How Jesus became God...

On April Deconick's blog she is in the process writing a series of posts on how Jesus became God, and in light of my recent post on the messianic secret this is some interesting stuff. Wrede's classic argument about the messianic secret in Mark is that Mark used secrecy language in his narrative to reconcile the fact that Jesus was not perceived as the messiah until after his death. Wrede argues that Mark portrayed Jesus and his disciples as being very secretive about Jesus' identity and that it was not to be made known to outsiders until after the resurrection (the key to Wrede's argument is Mk. 9.9 after Peter identifies Jesus as the messiah and Jesus tells his disciples to keep quiet until after the resurrection). I don't necessarily agree with Wrede's entire argument (or that Jesus' identity was the key to the secret in Mark, more on this later), but I think he is right in at least pointing out that there was some motivation to explain why the Historical Jesus wasn't seen as the messiah during his life, thus giving fuel to the inquiry into how Jesus actually became god.