The ascension

The exaltation of Jesus to the right hand of the Father is a basic component of the NT preaching of the person and work of Christ. In fact, the gospel declaration – “Jesus is Lord” – is a declaration of Jesus ascended: that the story of Jesus did not finish with his bodily resurrection but is ongoing, for he reigns. The ascension is the counterpart to the incarnation as we see in passages like Philippians 2:5-11. This was a favourite theme of our old friend, Irenaeus (A.H. 3.1, 18.2, 19.3.)


“In biblical terms the ascension involves a real departure of Jesus of Nazareth. That is the basis on which we find ourselves compelled to speak of two histories rather than one. Covenant history and world history have divided in this departure, for in and with Jesus the former has already reached its goal. In the resulting gap a place has opened up for the Eucharistic community as a genuinely new entity within world history, albeit a peculiar one with its peculiar view of the way things are.” (D.Farrow, Ascension and Ecclesia p. 40)




“Doctrinally, then, the Ascension … marks the culmination of the resurrection gospel – the universalizing of Jesus’ relevance to all aspects of human life, individual and global; the present possibility of a share in Jesus’ loving union with his Father, i.e. a life of both trustfulness and authority; the crowning of the purpose of Jesus’ life and death in the restoration of fellowship between heaven and earth. It represents both the call to witness (and to recognize Christ in the world of which he is declared Lord) and the promise of transformed – ‘deified’ – life, as the ground and source of that witness.” (R. Williams, 1983)

And heaven? What is that?

“’Heaven’ in biblical language is the sum of the inaccessible and incomprehensible side of the created world, so that, although it is not God himself, it is the throne of God, the creaturely correspondence to his glory, which is veiled from man, and cannot be disclosed except on his initiative.” (K. Barth, C.D. III/1. 453)