The Symbolism of Secret Mark

Now I want to mention something Jeffery gets right: the language of "mystery" in To Theodore. This is discussed in, again, Jeffery's rejected comment on Scott Brown's review of Jeffery's book. Jeffery is correct about the two-stage process of Christian initiation that To Theodore reflects. (I've spoken about how To Theodore reflects this in earlier posts and comments). Furthermore, I don't doubt his claims about the three-fold typology of "mystery" in Christian theology of the time.

But Jeffery wants to dismiss the authenticity of To Theodore for just these reasons. He finds one of the typologies (the "apocalyptic-incarnational vocabulary) absent from the letter, and considers the baptism represented in To Theodore "the wrong kind of baptism", reflecting a resurrection theme rather than the baptism of Jesus more closely associated with Epiphany traditions.

But I think Jeffery is wrong. First, he does admit that two out of three "mystery" typologies are present in the letter (the "Tabernacle" typology and the "mystery-cult" typology). I agree with this. But I also think that the "apocalyptic-incarnational" typology is strongly implied. The "great mysteries" for the early church were surely related to the eucharist. I have (again, in an earlier post) linked Secret Mark to the Johannine foot-washing/passover tradition, which is a narrative parallel with the Last Supper story--and I also showed, in that same post, an additional link between the Last Supper narrative in John and Mark. Furthermore, we should keep in mind that the eucharist was liturgically "protected" from non-initiates in the early church, and the newly-baptized and anointed were (and are, in the Orthodox church) often given the eucharist shortly after their baptism/anointing. We shouldn't be surprised if the passage in Secret Mark was taken to refer to an explanation, to those initiated by baptism at one point or another, of eucharistic symbolism (and that Clement was about to launch into an explanation of this in the truncated section of To Theodore). The eucharist is directly linked to incarnational theology, and so we have a likely reference to the incarnational typology that Jeffery thinks is absent from this Secret Mark pericope. Furthermore, if this eucharistically-incarnational typology were present, that would strengthen the presence of the Tabernacle typology (which Jeffery feels is only weakly present).

Secondly, I am not sure that any baptismal symbolism in To Theodore is "the wrong kind of baptism". I've written before that I'm uncertain To Theodore represents any baptismal tradition at all. However, if it does, I think there are a couple of different ways it might relate to baptisms. The first is simply via the liturgical traditions Jeffery discusses in chapter 4 of his book. We'll have a look at that next.