Jesus tells Nicodemus: “No one has ascended into heaven except (ει μη) the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man”
(John 3:13). If one reads this text without any prior theological commitments
in mind, its plain meaning is that Jesus claims both to have ascended into
heaven and to have descended therefrom, as Robinson writes. (The Priority of
John, 371-72) This is the logical implication of the form of speech Jesus
uses. The sentence “No one has done A except the one who did B”
implies that a single person has done both A and B. Jesus
therefore could just as well have said: “The only one who has ascended into
heaven is the one who also came from heaven, the Son of Man.” He claims both to
have ascended into heaven and to have descended therefrom at this point in the
narrative of the Gospel. Even so, despite the plain simplicity of the text,
many commentators are at a loss as to how to understand Jesus’s words. Mark
Edwards, (John through the Centuries, 48) John McHugh, (Critical and
Exegetical Commentary on John 1-4, 234) and René Kieffer (“John,” 966)
appear not to have appreciated the point that Jesus in this passage ascribes to
himself both as ascent and a descent. Craig Keener does not allow that this text
teaches a prior ascent and subsequent descent on the part of Jesus, since he is
convinced that John presents Jesus as the incarnation of hypostatic divine
Wisdom itself. (Gospel of John, 1:562-63) But this interpretation leaves
for him with nothing to identify as the ascent that Jesus here plainly claims
for himself. The same point can be made about Ridderbos’s treatment. (Gospel
of John, 134-36) D. A. Carson’s refusal to interpret John’s ει
μη as “except” seems desperate and purely theologically
motivated. (Gospel According to John, 199-201) Herold Weiss attributes
both an ascent and a descent to Christ on the basis of this text, but he
strangely does not grant that the ascent preceded the descent. (Meditations
on “According to John,” 35-42) He thinks instead that it refers to Jesus’s
crucifixion. (Meditations on “According to John,” 39, 41) Yet in the
very next verse Jesus speaks of his crucifixion as something that is still to
happen (John 3;14). The temporality of Jesus’s discourse thus corresponds to the
narrative of the Gospels of John to this point. The meaning of the text
consequently cannot be avoided: by this point in his life, Jesus has both
ascended into and descended from heaven.
What could this “ascent” refer to? The most promising answer to this
question is found in the event of his baptism, as Margaret Barker proposes. (Revelation
of Jesus Christ, 127-28) After Jesus was baptized, as he was praying, the
heavens were opened up, the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove, and a
voice from heaven said to him: “You are my Son” (Matt 3:17; Mark 1;11; Luke
3:22; cf. John 1:33). Jesus’s anointing with the Spirit and the declaration of
his status as Son is his “ascent” into heaven. This can be called an “ascent”
into heaven because it is a revelatory experience of God. By way of analogy,
consider how Paul speaks of a revelatory experience of his own when he says
that he was “caught up to the third heaven” and “heard things that are not to
be told” (2 Cor 12:2-5). This was an experience of a revelation, but Paul talks
about it as a matter of being “caught up to heaven.” One could imagine that any
kind of extraordinary experience of God of this sort is a matter of an
experience of “heaven,” this latter term being understood in the sense of God’s
domain or even God himself. For example, John’s baptism is said to have “come
from above” (το βαπτισμα το ‘Ιωαννου ποθεν
ην) (Matt 21:25), which
is to say that it is “from heaven” (εξ
ουρανου) or from God. The
same can therefore be said of Jesus’s experience at his own baptism. Because it
is an encounter with God, because the heavens are opened up to him, because it
involves the disclosure of a mystery, of secret information otherwise
unknowable to human beings, it is therefore an “ascent into heaven.” (Steven Nemes, Trinity and Incarnation: A
Post-Catholic Theology [Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade Books, 2023], 171-73)
Commenting
on Mark 1:9-13, Margaret Barker wrote the following:
Jesus saw the heavens opened, he heard a voice from heaven,
he was driven by the Spirit, he was served by angels and he was with the wild
beasts. The account of the baptism, when he saw the heavens opened, and the
account of the temptations, when he was alone in the desert, can only have come
from Jesus himself. These few lines in Mark's Gospel indicate that Jesus
claimed a throne vision at his baptism. Being with wild beasts may imply no
more than the presence of desert animals during the forty days, but the
reference to wild beasts and serving angels together with open heavens and a
heavenly voice suggests rather more. In the Greek, the words for 'beasts' in
Mark 1 and 'living creatures' in Revelation 4.6 are different; but the Hebrew
word ḥayyah would have been used for both a wild animal (Gen. 8.1)
and one of the throne creatures (Ezek. 10.15).
The other Gospels add significant details: during his time in
the desert, Jesus looked down from a mountain top and saw 'all the kingdoms of
the world in a moment of time' (Luke 4.5); he also felt himself on a pinnacle
of the temple (Luke 4.9). Both these are holy of holies experiences, mentioned
by other mystics: Habakkuk was set on a watch-tower in the temple to see his
vision (Hab. 2.1); the angel Metatron, the transformed Enoch, showed Rabbi
Ishmael all history depicted on the curtain of the heavenly holy of holies (3
En. 45).
Echoes of this experience can be detected in the earliest
Christian writings. Origen, in the first half of the third century CE, compared
Ezekiel's vision of the chariot throne to the open heavens at the baptism of
Jesus, implying that what the prophet saw, Jesus also saw (Origen, Homily 1 on
Ezekiel). Jesus, he said, first ascended to heaven at his baptism and brought
down to earth the spiritual gifts which he gave to his followers. Justin
Martyr, writing early in the second century CE, described how a fire appeared
in the Jordan when Jesus was baptized (Trypho 88). There is other evidence for
this fire, including two of the Old Latin translations of the New Testament
which include: 'a huge light shone around from the water' (Matt. 3.15 in Codex
Vercellensis and Codex Sangermanensis), and Ephraem's Commentary on the
Diatessaron.
The temple mystics believed it was necessary to pass through the
river of fire, the ultimate purification, in order to become an angel and enter
the holy of holies. This was the baptism of fire. Malachi prophesied that the
LORD would 'purify the sons of Levi', the priests, with fire (Mai. 3.2-3),
there was a river of fire flowing from the throne in Daniel's vision (Dan.
7.10) and Paul alludes to the belief: 'each man's work will be made manifest;
for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire and the
fire will test what sort of work each one has done' (1 Cor. 3.13). Later
mystical texts described the angels purifying themselves in a river of fire
before joining the heavenly worship in the holy of holies (3 En. 36). Perhaps
the most remarkable parallel to the fire in the Jordan is a story told of Rabbi
Johannan ben Zakkai, a contemporary of the first Christians. He saw a fire
burning around one of his disciples as he expounded the mysteries of the
chariot throne (see p. 194). The references to fire and open heavens were
intended for those who knew the secret tradition and what these phenomena
really implied.
A variant reading in some ancient versions of Luke's Gospel
provides another link to the throne vision of Revelation 4. In Matthew and
Mark, the voice from heaven speaks words from a coronation psalm, 'You are my
Son' (Ps. 2.7), and from a Servant Song, 'with whom I am well pleased' (Isa.
42.1), thus linking the traditions of king and servant. The text of Luke 3.22
in the Codex Bezae, however, has only Psalm 2.7: 'You are my son, today I have
begotten you', linking the baptism experience unambiguously to the coronation
ritual, the moment when the king entered the holy of holies, i.e. ascended to
heaven, and was enthroned as Son of God. The vision of the throne in Revelation
4 is followed by the description of the Lamb approaching the throne.
The evidence in early Christian tradition is only explicable
if the baptism had been remembered, perhaps only by the inner group of
initiates, as the moment when Jesus ascended to heaven, experienced the throne
vision and accepted that he was the one called to be enthroned. At first he
resisted - the temptations in the desert record that he had doubts that he was
the Son of God - but then he accepted the calling with all that this entailed.
'The kingdom of heaven', he later taught, 'is like a merchant in search of fine
pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had
and bought it' (Matt. 13.45-46). (Margaret Barker, The Revelation of Jesus
Christ: Which God Gave to Him to Show to His Servants What Must Soon Take Place
(Revelation 1.1) [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000], 126-28)