There are a number of ways that we can imagine the Arians MIGHT have interpreted this passage (and we should not be misled by Ambrose's citation of Matthew rather than Mark). Yet Ambrose's correction of the Arian position makes even clearer that they believed that one of these disciples was the Son who sat beside Jesus the Father:
She then, somewhat yielding to the devotion of a mother's zeal, besought the Saviour, saying: Grant that these my two sons may sit the one on Your right hand, the other on Your left in Your kingdom. [Matthew 20:21] Although it was an error, it was an error of a mother's affections; for a mother's heart knows no patience ... The Lord of heaven and earth was ashamed (to speak as accords with the assumption of our flesh and the virtues of the soul)— He was ashamed, I say, and, to use His own word, disturbed, to refuse a share even in His own seat to a mother making request for her sons. You maintain sometimes that the proper Son of the eternal God stands to give service, at other times you would have His co-session to be as that of an attendant [ibid. 55 - 57]
Of course Ambrose's employment of Matthew rather than Mark is as I said a deliberate rhetorical tactic. Mark only says "to sit at my right hand or my left is not mine to give to you but it is for those for whom it has been prepared" - i.e. there is no addition of the words 'by the Father' thus making Jesus speak of the Father as a separate person.
The problem is that Arius was the head of the Church of St. Mark at Boucolia, the place where the autograph copy of the gospel of Mark was kept. His preference would certainly have been for Mark's text.
Interestingly the text without Jesus' reference to 'the Father's preparation' gives us one of two choices for Jesus identity - viz. either he was 'the Father' and the disciple 'the Son' or - implausibly - Jesus was 'the Son' and John-Mark (the eventual co-regent on the Papal throne was 'the Father.'
I am even beginning to wonder if the original statement of Jesus might have been doctored to avoid making the disciple's identity as Christ explicit - i.e. "to sit at my right hand ... is not mine to give to you but it is for those for whom it has been prepared"
In any event Ambrose continues to attack the Arian position by saying:
... the Lord, Who knew that a mother's affection is to be honoured, answered not the woman, but her sons, saying: Are you able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of? When they say: We are able, Jesus says to them: You shall drink indeed of My cup; but to sit on My right hand and on My left is not Mine to give to you, but to those for whom it is prepared of My Father. [Matthew 20:22-23] How patient and kind the Lord is; how deep is His wisdom and good His love! For wishing to show that the disciples asked for no slight thing, but one they could not obtain, He reserved His own peculiar rights for His Father's honour, not fearing to detract anything from His own rights ... He was unwilling to seem to refuse to those whom He loved what they desired; He, I say, the good and holy Lord, Who would rather keep some of His own prerogative secret, than lay aside anything of His love. [ibid 63]
Yet does this explanation seem plausible. In other words, that John Mark the first gospel writer wrote an account where his mother Salome asked Jesus if he - John Mark - could sit at the right of Jesus on the throne and Jesus knowing that he the Son was supposed to sit to the right of the Father (who was someone else) indulged Salome, John-Mark and James deciding to keep the truth a secret? This is absolutely implausible, my friends. There had to be something to the original Arian interpretation of this passage ...
If you are interested in reading how this observation fits within my greater understanding of the workings of Secret Mark WITHIN the contemporary Alexandrian Church please go here
If you want to read more about how Alexandrian Christianity was rooted in the Jewish traditions of Alexandria, Philo of Alexandria and more feel free to purchase my new book here
