The theological and philosophical significance of the markan account of miracles

Faith and Philosophy

Volumn 15, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 298-323

  Marina, Jacqueline ^a  

^a PURDUE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 84880550583     PISSN: 07397046     EISSN: 21533393     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/faithphil199815321     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. See, for instance, Richard Swinburne's clear exposition The Concept of Miracle, (London: St Martin's Press, 1970).
2. Two major proponents of the hypothesis affirming Matthean priority are William R. Farmer (The Synoptic Problem : A Critical Analysis, Dillsboro, N.C. : Western North Carolina Press, 1976)
3. Hans-Herbert Stoldt (History and Criticism of the Marcan Hypothesis, trans, by Donald L. Niewyk, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1980).
4. However, against such a consensus, see C.H. Talbert (What is a Gospel? The Genre of the Canonical Gospels [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977])
5. For a defense of the majority view that holds to the uniqueness of the gospel genre, see D. E. Aune, 'The Problem of the Genre Gospels," in Gospel Perspectives: Studies of History and Tradition in the Pour Gospels (Sheffield: JSOT, 1981).
6. This was first pointed out by Karl Ludwig Schmidt in his study Der Rahmen der Geschichte Jesu, (Berlin: Trowitzsch & Sohn, 1919). A brief overview of the inconsistencies in Mark's chronology and geography are provided by Paul J. Achtemeier in Mark (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 13-14; a more in depth discussion of how these inconsistencies might relate to Mark's incorporation of different traditions into his gospel can be found in Achtemeier's article "Toward the Isolation of Pre-Markan Miracle Catenae" in JBL 89 (1970), 265-291.
7. W. Wrede, The Messianic Secret, (Library of Theological Translation-London: Clarke, 1971), German edition first published 1901.
8. According to Wrede, "It (the secret) can be characterized as the aftereffect of the view that the resurrection is the beginning of the messiahship at a time when the life of Jesus was already being filled materially with messianic content" Quoted from The Messianic Secret, ed., with an introduction by Christopher Tuckett (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 6. Wrede believed the secret to be the result of the clash of the primitive Christian belief that Jesus became the Messiah only after his resurrection with the notion that Jesus had been the Messiah all along. The standard critique of this aspect of Wrede's views is that Mark's material was never understood non-messianically.
9. E. Percy, Die Botshaft Jesu. Lund: Gleerup, 1953.
10. Tuckett, Messianic Secret, 15.
11. H. Conzelmann, An Outline of the Theology of the New Testament, (ET New York: Harper & Row, 1969 [German 1968]) pp. 138-140
12. "Present and Future in the Synoptic Tradition," Journal for Theology and the Church 5 (1968) 26-44
13. "History and Theology in the Passion Narratives of the Synoptic Gospels," Interpretation 24 (1970) 178-197.
14. As noted by James M. Robinson, in Mark, failure to understand is not an intellectual failing, but an existential one. It has less to do with that which is known than with the attitude taken to it. So Robinson, "It is clear that 'understanding' is closely associated with 'faith' in defining the religious attitude that Mark advocates" (James M. Robinson, The Problem of History in Mark, [London: SCM Press, 1957] 74ff.). The failure to understand Jesus has to do not only with a rejection of his person, but of the values he embodies as well. What is not grasped has to do with the inability to comprehend a completely new way of life, and moreover, this failure is intimately linked with the refusal to value this way of life.
15. For a discussion of the attitude of the disciples with regard to the passion see James M. Robinson, History in Mark, 51-53
16. Robert H. Gundry's recent book: Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross, (Grand Rapids: Willaim B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1993)
17. See D. Georgi, The Opponents of Paul in 2 Corinthians: A Study in Religious Propaganda in Late Antiquity, (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), German 1964.
18. For a discussion of this point, see Ernest Best, Following Jesus: Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark, (Sheffield: Dept of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield, 1981), 13. As Best notes, " . . . Christian's understanding of their discipleship and their ability to follow as disciples emerge out of their understanding of the passion and resurrection of Jesus/'
19. As Koester points out "Belief in this 'gospel' implies that the benefits of such miraculous acts are accessible, or even that these acts can be repeated in the religious experience of the believer. Jesus is the 'divine man' (8eioç ócvrjp); he can be imitated by his apostle, who thereby incorporates and represents the revelation in his missionary activity" Helmut Koester, "One Jesus and Four Primitive Gospels," in Trajectories through Early Christianity, by Helmut Koester and James M. Robinson, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 188.
20. Robinson's essay, "Kerygma and History in the New Testament," 59 in Trajectories, cited above; cf. Ancient Christian Gospels, by Helmut Koester (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990), 202.
21. Robinson, Trajectories, 55ff.
22. See also H. D. Betz, "Jesus as Divine Man," in Jesus and the Historian: Essays Written in Honer of Ernest Cadmann Colwell, Philadelphia 1968, ed. F. Th. Trotter, 114-133.
23. The same is noted by E. Best: "In contrast to many miracles from the contemporary religious world, faith is the presupposition of miracle and not its result." In "The Miracles in Mark," 539-54
24. L. Schenke, Die Wundererzählungen des Markusevangeliums (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1974); Cf. Tolbert, 180.
25. David Rhoads, "Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman in Mark: A Narrative Critical Study," in JAAR LXII No. 2, (1994) esp. 349-350.
26. Cf. Robert Tannehill, "The Disciples in Mark: The Function of a Narrative Role" JR 57 (1977), 386-405
27. Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel, 180; Tolbert's chapter "The Good Earth and the Rocky Ground," provides an excellent literary and rhetorical analy sis of how Mark connects faith and miracles.
28. Cf. A. Farrer, A Study in St. Mark, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1952), 290-304.
29. In his article "How Many Baskets Full?: Mark 8: 14-21 and the Value of Miracles in Mark" (CBQ 46 [1985], 643-665)
30. For an excellent discussion of the social position of a carpenter in first century Mediterranean life, see John Dominic Crossan's The Historical Jesus: the Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, (San Francisco: Harper, 1991), 29.
31. As proposed by Theissen, Miracle Stories, p. 214.
32. This is Robinson's suggestion, Trajectories, 51.
33. Crossan, 266.
34. Rhoads, 336-337.
35. See Frank J. Matera, 'He Saved Others; He Cannot Save Himself' A Literary-Critical Perspective on the Markan Miracles," Interpretation 47 (1993), 16.
36. Matera's position that in the Markan gospel "people do not perceive that, by these actions [the miracles] Jesus is proclaiming and inaugurating God's kingdom and calling them to repentance," (18) is too strong. For a more nuanced presentation of both the faith and failings in faith of the Markan characters, see Elizabeth S. Malbon, "Disciples, Crowds, Whoever: Markan Characters and Readers," Nov. Test. XXXVIII 2 (1986) 104-130. For instance, Malbon shows how Mark does not consistently characterize the faith of the disciples negatively; but rather both positively and negatively; their faith is incomplete, but its inchoate beginnings are nevertheless present. For instance, she notes that while "almost always their questions betray a lack of faith. ... at least the disciples remain willing to question Jesus, and to be questioned by Jesus, and to question themselves" 121.
37. E. S. Malbon, "Echoes and Foreshadowings in Mark 4-8: Reading and Rereading" JBL 111 (1993), 211-230.
38. An excellent discussion of Jerome's view is provided by Rowan Greer in The Fear of Freedom, (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), p. 20.
39. T. C. Williams, The Idea of the Miraculous, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), 36-37.
40. For a more in-depth account of how the ancients understood natural necessity, see R. M. Grant's study, Miracle and Natural Law in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Thought, (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Co., 1952).
41. For an excellent discussion of how miracles serve to specify the political geography of apocalyptic contest in Mark, see Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus (New York: Orbis Books, 1988). Myers situates the miracles in the context of Jesus's conflict with the Satanic order, linked with both the structures of oppression specifically embedded in the dominant social order of first century Roman Palestine, as well as practices of domination "ultimately embedded in the human personality and corporately in human history as a whole" (103). The miracles function to challenge the very structures of social existence (148). It is important to note, however, that Myers also recognizes the fact that for Mark the faith of those who are healed, and their willingness to transgress socially oppressive structures is all important to the occurrence of a miracle (147). Hence the miracle witnesses to the transformation of interpersonal relations made possible by Jesus, and thus to the inbreaking of God's kingdom.
42. Swinburne, Concept of Miracle, 1.
43. In this he follows R. F. Holland, "The Miraculous" American Philosophical Quarterly 2 (1965) 43-51
44. D. Z. Phillips, ed., Religion and Understanding (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), 155-170.
45. Robert A H. Larmer, Water into Wine?: An Investigation into the Concept of Miracle (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988), 14.
46. Another contemporary philosopher who holds that miracles "are the result of supernatural causation" is Ninian Smart; see his Philosophers and Religious Truth, 2nd ed. (London: SCM Press, 1964) 38.
47. Quoted from C. D. F. Moule, ed., Miracles, (London: A. R. Mowbray & Co., 1965) 13.
48. For an example of this position, see Nicholas Everitt, "The Impossibility of Miracles" Religious Studies 23, 347-349.
49. See Swinburne, The Concept of Miracles, 3.
50. Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, second German edition, English translation H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart, eds., (Edinburgh: T & T Clark), § 38, 2; 148.
51. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol 1, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 116
52. A similar view was put forth by the Oxford theologian William Temple when he wrote: "The machine-like character of the Universe, with its rigid laws and uniformities, is given to it by our unspiritual way of handling it; to a man in whom God dwells everything is plastic that he may mold it to God's purpose," in Foundations: A Statement of Christian Belief in Terms of Modern Thought: By Seven Oxford Men, (London: Macmillan, 1912), 129
53. For a fuller account and critique of Bultmann's understanding of the nature system and the miraculous, see T. C. Williams, Idea of the Miraculous, 1-24
54. Colin Brown's, Miracles and the Critical Mind, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1984), 128-133.