Jesus of Nazareth

by Joseph Ratzinger

  These connections also shed new light on the meaning of the fundamental claim of the prologue to John's Gospel, where the Evangelist sums up the mystery of Jesus: "And the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us" (Jn 1:14). Indeed, the Lord has pitched the tent of his body among us and has thus inaugurated the messianic age. Following this line of thought, Gregory of Nyssa reflected on the connection between the Feast of Tabernacles and the Incarnation in a magnificent text. He says that the Feast of Tabernacles, though constantly celebrated, remained unfulfilled. "For the true Feast of Tabernacles had not yet come. According to the words of the Prophet, however [an allusion to Psalm 118:27], God, the Lord of all things, has revealed himself to us in order to complete the construction of the tabernacle of our ruined habitation, human nature" (De anima, PG 46, 132B, cf. Danielou, Bible and Liturgy, pp. 344f.)

  Let us return from these broad vistas to the story of the Transfiguration. "And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, 'This is my beloved Son; listen to him'" (Mk 9:7). The holy cloud, the shekinah, is the sign of the presence of God himself. The cloud hovering over the Tent of Meeting indicated that God was present. Jesus is the holy tent above whom the cloud of God's presence now stands and spreads out to "overshadow" the others as well. The scene repeats that of Jesus' Baptism, in which the Father himself, speaking out of the cloud, had proclaimed Jesus as Son: "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased" (Mk 1:11).

  The solemn proclamation of Sonship, however, is now followed by the command "Listen to him." At this point, we are reminded of the link with Moses' ascent of Mount Sinai, which we saw at the beginning to be the background of the Transfiguration story. On the mountain, Moses received the Torah, God's teaching word. Now we are told in reference to Jesus: "Listen to him." H. Gese has provided a perceptive commentary on this scene: "Jesus himself has become the divine Word of revelation. The Gospels could not illustrate it any more clearly or powerfully: Jesus himself is the Torah" (Zur biblischen Theologie, p. 81). This one command brings the theophany to its conclusion and sums up its deepest meaning. The disciples must accompany Jesus back down the mountain and learn ever anew to "listen to him."

  If we learn to understand the content of the Transfiguration story in these terms--as the irruption and inauguration of the messianic age--then we are also able to grasp the obscure statement that Mark's Gospel inserts between Peter's confession and the teaching on discipleship, on one hand, and the account of the Transfiguration, on the other: "Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the dominion of God [the Kingdom of God] come with power" (Mk 9:1). What does this mean? Is Jesus predicting that some of the bystanders will still be alive at the time of his Parousia, at the definitive inbreaking of the Kingdom of God? If not, then what?

  Rudolf Pesch (Markusevangelium, II, 2, pp. 66f.) has convincingly argued that the placing of this saying immediately before the Transfiguration clearly relates it to this event. Some--that is to say, the three disciples who accompany Jesus up the mountain--are promised that they will personally witness the coming of the Kingdom of God "in power." On the mountain the three of them see the glory of God's Kingdom shining out of Jesus. On the mountain they are overshadowed by God's holy cloud. On the mountain--in the conversation of the transfigured Jesus with the Law and the Prophets--they realize that the true Feast of Tabernacles has come. On the mountain they learn that Jesus himself is the living Torah, the complete Word of God. On the mountain they see the "power" (dynamis) of the Kingdom that is coming in Christ.

  Yet equally, through the awe-inspiring encounter with God's glory in Jesus, they must learn what Paul says to the disciples of all ages in the First Letter to the Corinthians: "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power [dynamis] of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor 1:23f.). This "power" (dynamis) of the coming Kingdom appears to them in the transfigured Jesus, who speaks with the witnesses of the Old Covenant about the necessity of his Passion as the way to glory (cf. Lk 24:26f.). They personally experience the anticipation of the Parousia, and that is how they are slowly initiated into the full depth of the mystery of Jesus.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jesus Declares His Identity

  Already during Jesus' lifetime, people tried to interpret his mysterious figure by applying to him categories that were familiar to them and that were therefore considered apt for deciphering his mystery: He is seen as John the Baptist, as Elijah or Jeremiah returning, or as the Prophet (cf. Mt 16:14; Mk 8:28; Lk 9:19). In his confession, Peter uses--as we have seen--other, loftier titles: Messiah, Son of the living God. The effort to express the mystery of Jesus in titles that explained his mission, indeed, his essence, continued after Easter. Increasingly, three fundamental titles began to emerge: "Christ" (Messiah), "Kyrios" (Lord), and "Son of God."

  The first title, taken by itself, made little sense outside of Semitic culture. It quickly ceased to function as a title and was joined with the name of Jesus: Jesus Christ. What began as an interpretation ended up as a name, and therein lies a deeper message: He is completely one with his office; his task and his person are totally inseparable from each other. It was thus right for his task to become a part of his name.

  This leaves the two titles "Kyrios" and "Son," which both point in the same direction. In the development of the Old Testament and of early Judaism, "Lord" had become a paraphrase for the divine name. Its application to Jesus therefore claimed for him a communion of being with God himself; it identified him as the living God present among us. Similarly, the title "Son of God" connected him with the being of God himself. Of course, the question as to exactly what sort of ontological connection this might be inevitably became the object of strenuous debate from that moment on, as faith strove to prove, and to understand clearly, its own rational content. Is he "Son" in a derivative sense, referring to some special closeness to God, or does the term "Son" imply that within God himself there is Father and Son, that the Son is truly "equal to God," true God from true God? The First Council of Nicea (325) summed up the result of this fierce debate over Jesus' Sonship in the word homoousios, "of the same substance"--the only philosophical term that was incorporated into the Creed. This philosophical term serves, however, to safeguard the reliability of the biblical term. It tells us that when Jesus' witnesses call him "the Son," this statement is not meant in a mythological or political sense--those being the two most obvious interpretations given the context of the time. Rather, it is meant to be understood quite literally: Yes, in God himself there is an eternal dialogue between Father and Son, who are both truly one and the same God in the Holy Spirit.

  The exalted Christological titles contained in the New Testament are the subject of an extensive literature. The debate surrounding them falls outside the scope of this book, which seeks to understand Jesus' earthly path and his preaching, not their theological elaboration in the faith and reflection of the early Church. What we need to do instead is to attend somewhat more closely to the titles that Jesus applies to himself, according to the evidence of the Gospels. There are two. Firstly, his preferred self-designation is "Son of Man"; secondly, there are texts--especially in the Gospel of John--where he speaks of himself simply as the "Son." The title "Messiah" Jesus did not actually apply to himself; in a few passages in John's Gospel we find the title "Son of God" on his lips. Whenever messianic or other related titles are applied to him, as for example by the demons he casts out, or by Peter in his confession, he enjoins silence. It is true, of course, that the title Messiah, "King of the Jews," is placed over the Cross--publicly displayed before the whole world. And it is permissible to place it there--in the three languages of the world of that time (cf. Jn 19:19f.)--because now there is no longer any chance of its being misunderstood. The Cross is his throne, and as such it gives the correct interpretation of this title. Regnavit a ligno Deus--God reigns from the wood of the Cross,
as the ancient Church sang in celebration of this new kingship.

  Let us now turn to the two "titles" that Jesus used for himself, according to the Gospels.

  THE SON OF MAN

  Son of Man--this mysterious term is the title that Jesus most frequently uses to speak of himself. In the Gospel of Mark alone the term occurs fourteen times on Jesus' lips. In fact, in the whole of the New Testament, the term "Son of Man" is found only on Jesus' lips, with the single exception of the vision of the open heavens that is granted to the dying Stephen: "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God" (Acts 7:56). At the moment of his death, Stephen sees what Jesus had foretold during his trial before the Sanhedrin: "You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven" (Mk 14:62). Stephen is therefore actually "citing" a saying of Jesus, the truth of which he is privileged to behold at the very moment of his martyrdom.

  This is an important finding. The Christology of the New Testament writers, including the Evangelists, builds not on the title "Son of Man," but on the titles that were already beginning to circulate during Jesus' lifetime: "Messiah" (Christ), "Kyrios" (Lord), "Son of God." The designation "Son of Man" is typical for Jesus' own sayings; in the preaching of the Apostles, its content is transferred to the other titles, but this particular title is not used. This is actually a clear finding. And yet a huge debate has developed around it in modern exegesis; anyone who tries to get to the bottom of it finds himself in a graveyard of mutually contradictory hypotheses. A discussion of this debate lies outside the scope of this book. Nevertheless, we do need to consider the main lines of the argument.

  Three sets of "Son of Man" statements are commonly distinguished. The first group consists of sayings concerning the Son of Man who is to come, sayings in which Jesus does not point to himself as the Son of Man, but distinguishes between the one who is to come and himself. The second group comprises sayings about the earthly activity of the Son of Man, while the third speaks of his suffering and Resurrection. The predominant trend among exegetes is to regard only the first group--if any--as authentic sayings of Jesus; this reflects the conventional interpretation of Jesus' preaching in terms of imminent eschatology. The second group, which includes sayings about the authority of the Son of Man to forgive sins, about his lordship over the Sabbath, and about his having neither possessions nor home, is said to have developed--according to one main line of argument--in early Palestinian tradition. This would point to quite an early origin, but not as far back as Jesus himself. Finally, the most recent sayings would be those concerning the death and Resurrection of the Son of Man. In Mark's Gospel, they occur at intervals during Jesus' journey up to Jerusalem, and naturally, according to this theory, could only have been created after the events in question--perhaps even by the Evangelist Mark himself.

  Splitting up the Son of Man sayings in this way is the result of a certain kind of logic that meticulously classifies the different aspects of a title. While that might be appropriate for rigorous professorial thinking, it does not suit the complexity of living reality, in which a multilayered whole clamors for expression. The fundamental criterion for this type of interpretation rests, however, on the question as to what we can safely attribute to Jesus, given the circumstances of his life and his cultural world. Very little, apparently! Real claims to authority or predictions of the Passion do not seem to fit. The sort of toned-down apocalyptic expectation that was in circulation at the time can be "safely" ascribed to him--but nothing more, it would seem. The problem is that this approach does not do justice to the powerful impact of the Jesus-event. Our reflections on Julicher's exegesis of the parables have already led us to the conclusion that no one would have been condemned to the Cross on account of such harmless moralizing.

  For such a radical collision to occur, provoking the extreme step of handing Jesus over to the Romans, something dramatic must have been said and done. The great and stirring events come right at the beginning; the nascent Church could only slowly come to appreciate their full significance, which she came to grasp as, in "remembering" them, she gradually thought through and reflected on these events. The anonymous community is credited with an astonishing level of theological genius--who were the great figures responsible for inventing all this? No, the greatness, the dramatic newness, comes directly from Jesus; within the faith and life of the community it is further developed, but not created. In fact, the "community" would not even have emerged and survived at all unless some extraordinary reality had preceded it.

  The term "Son of Man," with which Jesus both concealed his mystery and, at the same time, gradually made it accessible, was new and surprising. It was not in circulation as a title of messianic hope. It fits exactly with the method of Jesus' preaching, inasmuch as he spoke in riddles and parables so as to lead gradually to the hidden reality that can truly be discovered only through discipleship. In both Hebrew and Aramaic usage, the first meaning of the term "Son of Man" is simply "man." That simple word blends together with a mysterious allusion to a new consciousness of mission in the term "Son of Man." This becomes apparent in a saying about the Sabbath that we find in the Synoptics. It reads as follows in Mark: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath" (Mk 2:27f.). In Matthew and Luke, the first sentence is missing. They record Jesus as saying simply: "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath" (Mt 12:8; Lk 6:5). Perhaps the explanation is that Matthew and Luke omit the first sentence for fear that it will be abused. Be that as it may, it is clear that according to Mark the two sentences belong together and interpret one another.

  To say that the Sabbath is for man, and not man for the Sabbath, is not simply an expression of the sort of modern liberal position that we spontaneously read into these words. We saw in our examination of the Sermon on the Mount that this is exactly how not to understand Jesus' teaching. In the Son of Man, man is revealed as he truly ought to be. In terms of the Son of Man, in terms of the criterion that Jesus himself is, man is free and he knows how to use the Sabbath properly as the day of freedom deriving from God and destined for God. "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." The magnitude of Jesus' claim--which is an authoritative interpretation of the Law because he himself is God's primordial Word--becomes fully apparent here. And it also becomes apparent what sort of new freedom devolves upon man as a result--a freedom that has nothing to do with mere caprice. The important thing about this Sabbath saying is the overlapping of "man" and "Son of Man"; we see how this teaching, in itself quite ordinary, becomes an expression of the special dignity of Jesus.

  "Son of Man" was not used as a title at the time of Jesus. But we find an early hint of it in the Book of Daniel's vision of four beasts and the "Son of Man" representing the history of the world. The visionary sees the succession of dominant secular powers in the image of four great beasts that come up out of the sea--that come "from below," and thus represent a power based mainly on violence, a power that is "bestial." He thus paints a dark, deeply disturbing picture of world history. Admittedly, the vision does not remain entirely negative. The first beast, a lion with the wings of an eagle, has its wings plucked out: "It was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man, and the heart of a man was given to it" (Dan 7:4). Power can be humanized, even in this age of the world; power can receive a human face. This is only a relative salvation, however, for history continues and becomes darker as it progresses.

  But then--after the power of evil has reached its apogee--something totally different happens. The seer perceives as if from afar the real Lord of the world in the image of the Ancient of Days, who puts an end to the horror. And now "with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man...And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion...and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed" (Dan 7:13f.). The beasts from the depths are confron
ted by the man from above. Just as the beasts from the depths represent hitherto existing secular kingdoms, the image of the "Son of Man," who comes "with the clouds of heaven," prophesies a totally new kingdom, a kingdom of "humanity," characterized by the real power that comes from God himself. This kingdom also signals the advent of true universality, the definitive positive shape of history that has all along been the object of silent longing. The "Son of Man" who comes from above is thus the antithesis of the beasts from the depths of the sea; as such, he stands not for an individual figure, but for the "kingdom" in which the world attains its goal.

  It is widely held among exegetes that this text rests upon an earlier version in which "Son of Man" indicated an individual figure. We do not possess this version, though; it remains a conjecture. The frequently cited texts from 4 Ezra 13 and the Ethiopian Book of Enoch that do portray the Son of Man as an individual figure are more recent than the New Testament and therefore cannot be regarded as one of its sources. Of course, it would have seemed obvious to connect the vision of the Son of Man with messianic hope and with the figure of the Messiah himself, but we have no textual evidence that this was done dating from before Jesus' public ministry. The conclusion therefore remains that the book of Daniel uses the image of the Son of Man to represent the coming kingdom of salvation--a vision that was available for Jesus to build on, but which he reshapes by connecting this expectation with his own person and his work.