The Son of Man Debate and its Relevance for Orthodox Theology

Abstract

From the very beginnings of biblical criticism, the challenges of scholarly quest for the meaning of the Christological title ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, so to speak, has been followed by the shadow of a complex debate. The fact that the theological language of Orthodoxy did not create a coinage that would match the German die Menschensohnfrage or the English one The Son of Man problem may be explained by the orientation of the young Orthodox biblical scholarship to which the scopes of the Western tradition were not interesting at times, especially if it touched on them burdened with its own question of survival. However, if anyone from Eastern Orthodox Church today was to touch on these challeges, they would inevitably be faced with the following two questions: 1) why did contemporary exegesis develop a debate over this, and not some other titles (e.g. ὁ ὑιὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, ὁ χριστός, ὁ μεσσίας), but also 2) what would make this debate relevant for Orthodox theology? Given that the objective of the proposed text is to answer these questions, but not to accept the aforementioned challenges, let us begin by considering the basic assumptions of the debate.

In der neutestamentlichen Wissenschaft spricht man in den letzten Dekaden oft über die gegenseitige Verbindung zwischen Bibel und Liturgie. Da zuerst in den alttestamentlichen Büchern die Spuren von Hymnen bemerkt wurden und da dies zur Erkennung des gottesdienstlichen Kontextes der Entstehung und Anwendung dieser Bücher führte, wurden auch Studien über neutestamentlichen Zeugnissen der frühchristlichen Liturgie veröffentlicht. Diese Welle der Interpretation freute sich vor allem über die Johannesoffenbarung, dabei verstehend, dass man aus der Fülle seiner liturgischen Szenen (z. B. Offb 4-5)4 besonders bestimmte Formen (z. B. Dialoge, Hymnen usw) auswählen kann, durch welche man in die alte Welt des frühchristlichen Liturgielebens sehen kann.