Friday, August 5, 2016

Patrick Navas on the Pre-Human Existence of Jesus

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.