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Jesus Ascended: The Meaning of Christ's Continuing Incarnation

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I bought the book as a reference for a class I was teaching. In addition to a wealth of information, as well as quotations from ancient and modern sources, I found eye-opening insights that changed forever my perception of Jesus' ascension. I can't recommend it more highly.

At last, a competent theologian who can write fairly clearly, perhaps because he is also a pastor! If what Gerrit Dawson is saying in "Jesus Ascended" is true than the Good News is very good indeed. As well as giving almost a thumbnail compendium from Early Church writings, Dawson zeroes in relentlessly on the point that when Jesus ascended he actually took us with him to the "heavenly places" (Ephesians 2:6). No, really took us there in the Spirit, not just in symbol. As a student of the trinitarian theologian Tom Torrance, Dawson derives these conclusions from the Incarnation of the God-Man, Jesus of Nazareth. He extrapolates a lot of this from John 21:18 where the newly risen Lord tells Mary on resurrection morning, "I am ascending to my Father and your Father and to my God and your God."

Solidarity with the Godhead! There it is! For Dawson the implications of the Ascension thus flow from the Incarnation as a seamless whole. "God became man that we may come to God" (Barth); "The Godhead was not stripped of humanity by the resurrection but adorned with it. He remains one of us" (Gregory Nazianzen); "The Son of God takes our humanity...sanctifies it by His vicarious life in the Spirit...and in his resurrection and ascension carries it into the holy place of God" (James Torrance).

This is heady stuff indeed but Dawson seems on solid Chalcedonian footing in tying the Ascension to the Incarnation and Resurrection--as J.I. Packer might say: three mysteries for the price of one! Along the way he clarifies Psalm 68 and gives evangelistic meaning to "lift up your heads, O ye gates" as predictors of the Ascension, which, by the way, Dawson is right to portray as a Roman victory triumph to heaven, even though Jesus triumphs specifically over those very Romans (Colossians 2:15; Ephesians 1:16-23). The "Roman triumph" analogy needed badly to be revived. The Ascension was "leading captivity captive," a text Christians know about but seemingly leave out of most preaching. And some of the implications of all this Dawson traces out by my own slightly reworked quote from the third century theologian, Tertullian: "The way of ascent was leveled by the footsteps of the Lord...an entrance opened up by the might of Christ and that no delay or inquest will meet Christians (in heaven) since they have there not to be put to the question but received."

"Not put to the question but received" radically revises the old picture of judgement after death. To sum it all up, Jesus as our Forerunner (Hebrews 6:20) is the very pattern and Guarantor of the glorified humanity which awaits us. True, most of this has been known before but rarely so well expressed in recent times and with implications for pastoral life. There are some quibbles--Dawson should have been using "glorified flesh" more often when speaking of Jesus working for us now in the heavenlies. Otherwise the Chrysostom (died 407) quote "Dust now sits at the right hand of the Father" may appear too spectacularly jarring for new students of incarnational theology. But Dawson has done great service by legibly breathing life into many texts too often subordinated in our pastoral teaching and reminding us that Christians have known most of this all along but need to have it freshly explained.