Deadly poison
Dear Donagh,
I asked my prayer group what was meant in Saint Mark’s Gospel by picking up poisonous snakes and drinking deadly poison and not being affected by it. Nobody was sure what it meant. It must mean something. Have there been people who tried those things out? What was the point of it and why is it in the Gospel? Trish
Dear Trish,
To put other possible readers in the picture: at the end of Mark’s gospel Jesus spoke of “the signs that will accompany those who have believed.” “By using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing it will not hurt them” (Mk 16:17f).
The early Church did not see this as a challenge to do these and other crazy things. They had the example of Jesus himself, who pushed back against a literal interpretation of Scripture. In Matthew 4:6 (and Luke 4:9), the devil took Jesus up to the pinnacle of the Temple and challenged him: “If you are the Son of God throw yourself down, for it is written (in Psalm 90): ‘God has commanded his angels / to keep you in all your ways. / They shall bear you upon their hands / Lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus dismissed this challenge, saying, “You must not put the Lord your God to the test.” In other word, you must not try to manipulate God, playing a game: expecting him to jump in and save you, to prove that you were right. The psalm is a song of praise to God for his protection, not a bag of tricks.
How then did early Christians interpret Jesus’ own words about picking up snakes, etc.? Unlike Christian fundamentalists today who interpret every Scriptural verse literally, they had a sophisticated understanding of literary form. The Old Testament is not one book; it is 46 books (for Protestants, 39). These books were written in a great variety of literary styles: history, poetry, wisdom literature, letters, prophecy, apocalyptic…. It is very misleading to mince all these up into one literal form. Early Christian writers distinguished several senses of a text. By the Middle Ages these had been formulated as the literal or historical sense; the allegorical or ‘typological’ sense; the moral or ‘tropological’ sense, and the ‘anagogical’ or mystical sense.
Early Church writers saw the handling of poisonous snakes etc. as a symbolic expression of God’s protection as you attempt to do his will (rather than play games, putting God to the test). There was one occasion when it appeared more literal: in Acts 28 St Paul was bitten by a snake but suffered no harm. But this never became something to imitate: it was seen in a more general symbolic way as a sign of God’s protection and of his victory over evil.
Some modern Christians in a number of Pentecostal ministries in the US interpreted Mk 16 (the passage you asked about) literally, most famously George Went Hensley, who founded a Church called the Church of God with Signs Following. He and his congregation would pick up poisonous snakes and drink strychnine to prove their faith. In 1955 he was bitten by a rattlesnake during a service. He refused medication and died the next day. Many of his followers met a similar fate.
Compare that with the brilliant interpretation of Mk 16 given by St Augustine (354–430). He interpreted ‘drinking poison’ in a symbolic sense. “Hearing, reading and storing many things in the memory: what is all that but drinking in thoughts? The Lord said that his faithful followers will not be hurt ‘even if they should drink any deadly thing.’” Then Augustine added that even if what they read was false, it would not poison them if they read with discrimination. “Even if they commit to their memory heretical statements which ought to be rejected, they will not be harmed by the false and poisonous nature of these statements.”
The implication is that Christ’s disciples can go out not only to the whole geographical world but also to the whole intellectual and cultural world without fear.
I hope this helps to put that text in perspective for you, Trish.
Donagh