The author of the First Epistle General of Peter thought of Jesus in terms of the suffering servant of Isaiah's prophecy. Matthew and Luke describe him as Son of God born in miraculous fashion. These, and other similar titles, taken either from the Old Testament or from the New, conveniently sum up the several ways in which the messiahship and person of Jesus were regarded in various parts of the New Testament, and are styled 'Christologies'. Thus, by a 'Lamb of God Christology' is meant the interpretation of Jesus as victim in a supreme sacrifice, with all the Old Testament background, which such language presumes; by a 'Son of David Christology' the interpretation of him as messianic king of the Davidic line. So, when the author of the fourth Gospel records that John the Baptist declared Jesus to be the Lamb of God, and subsequently; elucidates this statement in his narrative of the passion, (Jn.i.29,36; xix.33‑36) a 'Lamb of God Christology' is indicated; and when blind Bartimaeus is healed in response to the cry, 'Son of David, have mercy upon me' (Mk.x.46‑52), the incident reflects a 'Son of David Christology'. When such distinctive Christologies appear in the various strata of tradition it may be found that they are attached loosely to it, and, consequently, are capable of isolation. In which case it may be possible even to date their emergence in the primitive church.
The result of the attempt to discover and to analyse the editorial tendencies of Matthew and Luke has been to thrust the reader back upon the Marcan gospel. And he must have been led to suspect that Mark had written his gospel with a quite definite Christological purpose, and to suspect also that his purpose may not only have coloured his gospel, but have caused him to manipulate the tradition drastically in order that it might conform to his peculiar Christology. This inevitable suspicion must now be justified or discarded, and this is possible since we are by no means at his mercy. By a comparison of Mark with the other three blocks of material ‑ that which is common to Matthew and Luke; that which Luke alone used; and that which Matthew alone used - it should be possible to discover whether there is a Christology which is characteristically Marcan; whether, that is, the Marcan interpretation is, so far as we can judge, merely one among many primitive Christian interpretations of a simple original history.
If the impression of the Marcan gospel given in Chapter IV is justified, it is clear that Mark states his thesis in his first words: The gospel of Jesus Christ. Since, however, at great moments in his narrative the title Christ is glossed and defined by Son of God, it is evident that the gospel as a whole represents a Son of God Christology. In order to estimate editorial tendency on Mark's part, the evidence for the existence of this Christology in the rest of the synoptic material must be examined.
The other strata at least contained the title, 'Son of God'. The source common to Matthew and Luke clearly had it, since both record the temptations of Jesus as temptations of the Son of God ‑ 'If thou be the Son of God...' (Mt.iv.3, 6; Lk.iv.3, 9): (Mt.xi.27; Lk.x.22.) and both have a saying of Jesus: 'No one knoweth the Son, save the Father, neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.' But the fact that the same title is used does not make it certain that the Christology attaching to that title has not been developed in a peculiar direction by Mark. The Son of God might mean one who is miraculously Son in the sense that he was conceived as a result of such a miracle as is recorded in the Matthaean and Lucan nativity stories: or it might mean one who recognizes the fatherhood of God in a unique but quite human way. Mark's Christology will have to be examined more precisely before it can be determined what is meant by Son of God in the Marcan gospel, and whether this meaning is corroborated in the other synoptic material.
It has been said that the author of the Marcan gospel was primarily concerned to prove that Jesus is the Son of God. But, strangely enough, the term rarely occurs in his gospel. Apart from the doubtful variant reading in the first verse it is, in fact, used only seven times. Twice it occurs in declarations from heaven. At his baptism and at his transfiguration a voice proclaims his Sonship:
Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased (Mk.i.11)
This is my beloved Son: hear ye him. (Mk.ix.7)
Twice the evil spirits recognize him thus:
Thou art the Son of God. (Mk.iii.11) ‑
What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? (Mk.v.7)
Finally, the narrative of the crucifixion concludes with the centurion's confession:
Truly this man was Son of God. (Mk.xv.39)
Guarded though the use of this term is, it is nevertheless manifestly important and its guardedness deliberate. The first half of this gospel contains only supernatural witnesses to Jesus as the Son of God. Twice he is so named by God, twice by evil spirits. Men think of him variously throughout his ministry, as madman, fanatic, prophet, or messiah: but only in the depth of his humiliation does one man venture to call him Son of God. For some reason, although Mark presumes and indeed insists that Jesus is in fact the Son of God, and arranges his material so as to lead men to the conception of Jesus which the title expresses, he shows, apparently deliberately, that a true understanding of his Sonship can be reached only through recognition of his humiliation, completed in the crucifixion, and vindicated by his raising from the dead. And it is in this context of humiliation that the analogy of Father and Son is used, in the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen and in the saying that
of that day and that hour knoweth no man,
no, not the angels which are in heaven,
neither the Son, but the Father.
(Mk..6) (Mk.i.32)
During the course of the ministry, Mark (Mk.viii.29‑31) employs another title, which Jesus himself substitutes for Peter's confession of faith:
Thou art the Christ.
And he charged them that they should tell no man of him.
And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things...
In the Marcan gospel, Jesus uses the title 'Son of man' of himself fourteen times. Of these, the first two are claims to authority:
The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins. (Mk.ii.10) ‑
The Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath. (Mk.ii.28)
The remainder are prophetic.
The title 'Son of man' is used in prophecies of the rejection, of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and finally, in prophecies
of his future coming in glory.
Three times Mark reiterates in almost identical words that
The Son of man must suffer many things,
and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes,
and be killed, and after three days rise again.
(Mk.viii.31) (Mk.ix.31) (Mk.x.33)
This rejection is interpreted as the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies:
How is it written of the Son of man,
that he should suffer many things and be set at nought? (Mk.ix.12) ‑
For verily the Son of man came
not to be ministered unto, but to minister,
and to give his life a ransom for many. (Mk.x.45)
As the passion approaches, the crucifixion is shown more and more clearly to be the fulfilment of these prophecies:
The Son of man goeth, even as it is written of him:
but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed! (Mk.xiv.21) ‑
Behold, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. (Mk.xiv.41)
But in the midst of all this emphasis upon the rejection of the Son of man there is also an insistent emphasis, first upon his resurrection from the dead (Mk.ix.9), and secondly upon the necessity of his coming again in glory. This coming is also grounded upon Old Testament prophecy.
In the great Marcan discourse about the end of the age (Mk.i.26), Jesus declares: 'Then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.' And when the high priest asks him whether he is the Christ, the Son of the Blessed, Jesus replies: 'I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.' (Mk.xiv.62) These sayings are a deliberate application of the passage in the book of Daniel, which describes a glorious future coming on the clouds of heaven (Dan.vii.13), and also contain the phrase 'son of man'. In Mark, however, the title has two different associations. First it is applied to Jesus in humiliation: then to his future coming in glory. These associations are not merely successive but interdependent. For
Whosover therefore shall be ashamed of me
and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation;
of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed,
when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. (Mk.viii.38)
But the coming in humiliation, that is, the ministry of Jesus, has already, according to Mark, introduced the kingdom. It is not by chance that Mark records that the head of Jesus was anointed by a nameless woman and was crowned by soldiers, or that a kingly title was nailed to his cross. The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed sown upon the earth. (Mk.xiv.3) (Mk.xv.17) (Mk.xv.26) (Mk.iv.31) In fact, it is paradoxically already present and yet still to come. So intrusion of the action of God in the humiliation of the Son of man, and that faith in Jesus which carries with it a sure hope of eternal life, completely revise the old expectation of the last things. Here again Mark repre?sents the life and death of Jesus as the scene of the action of God. This background of divine action is just as necessary for an understanding of the title 'Son of man' as it is for a right understanding of the title 'Son of God'. For, immediately after the proclamation of divine Son-ship at the transfiguration, Mark records that
As they came down from the mountain,
he charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen,
till the Son of man were risen from the dead. (Mk.ix.9)
And when the high priest asked Jesus,
Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? (Mk.xiv.61 f.)
Jesus said,
I am:
and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power,
and coming in the clouds of heaven.
But this fastening of the Son of man Christology upon a necessary humiliation of the Son of God and upon his subsequent coming in glory upon the clouds, and this use of the title Son of man to hold together these two advents of the messiah which seem so characteristically Marcan, are found not only in the gospel of Mark. Matthew and Luke, it is true, did not leave the Marcan Son of man passages unchanged. They tried to make the meaning clearer in the account of Peter's confession, and in the trial, by stating definitely that the Christ is the Son of God. (Mt.xvi.16; Lk.ix.20; Mt.xxvi.63; Lk.x.70) They kept the title 'Son of man', but were evidently not at case with it; yet, nevertheless, they were compelled to incorporate Son of man sayings into their gospels, not only because they stood in Mark, but also because they stood in their common source and in their special material. The common source contained at least six sayings about the Son of man, which fall into precisely the two divisions of the Marcan sayings. Two are prophetic of the future coming:
Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in
the desert;
go not forth:
behold, he is in the secret chambers;
believe it not.
For as the lightning cometh out of the cast, and shineth even unto the west;
so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ‑
Therefore be ye also ready:
for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.
(Mt.xxiv.26 f; cf. Lk.xvii.23 f.) (Mt.xxiv.44; cf. Lk..40)
Three are connected with the rejection and humiliation.
The Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.
The crowds reject the Son of mail as a wine bibber,
just as they rejected John the Baptist as an ascetic.
A word spoken against the Son of man is blasphemy,
but blasphemy that can be forgiven.
Finally, the Son of man, (Mt..32; cf.) like Jonah, shall be a sign to this generation.
(Matthew states that by the sign of Jonah is meant the three days in which Jesus lay buried like Jonah in the belly of the whale. Luke also can hardly refer primarily to Jonah's preaching, for he uses the future 'shall be a sign', when Jesus was already preaching.)
(Mt.viii.20; cf. Lk.ix.58) (Mt.xi.16‑19; cf. Lk.vii.31) (Lk..10) (Mt..38‑44; cf. Lk.xi.29-32)
The material preserved only in Matthew and only in Luke also contains Son of man passages. The special Matthaean material contains references to the sign of the Son of man appearing in heaven at the end, and (Mt.xxiv.30) also a further description of his coming in glory with his angels to sit upon his throne (Mt.xxv.31). It contains, moreover, the parable of the Tares (Mt.i.24‑30), which emphasizes the identity of the man who sowed the good seed with the man who at the harvest orders his husbandmen to destroy the tares and to gather the wheat into his garners. Whether the subsequent interpretation that this man is the Son of man was originally in his source, or is the work of Matthew (Mt.i.36‑43), the parable itself links together two successive and related actions by assigning them to the action of one person. Clearly these actions are the actions of the Christ. Moreover, since the action of sowing refers to Jesus himself, the harvesting must be his work also.
The special Lucan material contains references to 'one of the days of the Son of man', that is, to one of the last days, 'which men shall long to see'; it contains also a description of the final revelation of the 'day of the Son of man', and a question whether 'at his coming he shall find faith upon earth'; and finally it refers to the earthly life of Jesus as a coming of the Son of man in a statement that
The Son of man came to seek and to save that which was
lost.
(Lk.xvii.22) (Lk.xvii.30) (Lk.xviii.8) (Lk.xix.19)
A conclusion from this comparison of Mark with the other strata of tradition is now inevitable. The very remarkable 'Son of man' Christology is not a creation of Mark, and is not the result of his manipulation of the tradition. The whole tradition concerning Jesus, as it is presented by a critical separation of sources, emphasizes two comings, the first in humiliation, and the second in glory. These are held together by the application of the title 'Son of man' to Jesus himself, Mark seems, it is true, to have emphasized the humiliation of the first coining deliberately. Son of God he believed Jesus to be; Son of God he was known by God to be; and as Son of God the evil spirits recognized his authority. But, throughout his ministry and passion, this must not, and indeed cannot, be disclosed in a setting of unbelief. The evil spirits are bidden to be silent and the disciples to say nothing of what they have seen. But there is not the slightest ground for supposing that Mark had no justification for concentrating so emphatically upon Jesus as the humiliated Son of man, or that he had no justification for displaying his divine Sonship through and in this humiliation.
It is now possible to estimate the significance of the 'Son of God' Christology in Mark. The Sonship did not merely consist in recognition of God as Father. Nor did the evil spirits call him Son of God because his powerful acts could only be attributed to a supernatural figure, for there is no reason to suppose that Mark, any more than Matthew or Luke (Mt..27; Lk.xi.19), regarded the casting out of a devil as a unique event. The spirits see through the flesh and blood figure, that is, through Jesus as Son of man, to Jesus as Son of God. Mark implies that true disciples of Jesus must possess a similar insight, and insists that they, unlike the evil spirits, must take up their cross and follow him in his humiliation. The coming in glory is the coming in his unveiled power and authority; but this second coming lies wholly in the future. The Marcan Christology clearly means that in Jesus the rule of God did break into this world from the other. The Son of man has power on earth. The kingdom of God is upon you. The bridegroom is present.
In spite of the fact that most of the non‑Marcan synoptic material is concerned with parables and sayings, the same sequence of ideas appears there also. In the material peculiar to Matthew (Mt.v.22, 28, 34, 39, 44), Jesus demands the complete fulfilment of the old law with a self‑consciousness that is tolerable only when it is recognized that the authority with which he speaks is the same authority that gave the Jewish law its form and substance. In the material peculiar to Luke, Jesus, with the same apparent egoism, declares:
To‑day hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears. (Lk.iv.21)
And in the common source not only does he answer John's question about his messiahship by appealing to his actions as the fulfilment of scripture,
And blessed is he that is not scandalized by me,
but also he declares the kingdom to have
come upon them
if I by the finger of God (or Spirit of God) cast out devils.
(Mt.xi.4 ff; cf. Lk.vii.22 f) (Mt..28; cf Lk.xi.20) (Lk.xvii.21)
Luke quotes from his special source the saying:
Behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst.
Jesus expounds the Mosaic Law and with the same authority expels the evil spirits. It is precisely this authority that he claims when he says, according to the common source of Matthew and Luke:
All things have been given to me by my Father. (Mt.xi.27) (Lk.x.22)
And so in the non‑Marcan as in the Marcan material the words and actions of Jesus are portrayed as the incursion of the authority of God into the affairs of men.
Not only in Mark is Jesus depicted as the humiliated Son of man.
Not only in Mark is this humiliation shot through with the glory of a future coining in visible authority and power.
Not only in Mark is the power of Jesus and the kingdom that he inaugurates a breaking in of that which is beyond historical
investigation.
This fascinating and terrifying Christology is found imbedded in the material that lies behind the editors, Matthew and Luke.
Throughout the whole synoptic material Jesus is called 'Son of God'.
Neither this title, then, nor the Christology attached to it, can be attributed to a tendency of Mark.
That there is a tendency based upon it in his gospel is true.
He, like Matthew and Luke in other ways, makes the paradoxical material of the tradition clearer for his readers. He emphasizes by
careful arrangement the necessary humiliation of the Son of God. But the material that the evangelist has received evokes the
Marcan arrangement and the Marcan emphasis.
I came to bring fire to the earth; and what will I if
it is already kindled?
(Lk..49, 50)
(Moffatt translates, surely rightly, 'would it were kindled already!')
But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!' This saying, found in Luke alone, is neither more nor less than that gospel which Mark has declared in the careful structure of his narrative.
Thus the attempt to throw upon the evangelists the responsibility of having manipulated the earlier tradition in the interests of a remarkable Christology does not survive a rigidly critical examination. The interpretation Put upon the actions and life and death of Jesus did not originate in the minds of the men who compiled the gospels in their present form. Their records have a clear and conscious purpose. That is obvious. But they extracted their purpose from the traditions they received: they did not impose it roughly upon a material unable to bear it. Their editing did not complicate the material, but simplified it. For the clearing away of obscurities ‑ whether of language, of style, of meaning, or even of Christological significance‑was everywhere an attempt to clarify the issues found in the tradition which lay before them.
Two conclusions, therefore, may be drawn with some confidence. In the first place, the difficult Christology which holds together the whole fabric of the tradition is not imposed by any of the evangelists, not even by Mark. The difficult Christology is lying in the various strata of material that they handled, and not only lies there, but controls it. The history of Jesus of Nazareth was already a highly interpreted history, interpreted through the medium of the Old Testament. Moreover, in the material, the actual history was conditioned by the interpretation. Jesus acted as he did act and said what he did say because he was consciously fulfilling a necessity imposed upon him by God through the demands of the Old Testament. He died in Jerusalem, not because the Jews hounded him thither and did him to death, but because he was persuaded that, as messiah, he must journey to Jerusalem in order to be rejected and to die. This violent and voluntary death is the opus operatum that inaugurates the new order. Neither Mark, nor Luke, nor Matthew, is interpreting a mere series of facts: still less are they imposing a Christology upon an undefined human personality. The interpretation is given them in the material which comes to them from various sources, and it is the same interpretation which is being presented to them throughout. The Christological, Old Testament interpretation is lying in the history of Jesus of Nazareth in so far as they know the tradition.
Secondly, so difficult is this Christology that it cannot remain static. The evangelists find it impossible merely to repeat it as it lies imbedded in the tradition. It requires elucidation and simplification. Mark inaugurates this process of elucidation in the form of a gospel in which the Christology is brought out more or less clearly. But his gospel is still obscure, and the later evangelists continue his work of clarification, which is completed, as far as the New Testament is concerned, with the writing of the fourth Gospel.