Note (return) — Chapter III

As to the facts of the history of Jesus, the real and the supposed, the circumstance that they formed the ever repeated proclamation about Christ gave them an extraordinary significance. In addition to the birth from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin, the death, the resurrection, the exaltation to the right hand of God, and the coming again, there now appeared more definitely the ascension to heaven, and also, though more uncertainly, the descent into the kingdom of the dead. The belief that Jesus ascended into heaven forty days after the resurrection, gradually made way against the older conception, according to which resurrection and ascension really coincided, and against other ideas which maintained a longer period between the two events. That probably is the result of a reflection which sought to distinguish the first from the later manifestations of the exalted Christ, and it is of the utmost importance as the beginning of a demarcation of the times. It is also very probable that the acceptance of an actual ascensus in cœlum, not a mere assumptio, was favourable to the idea of an actual descent of Christ de cœlo, therefore to the pneumatic Christology and vice versa. But there is also closely connected with the ascensus in cœlum, the notion of a descensus ad inferna, which commended itself on the ground of Old Testament prediction. In the first century, however, it still remained uncertain, lying on the borders of those productions of religious fancy which were not able at once to acquire a right of citizenship in the communities.268