The following excerpt is taken from the monumental work titled The Incarnate Christ and His Critics: A Biblical Defense, authored by Robert M. Bowman Jr. & J. Ed Komoszewski, published by Kregel Academic, Grand Rapids, MI, 2024, Part 2: Like Father, Like Son: Jesus’ Divine Attributes, Chapter 13: Was Christ the First Creature?, pp. 247-250.
In my estimation this is THE best and most comprehensive exposition and defense of the biblical basis for the Deity of Christ. Every serious Trinitarian Christian student of the Holy Bible, apologist, and/or theologian must have this book in the library.
LIFE FROM THE FATHER (JOHN 5:26 AND 6:57)
We begin with a pair of sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of John that critics of the doctrine of the incarnation commonly claim prove that Jesus was not eternal deity:
“For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” (John 5:26)
“As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.” (John 6:57)
It may seem surprising that anyone would claim to find proof texts against the eternal preexistence of Christ in the Gospel of John, the book that most emphatically teaches it (as we saw in the previous chapter). Some Jehovah’s Witnesses cite these two texts to prove that the preexistent Christ was a created being.1 The Muslim apologist Shabir Ally, who rejects the preexistence of Christ, cites these texts to show that John regarded Christ as a preexistent yet created being.2 The Unitarian author Kegan Chandler, who argues that Christ’s existence began at his human conception and birth, cites these texts to prove that Christ was “not in existence until the Father said so.”3
Christian scholars have proposed two somewhat different interpretations of John 5:26. The classic view, going back to the church fathers, is that the Father “granted the Son to have life in himself” in the sense that the Son has had life from eternity past in dependence on the Father. The Father has “life in himself,” and he has granted from eternity to the Son to have “life in himself” as well. On this interpretation, John 5:26 affirms both the Son’s eternity and his dependence on the Father. Edgar Goodspeed’s translation captures this interpretation quite explicitly: “For just as the Father is self-existent, he has given self-existence to the Son.”4 These scholars argue that the Father’s “life in himself” is most naturally understood to mean his eternal, self-existent life, and therefore we should understand the Son’s “life in himself ” here to be the same kind of divine life. This life, however, has been given by the Father to the Son, meaning that the Son eternally depends on the Father for his life. If this view is correct, the Son is fully God by nature (specifically, possessing eternal, self-existent life) and yet in some sense functionally “subordinate” to the Father in the sense of being eternally dependent on him. Many contemporary interpreters agree with this classic view.5
A second view going back at least to the sixteenth-century Reformer John Calvin6 is that John 5:26 refers to the Son’s dependence on the Father for his life in the incarnation. The idea here is that the Son exists eternally with divine life, but in becoming a man made himself particularly dependent on the Father for his life. That is, the Father gave or granted to the Son the role of being divine, eternal life incarnate for the purpose of giving eternal life to those who believe in him. Technically, John 5:26 does not say that the Father gave the Son life in himself, but that he gave the Son “to have” life in himself, which suggests this was a matter of the Son’s role. The verb translated “has granted” (ESV, NRSV, and others) or “gave” (NABRE, NASB), edōken, is used in John two dozen times in statements by Jesus that the Father had given to him various aspects of his role in redemption. In the immediate context, these things include the “authority” for “judgment” (5:22, 27). Elsewhere in John, Jesus says that the Father “gave” him works or work for him to accomplish (5:36; 17:4), what he was to say (12:49; 17:8), his people or “sheep” (6:37, 39; 10:29; 17:2b, 6, 9, 22b, 24b; 18:9), authority to impart eternal life (17:2a), the Father’s “name” to reveal (17:11, 12), the “glory” to be given to his people (17:22a, 24b), “the cup” of his death (18:11), and indeed “all things” (3:35; 17:7; cf. 13:3).
One of the strengths of this incarnational interpretation, as just noted, is that it fits especially well in the immediate context. The subject throughout this passage is the Father’s deferring to the Son the authority to raise the dead, judge all people, and give eternal life to whomever he chooses (John 5:21–29). Verses 21 and 26 are clearly parallel statements:
“For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.” (John 5:21)
“For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” (John 5:26)
One may hold to this interpretation of John 5:26 while also maintaining the classic understanding of the Son as eternally dependent on the Father in some way. It is also true that in the Gospel of John the many things that the Father “gave” his Son were proper for him to have due to his eternal relationship with the Father. What this interpretation does, specifically, is to explain John 5:26 as expressing the Father’s role in sending the Son to become Life incarnate. This view also has some notable contemporary scholars among its advocates.7
Whichever of these two views one prefers, John 5:26 does not teach that the Son was a created being. To the contrary, it affirms that he has “life in himself,” the same life that the Father has, and that his possession of this self-existent life is what enables the Son to give eternal life to others.
The same two basic interpretive options arise in John 6:57. Jesus’ statement, “I live because of the Father,” can be understood as referring to his preincarnate life8 or to his incarnate life.9 LDS author Charles Pyle, seeking to use John 6:57 to prove that Christ’s existence had a beginning in the primordial past, cites the standard Greek-English lexicon as stating that the word dia followed by a noun in the accusative case expresses “the efficient cause.”10
He concludes, “And if Jesus had an efficient cause, he had to have had some sort of beginning as an intelligent entity. There is no other way around that, in this author’s opinion.”11 (Recall that in LDS doctrine, all human beings, including Jesus, preexisted in heaven as spirit sons and daughters of heavenly Father and heavenly Mother.) However, whether or not Jesus was referring to his life before coming to the earth, his statement simply cannot mean what Pyle claims. After saying, “I live because of the Father,” Jesus says, “so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me” (di’ eme, that is, dia followed by the accusative, 6:57b). If “I live because of the Father” must mean the Father caused Jesus to exist, then “he also will live because of me” must mean that Jesus will cause the person who “feeds on” him to exist. But no one thinks that is what Jesus was saying, since those who believe in Jesus must first exist before they can “feed on” him!
The use of dia followed by the accusative can but does not necessarily express efficient causation. For example, it could mean that the Son lives “because of” the Father in the sense that the Father is the source or ground of the Son’s eternal divine life.12 Likewise, believers in Christ will live “because of” Christ in the sense that his incarnation of eternal life becomes the ground for imparting eternal life to them. Only if one (a) insists on taking dia to express efficient causation, (b) assumes that the context is the Son’s preincarnate life, and (c) presupposes that efficient causation must be interpreted in temporal terms, can one infer from John 6:57 that the Son was brought into existence at some point in the distant past. Such a conclusion can be defended, however, only at the cost of forcing John 6:57 into conflict with the rest of the Gospel, which presents the Son as eternal (John 1:1–3; 8:58; 17:5).
On the other hand, Jesus’ statement in John 6:57 may mean that he lived as the incarnate Son because of the Father. This interpretation, like the incarnational interpretation of John 5:26, fits the immediate context nicely. What Jesus says is this: “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me” (6:57). That is, the Father sent Jesus the Son to be a human being on the earth in order to be eternal life incarnate for our benefit (cf. 6:35, 48; 11:25–26; 14:6). Again, this interpretation does not deny that the Son preexisted with divine life. Rather, it understands John 6:57 to mean that it was the Father’s will for that life to be incarnated in human form.
In short, John 5:26 and 6:57 do not contradict John’s own teaching that Jesus the Son was with the Father before the world and that through him all created things came into existence.
1. E.g., “The Trinity—Should You Believe It?” Watchtower, Feb. 1, 1984, 5; Stafford, Jehovah’s Witnesses Defended, 3rd ed., 291, 337, 340, 362, etc. Stafford treats this interpretation as self-evident and so offers no argument or exegesis in support.
2. Ally, Is Jesus God? The Bible Says No, 27, cf. 11. 3. Chandler, The God of Jesus, 363 n. 1191.
4. Edgar J. Goodspeed, The New Testament: An American Translation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), John 5:26.
5. E.g., Morris, Gospel according to John, 282–83; Carson, Gospel according to John, 256–57; Kruse, John, 175; and see esp. Randy Rheaume, “John’s Jesus on Life Support: His Filial Relationship in John 5:26 and 6:57,” TrinJ 33 ns (2012): 49–75.
6. John Calvin, Commentary on the Gospel according to John, translated by William Pringle (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1847 [orig. 1553]), 1:206–7.
7. E.g., Barclay M. Newman and Eugene A. Nida, A Translator’s Handbook on the Gospel of John, UBS Handbook (New York: United Bible Societies, 1980), 159; Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John (I–XII): Introduction, Translation, and Notes, AYBC 29 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 215.
8. E.g., Carson, Gospel according to John, 299; Rheaume, “John’s Jesus on Life Support.”
9. E.g., Newman and Nida, Handbook on the Gospel of John, 209.
10. BDAG, s.v. “dia,” B.2.(d)β.
11. D. Charles Pyle, I Have Said Ye Are Gods: Concepts Conducive to the Early Christian Doctrine of Deification in Patristic Literature and the Underlying Strata of the Greek New Testament Text, rev. ed. (by the author; North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2018), 356.
12. So, for example, the Greek grammarian A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1932), 5:112–13; similarly, Murray J. Harris, John, EGGNT (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2015), 142. Note that BDAG, which Pyle cites, lists John 5:26 as a possible example of this usage, “because of, for the sake of,” s.v. “dia,” B.2.(a), as well as possibly expressing efficient cause.
To confirm the authors’ exegesis and refutation of the anti-trinitarian misapplication of John 5:26 and 6:57, I quote texts where Christ is described as the very Source of life, being the One who preserves all things and grants immortality to creatures. These are functions and characteristics which are uniquely divine, and therefore belong to God alone:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.” John 1:1-4 Legacy Standard Bible (LSB)
“For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes… Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live… Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.” John 5:21, 25, 28-29 LSB
“‘All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. Now this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.’ Therefore the Jews were grumbling about Him, because He said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ They were saying, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, “I have come down from heaven”?’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Stop grumbling among yourselves. No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day… He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.’” John 6:37-44, 54 LSB
“‘My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish—ever; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.’ The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, ‘I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?’ The Jews answered Him, ‘For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself God.’” John 10:27-33 LSB
“Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to Him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die—ever. Do you believe this?’ She said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, the One who comes into the world.” John 11:23-27 LSB
“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.” John 14:6 LSB
“Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life.’” John 17:1-2 LSB
“What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life—and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us—what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you may also have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” 1 John 1:1-3 LSB
“For in Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. And He IS before all things, And in Him all things hold together.” Colossians 1:16-17 LSB
“For you died and your life has been hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is manifested, then you also will be manifested with Him in glory.” Colossians 3:3-4 LSB
“in these last days spoke to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds, who is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power; who, having accomplished cleansing for sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high… And, ‘You, Lord (the Son), in the beginning founded the earth, And the heavens are the works of Your hands; They will perish, but You remain; And they all will wear out like a garment, And like a mantle You will roll them up; Like a garment they will also be changed. But You are the same, And Your years will not come to an end.’” Hebrews 1:2-3, 10-12 LSB
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