Apocalyptic Topography in Mark’s Gospel: Theophany and Divine Invisibility at Sinai, Horeb, and the Mount of Transfiguration

Abstract

ABSTRACT For Mark, geography is never just geography; his topographical features have theological significance beyond their roles as narrative settings. This essay considers one such Markan feature, the mountain, from the perspective of his apocalyptic theology. In the apocalypses, the mountain is an axis mundi, a conduit between earth and heaven, and a place of divine self-revelation. This is, of course, a trope also found in the mountaintop encounters of Moses on Sinai and Elijah on Horeb. This essay examines Mark’s transfiguration scene against this theophanic background, suggesting that there is ambiguity in his account that calls into question interpretations of the passage straightforwardly as a theophany. Consideration of Mark’s account in narrative and canonical context suggests that this is an apocalyptic mountaintop theophany, certainly, but one which does not reveal so much as it hides: a “theophany of divine invisibility.” In this connection, Katherine Sonderegger’s most recent contribution to Christian systematic theology is considered. In Sonderegger’s doctrine of God, divine invisibility is not a sign of his absence but the very mode of his omnipresence. Even in mountaintop theophanies, God is the One who hides himself and who is present in his hiddenness. Placed at the intersection of the study of the apocalypses and contemporary Christian systematic theology, therefore, Mark’s comparatively tempered account of the transfiguration can be seen not as evidence of a theologia crucis but an emphasis on non-perception and revelation as the narrative expression of an apocalyptic epistemology.