What Is Glory? - Addendum

Since my last post on the nature of glory, the topic has been ruminating in my mind, and I wanted to write a quick follow-up post.

A Clarification

I conflated glory with exalted status, which isn’t quite right (at least if I’m following Jacob’s analysis). I quoted this concluding summary from the end of her analysis of the terms δόξα and δοξάζω in the LXX:

when used vis-à-vis humanity in the LXX and Daniel and 1 Enoch, δόξα and δοξάζω primarily refer to or are associated with the concepts of honor, power, wealth, and/or authority that come with an exalted status.¹

In the rest of my post, I talked exclusively about exalted status. That might give the impression that glory is synonymous with exalted status, which isn’t right. Jacob’s book does focus on the notion of exalted status because that becomes important for her interpretation of Romans 8 (which, not being in the lectionary texts for my sermon, I never addressed). Instead, to use Jacob’s terms, glory denotes (primarily signifies) exalted status/honor that is associated with (connotes) power, authority, character, wealth/riches. Let’s take as an example the story of the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon (1 Kings 10).

When the queen of Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon and his relationship to the Lord, she came to test Solomon with hard questions. Arriving at Jerusalem with a very great caravan—with camels carrying spices, large quantities of gold, and precious stones—she came to Solomon and talked with him about all that she had on her mind. Solomon answered all her questions; nothing was too hard for the king to explain to her. When the queen of Sheba saw all the wisdom of Solomon and the palace he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his officials, the attending servants in their robes, his cupbearers, and the burnt offerings he made at the temple of the Lord, she was overwhelmed” (1 Kings 10:1-5).

The list of Solomon’s possessions here, and the even longer and more detailed list that follows in vv. 14-29, are Solomon’s glory.² But the glory is a sign of Solomon’s exalted status as king, and perhaps also his character as a wise ruler (his answers to all of her questions might be construed also as glory). It’s these things around Solomon that tell us something about him: he is a wise (and successful!) ruler.

With this clarification, I think it becomes clearer why Jacob’s fight against glory as luminous splendor is tilting at windmills. God, as God, is of such a character and exalted status (there is none like him!) that when he is made present with his people, there is a concrete physical manifestation. This could be light, but it could also be something like we see in God coming down on Sinai in Exodus 19: thunder, lightning, clouds, and trumpet blasts.

Ultimately, I think she employs an overly strict separation between status and ontology. Sure, the word may strictly denote status without requiring notions of ontology, but that doesn’t mean ontology isn’t there. In other words, Paul might only be thinking about our glorification in terms of our exalted status in Christ when he talks about our glory, but that doesn’t mean that our glorification isn’t also in some way connected to our ontological transformation (e.g., 1 Corinthians 15:51-54).

Cappadocian Theology

This understanding of glory incidentally connects with how the Cappadocians—Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus—articulated their trinitarian theology.

The early trinitarian debates might be described as exegetical and hermeneutical. Who is wisdom in Proverbs 8:22? What does it mean that wisdom was created? Or does it mean that wisdom was begotten? What is the difference between the two? By the time we got to the 360s, the game had changed. In an important council held in Constantinople in 360, the “neo-Arian” Eunomius defeated Basil of Caesarea in a debate and imperial favor from Constantius, Constantine’s son and successor to the throne. Eunomius’s approach was less exegetical than it was philosophical.

For Eunomius, names refer to essences, and as a consequence, all names applied to an individual are synonymous with the primary name. God’s primary name for Eunomius was unbegotten. Unbegotten refers to and encompasses God’s essence meaning whether we call God Father, YHWH, or anything else, what we are really saying is “unbegotten.” What is the primary name for Jesus? Well, John 1:14 tells us: begotten. Any other name for Jesus is ultimately saying “begotten.” Jesus might be called God, but he is begotten God. Unbegotten and begotten, being different, therefore denote two different essences. Therefore, they are not homoousious (same essence).

Eunomius’s argument was both clever and powerful and as history played out, it fell to the Cappadocians to respond to him. Basil of Caesarea was key here, and in many ways, the contributions of Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus rely on key distinctions between essence, properties, and concepts developed in his Contra Eunomium.³

A thing’s essence is ultimately unknowable. What we know is the properties which “surround” the essence. Properties are not merely “accidents” (e.g., the color of your hair) because accidents can change without a thing changing its essence. Properties, however, are necessary attributes that, while not being identical with an essence, are nevertheless always with the essence. The classic examples given are heat/fire and smell/flower. The heat that radiates from the fire isn’t the fire itself, but a fire always has heat coming from it. The same goes for the flower. We might quibble about whether these examples actually work, but it is sufficient to illustrate the idea here.

How does this relate to the trinitarian debates? For Basil, and subsequently, the two Gregorys, what we name is not God’s essence nor even the properties that surround God’s essence. Instead, names refer to the concepts (ennoia/epinoia) in our mind which arise either naturally or through a process of conceptualization about the properties of God.⁴ Names > Concepts > Properties surrounding the Essence.

Or, as Gregory of Nazianzus puts it in his Christmas sermon:

On the one hand, God always was and is and will be; or rather always “is.” For “was” and “will be” are divisions of time according to us and of our fluctuating nature; but he is always and named himself this when he gave audience to Moses on the mountain. For holding everything together in himself, he has being, neither beginning nor ending, like some infinite and indeterminate sea of being, transcending every concept, both of time and nature; roughly outlined by the mindalone, and this very dimly and modestly, not from what belongs to him, but from what surrounds him, gathering together mental images from here and there into one for some image of the truth, fleeing before being laid hold of, and escaping before being perceived by the mind; shining around our intellect, and this having been purified, in proportion as the appearance of a swift flash of lightning that does not remain.⁵

Okay, so now after that summary I think you can see where I find a similarity to Jacob’s discussion of glory. Glory as honor, character, wealth, and power all surround the exalted status. They are the visible manifestations of what is perhaps an invisible status (or ontology!).

A Question

Finally, in thinking about Jacob’s argument, I couldn’t help but wonder if this might have implications for our interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11:7, 14-15. Though citing the passage, Jacob never gives an interpretation of it since it falls outside the scope of her book. If δόξα and δοξάζω, in her words, “primarily refer to or are associated with the concepts of honor, power, wealth, and/or authority that come with an exalted status,” what does it mean when Paul says,⁶

A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man… Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering.

Should we read this in the sense of honor? Power? Wealth (that is, possession)? Authority? Something else that could be related like beauty or esteem? Something else? How would it relate to the notion of exalted status? I’m honestly not sure, but I have a gut feeling that there is something to be found here. Comments are always open, so feel free to put in your two cents!

1. Haley Goranson Jacob, Conformed to the Image of His Son: Reconsidering Paul’s Theology of Glory in Romans (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2018), 62.

2. The word “glory” isn’t used here, but the sense of glory experienced by the Queen seems obvious (e.g., she was overwhelmed).

3. For a contemporary translation and a more detailed introduction to the debates and philosophical issues involved, see Mark DelCogliano and Andrew Radde-Gallwitz’s translation here.

4. The latter distinction between God’s essence and his energies, while growing out of the Cappadocian metaphysic, is not in view here.

5. Oration 38.7 (translation mine).

6. I haven’t examined the proposal of Lucy Peppiatt that Paul isn’t actually saying this but quoting his Corinthian correspondents, so for now I have to assume it is Pauline.