+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:

1 Samuel 1:1-20, Acts 1:1-14, Luke 20:9-19

When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Acts 1:9-11

In his rather infamous book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, Jack Spong, retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark offers a number of reasons for why the “traditional Christian worldview” just doesn’t work anymore. He offers a number of reasons and then tosses out Christianity, hook line and sinker. Sometimes, like Thomas Jefferson and others, it seems simply that Spong just doesn’t like miracles: babies just can’t be born to virgins. Nope. Can’t happen.

Other times, though, he makes perfect sense for 50% of his argument.

The 50% is this:

The tri-level cosmology or the world map of the ancient world is not ours. The ancients conceived of the entire universe as functioning on three levels: the Underworld, Over-heaven and here, Middle Earth (the source of that name). Some serious issues arise as we have come into the present-day where we understand more about the universe (not all, just more). How do we - who live in an omni-directionally, infinite and expanding universe: apparently one of many in a ten-dimensional multiverse - how do we even pretend for a moment to live in an up-down tri-level, tiny universe?

I’m with you on “it’s a spiritual truth”, guys. But that’s new: very new.

John Chrysostom? Was very clear that the universe was up and down like a three storey building. Read his sermon on this passage. He makes no claims about “really it means something else.” Jesus goes up. Jesus will come down later. In fact, John reads in that Jesus rides on a cloud and goes on to make clear that he (John) believes that riding on a cloud is a mark of Jesus’ divinity - he “makes the clouds his chariot.” And he makes much of Jesus going up of his own volition.

Over the last 300 years, as our understanding of the shape of the universe changed, Protestant commentators seem to be moving away from this idea: Matthew Henry, writing in 1706 CE, says: By the clouds there is a sort of communication kept up between the upper and lower world; in them the vapours are sent up from the earth, and the dews sent down from heaven.

Fifty years later, John Wesley’s comments on the NT, skip over these three verses. And the Schofield comments, from the beginning of the 20th century, focus more on the second coming than on the going-away, ignoring the latter entirely.

Roman Catholics, of course, at least officially, had a lot of problems with changing the shape of the universe. Witness two things: A) the church’s mistaken excommunication of Galileo for his saying that the Sun does not move (and therefore such passages as Joshua 10:12–14, where the Sun stops must be untrue); and B) the amazing backflips that modern Catholics make to say, “Well, really, he wasn’t excommunicated for being right…”

I like this one:

If the sun does not move, as Galileo affirmed, how could the Lord have commanded it to stand still? The Church had not made an infallible pronouncement on the proper interpretation of these verses. Galileo, on the other hand, was making one: The sun does not move, meaning either Scripture is in error or the Church has to infallibly declare that the meaning of these verses is not literal.

The Church, to protect the faithful and to call Galileo to repentance, issued her condemnation. Pope John Paul II has removed the bull of excommunication against Galileo in part because the astronomer’s teaching no longer constitutes a danger to the faithful (just as Paul’s stern warning against circumcision in Galatians 5:2–4 was binding for his time but is not binding today).

Once you start being legalistic, it makes things so much easier just to keep going! It’s so hard just to say - like John Paul II did in the 1980s - “Oops. We were wrong.”

Hymns in Orthodox services make it clear: this higher/lower, up/down universe is very important:

The Lord has been taken up into heaven, that he may send the Advocate to the world. The heavens have prepared his throne; clouds his ascent. Angels marvel to see a human high above them. The Father receives him whom he holds eternally in his bosom. The Holy Spirit orders all his Angels: Lift up our gates, you rulers. All you nations, clap your hands: for Christ has gone up to where he was before.

Lord, at your Assumption the Cherubim were amazed as they contemplated you, the God who is enthroned upon them, ascending on the clouds; and we glorify you, for your mercy is kind. Glory to you!

Lord Christ, giver of life, as your Apostles, filled with lamentations of tears of dejection, saw you borne up on clouds, grieving they said: Master, do not make us your servants orphans, whom through pity you have loved as you are compassionate; but, as you promised, send us your all-holy Spirit to guide our souls with light.

Lord, as you completed the mystery of your dispensation, taking your Disciples with you, you took them up onto the mount of Olives; and behold, you passed through the firmament of heaven. For me you became poor like me, and you ascended whence you had not been parted; send forth your all-holy Spirit, to enlighten our souls.

That last verse is important: “You passed through the firmament of heaven”. In an infinite universe, he’d still be going…

Yes, I know: we mean these things spiritually, in a metaphoric manner. I’m ok with that. My point is this understanding is NEW.

The issue being that as science and, in general, common knowledge, change our understanding of the universe, we generally allow our theology to change. Most folks outside of the USA have allowed the same thing to happen to their understandings of the development of life on our planet.

But the point is how far can science change our understanding of the way things work before traditional theology falls so far out of sync as to be out of place?

I’m not eliminating miracles. Nothing wrong with Resurrections or even Virgin Births or stellar anomalies. The tomb was empty (which says nothing about how or why). In the first century they needed physical bodies, eating fish, passing through walls and fingers in holes to understand that. Do we? Don’t know. In the first century, they needed flying up on a cloud. Now we can understand that Jesus, at best, floated up because he had no time to explain 10 (or more) dimensions to 1st century Jews and then, once he was far enough away, he vanished into another place. (Please, don’t get a jackhammer and try to fit that understanding into the text.) But who knows how our understanding my change even later today or tomorrow? We do not have the last word on scientific knowledge any more than did the fist century.

About how many other things is this same process true?

Sex?
Gender?
Politics?
Morality?
Ecclesiology?
Theism?

Maybe we shall all learn to ascend as Jesus did. Maybe he’ll come back in our own cultural idiom: “Beam me down, Scotty.”

As we see your exaltation on the holy mountains, O Christ,
the splendour of the Father’s glory,
we hymn the appearance, formed of light, of your countenance;
we worship your sufferings,
we honour your Resurrection,
as we glorify your glorious Assumption.
Have mercy on us.