Christian apologist Taylor Brown posted an article (here) reviewing Dr. Michael Bird's "Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology". I replied as follows. I'm cross posting it here because Taylor has set up his blog to require him to approve replies before they post.
Full text:
Hello,
I'd
like to see your response to two skeptical contentions, namely, whether
reasonableness can coexist with inaccuracy, and if so, whether accusing Mark of
adoptionism can be reasonable even if wrong:
First
argument:
If it be true that not all positions that are false, are also unreasonable
(i.e., sometimes we make innocent mistakes), does this create at least a
logical possibility that a person who derives Adoptionism out of Mark's gospel,
despite being "wrong", might be "reasonable" nonetheless?
Second
argument:
Since Mark doesn't mention the virgin birth, the 4 most viable possibe
explanations would seem to be:
1 -
Mark mentioned the virgin birth, but this part of his gospel is lost to us.
2 - Mark accepted the virgin birth as truth, but knowingly "chose to
exclude" it from his gospel.
3 - Mark doesn't mention the virgin birth because he didn't know about it.
4 - Mark doesn't mention the virgin birth because he thought it was false.
Option
# 1 seems unlikely since no Christian scholar argues this and nothing in
patristics says Mark mentioned the VB.
Option 2 - seems unlikely since the VB would strongly support Mark's theory of
Jesus' true identity. Mark choosing to exclude it is akin to an author who
"chooses to exclude" Abraham Lincoln from a study of the Emancipation
proclamation.
Option 3 - seems unreasonable assuming the a.d. 70 date the Christian scholarly
majority assign to Mark, for then Mark must be thought to have somehow never have
heard about the VB even 40 years after Jesus died. If the VB stories are
historical truth, seems unreasonable that none of Mark's companions or
associates during those 40 years said anything to him about the VB. And if we
believe Irenaeus that Cerinthus the low-Christology Gnostic lived at the same
time as the apostles, seems likely Mark would have been hearing "Jesus
wasn't born of a virgin" at least a few times during that 40 year period.
Then
again, Option 3 might be reasonable given we'd reasonably expect a person with
a goal to prove Jesus' divine origin to find the VB a powerfully supporting
evidence he wouldn't likely "chose to exclude"
Option
4 seems reasonable because even conservative scholars of Markan Priority
persuasion affirm that Matthew often upgrades Mark's Christology (e.g. he
changes Mark's "Jesus COULD not" to "Jesus DID not", and
its probably not sheer coincidence that this change just happens to add a layer
of protection to high-Christology. That is, the author of Mark is not a person
who would likely ascribe to the high Christology found in the VB (I am not a
Christian, and so i don't automatically assume that whatever we find in Mark is
authentically from Mark, so I will not worry that my interpretation of
something about Mark is wrong if it cannot be harmonized with something else
found in "Mark").
Assuming that Mark thought the VB
story true, can't Option 3 or 4 be "reasonable" even granting for the
sake of argument that they are "wrong"?
I mean, it's not like Mark's reasons for omitting the VB are equally as clear
as his association with Peter. And it's not like the reason most NT authors
remain silent about the virgin birth is equally as clear as their reasons for
thinking Jesus is Lord. The more obscure the "truth" that skeptics
are denying, the more reasonable they can be to deny it, amen?
barryjoneswhat@gmail.com
