Exaltation? In the older texts of the New Testament the "exaltation" or "taking up" of Jesus is simply a form of expression for Jesus' raising or resurrection, with a different emphasis. The fact that Jesus was raised meant in the New Testament nothing more than that he was elevated to God by the very fact of being raised: exaltation as completion of the resurrection.
But does not exaltation mean assumption into heaven? At the same time it is clear that the blue firmament can no longer be understood as in biblical times as the external side of God's presence chamber. But it can certainly be understood as the visible symbol or image for the real heaven, the invisible domain ("living space") of God. The heaven of faith is not the heaven of the astronauts, even though the astronauts themselves expressed it that way when they recited in outer space the biblical account of creation. [And didn't some of the atheists have a hissy fit when that innocuous event happened.] The heaven of faith is the hidden invisible incomprehensible sphere of God which no journey into space ever reaches. It is not a place but a mode of being; not one beyond earth's confines, but bringing all to perfection in God and giving a share in the reign of God.
Jesus then is taken up into the glory of the Father, Resurrection and exaltation, when linked in Old Testament phraseology, means ascension to power (enthronement) on the part of him who has conquered death; assumed into God's sphere of life, he shares God's rule and glory and so can excise his claims to universal dominion for men. The Crucified is Lord and calls men to follow him. He is thus installed in his heavenly, divine dignity, which again finds its traditional expression in a metaphor referring to the son or representative of the ruler: "Sits at the right hand of the Father." That is he is nearest to the Father in authority and exercises it vicariously with the same dignity and status. In the earliest Christological formulas, as used for instance in the apostles' sermons in Acts, Jesus was indeed man in lowliness, but after raising him, God made him Lord and Messiah. It is only to the exalted and not to the earthly Jesus that Messiahship and divine sonship are ascribed.
This is important for the Easter appearances, however they are ultimately to be understood. It is from this heavenly state of divine power and glory that he "appears to those whom he will make his "instruments"; this is what Paul leart and what is quite naturally assumed in the appearances in Matthew John, and in Mark's supplement, where there is no mention of the whence and whither of the one who appears. Easter appearances are manifestations of the already exalted Jesus. It is always the exalted Jesus who appears, coming from God, whether it is Paul hearing the one who calls him from heaven or - as in Matthew and John - the risen Jesus appearing on earth.
In the New Testament then - apart from an exception to be discussed immediately - raising from death and exaltation to God are one. Whenever there is a mention only of the one, the other is implied. Easter faith is faith in Jesus as the Lord who is risen (=exalted to God). He is both the Lord of his Church present in the Spirit, and the hidden Lord of the word (cosmocrator) with whose rule the definitive rule of God has already begun.
I was tempted to leave this passage out except it was so interesting a demonstration of how the incomprehensible nature of the Resurrection, alien not only to human language but human experience of space and time, leaves us relying on metaphors to talk about what of it was experienced in the post-Resurrection passages of the New Testament, the experiences that explain the subsequent actions of those who had known Jesus and saw him put to death - by their own confession abandoning him, no doubt Peter standing in as the quintessential examples of his most devoted follower who, as soon as he was taken into custody denied he even knew him three times. Something clearly caused him to go from someone who could have probably gone back to his boat and resumed his life as a married fisherman but who, instead, became one of the leaders of a tiny, beleaguered sect of religious non-conformists constantly under danger of being killed as his co-leader of it, James, the brother of Jesus soon was and as others were being killed or at least persecuted by the likes of Saul who would, himself have experiences of the risen Jesus that set him on an even more startling and otherwise unexplained turn-around.
Hans Kung who is certainly a master of word-use, immediately after talking about how incomprehensible the experience of the Resurrection is in terms of humanly perceived reality is forced to talk about heaven as the "sphere of God " how the status of Jesus exalted is put in the crudest of human political terms of power and rule and terms invented to describe physical coercion. Given that the Gospels and other New Testament books were written by people whose language and manner of thinking was bound up in their experience of their world, it is entirely understandable that they would use the language they did, even as, occasionally, they talked about the inadequacy of such descriptions, and that things would get worse as medieval writers and thinkers put it into terms of early European feudalism, the mystics more often than conventional writers breaking out of it in terms that strike a modern reader as more poetic, though no less reliant on metaphors when there is an attempt at specificity.
I think the rule of God is through the subtle forces, as was the experience of God to Elijah and that passage would have been known to the writers of the Gospels, acts and certainly was known by Paul and James. The problem of human metaphors is that they are too crude and too blatant. The passage in which Elijah experiences God is one of the best I know about and it's the opposite of the language describing the status of the risen Jesus. God was not in the great wind, the earthquake or the fire but in silence. It's worth considering what that passage from 1 Kings ends up with, Elijah is told to anoint new Kings and a prophet who will do some pretty violent stuff. But the new rule described in the New Testament, despite the same kind of metaphorical language used to describe it, quite conclusively won't be one of the sword. It is not describable in human terms, certainly not in legalese.
Christians, especially when they are a majority make all kinds of trouble and bring Christianity into complete disrepute when, for example, "most Christian" princes and kings, presidents and prime ministers, generals and Popes and inquisitors have set up all-too worldly kingdoms to exercise their own power for immoral purposes. They choose to ignore that difference, it is in that lapse of meaning into the crudeness of the metaphors that has accounted for the scandalous history of Christianity as a constant and continual violation of just about everything Jesus, Paul, James, etc. said. Which shows how dangerous it is to forget that these are metaphors.
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