Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

d. Conclusion
THE QUESTION OF JESUS' SELF-UNDERSTANDING §16.3
In short, there are grounds, not substantial but probably sufficient, to support
these conclusions regarding the remembered Jesus: (1) that Jesus' Abba prayer
was both a characteristic and as such a distinctive feature of his praying, (2) that
this prayer was properly heard to express a profound sense of and confidence in
his relationship with God as his Father, and (3) that Jesus was also recalled as alluding
to this relationship on a few occasions during his mission. We can deduce
further, without strain, that this sense of sonship must have been (4) crucial, even
central, to Jesus' own self-understanding and (5) the source of the immediacy of
authority with which he proclaimed the kingdom of God, in both its eschatological
immanence and imminence. 77 Only if this were the case would the Fourth
Gospel's massive expansion and elaboration of the Father-Son theme have been
as justifiable in tradition-historical terms; and only so would the other elaborations
and developments of the Son-christology have been as acceptable as in the
event they proved to be.
As for what Jesus' sonship meant for his disciples, the tradition does not
encourage us to infer that Jesus made his relationship with God, as son to father,
a subject of explicit instruction, still less that he required his disciples to assent to
such a belief regarding himself. Nor that this sense of relationship was a secret
mystery which he taught only to an inner group, a higher stage of initiation, a
goal to be achieved along the path of discipleship. What the Jesus tradition does
indicate is that Jesus sought to induct his disciples into that same sense of sonship,
not least by teaching them to pray as he did, and that he encouraged them
all to live out of their own relationship to God as Father, as he did. And what
seems also to have been the case, he saw his disciples' relationship to God as Father
as in some sense a sharing in his own sonship to the Father.
From the little evidence we have on the subject these are surprisingly large,
but also surprisingly strong conclusions.
16.3. Son of Man: The Issues
After 'the kingdom of God/heaven' there is no phrase so common in the Jesus
tradition as 'the son of man'. Its importance within the Jesus tradition, and possibly
as a key to that tradition, therefore, can hardly be exaggerated. More to the
immediate point, it seems to be the nearest thing in the Jesus tradition to a selfchosen
self-designation. For example, in the healing of the paralysed man Jesus
77. Keck presses the point more strongly: 'Jesus probably saw himself as God's obedient
son, replicating the Father's way' (Who Is Jesus? 97-100; see also 140-44).
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