Why Apologists Don't Talk About the Ascension

 

An apostate Christian posted a video titled "Why Apologists Don't Talk About the Ascension" on YouTube. Here's what I wrote in the comments. I've included links that I didn't in the YT comments because they probably wouldn't work given YT's policy.

 The New Testament presupposes that the normative "location" [so to speak] of the Messiah is to be at Yahweh's right hand till all His enemies are defeated. Meaning, in "heaven." That's why Ps. 110:1ff. is one of the most often quoted or alluded to passages in the NT. Jesus' own most favorite self-designation [which passes multiple criteria of authenticity like 1. dissimilarity/awkwardness; 1. multiple independent early attestation] is the phrase "Son of Man" which is a clear allusion to the Danielic Son of Man in Dan. 7:13-14. The figure is more likely ascending with the clouds TO the Ancient of Days rather than descending. The Apostle Paul often talks about or presupposes Jesus being in heaven with the Father to such an extent that there are some atheists who are Christ Mythicists because of this type of language and assumption on Paul's part. [BTW, even the best Mythicist Richard Carrier thinks there's still a 1/3 chance Jesus was a historical figure despite his bad arguments for Mythicism]. All the synoptic Gospels assume and teach a period of time when Jesus would go away and will come again/return. That perfectly fits in with the concept of an ascension. Remember, Paul wrote before the Gospels. His are the earliest written NT documents. Yet, the concept of the Divinity of Christ [hence the tongue-in-cheek Early High Christology Club of Hurtado and friends] and of His location in heaven as He waits for His enemies to be destroyed [1 Cor. 15] is already there. It didn't take generations for the concept to develop ad hoc.

4:32 Regarding the cessation of Jesus' appearances. That's to be expected given that only Apostles were to be inspired to give revelation on par with OT scriptures. Why also only the writings of the Apostles or their close associates are to be considered eligible for possible inclusion into the canon. If other appearances were just as common, then that would undermine the closed nature of the NT canon. Even then, that doesn't mean that the appearances completely ceased. See Licona's recent interview on his YT channel of a student of his who is writing a book on alleged extra-Biblical appearances of Jesus in the early centuries. Moreover, such appearances seem to never have completely stopped. Even in modern times there are claims. For example:

-Bob Dylan the singer claimed at one point to have seen Jesus in a vision and became a Christian for a while. Even now, it's not clear whether he has rejected Jesus or not. He seems intentionally vague on the subject.

-Anglican bishop Hugh Montefiore was a Jewish teenager when he allegedly had a vision of Jesus. The bishop's latter conservatism is questionable, but that doesn't rule out the possibility of the reality of Christ appearing to him in his youth.

-Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri who died in 2006 was one of the most revered rabbis for many years. Before he died, he claimed the Messiah visited him. And from the message he said should be opened a year after his death, it seems he claims to have seen Jesus/Yeshua. It's my understanding that even some of his disciples have said that he privately claimed it was Jesus of Nazareth. See the various videos on YouTube where alleged former disciples acknowledge this. Also read the book "The Rabbi Who Found Messiah" by Carl Gallups

Barry Leventhal, professor of Church Missions and Ministries and Director of the Graduate School of Ministry Program at Southern Evangelical Seminary, shared the testimony of a Jewish man named Joseph who claimed Jesus visited him during the Holocaust. The following excerpt is from The Christian Post article titled, "Jesus Still Appears to People in Dreams, Even God Haters, Christian Apologist Says" By Michael Gryboski:

//...Leventhal shared the testimony of a Jewish man named Joseph who during the Holocaust was forced to work in a Nazi labor camp.

Joseph had sworn vengeance against his Lutheran neighbors who refused to help him and his family.

"He made a vow, a vow of only one thing: He would never stop hating his so-called Christian neighbors. He would always hate their Christian God; their Jesus would be his enemy as long as he lived," said Leventhal.

"His hatred for Christians and their Jesus grew with each passing day until one dark evening in his bunk, a night that would change Joseph's life forever, Jesus appeared to Joseph."

Quoting from Joseph's testimony, Leventhal recounted that on that night: "Jesus appeared to me. In the darkness of my hatred for Christians and their Jesus, Jesus appeared to me. I recognized Him in a split second, I knew who He was and His first words to me were 'Joseph, I love you. I died for you. You will survive.'"

Leventhal then said that just as God appeared to people in the Bible, so Jesus will continue to appear to people today, even God-haters, in their dreams.//

In the past few years many Muslims who have converted to Christianity claim to have been visited by Jesus either in vision and/or dream. Some of the claims have been proven to be hoaxes by con artists. But it's doubtful that all are cases of intentional deception. Especially since many of them have suffered for being a Christian, have been severely persecuted and have been disowned by or separated from family members. Some of this phenomena has been recorded in the book by Tom Doyle titled, "Dreams and Vision: Is Jesus Awakening the Muslim World?" There are also some testimonies on YouTube. Though the more popular and well known ones are from self-aggrandizing con men.

From my Christian perspective it's likely that some of the appearances I've listed above are genuinely supernatural but come from deceptive evil spirits masquerading as Jesus. But maybe some are from the actually resurrected Christ of the Bible.

Re: three-tiered universe. If Christianity is true, then the world and many things in it [including land, sea, sky, animals & plants species etc.] are designed by God to be emblematic of spiritual realities. For example, predatory animals like wolves and prey-like sheep and goats are emblematic of false teachers, true and false believers etc. Whether the human writers of the Bible believed in a literal three-tiered universe is moot. Maybe some did. Probably some didn't. Since even by the 1st century it was a common view, among other options, that the earth was probably spherical given folks like Eratosthenes. Educated writers like Luke and Paul would have known that possibility and probably didn't intend to imply or teach dogmatically a flat earth and a three-tiered universe. But rather, went along with the established imagery because of the usefulness of phenomenological language and its fitness given the emblematic nature of God's created world. Even today, when weathermen talk about the "rising of the sun" it's understood to be phenomenological language. Why assume the Biblical writers didn't understand dimensional language? Why assume that they never understood heaven, earth, and underworld language to be emblematic of different dimensions? Humans are by nature abstract thinkers. We naturally think of the number 1000 as "higher" than 10. But we know it isn't a physical or spatial "highness." In the OT Solomon is described as having said heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain God [1 Ki 8:27]. The book of Jeremiah talks about how God fills heaven and earth [Jer. 23:24]. Are those meant to deny or contradict other descriptions that God is in heaven in a way that He not on earth? Obviously not. The Jews knew a lot of this was figurative and anthropomorphic language.