“When he ascended on high, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” The churches have access to the righteous angels. They have access to the things of the Spirit. They have access to the heaven that orders earthly affairs. They have access to the world to come. They have access for the intellect, through participation in the mind of Christ; access for the soul, through the exercise of the keys; access for the body, through receipt of the bread of immortality and the cup of salvation and the oil of anointing. All this may be partial and provisional, transitional and hence sacramental, mysterious and not altogether utterable, but it is nonetheless real and effective.
“Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,” Jesus tells Peter, “and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” So if there remains until the parousia a profound distinction between earth and heaven, a distinction more wonderful and more terrifying than ever it was, that distinction is already redundant now that Christ has entered heaven. To say “heaven is not earth” is to speak of what was, not of what will be. Which leads us to think also of the glorification of earthly things, and of man himself.
IF ONE WERE TO EXCHANGE the reading of this little book (and a happy exchange it would be) for the privilege of participating in an eastern celebration of the eucharist, one would find that the latter takes its departure from this very point: ‘Blessed be the kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and for ever and ever.’’ One would also discover that the eastern liturgy unfolds, much more dramatically that that of the Latin church, as a re-enactment of the atoning work of Christ, which it considers not only from the standpoint of soteriology but also of teleology. By stages it moves — through the little entrance, the great entrance, the epiclesis and the communion — towards the promise of eternal glory, towards the union of earth with heaven, towards the final destiny of man. The work of atonement it depicts as an anaphoric work, a work that is at once redemptive and perfective, an uplifting and transfiguring work.
It is in that light that we want now to see the ascension. But since we are reading (or, in my case, writing) rather than singing and praying the divine liturgy, we may resort instead to the artificial device of a diagram, containing both eastern and western elements, the function of which is to display the ascension’s place in the wider anaphoric work of Christ, which is conducted in three distinct movements, each with a descending and an ascending phase:
birth/baptism v passion/death
trial
descent to Hades V ascent to Heaven
resurrection
coming in glory V cosmic regeneration
last judgement
In the first movement Christ undertakes the mission that provokes his trial and conviction, and is lifted up on the cross in demonic mockery of the destiny of man. Thence, in a second movement that recapitulates the first, he descends to the dead but is restored to life — God’s verdict reversing man’s — and is raised up to heaven.” In the final movement, having set heaven in order, he descends to judge the earth, and causes us to ascend with him into the Father’s presence. That is, he glorifies God by leading many sons to glory and by offering up the whole creation to be the kingdom of God. It is to that consummate offering that his ascension already tends, for by it he presents himself to God as the firstfruits, that God may in turn present him to us as the guarantee of a full harvest. Now in each of these movements we should see an accompanying work of the Spirit, without whom there can be no harvest. That is something we learned from Irenaeus, whose account of Christ’s anaphoric work is aptly described as epicletic. What man lacks, in his disobedience to the Word of God, is precisely that which perfects in him the divine image and likeness, namely, the Spirit. What he receives in the gift of the incarnation is the resolute companionship of that Word, who is capable both of recalling man to the Spirit’s ministrations and of recalling the Spirit to the aid of man; that is, of habituating man to the Spirit and the Spirit to man. And when this is achieved, when through the invocation of the Spirit man has ascended with Christ into the presence of the Father, it is not only the condition of man that will be changed but the condition of all creation. For the Spirit takes man for a divine inheritance in Christ, and in doing so takes also the body of man. He enables the body to be rightly related to the rational soul, just as he enables the rational soul to be rightly related to the Son and hence to the Father. This makes possible the new man, and with the new man a new world order in which the glory of God shines forth in all things. As Paul says, “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God . . . because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.”
The glorification of earthly things, which extends to all God’s handiwork, is for the sake of man. “For if there are to be real men,” insists Irenaeus, “there must also be a real plantation, that they vanish not away among non-existent things, but progress among those which have an actual existence.” The verb proficere (to advance or make progress) is worth pausing over. It signifies both continuity and discontinuity between the old creation and the new. Of course it has always belonged to man to advance and progress, because it has always belonged to him as creature to go on receiving from his Creator. Yet man declines and expires. The reason for that is a prideful grasping after perfection that amounts to a refusal of creaturehood, and has the ironic effect of preventing any actual growth — hence of trapping man in his own time as a mere “creature of today.” Not only man himself, but all “those things among which transgression has occurred,” must therefore pass away, “since man has grown old in them.” But when man has been refashioned in Christ, when the very possibility of sin is behind him, when body and soul have been fully invested with the life-giving Spirit, then he shall go forth and flourish in a world that is also incorruptible. This he will do, not laying aside his creaturely nature, but ever reinvigorating it by means of “fresh converse with God.” Under these conditions, says Irenaeus, even the least spiritual man will “forget to die.” He will be as one for whom, in his delight, time stands still, or rather runs always towards God, and therefore never runs out. “For communion with God is life and light, and the enjoyment of all the benefits which he has in store.”
The glorification of earthly things is more than their restoration, then. Restoration is certain, both for man and for his environment, for heaven has not been fully cleansed until the promises of God have been fully vindicated:
On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine —
the best of meats and the finest of wines.
On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces;
he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth.
The LORD has spoken.
In that day they will say:
“Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us.
This is the LORD, we trusted in him;
let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.” (Isa 25:6-9)
In what Jesus referred to as “the regeneration of all things,” however, there will be a new revelation of the ends towards which creatures tend, and of the grace that perfects their nature. That is why, from the little apocalypse of Isaiah to the great apocalypse of John, witness is given that the whole creation is to be made new.
Eclectic Orthodoxy 