Faithfulness of the Nicene formulation to the canonical Gospels in its confession of the full deity and full humanity of Jesus Christ as the second person of the Trinity is surely assumed and affirmed by every orthodox believer who rises to the call in worship, “let us say what we believe.” Less sure is the readiness of many believers to document that faithfulness of Nicaea in specific exegesis of arguments drawn directly from the Gospels. A study of any one of the Gospels might be enlisted into the service of providing a warrant for the apostolic roots of the patristic resolution of competing conceptions of the incarnate Son among Arians, Docetists, Apollinarians, and other contenders for orthodoxy throughout three centuries that preceded the convening of bishops in Constantine’s time.
Of the four, this paper will turn to an exegesis of the Gospel of Mark and its organization to demonstrate a direct and faithful resonance between the structure and argument of this apostolic record (which Papias attributes to Peter’s guidance) and the Christology of Nicaea as its 318 bishops came to define it.
Briefly, the connection the paper will identify rests upon a persuasive insight by N. Peterson in the Harvard Theological Review (1980) that Mark has arranged the central section of his Gospel into two sequences of three units, each of which sequence is punctuated at its conclusion with a narrative of the healing of a blind man. The first of the sequences (from its “beginning” in 4:1) illustrates and emphasizes the supernatural power of Jesus to calm storms, heal diseases, feed multitudes and yet perplex his disciples into asking one another, “Who then is this?” (4:41; 6:51; 8:17). Peter does eventually confess, on the strength of these displays, the central claim of this and all the Gospels: Jesus is the Messiah. And yet Peter’s understanding is like the initial sight of the blind man whom Jesus heals immediately before this: only partial. A second sequence of three further units (“beginning” in 8:31) each revolves around Jesus’ “passion prediction,” emphasizing Jesus’ human mortality. This sequence, too, concludes with a blind man, but this time one who sees not partially at first but completely.
Mark poses the question of his early readers, Do you “see” who Jesus is? Full sight of who Jesus is, a vision that finally resolves the lack of understanding pervading both sequences of three, Mark appears to be aiming to make clear, requires two indispensable conclusions about him as God’s Messiah: he comes to the world with all the supernatural power to qualify as God, and he lives in the world with all the human mortality that is capable of suffering and dying and serving as the second Adam in our stead. Very God and very man. That is the heart of Mark’s message. And the Fathers of Nicaea, to their everlasting credit, grasped it well.
[I have been invited to offer a more popularized version of this paper at a celebration of the 1700th Anniversary in Iznik (formerly Nicaea) this summer, in June.]