Ascension and Ecclesia by Douglas Farrow

There's something about the fact that Christianity has a real human being at its centre that seems to drive philosophers and theologians up the wall. I mean this in a real "they've completely lost it" kind of way. I think it's because competing with the mundanity of Jesus as a man are Aristotle and Plato harping on about cosmic purity and rationality (they don't mean reductivist materialism by the way).

The ascension then becomes one of the most difficult ideas on Christianity (alongside the trinity I think) because it dares to suggest that Jesus remains human even as part of the trinity. Now the responses to this can be manifold - do you say that the human part was only really for show, or do you think that once Jesus ascends he sloughs off the physicality of his humanity? You could suggest that he becomes more 'general and universal' in his nature. I also understand now why N. T. Wright appears to go mental when anyone tries to put forward a 'cosmic' argument.

I think that this entire argument is to overcomplicate something that's very simple (at least at its starting point) - that a human (albeit resurrected) Jesus ascends to the Father. No I say it's simple - what I mean is, there's no suggestion AT ALL that Jesus shakes off his humanity - neither its physicality nor its essential shape and psyche. That's where it gets complicated and that's where some of the greatest thinkers of the last two millennia have come unstuck.

From the absurdist questions such as -where did his atoms go? Or did he go up into the sky? To harder, perhaps more meaningful questions such as - did humanity always exist within the trinity or does Jesus' ascension walk humanity into the very nature of God? Does Jesus' ascension change God's very nature?

Farrow does a superb job of reviewing the development of ascension theology and, to a lesser extent, relating how the competition between anti-physical, anti-particular and cosmological/essentialist philosophies have shaped the church as an institution.

I, personally, hold a very particularist view of the trinity - that God is intimately concerned with individuals even if that is in the context in which they exist. I find the idea that we should or could relate to some cosmic saviour bizarre and alienating. So I'm with Farrow when he dismantles the motivation to adopt this type of position. It seems to me that far too much time has been spent by humanity loathing and fearing the skin we find ourselves in and that much thought has gone into imagining an existence where we could escape from our physical embodiedness.

Where Farrow is less successful is in tracing modern concepts of time and physicality - it's one thing few thinkers manage - to factor in the concept of time into their ideas. Particularity makes sense (is almost inevitable) in a dynamic creation - cosmic saviours in one that is fundamentally static. Farrow can't find that axiom - I think because it's a philosophical point most available to scientists and not classically trained philosophers - and hence his argument is missing a critical component.

Having said that, I think this is an interesting argument and one I enjoyed engaging with.