Jesus Christ: Eternally Older than Abraham

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 3: The Name of Jesus: Jesus’ Divine Names, Chapter 27: “I Am”: Jesus’ Divine Self-Declarations, pp. 516-524.

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. Underline emphasis will be mine.

“BEFORE ABRAHAM CAME INTO EXISTENCE, I AM” (JOHN 8:58)

Jesus’ saying in John 8:58 has elicited far more debate than any of the other “I am” sayings of Jesus: “Your father Abraham was overjoyed to see my day, and he saw it and was glad.” Then the Judeans replied, “You are not yet fifty years old! Have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “I tell you the solemn truth, before Abraham came into existence, I am [egō eimi]!” Then they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus was hidden from them and went out from the temple area. (8:56–59 NET)

Most commentators have concluded that in this passage Jesus claims to have personally existed before Abraham in a way that connotes eternal, divine preexistence. Of course, advocates of most unorthodox Christologies disagree, although their alternative explanations differ dramatically from one another. For sake of space we will consider just three of these interpretations.

Unitarians and John 8:58

Unitarians deny that Jesus Christ existed before his human conception and birth. Their usual interpretation of John 8:58 is that Jesus meant that he had an ideal, figurative existence as the Messiah forever in the mind of God.²¹ This interpretation that Jesus was saying only that he was eternally in God’s mind prior to Abraham needs to be set aside as patently wrong. We will briefly mention four serious objections.

1. Neither Jesus nor his opponents said anything about the Messiah in the context leading up to John 8:58. One must go back to verse 36 to find Jesus using the title “Son” for himself, and no plausible reading of the narrative will support the claim that Jesus in verse 58 was referring back to that statement.

2. The Jews had just asked Jesus how he could claim to have seen Abraham when Jesus was not even fifty years old (v. 57). Jesus’ reply is to the point, claiming at a minimum an existence that antedated Abraham (v. 58). The Unitarian interpretation makes Jesus’ reply a complete non sequitur.

3. Since God foreknows all things, he knew who Abraham would be just as long as he knew that Jesus would be the Messiah—that is, he knew both things from eternity past. In this regard, there could be no temporal contrast (“before”) between Abraham and a simply human Jesus.

4. As we explained in detail in chapter 12 (pp. 230–45), the Gospel of John clearly and repeatedly teaches that Christ personally preexisted before creation (e.g., John 1:1–3; 3:13, 31; 13:1–3; 16:27–28; 17:5). The traditional understanding of John 8:58 fits comfortably into this larger context of the teaching of the Gospel.

Progressive Christians and John 8:58

Progressive Christians generally interpret John 8:58 to mean that Jesus was a human being like others but one who experienced a mystical union with the divine available to anyone. John Shelby Spong explains the statement to mean, “I am part of the life of God. I am part of the love of God. I am part of the being of God.”²² Similarly, Yung Suk Kim claims that the verse means that “all are included in the love of God.”²³

The progressive Christian interpretation that Jesus was speaking mystically of the life and love potentially available in all people is nothing if not creative. If John 8:58 can be finessed away to mean that “all are included in the love of God,” as Kim claims, then texts really mean nothing. This interpretation is typical of Kim’s handling of the “I am” sayings, which is the main subject of his book, especially John 14:6, which makes an exclusive claim that Kim cannot accept. For example, when Jesus is quoted as saying, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12), for Kim this cannot be allowed to mean that Jesus “is the light” or even that he reveals the light (which would be an exclusive claim). He therefore decides that it must mean that “Jesus’ work is the light.”²⁴ But Kim overlooks the contrast that John makes in his prologue between John the Baptist, who “was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light” (1:8), and Jesus Christ, who was “the true light” (1:9). By Kim’s standard, John the Baptist could have said the words of John 8:12 about himself since John was also doing the work of the light.

Jehovah’s Witnesses and John 8:58

Jehovah’s Witnesses have published far more on John 8:58 than any of the other groups just mentioned.²⁵ Their official Bible version translates Jesus’ statement, “Before Abraham came into existence, I have been” (NWT). They think Jesus was telling his critics “about his prehuman existence as a mighty spirit creature in heaven before Abraham was born.”²⁶ Let us first notice what Jehovah’s Witnesses say with which orthodox Christians agree. We both understand Jesus’ statement to indicate that he personally existed at least prior to the time of Abraham. A few English versions that are designed to give smooth, highly readable English renderings (sometimes at the expense of precision, unfortunately) often translate Jesus’ statement in verse 58 to express this minimally clear point in idiomatic fashion: “I was in existence before Abraham was even born!” (Living Bible). The Watchtower’s rendering (“I have been,” NWT), on the other hand, is meant to preclude both the eternal preexistence of Christ and his identity as the God who says “I am” in the Old Testament. The most important issue, then, is what the statement means.

Since 1984, the Watchtower Society has argued that egō eimi in John 8:58 should be translated “I have been” because the present-tense verb eimi there is an instance of what is commonly called the present of past action in progress (hereafter PPA).²⁷ Unlike the interpretations of John 8:58 associated with the other Christologies, and unlike the Watchtower’s earlier explanations,²⁸ this one has some scholarly support, albeit meager. Four Greek grammatical reference works have classified John 8:58 as a PPA,²⁹ and the author of one of these, Kenneth McKay, argues that the text should be translated, “I have been in existence since before Abraham was born.” McKay, who calls the PPA the “extension from past” present, argues in an academic article that John 8:58 has no connection to Exodus 3:14. In that article he implies that John 8:58 speaks of Christ not as eternal but only as older than Abraham, commenting that “the claim to have been in existence for so long is in itself a staggering one.”³⁰ Not surprisingly, Jehovah’s Witness apologists defending the NWT rendering of John 8:58 rely heavily on McKay.³¹

On the other hand, most Greek grammarians have not classified eimi in John 8:58 as a PPA, and at least two—A. T. Robertson and Daniel B. Wallace— have disagreed with such a classification.³² The question is complicated because grammarians have defined this usage in varying ways, with broader definitions more likely to encompass John 8:58. As Wallace observes, “Depending on how tightly one defines this category, it is either relatively rare or fairly common.”³³

As usually defined in the grammars, and as is the case with almost all of the examples from the New Testament they cite, the PPA occurs when the verb is modified by some sort of temporal expression, typically an adverb or adverbial phrase, that indicates (whether vaguely or specifically) the duration of the action that the verb expresses. The examples that the grammars cite most often (translating literally) are Luke 15:29 (“for so many years I have been serving [douleuō] you”), Luke 13:7 (“For three years I have been coming [erchomai] seeking fruit”), John 5:6 (“he had been [echei] that way already a long time”), and John 15:27 (“you have been [este] with me from the beginning”). Notice the past-time expressions that directly modify the verb in each of these examples (“so many years,” “for three years,” “a long time,” “from the beginning”). Wallace points out that the grammars differ as to whether such expressions are necessary to the PPA category.³⁴ Some grammarians state that they are required,³⁵ others that they usually or often appear with the PPA,³⁶ and others say nothing about adverbials or other past-time expressions. Here it is noteworthy that two of three earlier grammarians (besides McKay) who classified John 8:58 as a PPA—G. B. Winer and Nigel Turner—said nothing about past-time expressions accompanying the verb.³⁷

There is a past-time expression in John 8:58, but it isn’t the same kind as those found in the uncontroversial examples of the PPA. In those texts, the qualifying expression refers to the period of duration up to the time of speaking, such as “for three years” or “from the beginning.” Other commonly cited New Testament textbook examples of the PPA have expressions associated with them that function in the same way, such as “so long” (John 14:9), “from ancient generations” (Acts 15:21), “all along” (2 Cor. 12:19), and the like (see also Acts 27:33; 2 Tim. 3:15; 2 Peter 3:4; 1 John 3:8). The past-time expression in John 8:58 refers to a period of time before an earlier event: “before Abraham came into existence” (NET, cf. NABRE) or “before Abraham was born” (NASB, NIV, REB). It does not refer to the period of time leading up to Jesus’ statement, as McKay’s translation “Since before Abraham was born” would have it.

The other relevant dissimilarity between John 8:58 and the undisputed instances of the PPA is that, as A. T. Robertson points out, in John 8:58 eimi is absolute.³⁸ The term absolute here is a grammatical description, not a theological one. In this context it means that John 8:58 is one of the seven places in John where Jesus is quoted saying “I am” (egō eimi) with no predicate noun or other expression completing the predicate. Charles Kahn, in his study of the Greek verb for “to be” (which deals with ancient Greek literature generally and has no agenda in relation to John 8:58), explains what it means to say that the to-be verb is absolute: “By an absolute construction I mean that there is no nominal or locative predicate and no other complement such as the possessive dative, nor even an adverb of manner. An absolute construction may, however, admit adverbs of time.”³⁹ We will explain what this means with some examples.

A nominal predicate would be a noun with or without modifiers, such as “I am the (true) vine” (John 15:1, 5) or “I am the light of the world” (8:12). A locative predicate would consist of a word or words that indicate the location or place of the action that the verb expresses. We actually have two examples in John of a locative predicate in which a form of eimi does function as a PPA. In the words, “Have I been [eimi] with you so long” (John 14:9), John quotes Jesus using eimi with the locative phrase “with you” (meth’ hymōn), which completes the predicate. The same thing happens in Jesus’ saying, “You have been [este] with me from the beginning” (John 15:27). Here este, the second-person plural form of eimi, has the locative expression “with me” (met’ emou) completing the predicate. On the other hand, John 8:58 has no nominal or locative predicates and no other grammatical complement expressed in the sentence. The main verb eimi, then, is grammatically absolute. We have no clear examples of a predicate absolute use of any form of eimi as a PPA. Nor does it seem plausible that such a predicate absolute would ever be used as a PPA, “since a predicate absolute does not express an action or ongoing event, nor even an ongoing specific condition, but rather simply existence.”⁴⁰

We would agree, then, with Robertson and Wallace that eimi in John 8:58 should not be classified as a PPA. If one does so classify it, one should understand that this classification does not mean that the verb should be translated into English using a past-tense form such as “have been.” Almost all of the undisputable textbook cases of the PPA have been translated using present-tense forms in some or even many English versions. For example, many versions translate diamenei in 2 Peter 3:4, a clear instance of the PPA, using a present-tense form: “For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing [diamenei] as they were from the beginning of creation” (ESV, cf. CSB, KJV, NASB, NIV, NKJV, NRSV, REB). Indeed, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ own Bible version does the same thing: “All things are continuing exactly as they were from creation’s beginning” (NWT). As for John 8:58 itself, virtually all of the English versions currently in use other than the NWT render eimi as “am.” This includes the five other English Bibles that the Watchtower has itself published: the KJV, the ASV, Benjamin Wilson’s Emphatic Diaglott, J. B. Rotherham’s Emphasized Bible, and Steven Byington’s Bible in Living English. All of these versions except for the Emphatic Diaglott are currently available on the Watchtower’s official website (JW.org). The burden of proof is entirely on the Jehovah’s Witnesses to show why John 8:58 must be translated “I have been.”

Finally, one must take into consideration the clear contrast in John 8:58 between Abraham, who “came into existence” (genesthai), and Christ, who simply is (eimi, “am”). As leading scholars of Greek grammar have explained, this verbal contrast in context clearly contrasts Abraham’s temporal origin with Christ’s eternal being.⁴¹ To quote again from C. K. Barrett (whom we saw critics of the deity of Christ have frequently quoted on other “I am” sayings), “The meaning here is: Before Abraham came into being, I eternally was, as now I am, and ever continue to be.”⁴²

The Old Testament Background of John 8:58

One of the Old Testament texts that Winer cites as an example of the PPA,⁴³ although it does not neatly fit that category (depending on how it is defined), sheds some light on John 8:58. Jesus’ statement there as presented in Greek recalls a classic affirmation of the eternal being of God in the Old Testament:

Three verbal elements of these two sentences are parallel. (1) The infinitive verb genēthēnai is the passive form of genesthai, used in John 8:58 in reference to Abraham coming into being. (2) The words su ei are the second-person equivalent of egō eimi. Moreover, ei is a predicate absolute, just as eimi is in John 8:58. (3) Both sentences have an aorist infinitive clause; the one in Psalm 89:2 LXX is headed by pro tou, which is equivalent in such clauses to prin, used in John 8:58. The two clauses are also ordered in the same way, with the aorist infinitive clause followed by the main clause ending in the predicate absolute verb. Thus, the Greek sentence here reflects the same grammatical structure as John 8:58 and uses the same verbs to make the same contrast between that which is created and temporal and the one who is uncreated and eternal. Of course, in John 8:58 Jesus contrasts his existence with that of Abraham, not of the world, but he does so because he was asked how a man of his age could have seen Abraham (8:57).⁴⁵

The close parallel between John 8:58 and Psalm 89:2 LXX confirms that however one classifies the usage of the present tense in John 8:58, the meaning goes beyond temporal existence before Abraham. Abraham and the rest of us are all part of the created order. Christ, although he joined himself with that created order by becoming a man, was as a person uncreated, eternal deity. John has already presented this same contrast in relation to all creation in his prologue. The Word (i.e., the preexistent Christ) “was” (ēn, third-person imperfect form of eimi, used four times) “in the beginning,” whereas all things “came into being” (egeneto, aorist indicative form of genesthai, used twice) through him (1:1–3, cf. 1:10).⁴⁶ John uses the imperfect ēn rather than the present-tense estin in John 1:1–2 because he is affirming the Word’s continuing existence at the beginning of creation. It is another way of expressing his eternal preexistence, as does “the one who was” (ho ēn) in the three-part description of God in Revelation as “the one who is and the one who was and the one who is coming” (Rev. 1:4, 8 LEB).⁴⁷

Psalm 89:2 LXX is not the only Old Testament text paralleled in John 8:58, and it may not even be the main text to which John 8:58 intentionally alludes. One text that should be given more attention here than is usually the case is Isaiah 43:10, to which as we have seen at least five of Jesus’ “I am” sayings in John allude, including three earlier in the same passage (John 4:25–26; 8:18, 24, 28; 13:19):

This statement contrasts the Lord, who says “I am,” meaning here that he is eternally God, with nonexistent gods, which if they existed would need to have “come into being,” but did not. That there was no God before him and would be none after him indicates his eternity past and future since, as Isaiah and everyone in his culture would agree, there must always be some sort of divine being or beings in existence. The verbal contrast between eimi and egeneto is comparable to John’s contrasts between ēn and egeneto in John 1:1–3 and between eimi and genesthai in John 8:58. One might dismiss the parallel as accidental, were it not for the fact that John’s presentations of Jesus’ “I am” sayings earlier in the same passage definitely allude to Isaiah 43:10.⁴⁸

As for the relationship between John 8:58 and Exodus 3:14, as we explained toward the beginning of this chapter, there are good reasons to understand the “I am he” sayings of Isaiah 41–52 as alternative ways of making the same point as Exodus 3:14. As Catrin Williams argues, one may see Exodus 3:14 as part of the relevant background to John 8:58 without regarding it as the primary allusion.⁴⁹

The Attempt to Stone Jesus (John 8:59)

The reaction of Jesus’ critics to his statement—attempting to stone him (John 8:59)—confirms that they thought he was making a divine claim. Had Jesus stated only that he had been alive longer than Abraham, they might have regarded such a claim as crazy (as they apparently did with regard to his earlier comments, vv. 48–57), but probably not as an offense meriting stoning.

In an attempt to rebut this point, McKay argues that Jesus’ claim to be older than Abraham was itself so staggering that it was “quite enough to provoke the crowd’s violent reaction.”⁵⁰ Reading the account in context leads us to a different conclusion. John has already reported that Jesus’ critics considered him worthy of death for claiming to be equal with God (John 5:18), and later they again wanted to stone him “for blasphemy” by making himself God (10:31–33). When we read about another attempt to stone Jesus between those two accounts (8:59), we should infer that their motive was the same as in the other incidents. This conclusion also fits the evidence we have already seen that Jesus’ statement in John 8:58 was indeed a clear if implicit claim to deity. Unlike some of Jesus’ other “I am” sayings (e.g., John 4:26; 6:20), the intimation of deity would have been quite clear to those who originally heard Jesus make this statement.

21. E.g., Buzzard and Hunting, Doctrine of the Trinity, 220–23. Buzzard defends this view while tentatively proposing another according to which Jesus meant that he would be resurrected before Abraham (222). This explanation is both grammatically impossible and contextually baseless.

22. Spong, Fourth Gospel, 142.

23. Kim, Truth, Testimony, and Transformation, 32.

24. Kim, Truth, Testimony, and Transformation, 32–33.

25. Besides Watchtower publications, see Furuli, Role of Theology and Bias in Bible Translation, 229–45; Stafford, Jehovah’s Witnesses Defended, 3rd ed., 261–99. To these should be added BeDuhn, Truth in Translation, 103–12. Although BeDuhn was never a Jehovah’s Witness, his argument is dependent on Stafford’s. Both Furuli and Stafford were responding mainly to Bowman, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jesus Christ, and the Gospel of John, 87–130.

26. NWT (Study Edition), at John 8:58.

27. For an early critique of this argument, see Bowman, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jesus Christ, and the Gospel of John, 103–12; and see the responses in Furuli, Role of Theology and Bias in Bible Translation, 233–38; Stafford, Jehovah’s Witnesses Defended, 3rd ed., 274–94 (esp. 283–94). The relevance of the PPA for translating and interpreting John 8:58 was the focus of a protracted written debate on the (now defunct) Evangelical and JW Theologies Yahoo Group between Bowman and Jason BeDuhn, “John 8:58: The BeDuhn—Bowman Debate” (2004–2005), now available at https://independent.academia.edu/RobertBowmanJr.

28. Cf. Bowman, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jesus Christ, and the Gospel of John, 90–103. The NWT was first published in 1950.

29. G. B. Winer, A Treatise on the Grammar of New Testament Greek, trans. W. F. Moulton, 3rd rev. ed.; 9th Eng. ed. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1882), 334; BDF, 168; Nigel Turner, Syntax, Volume III, A Grammar of New Testament Greek, by James Hope Moulton (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1963), 62 (with the citation misprinted as 5:58); and K. L. McKay, A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek: An Aspectual Approach, Studies in Biblical Greek 5 (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 41–42.

30. K. L. McKay, “‘I Am’ in John’s Gospel,” ExpTim 107 (1996): 302–3.

31. Furuli, Role of Theology and Bias in Bible Translation, 238; Stafford, Jehovah’s Witnesses Defended, 3rd ed., 278–80, 282, 284, 288. Cf. BeDuhn, Truth in Translation, 112, where three of the eight endnotes for his chapter on John 8:58 (nn. 1, 2, 8) cite McKay.

32. Robertson, Grammar of the Greek New Testament, 880; and Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, 531n. 48.

33. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, 519.

34. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, 519 n. 17.

35. E.g., Buist M. Fanning, Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 217.

36. E.g., Wallace himself, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, 519.

37. Winer, Treatise on the Grammar of New Testament Greek, 334; Turner, Syntax, 62. The third was BDF, 168.

38. Robertson, Grammar of the Greek New Testament, 880.

39. Charles H. Kahn, The Verb “Be” in Ancient Greek, Foundations of Language, Supplementary Series 16: The Verb “Be” and Its Synonyms: Philosophical and Grammatical Studies 6 (Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel, 1973), 240.

40. Bowman, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jesus Christ, and the Gospel of John, 107.

41. Robertson, Word Pictures, 5:158–59; Max Zerwick and Mary Grosvenor, A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament, unabridged 5th rev. ed. (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1974), 314.

42. Barrett, Gospel according to St John, 352.

43. Winer, Treatise on the Grammar of New Testament Greek, 334.

44. The Hebrew text has “you are God”; the Greek translation construed the Hebrew word ēl (“God”) to mean “not” and put it with the next sentence. Both versions, of course, express that God (to whom the psalmist is speaking) is everlasting or eternal in his existence.

45. On the parallel with Psalm 89:2 LXX, cf. Brown, Gospel according to John (I–XII), 360; Harris, John, 183.

46. Cf. Marianne Meye Thompson, John: A Commentary, NTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015), 197.

47. Cf. McDonough, YHWH at Patmos, 212.

48. Ball, “I Am” in John’s Gospel, 195; so also Lincoln, Gospel according to Saint John, 276.

49. Williams, I am He, 276–77.

50. McKay, “‘I Am’ in John’s Gospel,” 302.