John 8:57-58

“ Whereupon the Jews said to him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and thou hast seen Abraham! 58. Jesus said to them, Verily, verily I say unto you, Before Abraham came into being, I am. ”

From the fact that Abraham had seen Jesus, it seemed to follow that Jesus must have seen Abraham. The question of the Jews is the expression of indignant surprise. The number fifty is a round number; fifty years designates the close of the age of manhood. The meaning is: “Thou art not yet an old man.” No inference is to be drawn from this as to the real age of Jesus, since ten or twenty years more, in this case, would be of no consequence. “I am not only his contemporary,” Jesus replies, “but I existed even before him.” The formula, amen, amen, announces the greatness of this revelation respecting His person. By the terms γενέσθαι, became, and εἰμί, I am, Jesus, as Weiss says, contrasts His eternal existence with the historical beginning of the existence of Abraham. To become is to pass from nothingness to existence; I am designates a mode of existence which is not due to such a transition. Jesus goes still further; He says, not I was, but I am, Thereby He attributes to Himself, not a simple priority as related to Abraham, which would still be compatible with the Arian view of the Person of Christ, but existence in the absolute, eternal, Divine order. This expression recalls that of Psalms 90:2:

“ Before the mountains were brought forth and thou hadst founded the earth, from eternity to eternity, THOU ART, O God! ” No doubt, eternity must not be considered as strictly anterior to time. This term πρίν, before, is a symbolic form, derived from the human consciousness of Jesus, to express the relation of dependence of time on eternity in the only way in which the mind of man can conceive of it, that is, under the form of succession. There is no longer any thought, at the present day, of having recourse to the forced explanations which were formerly proposed by different commentators: that of Socinus and Paulus: “I am, as the Messiah promised, anterior to Abraham,” or that of the Socinian catechism: Before Abraham could justify His name of Abraham (father of a multitude, by reason of the multitude of heathen who shall one day be converted) I am your Messiah, for you Jews. Scholten himself acknowledges (p. 97f.) the insufficiency of these exegetical attempts. According to him, we must supply a predicate of εἰμί; this would be ὁ χριστός, the Messiah. But the antithesis of εἶναι and γίνεσθαι (be and become) does not allow us to give to the first of these terms another sense than that of existing. Besides, the point in hand is a reply to the question: “Hast thou then seen Abraham?” The reply, if understood as Scholten would have it, would be unsuitable to this question. The Socinian Crell and de Wette understand: “I exist in the divine intelligence or plan.”

Beyschlag goes a little farther still. According to him, Jesus means that there is realized in Himself here below an eternal, divine, but impersonal principle, the image of God. But as this impersonal image of God cannot exist except in the divine intelligence, this comes back in reality to the explanation of de Wette. This explanation of an impersonal ideal is opposed by three considerations: 1. The ἐγώ, I, which proves that this eternal being is personal; 2, the parallel with Abraham. An impersonal principle cannot be placed in parallelism with a person, especially when the question is of a relation of priority. Finally, 3. How could a Jesus conceived of as an impersonal principle have answered the objection of the Jews: Thou hast then seen Abraham? And yet if this word did not satisfy the demand of the Jews, it would be nothing more than a ridiculous boast. This declaration has the character of the most elevated solemnity. It is certainly one of those from which John derived the fundamental idea of the first verses of the Prologue. It bears in itself the guaranty of its authenticity, first by its striking conciseness, and then by its very meaning. What historian would gratuitously ascribe to his hero a saying which was fitted to bring upon him the charge of being mad? It will be asked, no doubt, how Jesus can derive from His human consciousness an expression which so absolutely transcends it. This conception was derived by Him from the revelation of His Father, when He said to Him: “Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” There is a fact here which is analogous to that which is accomplished in the conscience of the believer when he through the Spirit receives the testimony that he is a child of God (Romans 8:16).