Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before
Abraham was, I AM.”
“I AM WHO I AM” or “I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE”
(Exodus 3:14)
Defenders of Christ-is-God theology
cite John
8:58 as one of their biblical
bases in proving their belief that Jesus Christ is God. Although there is no
explicit statement from Christ in this verse that He is God, His statement is
being understood by those who believe in His alleged deity as an indication and
affirmation of His divinity. Why did they come up with this line of reasoning –
that Jesus is God – simply because Christ uttered, “I AM”?
Because God also made the same
statement in Exodus 3:14:
And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus
you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”
God declared “I AM” when He introduced
Himself to Moses. Using the concept of parallelism, Trinitarians conclude that
Jesus is God simply because Christ spoke the same terms uttered by God. This
type of reasoning was utilized by Josh
McDowell and Bart Larson, two
defenders of the alleged divinity of Christ, in their book Jesus: A Biblical Defense Of His Deity,
that Christ’s use of the term is a claim to deity:
“On several occasions Jesus used the term ego eimi of
Himself as it can be used only of God. The clearest example is when the Jews
said to Jesus, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?”
Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, ‘I
AM’ [Greek: εγω ειμι]. Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him (John
8:57-59). The Jews sought to kill Him for the presumption of that claim to
deity” (p.22).
Josh McDowell and Bart Larson also
proposed a concept that Jesus is the Almighty God. They claimed that:
“He took to himself the Old Testament names and titles for God
and also allowed others to call Him by the same names and titles . . .
this Galilean teacher was claiming to be Almighty God” (ibid., p. 21).
Moreover, they maintained that,
“Jesus claimed for Himself the name of God which was most
revered by the Jews, a name considered so sacred that the Jews would not even
utter it: YHWH” (ibid., p.22).
McDowell and Larson postulated a
concept that Jesus is the Almighty God of the Old Testament. The same idea is
shared by some Christian apologists who even went further in saying that Jesus
was the Jehovah or the God who spoke to Moses in Exodus 3:14. Typical of these
is Geisler’s reasoning in his book Christian
Apologetics, wherein he alleges that:
“Perhaps the strongest and most direct claim of Jesus to be
Jehovah occurs in John 8:58 where he said to the Jews, “Truly, truly, I say to
you, before Abraham was, I am”. The Jews’ reaction left no doubt as to how they
understood his claim. They knew he had claimed not only pre-existence before
Abraham but also equality with God . . . Jesus had clearly claimed to be
the “I AM” of Exodus 3:14 that refers to Jehovah alone” (p. 331).
Is Jesus the God who said “I AM” in Exodus 3:14? The answer is NO!
And when Jesus said “I AM” (Greek, εγω ειμι) in John 8:58, was He indicating His
alleged divinity? Definitely not! What was He affirming in this verse? That He
was before Abraham. How is He before Abraham when He was born later? It must be
remembered that Abraham is His ancestor and therefore came into existence
before He (Christ) was born. However, He is before Abraham because He was
foreordained by God even before the foundation of the world (1 Pet 1:20).
It is in this sense that He was before Abraham.
In the context of John 8 it should be
noted that Jesus and the Jews were having an argument about Abraham and Jesus’
authority. There is nothing we can glean from the chapter that Jesus was
claiming to be God. Rather, He told the Jews that He is “a man” telling them
the truth which He heard from God (John 8:40). Jesus was not telling the Jews
that His name is “I AM”. Likewise, He never told them, “I am God.” If Jesus
were God, He would have plainly told them so. On the contrary, Jesus clarified
to them that He came from and was sent by God (John 8:42).
It is true that Christ uttered the
statement egō eimi, and God also spoke the
equivalent of those words in Hebrew in Exodus 3:14. But does it prove that He
is the same God who spoke in the Old Testament? No. Christ was not the only one
who uttered these words. The truth is, both in the Old Testament and in the New
Testament, there were others who used the same words. In fact, in Judges 13:11 of The Septuagint with Apocrypha:
Greek and English by Sir Lancelot Brenton, it is stated:
“And Manoa arose and followed his wife, and came to the man, and
said to him, Art thou the man that spoke to the woman? And the angel said, I
am.”
The angel said to Manoa, “I am”. Now,
would our Trinitarian friends accept that the angel is also the true God for
the reason that he uttered the same statement? Aside from that angel, who else
uttered the same terms? In John chapter 9 verse 9, the formerly blind man
emphatically stated, egō eimi! Does that make him or qualify him also as the God
of the Old Testament because he uttered what God declared in Exodus 3:14?
Let our Trinitarian friends answer that question.
One could not notice immediately that
Jesus and the formerly blind man had uttered the same statement egō eimi because most English translations rendered
John 9:9 differently. Below are a few of the English translations of the Greek
term egō
eimi, spoken by the formerly blind man:
·
“I am he” (King James Version)
·
“I am he” (New King James
Version)
·
“I am the one” (New American Standard
Bible)
·
“I am the man” (New International
Version)
·
“I am the man” (New Revised Standard
Version)
·
“I am the man” (Today’s English
Version)
·
“I am the same one!” (New Living
Translation)
The addition of the words “he” or “the
man” in these translations somehow conceal the fact that Jesus and the formerly
blind man spoke the same words in the Greek New Testament.
Is it true, as Geisler alleges, that
Jesus is the Jehovah who spoke in Exodus 3:14? It must be noted that the term
Jehovah is how others translate the Tetragrammaton – YHWH, one of God’s names
in the Old Testament. If this allegation that Jesus were the same God who
uttered the statement “I AM” in Exodus 3:14 were
true, then our Trinitarian friends would have to accept that aside from having
a Jesus who is Jehovah, there is another Jesus, the servant of Jehovah.
Why? Going back to Exodus, chapter 3, Jehovah or YHWH, in English, Lord, introduced
Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in verse 15. However, in the New
Testament, the same God or Jehovah, was introduced by Peter as the One who
glorified Jesus, His servant. This is his testimony as it is written in Acts 3:13:
“The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers,
glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence
of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go.”
Now consider these scenarios: if Jesus
were the God who spoke to Moses in the burning bush, then who would be His
servant by the name of Jesus in Acts 3:13? Are we prepared to accept that
there are two Jesuses, one who is the God of Abraham and one who is called the
servant of the God of Abraham? Is there such a thing in the Bible as “Jesus who
is the servant of Jesus”? There is none! The Jesus who is the servant of God is
truly different from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus is not the
Jehovah of the Old Testament as Geisler and his co-apologists avow.
Moreover, Apostle Paul teaches that
Jesus is the seed of Abraham (Gal 3:16). How could Jesus be the seed of
Abraham and at the same time His God (Matt 22:32)? Therefore, serious theological
implications would result if we accept the Trinitarian’s view that Jesus was
the YHWH or God who spoke to Abraham in Exodus 3:14.
The three-word name of God in Exodus 3:14:
EHYEH-ASHER-EHYEH
Aside from the four-letter name of God,
YHWH, technically called Tetragrammaton, which is commonly translated into
English as “Yahweh” or “Lord” in some modern English versions and “Jehovah” in
some older English versions of the Bible, the Hebrew Bible mentions of God’s
various names such as “Elohim” (Gen 1:1),
“El Elyon” (Gen 14:18), “El Shaddai” (Gen 17:1), and the three-word name of God “EHYEH-ASHER-EHYEH” in Exodus 3:14 is translated as “I AM WHO I AM” in most English versions of the Old Testament.
Although majority of the English
versions of the Bible render the three-word name of God “EHYEH-ASHER-EHYEH” in Exodus 3:14 as
“I AM WHO I
AM”, it must be noted also that
this is how the translators perceived it as a translation of God’s name.
However, is “I
AM WHO I AM” the most precise English translation of the Hebrew name
of God? Rabbi Joseph Telushkin
answers:
“At one point, Moses says to God: “When I come to the Israelites
and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you’, and they ask me,
What is His name? what shall I say to them? God answers: ‘Ehyeh-asher-ehyeh’.
Thus you shall say to the Israelites, Ehyeh sent me to you.” The three-word
name God gives Himself is not easy to translate. The most precise rendering is
‘I shall be what I shall be’, although it sometimes is translated as ‘I am that
I am’. The 1962 Jewish Publication Society translation of the Torah despaired
of coming up with an accurate rendition, and just left the words in their
Hebrew original” (Jewish Literacy, pp.
47-48).
To a Jewish scholar like Telushkin, the
most precise rendering of ehyeh-asher-ehyeh is “I shall be
what I shall be.” And he is not alone in this view. Wayne Grudem, a Protestant
theologian, translated God’s name similar to Telushkin’s understanding. He
reasons:
“God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”. It is also possible to
translate this statement “I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE” (Systematic Theology, p. 161).
Furthermore, in the footnotes of
several English translations of the Bible, we could find their difficulty in
translating God’s name. Below are several examples:
·
“Since it seems related to the word
translated ‘I am’, it may mean ‘I am the one who is’ or ‘I will be what I will
be’ or ‘I am the one who brings into being’ ” (CEV).
·
“Or I will be what I will be” (NIV).
·
“I am: or I will be what I will be”
(New Revised English Bible).
·
“Or I am what I am or I will be what I
will be” (NRSV).
One could notice that
the translators had a difficult time getting a possible translation into
English of God’s name in Exodus 3:14. Nobody for sure is certain as to
how God’s three-word name should be translated into English.
In view of these things, there is no
parallelism between John 8:58 and
Exodus 3:14.
Although Jesus uttered the Greek terms egō eimi, there is no
concrete proof that He is the same God who said this term in the Hebrew Bible.
We can say that there is a deception involved on the part of some Christ-is-God
apologists when they tried to equate Jesus’ words in John 8:58 with God’s statements in Exodus 3:14.
In the final analysis, there is no
parallelism between God’s statement in Exodus 3:14 and Jesus’ statement in John 8:58.
His utterance of the Greek term egō eimi is
not a proof of His alleged divinity.
References:
Brenton, Lancelot Cd., The
Septuagint With Apocrypha: Greek and English. Peabody, Maryland, USA:
Hendrickson Publishers, n.d.
Geisler, Norman L., Christian
Apologetics. Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA: Baker Book House, 1976.
Grudem, Wayne. Systematic
Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Leicester, England: Inter-
Varsity Press; Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994.
Joseph, Telushkin. Jewish
Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish Religion,
Its People, and Its History. New York, USA: Wiliam Morrow and Company,
Inc., 1991.
McDowell, Josh and Bart Larson. Jesus:
A Biblical Defense of His Deity. San Bernardino, California, USA: Here’s
Life Publishers, Inc., 1983.
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