GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 8:32
Hearing the Truth
My first college faculty position was at a Bible college, where I taught history and a series of philosophy classes: Introduction to Philosophy, Logic, Apologetics, etc. Philosophy was one of the majors in my college program, and I enjoyed the subject. The Bible college curriculum required every student to take the Introduction to Philosophy class. One of the units in that class was epistemology—the study of knowledge, or how one differentiates between opinion, belief, and knowledge. How, for example, does one justify knowledge claims? Or, what is a justified belief claim as opposed to an unjustified belief claim? I took one of my own beliefs for the class and evaluated it in light of various justification systems.
A male student confronted me after one class and wanted to know why the administration allowed me to teach such “dangerous” ideas. I tried to explain the problem with unjustified belief, but he was not satisfied. So, I offered to go with him to the dean’s office and see if we could work out an alternative way for him to fulfill his philosophy requirement. On the way to the office, he decided to stay in the class, which he successfully completed.
In his account of Jesus teaching his disciples at Caesarea Philippi about what lay ahead for him, Mark said, “And openly he spoke the word. And taking him aside, Peter began to rebuke him.” (Mark 8:32) For Peter, who had just made the august declaration, “You are the Christ,” Jesus’ next words about rejection and death appeared contradictory, so he rebuked Jesus. Similar to the young philosophy student who thought it contradictory to subject beliefs to justification, Peter’s idea of “Christ” and Jesus’ prediction of rejection and death were incongruent. Peter came through his crisis of faith and became an Apostle for the resurrected Christ.
Someone once said that the truth always sounds like a lie the first time one hears it, and, for Peter, that apparently was true. He had left his job, his home, and his family to follow Jesus, and now Jesus was talking about being rejected and killed. It was too much for Peter, so he took Jesus aside and rebuked him. According to Matthew, Peter said, “Never, Lord, this will never happen to you.” (Matt. 16:22) He may have thought that Jesus was expressing a lack of confidence in his followers to protect him or perhaps his vision of the Messiah, the Christ, as he had previously stated, did not correspond with rejection and death.
On the one hand, Peter’s reaction is a cautionary reminder that, on one hand, gullibility is not a spiritual virtue and, on the other hand, neither is rejection of the Word.
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