In this paper, I will argue that the implicit connections between Thomas Aquinas’s accounts of the Transfiguration and the Lord’s Supper bolsters our understanding of sacramental illumination by highlighting the obediential potencies of their material instruments.
In contemporary scholarship, few contributions focus on Christ’s transfiguration. The neglect of the transfiguration is evident in the broad landscape of theological study, and the same is true if the scope is narrowed to scholars of Thomas Aquinas. Even in David Whidden’s notable work Christ the Light, which focuses on Thomas’s theology of light and illumination, the transfiguration event is surprisingly omitted. This essay will join the efforts to recover the significance of this neglected revelatory moment for contemporary faith and practice.
Whenever the transfiguration is mentioned in contemporary scholarship, its significance is never brought to bear on our understanding of sacramental illumination. However, it seems that Thomas scholars would do well to establish a connection between the transfiguration and the sacraments. For Thomas, the sacraments may be understood as perfecting instrumental causes of sanctification because they serve as an extension of the instrumentality of Christ’s human nature. We best understand the manner in which the sacraments produce any effect in the believer by understanding the manner in which the humanity of Christ is elevated for the purposes of revealing the divine Word and meriting grace on our behalf. In both cases, obediential potencies are actuated by divine interaction. The transfiguration warrants discussion on this point because it provides a clear example of the obediential potency of Christ’s humanity being actuated to express qualities that were beyond its unaided natural capacities, primarily by radiating the clarity of glory.
The Lord’s Supper offers a useful reference point for connecting the transfiguration to the sacraments; not because we have to admit that Christ’s body is physically present in the Supper, but because the physical elements which signify Christ’s body, like all created elements, also possess obediential potencies which can be actuated to produce effects beyond the capabilities of their natural forms. Therefore, I will offer a number of reasons implicit within Thomas’s works for demonstrating this connection. Through an analysis of Aquinas’s relevant scriptural and theological writings, I aim to make it evident that the transfiguration of Christ’s physical body may be understood as previewing the progressive transfiguration of Christ’s spiritual body through ongoing participation in the Lord’s Supper. This connection is grounded in the enactment of instrumental obediential potencies and the production of common effects, namely strengthening through illumination.
The illuminative character of the Lord’s Supper can be overshadowed by the effect of spiritual nourishment. However, establishing the connection between the transfiguration and the Lord’s Supper enables us to place greater emphasis on the sacrament’s effect of illumination. Participation in the Lord’s Supper impresses an intellectual vision of Christ in his clarity on our minds, and that intellectual vision produces the additional effects of spiritual nourishment and progressive sanctification.