John 17:5

Ver. 5. The most potent means of action of which He has need in order to continue this task, He can only obtain by recovering His state anterior to the incarnation. And this is the purpose for which He asks it again. There cannot be any temerity on His part in doing this, since this state of divine glory appertains to His nature, and He has voluntarily renounced it in order to serve God here on earth.

By the words: with thyself, Jesus opposes the divine sphere to that in which He is at present living (on the earth, John 17:4.), John 13:32. The expression: the glory which I had, is opposed to His present humiliation. No doubt, in His human state He has also a glory, even a glory “as that of the only begotten Son having come from the Father” (John 1:14). But it differs from His heavenly glory as the dependent form of the human existence differs from the autonomous form of the divine existence. This filial position in relation to God, which He has as man, is only a reflection of the filial position which He has had as God. Reuss thinks that this verse does not imply absolute pre- existence, eternity, but only a certain priority with relation to the world. But from the biblical point of view, the world embraces all that appertains to the sphere of becoming, and beyond this sphere there is only being, eternity. Comp. the opposition between γίνεσθαι and εἶναι, John 1:1; John 1:3; John 8:58, and Psalms 90:2. Παρὰ σοί, with thee, cannot have the purely ideal sense which the Socinians give to it, and which now again Beyschlag and Sabatier endeavor to maintain in somewhat different forms. This theory does violence to John's terms no less than to those of Paul (Php 2:6-11). He who says, I had...with thee, emphasizes His own personality previous to the incarnation, no less than that of God (John 17:24). The I who asks for the glory is the one who has had it. It is equally impossible to find here the least trace of the idea which Sabatier finds in the passage of Paul (Phil.), that of a progress from the glory of Christ before His earthly life to His glory afterwards. The only difference between these two conditions is that this latter glory is possessed by Him even in His humanity, elevated to the sphere of the divine existence (Acts 7:55; Matthew 26:64, where the term Son of man is still applied to the glorified Christ). See on John 8:58.

From the fact that Jesus says: before the world was, and not “before I came into the world,” Schelling concluded that the humiliation of the Logos began from the time of the creation, and not only with the incarnation. This conclusion is not well founded exegetically. For Jesus only means here to oppose this glory to a glory which may have had some sort of beginning in time.