Before we move on to consider Jesus' simple designation of himself as "the Son," which finally gives the originally political title "Son of God" its definitive, Christian significance, we must complete the history of the title itself. For it is part of that history that the Emperor Augustus, under whose dominion Jesus was born, transferred the ancient Near Eastern theology of kingship to Rome and proclaimed himself the "Son of the Divine Caesar," the son of God (cf. P. W.v. Martitz, TDNT, VIII, pp. 334-40, esp. p. 336). While Augustus himself took this step with great caution, the cult of the Roman emperors that soon followed involved the full claim to divine sonship, and the worship of the emperor in Rome as a god was made binding throughout the empire.
At this particular historical moment, then, the Roman emperor's claim to divine kingship encounters the Christian belief that the risen Christ is the true Son of God, the Lord of all the peoples of the earth, to whom alone belongs worship in the unity of Father, Son, and Spirit. Because of the title "Son of God," then, the fundamentally apolitical Christian faith, which does not demand political power but acknowledges the legitimate authorities (cf. Rom 13:1-7), inevitably collides with the total claim made by the imperial political power. Indeed, it will always come into conflict with totalitarian political regimes and will be driven into the situation of martyrdom--into communion with the Crucified, who reigns solely from the wood of the Cross.
A clear distinction needs to be made between the term "Son of God," with its complex prehistory, and the simple term "the Son," which essentially we find only on the lips of Jesus. Outside the Gospels, it occurs five times in the Letter to the Hebrews (cf. 1:2, 1:8, 3:6, 5:8, 7:28), a letter that is related to the Gospel of John, and it occurs once in Paul (cf. 1 Cor 15:28). It also occurs five times in the First Letter of John and once in the Second Letter of John, harking back to Jesus' self-testimony in the Gospel of John. The decisive testimony is that of the Gospel of John (where we find the word eighteen times) and the Messianic Jubelruf (joyful shout) recorded by Matthew and Luke (see below), which is typically--and correctly--described as a Johannine text within the framework of the Synoptic tradition. To begin with, let us examine this messianic Jubelruf: "At that time Jesus declared, 'I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes [to little ones]; yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will. All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son wills to reveal him" (Mt 11:25-27; Lk 10:21-22).
Let us begin with this last sentence, which is the key to the whole passage. Only the Son truly "knows" the Father. Knowing always involves some sort of equality. "If the eye were not sunlike, it could never see the sun," as Goethe once said, alluding to an idea of Plotinus. Every process of coming to know something includes in one form or another a process of assimilation, a sort of inner unification of the knower with the known. This process differs according to the respective level of being on which the knowing subject and the known object exist. Truly to know God presupposes communion with him, it presupposes oneness of being with him. In this sense, what the Lord himself now proclaims in prayer is identical with what we hear in the concluding words of the prologue of John's Gospel, which we have quoted frequently: "No one has ever seen God; it is the only Son, who is nearest to the Father's heart, who has made him known" (Jn 1:18). This fundamental saying--it now becomes plain--is an explanation of what comes to light in Jesus' prayer, in his filial dialogue. At the same time, it also becomes clear what "the Son" is and what this term means: perfect communion in knowledge, which is at the same time communion in being. Unity in knowing is possible only because it is unity in being.
Only the "Son" knows the Father, and all real knowledge of the Father is a participation in the Son's filial knowledge of him, a revelation that he grants ("he has made him known," John tells us). Only those to whom the Son "wills to reveal him" know the Father. But to whom does the Son will to reveal him? The Son's will is not arbitrary. What we read in Matthew 11:27 about the Son's will to reveal the Father brings us back to the initial verse 25, where the Lord thanks the Father for having revealed it to the the little ones. We have already noted the unity of knowledge between Father and Son. The connection between verses 25 and 27 now enables us to see their unity of will.
The will of the Son is one with the will of the Father. This is, in fact, a motif that constantly recurs throughout the Gospels. The Gospel of John places particular emphasis on the fact that Jesus unites his own will totally with the Father's will. The act of uniting and merging the two wills is presented dramatically on the Mount of Olives, when Jesus draws his human will up into his filial will and thus into unity with the will of the Father. The second petition of the Our Father has its proper setting here. When we pray it, we are asking that the drama of the Mount of Olives, the struggle of Jesus' entire life and work, be brought to completion in us; that together with him, the Son, we may unite our wills with the Father's will, thus becoming sons in our turn, in union of will that becomes union of knowledge.
This enables us to understand the opening of Jesus' Jubelruf, which on first sight may seem strange. The Son wills to draw into his filial knowledge all those whom the Father wills should be there. This is what Jesus means when he says in the bread of life discourse at Capernaum: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me so wills" (Jn 6:44). But whom does the Father will? Not "the wise and understanding," the Lord tells us, but the simple.
Taken in the most straightforward sense, these words reflect Jesus' actual experience: It is not the Scripture experts, those who are professionally concerned with God, who recognize him; they are too caught up in the intricacies of their detailed knowledge. Their great learning distracts them from simply gazing upon the whole, upon the reality of God as he reveals himself--for people who know so much about the complexity of the issues, it seems that it just cannot be so simple. Paul describes this same experience and then goes on to reflect upon it: "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart' [Is 29:14].... For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong...so that no human being might boast in the presence of God" (1 Cor 1:18f., 26-29). "Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise" (1 Cor 3:18). What, though, is meant by "becoming a fool," by being "a little one," through which we are opened up for the will, and so for the knowledge, of God?
The Sermon on the Mount provides the key that discloses the inner basis of this remarkable experience and also the path of conversion that opens us up to being drawn into the Son's filial knowledge: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Mt 5:8). Purity of heart is what enables us to see. Therein consists the ultimate simplicity that opens up our life to Jesus' will to reveal. We might also say that our will has to become a filial will. When it does, then we can see. But to be a son is to be in relation: it is a relational concept. It involves giving up the autonomy that is closed in upon itself; it includes what Jesus means by saying that we have to become like children. This also helps us understand the paradox that is more fully developed in John's Gospel: While Jesus subordinates himself as Son entirely to the Father, it is this that makes him fully equal with the Father, truly equal to and truly one with the Father.
Let us return to the Jubelruf. The equality in being that we saw expressed in verses 25 and 27 (of Mt 11) as oneness in will and in knowledge is now linked in the first half of verse 27 with Jesus' universal mission and so with the history of the world: "All things have been delivered to me
by my Father." When we consider the Synoptic Jubelruf in its full depth, what we find is that it actually already contains the entire Johannine theology of the Son. There too, Sonship is presented as mutual knowing and as oneness in willing. There too, the Father is presented as the Giver who has delivered "everything" to the Son, and in so doing has made him the Son, equal to himself: "All that is mine is thine, and all that is thine is mine" (Jn 17:10). And there too, this fatherly giving then extends into the creation, into the "world": "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son" (Jn 3:16). On one hand, the word only here points back to the prologue to John's Gospel, where the Logos is called "the only Son, who is God" (Jn 1:18). On the other hand, however, it also recalls Abraham, who did not withhold his son, his "only" son from God (Gen 22:2, 12). The Father's act of "giving" is fully accomplished in the love of the Son "to the end" (Jn 13:1), that is, to the Cross. The mystery of Trinitarian love that comes to light in the term "the Son" is perfectly one with the Paschal Mystery of love that Jesus brings to fulfillment in history.
Finally, Jesus' prayer is seen also by John to be the interior locus of the term "the Son." Of course, Jesus' prayer is different from the prayer of a creature: It is the dialogue of love within God himself--the dialogue that God is. The term "the Son" thus goes hand in hand with the simple appellation "Father" that the Evangelist Mark has preserved for us in its original Aramaic form in his account of the scene on the Mount of Olives: "Abba."
Joachim Jeremias has devoted a number of in-depth studies to demonstrating the uniqueness of this form of address that Jesus used for God, since it implied an intimacy that was impossible in the world of his time. It expresses the "unicity" of the "Son." Paul tells us that Jesus' gift of participation in his Spirit of Sonship empowers Christians to say: "Abba, Father" (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6). Paul makes it clear that this new form of Christian prayer is possible only through Jesus, through the only-begotten Son.
The term "Son," along with its correlate "Father (Abba)," gives us a true glimpse into the inner being of Jesus--indeed, into the inner being of God himself. Jesus' prayer is the true origin of the term "the Son." It has no prehistory, just as the Son himself is "new," even though Moses and the Prophets prefigure him. The attempt has been made to use postbiblical literature--for example, the Odes of Solomon (dating from the second century A.D.)--as a source for constructing a pre-Christian, "Gnostic" prehistory of this term, and to argue that John draws upon that tradition. If we respect the possibilities and limits of the historical method at all, this attempt makes no sense. We have to reckon with the originality of Jesus. Only he is "the Son."
"I AM"
The sayings of Jesus that the Gospels transmit to us include--predominantly in John, but also (albeit less conspicuously and to a lesser degree) in the Synoptics--a group of "I am" sayings. They fall into two different categories. In the first type, Jesus simply says "I am" or "I am he" without any further additions. In the second type, figurative expressions specify the content of the "I am" in more detail: I am the light of the world, the true vine, the Good Shepherd, and so on. If at first sight the second group appears to be immediately intelligible, this only makes the first group even more puzzling.
I would like to consider just three passages from John's Gospel that present the formula in its strictest and simplest form. I would then like to examine a passage from the Synoptics that has a clear parallel in John.
The two most important expressions of this sort occur in Jesus' dispute with the Jews that immediately follows the words in which he presents himself as the source of living water at the Feast of Tabernacles (cf. Jn 7:37f.). This led to division among the people; some started asking themselves whether he might really be the awaited Prophet after all, whereas others pointed out that no prophet is supposed to come from Galilee (cf. Jn 7:40, 52). At this point, Jesus says to them: "You do not know whence I come or whither I am going.... You know neither me nor my Father" (Jn 8:14, 19). He makes his point even clearer by adding: "You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world" (Jn 8:23). It is here that the crucial statement comes: "You will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he" (Jn 8:24).
What does this mean? We want to ask: What are you, then? Who are you? And that, in fact, is just how the Jews respond: "Who are you?" (Jn 8:25). So what does it mean when Jesus says "I am he"? Exegesis understandably set out in search of the origins of this saying in order to make sense of it, and we will have to do the same in our own efforts to understand. Various possibilities have been suggested: typical Revelation discourses from the East (E. Norden), the Mandaean scriptures (E. Schweitzer), although these are much later than the books of the New Testament.
By now most exegetes have come to realize that we should look not just anywhere and everywhere for the spiritual roots of this saying, but rather in the world where Jesus was at home, in the Old Testament and in the Judaism of his lifetime. Scholars have since brought to light an extensive background of Old Testament texts, which we need not examine here. I would like to mention just the two essential texts on which the matter hinges.
The first one is Exodus 3:14--the scene with the burning bush. God calls from the bush to Moses, who in his turn asks the God who thus calls him: "What is your name?" In answer, he is given the enigmatic name YHWH, whose meaning the divine speaker himself interprets with the equally enigmatic statement: "I am who I am." The manifold interpretations of this statement need not occupy us here. The key point remains: This God designates himself simply as the "I am." He just is, without any qualification. And that also means, of course, that he is always there--for human beings, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
At the great time of hope for a new Exodus at the end of the Babylonian exile, Deutero-Isaiah took up once again the message of the burning bush and developed it in a new direction: "'You are my witnesses,' says the LORD, 'and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am YHWH, and besides me there is no savior'" (Is 43:10f.). "That you may know and believe me and understand that I am he"--the old formula 'ani YHWH is now abbreviated to 'ani hu'--"I he," "I am he." The "I am" has become more emphatic, and while it remains a mystery, it has also become clearer.
During the time when Israel was deprived of land and Temple, God--according to the traditional criteria--could not compete with other gods, for a god who had no land and could not be worshiped was not a god at all. It was during this period that the people learned to understand fully what was different and new about Israel's God: that in fact he was not just Israel's god, the god of one people and one land, but quite simply God, the God of the universe, to whom all lands, all heaven and earth belong; the God who is master of all; the God who has no need of worship based on sacrifices of goats and bulls, but who is truly worshiped only through right conduct.
Once again: Israel came to recognize that its God was simply "God" without any qualification. And so the "I am" of the burning bush found its true meaning once more: This God simply is. When he says "I am," he is presenting himself precisely as the one who is, in his utter oneness. At one level, this is of course a way of setting him apart from the many divinities of the time. On the other hand, its primary meaning was entirely positive: the manifestation of his indescribable oneness and singularity.
When Jesus says "I am he," he is taking up this story and referring it to himself. He is indicating his oneness. In him, the mystery of the one God is personally present: "I and the Father are one." H. Zimmerman has rightly emphasized that when Jesus says "I am," he is not placing himself alongside the "I" of the Father ("Das absolute 'Ich bin,'" p. 6), but is pointing to the Father. And yet precisely by so doing, he is also speaking of himself. At issue here is the inseparability of Father and Son. Because he is the Son, he has every right to utter with his own lips the Father's self-designation. "He who sees me, sees the Father" (Jn 14:9). And conversely: Because this is truly so,
Jesus is entitled to speak the words of the Father's self-revelation in his own name as Son.
The issue at stake in the whole of the dispute in which this verse occurs is precisely the oneness of Father and Son. In order to understand this correctly, we need above all to recall our reflections on the term "the Son" and its rooted-ness in the Father-Son dialogue. There we saw that Jesus is wholly "relational," that his whole being is nothing other than relation to the Father. This relationality is the key to understanding the use Jesus makes of the formulae of the burning bush and Isaiah. The "I am" is situated completely in the relatedness between Father and Son.
After the Jews ask the question "Who are you?"--which is also our question--Jesus' first response is to point toward the one who sent him and from whom he now speaks to the world. He repeats once again the formula of revelation, the "I am he," but now he expands it with a reference to future history: "When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am he" (Jn 8:28). On the Cross, his Sonship, his oneness with the Father, becomes visible. The Cross is the true "height." It is the height of "love to the end" (Jn 13:1). On the Cross, Jesus is exalted to the very "height" of the God who is love. It is there that he can be "known," that the "I am he" can be recognized.
The burning bush is the Cross. The highest claim of revelation, the "I am he," and the Cross of Jesus are inseparably one. What we find here is not metaphysical speculation, but the self-revelation of God's reality in the midst of history for us. "Then you will know that I am he"--when is this "then" actually realized? It is realized repeatedly throughout history, starting on the day of Pentecost, when the Jews are "cut to the heart" by Peter's preaching (cf. Acts 2:37) and, as the Acts of the Apostles reports, three thousand people are baptized and join the communion of the Apostles (cf. Acts 2:41). It is realized in the fullest sense at the end of history, when, as the seer of the Book of Revelation says, "Every eye will see him, every one who pierced him" (Rev 1:7).
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