Let us turn now to the scriptural passages themselves. We saw that the first group of sayings about the Son of Man refers to his future coming. Most of these occur in Jesus' discourse about the end of the world (cf. Mk 13:24-27) and in his trial before the Sanhedrin (cf. Mk 14:62). Discussion of them therefore belongs in the second volume of this book. There is just one important point that I would like to make here: They are sayings about Jesus' future glory, about his coming to judge and to gather the righteous, the "elect." We must not overlook, however, that they are spoken by a man who stands before his judges, accused and mocked: In these very words glory and the Passion are inextricably intertwined.
Admittedly, they do not expressly mention the Passion, but that is the reality in which Jesus finds himself and in which he is speaking. We encounter this connection in a uniquely concentrated form in the parable about the Last Judgment recounted in Saint Matthew's Gospel (25:31-46), in which the Son of Man, in the role of judge, identifies himself with those who hunger and thirst, with the strangers, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned--with all those who suffer in this world--and he describes behavior toward them as behavior toward himself. This is no mere fiction about the judge of the world, invented after the Resurrection. In becoming incarnate, he accomplished this identification with the utmost literalism. He is the man without property or home who has no place to lay his head (cf. Mt 8:19; Lk 9:58). He is the prisoner, the accused, and he dies naked on the Cross. This identification of the Son of Man who judges the world with those who suffer in every way presupposes the judge's identity with the earthly Jesus and reveals the inner unity of Cross and glory, of earthly existence in lowliness and future authority to judge the world. The Son of Man is one person alone, and that person is Jesus. This identity shows us the way, shows us the criterion according to which our lives will one day be judged.
It goes without saying that critical scholarship does not regard any of these sayings about the coming Son of Man as the genuine words of Jesus. Only two texts from this group, in the version reported in Luke's Gospel, are classified--at least by some critics--as authentic sayings of Jesus that may "safely" be attributed to him. The first one is Luke 12:8f: "I tell you, every one who acknowledges me before men, the Son of man also will acknowledge before the angels of God; but he who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God." The second text is Luke 17:24ff: "For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of man be in his day. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation." The reason why these texts are looked upon with approval is that they seem to distinguish between the Son of Man and Jesus; especially the first saying, it is argued, makes it quite clear that the Son of Man is not identical with the Jesus who is speaking.
Now, the first thing to note in this regard is that the most ancient tradition, at any rate, did not understand it in that way. The parallel text in Mark 8:38 ("For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels") does not state the identification explicitly, but the structure of the sentence makes it crystal clear. In Matthew's version of the same text, the term Son of Man is missing. This makes even clearer the identity of the earthly Jesus with the judge who is to come: "So every one who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven" (Mt 10:32f.). But even in the Lukan text, the identity is perfectly clear from the overall content. It is true that Jesus speaks in the riddle form that is characteristic of him, leaving the listener to take the final step toward understanding. But there is a functional identification in the parallelism of confession and denial--now and at the judgment, before Jesus and before the Son of Man--and this only makes sense on the basis of ontological identity.
The judges of the Sanhedrin actually understood Jesus properly: he did not correct them by saying something like: "But you misunderstand me; the coming Son of Man is someone else." The inner unity between Jesus' lived kenosis (cf. Phil 2:5-11) and his coming in glory is the constant motif of his words and actions; this is what is authentically new about Jesus, it is no invention--on the contrary, it is the epitome of his figure and his words. The individual texts have to be seen in context--they are not better understood in isolation. Even if Luke 12:8f. might appear to lend itself to a different interpretation, the second text is much clearer: Luke 17:24ff. unambiguously identifies the two figures. The Son of Man will not come here or there, but will appear like a flash of lightning from one end of heaven to the other, so that everyone will behold him, the Pierced One (cf. Rev 1:7); before that, however, he--this same Son of Man--will have to suffer much and be rejected. The prophecy of the Passion and the announcement of future glory are inextricably interwoven. It is clearly one and the same person who is the subject of both: the very person, in fact, who, as he speaks these words, is already on the way to his suffering.
Similarly, the sayings in which Jesus speaks of his present activity illustrate both aspects. We have already briefly examined his claim that, as Son of Man, he is Lord of the Sabbath (cf. Mk 2:28). This passage exactly illustrates something that Mark describes elsewhere: "They were dismayed at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes" (Mk 1:22). Jesus places himself on the side of the Lawgiver, God; he is not an interpreter, but the Lord.
This becomes clearer still in the account of the paralytic, whose friends lower him from the roof to the Lord's feet on a stretcher. Instead of speaking a word of healing, as the paralytic and his friends were expecting, Jesus says first of all to the suffering man: "My son, your sins are forgiven" (Mk 2:5). Forgiving sins is the prerogative of God alone, as the scribes rightly object. If Jesus ascribes this authority to the Son of Man, then he is claiming to possess the dignity of God himself and to act on that basis. Only after the promise of forgiveness does he say what the sick man was hoping to hear: "'But that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins'--he said to the paralytic--'I say to you, rise, take up your pallet and go home'" (Mk 2:10-11). This divine claim is what leads to the Passion. In that sense, what Jesus says about his authority points toward his suffering.
Let us move on now to the third group of Jesus' sayings about the Son of Man: the predictions of his Passion. We have already seen that the three Passion predictions in Mark's Gospel, which recur at intervals in the course of Jesus' journey, announce with increasing clarity his approaching destiny and its inner necessity. They reach their inner center and their culmination in the statement that follows the third prediction of the Passion and the closely connected discourse on ruling and serving: "For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mk 10:45).
This saying incorporates a citation from the Suffering Servant Songs (cf. Is 53) and thus weaves another strand of Old Testament tradition into the picture of the Son of Man. Jesus, while on one hand identifying himself with the coming judge of the world, also identifies himself here with the suffering and dying Servant of God whom the Prophet foretells in his Songs. The unity of suffering and "exaltation," of abasement and majesty, becomes visible. Service is the true form of rule and it gives us an insight into God's way of being Lord, of "God's lordship." In suffering and in death, the life of the Son of Man becomes sheer "pro-existence." He becomes the Redeemer and bringer of salvation for the "many": not only for the scattered children of Israel, but for all the scattered children of God (cf. Jn 11:52), for humanity. In his death "for many," he transcends the boundaries of place and time, and the universality of his mission comes to fulfillment.
Earlier exegesis considered the blending together of Daniel's vision of the coming Son of Man with the images of the Suffering Servant of God transmitted by Isaiah to be the characteristically new and specific feature of Jesus' idea
of the Son of Man--indeed, as the center of his self-understanding overall. It was quite right to do so. We must add, though, that the synthesis of Old Testament traditions that make up Jesus' image of the Son of Man is more inclusive still, and it brings together even more strands and currents of Old Testament tradition.
First of all, Jesus' answer to the question as to whether he is the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed, combines Daniel 7 with Psalm 110: Jesus presents himself as the one who sits "at the right hand of Power," corresponding to what the Psalm prophesies of the future priest-king. Furthermore, the third prediction of the Passion, which speaks of the rejection of the Son of Man by the scribes, elders, and high priests (cf. Mk 8:31), blends in the passage from Psalm 118:22 concerning the stone rejected by the builders that has become the chief cornerstone. This also establishes a connection with the parable of the unjust vintners, in which the Lord cites these words in order to prophesy his rejection, his Resurrection, and the new communion that will follow. This connection with the parable also brings to light the identity between the "Son of Man" and the "beloved Son" (Mk 12:1-12). Finally, the Wisdom Literature provides another of the currents present here. The second chapter of the Book of Wisdom depicts the enmity of the "ungodly" against the righteous man: "He boasts that God is his father.... If the righteous man is God's son, he will help him.... Let us condemn him to a shameful death" (Wis 2:16-20). V. Hampel holds that Jesus' words about the "ransom for many" are derived not from Isaiah 53:10-12, but from Proverbs 21:18 and Isaiah 43:3 (cited in Schnackenburg, Jesus in the Gospels, p. 59). This strikes me as very unlikely. The actual reference point is and remains Isaiah 53; other texts demonstrate only that this basic vision may be linked to a wide range of references.
Jesus lived by the whole of the Law and the Prophets, as he constantly told his disciples. He regarded his own being and activity as the unification and interpretation of this "whole." John later expressed this in his prologue, where he wrote that Jesus himself is "the Word." "Jesus Christ is the 'Yes' to all that God promised," is how Paul puts it (cf. 2 Cor 1:20). The enigmatic term "Son of Man" presents us in concentrated form with all that is most original and distinctive about the figure of Jesus, his mission, and his being. He comes from God and he is God. But that is precisely what makes him--having assumed human nature--the bringer of true humanity.
According to the Letter to the Hebrews, he says to his Father, "A body hast thou prepared for me" (Heb 10:5). In saying this, he transforms a citation from the Psalms that reads: "My ears hast thou opened" (Ps 40:6). In the context of the Psalm, this means that what brings life is obedience, saying Yes to God's Word, not holocausts and sin offerings. Now the one who is himself the Word takes on a body, he comes from God as a man, and draws the whole of man's being to himself, bearing it into the Word of God, making it "ears" for God and thus "obedience," reconciliation between God and man (2 Cor 5:18-20). Because he is wholly given over to obedience and love, loving to the end (cf. Jn 13:10), he himself becomes the true "offering." He comes from God and hence establishes the true form of man's being. As Paul says, whereas the first man was and is earth, he is the second, definitive (ultimate) man, the "heavenly" man, "life-giving spirit" (1 Cor 15:45-49). He comes, and he is at the same time the new "Kingdom." He is not just one individual, but rather he makes all of us "one single person" (Gal 3:28) with himself, a new humanity.
What Daniel glimpsed from afar as a collective ("like a Son of Man") now becomes a person, but this person, existing as he does "for the many," transcends the bounds of the individual and embraces "many," becomes with the many "one body and one spirit" (cf. 1 Cor 6:17). This is the "discipleship" to which he calls us: that we should let ourselves be drawn into his new humanity and from there into communion with God. Let us listen once more to what Paul has to say about this: "Just as the one [the first man, Adam] from the earth was earthly, so too is his posterity. And just as the one who comes from heaven is heavenly, so too is his posterity" (cf. 1 Cor 15:48).
The title "Son of Man" continued to be applied exclusively to Jesus, but the new vision of the oneness of God and man that it expresses is found throughout the entire New Testament and shapes it. The new humanity that comes from God is what being a a disciple of Jesus Christ is all about.
THE SON
At the beginning of this chapter, we saw briefly that the two titles "Son of God" and "Son" (without further qualification) need to be distinguished; their origin and significance are quite different, even though the two meanings overlapped and blended together as the Christian faith took shape. Since I have already dealt quite extensively with the whole question in my Introduction to Christianity, I offer only a brief summary here as an analysis of the term "Son of God."
The term "Son of God" derives from the political theology of the ancient Near East. In both Egypt and Babylon the king was given the title "son of God"; his ritual accession to the throne was considered to be his "begetting" as the son of God, which the Egyptians may really have understood in the sense of a mysterious origination from God, while the Babylonians apparently viewed it more soberly as a juridical act, a divine adoption. Israel took over these ideas in two ways, even as Israel's faith reshaped them. Moses received from God himself the commission to say to Pharaoh: "Thus says YHWH, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, 'Let my son go that he may serve me'" (Ex 4:22f.). The nations are God's great family, but Israel is the "firstborn son," and as such, belongs to God in a special way, with all that firstborn status means in the ancient Middle East. With the consolidation of the Davidic kingship, the royal ideology of the ancient Near East was transferred to the king on Mount Zion.
The discourse in which Nathan prophesies to David the promise that his house will endure forever includes the following: "I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.... I will be his father, and he shall be my son. When he commits iniquity, I will chasten him...but I will not take my steadfast love from him" (2 Sam 7:12ff.; see Ps 89:27f., 37f.). These words then become the basis for the ritual installation of the kings of Israel, a ritual that we encounter in Psalm 2:7f.: "I will tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to me, 'You are my son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.'"
Three things are evident here. Israel's privileged status as God's firstborn son is personified in the king; he embodies the dignity of Israel in person. Secondly, this means that the ancient royal ideology, the myth of divine begetting, is discarded and replaced by the theology of election. "Begetting" consists in election; in today's enthronement of the king, we see a summary expression of God's act of election, in which Israel and the king who embodies it become God's "son." Thirdly, however, it becomes apparent that the promise of dominion over the nations--a promise taken over from the great kings of the East--is out of all proportion to the actual reality of the king on Mount Zion. He is only an insignificant ruler with a fragile power who ends up in exile, and afterward can be restored only for a brief time in dependence on the superpowers of the day. In other words, the royal oracle of Zion from the very beginning had to become a word of hope in a future king, a word that pointed far beyond the present moment, far beyond what the king seated upon his throne could regard as "today" and "now."
The early Christians very quickly adopted this word of hope and came to see the Resurrection of Jesus as its actual fulfillment. According to Acts 13:32f., Paul, in his stirring account of salvation history culminating in Christ, says to the Jews assembled in the synagogue of Antioch in Pisidia: "What God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm, 'Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee.'" We may safely assume that the discourse recounted here in the Acts of the Apostles is a typical example of early missionary preaching to the Jews, in which we encounter the nascent Church's Christological reading of the Old Testament. Here, then
, we see a third stage in the refashioning of the political theology of the ancient Near East. In Israel, at the time of the Davidic kingship, it had merged with the Old Covenant's theology of election; as the Davidic kingship developed, moreover, it had increasingly become an expression of hope in the king who was to come. Now, however, Jesus' Resurrection is recognized by faith as the long-awaited "today" to which the Psalm refers. God has now appointed his king, and has truly given him possession of the peoples of the earth as a heritage.
But this "dominion" over the peoples of the earth has lost its political character. This king does not break the peoples with an iron rod (cf. Ps 2:9)--he rules from the Cross, and does so in an entirely new way. Universality is achieved through the humility of communion in faith; this king rules by faith and love, and in no other way. This makes possible an entirely new and definitive way of understanding God's words: "You are my son, today I have begotten you." The term "son of God" is now detached from the sphere of political power and becomes an expression of a special oneness with God that is displayed in the Cross and Resurrection. How far this oneness, this divine Sonship, actually extends cannot, of course, be explained on the basis of this Old Testament context. Other currents of biblical faith and of Jesus' own testimony have to converge in order to give this term its full meaning.
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