The Apostles' Creed: Its Relation to Primitive Christianity.

By

Swete, Henry Barclay:

3d ed. Cambridge : University press, 1899,

VI

“The special prominence given to the Ascension” in the Apostles’ Creed is, according to Professor Harnack, “another deviation from the oldest teaching”; for “in the primitive tradition the Ascension had no separate place.” “It is not quite certain,” he adds, “that the writer of the Creed so conceived it, or that he did not rather intend to describe one single action by the three words ‘risen,’ ‘ascended,’ ‘sitting’.” It is certain, however, that from the time of Rufinus they have been otherwise understood; and Harnack’s contention invites an examination into the grounds upon which the Church regards the Ascension as a historical event, distinct from the Resurrection, and preliminary to the Session of our Lord at the right hand of God.
That the Ascension had no separate place in the primitive tradition, appears, it is said, from the following considerations. (a) It is not mentioned by the Synoptists, or by St Paul in his creed-like summary of the Faith (1 Cor. 15:3 ff.), or by the chief sub-apostolic writers. (b) It is omitted in some of the oldest accounts, which place the Session immediately after the Resurrection. (c) The interval between the Resurrection and the Ascension is variously estimated by the earliest authorities. It will be convenient to consider these points seriatim.
We have first the argument ex silentio. The Synoptists, we are told, know nothing of the Ascension; it is wanting in their Gospels. This statement needs some rectification. The first Gospel cannot fairly be said to omit the Ascension, for it does not carry the reader so far, stopping short with the meeting in Galilee. Whether the second Gospel omitted it may never be known, for if St Mark completed his work, the original ending is perhaps hopelessly lost. Nor is it certain that the Ascension is wanting in St Luke. After removing the interpolations from Luke 24:50, 51, we still have the words διέστη ἀπʼ αὐτῶν, καὶ αὐτοὶ ὑπέστρεψαν εἰς Ἰερουσαλὴμ μετὰ χαρᾶς μεγάλης. Διέστη may of course refer to a temporary parting, or to a permanent one not effected by an Ascension; but the joyful return to Jerusalem is difficult to explain on either hypothesis. On the whole, then, the facts scarcely justify the assertion that the Ascension is “wanting in the first three Gospels.” But granting that it is, the silence of the Synoptists does not imply ignorance. There is another explanation which deserves to be considered. “The Ascension,” it has been said, “apparently did not lie within the proper scope of the Gospels…its true place was at the head of the Acts of the Apostles, as the preparation for the Day of Pentecost, and thus the beginning of the history of the Church1.”
The silence of St Paul in 1 Cor. 15, is a still more precarious argument. The Apostle’s purpose in that chapter is simply to establish the truth of the Resurrection, and it is idle to require him to step aside from his argument in order to mention the Ascension. Ἀπέθανεν—ἐτάφη—ἐγήγερται—ὤφθη, form a series of statements essential to the matter in hand; the addition of ἀνελήμφθη would have been at once superfluous and misleading.
But the great sub-apostolic writers are also silent. The relevance of this circumstance depends upon the nature of their writings. What reason is there to expect them to touch upon the subject of the Ascension? Clement is almost exclusively concerned with the maintenance of discipline. Ignatius, as the opponent of Docetism, is chiefly interested in the Birth, the Passion and the Resurrection of the Lord. Polycarp has left us only one short letter, which is taken up with practical details. Nevertheless, Ignatius uses language which seems to imply a belief in the Ascension1, and Polycarp, who quotes 1 Peter2, could not have been ignorant of St Peter’s distinct reference to the event.
Thus the argument from the silence of early writers is in itself insufficient to bear the weight of Dr Harnack’s conclusions. Moreover, it is only fair to set against the silence of some writers the express statements of others who fall within the same period. The present ending to St Mark, which asserts the Ascension in the plainest terms, belongs at the latest to the earlier sub-apostolic age, and some cogent reasons have recently been produced for connecting it with the name of a personal disciple of our Lord3. The fourth Gospel, which, if its Johannine authorship be not conceded, can hardly be placed later than the beginning of the second century, contains allusions to the Ascension which are the more significant because they are incidental (cc. 6:62, 20:17). If we may not assume that the Acts was the work of St Luke, or that the materials for the early chapters of that book were derived from original sources, the statements in cc. 1:9, 2:33, 34, are at least earlier than the date of Polycarp’s Epistle, which quotes c. 2:24. The Epistle to the Ephesians assumes the fact of the Ascension (c. 4:8–10); the Pastorals quote a primitive Christian hymn in which it is celebrated (1 Tim. 3:16). Passages in the Epistles which speak of the Lord’s Return may also fairly be claimed (e.g. 1 Thess. 4:16, 2 Thess. 1:7), for the hope of a κατάβασις postulates an antecedent ἀνάβασις, without which it is inconceivable. On the whole it may confidently be maintained that the Christian literature of the century which followed the Ascension contains as many references and allusions to it as the position of that event in the Christian scheme and its relative importance in the estimation of the first age might have led us to expect.
But Professor Harnack proceeds to urge that “in some of the oldest accounts the resurrection and the sitting at the right hand of God are taken as parts of the same act, without mention of any ascension.” Let us interrogate one of these accounts. In Rom. 8:34 St Paul writes: Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς ὁ ἀποθανὼν μᾶλλον δὲ ἐγερθεὶς ἐκ νεκρῶν, ὅς ἐστιν ἐν δεξιᾷ τοῦ θεοῦ, ὃς καὶ ἐντυγχάνει ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν. Here are four well-marked links in a chain of facts—our Lord’s death, resurrection, session, intercession. It is difficult to see why the second and the third, the Resurrection and the Session, should be taken as parts of the same act, when the first is clearly distinct. If the Ascension is not mentioned, it is implied in the Session, for it is contrary to the usage of the New Testament to interpret ἐγείρεσθαι of any exaltation beyond the mere recall from death. In other passages the ellipsis is equally easy to supply. Thus St Peter’s words in Acts 2:32 (τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἀνέστησεν ὁ θεὸς…τῇ δεξιᾷ οὖν τοῦ θεοῦ ὑψωθεὶς) are interpreted by 1 Pet. 3:21, 22 (διʼ ἀναστάσεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὅς ἐστιν ἐν δεξιᾷ τοῦ θεοῦ, πορευθεὶς εἰς οὐρανόν). If in Eph. 1:20 the sequence ἐγείρας…καθίσας should be seized upon by a zealous advocate of the new teaching as a clear instance of the omission of the Ascension, he would presently find himself confronted by the appearance of the missing link in c. 4:10 (ὁ ἀναβὰς ὑπεράνω πάντων τῶν οὐρανῶν). But a single instance from a later writer will suffice to shew the futility of this reasoning. Justin in one place brings the Crucifixion and the Ascension together (dial. 38 σταυρωθῆναι καὶ ἀναβεβηκέναι εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν). Will it be contended that he omits the Resurrection because he regarded it as ‘part of the same act’ with either the one or the other of the events which he mentions?
One argument remains. Opinion for a long time fluctuated with regard to the interval which elapsed between the Resurrection and the Ascension. This uncertainty is thought to shew the unsoundness of the received teaching. “It follows…that the differentiation” of the single fact “into several acts was the work of a later time.”
Let us examine the evidence. “In the Epistle of Barnabas both resurrection and ascension happen in one day.” So Harnack. But the words are (c. 15) “We keep the eighth day for rejoicing, on which Jesus both rose from the dead, and, after His manifestation, ascended into heaven1.” Barnabas seems to affirm that both the Resurrection and the Ascension occurred on the eighth day, or on a Sunday. But he does not even hint that they occurred on the same Sunday. Nor does his statement necessarily conflict with St Luke’s (Acts 1:3 διʼ ἡμερῶν τεσσεράκοντα ὀπτανόμενος). Undoubtedly it was a natural inference from St Luke’s words that the Ascension took place on the fortieth day after the Resurrection; and this inference is already drawn by the author of the fifth book of the Constitutions2, and since the fourth century has been sanctioned by the annual celebration of Holy Thursday. Yet the words of the Acts allow greater latitude, and would be satisfied if the Ascension could be shewn to have taken place on the following Sunday, the forty-third day after Easter. Indeed the Syriac Doctrine of the Apostles carries it forward to the fiftieth day, making it coincide with the Descent of the Holy Ghost3. This is clearly inconsistent with the Acts, but it supports the statement of Barnabas that the Ascension occurred on the first day of the week.
But “other ancient witnesses give us yet a different story, and make the interval eighteen months.” Harnack omits to mention that these witnesses were certain Valentinians who sought by this arbitrary reckoning to bolster up their theory of the Pleroma4. A school of Ophites increased the interval to eleven or twelve years1, probably on the strength of the tradition which represented the Apostles as having remained for the latter period at Jerusalem2. Even within the Church speculation sometimes ran riot upon this subject, and Eusebius in one place (dem. ev. viii. 2) suggests that our Lord’s ministry lasted for the same number of years after the Passion as before it, three and a half years each way3. Such eccentricities shew that the statement of Acts 1:3 was not always taken as fixing a limit of time; but they certainly do not throw any reasonable doubt upon the fact of the Ascension, which is accepted without question by all Christian writers, Gnostic or Catholic, who refer to it at all.
To return to the Creed. No doubt can be entertained as to the place of the words “ascendit in caelos” in the Old-Roman form. In fact, no article in the Creed more certainly belongs to the earliest tradition. Ἀνελήμφθη ἐν δόξῃ finds a place in the creed-like hymn already noted in 1 Tim. 3:16. Εἰς οὐρανοὺς ἀνῆλθεν stands in the confession of Aristides4. Irenaeus witnesses that the Church throughout the world believed in the assumption into heaven of the flesh (τὴν ἔνσαρκον εἰς τοὺς οὐρανοὺς ἀνάληψιν) of Jesus Christ5. Tertullian professes that He Who rose from the dead was “carried up” (receptum, ereptum) or “taken back” (resumtum) into heaven1. None of these forms shews any trace of a confusion between the resurrection and the ascension, or of a suspicion that the latter was less truly matter of history than the former. It is evident, indeed, that from the first there were two ways of regarding the Ascension. It was either an ἀνάβασις or an ἀνάληψις, an ascent or an assumption. Both of these terms were suggested by passages in the LXX.—the first by Pss. 23:(24). 3 (τίς ἀναβήσεται εἰς τὸ ὄρος τοῦ κυρίου;), 67:(68). 19 ἀναβὰς εἰς ὓψος); the second by 4 Kings 2:9–11 (ἀνελήμφθη Ἠλειού). The latter view, in which the mystical aspect of the event predominates, recommended itself to the writers of the Acts, the Marcan fragment, the hymn cited in the Pastorals; and it appears also in Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen, and in some of the later Eastern expositions of the Faith. But the great Eastern Creeds, and the Western Creeds with scarcely an exception, represent our Lord as having ‘gone up to heaven,’ using either ἀναβαίνειν (ascendere) or ἀνέρχεσθαι. These expressions, which emphasised the historical character of the mystery, viewing it from the standpoint of its earthly surroundings, rested on equally good authority with the other (John 6:62, 20:17; Eph. 4:10), and the Church almost from the first shewed a disposition to prefer them for symbolical purposes. Ἀνάληψις was capable of misinterpretation; it will be remembered that it is used in a doubtfully orthodox sense by the Docetic author of the Petrine Gospel2. An assumption into heaven might mean nothing more than the return of the higher nature of Christ to the Father or the exaltation of His human spirit, and Irenaeus, it will have been observed, is careful to guard himself against these misconceptions by describing the assumption of Christ as ἔνσαρκος. It may have been for this reason that the Creeds, with remarkable unanimity, fall back upon the other group of expressions, which, while equally scriptural, left no room for doubt. The original Roman Creed, so far as we can discover, used the unambiguous phrase1; and the suggestion that its authors possibly regarded ascendit in caelos as merely another presentation of resurrexit a mortuis is not justified by the arguments which Harnack has produced. The legend which assigned the two clauses to two Apostles2 is nearer the truth than the latest criticism, in so far as the former emphasises what the latter fails to recognise, that the Resurrection and the Ascension are historically distinct although closely related events. This fact was present to the mind of the writer of the fourth Gospel when he represented the Lord as saying to the Magdalen after His resurrection, Οὔπω…ἀναβέβηκα3, and it was certainly not hidden from the teachers of the Western Church, when towards the middle of the second century they confessed that Jesus Christ both “rose from the dead” and “ascended into heaven”.

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