Notes on Galatians 5:1-12

More study notes by me for the sermon prep:

In verse 1, Paul is drawing on the idea that the Law with its Jewish particulars was one of the things that enslaved the Jews in a sense (along with sin and death), separating them from other peoples until the time of Christ (3:23-25), and cursing them for violation of the covenant with God.  Christ, then, provided rescue from this curse and deliverance from sin and the division between Jew and Gentile.  Jesus gave freedom – a new exodus, deliverance, or rescue of Israel from its exile/curse of the Law, something promised in the Old Testament to bring with it the ingathering of the nations (i.e., the Gentiles) into God’s one family.  This freedom from sin, death, Jewish-Gentile division, and the Law’s curse on Israel, then, belongs to those who truly belong to God’s one promised family – as chapter 4 has it, they are the children of God’s promise to Abraham – the Sarah people, not the Hagar people still under bondage to sin, death, division, and curse. 

In other words, Jesus came to fulfill God’s promise to Abraham of a single family of all nations on earth by bringing God’s salvation to the ends of the earth beginning with his exhaustion of Israel’s curse which it had acquired for covenant disobedience.  This sets up verses 2-4, as this is precisely what the agitators are, in effect, denying by forcing Gentiles to become circumcised – God’s family, in their thinking, was supposed to be restricted to one nation, the Jews alone.  They in effect deny the work of Christ in bringing about God’s promises.  So to go back to the old use of the Law in dividing Jew from Gentile (as opposed to Jesus’ and Paul’s use) is to reject what Christ has already done, to deny his work on the cross in bringing redemption and reconciliation between the nations. 

Paul’s point in verse 3, then, is that since being Jewish means, for the agitators, following all the Law’s Jewish particulars, Gentiles who obey the agitators (to become Jewish in order to become part of God’s people) are not done there – Gentiles being Jewish will have to go all the way and add to circumcision food laws, and so forth.  This is not about circumcision itself per se but the motives and theology behind why these Gentiles were becoming circumcised (Paul circumcised Timothy and would not say these things in 2-4 about Timothy).  Unfortunately, for centuries Gentile Christians became a version of these agitators themselves when they used this verse to deny that Jews could be Christians unless they became Gentiles first, thus again denying the work of Christ.  Even today, Christians unfortunately use terms like “Jew” or “Jewish” as contraries of “Christian”, further pushing the un-Pauline view that one cannot remain a Jew and be a true Christian.

In 5 and 6, Paul turns to the true marks of God’s family.  What sets them apart are not whether they are Jewish or not but whether they have faith, which is itself expressed outwardly in love, not necessarily in works of the Law (circumcision, etc.) – a love which by its very nature welcomes both Jews and Gentiles.  On the basis of this life led in faith, led by the Holy Spirit (associated with freedom from sin, etc. – see, e.g., II Cor 3:17) who is the sign that the new time of faith and Israel’s rescue has come, believers may now hope for the completion of God’s work in us, fully bringing his kingdom and establishing his new people in his new creation, even among Gentiles. 

In verses 7-9, Paul turns from Christ’s work to that of the agitators.  These agitators are basically trying to counteract Christ’s work in bringing together a family of both Jews and Gentiles, free from enslavement.  And what grieves Paul most is that it seems to be working at least somewhat!  False teaching, if not checked, can easily poison the church and cause people to stumble when they are easily swayed not to attend to the truth.  It takes only a few bad influences to start affecting the life of the whole church if they are allowed to continue.  In verse 10, Paul is, however, confident in the Galatians’ case that they will ultimately side with him over the agitators, no matter what is going wrong at the moment, since it is ultimately the agitators themselves who are to blame for this mess. 

The false teaching, hinted at in verse 11, was that Paul had kept back part of the gospel and of the full Christian life from the Galatians – the part about having to become a Jew in order to be a Christian.  The position was that Paul agreed with their version of the gospel but had been too stingy and had not given the Galatians the whole thing.  Summing up his self-defense so far, Paul makes it clear that he does not agree with the agitators’ version of the gospel and he certainly has not left out what they wanted to put in since it was never a part of the gospel in the first place.  If he had agreed with them that Gentiles had to become Jews, he would not be persecuted by his fellow Jews (who thought he was betraying God and Moses with his message).

Paul concludes then in this section that cutting off part of your body (like in circumcision) does not matter since both Jew and Gentile are now accepted equally into a single family – why not just go all the way and be castrated rather than stop at circumcision?  According to Paul, there is no significant religious difference.  The irony here, of course, is that to be castrated would, by the stipulations of the Law, bar one from the religious assembly of Israel.  Only the time of Israel’s rescue and the ingathering of the Gentiles, as foretold by Isaiah, would break down that barrier and allow eunuchs in on equal footing with others – precisely the work of Christ that these agitators who think they are in a privileged religious position are now denying.  Paul is therefore being even cleverer here than it seems on first glance!

Time Travel, Prenatal Ethics and other Miscellania

Random thoughts, mostly things I have posted online elsewhere:

Wow, this is simply HORRIBLE journalism. There are so many things wrong with this article - it's simply sensationalism. A text from hundreds of years after Jesus' death, written in the area from which we get all Gnostic writings which mixed up Jesus and Christianity with the mystery religions, has Jesus mention a "wife", a fact that even the person working on the text admits has nothing to do with whether Jesus was ever married, and what does the journalist say? "A small fragment of faded papyrus contains a suggestion that Jesus may have been married...The discovery, if it is validated, could have major implications for the Christian faith. The belief that Jesus was not married is one reason priests in the Catholic Church must remain celibate and are not allowed to marry. It could also have implications for women's roles in the church, as it would mean Jesus had a female disciple." Ugh. Then the journalist proceeds to undermine everything they just said. Way to go.

The real title of this article should be "I Like Incoherent, Logically Inconsistent Stories because I cannot Understand the Concept of Time Travel", but I think that would've been too long. It's because of writers like this that we have all the incoherent time travel stories that we do (and which I therefore despise, though I tend to give Doctor Who and Back to the Future a pass since criticizing them for lack of logic is like criticizing the Hitchhiker's Guide for letting Arthur turn into an infinite number of penguins). Seriously, this is horrible. Not all of the 4 options are even KINDS of time travel at all, nor even necessarily incompatible options. Number 3 is simply incoherent, 4 isn't really time travel but universe-hopping. Number 2, which is how non-contradictory time travel would work, has nothing to do with predestination, pre-ordination of events, or lack of any agency.

(1) New-born infants have a right to live;
(2) If there is no relevant intrinsic difference between the members of two sets, then the members of one set will have the same rights as the other;
(3) There is no relevant intrinsic difference between new-born infants and late-term, un-born fetuses;
(4) Therefore, late-term, un-born fetuses have a right to live.
This is a deductively valid argument, which means the only way to avoid the conclusion would be to reject at least one of the premises 1-3. But 2 seems to be a basic principle about rights and 3 is a scientific fact. 1 is therefore the most vulnerable, but few, I think, would be able to stomach the idea that infants have no right to live - to accept that would be pretty implausible. Since 1-3 are fairly certain and the argument is valid, then, we have to accept 4 as well.

Obama seems to deny 4, though, which makes me wonder which of 1-3 he would reject. But I'm sure he hasn't really thought about it (remember the "above my paygrade" remark?). This is just one of the reasons why I cannot understand people's enthusiasm for Obama (his unprecedented rolling back of various freedoms including religion and conscience are some of the other reasons). I understand people really liking some things about him or liking him more than Romney or liking him in general, but the unqualified enthusiasm some people have I cannot relate to. (Almost no one has any kind of enthusiasm for Romney (I certainly don't), so that's not an issue on his side!)

Since I did a potshot at Obama, here's one aimed at Romney: I think the rich should be taxed a lot more than the poor sheerly as a matter of fairness. Suppose we tax everyone 10% - then the person making 20,000 a year will be forced to pay 2000 - a chunk of their income they would be much better off holding onto. For them, missing that money is going to make a noticeable difference in their life. But suppose then we have someone making 100 million - 10 million is just a drop in the bucket and won't affect the quality of their lives in any noticeable way. Money has a diminishing marginal value as income goes up - 10% for a rich person, say, is an entirely different beast from 10% for a poor person. Suppose we actually scaled taxes according to the actual value money has for the individuals concerned (our tax brackets go some way towards this), then the rich person would be paying a much higher percentage of their income then the poor person and the two would be equally affected (or not affected) by the tax. And that's not even taking into account arguments you might make concerning the increased debt the rich have towards society for creating the possibility and infrastructure for such wealth in the first place. Those are just my own opinions, though.

 I don't always agree with him or think he's always fair to conservatives, but Jon Stewart is reliably hilarious. Apropos the above on taxation, this is pretty entertaining (be sure to click to watch on part two too).


I don't agree with all of this, but some interesting thoughts from a Christian philosopher on reforming higher education.

Tiessen on Salvation without Hearing the Gospel

Some thoughts on Tiessen's Who Can Be Saved?. For an online class I took.

***

The goal of Terrance Tiessen’s book Who Can Be Saved? is to assess the possibility of salvation in Christ and in other religions and how we as Christians ought to respond. Tiessen gives a rough taxonomy of views about the salvation of the unevangelized (among which he includes everyone from infants to adults who have not had the opportunity to hear the gospel for whatever reason), dividing these into the categories of ecclesiocentrism (called by the professor “exclusivism” or “particularism”), agnosticism, accessibilism (called by the professor “inclusivism”), instrumentalism, and relativism (this last at least falling under the professor’s “pluralism” category). This is a taxonomy that seems in some ways more comprehensive than that used by the professor since it includes categories that were not included by him (though the professor may have a better taxonomy for pluralism, even if some of those listed as pluralists Tiessen would put in the instrumentalist category and others in the relativist). Tiessen wants, in this book, to argue for and lay out an accessibilist view, according to which it is possible for some unevangelized non-Christians to be saved.

Tiessen starts with a Calvinist view. He thinks everyone, including infants, need to be saved but that Christ’s salvific work is for the elect alone. Everyone, on his view, has the revelation necessary to respond to God with faith, whether in a general or particular, individual form, or in the form of the gospel or Bible which is in the care of God’s covenant people. Only the elect, however, are given the effective grace which moves that person in faith to God. Without such effective grace, such a response cannot happen (even though, he claims, everyone has been given universally sufficient grace at one time or another which enables them to make a response of faith). This does not negate the freedom of the human individual, however, since Tiessen is a compatibilist and believes that human freedom and responsibility are compatible with everything being determined. This makes his view rather unlike that of other Evangelical accessibilists such as Clark Pinnock who is neither a Calvinist nor a compatibilist regarding free will (and hence unlike the professor as well).

On Tiessen’s view, everyone is judged according to how they responded to the revelation actually given to them and are not held accountable for revelation of which they were unaware. Hence, someone without explicit knowledge of the gospel could be saved in the case where they have responded in faith to the amount of revelation of God they do in fact possess. Tiessen cites various Old Testament believers and others as examples of this. These arguments in Tiessen I found personally surprising as I had not thought explicitly about the passages he brings up in quite that way before and the real life examples he brings up are equally interesting. However, for Tiessen, it is still best for people, saved or not, to come to a full knowledge of God in Christ and for God to be glorified in the church and through the spread of the gospel, hence mission in love is still essential to the task of the church.

Since everyone has revelation necessary for faith, Tiessen also holds that infants or the unborn are also saved by faith, their response to divine revelation. Because he assumes substance dualism, holding the mind to be an independent entity from the body, he thinks the infant’s mind can go beyond any biologically-linked limitations. In addition, he holds that infants – and, indeed, everyone – meets Jesus at the moment of their death and they will respond to that revelation in a way in keeping with their response to previous, lesser revelation. So if an embryo responded in faith to the revelation given to it in the womb, at its death (say, because of a miscarriage), it would meet Christ and respond with faith in Christ. The elect, then, will always at the moment of death respond to Christ with faith.

I agree with his conclusions in his book, in line with some of Clark Pinnock’s thinking, that people in other religions might sometimes have fallible experiences of God or have access to flawed or demonically distorted reports of genuine revelation and that God in his providence is able to use these as a bridge to faith. And this is so even though, contrary to relativists and instrumentalists such as John Hick and others mentioned by the professor, these other religions are neither instituted as systems by God for salvation nor are they themselves as those systems instruments of salvation. This, as Tiessen maintains, provides some impetus for dialogue but not interreligious worship, which would be unfaithful to the gospel.

There are a couple of problems with Tiessen’s book I would like to address. First of all, considering his own self-classification, if an ecclesiocentrist is someone who says that every saved person meets Jesus while still alive, Tiessen seems to be an ecclesiocentrist, contrary to his claims otherwise, since he thinks every person meets Jesus while still alive. He thinks his position is different because one meets Jesus at the moment of death, but that moment can be understood in one of two ways: either as the first moment of being not-alive or the last moment of being alive. If the former, then the meeting is only after death. That would be the view of Clark Pinnock and would indeed allow him to remain an accessibilist, but this is in fact a view which Tiessen rejects. If the latter, however, then the meeting is indeed while the person is still alive and hence Tiessen is no accessibilist after all. If, on the other hand, ecclesiocentrism requires that a person cannot be saved until that moment of meeting Christ, however, then Tiessen does not accept it after all, since he thinks people can be saved prior to that meeting. But then why have that meeting in the first place? Tiessen seems to retain some ecclesiocentric leanings here, contrary to the general thrust of the rest of his book.

Furthermore, Tiessen tries to answer objections to his Calvinism by positing universally sufficient grace that enables all to believe at some point or another. But only those who receive effective grace actually believe. It is not clear, then, what the point of sufficient grace is. It is not really sufficient, after all, since there is no actual belief or faith without effective grace. Hence, it is not really clear what sufficient grace really does. It is supposed to create for everyone the possibility of faith but it in fact does not, since effective grace is what is required, without which faith cannot happen. Sufficient grace is supposed to make a person responsible for their rejection of Christ and hence accountable for it – guilty and blameworthy – but it is not clear how it does so if that requires a possibility or capability of faith which sufficient grace does not seem to provide.

More importantly for this issue, it is not even clear why it is even important in the first place given that compatibilism about free will is assumed. It might indeed, after all, be determined that a person will not respond without effective grace, but absolutely everything that ever happens is determined on the sort of view Tiessen holds, hence acceptance or rejection of Christ does not seem any different from any other action a person might take. And Tiessen does indeed seem to want to see us as responsible for our own sins (he believes freedom and responsibility are compatible with determinism, after all). Hence, universal sufficient grace does not seem to actually do anything for Tiessen. In regards to responsibility and faith, it is effective grace and compatibilist freedom which do all the theoretical work.

Interestingly, then, Tiessen seems simply to have some strong incompatibilist intuitions in common with Arminians such as Clark Pinnock and others who reject Calvinism. Hence, he posits something that would really only make sense or even be required within a non-Calvinist, incompatibilist framework. In that sort of a framework, such grace would simply be a version of Arminian prevenient grace, granting the ability to each person to respond in faith to Christ (the main difference being that prevenient grace is often seen as always in effect whereas this version from Tiessen is applied at least once in each person’s life but is not necessarily present throughout every life). Given such an ability, a person may exercise their will to turn to God or not – no further effective grace is needed since they are incompatibilistically free to choose either way due to the grace given them.

This makes somewhat clearer what motivates Tiessen so strongly to allow for the salvation of infants. After all, one could see the fact that an infant did not live to hear the gospel as evidence that they were not in fact elect – if God elects someone, he brings them to a saving knowledge of the gospel. One could connect salvation of the children of Christians with belonging to the covenant people for whom Christ died and hence bring in Old Testament saints in the same way, but Tiessen’s motivation for allowing salvation of infants outside of that does not seem to derive from his Calvinism; their lack of being elect should be no more problematic than Calvinistic election in general. In fact, it is simply one instance of it, no different from others, particularly given Tiessen’s strong belief in original guilt. Again, the intuition that we need to leave room for the salvation of such infants seems like it may in fact derive from some non-Calvinist intuitions to the effect that everyone needs to be given a chance to genuinely choose for or against God with their incompatibilist free will. This seems to be connected also with his ecclesiocentric leanings mentioned above. Indeed, he feels some need to say that even infants or aborted embryos meet Christ and can respond to revelation prior to being dead.

However, Tiessen does not argue well enough for the possibility that infants or other mentally undeveloped or impaired persons are mentally equipped to have faith or understand any revelation in the first place. He simply accepts substance dualism without any real argument and assumes the abilities of the mind outstrip the functions or expressions of the brain, even though there seems to be a very tight empirical correlation between them. Many Christians, by contrast, have other views of the mind-body relation which would not necessarily allow for a natural mental ability in embryos or infants to respond in the way Tiessen wants (Thomistic views, for instance, see the soul or mind as the form of the body whereas animalist theories view the person as simply identical with the body), unless that be after death, if at all (which would fit more with Pinnock’s view, rather than Tiessen’s). These other views, however, are not even considered by Tiessen, but the possibility of their truth should have been taken into account or else argued against explicitly. Tiessen seems driven to this view, however, by his ecclesiocentrist and incompatibilist intuitions even while he wants to maintain a strict accessibilist and compatibilist point of view. It would be better, in my mind, to maintain a cautious agnosticism about infants outside the church than to adopt Tiessen’s overly-speculative theories.

Aquinas and Christmas

Like the great councils of Nicea, Constantinople I, Ephesus, Chalcedon, and Constantinople III, Aquinas addressed, in his own theory of the Incarnation, many of the Christological concerns that had been prevalent during the patristic period. Indeed, one way to see what he is doing is to try to do justice in a philosophical framework to the insights of these great councils, seeing Christ as having both a human nature and a divine nature and these as united in the one person of the divine Word, each with its own characteristic activity and operations. In my previous paper, I showed how the councils just mentioned addressed these concerns; in the present paper my concern will be to show first of all how Aquinas addresses these. As his own views entail that in some sense Christ is not a human person, I will also show how Aquinas can maintain this in light of Christ’s full humanity. Similarly, in regards to Christ’s full divinity and full humanity, I will describe how it is that Aquinas thinks Christ’s human will can be the principle of its own self-determining action but always as an instrument of and in cooperation with his divine will.

In the Incarnation, what is most essential perhaps is that God becomes man. However, to do justice to the divine transcendence requires explaining this in a way that does not impinge on the transcendence and immutability of God. The distinction between the two natures in Christ provides the beginning of a way to do justice to this. Since God qua God – that is, as existing in and through the divine nature – cannot change, then it must be something else that undergoes a change, since obviously some change does occur with the advent of the Incarnation. So it must be the Creation itself which undergoes change, not the Creator. After all, one can say that the divine Word does change in the sense that at one time certain predicates (such as being a man) cannot be applied to the Word but then later one is indeed able to apply such predicates. But that is compatible with there being no actual change in the Word himself as existing in his divine nature since the change which results in a change in which predicates can be appropriately applied may be in something outside of that divine nature.

This change, which is not in the Word in his divinity but in creation, involves the creation by God of a human nature in personal dependence on the Word as the Word’s own. A bit of creation, in this way, has been taken into the divine life, conjoined to God. It is not a pre-existing human nature but a created nature created precisely as a way of being for the divine Word, itself dependent upon the Word and lacking its own separate individual existence distinct from and apart from the Word since it is itself a mode of the Word’s own existing.

For Aquinas, this change in creation and subsequent relation of dependence of the humanity of the Word on the person of the Word involves the coming into being of new mixed relations rather than relations in which each term is really related to the other. Instead, the human nature is really related to the Word as one of its two modes of existence. The relation is real in it as it comes into existence united to the Word. This involves a real effect in the humanity without a change or any kind of effect in the Word in his divine existence, guaranteeing thus both the possibility of full humanity and full divinity since the two natures thus remain unmixed yet united in the one person of the Word, the human nature subject to change and really related to the divine but the divine nature still immutable and only in ideal relation to the human nature, the relation being in the human nature alone. Because God thus remains immutable in becoming human, we can truly say that it is God in Christ who has become a mutable man, not some other entity which in becoming a human would be subject to change and hence devoid of the divine transcendence proper to God. This works precisely because it is one and the same divine Word who, in addition to his divine nature, has conjoined to him a human nature in addition, thus permitting the communication of idioms when speaking of Christ.

Christ has a full human nature, however, composed of a fully human soul united to a fully human body. The problem is having this body/soul compound and full humanity in Christ yet not have it constitute its own person in addition to the divine person of the Word. A Boethian conception of personhood would let any concrete nature capable of consciousness and freedom to be a person, in which case there would be a human person in addition to divine person of the Word. Aquinas, however, requires of personhood or being a hypostasis that it be complete and existing independently of other things. In this sense, there is only one person in Christ for Aquinas, the divine person of the Word.

A union of joined body and soul, however, would in normal circumstances result in the existence of a human person. In Christ there is no such person but only a human nature since the human nature of Christ does not exist apart from all other hypostases but instead exists only in dependence on the person or hypostasis of the Word. Otherwise, the human nature would have its own human person, existing apart from the Word. The divine person, then, takes the place of the human person, preventing the human nature of Christ from being the mode of existence of a separate human person. If we understand a human person as a human nature existing hypostatically in itself, then on Aquinas’s view, there is no human person of Christ, only a divine person existing compositely in both divine and human natures.

For Aquinas, a person or hypostasis is not equivalent to the modern notion of a personality or a stream of consciousness but an individual existent. Personhood is a matter of who, not of what. The hypostasis of someone specifies who it is, its nature specifies what it is, giving the way in which that who exists. Being fully human, however, is a matter of what one is – one’s nature – not who one is – one’s hypostasis. Whether or not the person who has the human nature is divine or human does not impact the full humanity of that person, since being a divine person in no way effects what that person is. Insofar as they have a full, working human nature, that person is thereby fully human. The absence of a human person does not, in Christ, involve an absence of anything in his humanity but rather is the result of its addition to the divine person. Christ, then, is fully human and in that sense, subsisting in a human nature, can be said to be a human person. But Christ’s personhood does not arise from the human nature on its own, existing apart from everything else, and in that sense Christ is not a human person, but in such a way that his full humanity remains intact.

All this shows, then, that on Aquinas’s views it is truly God who is redeeming us as a man, but in such a way that the divine Word retains his divine transcendence and yet also possesses full humanity and unites both divinity and humanity in a single person. To show, however, that Jesus’ humanity is truly a mediator in our salvation and not simply an instrument of God (and hence is a full humanity and able to save human beings through his life, death, and resurrection), Aquinas must elaborate a dyothelite position which allows for truly human acting and willing. Otherwise, the divine will and activity crowd out the human and it becomes the divine nature alone which is active, the human nature being merely a passive participant and not a truly human source of human willing and human activity. It is the human suffering and willing of the divine Word in a genuinely human fashion that is redemptive, after all.

In Aquinas’s view, it seems that there is first of all a coordination of the divine will and human will in Christ rooted precisely in the fact that it is one person who possesses both wills, both principles of genuinely divine and human activity. The human will of Christ receives its principle of activity and is moved towards the intentions of God by the divine will. In this way, the human will of Christ acts as an instrument of the divine will in bringing about the divine ends. It is not a mere instrument, however, as the actions of the human nature of Christ are mediated by his human will, which is free and self-determining. It is, hence, a conjoined will as the will of the very divine person using it as an instrument, but also an instrument of the rational order with its own principle of action moved via that principle by another principle of action, the divine. It is hence not passive in this interaction but actively pursues and chooses for itself the intentions and goals of the divine will.

The human will of Christ, hence, is moved by the divine will to freely act and is graced by God in its hypostatic union with the person of the Word with the grace necessary to do so. This grace perfects in some way the human nature of Christ, as human nature is always perfected through the infusion of divine grace, which thereby makes Christ’s will free to always follow the good. In this sense of freedom, freedom to do the good, the hypostatic union and corresponding instrumentality of the human will of Christ in fact guarantee the freedom of that will rather than take away from it. The divine will, then, moves the human will of Christ towards freely pursuing the good and the divine ends, but through the self-determining and active principles of the human nature, not directly and without that mediation. As a conjoined will being used by a divine will, the influence of that divine will is one from the inside (internal to that person), as it were, not an external or coercive one. This may very well require, as perhaps Aquinas, White and Crowley seem to think (see, for instance, White 415, 421), a progressive human knowledge in Christ of who he is and of God’s will in given situations, graced upon him as part of the cooperation of his human nature with his divine, thus helping to secure a psychological unity for Christ as a single, integrated person of unmixed humanity and divinity. As already said, this grace perfects Christ’s humanity rather than detracts from it. By always being aware of the good and will of God, Christ, because of his graced human nature and will, always acts in accordance with the good and divine will, the human and divine wills thus being coordinated and yet their own principles of genuinely free activity in the person of Christ.

The person of the divine Word, then, acts as a single person precisely through this coordinated cooperation of his two natures and two wills. The Word is fully God, transcendent and unchanging even in the Incarnation. The Word is fully human, possessed of a union of body and soul with a functioning human life and active, self-determining will. It is one divine person who exists in and acts through each of these natures; there is not a distinct human person in Christ. Hence, it is in Christ truly God who redeems and truly through his own humanity and its activities and will that he does so. Aquinas appears, then, to have further elaborated and defended the very balancing of the various Christological concerns that was so vigorously defended by the great councils of the church.

Sealed Until the End: The Messianic Secret as Apocalyptic Motif

A paper I wrote for a New Testament class this last semester at the GTU. Unfortunately, I had a maximum of 10 pages to write this in, so I had to leave out a lot of interesting parallels between Mark and Daniel and did not have a lot of space to explain the things I did talk about. But here it is:

In Mark there appears to be a motif or set of motifs involving secrecy – secrecy, for instance, concerning miracles, concerning an aspect (or aspects) of Jesus’ message, and concerning his identity. Such a motif of secrecy in Mark, particularly as it concerns Jesus’ identity, has been dubbed the Messianic Secret. Properly speaking, there are a number of secrecy motifs in Mark, not all of them really concerning Jesus’ identity. But, as Jack Kingsbury puts it, these “may be motifs that can be distinguished from the messianic secret, but it is obvious that they can also enhance and further it.”[1] In other words, the other secrecy motifs may be read as reinforcing the motif concerning the secret of Jesus’ identity and hence examining the latter will likely involve examining at least some aspects of the former as well.

While there are many different ways to go about trying to explain the secrecy motif, the goal of this paper is not to sort through these or to evaluate which does a better job and where. Instead, the goal is to show that we can read the Messianic Secret in Mark as a kind of apocalyptic motif, particularly inspired by the book of Daniel – in particular, one that invites its readers into believing reception of the secrets unveiled to them in the book and a status as a follower of Jesus. This is not meant to forestall other understandings of the Secret nor is it meant to exhaustively explain it in every one of its details – it is simply meant to give us one more interpretive angle by which we can understand the secrecy motif in a better, fuller fashion.

The plan for the rest of this paper, then, is first to take some steps towards establishing echoes and correspondences both between Mark 4:1-20 and Daniel (especially chapter 2) and Mark 13 and Daniel. I then turn to some of the passages in which the Messianic Secret proper might be said to actually pop up and offer a preliminary reading of these within the context of my treatment of Mark 4 and 13. Finally, I will sum up how we can look at the Messianic Secret as a kind of apocalyptic motif based on such a reading.

Let us turn first to Mark 4:1-20 and Daniel 2 and the respective secrets or mysteries displayed therein.[2] Each of these two passages presents us with a riddle, a message hidden in imagistic clothing, in Mark in the form of a parable and in Daniel in the form of a dream. Each, then, gives us a wisdom-riddle which presents us with, as it says in the Greek text of both passages, a musthvrion – that is, a secret or mystery (Daniel 2:27 and Mark 4:11).[3] Indeed, later on in the Greek (12:8), Daniel, when inquiring into the meanings of his own visions, asks about parabolaiv or parables.[4] In Mark 4, there is likewise a mystery and it is given in parables.

The mystery, then, in both Daniel and Mark is indeed given, either in the form of dream or of parable, but it still requires explanation – the revelation is there, but it does not automatically generate understanding. Neither the disciples nor Nebuchadnezzar, though already given their respective mysteries, are able on their own to apprehend them. Such understanding must come from some special revelation or explanation. This failure to understand in both books emphasizes the mysteriousness of what is being given and questions may be required to get at the true meaning of what is being communicated. This becomes more apparent later on in Daniel where Daniel, like Nebuchadnezzar’s earlier seeking after the meaning of his dream, needs to ask questions in order to unpack the mysterious revelations he has been given (Daniel 8:27; 12:8).[5] In fact, as Joel Marcus has pointed out, in apocalyptic environments, inquisitiveness was seen as a good and adds that in Mark “it is a sign of serious spiritual impairment when [the disciples] become afraid to ask [questions] (9:32).”[6] The disciples’ questions, then, are not necessarily being cast in a purely negative light but may in fact play a positive function here as in Daniel and other apocalyptic works.

But what is this mystery? In both Mark 4 and Daniel 2, the mystery has something to do with God’s divine actions in history or God’s kingdom (basileiva in both Mark 4 and Daniel 2). In the early chapters of Daniel, for instance, we see God as sovereign even in the midst of the pagan, ungodly rule of foreign powers. In Daniel 2:44-45, God’s eschatological kingdom arrives not with the help of human hands but as an act of God’s perpetual sovereignty, thus emphasizing the theme in Daniel of the faithful suffering patiently through tribulation, awaiting God and God’s actions to bring in the kingdom and their salvation rather than attempting to force it on their own.[7] In Mark, we see that God’s kingdom has already come but not yet in its fullness and is to be followed not by way of military action but through taking up one’s cross and following Jesus – it does not yet overtake all other kingdoms but rather has come in their midst as an act of God in the person of Jesus, proceeding by the preaching of God’s word and not by the sword – despite what many Jews of his time may have wanted.[8]

As these mysteries concerning God’s kingdom are given veiled in imagery, someone else must help others to understand them. In Daniel, it is God who gives the mystery (e.g., Daniel 2:28) and Daniel who explains to the inquiring Nebuchadnezzar the content of the mystery already given. And in Mark, it is Jesus who both gives and explains the mystery to his inquiring disciples. Jesus (see, for instance, the many passages in which he teaches or is called teacher or rabbi[9]) and Daniel (see, for instance, Daniel 1:17) are both presented as wisdom figures, where wisdom is understood here as insight from God. With Daniel and Jesus we variously have such insight granted or communicated to others, thus being or making others wise in virtue of the possession of such revelatory insight.[10]

In Daniel, what is revealed in particular through Daniel is what must happen according to God’s plan for history leading up to his kingdom. In the Greek version of 2:28-29, the phrase for “it must happen” is dei: genevsqai, which does not occur in Mark 4 but does occur later in the apocalyptic discourse of Mark 13 in verse 7.[11] Such a deterministic air, however, so common in apocalyptic literature, also appears in Mark 4, particularly in verses 11 and 12, where the purpose of giving the mystery of the kingdom in parable form is, in effect, to illuminate “those inside” but to harden the already unbelieving hearts of “those outside”.[12] In the context of Mark 3, it may very well be that the insiders are those who “do God’s will” (3:35) and outsiders those who directly oppose Jesus’ ministry, such as the religious authorities (3:22 – cf. 3:28-29).[13] While the crowds are invited in, these religious authorities have shut themselves out and are confirmed in their opposition by Jesus’ own preaching. In a pattern reminiscent of Pharaoh before Moses or the Israelites before Isaiah (in the Isaiah 6 passage quoted in Mark), their own hardness of heart and stubborn unbelief, their resistance against God and his prophet, results in a punitive further hardening. As Joel Marcus puts it, “in a way their condemnation to blindness and obduracy in 4:12 is just a ratification of a process already in motion.”[14]

The hardening of Jesus’ opponents, however, according to many scholars has the specific goal of guaranteeing Jesus’ death by provoking such opponents into escalating their opposition. His crucifixion is not a failure of his ministry, but a crucial part of its success.[15] Speaking of much of the secrecy in Mark in general (cf. Mark 4:21-25), Marcus writes, “Jesus […] must hide his lamp under a bushel […] in order that he may be opposed and, ultimately, killed – in order that he may ‘give his life as a ransom for many’ (10:45).”[16] The crucifixion is therefore part of God’s predetermined plan, enacted partly through the God-ordained means of Jesus’ own preaching of the mystery of the kingdom in parable form. As Mark progresses towards the crucifixion, the apocalyptic overtones echoed in the modal verb deiv start to pile up, the majority coming in the apocalyptic discourse of chapter 13 (outside that chapter, one finds it in key eschatological or predictive contexts, for instance, in 8:31; 9:11; 14:31),[17] all leading up to the Passion, thus fulfilling Scripture and God’s plan.

By putting both the parable and its explanation in the book, however, Mark seems to be inviting his reader to either become or continue being wise like Daniel or those who are in Jesus’ circle by their reception of this divine revelation – and thus being wise, being also an insider with regard to Jesus and not an outsider. Readers may be encouraged, then, to see themselves as ones who have been given the secret of kingdom of God by Jesus since it has been written out for them in this very book. There may also be a hint of such a strategy also in Mark 13, to which we now turn.

As already hinted at, chapter 13 concentrates the apocalyptic vibe of Mark into a single discourse.[18] More instances of deiv seem to show up here than in any other chapter (13:7, 10, 14). The idea of an apocalyptic timetable as expressed in this chapter appears also in Daniel 12:7, 11, 12, minus the exact calculations and in favor of a more general sense of indefinite timing (Mark 13:32-37). Indeed, the notion of a shortening of the days as in 13:20, a truncation of the timetable, appears not only in Mark but also in other more paradigmatic apocalyptic works (1 Enoch 80:2; 83:1; Baruch 20:2).[19]

This shortened timetable is necessitated by the unparalleled suffering summarized in the prediction of 13:19, which seems to allude to the similar prediction of unparalleled suffering in Daniel 12:1.[20] And, as in Daniel 12:1, God shows mercy on his chosen ones – as already mentioned, the time in Mark 13:20 is cut short for their sake. Just as passages such as chapter 12 of Daniel can be read as a call to perseverance in the midst of refining suffering,[21] so also Mark 13 (and, indeed, Mark as a whole with its call for Christians to follow the way of the Cross). As John Goldingay states in relation to the suffering spoken of in Daniel, “It forces people to make up their mind which side they are on.”[22] So also Mark 13 can be seen as a call to choose sides and to choose the right one – to stay on the inside with Jesus and his followers.

For Mark’s readers, who many have suggested were undergoing some amount of persecution or suffering, this may have been an important call. Mark, in 13:14, connects more directly with them – making sure they know that this is written to them, perhaps calling attention to some particular aspect of what he is saying[23] – with the words “let the reader understand”. Although this is immediately connected with Jesus’ allusion to the abomination (bdeluvgma) of Daniel 9:27, 11:31, and 12:11, we can also, considering similar calls in Daniel, read it as applying also more generally to the discourse as a whole. Calls to understand a given passage occur, for instance, in Daniel 9:23 and 9:25,[24] calls which are directed at Daniel but which could also be seen as directed at the reader (perhaps uncoincidentally, this is also the very same passage where the abomination first shows up in Daniel).

Here in Mark 13, as in Mark 4, there may be an idea that the reader, by believing reception of what is given, will achieve understanding and stand as one of God’s chosen ones. This idea may also be present in Daniel 9 and indeed in the book as a whole, with its theme of the unveiling of various mysteries and future events, particularly for the sake of the readers who come later to the book – its messages were sealed for the future, hidden from others (Daniel 8:26-27; 12:4, 9-10), but now revealed at the proper time to the wise, those who believingly appropriate the book and its message and who are promised a glorious future. [25] As John Collins puts it, “Because the book is sealed, true understanding is hidden” – it is only available to the wise.[26] If we read Mark 13 against this background, we can look at it as having more to do with the secrecy motifs than it may have seemed at first – hidden things about the future spoken by Jesus have been put into this book and given to the readers so that they might read and understand and stand firm as part of God’s chosen. It is not so different, then, on such a reading, from the use of the secrecy motif as it occurred back in Mark 4. Let us now see how these apocalyptic themes which we have seen in Mark 4 and 13 can help us understand the Messianic Secret.

The secret of Jesus’ identity in Mark, Kingsbury has shown, is associated more often with the title “Son of God” than any other title in the book (1:11; 1:24-25, 34; 3:11-12; 5:7; 9:2-9; 12:1, 6; 14:11-64).[27] Mark slowly unfolds the secret of Jesus’ divine sonship throughout the second half of his gospel, marching through such partial understandings as 11:1-11 and 12:35-37, culminating in the insightful statement of 15:39 when Jesus dies on the cross. As Kingsbury puts it, in 8:27-16:8 “Mark guides the reader through a progressive unveiling of Jesus’ identity: the reader witnesses, respectively, Peter confess Jesus to be the Messiah, Bartimaeus appeal to him as the Son of David, and, finally, the centurion penetrate what for Mark is the essential secret of Jesus’ person, his divine sonship.”[28]

How are we to understand this progressive unveiling of the secret of Jesus’ identity and its relative hiddenness in Mark 1:1-8:26? From the general apocalyptic context of the book and its relation to the unveiling of secrets, particularly as we have seen in Mark 4 and 13, perhaps we can see this unveiling of Jesus’ identity as at least partially falling within this matrix of ideas. In this eschatological moment of the nearing of the kingdom (1:15), there is an initial divinely given message of divine sonship (1:11). In the following passages, it seems only the demons know of Jesus’ true identity as God’s Son, thus emphasizing that the truth of this is not discernible without supernatural aid. Such contests with the demonic or with oppressive spiritual forces occur also in Daniel 10:13, 20 and in other apocalyptic literature elsewhere as well, thus also emphasizing Jesus’ eschatological kingdom power.

It may very well be that part of what is going on when Jesus silences the demons is that the demons are trying to gain control over Jesus by stating who he really is but Jesus shows his greater power as their exorcist by silencing them.[29] But we can also see this in an apocalyptic light – it is not yet the right time in the divine time table for the unveiling of this secret. Yet, of course, Mark’s readers, by the very recounting of such stories are being let in on the secret as part of the continual invitation to read and understand and join in as insiders with regards to Jesus and his kingdom. In 8:30, after Peter is the first of the disciples to finally confess Jesus as the messiah, Jesus warns the disciples not to tell anyone, which emphasizes the lack of understanding of the disciples as to the exact kind of messiah he would be (and the nature of the kingdom as it was breaking in at this time in his person) – a suffering and dying one (3:31-33) whose followers need to be willing to take on suffering and death as well (3:34-38).

The warning thus emphasizes the secrecy or hiddenness of Jesus’ messiahship, both from the disciples and the rest of the world. From here on out, Mark unveils to his readers what kind of messiah this is, the suffering, Danielic, apocalyptic Son of Man (see Daniel 7) who is the Son of God.[30] The disciples do not fully understand all of this until after Easter – though they hear God’s reaffirmation of Jesus’ divine sonship in 9:7 (directly echoing the earlier 1:11), thus giving them the secret of Jesus’ identity, they do not understand it and are, as in the case of Daniel and his visions of the future and heavenly glory, not to reveal any of what happened at the transfiguration until after Jesus rises from the dead (9:9). Predictions of Jesus’ death continue from here on out as Jesus approaches his passion to come at Jerusalem.[31] As Ulrich Luz puts it, Jesus’ coming “suffering remains incomprehensible to the disciples until the cross. Only there, in the light of Jesus’ death, is full understanding and genuine confession of Jesus’ divine sonship possible, as Mark shows by way of example through the gentile centurion’s confession at the cross.”[32]

The Messianic Secret, read against the apocalyptic background of Daniel, particularly as instantiated in Mark 4 and 13, can thus be read as an apocalyptic motif used by Mark as a literary device, reinforced and in combination with some of the other secrecy motifs woven into the book of Mark. There is a divine time table and the correct time for the unveiling of secrets, here Jesus’ identity, is not to be rushed – and, in fact, the veiling and the timing of partial or full unveilment may very well be part of what pushes the plan along. Correct timing pushes the opposition forward and controls the perceptions of Jesus’ identity for their proper times.[33] The secrets themselves and their understanding, though, are for those inside – Jesus’ followers – alone, but such understanding comes in part through believing reception of the very words and secrets recorded in this book and finally unveiled now at the proper time for the readers. In Jesus’ death and resurrection, the end times for which the book has been written have proleptically arrived, thus ending Mark’s book on a note looking forward to resurrection, and the triumph of God and God’s kingdom over history, much as the book of Daniel itself ends. Like in Daniel, Mark’s readers are invited to take a part in this.[34]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Collins, Adela Yarbro. “The Influence of Daniel on the New Testament.” In J. J. Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, 90-112. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993.

Collins, John J. Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993.

Donahue, J. R. and D. J. Harrington. The Gospel of Mark. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2002.

Evans, Craig A. “The Function of Isaiah 6:9-10 in Mark and John.” Novum Testamentum 24 (1982): 124-138.

Goldingay, John E. Daniel. Dallas: Word, 1989.

Gundry, Robert H. Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1993.

Kingsbury, Jack D. The Christology of Mark’s Gospel. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983.

Luz, Ulrich. “The Secrecy Motif and the Marcan Christology.” In The Messianic Secret, edited by C. Tuckett, 75-96. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983.

Marcus, Joel. Mark 1-8. New York: Doubleday, 2000.

Moule, Charles F. D. “On Defining the Messianic Secret in Mark.” In Jesus und Paulus: Festschrift für Werner Georg Kümmel zum 70. Geburtstag, edited by E. E. Ellis and E. Gräßer, 239-252. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1975.

Telford, W. R. The Theology of the Gospel of Mark. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Tuckett, Christopher. “Introduction: The Problem of the Messianic Secret.” In The Messianic Secret, edited by C. Tuckett, 1-28. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983.

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[1] Jack D. Kingsbury, The Christology of Mark’s Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 11. Cf. Christopher Tuckett, “Introduction: The Problem of the Messianic Secret,” in The Messianic Secret, ed. C. Tuckett (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 1-28.

[2] There is another possible correspondence in Mark 4 with Daniel – the mighty tree in the parable of Mark 4:32 with its birds and branches may be an echo of the tree in the dream of Daniel 4 which similarly hosts animals. See John J. Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 107.

[3] Adela Yarbro Collins, “The Influence of Daniel on the New Testament,” in J. J. Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, 105-106. In drawing correspondences between Daniel and Mark, I will elsewhere also be making reference to the Greek text of Daniel.

[4] Collins, Daniel, 400.

[5] Collins, Daniel, 400; Robert H. Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1993), 197; Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8 (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 298.

[6] Marcus, Mark, 302. From the Dead Sea Scrolls, Marcus cites, for comparison, 1QH 4:23-24; 1Q5 5:11-12.

[7] Cf. Collins, Daniel, 51; John E. Goldingay, Daniel (Dallas: Word, 1989), 330.

[8] J. R. Donahue and D. J. Harrington, The Gospel of Mark (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2002), 146; Gundry, Mark, 206-207; Kingsbury, Christology, 73; Marcus, Mark, 303.

[9] For a sample list, see W. R. Telford, The Theology of the Gospel of Mark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 33-34.

[10] Collins, Daniel, 49-50, 105-106; Donahue and Harrington, Mark, 145; Goldingay, Daniel, 57.

[11] Collins, Daniel, 105-106; Donahue and Harrington, Mark, 145.

[12] Donahue and Harrington, Mark, 145; Gundry, Mark, 195-198; Marcus, Mark, 303. Donahue and Harrington, in particular, cite for comparison 1 Enoch 83:7; 91:5; 1QM 1:9-10; 1QpHab 7:13.

[13] Donahue and Harrington, Mark, 146; Gundry, Mark, 195, 203-207.

[14] Marcus, Mark, 306.

[15] Craig A. Evans, “The Function of Isaiah 6:9-10 in Mark and John,” Novum Testamentum 24 (1982): 138; Gundry, Mark, 195; Marcus, Mark, 526.

[16] Marcus, Mark, 526.

[17] Donahue and Harrington, Mark, 261.

[18] For additional parallels between this chapter of Mark and the book of Daniel or other apocalyptic literature beyond what I pursue here, see, for example, Donahue and Harrington, Mark, 371; Gundry, Mark, 747.

[19] Donahue and Harrington, Mark, 373.

[20] Collins, “Influence”, 110. A snippet of the parallel language – Mark 13:19: “aiJ hJmevrai ejkeivnai qli:yiV oi{a ouj gevgonen toiauvth ajp j”; Daniel 12:1: “ejkeivnh hJ hJmevra qlivyewV oi{a oujk ejgenhvqh ajf j”.

[21] Goldingay, Daniel, 319.

[22] Goldingay, Daniel, 319.

[23] Gundry argues that it is calling attention to Mark’s use of the masculine rather than the neuter in reference to the abomination of 13:14. But, as I will interpret it, it may additionally (or instead) also be a general call for the reader to pay attention. See Gundry, Mark, 743.

[24] Cf. Gundry, Mark, 743.

[25] Cf. Collins, Daniel, 341-342, 400; Goldingay, Daniel, 218, 309.

[26] Collins, Daniel, 400.

[27] Kingsbury, Christology, 12, 19, 150, 164. Cf. Charles F. D. Moule, “On Defining the Messianic Secret in Mark,” in Jesus und Paulus: Festschrift für Werner Georg Kümmel zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. E. E. Ellis and E. Gräßer (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1975), 242-243.

[28] Kingsbury, Christology, 20.

[29] Gundry, Mark, 88; Ulrich Luz, “The Secrecy Motif and the Marcan Christology,” in The Messianic Secret, ed. C. Tuckett (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 82; Marcus, Mark, 187, 201.

[30] “Son of Man” being an apocalyptic title developed further in other apocalyptic literature but originating in Daniel 7. Unfortunately, there is not enough room in the current paper for a full discussion of this contribution of Daniel to Mark’s apocalyptic atmosphere. For its use in Mark and Daniel, see Collins, Daniel, 80-84; Collins, “Influence,” 90; Kingsbury, Christology, 169-170; Moule, “Defining,” 250; Telford, Theology, 36.

[31] Cf. Collins, “Influence,” 98; Donahue and Harrington, Mark, 28-29, 261; Gundry, Mark, 462; Luz, “Secrecy,” 83-86; Tuckett, “Introduction,” 28.

[32] Luz, “Secrecy,” 85.

[33] Cf. Moule, “Defining,” 248-249.

[34] Cf. Collins, Daniel, 401; Goldingay, Daniel, 318.