God came down

I'm going to comment on two posts by Dale Tuggy attacking Mark's high Christology:

http://trinities.org/blog/archives/5620

http://trinities.org/blog/archives/5624

i) First off, let's comment on his treatment of Mk's introduction. Mark says:

1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,    who will prepare your way,3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness:    ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,    make his paths straight,’”4 John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Keep in mind that Tuggy is a "humanitarian unitarian." He believes that Jesus is merely human, although God has given Jesus godlike prerogatives to act on God's behalf, in God's stead.

This would be a consistent unitarian gloss on the fulfillment of Isaiah:

Yahweh is to the Father 

As Elijah is to Jesus

Jesus takes the place of Elijah. Jesus is the counterpart to Elijah. 

That, however, is not how Mark structures the fulfillment. Instead, this is the Markan scheme:

Yahweh is to Jesus

As Elijah is to John the Baptist

In the Markan parallelism, Jesus is the counterpart to Yahweh while John the Baptist is the counterpart to Elijah.

In Mark's introduction, Jesus is not a prophetic emissary. Rather, that's the role assigned to John the Baptist. By contrast, Jesus is the God who's coming is heralded by the Baptist. 

ii) Let's now consider some of Tuggy's evidence that Jesus is not God in Mark:

No, he’s the Son of God. (1) So, not God himself. God endorses him. (14-15) He’s the messenger, not the sender, so, not God.

Jesus, son of the Most High God” (7) So, not the most High God, not YHWH himself, but rather, his Son.

He’ll return “in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” That’ll be when we see “the kingdom of God come with power.” (9:1) “The Father” here is obviously, YHWH, the one true God.

He calls himself the “son of man” (12, 31), which seems an obvious reference to Daniel 7:13 – to the “one like a son of man” whom God makes a supreme ruler. (Daniel 7:13-14).

The high places in his coming Kingdom are not Jesus’s to grant. (40) We are to infer that this is God’s prerogative, not Jesus’s. 

His authority and power are from heaven – that is, from God. (27-33) 

But then, how can David, in Psalm 110:1, call the messiah his “Lord” – when that same messiah is David’s “son” (descendant)? We’re not supposed to think that Jesus is called “Lord” because he’s God himself. God is the one who sent him, and is, his god, the one Jesus prays to.

Even the pagan soldier realizes that this man is a son of a god, or the Son of God. (39) 

Let's take a comparison:

11 And when the crowds saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in Lycaonian, “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” 12 Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul, Hermes, because he was the chief speaker (Acts 14:11-12). 

6 They were waiting for him to swell up or suddenly fall down dead. But when they had waited a long time and saw no misfortune come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god (Acts 28:6).

For the sake of argument, let's play along with that framework. Notice how Tuggy's objections instantly fall flat if you throw them against that paradigm:

Hermes is the son of Zeus. He's not Zeus. He's a messenger of Zeus. Zeus sends him. He comes down from Olympus and returns to Olympus. Zeus is the king of the gods. Hermes is authorized to speak and act on his behalf. Hermes could call on Zeus if he needed to. 

Yet none of this would prove that Hermes is not divine. Hermes is a god in his own right. Zeus is a father god, and Hermes is his divine son. 

The fact that Hermes isn't Zeus doesn't mean Hermes isn't divine. He's divine in the same way Zeus is divine. They are two of a kind. 

The fact that Hermes is sent by Zeus doesn't mean Zeus is divine but Hermes is not. 

Likewise, if Zeus chose to abdicate, he could designate Hermes as his rightful heir. Hermes would become the king of the gods. 

Hermes looks human, but there's more to Hermes than meets the eye. 

iii) Now, Tuggy might object that I'm resorting to a pagan polytheistic frame of reference. Surely that's not analogous to the Father and the Son in Mark.

But keep in mind that Mark is addressed to a Gentile audience–unlike Matthew. So "the son of God" might well have different connotations for his audience. Tuggy even mentions the exclamation of the Roman centurion. 

Even though Mark operates with a monotheistic paradigm, he may play on the cultural expectations of his target audience, to correct and refine their understanding. When Tuggy says Jesus can't be "God" because he's "God's son," is he hearing that designation the same way Mark's original audience heard it? Would they share his facile dichotomies? 

My comparison is an a fortiori argument. Yes, there are fundamental differences, but we're moving from the lesser to the greater.

For instance, the notion of God coming down from the sky isn't uniquely pagan. That's an ancient Biblical motif. We have that going all the way back to the introductory book of the Bible (Gen 3:8; 11:5; 18:1ff.). We also have that in the NT (e.g. Phil 2:6-8). 

iv) Tuggy mentions the parable of the tenants:

The vineyard-owner’s “beloved son.” (6) Vineyard owner represents God, the son is Jesus. Too obvious to need spelling out.

And what lends force to the illustration is the fact that his son is not equivalent to servants who are unrelated to the vineyard-owner. 

v) What's the significance of "God's son" in Mark? In principle, it could be a simile for Davidic sonship. God was like a father to David. David was like a son to God.

And that's undoubtedly one of the connotations of "God's son" in Mark. Jesus is the Davidic Messiah. 

vi) However, there's more to divine sonship in Mark than Davidic sonship. For one thing, in Biblical typology, the antitype is characteristically greater than the type. 

vii) Likewise, if Jesus is merely human, why does Jesus take David's place? Why is David just a stand-in for Jesus? If the Davidic Messiah is merely human, why doesn't God come bring David back? Resurrect David in the 1C? If the Davidic Messiah is merely human, there's no need for David to be a placeholder for someone else. Why can't David himself reprise that role? Why must a different human being take over the same role? 

viii) Moreover, Davidic sonship doesn't adequate to account for some of the Markan data. We've already discussed Mark's introduction. In addition, Tuggy hurries over the fact that Jesus is convicted of blasphemy. But if he is merely claiming divine sonship in the Davidic sense, then there's nothing blasphemous about that claim. Even if the Sanhedrin rejected his claim to be the Davidic messiah, it wouldn't be "blasphemous" to make that claim. At worst, it would be mistaken. If the Sanhedrin misunderstood the nature of his claim, Jesus could easily refute the charge by clarifying the nature of his divine sonship. He could explain that he calls himself the "son of God" in the Davidic sense. That's not a claim to deity. 

ix)  Likewise, Tuggy mentions the demonic recognition of Christ (Mk 1:24-25,34; 3:11; 5:7), but fails to probe the significance of that phenomenon.

If Jesus is merely human, if he is God's son in the Davidic sense, then why are demons credited with perceiving something about Jesus that's hidden to human observers?

Human observers are confined to sensory perception. To the empirical Jesus. But demons are privy to extrasensory perception. They enjoy direct, supernatural insight into the person of Christ. 

This is reminiscent of recognition scenes in the OT involving theophanies or angelophanies. When the Angel of the Lord appears to someone, he often assumes a humanoid appearance. It's only at some point in the conversation that his true identity dawns on the human observer, which triggers fearful reverence.

It's similar in Mark, except that in the case of demons, you have instant recognition and sudden fear. They immediately sense that there's more to Jesus than meets the eye. They instantly perceive his true identity. And that terrifies them. They are confronting their Master and Judge. 

They've encountered him before. They remember him. Before they fell. Back when he and they were both in heaven. God's abode. 

Moreover, one spirit, one numinous being, can discern the presence of another spirit or numinous being. In this case, an inferior being who perceives a superior being.