To me, faith is beyond science. It is the infinite trying to express the eternal. It cannot be done adequately with the limitations we now have. Can we now walk through closed doors as Jesus is said to have done after the resurrection? No. yet according to Paul we will be like Jesus and apparently will be able to do such things. The limitation of things like gravity and even the elements of this planet will bow to us... remember how Jesus walked on water and commanded the storm to stop?
In the story of Elijah and Elisha Elijah opens the eyes of his servant and reveals a whole other world happening that Elisha never saw. I see that the Kingdom was, is and ever will be... on earth as in heaven... in the physical as it is in the spiritual... It is the melding of the two no the dualism you keep asserting on these ideas. That is the real issue I see in this conversation is that you keep asserting modernist scientific views on the bible instead of allowing it to speak in its historical context. Personally, I could never understand where people state the bible teaches the earth is flat and the sun revolves around the earth I read in Job and Genesis how God created the universe for the earth to light it, but not that everything revolves around it... It may be the center of the story, but not the literal placement.
If one asserts a modern view then one begins to have the many issues you are having. That is why modernism is so wrong to push on the bible. It begins to gut it of its glory. If we dissect the bible like a frog, we kill it as we do the frog... to experience a frog one must go to a pond and watch the frog in his world. I see some value in the sterile ideas of dissection... one can understand the language and then the ideas better, but to just use the scientific method on the bible kills it. Just as just using the post-modern ideas of deconstruction. Both modernism and post modernism are great tools, but both lack the value and instruction of the Holy Spirit, which gives life to us, and the text of scripture.
I am very honest of the cosmology of the bible. I see it as it is and acknowledge there is much I do not. Yet, the things I do not know are the wonder, awe, and mystery I have chosen to embrace along with what God began in me many years ago.
To ask if Jesus literally flew in outer space during the ascension is a rather silly question to me. It is assuming that Heaven is a physical place... like the earthly realm... it is not... it is beyond what we have here. Heavenly things are so far beyond what mere words cannot express what it is. It is like expressing the body soul and spirit. We get the body and how it works... we somewhat understand the soul/mind and how it works, but we do not have any grasp on how the body lives... or how the spirit works. We can weigh someone at death and witness mysterious loss of 21 grams which they claim is the soul (I think it is the spirit). We just know that without the spirit we are dead.
The cosmology of the bible is not "literal" but expressions of the intangible... they are to allow us to grasp what is beyond what we understand and see... and bring us in. If you ever read Revelation you will see words such as, "It was like..." It appeared as..." which give indication to what I am saying.
I am one that still takes much literally/historically but I also understand that often the story is more important than the literalness. Was it a whale or great fish that swallowed Jonah? Who cares... that is not the point of the story. Therefore, I focus on the teachings and important things instead of trying to prove that the bible can be proven by modern scientific standards... I accept that sometimes it cannot as it is beyond the limitations of modern science... and man's mind or even imagination. “For the eye has not seen or the mind conceived what God has in store for us.” I embrace that God is God without limitations and I am a mere creation with great limitations. I embrace that mystery that was, is, and yet is to come.
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