John 5:19 - God can do Nothing at All?

“19 Therefore, in answer, Jesus went on to say to them: “Most truly I say to YOU, The Son cannot do a single thing of his own initiative, but only what he beholds the Father doing. For whatever things that One does, these things the Son also does in like manner.”


One of the most remarkable arguments I've seen promoting "the deity of Christ" involves John 5:19, and goes something like this:

"Since Jesus can do nothing at all of his own initiative, but can only do what the Father does, he must be God, because only God can only do what God does.  We can do things of our own initiative, including the commission of both righteous and sinful acts, but Jesus was incapable of doing anything but what the Father does."

This odd argument not only ignores the fact that John 5 obviously presents Jesus role using agency language (i.e. "the agent is equated with the principal" as the Rabbis would put it), but it involves a de-contextualized reading.  Clearly Jesus was speaking in reference to doing God’s work in the carrying out of his commission as God’s representative.  He did not mean that he was incapable of eating, drinking, tying his sandal laces, blowing his nose, etc., without having first beheld “the Father doing [it]”.

The same could be said respecting any number of verses that orthodox folks sometimes tend to de-contextualize.

Take John 16:30 and Matt. 24:36 for example:

John 16:30: "Now we can see that you know all things and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

Matt. 24:36: "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

While apparently ignoring context, some will assert that John 16:30 implies that Jesus must be God for he "knows all things" without exception. Yet we know that the verse shouldn't be read that way because Jesus' followers themselves tell us that "This makes [them] believe that [Jesus] came from God" not that Jesus IS God. In other words, the disciples did not have in mind an all-encompassing reference, but they knew that Jesus was not lacking when it came to providing them with the knowledge that they’d need to be empowered for what was to come while they fulfilled their commissions as representatives of God and his Son. Thus, there's no contradiction between John 16:30 and Matt. 24:36, and no need to resort to verbal prestidigitation by asserting that as God Jesus knew all things without exception but as Man he had limited knowledge, as though that were even an intelligible statement.

John 9:32-34 also comes to mind:

“32 From of old it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of one born blind. 33 If this [man] were not from God, he could do nothing at all.” 34 In answer they said to him: “You were altogether born in sins, and yet are you teaching us?”

Here Jesus healed a blind man who goes on to defend Jesus to the religious leaders. When the blind man said “If this [man] were not from God, he could do nothing at all”, he didn’t mean that Jesus would be unable to eat, drink, trim his ear hair, etc. The “nothing at all” is clearly in a reference to the sort of miraculous works Jesus had just done.

Note also John 15:5:

“5 I am the vine, YOU are the branches. He that remains in union with me, and I in union with him, this one bears much fruit; because apart from me YOU can do nothing at all.”

Although Jesus tells his disciples that apart from him they can “do nothing at all”, he clearly didn’t mean that in an all-encompassing way. He is speaking in reference to “fruit” that his disciples can bear as “branches”. In other words, he was speaking of the work they would do as representatives of him and his Father, not about other things like eating, drinking, buying fish at the market, etc. And he certainly didn't mean that without Jesus, the disciples would be incapable of sinning!

Before Abraham was, I...what, exactly?

John 8:58 has come up so many times recently in various discussions, that I decided to upload my view here, briefly stated, so that I can stop typing it out and just provide the link in the future.

Here's the argument in a nutshell:

The Greek at John 8:58 fits an idiom described by grammarian Kenneth McKay as the "Extension from Past", which occurs when a present tense verb is "used with an expression of either past time or extent of time with past implications." (A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek: An Aspectual Approach), p. 41, 42

Based on this understanding of the Greek, McKay offers this superlative English equivalent of what Jesus meant:

"I have been in existence since before Abraham was born."

If we accept McKay's observation that verse 58 is an example of the Extension from Past idiom (and there's no reason why we shouldn't), then Jesus' response (a) makes perfect sense and constitutes an exquisite response in light of the question posed, and (b) would have constituted a stoning offense if untrue. Notice how the pieces fall in place under McKay's view:

Verse 56 - Jesus: "Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”

Verse 57 - Opponents: “You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham?”

Verse 58 - Jesus: "The truth is, I have been in existence since before Abraham was born!"

Jesus' opponents inferred from his statement in verse 56 that Jesus had personally observed (first hand) Abraham rejoice over seeing his day. For Jesus to say the equivalent of "I am God's name-bearing agent" (which is a paraphrase of what James McGrath and at least one other scholar argue that Jesus meant by EGO EIMI) as a response would be to utter a non sequitur. On the other hand, if we recognize the Greek idiom at work in the text and translate it the way we almost certainly would were it not for Church tradition, then Jesus' response fits perfectly, even exquisitely in context.

One apologist (Bowman, if memory serves) attempted to dismiss this view by saying something to the effect of, "Claiming to be really, really old wasn't a stoning offense." While that may be true generally speaking, offering such as a response to McKay's argument is really rather silly. Jesus' opponents wanted to stone him, not because a claim to be old was blasphemous, but because his claim to have been in existence since before Abraham was born could only have been viewed as a preposterous lie by them, and for Jesus to present himself as God's living, breathing power of attorney and then proceed to utter a lie while fulfilling his commission as God's agent would make God a liar, because as God's agent, his words were God's words, legally. Now THAT would be construed as blasphemous, especially by those who already sought his death!

McKay's understanding of the Greek isn't new, and sometimes when translators have broken away from committees and the unavoidable pressures such bodies sometimes exert out of allegiance to Church tradition, then they've offered renderings that attempt to capture the idiom.

Note a few examples:

Edgar J. Goodspeed rendered vs 58, "I tell you, I existed before Abraham was born."

James Moffatt similarly offered, "I have existed before Abraham was born."

Catholic James A. Kleist, S.J. offered, "I am here -- and I was before Abraham!" (In the footnote he claims that the utterance intimates eternity, but that's not a necessary implication of the Greek).

Charles B. Williams, whose translation was called "...the best translation of the New Testament in English", in part because it surpassed "...all other translators of the New Testament in bringing out the tense significance of the Greek verbs" (J. R. Mantey, comments on dust jacket), offered this rendering, "I most solemnly say to you, I existed before Abraham was born."

In their Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, Louw and Nida offer, "before Abraham came into existence, I existed."

All of these are fine attempts to capture the sense of the Greek, yet only McKay's rendering truly does it justice, as only his rendering "...expresses a state which commenced at an earlier period but still continues...", as George Benedict Winer put it [1], or "...which indicates the continuance of an action during the past and up to the moment of speaking...[which action is]...conceived as still in progress..." as Nigel Turner put it [2].

As William Loader asked, "Need ...[the words "I am" at 8:58] mean more than the stupendous claim: I am in existence since before Abraham?" No, they needn't mean *more* but they certainly mean that he WAS in existence since before Abraham was born.

One Unitarian has suggested that since GENESQAI is typically used in the NT in reference to things that had not happened yet in the historical sequence of the story, we should render John 8:58 something like this:

Modern Unitarian: 

"Before Abraham comes to be [in the resurrection], I am [the Messiah]."

Abner Kneeland offered a similar rendering:
 
"Before Abraham is to be, (manifested understood), I am manifested."

For Abner Kneeland's argument, see:

https://books.google.com/books?id=sj4AA ... se&f=false 

Both of these renderings obviously import elements that are nowhere articulated in the text, and end up placing a non sequitur on Jesus' lips.  We know that GENESQAI must be past tense at John 8:58, because (1) of the context in which the word appears, and (2) because translations based on understanding it to have future tense are (a) non sequiturs, (b) borderline gibberish, and, most importantly, (c) they form responses that would not have had the ability to incite the hostile reaction of Jesus' opponents.

Footnotes:

[1] A Grammar of the Idiom of the New Testament, Seventh Edition, p. 267
[2] A Grammar of New Testament Greek, Vol. III, Syntax, p. 62
[3] The Christology of the Fourth Gospel: Structure and Issues, p. 48