The Ascension: The Continuation of the Person and Work
It was Torrance’s intention to describe the full import of the resurrection on the person and work of Christ. Unfortunately, most of the lecture material on the subject is lost. However, we do learn something about the significance of the resurrection, but this comes in the next—and last—lecture: “The Ascension of Christ and the Second Advent.” In choosing to expound on the ascension, Torrance knows he is going against a tendency in modern theology to neglect the ascension. For example, Forysth and Mackintosh ignore the subject altogether, while Emil Brunner downplays its significance. For Brunner, the ascension means that “He has His Face turned in the other direction, away from us. The story of Christ has now reached an end.”65
For Torrance, by contrast, the story of Christ continues with the ascension. Indeed it must continue by this way if we really believe in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Faith in the resurrection entails that Jesus Christ continues to live as God and man. But on top of the biblical witness to this “Continuous Living Reality,” Torrance finds ontological reasons. It is obvious, then, that Christology for him is not only functional. With the Nicene Fathers he argues that this hypostatic union of God and man is one that “was/is eternal and never-ending.”66 Theology as Christology therefore can continue. It means too that eschatology is not simply a matter of conjecturing about the future, but is about what Christ is doing and will do.
Christian theology, centred in the Lord Jesus Christ, can have a proper place only where the reality of his human nature continues. Just as there only can be revelation to us where revelation takes human form, because humanity cannot think outside of itself, so here where the form and reality of Christ as God-Man continues, . . . there theology as Christology must persist in its efforts to gain a clear understanding of the risen and ascended Lord Jesus and all that he means for us in the Church and the world.67
Since the ascension is about the life and ministry of Jesus after the resurrection, Torrance prefers to speak of the “risen and ascended Lord Jesus” (cf. Eph 1:20). Recall that the cross had to be seen in conjunction with the incarnation, in order to comprehend the person and work of Christ in his humiliation and in his past. Likewise, we must think the resurrection and ascension together in order to comprehend his person and work in his exaltation—in his present and his future.
This is not to deny any difference between the revelation that comes from the resurrection and the one that comes from the ascension. The object of faith, Christ Jesus, remains the same, and the ascension is within the “same realm of revelation as that enjoyed by the disciples of Jesus before and after his resurrection.”68 There is a difference, however, in the mode of apprehension of Christ, due to the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost. Excepting Paul’s Damascus road experience, the ascension tells us that Christ is no longer visible to the naked eye, but only through the eye of faith, which is a work of the Holy Spirit—Christ’s “other self.”
For Torrance, the function of the risen and ascended Christ is no different substantially from the function of the incarnate Christ on earth. This is nothing less than the revelation of God to humankind and the redemption of humankind. The ascension reveals that Christ has returned bodily to the throne of God, confirming that Christ and his saving work on earth have their beginning and end in God. It can be understood as the “visible experience given to the disciples to assure them, as Jesus Christ on earth, he for ever is and will be in and with God in Glory.”69 It reveals that there is “a MAN in heaven today” and that all that constitutes our humanity in terms of mind, body, spirit, and relationships has been raised and carried up into heaven by Christ. Christ was, is, and always will be close to us; and thus he is truly qualified and ready to function as our compassionate High Priest before God the Father.70
The ascension gives us the knowledge also that time has a place in eternity. Christ’s heavenly session means time is “real for eternity,” not “illusory.”71 In asserting this Torrance is challenging Kant’s philosophy of time. Kant probably did not regard time as an illusion, but he did insist that time is an “internal sense” that applies only to phenomenal reality. Therefore, whatever that does not affect our senses, such as eternity or God, cannot be in time. For Torrance, the ascension means not only that time is real for the eternal God; it also means time has been redeemed. We can now look forward to a redeemed time in the kingdom of God. Indeed the presence of the Holy Spirit in the church indicates that this new time has already “invaded” this present fallen, sinful time.
Above all, the ascension reveals that Christ is God’s “Right Hand.” The ascension should dispel any lingering doubts about the deity of Christ, and especially doubts that Christ is the “Act” and “Being” of God. Just as the incarnation confirms the humiliation of God in Christ, the ascension confirms the exaltation of God in Christ. God in being and act is none other than Christ in his person and his work. “What Christ IS, God IS, because Christ IS God’s Right Hand.”72 The ascension guarantees that there is no other God hiding behind Christ, “no dark spots” remaining in the revelation of God, in the being and act of God. If the incarnation and cross show the humiliation and weakness of Christ, then the ascension shows us that the “act of Christ is actually the very omnipotent action of God-and that there is no other power or ‘potence’ in God which has not and is not revealed in Christ.”73
In order to explain how the ascension is part of Christ’s redemptive work, Torrance employs the three offices of Christ, the triplex munus, which have been important in Reformed dogmatics.74 Taking Christ to be Prophet, Priest, and King, permits one to think about his redemptive work as a unity with differences. In light of the resurrection, he defines the teachings of Christ as the work of his prophetic office, and his humiliation and cross as the work of his priestly office. Christ’s kingly office is fulfilled through the ascension, but Torrance prefers to call this office his “Royal Priesthood,” since he is a King still carrying out the work of redemption for the cosmos.
The central work of the priestly office is the cross. Therefore, even in his kingly office Christ bears the effects of the cross. “Jesus, yes, he Jesus, is now at the right hand of God holding the reins of the world in his hands, the hands that bore the imprint of the nails hammered in them on the cross.”75 This fact reveals the humanity of Christ the King, but it also determines the mode of his redemption in the world. Humankind will not be redeemed by means of the progress of civilization. It will be redeemed along the pattern of the cross. Redemption means ultimately redemption from suffering, but redemption takes place through suffering first.
It goes against the gospel to think that Christ’s redemption of the world can take place without serious interruptions in the world’s so-called development, without judgments upon the evils in the world. This cross-view of world redemption will come sharply into focus in Torrance’s sermons on the Apocalypse in 1946, just after his experience as a war-time pastor and army chaplain. Yet the rumblings of war in Europe in 1939 forced him even then to ponder the relationship between the ascended Christ and the course of history. “We may not now understand all that happens and can happen in the world of today offers; it is black—and when has it been blacker than this moment? [i.e., 1939]—but of this we are assured by the Ascension that the Lord Jesus Christ is reigning over the kingdoms and nations of the world and working out his redeeming purpose for redemption.”76
