Chapter 17, "The Man Who Emerges"

The kingdom of heaven will come on earth as the triumph of human solidarity, unbounded compassion, and unstinting fellow-feeling, founded on the faith that all our sins and trespasses will be — by one another, as by God — forgiven. Jesus, the man from Nazareth, presented that truth to us so authentically that, after his crucifixion, he was understood to be divine; death could not contain him.

This is how Albert Nolan reads the gospels in Jesus before Christianity. I've been reviewing the book's chapters, in reverse order, in a search for greater understanding of a message that often gets hidden in our formal church theology and doctrine today.

Nolan has it that, to Jesus, the Lord God in heaven, whom he called Father or Abba, had changed! God had relented with respect to his erstwhile intentions to judge and punish sinners. The "signs of the times" were manifest: God's mercy was at hand. That was shown by the great number of healings that were happening, all around Jesus, in first-century Palestine.

Jesus preached faith: the power of forgiveness and compassion to unify humanity and avert looming catastrophe. But if faith was not strong, or forgiveness not universal, dire catastrophe would come instead of the kingdom of God. In his time, the pending catastrophe Jesus prophesied was the turning out of Jews from their homeland at the hands of the conquering Romans, and the fall of the Temple. That actually transpired, a mere few decades later.

Even so, Nolan says, Jesus also preached that the kindgom of heaven would eventually come to, and on, our earth. Even if there wasn't enough faith and compassion in men's hearts to head off catastrophe in the short term, there would be enough in the long term to make the kingdom one day come true.


In Chapter 17, "The Man Who Emerges," Nolan makes the point that Jesus conspicuously "spoke and acted without authority" (p. 148, Nolan's italics). He would accept no titles. He declined even the accolade "good," saying that such an honor was to be reserved for God alone (Mk 10:18; Lk 18:19).

If he was in any sense a "king," his would be a metaphorical kingship only ... for the "kingdom" was specifically one in which the highest in society would serve the lowest. There would be no authority figures, no wielding of power in its literal sense.

From Jesus the man shone forth the truth expressed in 1 Jn 4:7-8: " ... everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love." Or, as Nolan puts it:

We know that [Jesus] was moved to act ans speak by a profound experience of compassion. And we know that the Abba-experience was an experience of God as a compassionate Father. This would mean that Jesus experienced the mysterious creative power behind all phenomena (God) as compassion or love. (pp. 151-152)

The "kingdom of God" is therefore a reign of compassion and love.


The only "title" Jesus gave himself was Son of Man. Nolan shows that it is mistaken of us to read it as a title.

For one thing, it can be taken as an idiom along the lines of how we sometimes use "yours truly": "If you want to know what yours truly thinks, you have only to ask."

For another — and this is the really important thing — "son of man" was understood by Jesus' contemporaries as synonymous with "human being." Per Nolan, that expression "could be used to underline the human as opposed to the bestial" (p. 145).

I think that interpretation is key. In so saying, I am treating what for Nolan is a mere "matter for conjecture" (p. 146) as fact: "Jesus' frequent and emphatic use of the term 'son of man' was his way of referring to, and identifying himself with, human beings as human beings" (p. 145, italics mine).

Nolan cites verses from the Book of Daniel, the Old Testament prophet, in this regard. For my purposes verses 11 through 14 from chapter 7 give the flavor of it:

I watched, then, from the first of the arrogant words which the horn spoke, until the beast was slain and its body thrown into the fire to be burnt up.

The other beasts, which also lost their dominion, were granted a prolongation of life for a time and a season.

As the visions during the night continued, I saw One like a son of man coming, on the clouds of heaven; When he reached the Ancient One and was presented before him,

He received dominion, glory, and kingship; nations and peoples of every language serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away, his kingship shall not be destroyed.

The contrast is drawn between the "beast" or "beasts" whose time has come and gone and "a son of man" whose "dominion" or "kingship" shall never cease.

Nolan quibbles (p. 145) about whether Jesus actually claimed to be this particular "son of man" or not, inasmuch as the "son of man" passages in the Gospels were possibly "not formulated by Jesus himself but by the very early Christians." But, really, his hypothesis about Jesus is strengthened by assuming that Jesus did claim this non-title, Son of Man, but never exclusively.

Rather, as Nolan in a page or so asserts:

Jesus must have been aware of the fact that he was fulfilling the prophecies and expectations of Scripture but it does not seem to have mattered to him who was fulfilling them. When according to the gospels, John's disciples ask [Jesus] whether he is the one to come, he does not answer the question directly, he simply points to the fulfillment of Scripture in what is now happening: "The blind see again and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed ... and the good news is proclaimed to the poor" (Mt 11:4-5).

He does not say, "I give sight to the blind, I am proclaiming the good news to the poor." What matters is that this kind of thing is being done, people are being liberated and saved. Who does it is irrelevant. He wanted his disciples to go out and do the same as he had done. It never occurred to him to stop anyone, even complete strangers, from participating in the work of liberation (Mk 9:38-40 par). Jesus' only concern was that the people be liberated. (pp. 147-148)


Putting this all together, we can deduce that the divine Jesus was, and wanted to be seen as, the embodiment of all that makes us human (and humane) beings, not beasts. Love and compassion are our birthright, he told us, and once we come fully and communally into our inheritance, the kingdom of God will arrive for us. We will be liberated, all of us together, from the beast within. Jesus just knew that ... and he made others know it and manifest it too.

That's the kind of God-man he was.