{"id":5679,"date":"2013-12-21T12:08:28","date_gmt":"2013-12-21T17:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=5679"},"modified":"2013-12-21T12:23:01","modified_gmt":"2013-12-21T17:23:01","slug":"mark-evangelicals-and-catholics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/mark-evangelicals-and-catholics\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark, evangelicals, and catholics"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Fr. Aiden Kimel has a good and thoughtful post<\/a> on my Mark posts<\/a>. I think he concedes my main point:<\/p>\n

… if we were to isolate the Gospel of Mark from the rest of the Bible, and indeed the Christian Church altogether, and read it just as historical artifact, would we come to the conclusion that Jesus of Nazareth is God? I doubt it. Indeed, the more we locate it in its Jewish monotheistic and messianic setting the more unlikely the claim becomes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He continues,<\/p>\n

But please first note the problematic nature of the clause \u201cJesus of Nazareth is God<\/strong>.\u201d In his writings Dale repeatedly uses equivalent expressions; but of course, the Nicene Creed does not say that \u201cJesus is God,\u201d because the Nicene Creed identifies the Father as God and confesses of Jesus that he is eternally begotten of the Father and of one substance with the Father.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Quite right, sir.<\/strong> In my view, that creed is not<\/em> 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<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

I’m adressing, as it were, members of my own tribe<\/strong>; I grew up evangelical, and graduated from Biola. They tend to either ignore or gesture at the actual historic catholic theories, in favor of: Jesus is God himself. That’s what they usually mean by “Jesus is God” or “the deity of Christ<\/a>” or Jesus being “who he claims to be.” Trinity theories as such are marginalized in church life, and actual incarnation debates and theories are little known. Mostly Trinity-incarnation (smudged together) becomes an issue when<\/strong> dastardly JWs or liberals or nameless “skeptics” are in view. Theologically, evangelicalism can be viewed as “catholic-lite”. Yes, I know that a great many evangelical seminarians aspire to be, and are, much more catholic than that. There’s a steady stream of books recommending more evangelical engagement with the church fathers and creeds. And many of my fellow Christians philosophers are evangelicals with quite sophisticated views on the Trinity and Incarnation issues. But I’m talking here about the bulk of evangelical people – the same who may read Dr. Kruger’s blog<\/a>, to get pointers or proving the “deity of Christ” from Mark 1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But you, Fr. Aiden, are a full-blooded catholic<\/strong>. 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<\/em>, and it’s not obvious that we should read them that way. You can also take a more easy-going approach about doctrinal development<\/strong>. Instead of boldly, and implausibly, asserting that yes, the Trinity (not just the trinity – see above) is plainly<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

You’re also right that there seem a vast gap<\/strong> between a first-century Jewish mindset, and fully devoloped catholic orthdoxy. As you say,<\/p>\n

One just doesn\u2019t jump from the confession that Jesus is the Son of God\u00a0to Jesus is God the eternal Son who hypostatically assumed human existence in the womb of the Theotokos.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would disagree with your claim that Mark reveals<\/p>\n

intimations that the inherited concepts of Messiah, Sonship, and divinity are inadequate to handle that which the 1st century Church strained to sing about Jesus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t see any such intimations there. Mark, by placing on Jesus’ own lips Psalm 110:1, teaches that Jesus is (post-resurrection) exalted to God’s right hand, and so is worthy of worship. It may bother us<\/em> that a man should be so worshiped<\/strong> (not “as God” but alongside God), but it doesn’t seem to bother Mark.<\/p>\n

…when someone tells me that historical criticism has demonstrated that the Gospel of Mark does not teach that Jesus is God, I\u2019m inclined to shrug my shoulders and say in reply, Why should I take this report seriously?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t see any need for historical criticism<\/strong> – it lies plain on the face<\/a> 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.)<\/p>\n

Fr. Aiden ends by quoting the late great Catholic scholar Raymond Brown.<\/p>\n

But were we to discover that the New Testament never calls Jesus God, this would not necessarily mean that the New Testament authors did not think of Jesus as divine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/strong> isn’t what did or didn’t call<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

Update<\/em>: part 2 of Fr. Aiden’s thoughts on Mark<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fr. Aiden Kimel has a good and thoughtful post on my Mark posts. I think he concedes my main point: … if we were to isolate the Gospel of Mark from the rest of the Bible, and indeed the Christian Church altogether, and read it just as historical artifact, would we come to the conclusion… Read More »Mark, evangelicals, and catholics<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,15,6,58,4,8,3,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-christology","category-complaints","category-creeds","category-heresy-orthodoxy","category-linkage","category-theories","category-worship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5690,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5679\/revisions\/5690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}