ST. THOMAS AQUINAS ON THE ASCENSION OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
The exaltation of
Christ was the reward for His humiliation. Therefore a twofold exaltation of
Christ had to correspond to His twofold humiliation.
Christ had humbled
Himself, first, by suffering death in the passible flesh He had assumed;
secondly, He had undergone humiliation with reference to place, when His body
was layed in the sepulcher and His soul descended into hell. The exaltation of
the Resurrection, in which He returned from death to immortal life, corresponds
to the first humiliation. And the exaltation of the Ascension corresponds to
the second humiliation. Hence the Apostle says, in Ephesians, 4:10, "He
that descended is the same that ascended above all the heavens."
However, as it is
narrated of the Son of God that He was born, suffered, and was buried, and rose
again, not in His divine nature but in His human nature, so also, we are told,
He ascended into heaven, not in His divine nature but in His human nature. In
His divine nature He had never left heaven, as He is always present everywhere.
He indicates this Himself when He says: “No man has ascended into heaven but He
who descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven” (John 3:13). By
this we are given to understand that He came down from heaven by assuming an
earthly nature, yet in such a way that He continued to remain in heaven. The
same consideration leads us to conclude that Christ alone has gone up to heaven
by His own power. By reason of His origin, that abode belonged by right to Him
who had come down from heaven. Other men cannot ascend of themselves, but are
taken up by the power of Christ, whose members they have been made.
As ascent into heaven befits the Son of
God according to His human nature, so something else is added that becomes Him
according to His divine nature, namely, that He should sit at the right hand of
His Father. In this connection we are not to think of a literal right hand or a
bodily sitting. Since the right side of an animal is the stronger, this
expression gives us to understand that the Son is seated with the Father as
being in no way inferior to Him according to the divine nature, but on a par
with Him in all things. Yet this same prerogative may be ascribed to the Son of
God in His human nature, thus enabling us to perceive that in His divine nature
the Son is in the Father Himself according to unity of essence, and that
together with the Father He possesses a single kingly throne, that is, an
identical power. Since other persons ordinarily sit near kings, namely,
ministers to whom kings assign a share in governing power, and since the one
whom the king places at his right hand is judged to be the most powerful man in
the kingdom, the Son of God is rightly said to sit at the Father’s right hand
even according to His human nature, as being exalted in rank above every
creature of the heavenly kingdom.
In both senses, therefore, Christ
properly sits at the right hand of God. And so the Apostle asks, in Hebrew 1:
13: “To which of the angels said He at any time: Sit on My right hand?”
We profess our faith in this ascension
of Christ when we say in the Creed: “He ascended into heaven and sits at the
right hand of God the Father" (St. Thomas Aquinas, Compendium of
Theology, 240).
