Today is the Feast of the Ascension on the Roman calendar. The Ascension always bothered me, it seems to me the spookiest part of the life of Christ. Virgin birth: no problem. Resurrection: what's the big deal. This is small change for God. But the Ascension just seems *weird*. "And He was taken up and covered by a cloud"? Give me a break.
I was thinking about this on the Feast of the Ascension about four years ago and I had this thought: What are the alternatives? It seems that the following map gives the relevant options. He could 1. Be seen to depart or 2. Not be seen to depart. If he is seen to depart then He must depart 1a. statically, "fade away" so to speak, or 1b. dynamically, be "transported" away (i.e. move from sight in some direction). If he is moved in a direction then it must be either 1b' a major point of the compass, or 1b'' an oblique angle.
Not being seen to depart would be the least spooky, but also the least educative. If He were just never seen nor heard from again, if He'd just disappeared, I think I would be even more disturbed actually. At any rate it would have left open-ended where the heck He went. Is he still out there, like Sasquatch, lurking in the forests eating berries? No, that's no good.
I also don't think the fade away would be any less spooky. The point of being transported "up" is to convey that He's going "up" to be with the Father. I don't know (or particularly care) whether the Apostles thought God was physical and lived in a castle in the air. I suspect they did not. However, I also suspect they had the same natural associations as we have and "the heavens" are, after all, a metaphor for Heaven. So why not up?
None of the other points of the compass convey much. Up is the only real "loaded" direction (I suppose "down" is loaded, but unsuitable for obvious reasons!). So I think it's a contest between the Fade and the Ascension. Can you imagine celebrating the Feast of the Fade?
". . . the relevant options. He could 1. Be seen to depart or 2. Not be seen to depart. . . "
A few more options. He could also be vaguely seen to depart and, assuming that a case might be made that he did not determnately depart (cf. e.g.. ."I am with you always"), he could be determinately seen to vaguely depart.
"If he is seen to depart then He must depart 1a. statically, "fade away" so to speak, or 1b. dynamically, be "transported" away (i.e. move from sight in some direction)."
He could also instantaneously vanish--no transporting, no fading.
"If he is moved in a direction then it must be either 1b' a major point of the compass, or 1b'' an oblique angle".
He could also move into hyperspace as a Flatland p might move to an unknown (to them) third dimension and come out a Flatland q, or as your left hand might move through an unknown (to us) fourth dimension and comes out looking exactly like your right hand. In that case He is not moving in any direction in three dimensional space.
There's also the issue of whether Jesus was forsaking the body and whether this involved a physical death. This does seem to be the best way to make it clear that it's not a leaving of the body or a physical death.
I gather that the point of the rising in the air and being covered by clouds was primarily to let the apostles know that they were witnessing something very important. After Christ was out of sight, then there seems to be more flexibility about exactly what happened. One possibility could be that the bits of matter that composed Jesus's body were transformed somehow, such as into a cloud (this doesn't seem any more troubling or unusual than the water-to-wine miracle, and I gather that the particular material components of the body weren't intrinsically valuable in a way that would prohibit their transformation for some reason).
I believe the line of thought you presented was also explored by C.S. Lewis in Miracles. I think he comes to exactly the same conclusion for the same reasons. I've thought about his (and your) response since then, and I'm undecided as to whether it's a good response.
The following could have happened: Jesus says, "OK guys, I'm going to leave now. Ready, 1, 2 , 3, ..." and then he's gone. You say that the way he did depart conveyed the significance of his departure to the people who witnessed it more than departing like that would. My concern with this is that it conveys this significance to the witnesses only because the witnesses had false beliefs (that the heavens were the abode of God, and Jesus was going there, etc.) (By the way, I think it's clear that at least Luke really did believe this stuff, after all, later on he has St. Stephen looking up into the heavens and seeing Jesus up there.) So it seems that in departing in this way Jesus was playing on people's false beliefs in order to convey something. I don't know why, but this part of your and Lewis' response bothers me. I guess--why couldn't Jesus have conveyed the significance of his departure by just saying something outright about its significance?
It's not that doing this would be immoral. I don't think that. Maybe what bothers me is this thought. Luke was predisposed to think that Jesus would have returned to heaven in this way because of his cosmological views. If Luke told a false story, we would expect him to tell a story according to what he was predisposed to expect to happen. On the other hand, if Jesus was going to depart after his resurrection, would we have expected him to depart in this way? I don't know what to say about that. You suggest some reasons to say yes. But I'm still not sure. But if we wouldn't have expected this, then it seems like we have at least some reason here to doubt the veracity of the story.
Obviously, my thinking on this subject is not so clear or worked out. And I'm not sure that I really agree with everything I just said, but I'm not sure I disagree with it either.
Dylan, that doesn't mean Luke thought this. It means at most that Stephen thought this. But I don't think it even means that. It says Stephen looked into the heavens, not that he looked into the sky and saw Jesus' face in Monty Python fashion but that he somehow had some spiritual vision of Jesus enthroned at the right hand of God.
Jeremy,
I didn't mean to suggest that from that one passage you can infer that Luke thought that. But I think that that story combined with the ascension story at least suggests that Luke presupposed the theory I attributed to him. (Note that Luke's telling of a story may show that he's presupposing a certain picture of things, but the story itself could be true even while the picture he's presupposing is completely wrong. I'm not denying that Stephen really had a spiritual vision of Jesus at the right hand of God.) Probably I overstated the case when I said that it's "clear" Luke believed that. I'd say it's plausible that he did.
Really it doesn't matter, though. Luke certainly belived lots of false things--perhaps this being a case in point. More interesting to me is the question of whether if Luke believed this false thing then that would undermine the credibility of the ascension story.
Trent,
I know that William Lane Craig discusses this in his debate with Gerd Ludemann in the book "Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment." Unfortunately, I can't remember what he said. So I'm just mentioning that the discussion's there.