Jesus is not God in the Gospel of Mark

It seems that theskeptik is bring in items that do not relate to the topic at hand. Perhaps I misread the debate topic, but I thought you were claiming the Gospel of Mark does not claim that Christ is divine. If so, then Paul, the Trinity, Markian priority, and other such things are irrelevant. These topics (while of value) have no bearing on the question “Did the author of Mark (here after referred to as Mark for ease) intend his readers to think Christ was divine?” Likewise I simply cannot see why you are claiming the lack of birth narrative is evidence of non-divinity. All that shows is that Mark wanted to emphasis other things than Christ’s birth, it says nothing about Christ’s divinity anymore than a biography of President Obama that ignores his birth and childhood would speak to his divine status. Mark’s listing of Christ’s divinity To establish that Mark portrays Christ as divine I need to show at least one instance where Christ says or does something that is divine. 1. If Christ says divine things or commits divine actions in the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Mark claims he is divine.2. Christ does say and do such things in Mark.3. Therefore according to Mark Christ is divine. This is actually easy as there is a hell of a lot more than one, two, or three examples of Christ’s divinity in Mark. First the things that are said of Christ. 1:1 He is called the Son of God.1:3 He is referred to as the Lord.1:11 God calls Christ his son at the baptism.3:11 The impure spirits call him the Son of God, and he commands them to be silent.5:6 The demons call Christ “Son of the Most High God”8:27-30 Peter calls him the Christ.9:2-8 The voice of God calls Christ his son during the transfiguration.15:39 The centurion proclaims that Christ was the Son of God. What Christ says about himself. 2:28 He calls himself Lord of the Sabbath. This places him on the level of God as the Jews regarded the law (of which the Sabbath was a central) as from God and under God’s authority.8:38 Christ indicates that if anyone is ashamed of him, God will be ashamed of him. This also places Christ on the same level as God.12:35-37 Christ uses a psalm of David to refer to himself as Lord.14:61-63: Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” “I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” The high priest tore his clothes. “Why do we need any more witnesses?” he asked. “You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?” This is a direct reference to a divine figure in Daniel 7:13-14. The Son of Man in Daniel is describe like this, “his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” Obviously only something divine is everlasting and does not pass away. It’s equally obvious the high priest and other Jewish leaders recognized that Christ was claiming to be divine. Otherwise why would they charge him with blasphemy? What Christ did. 2:5 Christ forgives a man’s sins. This is big deal because only God could forgive sins. The people who hear him forgive the man’s sins even say so. Yet Christ doesn’t back down, rather he then performs a miracle to further demonstrate his authority and divinity. Of course I can also make arguments that predicting your own death and resurrection is an indication of divinity, but there isn’t enough space to do so here. Miracles You do say that Mark shows Christ performing miracles, but you missed the point of those miracles. It’s not just that Christ does miracles, it’s that Mark consistently shows Christ demonstrating sovereignty over aspects of reality like death(5:22), nature, (4:35), disease (3:1), and demons (1:34). Mark is categorically showing is that Christ is sovereign over everything, and he is so by his own authority. He does miracles in his own name and never begins by saying “Thus saith the Lord.” This is because Mark wants the reader to see that Christ is the Lord. All of the above are only direct and obvious references. If we analyze things like the content of Christ’s teaching we would find even more reasons to affirm that Mark regards Christ as divine. Conclusion Mark’s gospel is peppered with references to Christ’s divinity. Even if your two arguments are valid we are still left with an incredible amount of material in Mark pointing to Christ’s divinity. I’ll let two great scholars sum it up. “ Mark has introduced us to Jairus’s daughter. He has told as that Herod thinks Jesus is John the Baptist, raised from the dead. He has conveyed to us the puzzlement of the disciples when Jesus spoke of the Son of Man rising from the dead. What is more, he has told us three times that Jesus warned the disciples of his coming death and told them that afterward he would be raised to life. Finally, he has emphasized that Jesus told the disciples on the Mount of Olives, and Caiaphas in the Jewish hearing, that the Son of Man would be vindicated, exalted on the clouds to a position or glory (not returning in the clouds in a second coming, please note).”http://ntwrightpage.com... “Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. . . . And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.” - C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity theskeptik’s arguments Your first point is that early manuscripts don’t have “Son of God” in Mark 1:1. So what? Even if I grant that (and we don’t know that, only that there is manuscript evidence that points both ways) it doesn’t show that Mark didn’t think Christ was divine. It might if it was the only reference to Christ’s divinity, but as I showed above there are a lot more references to Christ’s divinity. You further claim that titles like Son of God and Son of Man are not divine titles. But no Christian Creed or theology has ever relied on Son of Man to justify a claim to Christ’s divinity,(see Alistair McGrath Christian Theology: An Introduction and A J B Higgins Jesus and the Son of Man) so I don’t see why you think it's important. Son of God is far more important but it is used more than three times. It is used six times (1:1, 1:11, 3:11, 5:6, 9:2-8, 15:39). It is a divine title. I don’t know who you are reading that says otherwise but I’d like to see them cited. You seem to be arguing that as other individuals were called sons of God being called the son of God is no big deal. But there is a big difference between sons of god and son of God. "sons/children of God" was typically used collectively of the whole people. No one individual in the Hebrew Bible ever address God as “my Father” like Christ did. The partial exception to this is the very Psalm that Christ quotes in Mark 12:35-37 (see B. Byrne,"Sons of God"—Seed of Abraham, Analecta Biblica,) Additionally Christ never includes other individuals when he refers to God as “Father” this is always a singular address (see Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man) Christ refers to God as “Father” in 8:38 and 14:36 I do not see why you claim that when God calls Christ his son that has no theological content. Theology means the study of God, so when God speaks, that’s the most relevant thing there is to theology. It seems you just dismiss this and offer no reasons for your dismissal. So I don’t see how your two points establish much to work with. The lack of a birth narrative says nothing about Christ’s divine status, Son of man is not used to claim that Christ is divine, the examples you cite of other sons of God are quite different from the son of God, and you dismissed it when God called Christ his son for no given reason. It seems to me that to make your case you have to give us much better reasons as well as explain how all the references I cited are wrong.