Does Mark Really Present Jesus as God? A Response to James McGrath
In my most recent post, I argued that Mark 1:2-3 presents Jesus as the fulfillment of OT passages that discuss the coming of God himself. These verses, therefore, have tremendous implications for Mark’s Christology, namely that he views Jesus as “the Lord” of the OT.
James McGrath has responded over on his website here. Let’s have a look at McGrath’s two main complaints. Here is his first one:
…When I was a conservative Evangelical, I confess that I too made similar arguments, and never noticed how odd they are. Mark apparently believes that Jesus was God come in the flesh, and yet he expresses this not by saying it
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“The Question of Canon” Now Available
I was just informed by IVP-Academic that my book, The Question of Canon: Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate, is now out and available for purchase (see here). This was a bit of a surprise because I haven’t received my own copy yet! But, I am glad to know it is out.
Here is the description of the book:
…Unlike many books on the New Testament canon, this book does not seek to explain why these books and no others. It asks the questions: Why is there a NT at all? Was the notion of a canon of literature out of sync with the earliest
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Did Matthew Think He Was Writing Scripture?
One of the most common misconceptions about the New Testament canon is that the authors of these writings had no idea that they were writing Scripture-like books. I dealt with this misconception on a general level here, showing that there was a clear apostolic self-awareness amongst the New Testament authors.
While this apostolic self-awareness may be easy to show for authors like Paul, what about the gospels which, technically speaking, are formally anonymous? Do their authors exhibit awareness that they were writing something like Scripture? To explore this further, let us just consider just one of our gospels, namely the Gospel of Matthew.
The first step is to get … Continue reading...
Is Scripture Still Holy? A Review (Part 1)
In his latest volume, Is Scripture Still Holy? Coming of Age with the New Testament, A.E. Harvey tackles the thorny problem of whether Christians can still believe the Bible is, in some sense, a “Holy” book in light of the modern scholarly consensus which declares it to be quite ordinary. Given the problem of the canon, the disagreements over the Apocrypha, the various textual versions in the Dean Sea Scrolls, the existence of Q, and the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas, how can Christians still believe the Bible is special?
While the title of this volume implies that the author may still be presenting this as an open … Continue reading...
Is the Gospel of John History or Theology?
Over the years, biblical scholars have challenged the historicity of the canonical gospels on a number of fronts. But, no gospel has taken it on the chin like the Gospel of John. Ever since Clement of Alexandria’s famous statement that the gospel of John was “a spiritual Gospel” (recorded in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.14.7) critics have suggested that John has very little to do with history and has much more to do with theology.
The reasons for such critiques of John are not difficult to find. John writes the story of Jesus in a lengthy, drawn-out style, (quite different than the pithy language of the Synoptics), he includes unique … Continue reading...