The Pastoral Purpose of Q’s Two-Stage Son of Man Christology For those who advocate a titular approach for investigating the Christology of a document, Q must seem a particularly impoverished source in terms of its reflection on the person of Jesus. Cullmann, himself a classical practitioner of titular Christology, while privileging such an approach, nevertheless acknowledges that in some ways it creates a false dichotomy between the person and the work of Christ. He states, “The New Testament hardly ever speaks of the person of Christ without at the same time speaking of his work”(1). Thus in discussing the Christology that Q may present, it is necessary to consider both the titles used and the significance it attributes to the work of Christ. Here it is argued that Q constructs a two-stage Son of Man Christology. The first stage presents a suffering figure whose experiences align with the contemporary situation and liminal experience of the audience of Q. This motif of the shared liminality of the Son of Man and the first readers of Q is a product of the respective experiences of the rejection of theological claims, marginalization of status, a lack of a sense of “place”, and a perception of being “stateless” people (2). The second stage focuses on the future return of the Son of Man (3). It is at this point that group members will receive both victory and vindication. However, these two stages are not always maintained as discrete moments. By employing the title “the coming one”, Q at some points collapses this temporal distinction to allow the pastorally comforting message that some of the eschatological rewards can be enjoyed in the contemporary situation of the first readers of Q. 1. Missing Titles A preliminary survey of the infrequent or non-use of certain titles is both instructive and perhaps a little surprising. Depicting Jesus as “Christ” was, in certain strands of the early Jesus movement, a way of encapsulating messianic hopes and expectations. Admittedly, this title later became transformed into little more than part of a double-barrelled name, but nevertheless its usage remained a constant feature in references to Jesus. This makes its total absence from Q striking. Commenting on the Jewish background of the semantic (1) O. CULLMANN, The Christology of the New Testament (London 21963) 3. (2) For the classic discussion of liminality as a transitional phase see V. TURNER, “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage”, ID., The Forest of Symbols. Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, GA 1967) 93-111. (3) It may be the case that such a two-stage Christology arises from a sense of confusion in the community over the delay of the parousia, see H.T. FLEDDERMANN, Q: A Reconstruction and Commentary (BiTS 1; Leuven 2005) 130. However, while this remains a possible motivation for constructing a two-part Christology, this suggestion is ultimately not provable from the text. Hence it is considered more appropriate to take the Christology of Q as it stands in the reconstruction of that document without speculating about the forces that led to the formulation of such a Christology.