John 5:26:
For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.
This is one of the most striking antinomies in the Bible. To our minds, it seems to be a blatant contradiction; how can the Son have life “in himself” if it was “granted” or “given” to him? For anyone familiar with my work, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I link this antinomy to the “communal logic” of God, which contrasts with and contradicts the “self-relating” (i.e. fallen) logic of our fallen rationality.
As discussed in the previous post, the Trinity is not “in itself” an antinomy and certainly not a contradiction. In fact, nothing “in itself” is an antinomy because an antinomy is merely an apparent contradiction that, once properly grasped, is revealed as reasonable. Antinomies only “exist” insofar as we perceive them, that is, insofar as our minds have yet to be transfigured by the supra-rational God to perceive the inner rationality and harmony of the world (i.e. insofar as we remain in our protological state). Thus, I must emphasize that when I speak of the “antinomy” of John 5:26, I only mean that it is one of the (many) examples in the Bible where the logic of God contradicts the logic most natural to our (fallen) minds.
Jesus’ words reveal the communal nature of existence/life. The Father has life “in himself,” yet this life is shared eternally with the Son. In other words, life “as such,” the very life of the eternal God, is never “self-referential” or “self-enclosed,” but is always-already shared with the Son (and the Spirit). In other words, life is communion. Communion signifies unity-in-distinction, and John 5:26 brilliantly expresses this: the Father and the Son share a single “life,” yet the Son is not the Father because he is begotten. The Father is the “monarchia” of the Godhead who “gives” His life to the Son so that the Son derives His personhood from the Father, not the other way around. Thus, we have a unity-in-distinction, wherein the unity is manifested within the proper order of the three distinct persons in their perfect mutual interiority.
We must emphasize that while the Father is the “monarchia” or (timeless) “cause” of the Godhead, this does not make him superior, nor does it imply that the Father contains the divine nature within His personhood alone prior to (there is no “prior to” in the Godhead) its being shared with the Son and the Spirit. While the Son derives His personhood from the Father eternally, the Father could not be Himself without the Son, which is why He is always-already with the Son. In the same way, a river source is “before” the river, yet without the river, one cannot speak of a “river source.” All three persons are essentially dependent upon one another, yet the Father remains the cause. The divine life only ever “is” insofar as it exists within/as the communion of the three persons:
There is an activated event of complete participation, so that the Son is the only being in whom the Father participates, because if ‘the offspring be not always with the Father, this is a flaw in the perfection of His essence.’ So the perfection of the Paternal Essence lies in the fact that it is everlastingly, completely participated.1
However, one may object that John 5:26 isn’t actually a Trinitarian verse but is referring only to Christ after the Incarnation (so that the “life” the Father gives the Son is given to him during his time on earth). From what I can tell, most modern Biblical scholars take this position (and I imagine that this has something to do with a presupposition that the doctrine of the Trinity is not actually present in the Gospels). On the other hand, the Fathers universally considered this verse to be Trinitarian.2 For example, St. Augustine says:
Behold, whoever understands wherein He shows that the Son is equal with the Father, when He says, As the Father has life in Himself, so has He given to the Son also to have life in Himself; that there may be only this difference between the Father and the Son, that the Father has life in Himself, which none gave Him, while the Son has life in Himself which the Father gave [...] ...the Father, life in Himself, not from the Son; the Son, life in Himself, but from the Father. Begotten of the Father, that He might live in Himself; but the Father, not begotten, life in Himself. Nor did He beget the Son less than Himself to become equal by growth. For surely He by whom, being perfect, the times were created, was not assisted by time towards His own perfection.3
The problem with the modern interpretation of this verse is that it doesn’t actually account for the antinomy. If the life the Son has from the Father is truly life he has “in himself,” then it could not be given in time. The life “in himself” must be the very (divine) nature of the Son because only then is it truly something he possesses “in himself,” as opposed to something granted from without at some point in time. I suggest that the “in himself” does not simply mean something that the Son has “within” him (the way we have the divine life “within” us through our deification), but something he has by virtue of being the (eternal) Son. Just as the Father by virtue of being the Father has life “in himself,” the Son has this same life by virtue of being eternally begotten. John has already told us that “the Word was God” and that “in him was life” (John 1:1-4). I’m no Biblical scholar, but I think it makes the most sense to identify the (eternal) “life” of John 1 with the “life” of John 5, especially since the latter is identified with the life of the Father/God (who Jesus was “with” eternally, according to John 1:1), and also since essentially the same phrasing (“in him” in John 1, and “in himself” in John 5) is used.
Read in this way, the next verse (John 5:27) makes a lot of sense from a Nicene/Orthodox perspective (which I am, of course, presupposing is true): “And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.” The title “Son of Man” refers to Christ’s being the “Last Adam.” Just like the first Adam, Jesus is given authority over all creation. Christ, by virtue of his Incarnation, receives the authority God gave to man in the beginning. Thus, John 5:26-27 summarizes the two foundational dogmas of the Christian faith: the Trinity and the Incarnation.
In John 5:24, Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.” Whoever hears Jesus and believes his words (thereby believing in “him who sent me”) has eternal life. This is because “eternal life” is something the Son has from the Father by nature, and, as the Son of Man, Jesus has the authority to give and take this life.
Nikolaus Loudovikos, Consubstantiality Beyond Perichoresis.
See here for St. Cyril of Alexandria and St. John Chrysostom’s commentary (both agree with Augustine’s interpretation):
https://sites.google.com/site/aquinasstudybible/home/gospel-of-john-commentary
https://sites.google.com/site/aquinasstudybible/home/gospel-of-john-commentary/st-augustine-on-john