The Shape of Morality in the Gospel of Mark: An Experiment in Hermeneutics
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The following work draws from the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer to form an inquiry into the moral vision of the Gospel of Mark. The metaphor of slavery is identified as a central component of the moral instruction of Jesus to his disciples. Following a brief analysis of the metaphor in Greco-Roman literature to identify its basic import in Mark’s Gospel, a dialogue is developed between the second Gospel and the moral philosophy of Zygmunt Bauman. Three lines of thought are isolated in the work of Bauman and utilized to illuminate and elaborate the moral vision of Mark that emerges from the metaphor of slavery: the conceptualization of morality as responsibility for others; the rooting of moral action in emotion; and the location of morality at the center of what it means to be human.
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2
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 314-315. Although Gadamer has sometimes been accused of opening the way to such flat-footed relativism, his thought has repeatedly been shown to possess greater nuance and insight. See, e.g., Jean Grondin, “Gadamer’s Basic Understanding of Understanding,” in Cambridge Companion to Gadamer (ed. Robert J. Dostal; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 42-46. A more detailed account of how Gadamer holds in tension the twin hermeneutical realities of objectivity and subjectivity is furnished by Warnke, Gadamer, 73-106; Di Caesare, Gadamer, 96-97; Stanley E. Porter and Jason C. Robinson, Hermeneutics: An introduction to interpretive theory (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2011), 82-83, 86-88.
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3
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 316. For helpful analysis of Gadamer’s notion of conversation between text and interpreter and the goal of agreement in which both partners in the dialogue are transformed, see Warnke, Gadamer, 100-106; B.H. McLean, Biblical Interpretation and Philosophical Hermeneutics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012) 185-188; Di Cesare, Gadamer, 159.
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4
See Gadamer, Truth and Method, 318-333. Cf. Porter and Robinson, Hermeneutics, 78-79, 99-101; Warnke, Gadamer, 96.
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6
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 308-309. Italics original. Westphal, Whose Community?, 71-73, offers several helpful clarifications concerning the way in which temporal distancing contributes to clarity of interpretive vision. The rehabilitation of “prejudice” as a constructive component in the interpretive process was famously undertaken by Gadamer in Truth and Method, 278-318. See summary and analysis in Warnke, Gadamer, 75-83; Westphal, Whose Community, 77-86; James Risser, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other: Re-reading Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics (Albany: suny Press, 1997) 65-73.
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8
Garnsey, Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 1. See also Sandra R. Joshel, Slavery in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 17-22, 38-41; and the ancient sources cited in Thomas Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery (New York: Routledge, 2005 [1981]) 15-35. For the terminological distinction between διάκονος and δοῦλος, see H. Beyer, διακονέω, ktl, tdnt 2:81-93 (81-82); A. Weiser, διακονέω, ktl, ednt 1:302-304 (302).
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17
Cf., e.g., Xenophon, Mem. 1.3.11; Livy 30.12; Seneca, Phaedr. 608-612. For the slavery to the emotions, to ignorance, and to one’s body (excessive concern for health as well as fear of death), see Cicero, Harus. 23.48; Epictetus, Diat. 4.1; Seneca, Ira 1.7; Ep. 14.1; 26.9-10; 70.19-21; Vita beat. 8.2-3; On Firmness 3.1; Dio Chrysostom, 1 Serv. lib.; Plutarch, On Nobility of Birth. For slavery to a god, cf. Plato, Ep. 8.354c-e; Pliny, Nat. 2.5; Lucan, Phars. 1.523.
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26
Bauman, Life in Fragments: Essays in postmodern morality (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), 11.
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27
Bauman, Alone Again: Ethics after certainty (London: Demos Publishers, 1994), 5. Italics original. Cf. Bauman, Life in Fragments, 34; Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1989), 170-176. For a summary of Bauman’s critique of modernity’s conceptualization of “ethics as law”, see Manni Crone, “Bauman on Ethics—Intimate Ethics for a Global World?” in The Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman: Challenges and critique (eds. Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Paul Poder; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2008), 59-74 (61-63).
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29
Bauman, Postmodern Ethics (London: Blackwell Publishers, 1993), 78. Italics added.
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32
Bauman, Life in Fragments, 50; cf. 91-99; and Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, 145-168.
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33
Bauman, Life in Fragments, 51; cf. 49-51, 56-57; Bauman, Mortality, Immortality, and Other Life Strategies (Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press, 1992), 41-42. The notion of mis-meeting is amplified in Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, 153-158.
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34
Bauman, Life in Fragments, 51-53. In Bauman, Mortality, 207-208, he develops the metaphor of awakening from sleep: If most people live lives enveloped in an “egotistic somnolence” that “makes the Other invisible as an object of my responsibility”, the embrace of the radical disposition to be for awakens the self from this lonely and selfish “egology”.
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35
Bauman, Life in Fragments, 60; Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, 61. Cf. also Bauman, The Individualized Society, 168.
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38
E.g., Gundry, Mark, 586; C. Cranfield, The Gospel according to Saint Mark: an introduction and commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959) 341.
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39
E.g., LaVerdiere, The Beginning of the Gospel, 119; W. Grundmann, Das Evangelium nach Markus (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1968) 219; John R. Donahue and Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Mark (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2002) 313.
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40
See esp. P. Spitaler, “Biblical Concern for the Marginalized: Mark’s Stories about Welcoming the Little Ones (Mk 9,33-11,11),” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 87.1 (2011) 89-126. Cf., also, the related thoughts of Judith Gundry-Volf, “Mark 9,33-37,” Interpretation, 53.1 (1999) 57-62 (esp. 58).
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42
See comments in R. Burridge, Imitating Jesus: an inclusive approach to New Testament ethics (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2007) 183-184; F. Matera, New Testament ethics: the legacies of Jesus and Paul (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1996) 31-34; R. Schnackenburg, Die sittliche Botschaft des Neuen Testaments: Bd 2. Die urchristlichen Verkündiger (Völlige Neubearbeitung. edn.; Freiburg: Herder, 1988) 121; Pesch, Markusevangelium, 2.162; R. France, The Gospel of Mark: A commentary on the Greek text (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002) 419.
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43
Cf. the comments of R. Hays, The moral vision of the New Testament: community, cross, new creation (San Francisco: Harper, 1996) 82-83: “There is not the slightest hint in this Gospel that the requirements of God must be prudentially tailored or ‘realistically’ limited because of human weakness. Rather, the demand for self-sacrificial discipleship is uncompromising.”
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44
See, e.g., A. Goatley, The Language of Metaphors (London: Routledge, 1997) 151-152; and discussions in G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1980) ch. 21, and G. Lakoff and M. Turner, More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989) ch. 2
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46
See Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, 11-14, 60-61, 89-90; Bauman, Life in Fragments, 52, 57-59; Bauman, Mortality, 44-45.
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47
Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, 74; and see 47-53, 72-74. See, further, comments on Plato’s conception of love in Mortality, 41.
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48
See, esp., Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 69-88. Cf. Crone, “Bauman on Ethics,” 62-63.
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49
Bauman, Liquid Love (Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2003), 92. The language of ‘asymmetry’ is drawn from Lévinas and developed in, e.g., Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, 85-88. See also the important discussions on 47-59; Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, 200-208; Bauman, Mortality, 40-46. Keith Tester, The Social Thought of Zygmunt Bauman (New York, ny: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 132, elaborates on Bauman’s identification of modernity’s replacement of morality by utility.
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54
Cf. B. Witherington, The Gospel of Mark: A socio-rhetorical commentary (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans., 2001) 150.
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55
See, esp., Villaneuva, “Tocar Al Leproso: Mc 1,40-45: Una Aproximacion Al Ministerio De La Compasion,” Estudios Eclesiasticos 77 (2002): 115-139.
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60
Vetlesen, Perception, Empathy, and Judgment, 163. In his most recent works, Bauman devotes considerable attention to the dimensions of postmodern consumer culture that give rise to the “desensitizing” or “numbing” of the moral perception of others as persons deserving of care. See, e.g., Bauman, Collateral Damage: Social inequalities in a global age (Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2011), 72-82; Bauman and Donskis, Moral Blindness, 12-16.
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63
Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, 76-77. Italics original. Cf. also Postmodern Ethics, 13, 75-78, 85; Bauman, Life in Fragments, 52, 59-60, 63-64; and, esp., Bauman, Mortality, 40-48, 200-215.
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64
Bauman, Liquid Love, 78-79. Cf. also Bauman, Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008), 32-33.
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65
See Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, 85; Bauman, Liquid Love, 78-79, 81-85; Bauman, Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008), 32-33, 41. Keith Tester explains that the wish to push back against the facile sanction of the survival instinct in popular culture (esp. the media) forms part of the motivation behind this facet of Bauman’s thought. “What Bauman seeks to recover is the undischarged possibility that it might well be more important to be a human than merely to survive come what may.” See Tester, Social Thought, 133-134. Italics added.
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67
Collins, Mark, 472, 481; W.R. Telford, The theology of the Gospel of Mark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 133; C. Myers, Binding the strong man: a political reading of Mark’s story of Jesus (Maryknoll, n.y.: Orbis Books, 1988) 275; and, esp., Judith Gundry-Volf, “Mark 9,33-37,” Interpretation, 53 (1999) 57-62 (58), and Spitaler “Biblical Concern for the Marginalized,” 98.
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69
E.g., P. Lamarche, Evangile de Marc (Paris: Gabalda, 1996) 234-235; Myers, Binding the strong man, 266-271; Best, Following Jesus, 79, 107; Bayer, Markus, 348-349.
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The Shape of Morality in the Gospel of Mark: An Experiment in Hermeneutics
In: Horizons in Biblical TheologySearch for other papers by Gerry Wheaton in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
The following work draws from the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer to form an inquiry into the moral vision of the Gospel of Mark. The metaphor of slavery is identified as a central component of the moral instruction of Jesus to his disciples. Following a brief analysis of the metaphor in Greco-Roman literature to identify its basic import in Mark’s Gospel, a dialogue is developed between the second Gospel and the moral philosophy of Zygmunt Bauman. Three lines of thought are isolated in the work of Bauman and utilized to illuminate and elaborate the moral vision of Mark that emerges from the metaphor of slavery: the conceptualization of morality as responsibility for others; the rooting of moral action in emotion; and the location of morality at the center of what it means to be human.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 441 | 48 | 7 |
| Full Text Views | 188 | 6 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 74 | 15 | 0 |
