Class
3 -
The Theology of Mark’s Gospel: The Cross of the Son of God
Topics
to be covered:
The
genre of Mark’s Gospel
The
character of Mark’s Gospel
- passion narrative with
extended introduction?
- missing ending or open-ended
story?
The
focus of Mark’s Gospel: a look at some key ‘titles’
- the Son of God
- the Christ
- the Son of Man who must suffer
Obviously in a class of this sort, we cannot do a detailed study of the entirety of all aspects of the theology of an author, never mind trying to study all aspects of the theological thought of all the New Testament authors! So in the case of Mark, as will be true of the other Gospels too, the most we can do is survey the most important and prominent features of the work’s theology.
In the case of Paul, we saw that there were advantages and disadvantages to starting with his writings as opposed to the teaching of Jesus as found in the Gospels. In the case of Mark, it is very important that we turn to him before turning to Matthew and Luke. I presume that most if not all of you are familiar with the arguments for Markan priority – that is, the arguments suggesting that Mark wrote his Gospel first and that Matthew and Luke used his Gospel in producing their own. And so, on the one hand, we must avoid reading Matthew and Luke into Mark’s account. On the other hand, and perhaps more importantly, by observing the manner in which Matthew and Luke edit and adapt the material in Mark, we are given additional insight into their theological emphases and their chief concerns. For these reasons, it is helpful, indeed imperative, that we begin with Mark.
Mark’s Gospel created the genre ‘Gospel’ through the way he opened his ‘biography’ of Jesus: ‘The beginning of the Gospel [i.e. Good News] concerning Jesus Christ, the Son of God’. Of course, when I call Mark’s book a biography, I am thinking of ancient rather than modern biographies. Mark does not include a lot of the information we might expect in a modern bibliography, such as an analysis of his childhood and upbringing, key influences in his life, analysis of his motives for doing this, that and the other. But ancient biographies were less interested in peering into individual psyches, since ancient people were generally less interested in such matters. Mark’s Gospel, again like ancient biographies but unlike modern ones, is not interested in giving all the facts about an individual, but rather is about teaching the reader something through the story of the life of the person who is the subject of his book. This point, we shall see, is true of all the Gospels. They are interested primarily in teaching rather than informing. This is a crucial point. It does not mean that they do not inform us about the life of Jesus; it simply means that they chose from among the events of his life and wove them into a portrait that will instruct the reader(s). John’s own statement of purpose in John 20:30-31 is a good illustration of this point.
Mark’s Gospel is rather enigmatic in a number of respects. It emphasizes that Jesus brought a new and authoritative teaching (Mark 1:27), but we are not told a terrible lot about what he actually taught. Perhaps Mark assumed his readers would be familiar with Jesus’ teaching already (perhaps from another written source, such as Q?!)
Son of God: In 1:1? [on the textual problem see the article by Daniel B. Wallace, “Does Mark 1:1 Call Jesus ‘God’s Son’? A Brief Text-Critical Note”] Who in Mark’s Gospel calls Jesus ‘Son of God’? [Father, demons with supernatural knowledge; centurion at the foot of the cross]. The Gospel thus focuses on the cross, and in fact one commentator famously described Mark’s Gospel as “a passion narrative with an extended introduction”.
Intentionally enigmatic? Theme of disciples misunderstanding: See Mark 8:27ff; 9:30ff.
The disciples feature as important, ‘main’ characters in the Gospel – or at least, in prominent ‘best supporting actor’ roles. Yet they are portrayed negatively in many respects: they are confused, they fail to understand what Jesus is trying to teach them, they quibble and gripe and argue among themselves. Why doesn’t Mark give us some good examples to follow? On the one hand, we are to recognize the difficulty of discipleship: if even the twelve could fail in such obvious ways, how much more can we. Yet the reader is also given insights that were not available to the followers of Jesus during his earthly ministry. Thus the reader is invited to also disassociate himself or herself from the perspective of the disciples and to align his or her viewpoint with that of the narrator, which aligns itself in turn with God’s own perspective inasmuch as this can be known, namely identifying Jesus as the Son of God who is crucified and raised.
The difference between the perspective of the reader and that of Jesus’ original band of disciples becomes clear in Mark 9:9. The transfiguration sheds light on Jesus as God’s Son. Yet without knowledge of the cross and resurrection, these things are likely to be misunderstood. The disciples are thus told to keep it quiet until Jesus has risen from the dead. The disciples, from their standpoint, are perplexed and have no idea what he could possible mean. The reader, on the other hand, knows about the resurrection already and is reading in light of it. Thus, on the narrative level the light of the resurrection is not allowed to shine back into the narrative and illuminate the darkness and confusion in the minds of Jesus’ pre-Easter followers. This is doubly significant. On the one hand, the reader realizes he or she has an advantage over the original band of disciples, and is thus invited to understand where Peter and others initially failed to. Yet on the other hand, the narrative implies that even the resurrection does not obliterate the scandal of the cross, and thus the reader can sympathize with the difficulties that the twelve are facing in the narrative.
Secrecy motif: the truth that Jesus is the Messiah can only be rightly interpreted in light of the cross. The resurrection thus overrides the call to secrecy. Note also the point made by Joseph B. Tyson (“The Blindness of the Disciples in Mark”, reprinted in The Messianic Secret, ed. Christopher Tuckett, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983, p.36): “It is not as if the disciples had discerned the nature of Jesus but are prohibited from broadcasting it, but it is that the disciples have a wrong conception about his nature”. Also significant is the counterbalancing theme (noted by Dunn, in his article in the same volume just mentioned, “The Messianic Secret in Mark”, pp.120-121) of publicity and revelation: See 1:28; 2:12; 3:20; 5:19f; 6:2-3; 6:31; 7:24. This, he feels, means that we can speak of a motif of messianic misunderstanding, but not of a messianic secret (p.122). Note too the entrance of Jesus on a colt into Jerusalem: this was a public declaration of his messiahship, arranged by Jesus himself![1]
Peter’s confession is a turning point in Mark’s Gospel, as we can see from what follows: “from that time on, Jesus began…” (8:31). There is no attempt to analyze this change psychologically as one might in a modern biography. How influential in this turning point were the Scriptures, religious experience, the recent execution of John the Baptist, etc? We are not told. But what we are told is that, once the idea is first expressed publicly that Jesus is the Messiah, a lid is quickly put on it, and Jesus begins to explain to them about how the Son of Man must suffer. Jesus could have been identified in many ways prior to this point, as a preacher like John the Baptist, as an exorcist, as a charismatic miracle-worker. But now that the label ‘Messiah’ has been put on the table, Jesus begins to teach them, so as to explain what his Messiahship means. It is not denied that Jesus is in fact the Messiah, even in view of the silencing of the disciples after Peter’s confession. Mark uses the designation openly in the first verse of the Gospel! But this term was dangerous until it was to become clear what Jesus’ ministry was really going to be about.
The ending of Mark: an open-ended Gospel, or one that has been cut short?
The main point is presumably the one we have found throughout Mark: Jesus’ mission will challenge the assumptions and values of the culture and society of that time, assumptions and values that the disciples regularly show to be their own. Jesus is vindicated, but not in a spectacular blaze of public glory that will silence his opponents and put them to shame. And so it is that the disciples of the risen Lord remain, as far as the world can see, the disciples of the crucified. And so it is that the way of the cross means choosing obedience to God over everything else, including something more precious than rubies in that culture: one’s own reputation.