“What have you to do with me?”
Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon (see his Facebook page; public posts) is a Visiting Scholar in Biblical Studies at Wesley Biblical Seminary; formerly Professor of Biblical Studies at Houston Christian University and Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He obtained a Master of Theological Studies (MTS): Biblical Studies degree from Harvard Divinity School and a (Ph.D.) in New Testament Studies, magna cum laude, from Princeton Theological Seminary. Dr. Gagnon grew up Catholic, and he wrote on 8-17-24:
I didn’t find Christ in Catholicism . . . I lost the forest (the big picture of Christ) for a lot of unnecessary trees that were not scripturally grounded. Part of this . . . was due to some non-scriptural and even (in some cases) anti-scriptural doctrines that undermine the role and significance of Christ. I would love to come back to a purified Catholicism more in keeping with a biblical witness. The excessive adulation of Mary, which at times seems to me to come close to elevating her to the godhead (like a replacement consort for Yahweh in lieu of Asherah), is one such obstacle.
After I had made five in-depth responses to him, Dr. Gagnon replied (just for the record) in a thread on another Facebook page, on 9-17-24, underneath my links to all five: “like your other one, it is an amateurish piece.” This is his silly and arrogant way of dismissing my critiques in one fell swoop. I had informed him that I had over twenty “officially published books” [22, to be exact] and yet he replied that he didn’t know “whether” they were “self-published or with a vanity press or a reputable press.”
His words will be in blue. I use RSV for biblical citations.
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I’m responding to Dr. Gagnon’s public Facebook post (dated 9-4-24) regarding John 2:4:
John 2:1-4 On the third day there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; [2] Jesus also was invited to the marriage, with his disciples. [3] When the wine failed, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” [4] And Jesus said to her, “O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come.”
He wrote:
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Concerning the second: the Master’s question which literally reads: ‘What to me and to thee?’ has to be understood from biblical and not modern usage. Therefore it does not mean: ‘What concern is it of ours?’ or ‘There is no need for you to tell me’. In all the biblical passages where it occurs, Jg 11:12; 2 Kg 16:10 [2 Sam 16:10], [2 Sam] 19:22; 4 Kg 3:13 [2 Kings 3:13]; 2 Par [Chron] 35:21; Mt 8:29; Mk 1:24, the phrase signifies, according to circumstances, a great or lesser divergence of viewpoint between the two parties concerned. In 2 Kg [Sam] 16:10 it means total dissent; in Jg 11:12 it voices a complaint against an invader. In our passage, also, divergence must be admitted. In a sense our Lord’s answer is a refusal, but not an absolute refusal, rather, a refusal ad mentem [literally, “according to the mind of”], as a Roman Congregation would say, and the Blessed Virgin understood her Son’s mind from the tone of his voice. His first public miracle belonged to the divine programme of his Messianic mission into which flesh and blood could not enter. His answer is therefore an assertion of independence of his Mother, similar to the word he spoke in the temple about his Father’s business. The Blessed Virgin’s subsequent action shows that the tone of our Lord’s protest on this occasion was neither a curt nor an unqualified refusal.
Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch, in their Ignatius Catholic Study Bible (Ignatius Press: 2010) — which sits two feet away from my keyboard — go into a bit more exegetical depth:
The . . . Hebrew idiom . . . typically presupposes some perceived tension between two parties having contrary perspectives (Judg 11:12; 1 Kings 17:18; Mk 5:7), though not always (2 Chron 35:21). When the idiom is used in response to a person’s request, either stated or implied, the speaker sometimes capitulates to the expressed will of the other (2 Kings 3:13) and sometimes not (2 Sam 16:10). Here the former pattern is evident: Jesus complies with Mary’s request (Jn 2:7-8), and Mary herself appears perfectly confident that Jesus will respond favorably to her petition (2:5). In effect, Jesus would not have initiated the miracle at Cana, but neither does he refuse his Mother’s prompting.
2 Chronicles 35:20-21 After all this, when Josi’ah had prepared the temple, Neco king of Egypt went up to fight at Car’chemish on the Euphra’tes and Josi’ah went out against him. [21] But he sent envoys to him, saying, “What have we to do with each other, king of Judah? I am not coming against you this day, but against the house with which I am at war; . . ..”
2 Kings 3:13-14 And Eli’sha said to the king of Israel, “What have I to do with you? Go to the prophets of your father and the prophets of your mother.” But the king of Israel said to him, “No; it is the LORD who has called these three kings to give them into the hand of Moab.” [14] And Eli’sha said, “As the LORD of hosts lives, whom I serve, were it not that I have regard for Jehosh’aphat the king of Judah, I would neither look at you, nor see you.
Dr. Gagnon opined that a non-rebuke meaning of “what have you to do with me?” “cannot be substantiated . . . in OT parallels. . . . It is better to go with the phrase analysis that pays careful attention to the use of the phrase elsewhere in the Scriptures of Jesus (the OT)”. But to the contrary, 2 Chronicles 35:20-21 shows us that it can occur in a situation where there isn’t even a disagreement, and 2 Kings 3:13-14 is another instance where the speaker capitulates to the other, as with Jesus and Mary at Cana.
In my opinion, it’s very much like young Jesus in the temple and His mother’s misunderstanding. This was no sin on her part, any more than that was. They were both situations where she couldn’t be expected to totally understand where Jesus was coming from: qua God incarnate. Here, apparently, Jesus hadn’t planned from all eternity to change the water into wine, and He made note of that (“My hour has not yet come”), but since there was nothing wrong with it, seeing that the time a thing is done is not usually of its essence, He assented to His mother’s wish. How would Mary have known the time that Jesus intended to do His first miracle (i.e., if He hadn’t told her)? If it’s reasonable to suppose that she wouldn’t have known, then is it not reasonable to think that she did nothing wrong, let alone anything worthy of a rebuke?
What Dr. Gagnon and those who take his position have to explain, is a problem that is, I think, rather obvious: if it was supposedly such a “rebuke” that Jesus gave His mother, then why in the world did He turn around and do the miracle that He had just rebuked her for requesting? What sense does that make? It seems to me that if in fact it were a rebuke (other than perhaps the mildest of “reprimands”), He would have said, “it’s not my Father’s will” or “it’s not yet time to perform such a sign” or some such. But He does it. So what sense does it make to rebuke someone for requesting miracle x, but then do x nonetheless? None that I can see . . .
We Catholics are too often accused of eisegeting this text and smuggling our Mariology into it, forcing us to supposedly rationalize and special plead. But we could just as well reply — if we must go down that road — that some Protestants might in fact be guilty of the opposite impulse. In their rush to find some sin in Mary and to “want” to see a rebuke towards her from Jesus, they neglect to see that He did what she asked! How, then, could it have even been a fundamental disagreement between them? Doesn’t that work against an interpretation that He was rebuking her? I think it does, from common sense and the nature of the incident. I don’t think that simply because I’m a Catholic. I do because I sincerely think that is the most plausible interpretation of the text.
But if we’re gonna play the “game” of always accusing theological opponents of smuggling prior notions into biblical texts, there is more than enough of that to go around, on both sides.
Dr. Gagnon writes, “If one claims that another’s position is deficient, one has to make better arguments.” I totally agree! And he notes that we need “to understand the meaning given by the Fourth Evangelist.” Again, I agree, and that’s exactly what I am seeking to do. I sincerely believe what I am writing here and consider it more plausible exegesis than Dr. Gagnon’s take. He can accuse me of bias, which he is prone to doing with Catholics. By the same token, I could turn the tables and claim the same about him. But where does that get anyone, in the final analysis? We simply need to talk about the text back-and-forth and seek the truth of what it was intended to mean.
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See Dr. Gagnon’s “replies” on my Facebook page and my counter-replies, including my response to his long “counter-response” on his page, that mostly ignored my own words above; hence I told him I would ignore his altogether (excepting one section that was too outlandish to pass over), because it’s not true dialogue, as I conceive that practice and concept to be. Then he bloviated (with boorish predictability yet again): “I covered all your main arguments. You have no case. My response is completely civil. You won’t respond because you can’t respond.”
Photo credit: The Marriage at Cana (1596 or 1597), by Maerten de Vos (1532-1603) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]
Summary: Did Jesus rebuke His mother at Cana (“What have you to do with me?”) in John 2:4? Dr. Robert Gagnon says yes. I say no, and provide several exegetical & other reasons why.
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