Digital Logos Edition
What is a consistent theological meaning of the Son of Man in the Gospel of Matthew? For a suitable response, it is essential to analyze all thirty Son of Man logia in their relative literary contexts and in relationship to the gospel as a whole. Also, to bring out the uniqueness in Matthew’s portrayal of the Son of Man, a comparison with the other Synoptic Gospels aids the investigation. This work argues that the answer lies in the role of the Son of Man in the first Gospel. In Matthew, Jesus the Son of Man functions as mediator of God’s will to his genuine disciples. As the Son of Man journeys through his earthly life climaxing in his death and resurrection, Jesus mediates God’s will through his message and works and by exhibiting active obedience to his Father in the heavens. Jesus’s genuine disciples learn how to emulate the Son of Man’s character and ministry, enabling them to continue it in their future mission.
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Saunders’s creative and original argument draws the whole set of Matthean uses of Son of Man, in all their varied contexts, into a credible coherent whole: as the Son of Man, Jesus reveals the will of God by teaching, by example, and even by revealing the future of judgment, vindication, and vindication to which one’s orientation to the will of God will lead.
—John Nolland, former Vice-Principal and Academic Dean, Trinity College Bristol, and Visiting Professor, University of Bristol
In recent years students of Matthew have witnessed a relative dearth of treatments on the important subject of the Son of Man in this Gospel. Craig Saunders has addressed the lacuna by offering a fresh and in many ways novel understanding of this theme in Matthew’s Gospel.
—David R. Bauer, Ralph Waldo Beeson Professor of Inductive Biblical Studies, Dean of the School of Biblical Interpretation, Asbury Theological Seminary