The resurrection and the ascension

You are reading the brief version. Switch the depth control to Complete for the full treatment.

On the third day Jesus rose from the dead. Not as a metaphor, not as a continuing influence, not as a vision granted to grieving friends. His body came out of the tomb, transformed but genuinely His - it could be touched, it ate fish, it kept the wounds.

This is the load-bearing claim of Christianity. Paul says it without hedging: if Christ is not raised, our preaching is empty, your faith is empty, and you are still in your sins. He does not offer a fallback position.

The evidence has four strands that any explanation must handle together. The tomb was empty - in the city where it happened, weeks later, when producing a body would have ended the movement. The appearances were many, to individuals and to groups, over weeks, including to sceptics and to an enemy. The first witnesses were women, whose testimony carried little weight in that culture - nobody inventing a story would construct it that way. And the disciples were transformed, from a frightened huddle into men who died rather than retract.

Forty days later He ascended. This is not Jesus going away. It is His human nature being enthroned: there is a man at the right hand of the Father, and He does not stop being one. The ascension is why there is a priest in heaven who is one of us, and why the Church waits for Him to return the same way.

Between them lies Pentecost. He goes so that the Spirit may come, and the Church begins.

What the Church claims, precisely

The claim is narrower and stranger than either its defenders or its critics usually state.

It is not that Jesus's soul survived death. Nearly every ancient religion believed something like that, and the disciples believed it about everyone; it would not have astonished anyone.

It is not that He was resuscitated, like Lazarus, restored to ordinary life and destined to die again. Lazarus came out wrapped in his grave clothes and needing to be unbound. Jesus left His behind.

It is not that the disciples had visions of a Jesus who was spiritually alive while His body decayed. The Gospels go out of their way to exclude this. He eats. He is touched. Handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.

What is claimed is a third thing, for which the ancient world had no category: a body genuinely raised and genuinely transformed. Recognisable, and sometimes not recognised. Able to be touched, and able to enter a locked room. The same body, and no longer subject to death. Paul calls it a spiritual body - meaning a body animated by the Spirit, not a body made of spirit.

The evidence, and how to use it

Christianity makes a historical claim, and historical claims can be examined. What follows is not proof - history does not deliver proof - but it is the shape of the case, and it is worth knowing well enough to state calmly.

The empty tomb. All four Gospels report it, and the earliest preaching happens in Jerusalem within weeks, a walk from the grave. The one decisive refutation - produce the body - was available to authorities who had every motive. Matthew records the counter-story that circulated instead: the disciples stole it. That is significant, because it concedes the tomb was empty and disputes only the reason.

The appearances. Paul's list in 1 Corinthians 15 is the earliest written account, and the creed he quotes there is dated by most scholars to within a few years of the crucifixion. It names Peter, the Twelve, more than five hundred at once - with the pointed remark that most are still alive, which is an invitation to check - then James, then all the apostles, then Paul himself.

The women. In first-century Judaea, a woman's testimony was of limited legal value. Every Gospel nevertheless makes women the first witnesses, including Mary Magdalene, out of whom Jesus had cast seven demons. If you are constructing a persuasive legend, you do not do this. The detail survives because it happened.

The converts who had no reason. James, Jesus's brother, does not believe during the ministry - the Gospels say so plainly, which is itself an awkward admission - and afterwards leads the Jerusalem church and is killed for it. Paul is persecuting the Church and becomes its most tireless missionary, at enormous cost. Neither was disposed to be persuaded.

The transformation. The disciples scatter at the arrest. Peter denies Him to a servant girl. Weeks later they are preaching in the temple courts and will not stop under flogging. People do die for false beliefs, constantly - but for beliefs they sincerely hold, received from someone else. These men were in a position to know whether they had invented it.

The ascension

Forty days after Easter, Christ ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Father. Both creeds say it and the Church keeps the feast.

The imagery invites a cheap objection - up where? - so state the doctrine properly. Heaven is not a location above the clouds, and the right hand of the Father is a phrase about authority, not furniture. The visible ascent is a sign given to the disciples that this leaving is different from the previous disappearances: He is not going to reappear next week in Galilee. A new phase has begun.

Four things follow, and they are the reason the feast matters.

Humanity is enthroned. He did not leave His body behind and revert to being pure spirit. A human nature - a real one, with the wounds still in it - is now at the centre of God's life. Whatever heaven is, there is one of us there.

We have a priest who understands. Hebrews presses this hard: we do not have a high priest unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but one tested in every way as we are. His intercession is not a distant official's; it is the continuing presence of the one who went through it.

His presence is no longer local. While He walked in Galilee, to be with Him you had to be in Galilee. After the ascension He is available to all of His people at once, and the Spirit is sent. It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come.

The Church is given her work. The last words before He goes are a commission, and the angels' rebuke to the staring disciples - why stand ye gazing up into heaven? - is one of the sharpest sentences in Acts.

Where the four traditions stand

All four hold the bodily resurrection and the ascension without qualification. The differences are of emphasis and observance.