II

Having dealt with the historicity of the texts, let us turn to the side of theology. The key to an understanding of the theological significance of the predictions is perhaps found in the so-called messianic secret and in the Markan use of the Christological title "Son of Man" in the context of the whole section in which the predictions occur.

Wrede, the first exponent of the messianic secret,(10) finds the clue to the puzzle of Jesus' habitual enjoining silence upon all around him and his secrecy in Mk 9:9, which reads: "he charged them to tell no one what they had seen until the Son of Man should have risen from the dead". According to Wrede, this was invented by Mark to explain why Jesus was not seen in his glory until after the Resurrection. This was by no means accidental: Jesus had recommended secrecy because he did not want to reveal his real Messianic identity while he was still alive. Mark designed this explanation and inserted it into the tradition handed down to him. Evidently Wrede is working on a presupposition that no one had ever thought of Jesus as Messiah before the Resurrection and that Jesus himself had never claimed to be the Messiah. But was it really so? Was there ever a Jesus tradition free from Messianic elements? Probably not, for certainly the Jewish Christian community right from the very beginning saw their master as Messiah.

The clue to the messianic secret lies in the Passion, not in the Resurrection. The function of the messianic secret certainly was not that entertained by Wrede, for Mark did not impose a theory on the tradition he had taken over; rather he was concerned to emphasize its true nature of proclaiming Jesus in the light of the Resurrection. Mk 9:9 embodies the evangelist's own theological insight and reflection that a genuine understanding of the true nature of Jesus was impossible until after the Resurrection. Hence misunderstanding was not only unavoidable but even necessary. Mark realized that the true Christ was the suffering Son of Man, and this conviction obviously has controlled his treatment and organization of the gospel material. Evidence of this is in the section we have just analysed (Mk 8:27-10:52). Here the evangelist dramatically describes the disciples' failure to understand Jesus' true messiahship. The replies of Jesus are not only to reassure the disciples that he went to his execution knowingly and willingly, but also to point out that an understanding of his messiahship had to depend on the Passion. It is here too that the evangelist develops his christology and his soteriology of the Son of Man. "The Son of man must suffer many things" (Mk 8:31), but the Son of Man will come "in the glory of his Father with the holy angels" (Mk 8:38). And the Son of Man came "To give his life as a ransom for many" (Mk 10:45). Each of the passion predictions must be viewed in the light of these Markan presentations of the Son of Man; and in these Markan presentations, as Norman Perrin puts it, "we have moved from earthly authority through the necessity of suffering to apocalyptic authority. We have moved also from the necessity for the passion to the soteriological significance of the cross"(11) The passion predictions, therefore, have a definite and central theological function to perform within the Markan framework of proclaiming a suffering Messiah, a genuine understanding of whose true nature was impossible until after the Resurrection.

10.W. Wrede, The Messianic Secret (Translated by F.C.G. Greig), Cambridge and London, James Clarke, 1971.

11.N. Perrin, "The Creative Use...", p.364.