Did Ascension Really Happen?

At the height of the forty days spent with the disciples after his resurrection, Jesus physically ascended to heaven. Catholics have always understood that this is a literal and miraculous event. We believe it really happened and, as a Church, we profess it every Sunday.

But dogma also has its detractors. Some made fun of the doctrine, comparing Jesus' "flight" to an Apollo spacecraft, as was a common joke among atheists in the 60s and 70s. Others completely deny the possibility of the miraculous. Still others, such as Episcopal theologian John Shelby Spong, read ascension as non-literal and symbolic: “A modern person knows that if you get up from Earth (as in ascension), you don't go to heaven. Go into orbit. "

Considering such criticisms, how can Catholics defend the reality of Christ's ascension?

One could sympathize with Spong's objection above. After all, shouldn't heaven be "beyond" the physical universe? It is an interesting objection to which CS Lewis offered what I find a satisfactory refutation. After his resurrection, it may have been that Our Lord,

a being still somehow, though not our bodily way, has withdrawn from its will from Nature presented by our three dimensions and five senses, not necessarily in the non-sensual and dimensionless world, but possibly in, or through, or worlds of super-sense and super-space. And he may choose to do it gradually. Who the hell knows what viewers could see? If they say they saw a momentary movement along the vertical plane - therefore an indistinct mass - therefore nothing - who should pronounce this improbable?

So it could have been that Jesus, still in bodily form, chose to ascend not to the stars, but simply from the earth as the beginning of the super-physical journey to heaven. This assumes, of course, that miracles are possible. But are they?

Miracles are by definition supernatural events; and science only examines natural phenomena. To definitively state whether miracles can happen, one has to look beyond, for example, microscopes and rulers and ask if such events are possible on a philosophical basis. You may have heard some version of David Hume's objection that a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. The hypothesis is that God, if he existed, would not have the right to create a supernatural effect in the natural world. Why not? The believer's claim is consistently that God is the primary cause of all physical reality. This means that he is the creator and supporter of the natural laws and things that govern. He is the supreme legislator.

It is absurd to accuse him, therefore, of breaking his own "laws" since he has no moral or logical obligation to produce effects only through the normal physical causal relationships that he himself maintains. As the philosopher Alvin Plantinga asked, why can't we think of the laws of nature as descriptors of how God usually treats the matter he created? And since we discover that so many consolidated theories end up being inadequate to explain all the relevant phenomena, how can we say we know with absolute certainty what the "laws" are?

Another step in strengthening our defense of Christ's ascension is to show that there are good reasons to believe in Jesus 'resurrection. If the possibility of Jesus' resurrection can be rationally entertained, then it could be his ascension.

One of the most effective ways to argue the Resurrection is to use the minimal factual approach originally proposed by the scholar Jürgen Habermas. This implies considering historical facts widely accepted by all experts (most of the skeptics included), therefore proving that the resurrection, rather than a natural explanation, is the best explanation for them. These well-highlighted facts - what historian Mike Licona calls "historical foundation" - include the death of Jesus by crucifixion, the alleged apparitions of the risen Christ, the empty tomb and the sudden conversion of Saint Paul, enemy and persecutor of the first Christians.

Another theory is that the disciples were hallucinated when they saw the risen Jesus. This hypothesis is plagued from the outset by the fact that entire groups claimed to see Jesus at once (1 Corinthians 15: 3-6). Group hallucinations are unlikely since people share neither brain nor mind. But even if mass hallucinations do occur, could this explain the conversion of St. Paul? What are the chances that he and Christ's followers have hallucinated the risen Jesus himself? The most plausible explanations for all these events concern a real person, Jesus, risen from the dead after his crucifixion.

Could the account of ascension itself be questionable? With San Luca it is our primary source, how can we believe that it is telling us the story and not an allegory? John Shelby Spong finds this explanation most likely: “Luca never literally intended his writing. We deeply misrepresented Luke's genius by reading it literally. "

The problem with this reading is that Luke explicitly refuses his possibility. The evangelist clearly states in the prologue of his gospel that his intention is to describe the true story. Also, when Luke describes ascension there is no trace of embellishment, which is really strange if he didn't mean it literally. In the Gospel account, he simply tells us that Jesus "separated from them and was taken to heaven" (Luke 24:52). In Acts, he writes that Jesus "was lifted and a cloud removed him from their sight" (Acts 1: 9). Cold and clinical, like a serious historian interested only in facts, Luke tells us only what happened - and that's it. It is also noteworthy that the stories of the Gospel were written only a few decades after the crucifixion of Jesus, there would have been eyewitnesses of Jesus still alive to correct or contest the story of Luke. But there is simply no trace of this objection.

Indeed, Luke's Gospel and his Acts of the Apostles (which are "companion volumes") have been touted by scholars of ancient history and archeology as incredibly accurate. The great archaeologist Sir William Ramsay famously recognized San Luca as "a first-rate historian". More recent studies of Luca's historical accuracy, such as that of the classical scholar Colin Hemer, have further confirmed the merit of this high praise. So when Luke describes Jesus' bodily ascension into heaven, we have many good reasons to believe that Saint Luke referred the true story, "a narration of the things that have been accomplished. . . just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses "(Luke 1: 1).