How to Take Mark 6 on its Own Terms and Stay (small-o) orthodox
I’ve written here before that I enjoy the Theos-Seekers, our younger-adult Sunday school class at Athens Christian Church, and that hasn’t changed. ?Two weeks ago, while reading Phillip Yancey’s The Jesus I Never Knew as a class, we read one of my favorite bits of my favorite gospel, namely Mark 6, and it took us another week, a dive into the Greek text of Mark and Matthew, and a theological discussion that left me unable to articulate my answer to get to this blog post. ?(I’m tempted to excuse myself by pointing to the fact that my daughter had been born four days before Sunday, but I won’t go there.)
The discussion is not unfamiliar to those who have taken any New Testament Greek, I’m going to guess. ?In two parallel passages, one in Mark 6 and the other in Matthew 13, Jesus visits Nazareth, and the people vocally question his speaking as a prophet. ?In both cases, Jesus does not perform “many wonders” (KJV). ?But in the Matthew version, Jesus does not do (one indicative verb)?the wonders because of their unfaithfulness (prepositional phrase indicating motive), while in Mark Jesus is not able to do (indicative verb for “to be able” plus the infinitive “to do”) the wonders, except for a few healings, and He stands astonished by their unfaithfulness (separate sentence implying correlation but less sense of motive).
Naturally, our Sunday school class set to discussing the implications of both ways of telling the story. ?We noted first that neither of these phrases come from Jesus’s direct discourse. ?In other words, in each case the gospel’s narrator is framing the scene. ?I figured that would be enough to satisfy (English teacher that I am), but Jan, who was teaching these weeks (Jan and I share teaching responsibilities because each of us travels frequently over the course of a given year), wanted to push the question one more step: what is the reality underlying both accounts?
I could hear David L. Matson’s voice in the back of my head–take each gospel on its own terms! ?Don’t serve gospel stew for every meal! ?(Dr. Matson taught my New Testament courses when I was an undergrad at Milligan.) ?So my inclination was to say that we should just take Mark on his own terms rather than making one gospel the winner and the other the loser. ?Jan suggested a synthesis, in which “was not able to” reflected a psychological disposition rather than a lack of miracle-muscle, and that’s not a bad move. ?That said, I still wasn’t satisfied, but I couldn’t put my finger on a better way to articulate it. ?This post will try to do that articulation.
One possible key to making sense of Mark on his own terms, without a psychologizing move that strikes me as added-on, is the Garden of Gethsemane scene. ?In that scene, assuming that Mark’s Jesus is not engaging in a sort of play-acting for the narrator, Jesus prays to Heaven for “the cup” of his crucifixion to be taken from him. ?He then goes on to imply at the very least that to avoid upcoming events would be His will but that he ceded the moment to the will of the one (the Father) to whom Jesus prays.
So far so good.
Thus within Mark’s own narrative logic, the text leaves open the possibility that, at other moments, Jesus the human being, if His will were different from the Father-in-Heaven’s will, might have found His human will thwarted, perhaps finding himself without the ability to do what He (the human being) really wanted to do in the moment.
I think that one could take Mark 6’s ability-verb-plus-infinitive as a sign that, as Mark interprets it, this scene is one in which the human being Jesus of Nazareth wills one thing but the Father in Heaven, perhaps because of the people’s unfaithfulness, wills another. ?If those things held, then indeed the human being Jesus of Nazareth would not have the ability to do this or that. ?To make that move, I think, keeps intact the most obvious connotations of the Greek words, locates the power in the narrative where Mark generally locates it, and in general allows Mark to maintain some degree of literary integrity.
Moving over to Matthew, I think that move in Mark lets Matthew do his thing, namely to cast Jesus as as Moses figure, someone who, like His counterpart in the Torah, initiates actions against Israel (or segments thereof), sometimes by direct invocation of the Father and sometimes simply by stretching forth his staff. ?Again, it stays in the literary character of the particular gospel, avoids making Matthew fit Mark’s mold, and overall keeps the gospel intact.
Which one is true? ?Again, as an English teacher, I’m inclined to say both of ‘em, and as a theologian, I’m inclined to say that the written gospels have particular ways of using literary language to articulate divine power, a reality that by definition defies comprehension. ?As a Sunday school teacher I’m inclined to hope that some of our people (I know you’re on Facebook, people!) read this and come to Sunday school this weekend ready to say whether I’m full of beans or not. ?And as a blogger, I hope people comment. ?But as a professor, I’m neglecting my duties to write this. ?So here I sign off.
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It mirrors the calvinist/arminian stalemate, does it not? Does our will allow/frustrate saving grace (and other “wonders”) or is God’s actions of grace in our lives solely a matter of His will and initiation, not subject to our willingness or desire? As in the conundrum here, any answer you might give depends on what passage you look at. That divine power defies comprehension is, I think, a good answer. I have to wonder, though, whether there isn’t also something whack in our presuppositions that makes a contradiction apparent where there is in fact not one.
Only an Orthodox (big O) convert would look at a discussion of gospel exegesis and see Calvin and Arminius dueling. That’s what great about you folks.
As to the contradiction, I was just analyzing the grammar–if in fact words mean things, then one should give some sort of account for the very different verbs going on in the two passages. As I said, Jan looked for a psychological synthesis that I found less than satisfying; my literary attempt at things is my best run at another way to read them together.
But it’s hardly the last word, of course. (I love when I can end with the tag line.)
An alternate interpretation of Mark 6 would be that it was not a clash between the will of God the Father and God the Son in human form, but rather a clash between the free will of the residents of Nazareth and God the Son. In other words, since they did not believe, Jesus was not going to supersede their freedom to reject Him by performing miracles on the rebellious unbelieving (very different from the man who came to Jesus and said “Help me in my unbelief”). Hence, he was able to perform a few miracles for those who were not rejecting Him, but for the rest, nothing.
Well, I was raised Pentecostal Holiness so the hard lines of that duel baffled me long before I’d even known there was such a thing as Orthodoxy.
But I had in mind the discussion and its assumption of incoherence between the two accounts more than the content of your response to the discussion. Sorry if I veered off topic.
Your reading above does justice to the two gospels literarily (of course, my knowledge of literary theory amounts to bupkus so take that judgment for what it’s worth). I’m not sure it resolves the question, though. You’ve shown both tellings of the story to be coherent within their respective gospel, but that leaves the question of whether the two gospels, overall, are coherent regarding Christ’s and the Father’s power and wills. Haven’t you just moved the seeming incoherence of the can’t/won’t in the story in question up to the two gospels’ overall narratives? You obviously know that already–your last paragraph would be my own response, more or less–but I’m not sure it will satisfy your students or co-teacher.
I enjoyed being taken back to Milligan days, and want to say that the voice of Dr. Matson still rings in my hears too. I think you are right on in saying that (after taking each gospels account) we have to do the best we can and reconstruct our own narrative of what might have or probably happened.
I think taking Mark (or any first century writing) on its own terms and staying orthodox (later theological categories) is an exegetical problem. It seems that much of this ends up being sloppy exegesis and involves anachronisms.
Best thing to do might be to use some historical criticism into the literary mix. The obvious solution is to say that Mark’s account was earlier and might be a more faithful account. The other is the “embarrassment” criterion. That is if what’s recorded would have been embarrassing to the early movement than it’s probably true.
Now before I get labeled a heretic, let me say that I consider myself orthodox, but I think those categories come from later Church tradition which I also highly esteem.
Dan,
My main concern with that reading is that it complicates the reading by one more auxiliary verb, “would.” In that reading, where Matthew holds that Jesus did not do signs and Mark that Jesus was not able to do signs, your reading would hold that Jesus would not do signs, introducing a verb that isn’t even in the text. That said, it is similar to Jan’s reading, and I’m sure that psychological move is compelling to many folks who happen not to be English teachers.
Robert,
You’re right that my reading leaves the tension in there, and I suppose, pressed for the reality “behind” the texts, I’d be inclined to say that, were I present at the event, I likely would have written an account that wasn’t identical either to Matthew’s or Mark’s take, and more than likely, if I were writing a gospel (and had the Greek to do so), my own account would, like Mark’s and Matthew’s fit into the larger narrative schema that I was working on. But since we’ve got two canonical gospels, each of which seems to cast the life of Jesus in its own mold, and since the Church rejected the Diatesseron of Tatian that would have flattened the four into one, I’m inclined to take both of the readings as authoritative. If that leaves us with difference, I’m inclined to take that difference as part of our relationship to divine power.
Phil,
I’ll admit that the “embarrassment hypothesis” has worn thin with me. I’m more inclined to take Matthew’s account as being related positively to Matthew’s literary project than I am to take it as negating Mark primarily. In my view, making those moves gives sufficient cause for the shapes of the gospels without importing Germanic progress-models.
Nate,
I thought you might poo-poo historical methods. I guess English teachers will always cling to their ways. You literary folks are such haters!
Kidding aside I would say that the choice between a picture of Jesus that empathizes apocalyptic teaching (Matthew) and one that emphasizes an apocalyptic miracle worker (Mark.)
In both texts the humanity of Jesus is emphasized, but in Mark I think even more so. I think it’s good to remember that Jesus was in fact a human, who got frustrated in life, just like we do today.
The main thing that bothers me about the idea that Jesus’ will could and would sometimes be “thwarted” by the Father, as you suggested, is that it leaves open the possibility that Jesus in fact had no choice but to die on the cross, or that he in fact could not give in to the temptations of Satan, or any number of temptations to sin that I’m sure he stumbled upon during his life on Earth.
I’ve always thought it was important to understand that Jesus in fact had a choice about dying on the cross, at least. Yes, it was his Father’s will, but he willingly went along with it (at least that’s what his prayer in Gethsemane seems to imply).
Obviously what you are saying doesn’t logically preclude the possibility that Jesus could have at least theoretically gone against the Father’s will in at least some instances, only that the Father could choose to actually thwart the Son’s will in at least some instances.
This whole question strikes at the heart of what the dynamic of the Father-Son relationship actually looks like in the Trinity. How it all works out I think we will never know this side of eternity.
I can see that objection, Dan, but again, the distinction between “my will” and “thine/yours” in the Gethsemane passage does point towards that possibility, I think. You’re right that such passages, no matter how we read them, demand some hard thought about the central questions of theology.