The Apostles’ and Nicene-Constantinopolitan versions of the Christian Creed are in harmony with each other. Each of the 12 Articles of the Apostles’ Creed is in full substantial agreement with the corresponding Article in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan. Where the Articles differ in wording, usually the conciliar Creed is longer, using more precise words to give a fuller explanation of the tenet of faith so as to guard against specific heresies. This Article is the exception. The wording is almost identical between the two Creeds and were it not for the Greek language’s definite articles, which Latin does not have, and its non-sparing usage of copulas, this Article would have been longer in the Latin text of the Apostles’ Creed than in the Greek text of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan. That Latin text is ascendit ad caelos, sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis which in the English of our Book of Common Prayer is “He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father almighty”. The Greek text of the conciliar Creed is καὶ ἀνελθόντα εἰς τοὺς οὐρανούς, καὶ καθεζόμενον ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ Πατρός which in our English liturgy is “and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father”.
St. Matthew does not include an account of the Ascension in
his Gospel. He ends the narrative of his
Gospel with Jesus speaking to the Apostles on a mountain, commissioning them to
go out into all the world, and promising to be with them and by extension the
Church, the society of His followers that He is about to establish through
them, until the end of the Age. While
this speech does bear some resemblance to the speeches St. Luke and St. Mark
record as occurring just prior to the Ascension, the location rules out this
being the same event. The speech that
St. Matthew records took place on a mountain in Galilee, not the Mount of
Olives in Judea. St. Mark does record the
Ascension in his Gospel including His sitting at the right hand of the Father:
So then after the Lord
had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand
of God. (Mk. 16: 18) (1)
Immediately before this St. Mark had recorded Jesus sharing
a meal with the Apostles in which He spoke the words alluded to at the
beginning of the verse. As mentioned,
the words bear a certain resemblance to the speech Jesus had given in Galilee –
in both Jesus gives His Apostles a commission, in St. Matthew’s Gospel to make
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and
Holy Ghost, in St. Mark’s to go out into all the world and preach the Gospel,
in both Jesus attaches promises to the commission, in St. Matthew’s His abiding
presence until the end of the Age, in St. Mark’s that they will perform various
signs and miracles. St. Mark does not
mention the location of the meal and speech.
For that information we must turn to St. Luke’s account.
In the Gospel according to St. Luke, as in St. Mark’s
Gospel, Jesus shares a meal with the Apostles, then gives them instructions
regarding their mission to take His message to the world. St. Luke mentions that the instructions are
given as Jesus and the Apostles make their way to Bethany (Lk. 24:50), which is
located on the Mount of Olives. St.
Luke goes on to say:
and he lifted up his
hands, and blessed them. And it came to
pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into
heaven. (vv. 50-51).
St. Luke provides another account of the Ascension at the
beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, the sequel to his Gospel. This account is the fullest and the one from
which we get most of the details of the Ascension – that it took place forty
days after the Resurrection, that Jesus was taken up from them into the sky and
hid from view by a cloud, and the appearance of the heavenly witnesses who told
the Apostles as they gazed up where He had disappeared that “this same Jesus,
which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have
seen him go into heaven” (Acts. 1:11).
The word heaven is used in more than one sense in the
Scriptures. It can refer to the part of
Creation that is spoken of as the “Firmament” in the first chapter of Genesis. This basically means everything visible to
the eye above the earth, the place where the birds fly and the clouds are –
what we would call the atmosphere – and the place where the sun, moon, and
stars are – what we would call outer space.
Some think that when the Scriptures use heaven in this sense that it can
be further broken down into distinctions, some references speaking of heaven
strictly as the atmosphere, others speaking of heaven as outer space, with yet
others speaking of the entirety of the visible sky. At any rate, the distinction that is clear
in Scripture, is between heaven as the Firmament of Creation, and Heaven as the
eternal presence of God outside Creation.
In the narrative accounts of the Ascension, especially St. Luke’s
account in the book of Acts, Jesus is seen by the Apostles to ascend into the
heaven of Creation. He rises into the
sky and is hidden from view by the clouds.
His ultimate destination in the Ascension, of course, was the Heaven
beyond the created heaven, the eternal presence of God.
St. John does not provide a narrative account of the
Ascension but he does provide an account of Jesus’ teaching concerning the
event. The Synoptic Evangelists all
record the Last Passover Supper Jesus shared with His Apostles on the evening
of His betrayal and all record the institution of the Sacrament of the Lord’s
Supper on that occasion. St. John picks
up the account of this evening after the institution of the Sacrament and provides an extended
account of a discourse Jesus had with His Apostles beginning in the Upper Room
and continuing as they made their way to Gethsemane. In that discourse Jesus makes mention of His
being about to return to His Father many times. He gives a purpose for His return to Heaven
– to prepare a place for His disciples, and promises that from there He will
come back to receive His disciples unto Himself, thus, like the angels in the
first chapter of Acts, connecting His Ascension to His Second Coming, which, as
we shall see when we look at the seventh Article, the Creed does as well. Jesus also relates His Ascension to the
coming of the Holy Spirit which took place on Pentecost ten days after His Ascension. Jesus had to ascend back to
the Father for the Father to send the Holy Spirit inaugurating the Church which
indwelt by the Spirit of Christ continues His Incarnational Presence on earth
until the Second Coming.
The Church, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, is called the Body
of Christ in the New Testament and while He continues to be present in and
through His Church, in His literal body He is seated at the right hand of
God. St. Mark is the only Evangelist to
mention this in his Gospel account of the Ascension. St. Matthew records a prophecy that Jesus
gave to the high priest at His trial that they would see the Son of Man seated
at the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of glory (26:64)
reinforcing the connection between His present post-Ascension location and the
Second Coming and St. Luke in the book of Acts records the vision of St.
Stephen upon his martyrdom in which he sees Jesus at the right hand of God
(7:55). St. Paul makes frequent mention of Jesus’
being at the right hand of God in his epistles. To the Romans, he writes that Jesus is
making intercession for us at the right hand of God (Rom. 8:34), to the
Ephesians, he writes that the same great power of God that raised up Jesus from
the dead and seated Him at the right hand of God is now available for us who
believe (Eph. 1:19-20). To the
Colossians he writes that those who are united with Christ in His Resurrection,
i.e., baptized believers, should seek the things of above, where Jesus sits on
the right hand of God (Col 3:1).
The right hand of God to which Jesus ascended and from which
He shall return in His Second Coming is a place and position of authority and
power. It is important that we
recognize that when Jesus ascended to the right hand of God He was returning to
what had been His place and position all along. One of the heresies that plagued the Church
in the early centuries was Adoptionism, the idea that Jesus started out as just a man
and became God at some later point when He was adopted by the Father. Those teaching this heresy didn’t agree among
themselves as to when this was – some said His baptism, others the
Resurrection, and still others yet claimed the Ascension. Jesus Himself, however, said to Nicodemus
that “no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven,
even the Son of man which is in heaven” (Jn. 3:13). Jesus in the Ascension returned to the place
from which He had come down in the Incarnation. Jesus’ use of the present tense in the same
verse to speak of His being in Heaven guards against another error, more common
than Adoptionism. Jesus did not, as
some have mistakenly taught based on a misinterpretation of Phil. 2:7, abandon
His power, authority and glory as God in the Incarnation. Rather, in the Incarnation, in which His
full deity and humanity were forever united, He allowed his humanity to
temporarily cloak His divine glory and power for the duration of His
Humiliation, His journey from the throne of God to the Cross. In His Exaltation, His upward journey
beginning with His triumphant entry as Conqueror into Death’s Kingdom of Hell
and culminating in His Ascension back to the right hand of God in Heaven, He
clothed His humanity with His divine glory and power. All the power and glory of God were His the
entire time. (2)
Recently, Charles III, our earthly king of the United
Kingdom, the Dominion of Canada, Australia, and the other Commonwealth Realms,
was crowned and enthroned in a Coronation ceremony at Westminster Abbey. This was not like the inauguration of a
president in the American republic south of our border. The Americans elect their next president in
the November of one year, and he is sworn into office in the inauguration in
the January of the next year. The
previous president remains in office until the inauguration of the next, who
does not become president until he is sworn into office. By
contrast King Charles III did not become our king in the Coronation but the
moment his mother, our late Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth II, passed
away. The office of king was his by
right of inheritance, the Coronation was merely a ceremony that formally and
publically solemnized it. In this difference we find an illustration of
the difference between the Ascension of Jesus Christ to the right hand of God
in Heaven in orthodox theology and the same event as understood by the
Adoptionist heresy. Jesus Christ is the
King of Kings, not the president of presidents. The position of glory and power, to which He
ascended forty days after the Resurrection, had always been His by right as the
Son of God.
(2) St. Thomas Aquinas included a very helpful discussion of some of these matters in Summa Theologica, III, Q.57.
No comments:
Post a Comment