Christ Ascends by His Own Power, Above All the Heavens and All Spiritual Creatures; How the Ascension Causes Our Salvation

Orientation #

He is reading straight through q. 57 on the Ascension, beginning at article 3 and finishing article 6; he refers back to what “has been said above about the resurrection” (prev. lecture) and to a discussion of the fifth essence promised for the treatment of the common resurrection. The previous class covered the effects of the Resurrection and the opening of the treatise on the Ascension.

The class, in order #

1. Article 3, objections: did Christ ascend by His own power? (“was assumed to heaven”) #

1. Mark 16 says He “was assumed,” Acts 1 that He “was elevated” and a cloud took Him: what is assumed or elevated is moved by another — so by an alien power.
2. Christ’s body was earthly, and upward motion is against the nature of an earthly body; no motion against nature is by one’s own power. Aside: that is why walking uphill is harder than down — contrary to the nature of the elements, though an animal nature can go against it; he jokes at Thomas’s example of man’s freedom to walk or run (“Thomas must have been big to have that choice”).
3. Christ’s own power would be divine power; but divine power is infinite, so the motion would have been instantaneous, and the disciples could not have watched Him rise. He notes this argument “has a long history in the history of philosophy.”

Sed contra: Isaiah 63, “going up in the multitude of His own power”; and Gregory’s homily on the Ascension — Elias is read to ascend in a chariot, to show that a pure man needs alien aid, but our Redeemer, in no chariot and by no angels, was borne above all by His own power.

2. Article 3, body: two natures, and in the human nature two powers (“the power of glory”) #

• In Christ there are two natures, so “His own power” can be taken according to either.
• In the human nature, two powers: (a) natural, from the principles of nature — by this He plainly did not ascend; (b) the power of glory, one of the dowries and gifts — by this He ascended, by a power of His glorified body.
• One explanation of that power: from the fifth essence, light, posited as a composing part of the human body reconciling the contrary elements. In mortality the elementary nature dominates, so the body is borne downward; in glory the celestial nature predominates, and the body is borne to heaven. Thomas sets this opinion aside, referring to the First Part and to the future treatment of the common resurrection. He notes: “we’ve never discussed that opinion, so we’ll have to leave it to that.”
• The explanation he keeps: from the glorified soul, whose glory overflows into the body (Augustine, to Dioscorus; City of God XXII — “where the spirit wills, there at once is the body”). The glorified immortal body fits a celestial place, so at the soul’s willing the body ascended. And the soul is made blessed by partaking of God (Augustine on John) — so the first origin of the Ascension is divine power.
• Conclusion, two ways: Christ ascended by His divine power, and by the power of the glorified soul moving the body as it wills — itself a partaking of divine power.

3. Article 3, replies (“nevertheless, by the Father elevated”) #

• ad 1: as Christ is said to have risen by His own power and also to be raised by the Father — the power of Father and Son being the same — so He ascended by His own power and was also elevated by the Father. Student exchange: Peter in his first speech to the crowd says the Father raised Him — a moderation, preparing their minds; had he said “by His own power” they might have taken up stones. Another student recalls Paul (Romans or Hebrews) on Him who raised Christ by the power of the Spirit — “they get the whole Trinity.”
• ad 2: the objection proves only that He did not ascend by the power natural to human nature. Ascent is against the nature of the body in the present state, where the body is not wholly subject to the spirit; it is neither against nature nor violent for the glorified body, wholly subject to the spirit. Aside: we are not going to be “shoveling up there,” and we shall not have to walk through snow — followed by a long digression on icicles off the roof, Kansas City fog, snow in every continental state but Florida, his son in Atlanta clearing snow with a dust pan, and snow in Rome.
• ad 3: divine power is infinite on the side of the one operating, but the effect is received according to the capacity of things and the disposition of God’s will. A body cannot be moved instantaneously in place, since it must measure itself against the space by whose division time is divided (Natural Hearing VI [ed.: Physics]). So the body moves at the velocity God disposed. He links this to the question of the infinite power moving the heavenly bodies: a natural infinite power would move instantly, which is impossible; but a mover by will need not use all his power.

4. Article 4, objections: above all the heavens? (“that’s a different sense of heaven”) #

1. Psalm 10, “the Lord in heaven His seat” — what is in heaven is not above heaven. He notes this is a different sense of “heaven.”
2. The second objection (two bodies cannot be in the same place; no passage from extreme to extreme except through the middle, so the heavens would have to be divided, which is impossible) is marked in his edition by an asterisk: omitted by the Leonine as not in the original manuscript. “Shocking.” The parallel objection in the Leonine text: there is no place above the heavens (De Caelo), but every body must occupy a place. Aside: Christ came through walls and locked doors at the Resurrection. Aside on his defective volume — missing pages, repeated signatures.
3. Acts 1: a cloud received Him, and clouds cannot be raised above the heavens. (Joke about flying through clouds — “not by your power.”)
4. We believe He remains forever where He ascended; what is against nature cannot be eternal, since what is according to nature is for the most part.

Sed contra: Ephesians 4, “He ascended above all the heavens, that He might fulfil all things.”

5. Article 4, body: the more a body partakes of divine goodness, the higher its place (“in place and dignity”) #

The more perfectly bodies partake of divine goodness, the higher they stand in the bodily order, which is the order of place; more formal bodies are naturally superior (Natural Hearing IV; the second book De Caelo), since by its form each body partakes of divine being (Physics I). A body partakes of divine goodness more through glory than any natural body through its natural form; among glorious bodies Christ’s shines with greatest glory; so it was most fitting that it be set above all bodies. Gloss on Ephesians 4: ascending “in place and in dignity.”

• Ancient physics as the illustration: earth at the centre, then water, air, fire — as you go up, bodies are more active and more formal; Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, “I am fire and air,” leaving the earth to the baser elements.
• Aside: popular science books make a scandal of the earth not being the centre; but the centre was the lowest place, not the most important — “it wasn’t egocentrism” — “geocentrism” — “just a transposition of the letters.”

Replies: (1) God’s seat is said to be in heaven not as contained but rather as containing — so no part of heaven is above Him; Psalm 8, “Thy magnificence is elevated above the heavens.” (2) Two bodies in one place is beyond bodily nature but possible by miracle, as Christ went forth from the closed womb of the Virgin and entered through closed doors (Gregory) — belonging to His body not from its own propriety but by divine power assisting. (3) The clouds gave no aid as a vehicle but appeared as a sign of divinity, as God’s glory appeared over the tabernacle in a cloud; a student links the cloud of the Transfiguration, and he adds Thomas takes it to represent the Holy Spirit, with the Father’s voice, “This is my beloved Son, hear Him.” (4) The glorified body has being above heaven not from its own principles but from the blessed soul, so its motion or rest there is not violent — nothing prevents it from being eternal.

6. Article 5: above every spiritual creature (“the dignity of the union”) #

Objections: (1) no fit comparison between things not said in one meaning, and “place” is not attributed in the same sense to bodies and spirits (First Part). Illustration: an angel is “here” not as your body is, but by application of his power to this place — his brother Mark ducking a pipe on the tractor, “that was my guardian angel”; and driving to Quebec on bad tires in winter. (2) Augustine (De vera religione (inferred), “the book about religion”) — spirit is preferred to every body, and a more noble thing is owed a more sublime place. He asks: why should a body be above all spiritual creatures? — pointing to the paintings of the Virgin glorified above them. (3) In every place there is some body, since nothing is empty in nature (“nature abhors a vacuum”); if no body in the natural order reaches higher than a spirit, no place is above every spiritual creature.

Sed contra: Ephesians 1:20–21, constituted above every principality and power and every name named in this age or the future.

Body: the more noble a thing, the higher the place owed it — whether owed by bodily contact, as with bodies, or by spiritual contact, as with spiritual substances; hence a celestial place, the highest, is owed by a certain congruity to spiritual substances, supreme in the order of substances. Christ’s body, considered as bodily nature, is below spiritual substances; but considered in the dignity of the union by which it is personally joined to God, it exceeds the dignity of all spiritual substances — “that’s kind of an amazing statement, isn’t it?” So by that congruity a place higher than any creature, even spiritual, is owed it (Gregory’s homily again).

• Student exchange on the Blessed Virgin — Queen of Angels; his teacher Kasurik’s playful remark that her guardian angel, a lower angel, was raised above the angels by guarding her (“but that’s not definitive necessarily”); and his own wish to study the angels.
• Replies: (1) though place is attributed for different reasons to bodily and spiritual substance, both reasons share this, that a higher place is attributed to the worthier. (2) the objection holds of Christ’s body by condition of bodily nature, not by reason of the union to the Person. (3) the comparison may be taken by reason of the places — and then no place is so high as to exceed a spiritual substance’s dignity, which is the objection’s truth — or by the dignity of those to whom places are attributed, and then Christ’s body is owed a place above all spiritual creatures. A student finds this reply confusing; he agrees, and cites the note from Cajetan that the title must be taken cum grano salis — “not the green salt” — its sense being whether the place to which Christ ascended is superior to the places in which spiritual creatures are.

7. Article 6: is the Ascension a cause of our salvation? (“How did you discover these two ways, Thomas?”) #

Objections: (1) Christ caused salvation in so far as He merited it; but the Ascension pertains to the reward of His exaltation, and merit and reward are not the same, as road and end are not. (2) If it caused anything it would be our ascension, but that was granted through His passion — Hebrews 10, confidence to enter the holy places through His blood. (3) Our salvation is eternal (Isaiah 51), but He did not ascend to be there forever, since He will come again (Acts 1), and He showed Himself on earth after the Ascension, as to Paul (Acts 9).

Sed contra: John 16, “It is expedient for you that I go.”

Body, two ways — “How did you discover these two ways, Thomas? What a mind he had!”

• On our side: by the Ascension our mind is moved to Him — place given first to faith, second to hope, third to charity; fourth, our reverence is increased, since we no longer estimate Him a mere earthly man but a celestial God (2 Cor. 5, “though we knew Christ according to the flesh, now we know Him so no longer”). Aside: “familiarity breeds contempt” — had He not ascended we would think of Him as just another man.
• On His side, three things: (a) He prepared our way of ascending — “I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14); Micah 2 (as he reads it), “He ascended, opening the way before us”; He is the head, the members must follow where the head preceded, “where I am, you also will be” — and in place. As a sign, the souls of the saints He brought out of hell He transferred to heaven: Psalm 67, “ascending on high, He led captivity captive” — a good capture, the captives acquired by victory. He adds: where the head is, there the members — “where the body is, there the eagles shall be gathered,” not that they be decapitated. (b) As the high priest entered the sanctuary to stand before God, Christ entered heaven to intercede for us (Hebrews 7): the representation of the human nature He bore into heaven is itself an intercession, since God, having so exalted human nature in Christ, takes pity on those for whom the Son assumed it. A student notes the same expression about representation in the commentary on Romans — “he’s consistent” — and that this representing of human nature and its merits to the Father is basically what the Mass is, applying it. Aside on Hebrews: one must not deny it is Paul’s merely because the style differs; an early father (perhaps Justin Martyr) said Paul wrote it in Hebrew and it was translated; compare the Pope writing personally to Germans, or Thomas’s dedicatory epistle to Urban IV, harder Latin than the Summa’s. (c) Constituted in the seat of heaven as God and Lord, He sent divine gifts to men — Ephesians 4, “He ascended above all the heavens that He might fill all things” with His gifts. Aside: “you want something new in your sermon on the Ascension, you can use this text.”

8. Article 6, replies, with the digression on distinction, division, definition (“that’s a distinction, rather than division”) #

• ad 1: the Ascension causes salvation not by way of merit — that belongs to His death on the cross — but by way of efficient cause, as was said of the resurrection.
• Digression, prompted by his own wording: he corrects himself, “that’s a distinction, rather than division,” and recalls the order of the three: definition, division, distinction. As with beginning, cause, element — every cause is a beginning but not conversely; every element is a cause but not conversely — so every definition is in a way a division and not conversely; every division is a distinction and not conversely, since division is more properly a distinction of the parts of some whole (dividing a whole into parts, a genus into species). Distinction is more universal, and is what is presupposed to order.
• ad 2: the passion is cause of our ascension properly by removing the sin that prevents it, and by way of merit; the Ascension is directly the cause of our ascension, as a beginning made in the head to which the members must be joined. He cites Thomas’s prayer before communion — to receive the body taken from Mary so as to be incorporated into His mystical body, and so ascend, “numbered among its members.”
• ad 3: by ascending, Christ obtained for Himself and us in perpetuity the right and dignity of a celestial mansion; it derogates nothing if by dispensation He sometimes descends bodily — to show Himself to all at the judgment, or specially to someone, as to Paul (Acts 9). So Paul’s was not merely an imaginary vision: 1 Corinthians, “last of all, as to one born out of due time, He was seen also by me,” confirming the faith of the resurrection — which vision would not prove the truth of the resurrection unless the true body itself were seen. Closing remark: this is part of Paul’s rank as an apostle, since the apostles are the witnesses of the resurrection. “That’s a good place to stop.”

His words #

• “Natural Hearing” — [ed.: Aristotle’s Physics]; cited for book VI on time and the division of magnitude, and book IV.
• “the book about the universe” — the De Caelo; he notes the Greek title means universe, Latin caelum the heavens, hence De Caelo et Mundo.
• “power of glory” — the power in human nature by which the glorified body ascends; “one of the dowries and the gifts.”
• “fifth essence” — light, posited by some as a composing part of the body reconciling the contrary elements; the opinion Thomas sets aside.
• “redundancy” — the overflow of the glorified soul’s glory into the body.
• “dignity of the union” — Christ’s body personally joined to God, whence it exceeds all spiritual substances.
• “cum grano salis” — with a grain of salt; Cajetan’s note on the title of a. 5 — “not the green salt.”
• “a good capture of the captives” — his gloss on “he led captivity captive”: acquired by victory.
• distinction / division / definition — his ordering: definition is a kind of division, division a kind of distinction; distinction is presupposed to order.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 57, aa. 3, 4, 5, 6 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Cajetan’s note on the title of q. 57, a. 5 (printed in his edition)

Mentioned

• Mark 16; Acts 1; Acts 9; Isaiah 63; Isaiah 51; Psalm 8; Psalm 10; Psalm 67; Ephesians 1:20–21; Ephesians 4; Hebrews 7; Hebrews 10; John 14; John 16; 2 Corinthians 5; 1 Corinthians (on “seen also by me”); Micah 2; Romans (on raising by the Spirit)
• Gregory, Homily on the Ascension
• Augustine, City of God XXII; letter to Dioscorus; on John; “the book about religion” (De vera religione, inferred)
• Aristotle, Physics I, IV, VI; De Caelo II
• Thomas, commentary on Romans; dedicatory epistle to Urban IV; prayer before communion
• Shakespeare, Cleopatra (“fire and air”)

His questions #

• Did Christ ascend by His own power? Yes — by divine power, and by the power of the glorified soul moving the body at will; not by the natural power of human nature.
• Why is walking uphill harder than downhill? Because it is contrary to the nature of the elements of which the body is composed, though an animal nature can act against it.
• If divine power is infinite, why was the Ascension not instantaneous? Because the effect is received according to the capacity of the thing and God’s disposition; a body cannot be moved in an instant, and a will-mover need not use all his power.
• Did Christ ascend above all the heavens? Yes — in place and in dignity, since His glorified body partakes most of divine goodness.
• Why should a body be above all spiritual creatures? By reason of the dignity of the personal union to God, not by the condition of bodily nature.
• Is the Ascension a cause of our salvation? Yes, in two ways — on our side, moving our mind by faith, hope, charity and reverence; on His side, preparing our place, interceding, and sending gifts.
• In what genus of cause? Not merit (that belongs to the passion and death) but efficient cause, as with the resurrection.
• Was Paul’s vision of Christ merely imaginary? No — it would not prove the resurrection unless the true body was seen.
• What is the order of definition, division and distinction? Every definition is in a way a division, every division a distinction; distinction is the most universal, presupposed to order.
• What of the opinion from the fifth essence? Left open — set aside here, promised for the treatment of the common resurrection.