8; Lc 9:28-36). After the initial conceptualization of the metamorphosis within the Holy Scripture, Jewish and Greco-Roman pagan literature, author shapes s.c. transformative (hermeneutical) vision which enables him to apply transformative reading on the whole corpus of the Greek Early Christian interpretation of the transfiguration. Doing so, the study does not reduce itself to merely exegetical discussion, but presents a new method of reading and understanding the transtemporal transformative meaning for the readers and listeners.
Christ’s transfiguration in the writings of the presented authors becomes a paradigmatic icon of the personal spiritual transformation offered to Christians. Without remaining enclosed only to some sort of theoretical contemplation, this vision instead – especially in the homiletic and liturgical works – creates a prayerful atmosphere, which enables the activity of the Holy Spirit, who transforms human interiority.
This elucidated transformative vision can be systematically expressed on different levels: theological (Christological), soteriological and eschatological. A deeper, even more transformative meaning found in the texts, however, can be entitled under the concepts of ontological, hermeneutical and spiritual transformation. As Anastasius of Sinai brilliantly maintains in his Sermo de transfiguratione, a special vision is formed on the background of Christ’s transfiguration, through which a person can find himself as an object of the address (sermon, homily, liturgical hymn) in the co-relation with Christ. Together with Him the person experiences the renewal of his ontological essence, reaches the deification (theosis), lives con-formation to the form of the Divine Logos and is changed for the better.
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