LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 363

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS

Gal. 4:4-7:

But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman,
born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we
might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent
the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So through
God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir.

But when the time had fully come, God sent forth God’s Child, born of
woman, born under law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that
we might receive adoption as children of God. And because you are chil-
dren, God has sent the Spirit of the Child into our hearts, crying, ”...
Father!” So through Ged you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a
child then an heir. (Lectionary, 43) ©

Is such translation, which intentionally wishes to avoid the title of
“Son” or “Son of God” for Jesus, justified? It is not justified, and for the fol-
lowing reasons. First of all, at the purely linguistic level the Greek word
translated by An Inclusive-Language Lectionary with “Child” is hiios (vide).
However, huios does not mean “child”; it means “son.” “ The Greek lan-
guage has other words for “child” (e.g., xaig and téxvov). The desire to
avoid the word “son” in fact leads to an incorrect translation, not to a legit-
imate option. Second, the rendering “child” is not gender specific, allow-
ing the referent to be either masculine or feminine. It is the intent of “inclu-
sive” translations that both genders be “included” in the terms translated.
However, in the above cases of huios the referent is, in fact, Jesus, who was
a man and not a woman. The use of “child” erodes the historical specifici-
ty of the evangelical story. The fact that Jesus was a man is in itself suffi-
cient to explain the use of “son” rather than “child.” However, as the
translation of Gal. 4:4-7 above indicates, Jesus’ title “Son” entitles the
believers to be named “sons.” Yet some “inclusive” translations claim that
such a translation is exclusive of women. This leads to a third considera-
tion. The intentional avoidance of “son” terminology is often not separa-
ble from a theological commitment to the view that the masculinity of
Jesus is irrelevant to his meaning as Christ and Savior. The “Appendix” to
the Lectionary makes this explicit:

A son is male, and of course the historical person, Jesus, was aman. But as

the Gospels depict Jesus, his maleness is not said to have any significance

©The Lectionary is thoroughgoing in this translation option. Other examples are Matt
14:33; 26:63; John 19:7; 20.31; Rom. 5:10; Heb. 4:14. The Lectionary typically uses also other
strategies for avoiding what it regards as gender specific language, but in the examples hst-
ed we are interested only in the translation of wd by “Child” rather than by “Son.”

Rev. 12:5 says that the woman “brought forth a male child” (RSV). The Greek here is
vidv dpoev. Here the RSV does translate vids with “child.” However, this hardly implies
that vidg in other contexts means generically a “child.” One would not, for exampte, find the
word pair “female child” expressed as vids OnAu

25

John 3:13-14:

No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the
Son of man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must
the Son of man be lifted up.

No one has ascended into heaven but the one who descended from heav-
en, the Human One. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
so must the Human One be lifted up. (Lectionary, 88)

Acts 7:56:
And [Stephen] said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man
standing at the right hand of God.

{Alnd Stephen said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Human
One standing at the right hand of God.” (Lectionary, 148)"

The term “the Son of Man” (0 vids tod dvépdmov) is frequently found
in the Gospels, always in reference to Jesus and always spoken by Jesus of
himself. It is, therefore, a self-designation of Jesus. The term “Son of Man”
without the article (viog dvOpdmov) is also found in the New Testament of
Jesus (John 5:27; Heb. 2:6; Rev. 1:13; 14:14). The Lectionary gives its ratio-
nale for rendering the term “the Son of man” by “the Human One”: “The
term (the Son of man], however, is subject to being misinterpreted as
speaking about a male human being, a ‘son’ of a ‘man.’ And so, in this lec-
tionary, ‘the Human One’ is used as a formal equivalent for ‘the Son of
man.’” ©

The term “[the] son of man” can mean simply “a person” or “a human
being” in distinction to God or to animals. For example, in Ps. 144:3-4 we
read: “© Lord, what is man that thou dost regard him, or the son of man
that thou dost think of him? Man is like a breath, his days are like a pass-
ing shadow.” Here “man” is equivalent to “son of man,” both meaning
human beings who, unlike God, are subject to death. The same is true of
Ps. 90:3: “Thou turnest man back to the dust, and sayest Turn back, O chil-
dren of men!” > The plural form “sons of men” in Mark 3:28 and Eph. 3:5
also suggests that the simple meaning of “human beings” is intended.

* Other examples in the Lectionary are Matt. 10:23; 13:37; 16:13; 27: 17:9; 25:31; John $35.

” The Greek phrase corresponds to the Hebrew SND (Ps 144:3, ben enosh), TRS
(ben adam, frequent in the Old Testament), and the Aramaic {R73 (Dan. 7:13). The
anarthrous (without the article) Greek phrase is probably a literal Greek rendering of these
Hebrew and Aramaic phrases, which have no definite articles.

™ Lectionary, 274. In the earlier 1983 version of An Inctusive Language Lectionary the
phrase “the Human One” or “the human figure” is said to lay aside “the strictly male aspect
of the phrase ‘the Son of man’ and {to emphasize} the human connotations of the term”
(“Appendix.” no page).

™ The RSV has “children of men.” but in this Psalm the Hebrew is O77
men,” and the Septuagint has viot avépanay. “sons of men.”

, “sons of

27

for salvation. It is the fact that Jesus was Auman that is crucial, both for
Jesus’ designation as the Christ and for Jesus’ work of salvation.

U the fact that Jesus was a male has no christological significance, then nei-

ther has the fact that Jesus was a son and not a daughter. Therefore, in this

lectionary the formal equivalent “Child” or “Child of God” is used for

“Son” when the latter has christological significance, and the masculine

pronouns that refer to “Child” (“Son”) are rendered as “Child.” Thus, ail

hearers of the lectionary readings will be enabled to identify themselves

with Jesus’ humanity.
Behind the verbal avoidance of the title “Son” lies a conviction which
denies any theological or salvific meaning to the reality of Christ’s sonship.
Indeed, according to this line of reasoning, that Christ is “son” is of no
more consequence than that he is masculine; both are basically irrelevant.
This understanding hardly does justice to biblical realism. Moreover, the
material from the previous section of this document requires repetition. In
Christ “Son” is not merely or only a title; it designates and specifies his per-
sonal reality as the eternal Son of the eternal Father.

Another similar yet distinct attempt to translate “inclusively” is to
render the phrase “(the) Son of Man” with circumlocutions such as “{the]
Human One” or as “{the] mortal.” The Lectionary consistently translates
in this way, as do some modern translations of the Bible such as the New
Revised Standard Version.” Some examples of this usage in the Lectionary
follow:

Matt. 26:64:

Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But! tell you, hereafter you will see
the Son of man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming on the
clouds of heaven.”

Jesus replied, “You have said so. But I tell you, hereafter you will see the
Human One seated at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds
of heaven.” (Lectionary, 106)

“ Lectionary, 273.

© The argument is sometimes made that the maleness of Christ was due only to God's
accommodation to the patriarchal culture of the New Testament period. See, for example,
Paut K. Jewett, Man as Male and Female (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 168: “{God] was
entering into the stream of human life, coming from beyond time and place into our time and
Place. Hence he could not ignore the actualities of the human historical situation. But this
ts just to say that there is no ultimate reason, either in the nature of Man the creature of of
God the Creator, but only a proximate one in history—and that a history marked by sin and
alienation—that God should uniquely reveal himself in a man rather than a woman.” How-
ever, such a view not only calls into question the sovereignty of God’s freedom in his reve-
lation but it calls into question the personal identity between the Christ and the man Jesus.
To suggest that the Christ could have come as a woman abstracts the reality of the Christ
from the concrete reality of the man, Jesus. Such a posture is typical of gnosticizing heresy

© The NRSV systematically removes the phrase “son of man” from the Old Testament
The phrase “san of man” occurs 106 times in the Old Testament in the standard RSV, but it
occurs nowhere in the Old Testament translation of the NRSV.

26

However, that in the New Testament “the Son of Man” is always used
of Jesus should forewam us that very likely the mere fact of his humanity
is not sufficiently connotative of the term. For example, according to Luke
22:48, when Jesus is about to be betrayed in the Garden of Gethsernane, he
says, “Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” It seems
wholly unlikely that with this designation Jesus has only his common
humanity in mind. It is not that Judas is betraying just any human being,
but this particular human being whose significance as “Son of Man” lies in
his personal identity and work. Similarly, in John 9:35 Jesus addresses the
man whom he had eartier healed of blindness: “Do you believe in the Son
of Man?” Clearly, in this story the healing, salvific Meaning of Jesus is not
separable from his title “Son of Man”: “Do vou believe in the Son of Man?”
One does not believe in someone simply because they share common
humanity. Jesus as Son of Man is redeemer.

In two passages of the Old Testament the title “Son of Man” has dis-
tinct messianic significance. In Ps. 8:4 we read: “[WJhat is man that thou
art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him?’ This
passage is quoted in Heb. 2:6 to refer to the victory and exaltation which
Christ has won for us through his suffering and resurrection. To translate
“man” and the “Son of Man” by such renderings as “a human being” or
“the Human One” is to overlook the distinct messianic application which
such a passage receives in the New Testament. The same point is to be
made concerning Dan. 7:13: “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with
the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man.” In speaking of his
own coming, Jesus clearly refers to this passage of Daniel: “[Hlereafter,
you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming
on the clouds of heaven” (Matt. 26:64). To translate Dan. 7:13 with “I saw
one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven,” as the New
Revised Standard Version does, robs the Daniel passage of its clear Christo-
logical reference by making indefinite the specific messianic reference to
Christ as Son of Man.

In considering the phrase “Son of Man” we must furthermore keep a
significant narrative theme of the Scriptures in mind. In the creation
account God speaks: “Let us make man (Hebrew: C7, adam) in our image,
after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). The word C7 (“adam”) is indicated as the
name of the human race in Gen. 5:1-2: “When God created man, he made
him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he
blessed them and named them Man (C18) when they were created”
(emphasis added). In the next verse, Gen. 5:3, the name “Adam” is the spe-
cific name of the man, Adam. In other words, within the world of mean-
ing of the Bible the name “Adam” encompasses both male and female,
who together constitute the human race. However, the man, Adam, is the
responsible head of the human race, the one from whom all humanity
derives its sinful name and nature. In the New Testament Christ is depict-

28

363