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| Chapter XXII. That the raising up of Christ into heaven is not to be ascribed to the Spirit alone.
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Chapter XXII.
That the raising up of Christ into heaven is not to be
ascribed to the Spirit alone.
But you add this also to
those impieties of yours mentioned above; viz., that the Spirit granted
to the Lord His ascension into heaven: showing by this blasphemous
notion of yours that you believe that the Lord Jesus Christ was so weak
and powerless that had not the Spirit raised Him up to heaven, you
fancy that He would still at this day have been on earth. But to prove
this assertion you bring forward a passage of Scripture: for you say
“Giving commands to the apostles whom He had chosen, by the Holy
Ghost He was raised up.”2653
What am I to
call you? What am I to think of you who by corrupting the sacred
writings contrive that their evidences should not have the force of
evidences? A new kind of audacity, which strives by its impious
arguments to manage that truth may seem to confirm falsehood. For the
Acts of the Apostles does not say what you make out. For what says the
Scripture? “What Jesus began to do and to teach until the day in
which giving charge to the apostles whom He had chosen by the Holy
Ghost, He was taken up.” Which is an instance of Hyperbaton, and
must be understood in this way: what Jesus began to do and to teach
until the day in which he was taken up, giving charge to the apostles
whom He had chosen by the Holy Ghost; so that we ought not perhaps to
have to give you any further answer in this matter than that of the
passage itself, for the entire passage ought to be sufficient for the
full truth, if the mutilation of it was available for your falsehood.
But still, you, who think that our Lord Jesus Christ could not have
ascended into heaven, unless He had been raised up by the Spirit; tell
me how is it that He Himself says “No one hath ascended into
heaven but He who came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in
heaven”?2654
Confess then how
foolish and absurd your notion is that He could not ascend into heaven,
who is said, although He had descended into earth, never to have been
absent from heaven: and say whether to leave the regions below and
ascend into heaven was possible for Him to whom it was easy when still
on earth, ever to continue in heaven. But what is that which He Himself
says: “I ascend unto my Father.”2655
Did He imply that in this ascension there would be the intervention of
Another’s help, who by the very fact that He said He would
ascend, shows the efficacy of His own power? David also says of the
Ascension of the Lord: “God ascended with a merry noise, the Lord
with the sound of the trumpet:”2656
He clearly explained the glory of Him who ascends by the power of the
ascension.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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