I
have discussed John 17:5 and how this verse clearly supports the personal
pre-existence of Jesus in the following posts that interact with, and critique,
leading apologists for Socinian Christology (Anthony Buzzard; Duncan Heaster;
Dave Burke):
Patrick
Navas, author of the book, Divine Truth
or Human Tradition?: A Reconsideration of the Roman Catholic-Protestant
Doctrine of the Trinity in Light of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures,
has an interesting paper addressing the question of the personal pre-existence
of Jesus:
On
pp.21-24, he addresses this text; here are some potent comments he makes while
interacting with the Socinian interpretation:
I consider [the Socinian reading] reasonable.
But it also seems difficult from my perspective to entirely exclude the
possibility that Jesus, in this case, simply meant what he said in a
more-or-less literal way. After all, one could argue, Jesus could have said,
"Father, glorify me with the glory you purposed for me before the
foundation of the world." Perhaps Jesus did mean that. I do not discount that as a valid possibility. But
again, who would completely dismiss the possibility that Jesus really meant he,
as God's Son (the only-begotten god) truly had glory alongside the Father (in
the bosom of the Father) before the world was? . . . If Jesus really dwelled in
God's glorious presence before the world was, I think the faith and confident
Jesus possessed would have had its very basis in the intimate knowledge he had
of the Father (and the Father's plan and power) when he was "in the bosom
of the Father" for untold ages. And couldn't one also argue, "When
Jesus asked the Father to 'glorify me in your own presence with the glory that
I had with you before the world existed,' wasn't he asking that the Father
employ that the very same past "glory" heh ad in the beginning
"with God" (John 1:1), in the "form of God [or a god]" (Philippians
2:5) and in 'the bosom of the Father' (John 1:18) I always took the statement
in John 17:5, as brief as it is, to be a rare, precious and beautiful insight
into the Father and Son's heavenly relationship before the world as we know it
came into being--a case in the Bible where Jesus' gives us a glimpse into the
heavenly dwelling place, what went on there, the profound and intimate
spiritual bod that existed between God and his divine offspring, his firstborn
Son--a glorious picture.
Navas
examines many important texts. Notwithstanding his Unitarianism, Navas comes
down on the personal pre-existence of Jesus, so it is an interesting read.