Jesus is not God in the Gospel of Mark

In my closing arguments, I’ll attempt to recap how the debate went and see if any conclusions can be drawn. theskeptic’s arguments theskeptic was arguing that in the Gospel of Mark Christ is not considered divine and you attempted to show this through two points. 1. There is no birth narrative (and consequently no virgin birth) in Mark. 2. You also argued that Christ being called the Son of God and the Son of man are not indications of divinity. Other indicators of Christ’s divinity in Mark I attempted to counter by showing that even if those two points are valid there is still a wealth of other indications of Christ’s divinity in Mark, such as; Christ’s identification with the divine “I am” statements. Christ acting and teaching in his own name and by his own authority. How Mark systematically uses the miracle stories to show Christ’s authority over all aspects of reality. Christ’s statements before the high priest that get him charged with blasphemy. The fact the nearly all of the gospel of Mark simply doesn’t make sense if the divinity of Christ is stripped out of it. Christ always addressing God as Father or my Father even though no OT individual ever addressed God as “my Father.” And others. You didn’t respond to most of these indicators of divinity and I really wish you would have as I don’t see how you can make a case for the non-divinity of Christ in Mark without showing how I am mistaken about them. If there is one clear example of Mark identifying Christ with the divine then it is perfectly reasonable to say Mark thought Christ was divine. It seems that we have many such examples and I attempted to explain how and why they are examples of or indicators of the divinity of Christ. You seem to still be missing or ignoring the point that Christ didn’t teach and act in the name of God. He taught by his own name and authority and performed miracles by his own name and authority. Doing a miracle is not in and of itself an indication of divinity, but when Christ forgives sins and acts by his own authority that is. You are not comparing like examples when you compare his miracles to those of Moses. I further argued that your two points are incorrect. The birth narrative Perhaps I misunderstood you on something about the lack of a virgin birth in Mark, but I still don’t see how it indicates a lack of divinity. You conceded or explained to me in your last argument that you don’t think a virgin birth is necessary for divinity either, but then I am at a total loss to understand why you believe the lack of virgin birth narrative equals lack of divinity. I really wish you would have explained this further or laid out this argument in a clear, structured fashion. As it stands now it seems to me that there is no valid point there, but perhaps I grossly misunderstood you. In this regard, absence of evidence most definitely is not necessarily evidence of absence. That is basic logic. Ask any police investigator if the absence of a murder weapon is evidence there was no murder. This is even more obvious when there is a stabbed, dead body lying in front of the investigator. Just because the murder weapon has not been found doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Son of God and Son of Man You also tried to argue that Son of God and Son of Man are not divine titles. You ceased claiming anything about Son of Man when I explained (or conceded) that no Christian creed or theology has ever relied on Son of Man as an indicator of divinity. It seemed you were arguing that being called the Son of God is no big deal as other people in the OT are called Sons of God all the time. I attempted to explain that it is distinctly different when Christ is called the Son of God. Nearly all of the OT references our plural and general (i.e. the people call God our Father) and every time Christ address God he does so in a possessive and singular fashion (Christ calls God my Father). Further I argued that each time God speaks of Christ in Mark he uses an indicator that Christ is the only Son of God. I also cited several Biblical scholars in support of this to show that it isn’t just my crazy idea. It’s well supported and argued by experts in the field. The different sense in which Sons of God is used or someone is called a Son of God are simply too different to draw a comparison between them and when it is used to describe Christ. You responded by citing a couple of OT passages, but they don’t seem to address this issue as they do not have God addressing other people as his only son or an individual addressing God as my father. You did mention some scholars in your last argument, but you didn’t explain their arguments and reasoning or even point me toward the books and articles where they make their arguments. The point of citing experts is not to show a list of names that agree with you, it is to engage with the best examples of reasoning and arguments in that field. I really wish you would have cited what those scholars’ arguments are instead of just listing their names as I would have liked to engage their reasons and arguments. I am aware of some of those scholars’ arguments and find them lacking, but that’s all the more reason why I wish you would have brought them up so we could engage them. My conclusions So to conclude it seems to me that theskeptic has failed to make his case. He was unable or unwilling to explain how the lack of a virgin birth narrative counts against Christ’s divinity, he was unable to counter the explanations I offered on how Son of God is a divine title in Mark, and he was unable to explain away the numerous other references to Christ’s divinity in Mark. I appreciate that he had a very difficult task in attempting to show that Christ is not divine in Mark. There are so many references to and indicators of Christ’s divinity in Mark that someone could (and I think some people have) write a doctoral thesis on the subject. Explaining away all those references would be a very long and difficult tack (maybe two or three doctoral projects worth of material), so I think he just took on a case that is too big. theskeptic, I do appreciate you bring up this topic, the way you attempted to stick to the issues at hand, and that we were able to debate in a polite and respectful manner. If I misunderstood you at any point, that was not intentional and my apologies for it. Now I think I should win just for being able to find a way to reference Futurama in a debate on the gospel of Mark. ;) If you feel I haven’t responded to anything you argued, here is my witty response.