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 homooúsios, “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 Jülicher’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 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 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 kénosis (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.
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).
At the end of the disputes reported in chapter 8 of John’s Gospel, Jesus utters once again the words “I am,” now expanded and interpreted in another direction. The question “Who are you?” remains in the air, and it includes the question “Where do you come from?” This leads the discussion on to the Jews’ descent from Abraham and, finally, to the Fatherhood of God himself: “Abraham is our father…We were not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God” (Jn 8:39, 41).
By tracing their origin back beyond Abraham to God as their Father, Jesus’ interlocutors give the Lord the opportunity to restate his own origin with unmistakable clarity. In Jesus’ origin we see the perfect fulfillment of the mystery of Israel, to which the Jews have alluded by moving beyond descent from Abraham to claim descent from God himself.
Abraham, Jesus tells us, not only points back beyond himself to God as Father, but above all he points ahead to Jesus, the Son: “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad” (Jn 8:56). At this point, when the Jews object that Jesus could hardly have seen Abraham, he answers: “Before Abraham came into existence, I am” (Jn 8:58). “I am”—once again, the simple “I am” stands before us in all its mystery, though now defined in contrast to Abraham’s “coming into existence.” Jesus’ “I am” stands in contrast to the world of birth and death, the world of coming into being and passing away. Schnackenburg correctly points out that what is involved here is not just a temporal category, but “a fundamental distinction of nature.” We have here a clear statement of “Jesus’ claim to a totally unique mode of being which transcends human categories” (Barrett, Gospel, II, pp. 80f.).
Let us turn now to the story recounted by Mark about Jesus walking on the water immediately after the first multiplication of the loaves (cf. Mk 6:45–52), a story that closely resembles the parallel account in the Gospel of John (cf. Jn 6:16–21). H. Zimmermann has produced a painstaking analysis of the text (“Das absolute ‘Ich bin,’” pp. 12f.). We will follow the main lines of his account.
After the multiplication of the loaves, Jesus makes the disciples get into the boat and sail to Bethsaida. He himself, however, withdraws to pray “on the mountain.” The disciples, in their boat in the middle of the lake, can make no headway because the wind is against them. While he is praying, the Lord sees them, and comes toward them over the waters. Understandably, the disciples are terrified when they see Jesus walking on the water; they cry out in “total confusion.” But Jesus kindly speaks words of consolation to them: “Take heart, it is I [I am he]; have no fear!” (Mk 6:50).
At first sight, this instance of the words “I am he” seems to be a simple identifying formula by means of which Jesus enables his followers to recognize him, so as to calm their fear. This interpretation does not go far enough, however. For at this point Jesus gets into the boat and the wind ceases; John adds that they then quickly reached the shore. The remarkable thing is that only now do the disciples really begin to fear; they were utterly astounded, as Mark vividly puts it (cf. Mk 6:51). But why? After their initial fright at seeing a ghost, the disciples’ fear does not leave them, but reaches its greatest intensity at the moment when Jesus gets into the boat and the wind suddenly subsides.
Obviously, their fear is of the kind that is typical of “theophanies”—the sort of fear that overwhelms man when he finds himself immediately exposed to the presence of God himself. We have already met an instance of this fear after the abundant catch of fish, where Peter, instead of joyfully thanking Jesus, is terrified to the depths of his soul, falls at Jesus’ feet, and says: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man” (Lk 5:8). It is this “divine terror” that comes over the disciples here. For walking on the waters is a divine prerogative: God “alone stretched out the heavens, and trampled the waves of the sea,” we read in the book of Job (Job 9:8; cf. Ps 76:20 in the Septuagint version; Is 43:16). The Jesus who walks upon the waters is not simply the familiar Jesus; in this new Jesus they suddenly recognize the presence of God himself.
The calming of the storm is likewise an act that exceeds the limits of man’s abilities and indicates the power of God at work. Similarly, in the earlier account of Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee, the disciples ask one another: “Who is this that even wind and water obey him?” (Mk 4:41). In this context too, the “I am” has something different about it. It is more than just a way for Jesus to identify himself. The mysterious “I am he” of the Johannine writings seems to find an echo here too. At any rate, there is no doubt that the whole event is a theophany, an encounter with the mystery of Jesus’ divinity. Hence Matthew quite logically concludes his version of the story with an act of adoration (proskynesis) and the exclamation of the disciples: “Truly, you are the Son of God” (Mt 14:33).
Let us move on now to the sayings in which the “I am” is given a specific content by the use of some image. In John there are seven such sayings; the fact that there are seven is hardly accidental. “I am the Bread of Life,” “the Light of the World,” “the Door,” “the Good Shepherd,” “the Resurrection and the Life,” “the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” “the True Vine.” Schnackenburg rightly points out that we could add to these principal images the image of the spring of water—even though it does not literally form part of an “I am” saying, there are nevertheless other sayings in which Jesus presents himself as this spring of water (cf. Jn 4:14, 6:35, 7:38; cf. also 19:34). We have already considered some of these images in detail in the chapter on John. Let it suffice here, then, to summarize briefly the meaning that all these Johannine sayings of Jesus have in common.
Schnackenburg draws our attention to the fact that all these images are “variations on the single theme, that Jesus has come so that human beings may have life, and have it in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10). His only gift is life, and he is able to give it because the divine life is present in him in original and inexhaustible fullness” (Barrett, Gospel, II, p. 88). In the end, man both needs and longs for just one thing: life, the fullness of life—“happiness.” In one passage in John’s Gospel, Jesus calls this one simple thing for which we long “perfect joy” (Jn 16:24).
This one thing that is the object of man’s many wishes and hopes also finds expression in the second petition of the Our Father: thy Kingdom come. The “Kingdom of God” is life in abundance—precisely because it is not just private “happiness,” not individual joy, but the world having attained its rightful form, the unity of God and the world.
In the end, man needs just one thing, in which everything else is included; but he must first delve beyond his superficial wishes and longings in order to learn to recognize what it is that he truly needs and truly wants. He needs God. And so we now realize what ultimately lies behind all the Johannine images: Jesus gives us “life” because he gives us God. He can give God because he himself is one with God, because he is the Son. He himself is the gift—he is “life.” For precisely this reason, his whole being consists in communicating, in “pro-existence.” This is exactly what we see in the Cross, which is his true exaltation.
Let us look back. We have found three terms in which Jesus at once conceals and reveals the mystery of his person: “Son of Man,” “Son,” “I am he.” All three of these terms demonstrate how deeply rooted he is in the Word of God, Israel’s Bible, the Old Testament. And yet all these terms receive their full meaning only in him; it is as if they had been waiting for him.
All three of them bring to light Jesus’ originality—his newness, that specific quality unique to him that does not derive from any further source. All three are therefore possible only on his lips—and central to all is the prayer-term “Son,” corresponding to the “Abba, Father” that he addresses to God. None of these three terms as such could therefore be straightforwardly adopted as a confessional statement by the “community,” by the Church in its early stages of formation.
Instead, the nascent Church took the substance of these three terms, centered on “Son,” and applied it to the other term “Son of God,” thereby freeing it once and for all from its former mythological and political associations. Placed on the foundation of Israel’s theology of election, “Son of God” now acquires a totally new meaning, which Jesus had anticipated by speaking of himself as the Son and as the “I am.”
This new meaning then had to go through many difficult stages of discernment and fierce debate in order to be fully clarified and secured against attempts to interpret it in light of polytheistic mythology and politics. For this purpose the First Council of Nicea (A.D. 325) adopted the word consubstantial (in Greek, homooúsios). This term did not Hellenize the faith or burden it with an alien philosophy. On the contrary, it captured in a stable formula exactly what had emerged as incomparably new and different in Jesus’ way of speaking with the Father. In the Nicene Creed, the Church joins Peter in confessing to Jesus ever anew: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16).