While one
disagrees with much of his theology, such as his Arian
Christology, Gregory Stafford in his works defending Jehovah’s Witnesses
theology did a good job answering Anthony Buzzard and Charles Hunting’s denial
of John 17:5 as teaching the personal pre-existence of Jesus in their book, The Doctrine of the Trinity: Christianity’s
Self-Inflicted Wound:
There are other NT texts that clearly teach
the real, personal preexistence of Jesus of Nazareth. For example, in John 17:5
Jesus is recorded as speaking directly to his Father, who is in the heavens
(John 17:1). During this conversation Jesus says (with emphasis added), “So now
you, Father, glorify me alongside yourself with the glory that I had alongside
you before the world was.” Buzzard and Hunting take the following view
of this text (with underlining added):
When Jesus says that he “had” the glory for
which he now prays (John 17:5), he is merely asking for the glory which
he knew was prepared for him by God from the beginning. That glory existed
in God’s plan, and in that sense Jesus already “had” it. We note that Jesus
did not say, “Give me back” or “restore to me the glory which I had when I was
alive with you before my birth.” This notion would have been completely foreign
to Judaism. (Buzzard and Hunting, The
Doctrine of the Trinity, p. 165)
I will discuss what would have been
considered “completely foreign to Judaism” in Jesus’ day later in this chapter.
But I am here interested in what is “completely foreign” to the Bible, and to
its revelation of who Jesus is according to what we read therein. What Jesus’
religious enemies may have believed about preexistence in general or about the
Messiah in particular is really quite secondary to what Jesus and his followers
actually taught. Contrary to Buzzard and Hunting, Jesus says nothing whatsoever
about “the glory which he knew was prepared for him by God from the beginning.”
In fact, what Jesus tells us is completely different from the teaching of Buzzard
and Hunting. Indeed, here I will provide a comparison between what Buzzard and
Hunting claim Jesus “did not say,” with what John says Jesus did teach.
Buzzard and Hunting also claim “Jesus did not
say” to the Father, “Give me back” or, “restore to me the glory which I had when
I was alive with you before my birth.” Yet, using slightly different wording
that is what Jesus said in prayer to his Father according to John 17:5,
“So now you, Father, glorify me alongside yourself with the glory that I had
alongside you before the world was.” Consider again both what Jesus said and
what Buzzard and Hunting say Jesus said:
Buzzard/Hunting: Jesus did not say, “restore to me the glory which I had”;
Jesus: Did
say, “glorify me alongside yourself with the glory that I had.”
Buzzard/Hunting: Jesus did not say, “I was alive with you before my birth”;
Jesus: Did
say, “I … alongside you before the world was.”
The very things that Buzzard and Hunting say
Jesus did not say are, in fact, the very things Jesus is said to have
said! There is nothing controversial at all about the text or about the
translation of John 17:5. Jesus speaks to the Father and then he refers nostalgically
to his life “before the world was.” That Jesus here refers to his “life” is
clear from the use of the first-person form of the verb for “have” (Greek: eichon
[“the glory that I had”]), from the preposition “with” (Greek: para),
and from the second-person pronoun in the dative case (Greek: soi).
These good reasons reveal Jesus’ personal, prehumen
association “with” the Father “before [pro] the world was.” John 17:5
has Jesus asking the Father to have once more the glory he gave up according
Philippians 2:5-9, which glory Jesus enjoyed in the “form of God/a god” prior
to ‘taking on the form of a man.’ Jesus had this glory before he
came to earth, when he was “with God,” not only as a part of “God’s plan” but
“alongside” or “with” God “in the beginning.”—Proverbs 30:4; John 1:1.
Rather than comment on the pronominal
references, the preposition “with,” or the nostalgic expressions of Jesus in
John 17:5, Buzzard and Hunting try to compare Jesus’ use of “had” (“the glory I
had”) with Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 5:1, “For we know that if our
earthly house, this tent, should be dissolved, we are to have a building from
God, a house not made with hands, everlasting in the heavens.”
The idea behind Buzzard and Hunting’s
connecting these two texts has to do with their belief that “a Christian in the
future, after the resurrection at Christ’s return, will be able to say that he has
now received what he already ‘had,’ i.e. laid up for him in God’s plan.” (Buzzard
and Hunting, The Doctrine of the Trinity, page 165.)
However, the problem with comparing John 17:5
and 2 Corinthians 5:1 in this way is that the verb for “have” is in the present
form in 2 Corinthians 5:1, showing that it is something “laid up for him in
God’s plan.” In John 17:5 John uses a past verb form for what Jesus at
one time “had,” does not have now (at the time of the speech events of John
17:5), but that Jesus wants again! If the “glory” that Jesus “had” according to
John 17:5 is what belonged to Jesus already (because it “existed in God’s
plan”), then John could simply have used the present form of the verb like Paul
did in 2 Corinthians 5:1.
For good reasons, then, it is clear Jesus
“had” a glory “with” God “before the world was.” Therefore, he “had” this
“glory” before he ‘became a man.’ Of course, existing with the Father before
the world “was” does not have to mean that he was eternal, for even the angels,
the other “sons of God,” existed with God “before the world was” (Job 38:7).
The difference between these “sons” and Jesus is that it is not said that the
other “sons of God” possessed the same “glory” that Jesus possessed and
subsequently gave up when he became a man. (Greg Stafford, Jehovah's Witnesses Defended: An Answer to Scholars and Critics [3d
ed.; Murrieta, Calif.: Elihu Books, 2012], 220-22)