Heaven/the heavens and the Exaltation of Jesus Christ

This Ascension-tide let us reflect upon the beatific vision and its relation to the Ascension of Jesus the Christ.

"Heaven" in the singular or plural form has a variety of meanings in the Bible and in Christian discourse. And these can seem contradictory and confusing.

In the Apostles' Creed God is said to have created the "heaven and earth". "Heaven" here would seem to be all the cosmos apart from the earth. For ancients this was the sky and whatever was above and around it.

The word "heavens" (plural) also often refers to the sky and whatever is above, beyond and around it.

When the Nicene Creed speaks of God creating "all things, visible and invisible" the word "visible" has reference to the cosmos ( that which is seen as well as unseen by the naked eye), while "invisible" has reference to that sphere or invisible world wherein are those spiritual beings that we call angels, cherubim and seraphim and a sphere which we cannot see at all with physical, human eyes.

In the Old Testament, the invisible sphere of angels where God is more perfectly known and worshipped than He is or can be on earth is called "the heaven of heavens".

When the Creeds, summarising the New Testament teaching, speak of "heaven" as the place/sphere to which Jesus Christ "ascended" in order "to sit at the right hand of God the Father" then the reference is obviously not to anywhere in the vast, physical cosmos but to the "invisible sphere/world" inhabited by the angels, or even to a sphere "above" that of the angels.

In the Lord's Prayer, the children of God pray, "Our Father who art in heaven", and here the reference is to the sphere wherein God can be the most perfectly known and worshipped, and where his will is perfectly done. This is sphere into which Christ ascended.

The very centre and focus of the heaven of heavens is obviously the eternal, infinite, ineffable, Divine Spirit who is the Holy Trinity, Three Persons and One God. He has always been adored, worshipped, praised and served by the myriads of spiritual beings in the sphere of the heaven of heavens. Yet this heaven cannot contain this Deity, when though he is most fully known there.

With the Ascension & Exaltation of Jesus Christ, which is the entry of the eternal Son with his assumed, perfected and glorified human nature into the supreme heaven, the nature of the heaven of heavens itself was transformed for ever. That which was perfect already was given a higher degree of perfection and grace. By the presence of the Incarnate Son of God, there was now room for redeemed, sanctified and glorified humanity to exist - alongside the angels - in the closest possible relation to the Holy Trinity. Redeemed and perfected man, through and in Jesus Christ, now joined perfect angels in the holy service of the Holy Trinity.

The Second Person as the one and only Mediator between God and Man is both God and Man (One Person with two natures, divine and human) and through him and in him those who are united to him [enclosed, as it were within his glorified human nature by the action of the Holy Ghost] are also thereby united to the Holy Trinity. By abundant grace, they can behold the glory of the Father in the human face of Jesus Christ, who is the God-Man, and they can serve God with pure love and obedience.

Yet it is always the case that neither sinless spiritual beings nor redeemed and glorified human beings can look upon God as the Lord God directly for the intensity of the Beauty and Holiness of the Divine Nature is too gloriously dazzling and overpowering for their created natures to withstand. But through and in the Incarnate Son, as they are incorporated into his human nature, the beatific vision is granted unto them for in Christ they can see God the Father and be blessed.

The Book of Revelation gives us through apocalyptic imagery and evocative symbolism a picture of the new Order where the redeemed creation worships the Son and in the Son worships the Father, as guided and energised by the Holy Ghost.

So on Ascension Day we celebrate not only the Exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ to the supreme place of authority alongside the Father but also the raising of our human nature into the very centre of heaven. Where he has gone those who are united to him by faith and in love by the Holy Ghost will also go - in heart and mind now and in full bodily reality at the End time.

As St Augustine put it long ago - "All our activity will be Amen and Alleluia." For "There we shall rest, and we shall see; we shall see and we shall love; we shall love and we shall praise. Behold what shall be in the end and shall not end." [The Latin is most evocative - Vacabimus et videbimus, videbimus et amabimus, amabimus et laudabimus. Ecce quod erit in fine sine fine. (City of God, Book XXII, chap.xxx.)]

The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon