The account of the Ascension is certainly one of the oddest in the whole Bible. It even beats the revivification for oddity, I think – because at least the revivification happens when no-one is looking, giving the impossible possibility an endless air of anonymity. But the Ascension? We’re told that even as they stood there looking, he was taken up into the clouds.
How do we move toward a story like this in the 21st century? It was easier, I visualize, for the earliests and the medievals to imagine such a scene: after all, if you considered that “heaven” was a truthful place above the clouds, then ascending up there wasn’t too much of a stretch. But we know that “up there” beyond the stars there are more stars, and galaxies.
John A T Robinson undertook this problem in his book Honest to God, which, when it was published, was contentious because it seemed that he was moving the goalposts of faith and unstitching conventional belief. But in reality, he was hitting this problem head on: if we know God isn’t “up there” or “out there”, then where is He?
I know the Archbishop of Canterbury gets denigrated for talking about poetic language, because those who can’t be bothered to study language think he’s making justifications. But if you really take the time to read up on it, it makes wonderful sense that when there are things we know mechanically but are unable fully to clear, we do use poetic or metaphorical language. One of the best-ever books on this was Metaphor and Religious Language, by Janet Soskice, who give details the most complex philosophical ideas with a clearness few can achieve.
The Ascension, and the Resurrection too, are beyond our normal understanding, but just because you can’t reduce something to experimental clarification doesn’t mean it’s not there. It means you can’t clarify it. The account in Acts was written down by someone with an completely different cosmology from ours. But that doesn’t mean there’s no truth in it at all.
So on Ascension day we will only catch the joy if we start with Coleridge’s advice and exercise “the willing suspension of disbelief”; or have the humbleness to admit – as Shakespeare put it – that “there are more things in heaven and earth… than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.
How do we move toward a story like this in the 21st century? It was easier, I visualize, for the earliests and the medievals to imagine such a scene: after all, if you considered that “heaven” was a truthful place above the clouds, then ascending up there wasn’t too much of a stretch. But we know that “up there” beyond the stars there are more stars, and galaxies. John A T Robinson undertook this problem in his book Honest to God, which, when it was published, was contentious because it seemed that he was moving the goalposts of faith and unstitching conventional belief. But in reality, he was hitting this problem head on: if we know God isn’t “up there” or “out there”, then where is He?
I know the Archbishop of Canterbury gets denigrated for talking about poetic language, because those who can’t be bothered to study language think he’s making justifications. But if you really take the time to read up on it, it makes wonderful sense that when there are things we know mechanically but are unable fully to clear, we do use poetic or metaphorical language. One of the best-ever books on this was Metaphor and Religious Language, by Janet Soskice, who give details the most complex philosophical ideas with a clearness few can achieve.
The Ascension, and the Resurrection too, are beyond our normal understanding, but just because you can’t reduce something to experimental clarification doesn’t mean it’s not there. It means you can’t clarify it. The account in Acts was written down by someone with an completely different cosmology from ours. But that doesn’t mean there’s no truth in it at all.
So on Ascension day we will only catch the joy if we start with Coleridge’s advice and exercise “the willing suspension of disbelief”; or have the humbleness to admit – as Shakespeare put it – that “there are more things in heaven and earth… than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.
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