Identity - Lesson 6

Dr. James Houston

Identity

th731-06

Portraits of Jesus in Matthew and Mark

Lesson Transcript

The great enemy of God is human tunnel vision. We restrict Him too much. We restrict Him to our image and likeness and that’s our sinfulness. Where we can give a claim to scientists is that they don’t have tunnel vision as far as the cosmos is concerned. They see it as a very, very big picture. But where we all fall in our misunderstanding of reality is that we restrict that vision to being without God. How can the Creator be absent from the world that is His by creation?

And so one of the things that theological education does is it gives us tunnel vision. And we see it at every level. We see it how this department views things in this way and is refusing to have a broader perspective. And so one of the great developments that’s taking place in the postmodern world today is that the old disciplinary boundaries are breaking down and now, today, whether you study mathematics or physics or mechanical engineering or the humanities, they’re all interrelated. And that’s a very welcome, new breakthrough for higher education. But we ourselves in seminary education still have tunnel vision. And that’s why some of the things that I may have said in our first lecture have shocked you, but it’s intended to indicate that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, His ways are not our ways and that we should have a much, much broader picture of how God has entered into time and related to mankind.

That’s why what we were emphasising, perhaps too intensely, in our first lecture was that, first of all, the whole evolution of man is under God’s control and that God has an infinite patience, so how long has He waited for the creation of Adam to become the Imago Dei? Was it 100 million years ago, 60 million years ago? We don’t know. But He waited a long time. And so we have to see the evolution of man as the patience of God. And we can even see the patience of God that He waits for the pregnancy of Mary to be nine months. So whether it’s in the smallest detail of a mother’s womb, or whether it is in the creation of mankind, it’s the patience of God that we have to admire as being so profoundly worshipful.

What we’ve also been trying to do in our first lecture was to indicate two sources of narrative. And the first source of narrative was the narrative of being human and we’re going to say a little bit more about that in this next lecture. But then alongside of that narrative of being human is the narrative of how God chose particular people to be his people, Israel. So we also have conjoined with that aetiological perspective, the figural perspective of the narrative of Israel as God’s story of His intervention in this world.

[00:04:05]

Now we’re going to look at the broad perspectives that we have in the Incarnation with the Gospel portraitures of Jesus Himself as Lord. But before we do so, we need to explore further one of the questions that I raised with you at the beginning of our discussion at the end of last week’s lecture and that is to explore more deeply what does it mean for us to be made in the image and likeness of God? I would refer you to a recent book on this subject by J. Richard Middleton, The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1.

And he places this theme in the historical context of both Egypt and Mesopotamia, where the Egyptian kings were more viewed as gods than the Mesopotamian notion that their kings shared the burdens and the mortality much more with their subjects, even though they too had absolute powers over their subjects. But while all ancient kings were images of the gods, the uniqueness of the Genesis text is that all mankind bear the image of God as man and woman. Both do so being [epic 00:05:32], that is to say, as larger than life characters requiring more than anthropology to express their origin. Hence, the use of the term ‘theo-anthropology.’ Christian anthropology is theo-anthropology. Originally referring to a heroic poem of Ancient Greece, epic goes back to that mythical world where gods and goddesses mingle with humans that we read about in Genesis 6:1–4 and which Biblically is used polemically in this whole mythopoeic realm of Genesis 1–11, as we now will point out.

In the Ancient Near East, a figurine or statue of a god was worshipped as if the actual presence of the god was there. Likewise, when the pharaoh placed his image at the frontiers of his empire, it was to demonstrate his rule and authority was there to protect his territory with god-like powers. But the statement in Genesis 1:27 that God created man in his own image and likeness is the triple polemic against all such idolatry. Firstly, since all humanity bears the Imago Dei, all are incurably worshippers. So it is not God we truly worship. We are condemned to worship idols whether we think of ourselves as atheists or secularists or religionists of some sort. We cannot remove the instinct of worship from being human.

[00:07:21]

Secondly, the creation mandate of the Imago Dei is the only ontological basis for today’s awareness of humans as Earth-keepers in which secularists are in complete denial and ignorance. Instead of worshipping nature as some goddess Gaia, to which the vast majority of the world’s top spas are dedicated like some new worship cult, we have to act globally and responsibly as God’s co-regents of His creation, as read in Genesis 2:15–19.

And thirdly, critically and fundamentally, the term ‘likeness’ refers to our moral charge to seek to become godly in our human, moral growth and character, for as the image of God we’re only facsimiles, only likenesses of God. This distinction between image and likeness was clearly understood by the Early Church Fathers and pastorally acted upon in their teachings. But late in the Reformation, the distinction was swept aside as expressive of a corrupt penitential system of salvation by good works, which is not the context at all that we should be considering it. No human then can be worshipped as a god, nor can nature be worshipped either. Only God above all gods alone can be worshipped as the one true God of all.

This declaration is no longer a doctrinal issue in comparative religion for it arouses a new global urgency as we face climate change, but that is not enough. Climate change requires more profoundly human change. This is still not the voice of Christians, let alone of non-Christians. Even educated Christian scholars need to reframe theo-anthropology, not just as a seminary study. It needs to be proclaimed to all the nations with cosmic vision and new passion before all mankind, for the gods which are now worshipped—money, greed, self, sex, pleasure—will eschatologically destroy God’s earthly garden far more powerfully than any of the ancient gods in their idolatry.

I preface all this to heighten the importance of our subject: the presentation of Jesus in the Gospels. As we saw in our previous address, the Biblical characters such as Abraham, Moses, Ruth and Jeremiah and David, are powerfully figural of God’s covenant with humans. In their acceptance of the doctrine of the Imago Dei, the Early Fathers justifiably separated image and likeness. In the image, as the distinctive of being human and not animal. In likeness, as the pursuit of godliness that all our life we have to pursue. The figural exegesis we were illustrating last week was demonstrating how these central Biblical characters were responding to becoming the likeness of God in responding to God’s covenant relationships with all people. So we saw that even a heathen Moabitess, Ruth, could become a shining witness in seeking to become a true Israelite. The ongoing presumption of the Jews’ claim to be the people of God was and still is false, time and again, throughout their history. And so we need with a new urgency to have a whole new [purpostival 00:11:23] seriousness.

[00:11:25]

But before we enter into the understanding of Biblical identity in the New Testament, let’s go back to the portraiture of identity in the Classical world, out of which the cradle of Christianity arose. Classical culture was one of hubris. Unlike the codes of the Ancient Near East that stressed the need for humility and obedience, of the smallness of man in the face of divine authority and power, Greek practice was to view man’s posture not as prostrate, but as standing upright and tall. Yes, the gods had everything: omnipotent and exempt from death. Yes, dwelling in their palace atop of Mount Olympus they were continually taunting man below, seeking at the shrine and spring of Delphi to learn to know thyself with the guidance of the oracle. But only humans could risk and lose; the gods were static. Since humans must die while the gods were unchanging, it was only man who was truly alive. Only he possessed the capacity to reach out to arete, maturity or perfection, and seek in the process to adapt and to change and to grow.

Had the gods’ home been invisibly in the sky, but within human reach at Mount Olympus, the humans might not have been able to rival the gods and even see them as inferior. This tempted humans to be godlike. No one felt this torture more than Achilles, whose father, Peleus, was a mortal, but his mother, Thetis, was a goddess. Is this an echo of Genesis 6:1–2? The fates give Achilles a choice. He could live long to a ripe old age, dwelling in his father’s palace and never be remembered afterwards, or he could choose to die young and be remembered forever. He chose the latter: to possess undying fame. Aware of his mortality, his mother had baptised him in the River Styx, whose divine waters would make his skin invulnerable to any wound, but she held onto his heel, untouched then by the sacred waters. And in the latter battles of Troy, Achilles is struck by an arrow in his heel and he dies, as his mother feared he would. Yes, believed the Greeks, the gods are invulnerable, but mighty Achilles was willing to pay the price of being mortal of being human, of being able to love, to feel intensely as we do, to be remembered after death.

[00:14:38]

Another later warrior at Troy, Ulysses, was willing to die, but for another reason. On the way home from Troy, he’s tempted to stay on the island of the goddess Calypso, where she falls in love with him, offering him eternal life through sensual temptations of all sorts. Weeks later, she finds him weeping by the seashore, looking to the distant horizon where his home lies. It was because Ulysses knew his wife, his son, that his friends needed him, needed his presence to right the wrongs, to complete an unfinished task, that he turns away from the seduction of Calypso. Yes, if he had stayed, Ulysses would have had eternal life, but he would have been hidden from other humans and, most profoundly, hidden from himself.

[00:15:38]

So Greek humanism was and still is the proud affirmation of both our promise to ourselves, of our duty to others; of self-knowledge—the Delphic imperative. Empires, then, can be governed wisely as Alexander the Great then sought to conquer and to rule. Greek coins began to depict the human face and Greek [statuary 00:16:06] developed the human bust, it’s face reflective of the powers available in knowing that philosopher Socrates or that doctor of medicine, Hippocrates. So in the 5th century, ode of the dramatist Sophocles, he could extol many are the wonders of the world, but none so wondrous as man. Then, like the celebration of the Genesis mandate to have dominion over the Earth, Sophocles celebrates the way man sails over the waves as a seaman, how he can fish, how he can plough the earth for his crops, how he domesticates animals, indeed how he uses speech to communicate his thoughts.

We may think then of the Greek temple as having eight pillars to sustain its worship. The pillar of man as being human. The pillar of excellence: arete. The practice of moderation, which was the motto at the entrance to Delphi: nothing in excess. The pillar of self-knowledge that enables man to be prophetic. The pillar of rationalism, meaning the use of reason. The pillar of curiosity, ever restless to know more. The pillar of the love of freedom. And the pillar of individualism, as having pride in self-accomplishment and in self-fulfilment. All these continue to besiege and to go on tempting us today. But it is no coincidence that Plutarch, spending time at Delphi, should develop the Classical genre of human portraiture so powerfully in his classic Plutarch’s Lives.

[00:18:08]

I give you this long introduction to help you see the greatest challenge conceivable for the early Christians as they were faced in their Gospel portraiture of Jesus as Christ and Lord. So now we turn to the portraiture of Jesus in the synoptic Gospels. There are five literary forms given to us in the New Testament. I referred to some of the other literary forms in the Old Testament. But in the New Testament, these genres are biographies, or portraits; history, as we have recorded in the Acts of the Apostles; letters, such as we have so supremely in the Apostolic ministries; and we have sermons, like that of the Epistle to the Hebrews; and then, of course, we have the apocalypse as we have in the Book of Revelation.

The traditional idea that the four Gospels are unique as a genre is no longer tenable, although their subject of Jesus remains unique indeed. But as we refer to Plutarch, so there are the biographies or portraits of Suetonius, and of Cornelius Nepos, of such figures as Alexander the Great. And in the time of Jesus, every educated pagan household read and discussed Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. So we should not be surprised if polemic echoes against the heroes and values are not found throughout the Gospels, for clearly they were composed in this culture of honour, of glory, of fate, of competing deities, with no less than 17 different gods, each with differing noble goals. Whereas, the Gospels are about one Lord Jesus Christ, with one objective: the gracious and merciful salvation of all humanity as sinners, rich and poor, men and women. Its central message is about the scandal of the cross of Christ. So while Homer is never mentioned, his presence is certainly there.

[00:20:38]

One of the things that I’ve also been reflecting on, which is just simply a suggestion to you, is that the three Gospels are like the three origins of man. There’s the origin of the Hamitic beginnings of man as a toolmaker. There’s the Semitic origin of man as a religious being, as Seth. And there’s the Japhite rule of man as the one of intellect and reason and soulfulness, we might say. What I can suggest is that Matthew gives us a portrait and, significantly, Matthew is the Gospel that begins with the genealogy of Adam. And so Matthew’s is the Seth portraiture. Mark is, like so many of us, so busy. In the shadows of Mark is Peter: the impetuous Peter, always doing the wrong thing. And so he is truly the Hamitic. And then there’s Luke, the kindly physician, who is the soulful healer, as a physician is in the Japhite background. Well, I’m not telling you more than just these are shadows in the background for us to enlarge our portraiture of what we find in the Gospel story.

Let’s reverse and begin with Mark. Dennis MacDonald, in his book The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, argues for the influence of the Homeric in Mark’s Gospel, where he argues the first 14 chapters of Mark model on The Odyssey and the last two on The Iliad. He writes about Jesus, born 6–4 BC and dying about 29–30 AD. The evidence is that it was written by John Mark, who was a disciple of Barnabas, Paul’s missionary companion, who had a previous document called Q to give him sources about the ministry of Jesus. His style is episodic: the employment of a plot into which the reader is brought into, to then make his or her own meaning of the text. Mark’s purpose in writing is to give the reader insights and decisions as to the purpose of Jesus’ ministry as expressive of God’s will for His people.

All through the text, he’s making allusions to the Old Testament itself. The opening text, reversing the Old Testament from the wilderness to the Jordan, to Judea, to the temple of Jerusalem. Mark reverses this to begin with Judea. People from the whole Judean countryside and from Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptised in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. He says in 1:5, and the two feeding episodes of Mark 6:30–44 and 8:1–13, contain four different allusions of the feeding in the wilderness of Numbers 11,13 and 22, Exodus 18:24–25, 2 Kings 4:43. Likewise, Number 12:6–8 inform the Israelites he will speak to the prophets in visions and dreams, but to Moses face-to-face—that is to say, without riddles. Likewise, Jesus speaks plainly to his disciples, but to outsiders he speaks in parables. He alludes to Israel as sheep without a shepherd in 6:34, as is echoed in 1 Kings 22:17, or 2 Chronicles 18:16, or indeed in numerous other passages like Isaiah 13:14, Jeremiah 50:6, Ezekiel 34:11. In terms of Old Testament characters, Jesus alludes to Joseph in Genesis 39, Mark 14:32, to Esther in 5:3, in reference to Salome in Mark 6:22–23. The reader is faced then to make responses to these allusions.

[00:26:29]

In Mark, Jesus is always breaking through cultural boundaries to formulate new visions for a new Israel in quarrelling with religious leaders about all aspects of their manmade taboos of divorce, of sources of Jesus’ authority, of the parable of the wicked tenants, the issue of taxes, the accusation that the Sadducees neither know God nor the scriptures, or the nature of the law, or warnings of the hypocrisy of the scribes. Figurally, the disciples do not know the nature of his Messiahship, nor the nature of discipleship, nor why such exemplars as the Syrophoenician woman in [7:24ff 00:27:23], nor the Roman centurion in 15:16–20, 25–36, have such insights who Jesus was. Joseph of Arimathea also such insight waiting for the Kingdom of God in 15:43.

Today, there’s a flood of studies on Mark. The trend is now moving away from Mark speaking with the voice of Peter as recorded by Papias and yet as having special connections with Peter’s dynamism as always being on the go. You look at the speed with which the narrative is given in 5:1–2, 8:22, 11:12, 14:32. He’s always being with his disciples. 21 plural verbs are used of this narrative form and the role of Peter prominently in the Gospel represents all the other disciples. Peter is the archetype of a human disciple. Peter thus invites us to be responsive readers, in the event, to change our cultural world view. For Mark’s purpose is to demonstrate Jesus’ true Messianic identity and the kind of discipleship that entails. So by individuating Peter himself, he reflects upon Peter’s own personal encounters with Jesus to narrate his own story as no one else could express it.

[00:29:20]

What then of Matthew’s portrait of Jesus? In the 2nd century, Irenaeus, dependent on Papias, states Matthew produced a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own language while Peter and Paul were in Rome preaching and founding the Church. And this is clear from the central message of Matthew 5:17–18. Jesus did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfil it. His extensive quotation of the Old Testament amplifies on this purpose with his repeated stress on righteousness, which is the right relationship we need with God. It’s the echo of Psalm 1. It’s his distinctive speaking of the Kingdom of Heaven rather than the Kingdom of God. So he limits the mission of Jesus and his disciples to Israel in 10:5–6, 15:24. And there are Pharisees as reformers sitting in Moses’ seat in 23:2. In other words, Matthew is addressing the Jews.

[00:30:40]

After the destruction of the second temple, many differing sects arose ranging from the conservative Qumran community to the liberalism of the Sadducees. But only the Jewish community around Jesus, the Messiah that had now come, is this Gospel written for them by a fellow Jew. The law is now sovereignly fulfilled and embodied in Jesus their Messiah so that he, the Son of Man, is the Lord of the Sabbath. That is the true identity. It’s a Sabbatical, not a circumcision, identity. So in place of food taboos, now it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person. Community is no longer, as in the synagogue, centred in the Torah, for where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst, he says in 18:20. There’s now a radical break from the synagogue services. Finally, it is the words of Jesus’ authority that are eternal: Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away—24:35.

Also central to Matthew is his Christology. Jesus the human is the Messiah to Jewish promises, but he’s uniquely the Son of God. He brings the Davidic covenant to its fulfilment so that all the Psalms sing with his voice for all things have been delivered to me by my Father and no one knows the Son except the Father. And no one knows the Father [except the Son 00:32:48] and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal [Him 00:32:53]—11:27. We may compare these words with the words of the risen Christ himself. All authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given unto me—28:18. Therefore, it is in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit that the disciples are now to baptise their converts in 28:19, assuring them I will be with you always till the close of the age.

[00:33:35]

Matthew is emphasising that the mission of Jesus is not to expound Torah like the rabbis, but to repent with the imminent advent of the Kingdom of God. Its new reality has begun mysteriously with the cross of Christ and Jesus’ dying words: It is finished. For the Son of Man came to save his people from their sins, 1:21, so he came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many, 20:28.

Throughout the Gospel, there’s a divine freshness for all are now new. The old has passed away. New wine for the heavenly banquet now needs new wine skins to communicate new joy, glad tidings indeed with which the Messiah’s birth began. Yet there’s no new religion. The old is fulfilled.