23 Cf. a careful precis of Mark's Conception of the Person and Office of Christ in a section of Dr. Swete's Introduction to his commentary on Mark: pp. xc-xcv. If we should put together, simply, the elements of Mark's christology, perhaps it might be expressed as follows : Jesus was a man, appointed by God Messiah, and endowed for His Messianic tasks; but not a mere man, but a superhuman being, in rank and dig- nity above angels (is^^), who "came" to earth for a mission. This mission was not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and accordingly involved humiliation and suffering: but a humiliation and suffering not for Himself but vicarious (io^% cf. 2^^). He prosecuted this min- istry by a career of preaching (i^^), and in the end died and rose again that He might give His life a ransom for many (lo*^). Mean- time, being God's beloved Son, the heavenly King of God's own King- dom predicted in Daniel, the Lord of the House (13^^ cf. ii^) and no servant (12'', cf. i^^ 9'^), not merely David's son but David's Lord (1335) vvho is Jehovah Himself (i^). He had in His hands all author- ity (i22 i27 2I0 2^8 4.41 543^ cf. i^i 2I1 9^5), and exercised all divine prerogatives — controlling evil spirits, the laws of nature, death itself, —
Mark's Conception of Our Lord 53
We must guard ourselves especially from imagining that the recognition found in Mark of the deity of Mark's Jesus is in any way clouded by the em- Conception of phasis he places on the Messiahship of the Messiahship jggyg ^g ^^^ fundamental fact of His mission. We have already had occasion to point out that the Messiahship and the deity of Jesus are not mutually exclusive conceptions. Even on the purely Jewish plane it was possible to conceive the Messiah a supernatural person: and He is so conceived, for example, in the Similitudes of Enoch and the Visions of 4 Esdras. The recognition of the deity of Jesus by Mark — and by Jesus as reported by Mark — in no way interferes with the central place taken in Mark's narrative — and in Jesus' thought of Himself as re- ported by Mark, — by our Lord's Messianic claims. It only deepens the conception of the Messiahship which is presented as the conception which Jesus fulfilled. The result is merely that the Christian movement be- comes, from the point of view of the history of the Messianic ideal, an attempt to work a change in the current conception of the Messianic office — a change which involved its broadening to cover a wider area of Old Testament prophecy and its deepening to em- body spiritual rather than prevailingly external aspira- tions.^* We have already noted that our Lord's
reading the heart and the future (9^^ lo^^)^ and forgiving sin on earth, and after His dying rose again and in His own proper time will return in the clouds of heaven with the angels to establish the King- dom and judge the world.
2* Cf. Wellhausen, Mark, p. 71 : "I can find this at least not incred- ible, that Jesus was pleased with the name of the Jewish ideal, and yet changed its contents, and that not merely with respect to the Mes- siah, but analogously also with respect to the Kingdom of God." How
54 The Designations of Our Lord
preference for His self-designation of the title * Son of Man ' over other more current titles is indicatory of His enlarged and enriched conception of the Mes- siahship : and we have already hinted that even the title ' Son of Man ' only partly suggests the contents of His conception, elements of which found their adumbration in yet other portions of Old Testament prediction. Among these further elements of Old Testament prophecy taken up into and given validity in His conception, there are especially notable those that portray the Righteous Servant of Jehovah, cul- minating in the 53d chapter of Isaiah, and those that set forth what has appropriately been called the " Ad- vent of Jehovah," — the promises, in a word, of the intervention of Jehovah Himself to redeem His people.