God's Human Face by Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn

Author:Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn [Schoenborn, Cardinal Christoph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9781681492124
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2011-04-01T06:00:00+00:00

6. “Image and Symbol of Himself”

This interchange between God and man was in a special way made visible at Christ’s Transfiguration. The Transfiguration on Mount Tabor lets us sense the ultimate purpose of the Incarnation:

In his outward appearance he was like us; for in his boundless love he took it upon himself to become creature, yet without changing [his divinity], and thus he became the image [typos] and symbol of himself: he has revealed himself symbolically out of his inner being; through himself who is visible he has drawn the whole of creation to himself who is invisible and totally hidden.229

This dense text, formulated with the precision of the Greek language, represents in a sense a summary of all that Maximus taught concerning our topic. Closing this chapter, we can let ourselves be guided by this text, in order to recapitulate the results and to compare them with the previous stages of our journey so far.

At first sight, this text brings to mind Origen’s view of the Incarnation; Christ’s humanity is the indispensable medium that God had to employ in order to reveal himself to us men who are bound by the realm of the senses; the intention, however, remained always to reach beyond the instrument of the human form and to arrive at the invisible, hidden divinity of the Logos. On Mount Tabor, in Christ’s Transfiguration, does not the divine glory for a brief moment break through the obscure veil of the flesh? Yet what precisely did Maximus say? That Christ “has revealed himself symbolically out of his inner being”. The emphasis focuses entirely on “himself”. In his humanity, he has shown nothing else but “himself”. “He himself who is visible” is no other than “he himself who is invisible and totally hidden”. The path from one to the other does not lead anywhere but to him himself; this path never leaves its starting point, for the Lord himself is this path. Christ’s humanity, “he who is visible”, is the image and symbol, not of someone other and different in his invisibility, but of “him himself who is invisible”. The two sides, the one visible and the other invisible, can never be separated; for both pertain to the one Lord.

The visible side, the human likeness of Jesus, is irrevocably the “image and symbol” of the Son of God. The Word became flesh, and remains so. But where does it direct us? To “himself who is hidden”. The Word would guide us “from himself to himself”, and this journey, this transition, is indeed the “paschal passage” of the Lord, that “exodus” about which Christ conversed with Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration (cf. Lk 9:31). In his paschal passage, Christ leads “all of creation” to the Father; for he, once lifted up from the earth, draws all to himself (Jn 12:32). He himself is the way to the Father; to find him means to have already reached the Father. There is no other access to God’s glory than the face of Christ (2 Cor 4:6).

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