Are the Christologies of Mark and John
radically different?
Posted: Aug 28/2k
A dear friend of mine sent me a question recently:
I've been reading through the gospels of Mark and
John, and frankly am puzzled by the low
Christology in Mark, and the high Christology in John. granted they likely
wrote 25-30 years apart (I'm not concerned who the gospel writers were), but seems the Spirit was still revealing
essentials of the faith as late as
85-100AD.
And
I replied (with sub-Tank detail obviously...smile)...
They don't
actually differ in the 'altitude' of the Christology, only in the level of
explicitness or articulation...
For example, mark
has an order of magnitude more miraculous events of Jesus, than John, including
the 'nature' miracles in which Jesus acts as the very Presence of YHWH (as
opposed to the prophetic 'agent' of YHWH)...these certainly provoked (in the
narratives) responses to deity [see my tank thing on the Trinity, NT], but Mark
records very little dialogue...John, cites only a few miracles, but goes into
much more explicitness on the discussions engendered by those miracles (and
also includes more of the theological debates about Jesus' sayings)...
The difference can
also be seen as arising from the likely audiences of the two...Mark is Peter's
preaching, largely to "Hellenistic" Jews scattered throughout the
roman empire...John is more likely (I believe he wrote BEFORE the destruction
of Jerusalem) addressing Palestinian Jews, more familiar with Pharisaic
beliefs, theological categories, and arguments...this would allow/necessitate
usage of more 'refined' theological categories which might be described as
'high Christology' when in fact it is simply 'more explicit Christology'...
BUT---this is NOT
to say that revelation was NOT progressive during the period of NT formation,
for I ABSOLUTELY believe that to be the case...I use the example of the
Jerusalem council, e.g., to show HOW God can develop clarity and unpack
implications WITHIN a "non-prophetic" context...
But my view would
imply that there would not
be two 'contradictory" answers to the 'Who am I?' question, but only
'different' (largely differentiated on the basis of precision or
comprehensiveness)...
[Pardon all the
spelling errors, this is hastily written, brother]
In fact, the book
I just finished argues that Mark's Christology is "HIGHER" than
John's, on the basis of the miracle narratives...excellent book, highly
recommended by me, Graham Twelftree, _Jesus
the Miracle Worker: A Historical and Theological Study_
There are other
approaches to this issue, but the above are the ways I personally understand
the data...I hope this helps...
warmly,
glenn