‘He ascended into heaven’ — upward-looking theology

COULD someone stand on a soap box at Hyde Park Corner and preach concerning the ascension as gospel or excellent news? In this series, I’m making that claim about each a part of the creed. Approaching the ascension that way involves treating it quite otherwise from the various somewhat embarrassed sermons that I actually have heard on Ascension Day over time.

The ascension belongs to the gospel, and bears witness to the gospel, since it is a lot about Christ, and about God’s unshakeable commitment to being with us and for us. It is sweet news since it shows that our humanity has been taken into God’s presence: Christ going ahead of us somewhat than abandoning us, and interceding for us there.

The gospel message of Christmas is “God is with us.” That returns at Ascensiontide, once we do not forget that Christ has passed into the presence of his Father in his flesh, which he won’t ever lay aside. As St John Chrysostom put it, the Son “clothed himself with our flesh, not as again to depart it, but at all times to have it with Him” (Homily 11 on John).

This message of God’s unbreakable commitment to us, and union with us in Christ, needed to be fought for. Marcellus of Ancyra, within the fourth century, taught that Christ’s human nature was temporary, destined to dissolve back into the Father. Against him, the Council of Constantinople (381) expanded the emerging Nicene Creed with the phrase “whose kingdom shall don’t have any end”. Christ won’t ever divest himself of our humanity. For the Second Person, the ascension is not any return to disembodied Godhead.

THE gospel is proclaimed within the ascension as “God is with us.” We can add that “We are with God.” Christ is our forerunner, taking our nature into God’s presence, with the promise that, where the top is, there the members will follow (to make use of language redolent of John 12.26, 14.3, and 17.24, elaborated as an example by St Leo the Great in Sermon 73).

That brings us back to the concept Christ doesn’t a lot depart from us as go ahead of us (John 14.2-3). Asking what it’d mean for the ascension to be a “cause” of our salvation, Aquinas points to exactly this. (He also writes that the ascension stirs up the Christian’s lively reception of that salvation, by lifting our hearts to God, and leading us into faith, hope, and charity — Summa Theologiae III.57.1 ad 3, 57.6). Think of a guide scouting out a track ahead of us: for him to secure the trail feels entirely different from his leaving us to wander off.

For Hans Urs von Balthasar, the ascension is Christ’s return to the Father, bearing his prize. It is “a return to the place to begin of his mission, now laden, nevertheless, with the entire harvest of the world that he reaped through that mission” (Credo, 63). Again, we will connect the ascension with the Christmas message. In the words of a hymn by St Ambrose of Milan from the fourth century (as translated by J. M. Neale): “From God the Father he proceeds, To God the Father back he speeds, Runs out his course to death and hell, Returns on God’s high throne to dwell.”

Christ doesn’t return empty-handed from that great odyssey: he returns together with his hands laden with those whom he has redeemed.

Paradoxically, then, the ascension of Christ proclaims the excellent news of Christ’s presence, not his absence. Christ takes our humanity into the presence of the Father for all eternity, and in that he goes from being, to some, locally present to being universally present to all.

Central to that’s the sending of the Holy Spirit — “It is to your advantage that I’m going away, for if I don’t go away the Advocate is not going to come to you; but when I’m going, I’ll send him to you” (John 16.7) — which we’ll come to in the subsequent of those columns. To this we can even add the sense during which Christ comes into the soul or lifetime of each Christian (what Aquinas called his “invisible” mission, or sending), and his presence “to the top of the age” within the eucharist (which should be a part of what he means in Matthew 28.20).

THERE can also be excellent news that Christ will not be present before the Father in some static or resting state. He is there to do something, namely, to plead for us, within the flesh that he took and has not laid down: “He at all times lives to make intercession” for many who come to God through him (Hebrews 7.25, cf. 4.14-16).

This is the gospel message that Christ — and his righteousness, sinlessness, and faithfulness to God — avails for us, first doing for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves, and eventually conforming us to that very righteousness, sinlessness, and faithfulness to God. Aquinas linked this to the incarnation: because the Old Testament High Priest entered the holy place to face before God for the people, so Christ has entered heaven in his human nature to hope for us, “that God may take pity on those for whom the Son of God took human nature” (ST III.57.6).

Aquinas also links it to Christ’s Passion, insisting that the risen and ascended Christ retains his wounds gloriously: the scars are usually not effaced, but transfigured (ST III.54.4). This features in later hymnody each within the familiar words of Matthew Bridges “Behold his hands and side, Rich wounds, yet visible above. . .”, and, in some less well-known lines by Charles Wesley: “Five bleeding wounds he bears, Received on Calvary; They pour effectual prayers, They strongly plead for me. Forgive him, O forgive, they cry, Nor let that ransomed sinner die.”

FINALLY, we would say, with Karl Barth, that the ascension speaks to us of the excellent news of God’s patience. We are situated, Barth wrote (Dogmatics in Outline, 124), within the time when Christ “is seated at the correct hand of the Father”, and the Creed passes here from a series of accomplished actions — was born, suffered, was crucified, rose — to the current tense (“is seated”). Barth called this the time of the Church, the time “that God leaves us, in his great patience, in order that we might imagine and understand and consider” (Faith of the Church, 89-90). “The Lord will not be slow about his promise, as some consider slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come back to repentance” (2 Peter 3.9).

Back to the soap box at Hyde Park Corner. What might the preacher say? That the ascension proclaims the excellent news that our own humanity has been carried into the lifetime of God, and that Christ has gone ahead of us somewhat than away from us. Where he now could be, he intercedes for us all. That, surely, is a proclamation of fine news. Following Christ, who climbed the Mount of Olives, we, too, might “rise up to a high mountain” and be “a herald of fine tidings . . . lifting up our voice with strength” to proclaim the excellent news of the ascension.

The Revd Dr Andrew Davison is Regius Professor of Divinity within the University of Oxford, and a Canon Residentiary of Christ Church.

An Old Testament Passage

“I saw one like a human being
coming with the clouds of heaven.
And he got here to the Ancient One
and was presented before him.
To him was given dominion
and glory and kingship,
that each one peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
that shall not pass away,
and his kingship is one
that shall never be destroyed.” (Daniel 7.13-14)

ALTHOUGH we are likely to associate the apocalyptic passages of Daniel with Advent and the Second Coming, this passage lines up with the ascension, and has long been understood that way by Christians. The “one like a human being” involves the “Ancient One” and comes, indeed, “with the clouds of heaven”, as echoed within the ascension story in Acts (1.9). That phrase “like a human being” features within the Aramaic text of the Old Testament as “like a son of man”: language that’s taken up within the Gospels, where it points to Christ because the archetypal and representative human being, as he’s in his ascension to the Father.

We may additionally think that the word “like” here points to there being something extraordinary about Christ, namely his divinity: not that this makes him less human, but that there’s an inexplicable “more” to all the pieces about him.

For other texts, consider 1 Samuel 2.1–10 (Hannah’s Song), Psalm 68.18 (not least as taken up by Ephesians 4.8), and Psalm 110.1.

A New Testament Passage

“In my Father’s house are many rooms. . . I’m going to organize a spot for you, and if I’m going and prepare a spot for you, I’ll come again and can take you to myself, in order that where I’m, there chances are you’ll be also.” (John 14.2-3)

THIS reading doesn’t feature because the Gospel for Ascension Day or the Sunday after Ascension Day, which is a shame. We more often hear it at funerals. It sets up Christ’s departure, not as a matter of loss or sadness, but as a matter of going before, to organize a spot for us.

The Letter to the Hebrews puts the identical point in priestly terms: Christ has passed through the heavens because the High Priest passed through the veil into the holiest place, bearing our humanity with him (Hebrews 4.14, 7.25). He is there for us, praying and interceding.

No wonder that this passage from John features so prominently amongst burial readings. It is such a very good funeral text since it is, to begin with, an ascension text. It tells the bereaved that their beloved has not departed into territory unfamiliar to God. Christ has gone ahead, in flesh like our own.

For other texts, consider John 20.17; Ephesians 2.4-6; Colossians 3.1-4; Hebrews 4.14-16, 7.25.

Quotations from the Fathers and Aquinas

“He inhabits this tabernacle for ever, for he clothed himself with our flesh, not as again to depart it, but at all times to have it with him.” — John Chrysostom, Homily 11 on John

“Flesh hath purged what flesh had stained, And God, the flesh of God, hath reigned.” — the traditional hymn Aeterne Rex altissime (c. fifth century), translated by J. M. Neale

“Ascending on high, he led captivity captive” (quoting Ephesians 4.8, working with Psalm 68.18): those whom Christ takes with him are “captives indeed of a joyful taking, since they were acquired by his victory.” — Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.57.6

“To sit at the correct hand of the Father is a mystery belonging to the incarnation.” — Rufinus, Commentary on the Apostles’ Creed 32

“This is the consummation and fulfilment of the opposite festivals, and a joyful conclusion to the entire story of the Son of God.” — Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon on the Ascension of the Lord