The Paradox of Mark's Christology:
"The Son of Man Must Suffer. . .and. . .Rise Again" (Mark 8:31)

1. Twin themes in Mark's Gospel

• A Theology of Glory: Mark describes a miracle-working, crowd-attracting, demon-exorcising, authority-wielding, debate-winning, future-predicting Jesus who resembles the Jewish and Greco-Roman holy men and wonder-workers of his day.
• A Theology of Suffering: Mark describes a misunderstood, persecuted, betrayed, forsaken, suffering, humiliated, crucified Jesus whose death as a common criminal at the hands of the Romans is as horrifying as it is shameful.
  • To learn about Roman crucifixions, go here. For Josephus' description of Roman crucifixions, go here.
• How do these two themes fit together in the Gospel of Mark?

2. Contrasting Proposals concerning Mark's message

• Mark wrote to counter an over-exalted Christology (= a theology of glory) by depicting Jesus' humiliation.
  Some early Christians strongly emphasized Jesus' power, authority and heavenly glory, and largely ignored his earthly humiliation. For Mark's intended audience, ongoing experiences of suffering, failure and crisis were deeply troubling; for Mark, following Jesus inevitably meant denying oneself and taking up the cross. The cross is exemplary for the life of the Christian.

"In short, in the first half of the story, the Jesus of Mark's Gospel looks very much like a Hellenistic wonder-worker or magician. He acts as a superhero who exercises the power of God to subdue the forces of evil" (Hays, 75).
"Those who know Jesus only as a worker of wonders do not understand him at all, for the secret of the kingdom of God is that Jesus must die as the crucified Messiah" (Hays, 76).
"Mark has crafted the story to gain hermeneutical control over the traditions of Jesus as a miracle-worker. Those who perceive Jesus as a purveyor of power--whether supernatural or political--have failed to understand him. He can be rightly understood only as the Son of Man who will surrender power in order to suffer and die. The cross becomes the controlling symbol for interpreting Jesus' identity" (Hays, 80).

• Mark wrote to refute claims that the cross was a shameful defeat, by depicting Jesus' power and dignity.
  Mark presents Jesus, both before and on the cross, as one who is divinely empowered, always in control, innocent of all charges, and unjustly treated and condemned. For his intended audience, the cross was a scandal; for Mark, the resurrection has overcome that scandal, proving the cross stands at the center of God's redemptive plan.

"We know the shamefulness of crucifixion in the Greco-Roman world . . . We know the consequent folly and scandal of early Christian preaching of the Cross" (Gundry, Mark, 14; cf. 1 Cor. 1:18, 23).
"Mark wrote his gospel as an apology for the Cross. For he appeals to exactly those elements in the career of Jesus which for Greco-Roman readers would most likely suffuse the shame of crucifixion in a nimbus of glory" (Gundry, 15).
"[In] the passion narrative. . . , Mark chooses and shapes his materials and comments on them in ways that glorify the Passion, not in ways that passionize the earlier glory" (Gundry, 12).
"Mark does not pit the suffering and death of Jesus against his successes, but. . . pits the successes against the suffering and death, and then uses the passion predictions, writes up the passion narrative, and caps his gospel with a discovery of the empty tomb in ways that cohere with the success-stories, in ways that make the passion itself a success-story" (Gundry, 3).

Which proposal best makes sense of the narrative of Mark's Gospel? Were readers prone to repudiate suffering or to dismiss the Gospel as scandalous? Does Mark strive to link Jesus' identity with suffering, or to defend his glory in spite of it?