Seeking the truth...

12 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples; and they remained there a few days.  13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  14 In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables.  15 Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.  16 He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”  17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”  18 The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?”  19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”  20 The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will ...

I hope all of you with me in the Midwest are staying warm. In my earlier four part discussion of the identity of Jesus, two themes or categories stood out: Messiah and divine identity (perhaps not in Mark, but definitely in the other three gospels). The former seems to me to be the primary category. At the time when I wrote, these categories seemed to me to be distinct, with the Messiahship becoming less important over time as emphasis on divinity increased. Over the past two months I have been reading Paul and the Faithfulness of God . Wright has argued strongly that divine identity and messianic status were entwined topics for the early church. My continued study of the gospel of John has colluded with Wright's suggestion and made me think that I need to take some time to explore that relationship. Wright, it seems to me, subsumes Messianic status within the notion of divine identity. Without considering the evidence, there's an attractiveness to that proposal because it ...