The Throne of God and the Glory of Christ
Is Scripture one Book or a collection of many books? If the Bible is one Book, then it has to have one subject, one unifying center. According to the New Testament, that one subject is Christ, who is foreseen, spoken of, and even active, in the many books of the Old Testament. Such is the argument offered by Olivier-Thomas Venard in a chapter titled “Christology from the Old Testament to the New” in The Oxford Handbook of Christology. Venard notes:
Each of the NT authors developed “his” Christology in his own unique way. Yet all of them have something in common: they say who Christ is in the language of the Scriptures.
Venard catalogs the many ways the New Testament presents Christ in the language of the Old, thus bringing to light from the texts themselves Christology as a unifying hermeneutic for reading the Bible.
One of the ways that this Christological hermeneutic is displayed in the New Testament is in the relationship between the Gospel of John and Isaiah. The Gospel of John relies a great deal on Isaiah, and John 12 marks a high point in terms of textual correspondence. In John 12 especially, the Gospel relies upon Isaiah in order to speak of Christ’s “glory.”
The glory of Christ Jesus is a central theme that runs throughout the Gospel of John. Jesus speaks often of his glory and of the “hour” of his glorification, that is to say, the hour of the cross. With an emphasis that is unique among the Evangelists, John presents the cross as a throne, so that the moment of crucifixion becomes the moment when the Lord is enthroned in glory. In fact, the prominence given to the glory of the cross by the Fourth Gospel is such as to (almost) make the Resurrection narrative of John 20 appear redundant.
The themes of glory, throne, and cross all coalesce neatly in John 12. This chapter, which marks the end of the “Book of Signs” and so of the public ministry of Christ, prepares us to behold, as a single mystery, the glory of Christ Crucified. The Gospel accomplishes this especially by invoking the witness of Isaiah:
Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke about him (John 12:41).
Isaiah, of course, saw and spoke of the glory of Yahweh, the Lord God of Israel, most notably in the great theophany of Isaiah 6. Remarkably, in John 12:41 the Gospel tells us that the one seen by Isaiah was, in fact, Christ himself. John identifies Jesus with Yahweh; he belongs with Yahweh and his glory is revealed to be the glory proper to the Lord God. Further, Isaiah also spoke of the Lord God seated upon a high and lofty throne. In John 12:32, Jesus will draw on this description of God’s throne to speak of his cross. In this way, the Gospel is able to present the cross of Christ by turning to the Isaian language describing the high and lofty throne of God.
His Glory
In order to appreciate the tight link the Gospel of John makes between Isaiah and Christ, it is helpful to note a few details from the Greek translation of Isaiah 6 as found in the Septuagint (the earliest Greek translation of the Old Testament, commonly abbreviated LXX), as this is the version of Isaiah cited by the Gospel of John. The text of Isaiah 6 in the Septuagint, while basically faithful to the original Hebrew, nonetheless contains a slight variation in the chapter’s opening verse. For comparison, here is the NAB translation of Is. 6:1:
In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of his garment filling the temple.
This translation is faithful to the original Hebrew. However, the LXX version of Isaiah 6:1 reads:
In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, and the temple was full of his glory.
The difference is italicized. The LXX renders “the train of his garment” with the word δόξα (doxa, “glory”), so that Isaiah sees the temple filled with the glory of God. Of course, the Hebrew original conveys God’s glory as well, but it does so by using the metaphor of the hem of Yahweh’s garment. The LXX gives us the substance without the metaphor, telling us simply that Isaiah is witness to the glory of God. In this way, the LXX provides, as it were, a smooth road with no bumps to the Gospel of John, in which Christ’s glory figures so prominently, and allows Isaiah to stand as witness to the identity of the glory of Yahweh and the glory of Jesus.
The other relevant detail from the LXX of Isaiah 6 concerns the cry of the Saraphim in verse 3.
Here, the Septuagint follows the Hebrew exactly:
Hebrew Original
וְקָרָ֨א זֶ֤ה אֶל־זֶה֙ וְאָמַ֔ר קָדֹ֧ושׁ ׀ קָדֹ֛ושׁ קָדֹ֖ושׁ יְהוָ֣ה צְבָאֹ֑ות מְלֹ֥א כָל־הָאָ֖רֶץ כְּבֹודֹֽו׃LXX
καὶ ἐκέκραγον ἕτερος πρὸς τὸν ἕτερον καὶ ἔλεγον ἅγιος ἅγιος ἅγιος κύριος σαβαωθ πλήρης πᾶσα ἡ γῆ τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦMy Translation
One cried out to the other and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts! All the earth is filled with his glory!”
The Lord’s glory does not fill the Temple only; it extends to all the earth, because, as the Holy One, he is Lord of Hosts and master of all the earth. What is interesting here concerning the LXX is that the last three words of the Seraphim in verse 3 repeat verbatim the last three words of verse 1: τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ (tēs doxēs autou), “his glory.” It is these same three words from the LXX of Isaiah 6:1, 3 that appear in John 12:41 and are referred to Christ:
Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory (τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ) and spoke about him.
The Throne of God and the Cross
In Hebrew, Isaiah 6:1 describes the Lord’s throne as רָ֣ם וְנִשָּׂ֑א, “high and lofty.” These same two Hebrew words are repeated at Is 52:13 and describe what is to happen to Yahweh’s Servant:
See, my servant shall prosper, he shall be יָר֧וּם וְנִשָּׂ֛א (raised high and greatly exalted) (Is 52:13; The Hebrew text adds: וְגָבַ֖הּ מְאֹֽד “and be very high”).
Importantly, Isaiah describes the exalted status of both the throne and the Servant by using the same words. Just as the throne of Adonai is exalted and lifted up, so also the Servant will be exalted and lifted up.
Once again, the LXX provides a bridge to these texts of Isaiah for the Gospel of John. In the LXX, the רוּם of Is 52:13 is rendered by the word ὑψόω (hypsoō), meaning “to lift up,” “to exalt.” There are two moments in the Gospel of John when Jesus uses this very word to speak of his cross. In John 12:32, Christ says:
κἀγὼ ἂν ὑψωθῶ ἐκ τῆς γῆς, πάντας ἑλκύσω πρὸς ἐμαυτόν.
And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself (John 12:32).
Christ’s statement here in chapter 12 parallels his statement in John 3:14, in which he uses this same word twice:
καὶ καθὼς Μωυσῆς ὕψωσεν τὸν ὄφιν ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ, οὕτως ὑψωθῆναι δεῖ τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up (John 3:14).
Whenever Christ speaks of his being “lifted up” on the cross, he does so by using the very word that is used by the LXX at Is 52:13. What is the upshot of all this? In speaking of his own death, Christ draws on the theology of the Servant of Isaiah 52:13, itself connected linguistically and so theologically to the theophany of Isaiah 6 and the throne of the Lord God.
The importance of these citations from Isaiah is made all the more significant by the fact that John, more than any other evangelist, describes Christ as king during the passion and depicts the cross as the throne of glory from which the Crucified reigns. Jesus is calm, composed, regal, and in control throughout the passion in John. In the words of Donald Senior, Jesus “goes to his death with majesty, and the brutal rituals of crucifixion are transformed into symbols of triumph.” The high Isaian theology is focused upon Christ, the true King of the world reigning in glory from the cross.
It is the witness of Isaiah that allows the Fourth Gospel to articulate in a profoundly biblical idiom both the surpassing glory of Christ, and the cross as the high and lofty throne of the Crucified. John 12:41 is one of a handful of New Testament texts in which a significant figure from the Old Testament is said to have seen or spoken of Christ. To give but two examples: in John 5:46 Christ says that Moses “wrote about me.” And in Peter’s speech at Pentecost, he tells the crowd, “David . . . foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ” (Acts 3:29-31).
It is part of the claim of the New Testament that not only do many verses of the Old anticipate or foreshadow Christ in some way, but also that the major figures, such as Isaiah, Moses, David, saw and spoke of Christ. In this way, Christ stands at the very center of Scripture and gives the many books of the Bible their unity. The Old Testament speaks of him, and the New Testament displays him. Pope Benedict, in Verbum Domini, speaks of a “Christology of the word,” that is, of reading Scripture Christologically. The pope notes, referencing his own Deus Caritas Est:
Here the word finds expression not primarily in discourse, concepts or rules. Here we are set before the very person of Jesus. His unique and singular history is the definitive word which God speaks to humanity. We can see, then, why “being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a definitive direction.”
St. Thomas Aquinas provides an example of someone who reads Scripture Christologically, and he is very much alive to the tight connection between Isaiah and John. In his Commentary on John he selects, of all things, Isaiah 6 as the prologue to his commentary. and writes:
“I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, and the whole house was full of his majesty, and the things that were under him filled the temple” (Isa 6:1).
These are the words of a contemplative, and if we regard them as spoken by John the Evangelist they apply quite well to showing the nature of this Gospel. . . . Thus, I saw the Lord. And because, as John himself says below (12:41), “Isaiah said this because he had seen his glory,” that is, the glory of Christ, “and spoke of him,” the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, is Christ.
As a final note, the centrality of “glory” in John 12 and throughout the Gospel has been noted above. The richness of this word stems in large part from the OT, from the countless texts that speak of the כָּבוֹד (kabod, “glory”) of Yahweh. The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament gives what is perhaps the most beautiful OT passage concerning the glory of Yahweh:
Indeed, we can see from the beautiful story in Ex. 33:18 ff . . . When Moses expressed a desire to see the כָּבוֹד of Yahweh, we are told that so long as he stands in a cleft of the rock, and Yahweh covers him with His hand, Yahweh will cause all His beauty (? כָּל־טוּבִי֙) to pass by him; and when He has passed by, and His hand has been withdrawn, Moses will see Him from behind.
The Gospel of John applies the glory of Yahweh, in the full richness of its signification, to Christ. For the Fourth Gospel, the beauty of Yahweh’s glory is veiled no longer by his hand, but rather by the flesh of the Word dwelling among us, the true Temple whose grace, truth, and beauty fill the whole world (cf. John 2:19), even as “the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil” when Mary anointed his feet (12:3). It is this beauty and glory, manifest on the cross, that we approach by faith.
