The accusers and critics of Jesus as recorded in the Gospel of Mark did not all die in the first century. We want to answer a modern opponent of who Jesus was. In his discussion of the theology of Mark, Craig Evans notes that Mark’s theology is revealed in the Messianic Secret (see footnote 1).
William Wrede (pronounced Ready), (1859 -1906) was a German Lutheran theologian, who promoted the Messianic Secret. Other German liberal theologians who denied the deity of Christ were Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889) and Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930). Wrede advocated that the Messianic Secret was
First manifested in Jesus forbidding others to proclaim he was the Messiah (demons in 1:34; healed leper in 1:44),
Second, in the disciples’ failure to understand who Jesus claimed to be (in the three passion predictions in Mark 8, 9, 10).
Third, in Jesus’ teaching, such as the parables (4:11-12), which meant to conceal.
Wrede contended that Jesus did not know he was the Messiah and no one recognized Jesus as the Messiah, until after his resurrection and that Mark had to create the Messianic Secret to show how no one recognized Jesus as the Messiah before the resurrection (see footnote 2). D. Edmond Hiebert summarizes Wrede, “These [references to Jesus as messiah] were all editorial and unhistorical …. By inventing the ‘messianic secret’ Mark removed a source of embarrassment for the theology of the church by explaining why Jesus was not more generally recognized as Messiah during His lifetime” (see footnote 3).
A proper understanding of Mark’s theology clearly shows that Jesus was publicly proclaimed to be the Messiah and that he understood he was the Messiah. Both Peter in 8:29 and Bartimaeus in 10:48 publicly announced Jesus was Messiah and he accepted their acknowledgment. Bartimaeus humbles himself and cries out to “Jesus, the Son of David” for mercy in 10:47. In 10:48, the crowd tried to silence Bartimaeus. It was the crowd attempting the “Messianic Secret.” Jesus refused to silence the humble and determined blind man who had the spiritual insight to recognize Jesus as the Messiah. In other words, the Gospel of Mark was not a cover-up. Jesus also publically pronounced himself as the Messiah in 14:60-61 (See footnote 4). The High Priest asked Jesus, “Are you the Christ [Messiah]?” Christ answered, “I am.”
J. D. G. Dunn refutes all three major reasons for Mark’s alleged cover-up, but the focus here is on the second reason. Dunn argues:
Turning to this latter theme, the obtuseness [dullness] of the disciples, which is often cited as an important element in Mark's theology of the Messianic secret .... Bearing in mind this diversity in the situations which demonstrate the disciples' obtuseness, it is more plausible to recognize in the motif a historical reminiscence of the very natural and unexceptional slowness of unlettered men whose rigid and closed system of thought made it difficult for them to adjust to new teaching (See footnote 5) .... Such a situation can be resolved only by a conversion of mind—a transformation ... something which by all accounts did not happen to the disciples till the gift of the Spirit after Jesus' resurrection (See footnote 6). Jesus knew this reality and made provision for it in Mark 9:9.
Therefore, Wrede is wrong in denying the Messiahship of Jesus by contending that the idea of his Messianship originated not with Christ and his disciples but later with the church.
Footnote 1:
Craig A. Evans. Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 34B, Mark 8:27-16:20, Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001, lxx-lxxii.
Footnote 2:
(William Wrede, Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien: Zugleich ein Beitrag zum Verständnis des Markusevangeliums (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1901); English edition, William Wrede, The Messianic Secret, trans. J. C. G. Grieg (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1971).
Footnote 3:
D. Edmond Hiebert. An Introduction to the NT: Vol One The Gospels and Acts (Chicago: Moody Press) 1975, 96.
Footnote 4:
Craig L. Blomberg. Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey (Nashville: B&H Academic) 1997, 119.
Footnote 5:
The intertestamental Jewish view expressed in the pseudepigraphic Psalms of Solomon, of a conquering Messiah, reveals what kind of messiah the disciples were expecting. The intertestamental author prayed:
See, Lord, and raise up for them their king, the son of David, to rule over Israel, your servant, in the time which you chose, O God, undergird him with the strength to destroy the unrighteous rulers, to cleanse Jerusalem from gentiles who trample her to destruction; to drive out in wisdom and in righteousness the sinners from the inheritance; to crash the arrogance of sinners like a potter's jar; to smash all their substance with an iron rod; to destroy the lawless nations with the word of his mouth; to make the nations flee from his presence at his threat and to put sinners to shame by the word of their heart (R. B. Wright. “Psalms of Solomon” in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James Charlesworth, Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 17:21-25, 2010).
Footnote 6:
J. D. G. Dunn. “The Messianic Secret in Mark” in Review of Tyndale Bulletin, 21, 1970, 95-96.