Mark and Paul.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

I want your opinions on a matter that I have been thinking of for some time. Paul appears to regard Jesus as the preexistent son of God; that is, Jesus was already the son of God before he was made manifest in the likeness of flesh (Romans 8.3, for instance). But Mark is pretty easy to read as separationist or adoptionist, by which logic Jesus would be an ordinary man who was invested with filial and divine power at his baptism, and I do not think Mark hints at preexistence (if he does, please let me know what I have missed). This seems to be a step backward, Christologically speaking, does it not? My question is, if Mark respected Paul enough to use his works as often laid out on this forum, why does he seem to disagree on so basic a topic as the very nature of Jesus Christ?

I tend to disagree. I think Mark's "Christology" is in some sense an authentic "biblical" Christology with regard to the Jewish Scriptures. I would not consider this as "low" or "a step backward". I think this is a typical Christian point of view.

[Ben C. Smith]

I want your opinions on a matter that I have been thinking of for some time. Paul appears to regard Jesus as the preexistent son of God; that is, Jesus was already the son of God before he was made manifest in the likeness of flesh (Romans 8.3, for instance). But Mark is pretty easy to read as separationist or adoptionist, by which logic Jesus would be an ordinary man who was invested with filial and divine power at his baptism, and I do not think Mark hints at preexistence (if he does, please let me know what I have missed). This seems to be a step backward, Christologically speaking, does it not? My question is, if Mark respected Paul enough to use his works as often laid out on this forum, why does he seem to disagree on so basic a topic as the very nature of Jesus Christ?

I tend to disagree. I think Mark's "Christology" is in some sense an authentic "biblical" Christology with regard to the Jewish Scriptures. I would not consider this as "low" or "a step backward". I think this is a typical Christian point of view.

Okay, but do you see Mark as disagreeing with Paul on this matter, taking something away from Christ that Paul's Christology would grant him? (Another way of asking: why would Mark draw from Paul so much if he disagrees with Paul on something so fundamental? Is he deliberately correcting Paul? Does he not notice the difference? Does he have access only to some of the epistles, as Andrew suggests?)

[DCHindley]

I want your opinions on a matter that I have been thinking of for some time. Paul appears to regard Jesus as the preexistent son of God; that is, Jesus was already the son of God before he was made manifest in the likeness of flesh (Romans 8.3, for instance). But Mark is pretty easy to read as separationist or adoptionist, by which logic Jesus would be an ordinary man who was invested with filial and divine power at his baptism, and I do not think Mark hints at preexistence (if he does, please let me know what I have missed). This seems to be a step backward, Christologically speaking, does it not? My question is, if Mark respected Paul enough to use his works as often laid out on this forum, why does he seem to disagree on so basic a topic as the very nature of Jesus Christ?

I tend to disagree. I think Mark's "Christology" is in some sense an authentic "biblical" Christology with regard to the Jewish Scriptures. I would not consider this as "low" or "a step backward". I think this is a typical Christian point of view.

Personally it seems that high Christology is expressly stated in the letters of Paul, but only implied in the gospel of Mark. In other words, Mark can assume that the reader/hearer of his gospel knows some high Christology and can put it in perspective. He is using the rhetorical technique of "enthymeme" where the reader is given clues, which will "gel" with things s/he has previously heard, to cause the reader to suddenly put it all together as a kind of epiphany. Roman politicians and other writers or speakers in court could do it very, very, effectively.

I'm not saying that Mark operates at the level of a sophisticated member of the Roman elite, but what works is what works.

Has anybody posted parallels between the Christology and/or ethical teachings of Paul's letters and those found in the various Gospels, particularly Mark?

I seem to recall seeing something like this a while back, but thought at the time that the parallels were so general that no literary dependence could be conclusively spelled out. They could both have drawn from common traditions.

My personal opinion is that the Christology of Paul's letters is rougher around the edges than that assumed in the synoptic gospels, which I always attributed to the Christology in Paul's letters being earlier than the more refined Christology of the gospels.

But of course, Paul is supposed to have flourished in the 50's-60's CE, and the synoptic gospels are generally assumed to have been composed at least after 70 CE, so that is to be expected.

DCH

[toejam]

As several on this forum have pointed out, Mark seems to know and use Paul at various points.

I've been away for a few weeks... What is the evidence that Mark seems to know and use Paul? A parallel isn't good enough to be persuasive because it could be that Paul is drawing from Mark or that they are both drawing from pre-Markan sources.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

Okay, but do you see Mark as disagreeing with Paul on this matter, taking something away from Christ that Paul's Christology would grant him? (Another way of asking: why would Mark draw from Paul so much if he disagrees with Paul on something so fundamental? Is he deliberately correcting Paul? Does he not notice the difference? Does he have access only to some of the epistles, as Andrew suggests?)

Of course. I completely agree that there is a major difference between Mark and a few of Paul’s statements. On the other hand, 1 Cor 2:2 (“For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”) may also be not compatible with those other Pauline ideas.

I suspect that Mark wished to bring down the Christian discussions about the nature of Christ to a biblical basis to focus on the question “What can I do to inherit eternal life?” and on the belief that God’s loving power is/was in the world through and with Jesus.

At least I agree with your observation, but I do not see a great problem for the assumption that Mark was in the Pauline camp.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

Personally it seems that high Christology is expressly stated in the letters of Paul, but only implied in the gospel of Mark. In other words, Mark can assume that the reader/hearer of his gospel knows some high Christology and can put it in perspective. He is using the rhetorical technique of "enthymeme" where the reader is given clues, which will "gel" with things s/he has previously heard, to cause the reader to suddenly put it all together as a kind of epiphany. Roman politicians and other writers or speakers in court could do it very, very, effectively.
...
My personal opinion is that the Christology of Paul's letters is rougher around the edges than that assumed in the synoptic gospels, which I always attributed to the Christology in Paul's letters being earlier than the more refined Christology of the gospels.

I really love your judgement from a few years ago

On the other hand, the Christology of the synoptic gospels is cool as a cucumber (well, less hot headed that that found in Paul)

But I’m not so sure about the use of a rhetorical technique of "enthymeme". If we start with the crystal-clear things in Mark then

- there is a “Jesus” (and nothing more)
- the spirit is upon him
- he is the beloved son
- he is the authorized messenger of God
- there is a "Son-of-Man"-ology (and not a Christology)
- he is thematically the suffering servant

The second authorized messenger speaks of this Jesus as (Mk 16:6)

- the Nazarene
- the crucified one
- and that he was risen

Then we have discussions about the following traditional titles

- Christ
- Son of God
- Lord
- Son of David
- Elijah or one of the prophets

I think that Mark’s position was that - for example - Jesus is the son of God (and also the Christ), but only in some sense, and that from Mark’s point of view there are also misconceptions of these titles. My impresssion is that Mark emphasized more the loving relationship between God and Jesus with regard to the title “son of God” and not a "nature" of Jesus.

[Ben C. Smith]

If we start with the crystal-clear things in Mark then

- there is a “Jesus” (and nothing more)
- the spirit is upon him
- he is the beloved son
- he is the authorized messenger of God
- there is a "Son-of-Man"-ology (and not a Christology)
- he is thematically the suffering servant

The second authorized messenger speaks of this Jesus as (Mk 16:6)

- the Nazarene
- the crucified one
- and that he was risen

Then we have discussions about the following traditional titles

- Christ
- Son of God
- Lord
- Son of David
- Elijah or one of the prophets

I think that Mark’s position was that - for example - Jesus is the son of God (and also the Christ), but only in some sense, and that from Mark’s point of view there are also misconceptions of these titles. My impresssion is that Mark emphasized more the loving relationship between God and Jesus with regard to the title “son of God” and not a "nature" of Jesus.

I love this summary of Mark's approach.

Okay, but do you see Mark as disagreeing with Paul on this matter, taking something away from Christ that Paul's Christology would grant him? (Another way of asking: why would Mark draw from Paul so much if he disagrees with Paul on something so fundamental? Is he deliberately correcting Paul? Does he not notice the difference? Does he have access only to some of the epistles, as Andrew suggests?)

Of course. I completely agree that there is a major difference between Mark and a few of Paul’s statements. On the other hand, 1 Cor 2:2 (“For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”) may also be not compatible with those other Pauline ideas.

That depends, in my estimation, upon how much meaning (and upon what kind of meaning) Paul is pouring into the term "Christ" (as well as, to a lesser extent, what he potentially makes of the name "Jesus", since we have some evidence of a conscious connection between Yahweh, "the name above all names," and the theophoric Yehoshua/Jesus in Philippians 2.6-11). There is potentially a huge difference between concentrating on the crucifixion and concentrating on Christ crucified.

I suspect that Mark wished to bring down the Christian discussions about the nature of Christ to a biblical basis to focus on the question “What can I do to inherit eternal life?” and on the belief that God’s loving power is/was in the world through and with Jesus.

At least I agree with your observation, but I do not see a great problem for the assumption that Mark was in the Pauline camp.

Well, it concerns me a bit (A) that early Christian groups seemed very quickly to pronounce anathema upon each other for differences of lesser moment than this one. Paul himself warns against those who might preach "another Jesus" in 2 Corinthians:

11.1 I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me! 2 For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. 3 But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4 For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. 5 Indeed, I consider that I am not in the least inferior to these superapostles. 6 Even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not so in knowledge; indeed, in every way we have made this plain to you in all things.

Now, maybe Paul has a very specific moralistic meaning in mind (a view of Jesus which leads one to live in an unworthy manner or such), or maybe he means exactly what it sounds like: there are ways of presenting Jesus so far off track that it is essentially a different person. And Mark's Jesus seems to me to be different enough from Paul's Jesus to consider him as possibly falling into the "other Jesus" category.

It also concerns me (B) that those whom I would mentally place in the Pauline camp — that is, the authors of the pseudo-Paulines and Hebrews — seem, if anything, to lean into the "high" Christology that Paul himself espoused. If anything, they go even higher (were that possible). This is exactly the opposite of what we find in Mark.

On the other hand, Paul has his Christ figure temporarily taking on human flesh, and I have played around with the idea that Mark is trying to imagine what that looked like, and that this is where Mark's "lower" Christology fits in. He imagines the pre-existent Christ, the son of God, coming into the purely human Jesus at the baptism (Paul fails to specify a time frame, so why not the baptism?). The Christ is now disguised in Jesus' body to all except the spirit world. This is essentially separationism, and might be the Marcan way of fleshing out the details in Paul (and elsewhere). However, that is not really how Mark writes it up. He does not have the Christ come down at the baptism; it is the Spirit. So the equation does not seem to be Jesus + Christ = Jesus Christ, Son of God; rather, it seems to be Jesus + Spirit = Christ, Son of God. Far from being pre-existent, then, Christ actually comes into being right at the baptism, and the Sonship is one of adoptionism, not of pre-existence. This process far more closely resembles how Paul describes believers' adoptions in Romans 8 (Humans + Spirit = Sons of God "in Christ") than how Paul describes Jesus Christ, which is why I once asked you about your view of the baptism in Mark:

Do you take the baptism scene in Mark as a parable/allegory/depiction of the (Pauline) believer's spiritual baptism into Christ? (That is, do you apply that scene to an event that can happen to anyone rather than to a special event that happened once, only to Jesus?)

Difficult. I'm not sure that Mark intended an answer to your question. Gustav Volkmar once wrote (my poor translation)

The difference is above all, that Jesus has received the Spirit of God, the consciousness of sonship and the sight of the open heaven as the first one. All others only after him. So he is the firstborn of God's Spirit, or the Son, the later-borns depend on his event, in proportion to him they remain as children of God: he is the firstborn among many brethren (Rom 8:29).

More or less I tend to agree with him.

Finally, it concerns me (C) that Mark does not betray any awareness of any of this kind of controversy. He seems simply to be writing things as they were/are to him, oblivious to anything in Paul (or elsewhere) that would make Jesus Christ out to be a different kind of being. What concerns him is, not Jesus' exact constitution, but rather who knows about it (the spirits, the disciples, and so forth).

I have to admit, I have toyed with the idea that the Pauline stuff is actually a later development in Mark than most of the rest of the gospel materials; but I have done no real work in that direction, so there is nothing to debate on that score yet. The first step would be to assemble a catalog of all the potentially Pauline parallels in Mark, which has been a desideratum of mine for a while now.

Ben.

[Giuseppe]

Ben wrote:

He does not have the Christ come down at the baptism; it is the Spirit. So the equation does not seem to be Jesus + Christ = Jesus Christ, Son of God; rather, it seems to be Jesus + Spirit = Christ, Son of God

Have you considered the concrete possibility that during the baptism, it is the Spirit descending on Jesus to be addressed as "you are my Son" and not just Jesus himself ? It seems that both the Spirit and Jesus are "Christ" in two opposed ways: Jesus as coming from Nazareth (a davidic town via Netser) and the Spirit as Son of God. Therefore it seems to be Jesus Nazarene + Spirit Son of God = Jesus Christ, an apparent fusion of two conceptions of Messiah (respectively earthly and spiritual).

An harmonic fusion or a dualistic fusion? I like more the second

[Ben C. Smith]

Ben wrote:

He does not have the Christ come down at the baptism; it is the Spirit. So the equation does not seem to be Jesus + Christ = Jesus Christ, Son of God; rather, it seems to be Jesus + Spirit = Christ, Son of God

Have you considered the concrete possibility that during the baptism, it is the Spirit descending on Jesus to be addressed as "you are my Son" and not just Jesus himself ?

I cannot tell whether you are pulling for the Spirit alone or for Jesus + the Spirit. It can be Jesus whom the voice is addressing, or it can be Jesus + the Spirit, but it makes no sense for it to be the Spirit alone, without Jesus, since the scene is basically repeated in Mark 9.7, in which the pronouns (masculine, singular) have to go back to Jesus (masculine, singular), and the Spirit is not even mentioned in context. Jesus himself agrees with this in 14.61-62. The centurion in 15.39 agrees with this, too, calling "this man" (masculine, singular) the Son of God.

[maryhelena]

Ben wrote:

He does not have the Christ come down at the baptism; it is the Spirit. So the equation does not seem to be Jesus + Christ = Jesus Christ, Son of God; rather, it seems to be Jesus + Spirit = Christ, Son of God

Have you considered the concrete possibility that during the baptism, it is the Spirit descending on Jesus to be addressed as "you are my Son" and not just Jesus himself ? It seems that both the Spirit and Jesus are "Christ" in two opposed ways: Jesus as coming from Nazareth (a davidic town via Netser) and the Spirit as Son of God. Therefore it seems to be Jesus Nazarene + Spirit Son of God = Jesus Christ, an apparent fusion of two conceptions of Messiah (respectively earthly and spiritual).

An harmonic fusion or a dualistic fusion? I like more the second

Methinks your getting into George Wells territory here