Lecture 4-2: Mark's Christology and the Question of the Messianic Secret
There is a pattern in Mark that a reader notices without being told and then usually forgets to ask about. Jesus heals, and orders the healed person to say nothing. Demons name him, and are silenced. Peter confesses him as the Christ, and is immediately commanded to tell no one. Three disciples see the transfiguration, and are ordered to keep it to themselves until after the resurrection. The commands are frequent, they cluster in this gospel and not in the others to anything like the same degree, and — this is the detail that makes the pattern strange rather than merely pious — they are usually disobeyed, and Mark says so.
In 1901 William Wrede published Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien, translated into English only in 1971 as The Messianic Secret. Wrede's proposal was that these commands are not history but theology: they are Mark's device for reconciling a tradition in which Jesus had not been recognised or proclaimed as Messiah during his lifetime with a church that confessed him as Messiah from the resurrection onward. The secrecy, on this reading, explains the silence of the earlier tradition rather than reporting Jesus' own practice.
This lecture does three things. It reconstructs Wrede's argument in its strongest form, because the argument is more often dismissed than read, and the dismissals usually attack a version of it that Wrede did not hold. It then sets out the principal responses — historical, source-critical, and literary — including the important criticism that Wrede assembled under one heading several motifs that do not in fact behave alike. Finally it turns to the two christological questions that the secrecy debate keeps circling: the meaning of the title "Son of Man," which Jesus uses of himself in Mark in three quite different kinds of saying, and the placement of the only full human confession in the gospel, which Mark gives to a Roman executioner at the foot of a cross.
이 30분으로 얻는 것
- State Wrede's argument in the order he made it, identifying the texts he relied on and the historical problem he was trying to solve.
- Distinguish at least three types of response to Wrede — historical, literary, and the criticism that the "secret" is not a single motif — and name a representative of each.
- Classify Markan "Son of Man" sayings into the three standard groups, quote an example of each, and explain what is at stake in the debate over the Daniel 7 background.
- Explain why Mark 15:39 is structurally significant, and describe accurately the translation difficulty in the centurion's words and what turns on it.
- Explain, in your own words, why a christology built around the cross places particular pressure on when and how Jesus may be identified.
He strictly warned him, and immediately sent him out, and said to him, “See you say nothing to anybody, but go show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing the things which Moses commanded, for a testimony to them.” But he went out, and began to proclaim it much, and to spread about the matter, so that Jesus could no more openly enter into a city, but was outside in desert places: and they came to him from everywhere. — Mark 1:43-45
World English Bible
The unclean spirits, whenever they saw him, fell down before him, and cried, “You are the Son of God!” He sternly warned them that they should not make him known. — Mark 3:11-12
WEB
Jesus said, “I am. You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of the sky.” — Mark 14:62
WEB
Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and gave up the spirit. The veil of the temple was torn in two from the top to the bottom. When the centurion, who stood by opposite him, saw that he cried out like this and breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” — Mark 15:37-39
WEB
These four passages mark the argument's route. Mark 1:43-45 is the clearest case of a command to silence that is broken, with consequences narrated: the man's proclamation restricts Jesus' movement. Mark 3:11-12 is the demonic recognition motif, which Wrede treated together with the healing commands and which several later scholars argue is a different thing. Mark 14:62 is the one place in the gospel where Jesus answers a direct christological question without qualification, and he does so in the setting where the answer costs him his life. Mark 15:39 is the confession the whole book has withheld, placed on the lips of the officer supervising the execution.
Wrede's argument, set out properly
Wrede did not begin from a wish to make Mark unhistorical. He began from a problem in the sources, and the problem is real. In the earliest layers of the tradition, as he read them, Jesus is not proclaimed as Messiah during his ministry; messianic confession belongs to the community after Easter. Yet Mark's narrative has demons who know exactly who Jesus is from the first chapter, a divine voice at the baptism, and a disciple who confesses him at the centre of the book. Wrede asked how a gospel could contain both, and answered that Mark inherited a non-messianic tradition and imposed on it a framework in which the messiahship was present all along but deliberately concealed.
He assembled the evidence in groups. First, commands to silence after healings: the leper at 1:44, Jairus' household at 5:43, the deaf man at 7:36. Second, silencing of demons who recognise him: 1:25, 1:34, 3:12. Third, commands to the disciples: the prohibition after Peter's confession at 8:30, and the transfiguration command at 9:9. Fourth — and this is the group most often left out of summaries — the theme of the disciples' incomprehension, which in Mark is not occasional but sustained: they do not understand the parables (4:13), they do not understand about the loaves and their hearts are hardened (6:52), they still do not understand after the second feeding (8:17-21), they do not understand the passion predictions (9:32), and they argue about status immediately after them. Fifth, the parable theory at 4:11-12, in which Jesus states that teaching in parables has the function of preventing outsiders from perceiving.
Two features of Wrede's case deserve emphasis because they are what make it strong rather than merely ingenious.
The first is the argument from 9:9. Jesus commands the three to tell no one what they have seen "until after the had risen from the dead." Wrede pressed the terminus: the secret has an expiry date, and the date is the resurrection. That is exactly what a theory built to explain why messianic proclamation began at Easter would predict, and it is not obviously what a historical policy of prudence would produce.
The second is the argument from the broken commands. In 1:45 and 7:36 Mark reports that the command was disobeyed, and in 7:36 he reports that the disobedience increased in proportion to the command. A narrator who wished to explain a genuine historical concealment would not repeatedly record that the concealment failed. A narrator using silence as a literary and theological signal would.
Wrede also observed that the pattern varies in intensity across the gospel and is largely absent from Matthew and Luke where they are not simply copying Mark, which points to a Markan rather than a pre-Markan origin. Whatever one concludes, this is a serious historical argument resting on textual observation, and a student who cannot restate it in Wrede's own terms is not in a position to reject it.
The responses
The historical response. Albert Schweitzer, writing shortly after Wrede and disagreeing with him sharply, agreed that the secrecy was real and located it in Jesus rather than in Mark. On Schweitzer's reconstruction Jesus did hold a messianic self-understanding, of a thoroughly apocalyptic kind, and concealed it because the messiahship he expected was future — to be manifested at the coming of the kingdom, not claimed in Galilee. Schweitzer's Jesus keeps a secret because the secret is about something that has not happened yet. Later historical responses have been more modest: that "Messiah" in first-century Judaism carried associations of armed national restoration which Jesus had reason to avoid, and that public healing in Roman Galilee, under a ruler who had already executed John, carried practical danger. This last point has force, but it explains only part of the data; it does not explain 9:9 or the silencing of demons.
The response from data selection. The most damaging technical criticism is that Wrede's "messianic secret" is not one motif but several, gathered under a single heading and then explained by a single cause. Heikki Räisänen argued this at length in The Messianic Secret in Mark's Gospel (1990), distinguishing the healing commands, the demon silencings, the parable theory and the disciples' incomprehension as separate strands with different origins and different functions. had made a related point in a 1970 essay, observing that the secrecy is uneven — the Gerasene demoniac is told to go and tell (5:19), which is the opposite command, and Bartimaeus is not silenced at all. If the strands do not behave alike, then a unified explanation of them is overdetermined, and Wrede's synthesis loses much of its force even where individual observations survive.
The literary response. A third line accepts that the secrecy is Markan composition but denies that its purpose is apologetic. On this reading it is a device for managing the reader. Norman Perrin argued that Mark uses the secrecy to correct an inadequate christology — one built on Jesus as miracle-worker — by refusing to let any confession stand until the cross has been narrated. Jack Dean Kingsbury argued similarly that the point is not that Jesus' identity is unknown but that it cannot be rightly known before Golgotha. Ulrich Luz distinguished the "epiphanic" element, in which the reader is repeatedly shown who Jesus is, from the "secret" element within the story world, and argued that Mark deliberately keeps the reader ahead of the characters. That gap between reader and character is dramatic irony, and it is the most economical explanation of why Mark tells us at 1:1 what none of the human characters will say until 15:39.
This is a point where readers will not agree. The three positions are not mutually exclusive at every point, and the honest classroom presentation is a spectrum rather than a menu. Wrede held that the secret is Markan and apologetic in function. Schweitzer held that it is historical and eschatological. Räisänen held that "it" is not a single thing at all. Perrin, Kingsbury and Luz hold that it is Markan and rhetorical rather than apologetic. What is no longer defensible is the older habit of dismissing Wrede as a sceptic who invented a problem: the textual observations he made are still on the page, and every position above has to account for 9:9.
Son of Man: three groups of sayings
Mark's Jesus refers to himself as "the Son of Man" some fourteen times. The sayings fall, by near-universal agreement, into three groups.
Present authority. "The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" (2:10); "the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath" (2:28). These are claims made in controversy, in the present tense, about what this figure may do now.
Suffering. "The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again" (8:31); similarly 9:31 and 10:33-34; and the summary at 10:45, "the Son of Man also came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
Future coming in glory. "Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory" (13:26); and, at the trial, 14:62.
The three groups make different claims, and their relation is the disputed matter.
This is a point where readers will not agree. The debate turns on whether the phrase was a recognised title before Jesus used it. One position, associated with the Danielic reading, holds that "one like a son of man" in Daniel 7:13-14 — a figure who comes with the clouds, approaches the Ancient of Days, and receives an everlasting dominion — supplied a known apocalyptic reference, so that Jesus' use of the phrase was a claim his hearers could recognise. Morna Hooker argued a version of this in The Son of Man in Mark (1967), and has argued a further version in which the Danielic figure represents vindicated Israel and the saying at 14:62 is about enthronement rather than descent from the sky. The opposing position, argued philologically by Geza Vermes and developed by Maurice Casey, holds that the underlying Aramaic bar (e)nasha was an ordinary idiom — a way of saying "a man," or "a man such as I" — carrying no titular weight at all, and that the apocalyptic sense is a later Greek-language development. Norman Perrin argued from a different direction that there was no pre-Christian "Son of Man" title in Judaism, and that the fusion of Daniel 7 with the phrase is the work of the early church rather than of Jesus.
What is at stake is not a word. If the titular reading is right, then the future sayings may plausibly go back to Jesus and the suffering sayings are the interpretative problem. If the idiomatic reading is right, then some present-authority sayings may be original and the apocalyptic sayings are the church's construction. Notice that each position finds the group it cannot easily explain and assigns it to a later hand. That symmetry should slow a student down. It is a warning sign, in the sense discussed in the previous lecture: an argument that resolves its own hardest data by relocating it is doing something that any competing argument can do equally well.
Here the Daniel background, for reference:
I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. There was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. — Daniel 7:13-14 (WEB)
The cross as the place where the title is allowed
Mark's christology is not stated in a doctrinal paragraph. It is stated by arrangement, and the arrangement is unmistakable once the pattern of confession is traced.
The narrator says "Son of God" at 1:1. The voice from heaven says it, to Jesus, at 1:11, and to three disciples at 9:7. The demons say it, and are silenced (3:11-12). No human being in the story says it — until 15:39, when a Roman centurion, having watched Jesus die, says it. Between those points the only human confession, Peter's "You are the Christ" at 8:29, is immediately silenced and then, six verses later, shown to be held without understanding: Peter rebukes Jesus for speaking of suffering and is called Satan for it. Mark's arrangement therefore says that a confession of Jesus made without the cross in view is not yet a correct confession, even when its words are correct.
Three details of 15:39 repay attention.
The centurion is a Gentile, an officer of the occupying power, and — on the natural reading of the verse — the man responsible for the execution. Mark gives him the sentence the disciples never manage. The disciples, by that point, have all fled (14:50).
The confession is triggered by a death, and specifically by the manner of the death: "when the centurion... saw that he cried out like this and breathed his last." Not by a miracle, not by a resurrection, not by the darkness. Mark places the torn temple veil in the verse before, and readers have long debated whether the centurion is responding to that too, but the verse itself ties his words to what he saw of the dying.
And there is a real translation difficulty, which should not be smoothed over. The Greek phrase lacks the definite article: alēthōs houtos ho anthrōpos huios theou ēn. It can be rendered "truly this man was the Son of God," as the World English Bible does and as most English versions do, or "truly this man was a son of God," which is what a Roman officer's own religious vocabulary would more naturally have meant — a divine man, a hero, the kind of thing said of an emperor. Earl S. Johnson argued in a 1987 article that the anarthrous phrase and the Roman speaker together point to the lesser sense, and that Mark's irony consists in a true statement made by a man who does not know what he is saying. Robert Tannehill and John Donahue, among others, read it as a genuine and full confession, noting that Mark's own usage elsewhere is not consistent about the article and that the placement at the climax of the narrative carries more weight than the grammar. Both readings can be held with integrity. What no reading can do is treat the ambiguity as absent.
If the fuller sense is right, Mark has arranged his gospel so that the title announced in verse one is finally spoken by a human being only at the cross, and by an outsider. If the lesser sense is right, Mark has arranged it so that the truth is spoken by someone who cannot mean it, which is a sharper irony and equally Markan. Either way the location of the sentence is the argument, and the location is not in doubt.
The diagram is arranged by speaker rather than by chapter, because that is the variable Mark appears to be controlling. Read down the columns and a rule emerges: knowledge that comes from above or below is accurate but suppressed, while knowledge held by human characters is either premature or absent until the execution. Read the bottom panel and the rule is qualified: it has exceptions in the text, and its climax rests on a phrase that can be translated two ways. Both halves belong in a fair presentation.
6. Further Reading
- William Wrede, The Messianic Secret, trans. J. C. G. Greig (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1971). The original, and short enough to be read rather than summarised.
- Heikki Räisänen, The 'Messianic Secret' in Mark's Gospel, trans. Christopher Tuckett (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1990). The decisive argument that the secret is several motifs.
- Christopher Tuckett, ed., The Messianic Secret (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983). A collection of the key twentieth-century essays, including Dunn's, in one place.
- Morna D. Hooker, The Son of Man in Mark (London: SPCK, 1967). The classic case for a Danielic background read through the whole gospel.
- Maurice Casey, The Solution to the 'Son of Man' Problem (London: T. and T. Clark, 2007). The developed philological case that the phrase was an ordinary Aramaic idiom.
- Jack Dean Kingsbury, The of Mark's Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983). Argues that the secrecy functions to withhold correct confession until the cross.
- Donald H. Juel, A Master of Surprise: Mark Interpreted (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994). Literary reading of Mark's christological reticence, unusually clear on the reader's position.
- Joel Marcus, The Way of the Lord: Christological of the Old Testament in the Gospel of Mark (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992). On how Mark's use of scripture shapes his portrait of Jesus.
핵심 요약
- Wrede's 1901 The Messianic Secret argued that Mark's silencing commands (the leper at 1:44, Jairus' household at 5:43, the demons at 1:25/1:34/3:12, Peter after 8:29) are Mark's device for reconciling a non-messianic historical tradition with a church confessing Jesus as Messiah from Easter onward — a case Wrede strengthened by noting the secret has an expiry date at the resurrection (9:9) and that the broken commands (1:45, 7:36) are reported as broken rather than kept.
- Räisänen's rebuttal (1990) is that the "messianic secret" is not one motif but several — healing commands, demon silencings, the parable theory of 4:11-12, and the disciples' incomprehension — with Dunn noting the pattern is uneven (the Gerasene at 5:19 is told to proclaim, Bartimaeus at 10:47-48 is never silenced), which undercuts any single explanatory cause.
- Mark's "Son of Man" sayings fall into three groups — present authority (2:10, 2:28), suffering (8:31, 9:31, 10:33-34, 10:45), and future coming in glory (13:26, 14:62) — and the debate over whether the title draws on Daniel 7:13-14 (Hooker, Wright) or an ordinary Aramaic idiom
bar (e)nasha(Vermes, Casey, Perrin) turns on which group of sayings each side must then explain away as secondary. - The only full, unqualified human confession of Jesus in Mark is the Roman centurion's "Truly this man was the Son of God" at 15:39, spoken at the moment of death rather than at any miracle, while Peter's correct-sounding confession at 8:29 is silenced and shown six verses later to be held without understanding (8:32-33, "Get behind me, Satan!").
- The Greek of 15:39 lacks the definite article, so it can mean either "the Son of God" (a full confession, Tannehill, Donahue) or "a son of God" in the sense a Roman officer's own religious vocabulary would use of a divine hero (Earl S. Johnson, 1987) — a real ambiguity the lecture insists must not be smoothed over.
If you remember nothing else from this lecture: Wrede argued that Mark's repeated commands to silence — after healings, to demons, to Peter after his confession at 8:29 — are not history but Mark's theological solution to a tradition in which Jesus was not proclaimed Messiah until Easter, a case strengthened by the secret's built-in expiry at the resurrection (9:9) and by Mark's own reports that the commands were disobeyed. Räisänen answered that the "secret" is really several unrelated motifs bundled together, since the pattern is uneven — the Gerasene demoniac is told to proclaim, Bartimaeus is never silenced at all. The debate over Mark's "Son of Man" sayings (present authority, suffering, future glory) runs on a parallel track, disputing whether the title comes from Daniel 7 or an ordinary Aramaic phrase for "a man." Both threads converge on 15:39, where a Roman centurion, watching Jesus die, becomes the first human being in the gospel to say "Son of God" — in Greek without the article, so that even Mark's climactic confession is deliberately ambiguous between a full confession and an unwitting one.
스스로 확인해 보세요
읽었는지가 아니라 설명할 수 있는지를 묻는 것입니다. 체크는 이 기기에만 저장됩니다.
묵상 및 토론
- Wrede regarded 9:9 — silence "until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead" — as decisive. Reconstruct why, and then attempt the best answer available to someone who thinks the secrecy is historical.
- Räisänen argues that the "messianic secret" is several motifs, not one. If he is right, does anything of Wrede's case survive? Identify what survives and what does not.
- Mark reports twice that a command to silence was disobeyed, and once that disobedience increased in proportion to the command. What does a narrator gain by reporting this? Give at least two possible answers.
- Take one saying from each of the three Son of Man groups. On the idiomatic reading defended by Vermes and Casey, which of your three is hardest to explain? On the Danielic reading, which is hardest?
- The lecture observes that both sides of the Son of Man debate resolve their hardest data by assigning it to a later hand. Is that a fair criticism of both, or does one side have independent grounds the other lacks?
- If the centurion's words mean "a son of God" in his own Roman sense, is Mark's climax weakened or sharpened? Argue the case you find less natural.