Jared,
This post deserves a comment.

So here it is. :)

I've thought for years, since I was a teenager heavy into science fiction novels, that heaven was "another dimension" or a parallel universe type of existence. So that's not so new to me. Already there, dude. :)

But what I don't "get" here, is the idea of Jesus not going "up". Doesn't the Bible say that's what he did? Or does "up" not mean "up"? I just always figured that he entered into that other plane of existence somewhere on the way. Likewise when he returns, he'll re-enter our plane in the sky and come down. That seems to be the Scriptural description, doesn't it?

Phil, Wright says that "ascended" is a figure of speech, a way to describe what there was no words for: Jesus leaving this space and entering the space of heaven.

The other problem with literal ascension into the clouds, per Wright, is that it supposes a flat view of cosmology (3 layers with hell below and heaven above), which is problematic given that earth is round and Jesus going "up" in Israel would be going "down" to those on the other side of the globe, etc.

But if you just mean he rose up in the air before disappearing into heaven (not that he traveled into space or whatever), I don't know that Wright would deny the possibility, but he would probably still quibble with taking ascension literally for no apparent reason than to be able to take it literally. (Which is only halfway literal since it's said that he ascended into heaven, not ascended into the air and then stepped into heaven or whatever.)

I've thought of heaven as another dimension also, but the problem (for me) has been grasping that dimension as not derivative or dependent on earth or space-time or something like that. The Narnia illustration helps (me) a lot, because Narnia is not another dimension within earth, nor is earth a dimension of Narnia, but it's a different space entirely with a different time, and certain people can pass between the two worlds, but neither Narnia nor earth can be said to exist within the other or to be dimensions of the same space.

Up to this time, "another dimension" has struck me as somewhat space-less, matter-less, a completely spiritual space (whatever that may mean).

Phil, Wright says that "ascended" is a figure of speech, a way to describe what there was no words for: Jesus leaving this space and entering the space of heaven.

I'm not buyin' it. The text is too specific. "He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. "Men of Galilee" they said, "Why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back int he same way you have seen him go into heaven." (Acts 1:9-11)

Interesting, I just checked the other Gospels. Matthew has no account of the ascension. Mark's account is part of the large section not contained in the earliest manuscripts. John has no account of it. And Luke's description in his gospel merely says, "While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven" (Luke 24:51).

So with just the Gospel accounts, there's certainly room for Wright's interpretation, even with Luke 24:51 above. But I can't get past the account in Acts that actually describes the event including a cloud obscuring Jesus from view, and the apostles straining their eyes, looking up.

The other problem with literal ascension into the clouds, per Wright, is that it supposes a flat view of cosmology (3 layers with hell below and heaven above), which is problematic given that earth is round and Jesus going "up" in Israel would be going "down" to those on the other side of the globe, etc.

I'm not buyin that either. Wright has no problem with phenomenological language elsewhere, why would he here. Jesus went "up into the sky" as far as the apostles were concerned.

But if you just mean he rose up in the air before disappearing into heaven (not that he traveled into space or whatever), I don't know that Wright would deny the possibility, but he would probably still quibble with taking ascension literally for no apparent reason than to be able to take it literally. (Which is only halfway literal since it's said that he ascended into heaven, not ascended into the air and then stepped into heaven or whatever.)

OK, I don't have an answer for that one...unless the portal to heaven was behind the cloud, so in that sense he "ascended into heaven" :) which would be literal. AAAAAGH.


Up to this time, "another dimension" has struck me as somewhat space-less, matter-less, a completely spiritual space (whatever that may mean).

I think we often think of heaven that way, because we are with him in heaven in spirit, before we receive our new bodies...

However, once I allowed room in my own view of heaven for physical bodies, I came to something like the alternate universes of Star Trek. But who knows maybe heaven is spiritual and non-corporeal...And our bodies will be here in physical space in the transformed "new heavens and new earth". And maybe Jesus is the only corporeal being who can live there. His new body was special anyway, it passed through walls, or could "teleport". And hey, what happened to Enoch and Elijah's physical bodys?

Aaaah, we'll never figure it all out, which may be a big part of Wright's point?

Maybe.

Good stuff on the ascension language. That is similar to my grounds for disagreement with Wright on his view that Jesus never spoke of the second coming. He does believe in it and teach it, but he says Jesus never teaches it or references it.
I find that hard to swallow since it sort of makes Paul more an innovator than an expander or articulator of already-formed theology, but mostly because I view Jesus' teachings in the Olivet Discourse encompassing more than just his "vindication" in cross/resurrection and the events of AD70.

What's interesting is that Wright clearly rejects full preterism (on the part of those who say the second coming was AD 70), despite that he agrees the Olivet Discourse's furthest future ramifications lay there and despite many full preterists using Wright's work to defend their arguments! He mentions this in the book and it's quite humorous.

Hey, some of us are going to see Wright at the West End UMC on April 22 for a Q&A on this book. Asbell is probably going.
If there's an opening, and my other question about the dude taken into the 3rd heaven seems less interesting or already answered, I may ask him to spend some more time on the text of Acts 1 in the hopes of clarification.

I think Lewis had it right long before Wright, and not just with Narnia.

Lewis wrote about his love for a book called 'Flatland: A Romance in Many Dimensions' written by Edwin Abbott in 1884.

In Abbott's book, a square living in a two-dimensional world (called Flatland) visits a one-dimsional world called Lineland and finds it impossible to make an occupant there see that he is something other than lines. Later, the square is visited by a sphere and told of the existance of a three-dimensional world called Spaceland, but the square can't comprehend it or believe it until he is taken there. When he returns, he finds it almost impossible to explain this third dimension to his fellow Flatlanders.

After some other plot points, the square asks the sphere why can't there be more than three spatial dimensions? Maybe there are 4th, 5th, etc. dimensions beyond the sphere, which the sphere cannot comprehend. This shocks and dismays the sphere when he sees it logically could be true. The square also has a dream of 'Pointland', a single dimension world where the sole inhabitant perceives any attempt at communication with him as a thought originating in his own mind.

Lewis used these ideas of multiple dimensions throughout quite a lot of his writing. The angels in Perelandra are apparently four dimensional beings perceived in three dimensions. In Mere Christianity, he uses the idea directly with his discussion of the Trinity (i.e. six squares in a cube being compared with the 3 in 1). And in his essay Transposition, he argues that the higher or richer medium/plane, can never be fully described in a lower.

I don't read much of Wright anymore. I was excited about 'Simply Christian', but found it average at best, and I find I much prefer (and get more out of) re-reading Lewis, Chesterton, McDonald, etc.