SON
144
SON
the Father: neither doth any one know the Father,
but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son
to reveal him. Come to me, all you that labour, and
are burdened, and I will refresh you" (Matt., xi,
25-30; Luke, X, 21,22). In the parable of the wicked
husbandmen the son is distinguished from all other
messengers: "Therefore having yet one son, most
dear to him; he also sent him unto them last of all,
saying: They will reverence my son. But the hus-
bandmen said one to another: This is the heir; come
let us kill him" (Mark, xii, 6). Compare Matt.,
x-xii, 2, "The kingdom of heaven is likened to a king,
who made a marriage for his son. " In Matt., xvii, 25,
He states that as Son of God He is free from the
temple tax. "David therefore himself calleth him
Lord, and whence is he then his son? " (Mark, xii, 37) .
He is Lord of the angels. He shall come ' 'in the clouds
of heaven with much power and majesty. And he shall
send his angels" (Matt., x.xiv, 30,31). He confessed
before Caiphas that he was the Son of the blessed
God (Mark, .\iv, 61-2). "Going therefore, teach ye
all nations, Ijaptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost . . . and behold
I am with you all davs, even to the consummation
of the world" (Matt.,"x.\-\dii, 19, 20).
The claims of Jesus Christ, as set forth in the Sy- noptic Gospels, are so great that Salmon is justified in writing (Introd. to New Test., p. 197): "We deny that they [Christ's utterances in the Fourth Gospel] are at all inconsistent with what is attributed to Him in the Synoptic Gospels. On the contrary, the dignity of our Saviour's person, and the duty of adhering to Him, are as strongly stated in the discourses which St. Matthew puts into His mouth as in any later Gospel. . . . The Synoptic Evangelists all agree in representing Jesus as persisting in this claim [of Supreme Judge] to the end, and finally incurring condemnation for blasphemy from the high-priest and the Jewish Council. ... It follows that the claims which the Synoptic Gospels represent our Lord as making for Himself are so high . . . that, if we accept the Synoptic Gospels as truly representing the character of our Lord's language about Himself, we certainly have no right to reject St. John's account, on the score that he puts too exalted language about Himself into the mouth of our Lord."
(2) St. John's Gospel. — It will not be necessary to give more than a few passages from St. John's Go.spel. "My Father worketh until now; and I work. . . . For the Father loveth the Son, and shew- eth him all things which he himself doth : and greater works than these will he shew him, that you may wonder. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and giveth life: so the Son also giveth life to whom he will. For neither doth the Father judge any man, but hath given all judgment to the Son. That all may honour the Son, as they honour the Father" (v, 17,20-23). "And this is the will of my Father that sent me: that everyone who seeth the Son, and beUeveth in him, may have life everlasting, and I will raise him up in the last day" (vi, 40). "Father, the hour is come, glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee. . . . And now glorify thou me, O Father, with thyself, with the glory which I had, before the world was, with thee" (xvii, 1, 5).
(3) St. Paul. — St. Paul in the Epistles, which were written much earlier than most of our Gospels, clearly teaches the Divinity of Jesus Christ, and that lie was the true Son of God; and it is important to remember that his enemies the Judaizers never dared to attack this teaching, a fact which proves that they could not find the smallest semblance of a discrepancy between his doctrines on this point and that of the other Apostles.
I.EPiN. Jfgus Messie el Fits de Dieu (Paris. 1906); fttioEnc. tr. (Ptiiladolphia); Rose, Studia on the Gospels (London. 190.3); Sandat, Hist. Diet. Bible. Q AhERNE.
Son of Man. — In the Old Testament "son of man "
is always translated in the Septuaginst without the
article as Ms avepdnrov. It is employed (1) as a poetical
synonym for man, or for the ideal man, e. g. "God
is not as a man, that he should lie, nor as a son of
man, that he should be changed" (Num., xxiii, 19).
" Blessed is the man that doth this and the son of man
that shall lay hold on this" (Is., Ivi, 2). "Let thy
hand be upon the man of thy right hand : and upon the
son of man whom thou hast confirmed for thyself"
(Ps. Lxxix, 18). (2) The Prophet Ezechiel is addressed
by God as "son of man" more than ninety times, e. g.
"Son of man, stand upon thj' feet, and I will speak to
thee" (Ezech., ii, 1). This usage is confined to Eze-
chiel except one passage in Daniel, where Gabriel said:
" Understand, O son of man, for in the time of the end
the vision shall be fulfilled" (Dan., viii, 17).
(3) In the great vision of Daniel, after the appear- ance of the four beasts, we read: "I beheld therefore in the vision of the night, and lo, one hke a son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and he came even to the Ancient of days: and they presented him before him. And he gave him power, and glory, and a king- dom: and aU peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve him: his power is an everlasting power that shall not be taken away: and his kingdom shall not be de- stroyed" (vii, 13 sq.). The person who appeals here as son of man is inteipreted by many non-Catholics as representing the Messianic kingdom, but there is nothing to prevent the passage from being taken to represent not only the Messianic kingdom, but par excellence the Messianic king. In the explanation, verse 17, the four beasts are "four kings" R.V., not "four kingdoms" as translated by D. V., though they appear to signify four kingdoms as well, for the characteristics of oriental kingdoms were identified with the characters of their kings. So when it is said in ver.se 18: "But the saints of the most high God shall take the kingdom: and they shall possess the kingdom for ever and ever", the king is no more ex- eluded here than in the case of the four beasts. The "son of man" here was early interpreted of the Mes- sias, in the Book of Henoch, where the expression is used almost as a Messianic title, though there is a good deal in Drummond's argument that even here it was not used as a Messianic title notwithstanding the fact that it was understood of the Messias. It has to be added that in the time of Christ it was not very widely, if at all, known as a Messianic title.
The employment of the expression in the Gospels is very remarkable. It Ls used to designate Jesus Christ no fewer than eighty-one times — thirty times in St. Matthew, fourteen times in St. Mark, twenty- five times in St. Luke, and twelve times in St. John. Contrary to what obtains in the Septuagint, it appears everywhere with the article, as 6 mbs toO avBputrov. Greek scholars are agreed that the correct transla- tion of this is "the son of man", not "the son of the man". The possible ambiguity may be one of the reasons why it is seldom or never found in the early Greek Fathers as a title for Christ. But the most remarkable thing connected with "the Son of Man" is that it is found only in the mouth of Christ. It is never employed by the disciples or Evangelists, nor by the early Christian writers. It is found once only in Acts, where St. Stephen exclaims: "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man stand- ing on the right hand of God" (vii, 55). The whole incident proves that it was a well-kno^\'n expression of Christ's. Though the saying was so frequently employed by Christ, th<> disciples preferred some more honorific title and we do not find it at all in St. Paul nor in the other Ejiistles. St. Paul perhaps uses something like an equivalent when he calls Christ the second or last Adam. The writers of the Epistles, moreover, probably wished to avoid the Greek am- biguity just alluded to.
