As to Whom Jesus IS and the title of Son of Man, when Jesus used that term applying to Himself, He was telling His listeners, The Jews of that day, that He is The I Am, for the Old Testament is clear to those who were familiar with it that the term Son of Man applied ONLY to the Christ, the Son of The Living God Whose name is I Am. Jesus told Philip that He is One with The Father (John Chapter fourteen), and the Old Testament (the Bible of the Jews then) is emphatic in proclaiming that God is One. So to be One with the Father is the same as Jesus saying I Am, that I Am.
If I believed you were hung up on comprehending Whom Jesus Is, then I would offer the following little essay which I have offered here at FreeRepublic on occasion of such conundrum:
The following will be 'a way' to understand the notion of the trinitarian nature of the Deity, not a strictly Biblical explanation, but one which is applicable to the teaching of the Bible. Here goes:
God The Father Almighty is greater than His creation, thus greater than dimension time and dimension space, thus we may think of The Father Almighty as beyond time and space but not prevented from touching and indeed penetrating His creation.
The universe of space and time is likened to a bubble: what is inside the bubble is in time and space. But the nature of what is inside the bubble is only partially understood in modern Physics.
The Bible relates scenes which defy the simplistic notions we use for assumptive science. We'll get to that 'assumptive' notion shortly, but let us make the statement that God The Father Almighty is as comfortable outside the bubble as He is inside the bubble.
Modern Physics has discovered that the balance of forces and tensions sustaining the universe necessary for human life to arise within the universe is extremely delicate, on the order of a mathematical improbability, represented as a 'one in less than' fraction so tiny that a one over a one followed by more than one-hundred zeros defines the probability that the whole thing remains in balance! Such a delicate balancing act is but one of the continuing 'works' of the Holy Spirit of God. It is by the Spirit of God, The Word, that the universe came into existence and it is said in the Bible that by His Spirit the whole is maintained.
But the Bible also states that The Word was with God in the beginning and was God. In John's gospel we find that Jesus is The Word made flesh Who dwelt among us. So, inside the bubble Created by The Father Almighty, sustained by God The Holy Spirit, is the Word, God made flesh Who dwelt among us. The Creator does not stop being greater than His creation bubble, nor does His Spirit cease to sustain it all in balance, when Jesus comes in the flesh to dwell among us.
Here's an address to 'assumptive science limitations': Now, when one reads the Tanakh/Old Testament, one finds scenes like the fifth chapter of Daniel where a being is in one spacetime 'where/when' reaching into another 'where/when' to write on the palace party central wall of king Belshazzar. Just the forearm/hand is seen in the where/when of Belshazzar and the party folks, the rest of the being remains in 'another' where/when.
God The Father Almighty created this 'other' where/when, His Holy Spirit maintains its balance and separateness from our where/when, and Jesus has moved in and out of this other where/when: as shown when He resurrected from the tomb without rolling away the stone, just passing out of the tomb where/when, into 'another' where/when; then back into our where/when as He spoke to the women come to the sepulchre; and when He appeared in a locked and shuttered room with the disciples present; or appeared suddenly with the disciples walking on a road and broke bread with them then left our where/when to go to the 'other' where/when.
The trinitarian nature of God is shown in the Bible, even in the Tanakh. Trinity IS the nature of God as we have been given to know. Even in the Old Testament/Tanakh, we do have instruction on the Three nature of God as Creator, Sustainer, and Deliverer. God Is manifested as three yet one, seen identified by 'the work He is doing'.
With each manifestation, we are given to realize His presence simultaneously as Creator--because we exist in the realm He created, as Sustainer--because the balance is too delicate to stand alone without His sustaining the separation and interdependence, and as God with us in the person of Jesus our Lord and Savior.
You might find it exhilarating that it is only the current generation of humankind who can even begin to fathom the total dimensionality of God as greater than yet relating to His creation, and thus sense the ways, from a Physics standpoint, that I Am is involved with His creation.
The founders, some of them at least, were beginning to see a glimpse, but only with the deeper Physics clarity Scientists have discovered in our epoch can we see the interconnectedness being revealed. And there is so much more to come, which The Bible points to in so many places, prophetic places.
When Jesus told the Jews then that He is Son of Man, He was claiming to be One with The Father Almighty, so in John fourteen when Philip said 'show us The Father and that will sufficie for our clarity', Jesus explained that all they could see of the Father was where He, The Father Almighty, was IN THEIR SPACETIME REALM, as Jesus, God With Them.
When the SHTF, is the important question going to be “Who reads their Bible just right?’, or “Who’s got my back?”
Groucho once said that he’d not be a member of any club that would accept him!
I feel the same way about a thread with over 666 replies already.
kerping
But I've "spewed" no heresies, merely taken the New Testament to mean what it says about Jesus.
That brings me to religious opinions which are quite similar to many (not all) of our Founders.
So I am here to defend them against the hatred you spew at me.
MHGinTN: "If I believed you were hung up on comprehending Whom Jesus Is, then I would offer the following little essay which I have offered here at FreeRepublic on occasion of such conundrum:
***posts lengthy Trinitarian exegesis*** "
FRiend I have not denied that you offer up a valid understanding, and I don't criticize you for it.
I merely point out that there are other possible understandings, and that both our Founders and today's "restorationists" Christians had/have different views.
What you will not find, in most Founders, is any explicitly Trinitarian language beyond what the New Testament itself says about Jesus.
That's because our Founders' Christianity was influenced to more-or-less degrees by ideas from Enlightenment Age theism/deism, Unitarian and/or Freemasonry.
These are ideas which you find so objectionable in yours truly, BroJoeK, but seem perfectly happy with in our Founders.