Christ's Two Natures

[Didymus]

Did Christ retain both natures after the Ascension? Does the Church teach that He is fully God [i]and[/i] man in heaven?

[cappie]

I will deal with the question regarding the Body of Jesus as I think it goes to the nature of the question maybe someone has a better answer



Jesus still possesses His human body in heaven, albeit in a glorified form. Jesus’ person did not change from His pre-glorified state to His post-glorified state. Jesus’ humanity is permanent. It did not dissolve somehow at the ascension. Paul, in Colossians 2:9, which was written about 34 years after Jesus' ascension, said that the fullness of God dwells in Christ bodily. Where does it dwell? Bodily. According to Paul, Jesus still possessed His human body.

Once God assumed humanity at His conception in Mary's womb, He acquired an identity He would retain for the rest of eternity. Jesus' humanity is not something that can be discarded or dissolved back into the Godhead, but He will always and forever exist in heaven as a glorified human, albeit God at the same time. His humanity is permanently incorporated into the Godhead. God did not just live in flesh as a man, but the "Word became flesh" (John 1:14). God is now a man. This does not mean He no longer exists as the omnipresent Spirit, but it does mean that His existence as a man is both authentic and permanent.

Jesus did not merely put on a "robe of flesh" when He came to this earth. There was no separation of natures within Jesus as though He is two separate individuals living in one body, and at the ascension one was discarded. The flesh of Christ was not a mere shell that Deity moved within, and neither was Jesus' humanity independent of the His deity. In Christ the Spirit of God was inextricably and inseparably joined with the humanity, and thus, in the resurrection/ ascension Jesus went to heaven with the same flesh He possessed here on earth, albeit in a glorified form, even as we shall have in our resurrection (I John 3:1-3).