He Ascended by His Own Power

To those wicked statements of yours mentioned above, you also add that the Spirit granted the Lord his ascension into heaven. By this blasphemous idea you show that you believe the Lord Jesus Christ was so weak and powerless that, if the Spirit had not raised him up to heaven, you imagine he would still be on earth to this day. To prove this assertion you bring forward a passage of Scripture. You say, “Giving commands to the apostles whom he had chosen, he was raised up by the Holy Spirit.” What am I to call you? What am I to think of you, who corrupt the sacred writings so that their evidence has no force as evidence? This is a new kind of daring, which struggles with its wicked arguments to make the truth seem to confirm a falsehood. [a]

For the Acts of the Apostles does not say what you make out. What does Scripture say? “What Jesus began to do and to teach until the day on which, giving charge to the apostles whom he had chosen through the Holy Spirit, he was taken up.” This is a case of hyperbaton, and it must be understood this way: “What Jesus began to do and to teach until the day on which he was taken up, giving charge to the apostles whom he had chosen through the Holy Spirit.” So perhaps we should not have to answer you further on this point than with the passage itself. If the cut-down passage was useful to your falsehood, the whole passage ought to be enough for the full truth.

But still, you who think 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 has ascended into heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven”? Admit, then, how foolish and absurd your idea is, that he could not ascend into heaven who is said never to have been absent from heaven, even when he had come down to earth. And tell me whether leaving the regions below and ascending into heaven was possible for the one who found it easy, while still on earth, to remain always in heaven. And what of his own words, “I am ascending to my Father”? Did he suggest that someone else’s help would step in at this ascension, when by the very fact that he said he would ascend he shows the force of his own power? David too says of the Lord’s ascension, “God has gone up with a joyful shout, the Lord with the sound of the trumpet.” By the power of the ascension he clearly set out the glory of the one who ascends.