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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.

Footnotes

Acts i. 2.

S. John iii. 13.

S. John xx. 17.

Psa. 47.6.