Mark, evangelicals, and catholics

“Maybe McGrath’s thesis will eventually win over his fellow biblical scholars and historians; but in the meantime I will stick with the conventional view that worship of Jesus, once such worship became clearly known, would have offended Jewish sensibilities and violated Judaism’s fierce monolatrous convictions.”

He has made quite an impression, yes. But you prefer the judgment of a modern rabbi against scholarship which has painted a much more complex picture than modern Judaism or neatly-packaged Evangelicalism. Margaret Barker and Crispin Fletcher-Louis’ theses have, in my opinion, not been addressed by counter scholarship – and most certainly not by Bauckham. Both monotheism and worship are addressed by them. Worship in and of itself does NOT render the recipient thereof identical to God Almighty; instead the UNDERSTANDING of who and what the recipient is governs the extent of such worship. This reverse proposal hardly ever gets addressed by any Jesus-as-God proponents.

I cannot help but think, if we unitarians had a position disputed by an historic-analytical reading of the sources, why would anyone, you included would still value such a proposition and not trash it as what it rightly is – garbage?

Greetings, Dale.

A couple of comments in response to your posting. Hopefully it won’t get too long so that I feel compelled to make it into yet another articles on my blog. 🙂

You write: “Quite right, sir. In my view, that creed is not the turning point of the transition from the one God as Father (seen in the NT and in all pre-4th c. catholic tradition) from one God as Trinity. Or, to put it another way, the move from trinity as a closely related triad, one member of which is God (late 2nd c. to mid 4th c.) to Trinity as the one God. In other words: unitarian to trinitarian.”

As you might expect, I would not formulate the theological development as you do. The Church was trinitarian right from the start, not conceptually perhaps (that would come later) but as embodied in its narrative and liturgical life. That Christians worshipped and prayed to Jesus and baptized in the triadic Name is, I suggest, quite decisive. All other considerations aside (e.g., Torah observance), these elements in themselves would eventually have compelled the separation of church and synagogue. The worship of Jesus must ultimately be seen as a violation of the first commandment. I think we see this reflected in John 10:22-39. I find implausible the suggestion of James McGrath that 2nd Temple Jews were comfortable with worshipping lesser deities than YHWH. This makes rabbinical Judaism into virtually a different religion than the one that existed 2,000 years ago. As a well educated Jewish rabbi wrote me yesterday: “From the standpoint of tradition, however, there is no question that the Biblical references prohibit not only worship, but even belief in any competing deity. Consider Deuteronomy 4:35: ??? ??? ????? . There is nothing besides Him. I imagine one could interpret that as ‘Of all the other gods hanging around out there, there is none other that should interest you.’ But the text does not say that.” Maybe McGrath’s thesis will eventually win over his fellow biblical scholars and historians; but in the meantime I will stick with the conventional view that worship of Jesus, once such worship became clearly known, would have offended Jewish sensibilities and violated Judaism’s fierce monolatrous convictions. Bauckham’s judgment here seems much more likely to be true than McGrath’s:

Most Jews in this period were highly self-consciously monotheistic, and had certain very familiar and well-defined ideas as to how the uniqueness of the one God should be understood. In other words, they drew the line of distinction between the one God and all other reality clearly, and were in the habit of distinguishing God from all other reality by means of certain clearly articulated criteria. So-called intermediary figures were not ambiguous semi-divinities straddling the boundary between God and creation. Some (such as God’s wisdom and God’s word) were understood as aspects of the one God’s own unique reality. Most were regarded as unambiguously creatures, exalted servants of God whom the literature often takes pains to distinguish clearly from the truly divine reality of the one and only God.

Back to you, Dale. You write: “But you, Fr. Aiden, are a full-blooded catholic. So you quite rightly protest that “Jesus is God” or “Jesus is divine” are not obviously to be understood as Jesus being God himself. That’s not what the creeds say, and it’s not obvious that we should read them that way. You can also take a more easy-going approach about doctrinal development. Instead of boldly, and implausibly, asserting that yes, the Trinity (not just the trinity – see above) is plainly taught right in the Bible (but bizarrely, was not really noticed for around three centuries), you can admit that it is the product of divine revelation, through the Church, in the whole patristic era, and beyond.”

As a “full-blooded catholic,” I have no problem at all saying “Jesus is God,” as I recognize this statement as an abbreviation of the more accurate statement “Jesus is the incarnation of the Second Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity,” and of course this Second Hypostasis is God, specifically, God the divine Son. “God” here is no longer functioning strictly as a hypostatic name but designates the one divine nature that is equally and fully possessed by the Father, Son, and Spirit. On the other hand, we Orthodox also acknowledge, in continuity with the creeds, that the Father is rightly confessed as the One God, for it is from the Father that the Son and Spirit derive their divine identities. This confession is also embodied in the structure of ancient Christian prayer, in which the Church addresses God through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. “God” can also signify the Holy Trinity, for the three hypostases are not three gods As St Gregory the Theologian declared: “The Godhead is one in Three, and the Three are One, in whom all the Godhead is, or, to be more precise, who are the Godhead.” You of course know all of this, but I thought it important to make explicit the multiple meanings of the “God” in catholic discourse.

Neither Orthodox nor Catholics understand the evolution in trinitarian doctrine as a product of continuing divine revelation—the revelation delivered to the Apostles is once and for all—but rather as the unpacking and clarification, under the guidance of the Spirit, of the trinitarian revelation embodied in the faith and life of the apostolic Church.

You write: “I don’t see any need for historical criticism – it lies plain on the face of the book, where any reader with minimal background knowledge can see it. As to our paucity of information on 1st c. Christianity, you’re right. But a good amount is deducible from Paul’s undisputed letters, which are all earlier than Mark. Whether his christology is compatible with Mark’s is another thing. (I think it is.)”

I am surprised that you think that we can read any book of the New Testament or presumably all of Scripture or any ancient document without availing ourselves of the tools and research of historical scholarship. Quite frankly, Dale, I find this to be an absolutely untenable, even outrageous, claim. Clearly you yourself have availed yourself of the judgments of specific (largely unnamed) scholars. You seem to believe, for example, that you know what “Messiah” and “Son of God” means in the Gospel of Mark. You seem to believe that you know that first century Jews would not have been offended by the claim that the exalted Jesus is worthy of worship. These are all historical claims, and they cannot be substantiated simply by pointing to the text. I presume that you read biblical Greek (alas, I do not). At the very least, therefore, you rely on the linguistic work of ancient Greek scholars. Claiming that your reading of the biblical text is “obvious” or “plain” simply will not do, Sir. Would any instructor of New Testament 101 allow you to get away with this? Surely not. Yet you repeatedly appeal, not only here but elsewhere in your blog writings, to what seems “obvious” to you from your reading of the Bible. I too read the Bible and what seems obvious to me often conflicts with your obvious.

Finally, you write: “Quite correct – “divine” can, in principle, mean a lot of things beyond “being God himself” or “being numerically one with God.” And of course the real issue isn’t what did or didn’t call him, but rather, what did they think about him and teach about him. Mark never calls him God, true, but also makes clear that he’s the Son of God, meaning, God’s unique Messiah.”

I find the “numerically one with God” phrasing unhelpful and misleading. If Jesus were numerically one with the Father, then he simply would be the Father; and most Christians have called this heresy. And this is why attempting to remain within the conceptual structures of the first century is impossible for Christian theology. It just took time for theologians to find a way to speak of the ontological unity of the Father and the Son in a way that acknowledges their hypostatic uniqueness.

I bid you a Merry Christmas, Dale. Thanks for the conversation.

That is correct. All who follow those creeds would consider themselves “catholic” as well.

However, a pointer – expand your definition of “Catholic” to incorporate all the Eastern Catholic Churches as well as the Roman Catholic Church.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05230a.htm

Maria Therese was the one who first called Byzantine Catholics “Greek Catholics” and the name kind of stuck until recently in America. Greek-Slavonic or Ruthenian is what I am.