The Life Of Jesus Christ In Its Historical Connexion

Christ must, therefore, have had special reasons for adopting, with an obvious predilection, the less known Messianic title. Even if we were to grant that lie used it more frequently because of its less obvious application, in order, at first, to lead the Jews gradually to recognize him as Messiah; still we should not have a sufficient explanation of his employing it so generally and so emphatically. [145] We find a better reason for it in Christ's conscious relation to the human race; a relation which stirred the very depths of his heart. He called himself the "Son of Man" because he had appeared as a man; because he belonged to mankind; because he had done such great things even for human nature (Matt., ix., 8); because he was to glorify that nature; be cause he was himself the realized ideal of humanity. [146]

We certainly cannot find in Christ's use of the title any trace of the Alexandrian Theologoumenon of the archetype of humanity in the Logos, of Philo's distinction between the idea of humanity and its manifestation (or the Cabbalistic Adam Cadmon); notwithstanding it was not by accident that so many ideal elements, formed from a commingling of Judaism and Hellenism, were given as points of departure to the realism of Christianity; although this last was grounded on the highest fact in history.

So, too, the fundamental idea of the title "Son of Man" is, perhaps, allied to that involved in the Jewish designation of Messiah as the "second Adam;" but it is clear that Christ was not led by the latter fact to employ it. Much rather do we suppose that the name, although used by the prophets, received its loftier and more profound significance from Christ's own Divine and human consciousness, independent of all other sources. It would have been the height of arrogance in any man to assume such a relation to humanity, to style himself absolutely Man. But He, to whom it was natural thus to style himself, indicated thereby his elevation above all other sons of men -- the Son of God in the Son of Man.

The two titles, "Son of God" and "Son of Man," therefore, bear evidently a reciprocal relation to each other. And we conclude that as Christ used the one to designate his human personality, so he employed the other to point out his Divine; and that as he attached a sense far more profound than was common to the former title, so he ascribed a deeper meaning than was usual to the latter.