Divine-Human Relations

The Christian Church continues to absolutize the kingship of Jesus from the time of his birth into his resurrection from the dead. But according to the witness of the four gospels, Jesus'identity is paradoxical,combining both Messiah and "The Son of Man." In all four gospels Jesus is the Messiah from the time of his birth to the end of his life. It is in his crucifixion that he is pre-eminently the Messiah, and Pontius Pilate mockingly establishes his ironic identity through the superscription, "The King of the Jews." Jesus is the Messiah preeminently in death. In the Gospel according to Mark it is the unnamed woman who anoints Jesus as Messiah in death. In and through his resurrection, however, Jesus is "the Son of Man," no longer the Messiah. For by his resurrection from the dead he inaugurates God's New Humanity that is commissioned to continue the work that he initiated, namely,to work toward the establishment of justice and peace on earth.

Resurrection is the entry into a new moral order that is constituted as a terrestrial reality by the creative act of God, and therefore it is something that happens to individual human beings.

The two Old Testament quotations of Mark 1:2-3 serve as the governing principle of Mark's Gospel. Although they stand in contradiction to each other, the resolution that follows constructs a paradoxical relationship between Jesus as "the Son of the Human Being—Son of God" and Jesus as a type of Elijah, like John the Baptizer, who constructs the way for his disciples into death and resurrection. The youth in the tomb, who appears in the Gospel's ending that is not the ending, continues this paradoxical principle of participating in the reordering of power and yet constructing the way into a reordering of power for the addressees of Mark's Gospel.

As the child of Mary, Jesus is a new creation generated by the holy Spirit. As the adopted son of Joseph, he is a descendant of David and Abraham. Although he represents two generations and wears two christological hats concurrently, he is one person and has one name, Jesus. His life manifests a direct correspondence between his activity and his name, between his person and his work. That is why his naming is so important.

At the beginning of his letter to the Romans the Apostle Paul declares that he is not ashamed of the Gospel—for two reasons. On the one hand, it is "the power of God" that is directed towards salvation, and, on the other hand, it discloses the reality of God's justice.

Paul continues to be identified with "justification by faith," but in actuality "justification by faith" as Romans 4 indicates, is a relationship with God that goes all the way back to Abraham and Sarah and simply serves as the point of departure for Paul's presentation of the Gospel in Romans 5. Far more significant is his interpretation of Jesus' death and resurrection which discloses a new road into the fulfillment of the justice that God wills for humankind. The movement from Abraham's faith into the salvation of Jesus Christ that generates justice is expressed in the double prepositional phrase of Romans 1:17, "Out of the trust [of Abraham] into the trust [of Jesus Christ]."