Sentence:  To be the Savior and the Lord , Jesus Christ has to be a historical individual with a biography all his own ; he dare not <WSD>be</WSD> a cosmic aeon that swoops to earth for a while but never identifies itself with man 's history . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)