Why Do You Call Me Good?
Why Do You Call Me Good?
`Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone' (Mark 10:18; Luke 18:19)
This is not a very hard saying. Schmiedel, however, included it in his list of pillar texts, arguing (quite cogently) that it is most likely to come from Jesus himself, since no one else was likely to put into his mouth words which seemed to cast doubt on his goodness. A would-be disciple (a rich man, as the sequel shows, but that is irrelevant at this point) ran up to Jesus once and said, `Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' Before answering his question, Jesus took him up on his use of the epithet `good'. A word which in its proper sense belonged to God alone should not be used lightly as a mere expression of courtesy, and Jesus suspected that it was simply as a polite form of address that the man used it. He himself did not refuse to describe people as good when he really meant `good'. If it be asked how such language squares with his assertion here that `No one is good but God alone', the answer is plain: no one is altogether good, as God is, but men and women are good in so far as they reflect the goodness of God.
It appears, indeed, that the form in which Mark (followed by Luke) preserves these words of Jesus was felt to present a difficulty at quite an early stage in the formation of the Gospels. In the parallel passage in Matthew 19:16-17 the weight of the textual evidence favours the recasting of the man's question as `Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?' - to which Jesus replies, `Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good.' This recasting of the question and answer, however, was not perpetuated. Whereas normally, in the process of transmitting the Gospel text, the tendency is for the wording of the other evangelists to be conformed to that of Matthew, here the Matthaean wording has been conformed to that of Mark and Luke in the majority of later manuscripts, followed by the AV: "`Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?" ... "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God."' If the saying had been felt to be insuperably hard, the Matthaean form would have prevailed throughout the synoptic record of the incident.