[Dialogue] 7/30/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXVI - The Eighth Thesis, The Ascension of Jesus
Ellie Stock via Dialogue
dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net
Thu Jun 30 03:45:46 PDT 2016
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<div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h1 style="color: #003d4a;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 34px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Charting a New Reformation</h1>
<h2 class="aolmail_null" style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Part XXVI, The Eighth Thesis, The Ascension of Jesus</h2>
<blockquote>
<p><em>“The Biblical story of Jesus’ ascension assumes a three-tiered universe, which was dismissed in intellectual circles some 500 years ago. If Jesus’ ascension must be regarded as a literal event that occurred in history, it is now beyond the capacity of our 21st century minds to accept it or believe it.”</em></p>
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<p>
The late Carl Sagan, one of the world’s most esteemed and well known astrophysicists, said to me at a conference in Washington, DC, just two years before his death: “Jack, do you know that if Jesus literally ascended into the sky at the time of the ascension, and even if he traveled at the speed of light (approximately 186,000 miles per second), he has not yet escaped our galaxy?” It was a typical Sagan tour de force delivered against what he experienced as the small mindedness of traditional religious believers. Carl, who was Jewish by ethnic background and atheist by theological persuasion, was well known for having little patience with what he thought of as absurdities offered by religious people as something designed to be literally true. Yet the fact remains that for most of Christian history this story, has been uncritically presented in both church and society at large, even though it makes no sense in our post-Copernican world. Many magnificent portraits of Jesus ascending into the sky have been painted by the master artists of the ages and they hang today in the great museums of the world. A number of them have also been reproduced in stained glass and they continue to occupy prominent places in the churches of the world. If an artist was commissioned to paint scenes from the life of Jesus on the walls of an Italian Church in the Middle Ages, the first scene would normally be some aspect of the virgin birth and the final scene would almost surely be some aspect of the ascension of Jesus. These two scenes were thought to have framed the limits of his earthly life — his arrival in this world and his departure.</p>
<p>We noted earlier in this series that the miraculous birth of Jesus is referred to in only two of the four gospels and that neither of these stories became part of the Christian tradition until the ninth decade. This fact hardly confers objective truth on either of the two virgin birth stories. Since that is so, then it is even more problematic to ascribe history or objectivity to the story of Jesus’ ascension into heaven, for this story appears in only one gospel and it may well be as late as the tenth decade. The first mention of the ascension of Jesus is found in the 24th chapter of the gospel of Luke (vs. 44-53). That particular narrative is, however, not the well-known or well publicized ascension passage. According to Luke the resurrected Jesus made appearances over a period of forty days. Following his final appearance, and serving the purpose of announcing that resurrection appearances were now ceasing, Luke concludes his gospel with these words: “Thus he (Jesus) led them out as far as Bethany and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven.” It is worth noting that the words “was carried up into heaven” are missing from many of the most ancient manuscripts and may well be a later editorial gloss to bring the story more into line with the version described in the first chapter of Acts, which is far better known. When we come to this ascension narrative in the book of Acts, we need to be made aware that we are dealing with the same author who wrote the gospel of Luke. The book of Acts is simply volume two of Luke’s two-part corpus. It is in this second volume that we find the familiar and much more elaborately detailed narrative of the ascension of Jesus. When most people think of the ascension they are drawing their details from the book of Acts. Listen to the actual words found in this source: “As they were looking on, he (Jesus) was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold two men stood before them in white robes and said, ‘Men of Galilee why do you stand looking into heaven. This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven’” (Acts 1:10-11).</p>
<p>There is only one other reference to the ascension in the New Testament and that comes in the final chapter (chapter 20) of the authentic Fourth Gospel. (By this I mean to imply that chapter 21 of John’s gospel is widely regarded as a later addition to this book and from the pen of a different author.) This reference comes in the account of the risen Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene (20:11-18), to which we referred when we were dealing with John’s resurrection material. Here in this narrative Jesus speaks her name: “Mary.” In the speaking of her name, we are led to believe that she finally saw his identity, which until that moment had been hidden from her. She turns, says the writer of the Fourth Gospel, calls him “Rabboni,” which is a rather intimate form of the word Rabbi, and rushes toward him. Jesus appears to hold her off saying: “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father, but go to my brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God.’” The Fourth Gospel is normally dated between the years 95-100, well after Luke-Acts, so I think it fair to say that he was drawing on Luke’s material. That is the sum of the places in the New Testament where an explicit mention was made of what came to be called the ascension. It is thus a late-developing part of the Jesus story.</p>
<p>We note first a couple of obvious contradictions. Ascension in Luke brings the appearances of the risen Christ to an end. In John, the ascension of Jesus precedes all other resurrection appearances except the one to Magdalene. Luke in Acts tells the ascension story with narrative details; John provides no details whatsoever, referring to the ascension as if people would know what the word meant. There is no doubt that it is Luke’s narrative in Acts that placed the story of Jesus’ ascension into the Christian understanding, so I will focus on that narrative in the development of this eighth thesis.</p>
<p>First, the framework. The Bible, like most things written during the time of its compilation (circa 1000 BCE and 140 CE), assumed that the earth was the center of a three-tiered universe. Heaven, the abode of God, was clearly above the sky, while something, usually fearful, was thought to be located beneath the earth, in time it became known as hell or the abode of the devil, though that note is not dominant in the New Testament until the Book of Revelation, written in the tenth decade. Ancient people had no concept of the vastness of space. The sky seemed near enough to place them in the direct gaze of God, but the closest they could come to God physically was to climb to the top of a mountain. So Moses had to go up a mountain to receive the law. A story in Genesis reveals that human beings thought they could build a tower high enough to reach heaven (Genesis 11). Matthew’s birth narrative assumed that the sky was the floor of heaven, which meant that a star could be dragged across the floor of heaven so slowly that wise men could actually keep up with it. Given these assumptions, for them to have Jesus return to God at the end of his earthly life, meant that they had to portray him as rising into the sky. It made perfect sense in the small universe they believed they occupied.</p>
<p>Luke had one other agenda. As we noted earlier, Luke had turned the resurrection of Jesus into a literalized, resuscitation of a deceased body. For Luke, resurrection seemed to imply that Jesus has resumed his pre-crucifixion physical life. When a truth, incapable of being expressed in words, is literalized there are some unanticipated consequences, which become obvious immediately. If resurrection meant being restored to one’s previous life, bound as it was by time and space, then what does one do with that life then? How does one get that physical life out of this world? Usually the way we depart this world is to die. Jesus, however, tried that and it did not work. So the question was: “Was he bound to walk the paths of this planet earth through all eternity?” If one literalizes the resurrection then one must develop an exit story appropriate to a resuscitated body. That is exactly what Luke did in his gospel. In the narrative of Jesus’ ascension, Luke created a plausible exit story, but it was never meant to be more than a story.</p>
<p>Carl Sagan reminded us that if we literalize the story of the ascension of Jesus, but do not understand the size and shape of the universe in which that story presumably took place, the result is absolute nonsense. Can we get to heaven by rising up into the sky? Of course not! If we rise into the sky far enough, there are only two options. One is to achieve orbit. The idea of Jesus in perpetual orbit around this earth with his white tunic waving in the breeze does nothing for my spiritual life! The other is to have Jesus sink into the infinity of space. Heaven is not above the sky, I don’t care how many athletes point to the sky when hitting a home run, making a goal, kicking a football through the upright from sixty yards away or sinking the winning basket. When we in the western world point to the sky, we are pointing in exactly the opposite direction from someone who lives in the Far East. Words like “up” and “down” become meaningless in the infinity of space.</p>
<p>Since we know it would take light still traveling at the approximate speed of 186,000 miles per second, more than 100,000 years, to go from one end of our galaxy to the other, a literalized ascension story does nothing except to make Carl Sagan literally accurate.</p>
<p>There must be a meaning to this story that has simply eluded us in our literal attempt to understand the Bible. There is, and we will turn to it next week.</p>
<p>John Shelby Spong</p>
<p>Read the essay online <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=e16d5b53f6&e=db34daa597">here</a>.</p>
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<p><span style="font-size:18px">Katherine May via the Internet, writes:</span></p>
<h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Question:</h4>
<p>Thank you for your weekly emails. They are always informative and interesting. I’ve also read your books over the years and enjoyed your thought-provoking ideas and perspective. I am a nurse-psychotherapist in private practice and an adjunct professor for a psychiatric and mental health nurse practitioner program at a university. I will be teaching a course next year, which I have developed, entitled: “Depth Psychotherapy: Caring for the Soul.” I have studied James Hillman, Thomas Moore and have participated in many workshops and studies in Jungian Psychology for over two decades.</p>
<p>James Hillman spoke and wrote a lot about his disappointments around psychotherapy. Modern day treatment of mental health issues is caught in the “spirit of the times” medical model, including over diagnosing and overuse of medication to “relieve symptoms” and “improve functioning” as its primary goals.</p>
<p>Since “psyche” is a Greek word translated in English as “soul” and “therapy” means to “minister, care, serve,” I’m interested in studying how we can better connect psychotherapy practice back to its original meaning. I’m wondering if you would be willing to share your view of “soul,” how soul expresses/manifests in life and any ideas about a psychotherapy that could “minister” or “care” for the soul? Also, your ideas about the differences between souls and spirit and mind.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for your efforts and care in answering these questions.</p>
<p> </p>
<h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Answer:</h4>
<p>Dear Katherine,</p>
<p>Thank you for your letter and for your professional work dedicated, as it is, to the wholeness of life.</p>
<p>I find human words “squishy” when trying to define topics which words cannot fully embrace. The Greeks used the word <em>soma</em> to refer to bodies, but they also used the word <em>sarx</em>, which got translated as “flesh.” The word “<em>psyche</em>” could mean mind, but the Greeks also used the word “<em>nous</em>” to refer to the mind. <em>Psyche</em> could also mean “<em>soul</em>.” The words are anything but precise.</p>
<p>The Hebrew word “<em>nephesh</em>” is translated as “soul” or “spirit,” but it literally means breath. <em>Ruach</em> was the Hebrew word for “wind,” but it also meant “spirit”. So I don’t find it helpful just to assume that words convey a consistent message. Words are, however, all that human beings have to use, but in the non-scientific, inexact areas of human experience, they leave much to be desired.</p>
<p>In my opinion both psychotherapy and all the healing arts have one primary goal, which is to make people whole. The sign of wholeness is not found in any particular religious formulation, but is an expression of a deeper level of self-acceptance, one that expresses itself in the ability to give yourself away in love to another. The word “grace,” so freely used in religious circles, means the recognition that we are ultimately not self-made people, but are dependent on another for both life and love, which for me are synonyms for God. Obviously the gift of life is given to us by our parents. Not as obvious, but equally true, is that we have to be loved into the ability to love. We cannot give away what we have not received. We are driven by our own biology to be survival-oriented and thus self-centered. The grace of love is the only thing that can lift us beyond our survival needs and enable us to live for others.</p>
<p>The healing disciplines deal with both the physical and mental distortions that have been passed on to us in the course of life. This fact should free us from moralizing, one of the favorite pastimes of religious people. Judgment is difficult, however, when we know that unloved people hurt others, that abused children are likely to turn into being abusive adults and that, in biblical language, “the sins of the fathers (and mothers) are passed on to the third and fourth generation.”</p>
<p>Your task and mine is to bring wholeness to life. If using words like “soul” are helpful, that is fine; if not, feel free to abandon those words. Wholeness comes to our bodies, minds, spirits and souls in a variety of ways. The task of the would-be healer is to enable every person, no matter how badly he or she has been wounded by life, to find the courage to be all that he or she can be.</p>
<p>Enjoy your life of service to others.</p>
<p>John Shelby
<a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=6d3fff99c9&e=db34daa597">Read and Share Online Here</a></p>
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<div style="text-align: center;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=c30fb3df87&e=db34daa597"><img align="none" height="165" style="width: 371px;height: 165px;margin: 0px;border: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="371" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/e126c963-4a1f-4975-b07c-92143e3056a5.jpg"></a></div>
<h3 class="aolmail_null" style="text-align: center;color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 26px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;"><span style="color:#000000">Bishop Spong at Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, CA - July 11th - 15th, 2016</span></h3>
The purpose of the course will be to establish the fact of history that the three Synoptic Gospels are the products of the First Century Synagogue, in which Jesus was wrapped inside the Hebrew Scriptures, organized by the liturgical cycle of the Synagogue, invested with Jewish messianic interpretations and are reflective of the story telling traditions of the Jewish people. Biblical literalism was imposed on the gospels by Gentile Christians after 150 CE, unaware of </div></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr><tr><td align="center" valign="top"><table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="600" id="aolmail_templateFooter" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border-top: 0;"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" class="aolmail_footerContent"><table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody>
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