Brant Pitre on the riddles of Jesus’ divinity

It is Brant Pitre’s argument in Jesus and Divine Christology that the intrinsic divinity of Jesus is revealed in the Gospels either through actions and events or through certain cryptic sayings. His divinity is a secret, a hidden reality, that may sometimes be glimpsed breaking through revelatory or “apocalyptic” cracks in the human exterior.

There are serious problems with Pitre’s reading of the supposedly “epiphanic” miracles. What is revealed is not divine identity but the authority and glory given to the Son of Man as part of the story of the crisis of first century Israel.

• Brant Pitre on the epiphany miracles: the stilling of the storm
• What the walking on the water business is really all about
• The transfiguration of Jesus: what exactly is revealed?

There are similar problems with the interpretation of the three meshalim—parables, riddles—that are the subject of chapter two. We will look at all three sayings in this post.

Greater than father or mother

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. (Matt. 10:37)

Jesus demands that his disciples love him more than they love their fathers and mothers. In first century Judaism, “the biblical obligation to honor one’s father and mother had come to be regarded as second only to the obligation to honor God himself” (117). Therefore, Jesus puts himself on a par with God.

If the honor due to one’s parents is second only to God himself…, and Jesus insists that his disciples love him above their father and mother, then who exactly is he claiming to be? In a Second Temple Jewish context, the answer is inescapable: Jesus is implying that he is (somehow) worthy of honor on a level that is equal with the God of the Decalogue. (118)

First point to make: this is not a stand-alone christological axiom. I’ve complained before that Pitre presses the general first century Jewish context in disregard of the literary setting that directly circumscribes or filters that context and makes it meaningful. Even the loving son and daughter part disappears from sight once he gets going.

The frame of reference for the saying is the narrative of Micah 7:1-7. The prophet laments the failures of justice and righteousness in Israel, the upsurge of violence, and foresees divine judgment. No one is to be trusted—not friends, not leaders, not even family members: “for a son dishonors a father, a daughter shall rise up against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; the enemies of a man are the men in his house” (7:6).

The fourth commandment may be in the background, but the argument is about the breakdown of family and community life in all directions.

With this thought in mind, Jesus warns that he brings a sword, not peace, to the land; he has come to turn children against their parents: “a person’s enemies will be those of his own household” (Matt. 10:36). The logion is not obviously a mashal or riddle. He is doing what he does repeatedly—evoking prophetic narratives as a warning for the current generation of his people.

This is the context in which he demands that his disciples love him more than family members. Jewish society is falling apart, the decalogue has been grossly neglected, a violent outcome is foreseen, the disciples are called to proclaim a message of judgment and salvation, and they will fail in their mission if they do not prioritise their attachment to Jesus, take up their crosses, and suffer for his sake (10:37-39).

So what is at issue here is not Jesus’ identity but the mission of Israel’s messiah and his followers during a period of eschatological crisis. There is plenty of room between love for family and honouring God for the disciples’ devotion, under such extreme conditions, to the agent of God’s purposes for Israel.

No one is good but God

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. (Mk. 10:17-18)

The first part of Pitre’s argument is uncontroversial: “when all of Jesus’s allusions to Jewish Scripture are taken together, the upshot of his answer to the rich man is this: in order to have the eternal life of the resurrection, it is necessary both to profess the goodness of the one God of Israel and to live according to the Decalogue, especially the commandments focused on love of neighbor” (132).

But what are the implications of what Jesus says about being good: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” (Mk. 10:18).

Pitre argues that Jesus alludes to the Shema and Decalogue to ‘invite the rich man to realise that [he] is much more than just a merely human “teacher”’ (135). Two observations are made in support of this contention.

First, Jesus does not actually deny that he is good or that he is God, he merely affirms monotheism.

Secondly, “Jesus adds a commandment to the Decalogue that is entirely focused on following him” (italics removed). He presumes not only to modify the commandment but also to identify himself with the God of the commandment.

So the conclusion is that “the episode perhaps most frequently cited to argue that Jesus sees himself as merely human turns out to the powerful evidence that Jesus puts himself on par with the God of the Decalogue” (136-37, italics removed).

The objection to this is that Jesus adds nothing to the decalogue. Pitre has again lost sight of the narrative context in the Gospels. Let me explain.

If the rich man asks about inheriting the life of the age to come, which Pitre correctly links to Daniel 12:2-3, it is because he understands that a decisive “kingdom of God” event is imminent. He has presumably just heard Jesus say that people must become like children to enter into the kingdom of God (Mk. 10:14-15). He is looking for the life of the age that will come with the resolution of the historical crisis facing Israel, which will be a resurrection figuratively of Israel and literally of the righteous dead.

The decalogue was given as rules of life for Israel in the land. They were to honour father and mother “that your days may be long in the land the LORD your God is giving to you” (Exod. 20:12). The rich man has kept these rules, but Israel as a whole has not, therefore they face invasion, destruction, slaughter, and dispersion—an eschatological crisis. Their days will not be long in the land.

Righteousness according to the Law will not get individuals such as the rich man through the crisis. What he must do is find the narrow and difficult path leading to the life of the age to come. To make good this lack, he must abandon the material goods that came with Torah observance and follow Jesus along a path of hardship, ostracism, and persecution.

If Jesus’ “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” is not quite to be taken at face value, it is because he means to underline the absolute seriousness of the eschatological challenge—to recognise that under the circumstances Torah observance will not get him to the age to come, it will keep him on a broad road leading to destruction. The commandments of the good God are good, but they are not enough.

Finally, the interpretive significance of the eschatological narrative about the Son of Man becomes obvious in the ensuing discussion about riches and the kingdom of God (Matt. 19:23-30; Mk. 10:23-31; Lk. 18:24-30). Notably, Matthew has Jesus say to his disciples: “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28).

The riddle of David’s Lord

And as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, “How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.”’ David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son?” (Mk. 12:35-37)

The exegetical argument runs as follows:

1. Jesus does not here dispute the fact that the scriptures say that the messiah will be a descendant of David, but he will in some sense be greater than David because David calls him “lord.”

2. The messiah in Psalm 110 is a divine figure because he sits at the right hand of God in heaven.

3. The messiah in Psalm 110 is also described as a “son of God,” who was “begotten from the womb before the morning star” (Ps. 109:3* LXX; cf. Ps. 2:7; Is. 14:12). So Jesus seems to imply that “the messiah is not merely the human descendant of David; he is also the divine begotten son of God” (154). Witherington is quoted:

Clearly, this text is a crucial one in Jesus’ process of self-discernment and self-understanding. This text, when coupled with others, strongly suggests that Jesus did see himself in more than ordinary human categories. (155)

So the conclusion is that Jesus uses the “riddle” of the messiah in Psalm 110 to “reveal the mystery of his divine messiahship.”

However…

The king seated at the right hand of God is not enthroned in heaven, he is not a divine figure. He rules in the midst of his enemies with a sceptre sent out from Zion (Ps. 110:2). The thought, therefore, is of God present on earth at the enthronement or empowerment of the king. God intervenes on earth and invites the king to participate in and benefit from his act of kingdom.

Something similar happens, I think, in the vision of Daniel 7:9-14: wheeled thrones need to be put in place because this is happening on earth, in the midst of history, not in heaven; old kingdoms are judged and destroyed, new dominions are established. The beneficiaries of the tribunal are faithful Jews and perhaps some of the dead who have been raised to share in the vindication and in the life of the new age.

Jesus, of course, reads the Psalm a little differently. It is David, not the court prophet-poet, who speaks.

Since he will later identify himself with the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven within the lifetime of the current leadership of Israel (14:62), he may here locate the exchange between the Lord and “my Lord” in heaven, but that would presuppose the resurrection.

David speaks “in the Holy Spirit”—i.e., prophetically—about an exchange between God and the ascended Jesus: he will rule for the sake of his beleaguered and persecuted people until the last of their enemies has been destroyed. The one greater than David is the future crucified and exalted messiah.

The begetting of the king happens not at his birth—primordial or historical—but when he is given a sceptre to rule in the midst of his enemies (Ps. 110:1) or the nations as his inheritance (Psalm. 2:7). It is not the divine origins of Jesus that is determinative here but the authority that he will receive as Son of Man to judge and rule. The New Testament is consistently forward-looking, not backward-looking.

Quite what Jesus is doing with the quotation is not easily discerned.

The key, I think, is found in the statement that David was speaking in the Spirit. The Christ will differ from the son of David insofar as he will attain his rule in the amidst of his enemies not through physical descent but by resurrection from the dead, which is exactly what Paul says about the gospel. It was promised ahead of time through prophets such as David. Its subject is Jesus, who was descended from David according to the flesh but who was “declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:2-4).