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The Situation of Union With Christ

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in Ascension, Christology, Incarnation, Union With Christ

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ascension, christology, Gerritt Scott Dawson, incarnation, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Jesus Ascended: The Meaning of Christ’s Continuing Incarnation, John Calvin, Lewis Smedes, Union with Christ

Lewis Smedes in Union With Christ orients the doctrine of union in the “situation” of the Christian between the resurrection and the Second Coming. But before he explores the union, he begins by noting types of doctrines of union.

First, he references the “communion with God” model.  This model denies any real union with Jesus. The man Jesus is dead and gone. While there may be communion with God (or with “Christ”), Jesus, himself cannot be an object of union.

Dawson in Jesus Ascended considers the problem which the non-union “communion” model places to the fore: How can a man, Jesus of Nazareth, be the subject of any real relationship, seeing he is physically located somewhere (“heaven”) distant from us?

Still, because a body occupies space, the spatial distinction is not merely a metaphor but a reality. There is a place where the human Jesus is. There isa  heaven in which spiritual bodies occupy space, a created realm in which creatures are, to the limits of their capacity, in the presence of God (49).

Dawson responds by noting that the trouble of union with a distant Jesus lies in our concept of space. While there is a physical location of Jesus, we must limit our conception of space to a receptacle which holds the body of Jesus.

Relying upon Calvin and Thomas Torrance, Dawson discusses the matter of “relational” space:

Rather, in a relational sense, God in Christ crosses the divide to enter our existence, our way of being. Then, through this union, Jesus returns, still bearing his humanity, to the place the place of relation described as the Father’s right hand, the ‘place’ or honor, glory, power and dominion. Thus, heaven as a relational place is where God has ‘room’ for his divine life and activity in ever-deepening communion with humanity. (49)

The non-union response would be that this distant Jesus cannot be accessed from the place of our life. However, as Calvin notes, the Holy Spirit can communicate the blessings of Jesus to us.

We see how, in order to unite Christ with the Church, he does not bring his body out of heaven. … Here it is clear that the essence of the flesh is distinguished from the virtue of the Spirit, which conjoins us with Christ, when, in respect of space, we are at a great distance from him….  He sends his grace to us from heaven by means of the Spirit. (4.17.28).

John Calvin and Henry Beveridge, vol. 3, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Edinburgh: The Calvin Translation Society, 1845), 424-25.

Now, of those who do admit to a union, Smedes defines three types: First, a sacramental union. Such a union depends upon an exalting humanity:

Sacramental Christology stands and falls with the historical Jesus. But it does not find its center in the meaning of the historical events of Jesus’ life; it finds the center in the elevation of humanity to a new level. There is indeed a new creation, a new being that is Christ. But the primary note in the new creation is its being, not its action. Humanity is deified; that is the core of the good news. (9).

He next defines a “transaction Christology”:

[Jesus] became a man to obey, to die, to sacrifice, to atone. The heart of Christology lies in what Jesus did personally to transact with God for our atonement (10).

Now, as  Calvin notes, Jesus does us no good as long as he remains outside of us:

As long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and is of no value to us. [Calvin’s Institute, 2.17.3, quoted in Smedes, 11).

Third, Smedes brings forward the category of Situation Christology. Situation Christology does not deny the position of transaction, but rather “stress[es] that Christ radically changed the historical situation in which men live” (15).

The work of Christ took place within history – but also without and transcending history: “The decisive event was able to alter the human situation fundamentally because it too place behind the scenes of the human situation” (18).

Yet, it is just this change in situation which leads to the present quandary:

In view of the spiritual revolution in the world situation that took place at the resurrection and in vie of the fact that the ultimate triumph is still waited for, what is the meaning of the present time? Is there a Christological interpretation of the present existence of Christian people. (22)

Smedes notes that some of tried to solve this problem by arguing that Christ merely changed the “spiritual” situation, a “spiritual” experience –but one that has no real effect no or ever upon history. Smedes rejects that position and contends,

The present reality is the reality of union with Christ. And union with Christ is the experience of people who are introduced to the new age, with Christ as Lord (25).

Book Review: (Part 1)

18 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in Ascension, Christology

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Accent on the Ascension, ascension, Carl Brumback, christology, doctrine, Douglas F. Kelly, Gerritt Scott Dawson, Henry Barclay Swete, Jesus Ascended: The Meaning of Christ’s Continuing Incarnation, The Ascended Christ”, The Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood of Our Lord, Theology, William Milligan, worldliness

In the Foreward to Gerritt Scott Dawson’s  Jesus Ascended: The Meaning of Christ’s Continuing Incarnation,  Dr. Douglas F. Kelly writes,

For whatever reason, the ascent of the glorified body of Christ bearing our new humanity to the Father’s Throne has been generally neglected for centuries in most theological and ecclesiastical traditions.

Writes that after 18 years of ministry, “I had not preached a single sermon devoted entirely to the ascension” (Accent on the Ascension, Carl Brumback, Gospel Publishing House, 1955). He had not heard any such sermon. He went to look for a book on the subject, but “the cupboard was bare.”  He checked the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. (for those younger readers, finding the contents of a library used to require actually traveling to the physical building):

I could scarcely believe my eyes when I examined the files. Among the thousands of books on religious subjects, there was but one work in the English language which dealt solely with the ascension: The Ascended Christ, written by Henry Barclay Swete, and published originally in England in 1910.

He had missed William Milligan, The Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood of our Lord, 1894.[1] Now this lack of recent work actually begins a delight of this Dawson’s book: First, it is good to have such a thorough and thoughtful book available. Second, due to the lack of recent work, Dawson’s authorities for explication of the relevant biblical texts are drawn largely from the Church Fathers.  Too many theology books spend their time sparring with graduate students and fail to consider the extraordinary history of the church. 

However, as is amply demonstrated by Dawson, the Christological and Trinitarian debates of the early Church brought out brilliant insight into the biblical texts which might have received less consideration if more doctoral theses had focused on the Ascension.

Now neglect of a doctrine may be a mere historical curiosity – but Dawson draws a practical pastoral implication. He reviewed the nature of the life of his local congregation:

All of these signs point to a membership composed of committed Christians who are living in the grip of a world that has claimed them as its own. I do not believe my people are consciously trying to serve two masters. Generally, I do not think they even realize the contradiction between our beliefs and our life as a church. They are kind, happy, forgiving, dear church fold. Their pastor, however, knows himself to be compromised, realizes that he, too, has ‘the world is too much with us’ disease, and wants to get better (21).

Dawson locates recovery of the doctrine of the Ascension as vital antidote to the poison of worldliness:

A solution to the world’s being too much with us is an increasing awareness of how much our true identity and life’s destination is located in heaven, followed by the change in life here on earth that comes from the transformation in vision. (26)

Dawson than makes a reference to the postscript of Swete’s volume  which bears more substantial examination.  Swete identifies seven ways in which right knowledge of the doctrine of Ascension would affect the manner in which we live as Christians in the current age.

The first aspect (which Dawson quotes in part) is that the doctrine directly countermands the spirit of the age: The current age of the world seeks to make the here and now, the getting and spending, as the beginning and end of human existence.  Yet, when we rightly realize there is a human being – God incarnate, Jesus Christ at the right hand of majesty on high and that he is ushering in the age to come, it transforms the manner in which we think of this world:

The Ascension and Ascended Life bear witness against the materialistic spirit which threatens in some quarters to overpower those higher interests that have their seat in the region of the spiritual and eternal. They are as a Sursum corda—’ lift up your hearts’—which comes down from the High Priest of the Church who stands at the heavenly altar, and draws forth from the kneeling Church the answer Habemus ad Dominum—’ we lift them up unto the Lord.’ Faith in the Ascended Christ was S. Paul’s remedy for the sensuality which he encountered in the Greek cities of Asia Minor: seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth; for your life is hid with Christ in God; mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth. How strong a motive this appeal supplied is evident from the history of the primitive Church. The grosser vices of paganism have less attraction for our age, but the downward pressure of external things remains; at a time when life is being reduced to a complex machinery for the production of wealth, there is ample room for a doctrine which points men persistently to an order of realities which are at once present and eternal, a world which already surrounds us and waits only for the coming of the Lord to be manifested in overwhelming power. (Swete, 155-156).

However, the doctrine of Ascension does not lead us to flee the world. We are to live in the world, for our Lord is man of the physical world (even as he is also Son of God by nature). We cannot give the world our ultimate allegiance, for our King lives elsewhere – and yet we must not forget the world entirely. We must be in the world, but not of the world:

Faith in the Ascended Christ dictates the attitude which the Church should maintain towards the world. Two mistakes have been made in reference to this matter. There have been times in the life of the Church when she has been tempted to make common cause with the world, or to meet it halfway; and times, again, when she has gone to the opposite extreme of retiring from the world altogether. Neither of these attitudes is Apostolic or primitive, for in the early days of the faith, when men lived in full view of the Ascended Life, they knew how to live in the world without being of it. There is a familiar passage in a second century Apology which puts this into words, and must be quoted here once again. ‘Christians,’ the writer says, ‘ are not distinguished from the rest of mankind either by country or speech or customs. They neither inhabit cities of their own, nor use a different language, nor practise a manner of life which is out of the common. But while inhabiting cities Greek or foreign, as the lot of each determines, and following the customs of the country both in regard to dress and food and life in general, they shew themselves to be possessed of a citizenship which is all their own, and the nature of it is a paradox. They dwell in their native lands, but as sojourners; they share all things as citizens and endure all things as strangers; every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland a foreign country to them. They are in these sides of the Christian life, or exaggerates one of them at the expense of the other, suffers spiritual loss; and it suffers because it has failed to realize the full significance of the Ascension and the Return in their relation to the present duty of the Church as representing Christ in the world.

Thus, as Swete and Dawson note, the doctrine of the Ascension is a necessary anchor to permit the Christian to navigate the world rightly. Since our hope is anchored beyond this world, this world cannot ultimately trouble us, nor should it take our dearest attention (for it is the world that killed our Lord). Yet, our Lord has seen fit that we should witness to his majesty in this world. Thus, his kingship gives us the strength to remain in the world.

Thus, recovering and understanding the doctrine of the Ascension is of critical importance for the people of God. 

In the next posts I will review Dawson’s development of the doctrine.


[1] I did manage to find a copy of this book for $1.00 – but I have not seen it available elsewhere. And, I am not selling it.

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