-    Jesus  Declares  His  Identity    -   By His Holiness Pope Benedict VI   -  Joseph Ratzinger  -

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. Matthew 16:14; Mark 8:28; Luke 9:19) In his confession, Peter uses - as we have seen - others, 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 the 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 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 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. John 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 lingo 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.

(1) - THE  SON  OF  MAN - Son of Man - this mysterious term is the 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 in 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." - Mark 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 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 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 professional 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 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 condemned to the Cross on account of such harmless moralizing.

For such a radical collusion 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 would 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" - Mark 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" - Matthew 12:8; Luke 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 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 term 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 as 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" - Daniel 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" - Daniel 7:13f - The beasts from the depths are confronted 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.

Let us turn now to the scriptural passages themselves. We saw that the first group of saying about the Son of Man refers to his future coming. Most of these occur in Jesus' discourse about the end of the world - cf. Mark 13:24-27 - and in his trail before Sanhedrin - cf. Mark 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 behaviour toward them as behaviour 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. Jesus is the man without property or home who has no place to lay his head. - cf. Matthew 8:19; Luke 9:58 - Jesus is a 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 the 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, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God; but he/she who denies me before men will be denied before angels of God." The second text is Luke 17:24ff: ............. - P A G E  O N E

Wishing you, 'Happy Reading', and may God, the Father, the Son of the living God, Jesus Christ, fills your heart, mind, thoughts, and grants you: The Holy Spirit, that is, Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding, Counsel, Piety, Fortitude, Fear of the Lord, and also His fruits of the Holy Spirit, that is, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Trustfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control. Amen! God blessing be upon you!

Why do you call Me, "Lord, Lord" and not do what I say?' "Everyone who comes to Me and listens to My words and acts on them - I will show you what he/she is like. He/She is like a man/woman who when he/she built his/her house dug, deep, and laid the foundations on rock; when the river was in flood it bore down on that house but could not shake it, it was so well built. But the one who listens and does nothing is like the man/woman who built his/her house on soil, with no foundations: as soon as the river bore down on it, it collapsed; and what a ruin that house became!" - Luke 6:46-49 - 

If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow in all ways into Christ Jesus, who is the head by whom the whole body is fitted and joined together, every joint adding its own strength, for each separate part to work according to it function. So the body grows until it has built itself up, in love." - Ephesians 4:15-16 - 

I still have many things to say to you but they would be too much for you now. But when the spirit of truth comes, he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking as from himself, but will say only what he has learnt; and he will tell you of the things to come. He/She will glorify me, since all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine. Everything the Father has is mine; that is why I said: all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine." - John 16:12-15 -