John 17:3-5 - Implications For Jesus And The Dawah Propagandists

INTRODUCTION

It is a favorite tactic of the dawah propagandists to quote part of John 17:3 where Jesus addresses the Father as “the only true God” to disprove the deity of Christ. They always ignore or try to explain away v5 “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” They also ignore the general context and nature of the chapter. This paper explains why the dawah propagandists attempt to utilize the text, why they fail in so-doing, and what the chapter actually teaches us about the Person of Christ.

1. The Trinity and Person of Christ in Islam

To understand why the dawah propagandists frequently quote (or rather, misquote) John 17:3, we must consider what Islam teaches about the Trinity and the Person of Christ. To begin with the Trinity:

Surah An-Nisa 4:171

O People of the Scripture! Do not exaggerate in your religion nor utter aught concerning Allah save the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah, and His word which He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe in Allah and His messengers, and say not “Three” - Cease! (it is) better for you! - Allah is only One God.

The contrast between “Allah is only One God” and the call to “say not ‘Three’” indicates that the Qur’an is accusing the Christians of professing Tritheism – belief in three separate deities. This is emphasized by the next verse:

Surah Al-Maida 5:73

They surely disbelieve who say: Lo! Allah is the third of three; when there is no God save the One God. If they desist not from so saying a painful doom will fall on those of them who disbelieve.

It is clear from Surah 5:75 that the two other gods in view are Jesus and Mary; “The Messiah, son of Mary, was no other than a messenger, messengers (the like of whom) had passed away before him. And his mother was a saintly woman. And they both used to eat (earthly) food. See how we make the revelations clear for them, and see how they are turned away!” This is reinforced by this verse: Surah Al-Maida 5:116: “And when Allah saith: O Jesus, son of Mary! Didst thou say unto mankind: Take me and my mother for two gods beside Allah? he saith: Be glorified! It was not mine to utter that to which I had no right.” So, the Qur’an accuses Christian of professing three distinct gods – Jesus, Mary and God. Note that the Arabic word qul means “Say”.

It need hardly be stated that Christians never professed or said any such thing. The doctrine of the Trinity is that there is one God in three Persons – Father Son and Holy Spirit (e.g. Matthew 28:19), One Ousia, three Hypostases. The Three Persons are not separable – the doctrine of Perichorēsis - co-inherence, circumincession, the idea that all Three Persons of the Trinity ‘inter-penetrate’, mutually sharing in the life of the others. The Father is in the Son, and vice versa (John 10:38, 14:10, 23, 17:21, cf. 1 Corinthians 2:10-11; Colossians 2:9), and the Spirit is the Spirit of both. They share one essence.

It follows that there are not three separable “parts” of God, any more than there are three distinct deities. Hence, he who receives the Spirit receives also the Son and Father. While each of the Persons is designated one, they cannot be added together. The reason for this is that the divine nature which they share is simple and indivisible. It is wrong to imagine that by “Triunity” Christians mean that God is composite. This would imply that the Persons, and thus the divine essence, was separable. We should avoid “ignorant arithmetic” (1+1+1=3). Because the Persons co-inhere, we always arrive at the fact that God is numerically one. God is a unique Being, not comparable to any finite creature, and only comprehensible through His own self-revelation.

The Qur’an is either ignorant, or willfully ignores what Christians have always said, and makes a false accusation against them. Whether it be the Scriptures, the teaching of the Early Church Fathers, the Creed of Nicaea, the Chalcedonian Definition, etc., it is clear that do not go around saying that there are three gods. It is this misrepresentation of Christian doctrine that prejudices the minds of the dawah propagandists. Despite the constant denials of Christians, carefully instructing them in what the Bible and Christian doctrine teaches, the Qur’an prejudices their intellects by making the false claim that Christians say there are three gods. Hence, they grab on to John 17:3 (“the only true God”) because they imagine it disproves the deity of Christ – who the Qur’an teaches – wrongly – that Christians say He is a god (note; not God).

This is tied to what the Qur’an teaches about Jesus:

Surah 5 Al-Maida

72. They do blaspheme who say: ‘Allah is Christ the son of Mary.’ But said Christ: ‘O children of Israel! worship Allah my Lord and your Lord.’ Whoever joins Other gods with Allah Allah will forbid him the garden and the Fire will be his abode...

75. Christ the son of Mary was no more than an Apostle; many were the Apostles that passed away before him. His mother was a woman of truth. They had both to eat their (daily) food.

Surah Mumineen 23:91

No son did Allah beget nor is there any god along with Him...

The impression one gets from the Qur’an is that Christians go around saying that Jesus is a god, but do not affirm His humanity. Yet the various creeds as well as the teaching of the New Testament is that Jesus is True God (not a god) and True Man. The Qur’an never addresses the Christian doctrines of the Hypostatic Union, the Two Natures and Unipersonality of Christ. It merely sets up a straw man – the false accusation that Christians say that Jesus is a god. This failure to address the Christian profession that Jesus has two natures is fatal to the abuse of John 17:3 by the dawah propagandists.

1. The context of John 17

The chapter consists of prayer by Jesus to the Father during the Last Supper. It is often called “The High Priestly Prayer”, as it precedes the event in the garden (Gethsemane) where Jesus is arrested, leading to His crucifixion – His self-sacrifice. Before going any further, contra the claims of the dawah propagandists that Jesus always prayed like a Muslim, consider how the prayer begins (v1): “When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you…” Raising one’s eyes in prayer is actually forbidden in Islam, as demonstrated by these ahadith (from www.sunnah.com):

Jabir b. Samura reported:

The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: The people who lift their eyes towards the sky in Prayer should avoid it or they would lose their eyesight.

حَدَّثَنَا أَبُو بَكْرِ بْنُ أَبِي شَيْبَةَ، وَأَبُو كُرَيْبٍ قَالاَ حَدَّثَنَا أَبُو مُعَاوِيَةَ، عَنِ الأَعْمَشِ، عَنِ الْمُسَيَّبِ، عَنْ تَمِيمِ بْنِ طَرَفَةَ، عَنْ جَابِرِ بْنِ سَمُرَةَ، قَالَ قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم ‏ "‏ لَيَنْتَهِيَنَّ أَقْوَامٌ يَرْفَعُونَ أَبْصَارَهُمْ إِلَى السَّمَاءِ فِي الصَّلاَةِ أَوْ لاَ تَرْجِعُ إِلَيْهِمْ ‏"‏ ‏.‏

Reference

Sahih Muslim 428

In-book reference

Book 4, Hadith 128

USC-MSA web (English) reference

Book 4, Hadith 862

(deprecated numbering scheme)

Abu Huraira reported:

People should avoid lifting their eyes towards the sky while supplicating in prayer, otherwise their eyes would be snatched away.

حَدَّثَنِي أَبُو الطَّاهِرِ، وَعَمْرُو بْنُ سَوَّادٍ، قَالاَ أَخْبَرَنَا ابْنُ وَهْبٍ، حَدَّثَنِي اللَّيْثُ بْنُ سَعْدٍ، عَنْ جَعْفَرِ بْنِ رَبِيعَةَ، عَنْ عَبْدِ الرَّحْمَنِ الأَعْرَجِ، عَنْ أَبِي هُرَيْرَةَ، أَنَّ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم قَالَ ‏ "‏ لَيَنْتَهِيَنَّ أَقْوَامٌ عَنْ رَفْعِهِمْ أَبْصَارَهُمْ عِنْدَ الدُّعَاءِ فِي الصَّلاَةِ إِلَى السَّمَاءِ أَوْ لَتُخْطَفَنَّ أَبْصَارُهُمْ ‏"‏ ‏.‏

Reference

Sahih Muslim 429

In-book reference

Book 4, Hadith 129

USC-MSA web (English) reference

Book 4, Hadith 863

(deprecated numbering scheme)

By glorification, Jesus is talking about the imminent crucifixion, which, paradoxically, involves Jesus being glorified – specifically, what lay beyond this event – His return to the Father. That is, Jesus is talking about His death and what was occur immediately afterwards. Again, this is problematic for the dawah propagandists, since they deny the true crucifixion of Jesus! Before leaving this point, we should observe the basic error the dawah propagandists makes, led as they are by the misrepresentation of Christian belief in the Qur’an: they ignore that this passage is evidence of the two natures of Jesus. Prayer is a human act, and here Jesus prays. The human Jesus prays to God the Father. Therefore, we should expect that He would address the Father – in terms of YHWH in Heaven – as the only true God. Jesus is effectively denying to future pagan hearers that there is more than one god – and we should remember that Roman paganism was similar to Hinduism, in that it was syncretistic. Christianity, however, in keeping with its Old Testament roots, was exclusivist – i.e., monotheistic.

In terms of the Old Testament, in 2 Chronicles 15:3 we find “For a long time Israel was without the true God…”, and Jeremiah 10:10: “But YHWH is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King.” In historical context, this description is set over against the false gods of the pagan nations. This understanding is found in 1 Thessalonians 1:9: “…you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God…” So, clearly, the import is that YHWH, rather than any pagan gods, such as Zeus or Jupiter at the time Jesus was speaking, is the only true God.

The significance of this becomes clearer at verses 18-20: “18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. 20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word…” Clearly, the Apostolic Commission would bring the Gospel to the pagan world, so Jesus’ prayer at v3 would look forward to His statement in these verses, and indeed, what is stated in v2 – “since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.” Jesus’ authority is not geographically or ethnically limited, but applies to all humanity, with the offer of eternal life to people of all backgrounds. The syntax between v2 here Jesus has “authority over all flesh” and the reference to eternal life coming through knowledge of “the only true God, and Jesus Christ” suggests at least a major reason for Jesus referring to the uniqueness of God. We should note what Lindars states about the character of the Gospel of John (Barnabas Lindars, The Gospel of John, Grand Rapids/London: Eerdmans/Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1972, 1981, 1986, p. 7): “…it is pre-eminently an evangelistic work.”

1. Eternal Life and Truth in the Gospel of John

It is in the light of this prayer about His imminent glorification that we should consider these verses:

2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

The dawah propagandists neglect to give the full sentence in v3 - that Jesus is speaking about eternal life, which is in His gift (v2). What is eternal life, and how does one receive it? In the original Greek, v3 reads: αὕτη δέ ἐστιν ἡ αἰώνιος ζωὴ ἵνα γινώσκωσι σὲ τὸν μόνον ἀληθινὸν θεὸν καὶ ὃν ἀπέστειλας Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν. There are two Greek words for life – bios βιος (from where we get the word biology), i.e., natural life, and zoē ζωὴ - which denotes quality of life, specifically, in the Bible, eternal life, the Life of the Age to Come, the Resurrection Age. Ladd (George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974, Revised Edition, Edited by Donald A. Hagner, 1993, p. 291) states: “The exact phrase occurs in the LXX only at Daniel 12:2, where it translates hayyȇ ‘ôlam, “the life of the age,” designating the life of the future age after the resurrection of the dead.” One receives this by “knowing” the Father and the Son – Jesus, sent by the Father. In fact, one can only know the Father through the Son – John 17:26: “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

It need hardly be said that no Old Testament prophet nor New Testament Apostle ever made such a claim that eternal life came through knowing God the Father and him. We should recall John 5:21 at this point, where Jesus claims to have the prerogative of granting (eternal/Resurrection) life:

For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.

ὥσπερ γὰρ ὁ πατὴρ ἐγείρει τοὺς νεκροὺς καὶ ζῳοποιεῖ, οὕτως καὶ ὁ υἱὸς οὓς θέλει ζῳοποιεῖ.

It follows that in 17:3, Jesus is actually claiming to have the same standing as God the Father – to be the object of Faith and the means of salvation, through the grant of eternal life. The dawah propagandists’(mis)use of this verse actually undermines them! However, what are we to make of the reference to “the only true God”? Guthrie comments about eternal life here (Donald Guthrie, New Testament Theology, Leicester/Downers Grove: IVP, 1981, p. 878).

It is in fact defined as follows: ‘This is eternal life, that they may know thee and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent’ (17:3). Knowing God and knowing Jesus Christ is the main aim of heavenly living. Naturally this process begins in this life, but can reach its goal only in eternal life.

In the beginning of his prayer in John 17:1 Jesus lifted up his eyes to heaven (i.e. to God). This fits in with John the Baptist’s description of the Spirit descending from heaven (1:32), and with the reference to a voice from heaven in response to a prayer of Jesus to the Father (12:28). The direction indicates the source, i.e. God.

Truth is a major issue in the Gospel of John. For example, John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth”; 1:17: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ”; 4:23-24: “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” More specifically, Jesus states of Himself in 14:6: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Note that Jesus states not only is He the truth, but also He is the life – zoē, so eternal life comes through Him. Concerning the Holy Spirit, Jesus calls Him in 14:17: “the Spirit of truth”. Specifically, in 17:17, Jesus states: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”.

We should look at the reference to “the only true God” in this light. The Son is truth, the Spirit is truth, the Father is truth. At this point, we are brought back to the evangelistic and missionary aspect of the prayer – that the Apostles, for whom Jesus is praying, will bring the Gospel message to people of all backgrounds, not just Jews. They will face people who believe in a multiplicity of gods, where the Christian message is that there is only one true God – the source of truth and giver of eternal life. That being so, since Jesus is “the truth” and “the life”, it follows that He is divine.

1. Textual variants and the Dawah propagandists’ eisegesis

The obvious rejoinder to the assertions of the dawah propagandists that John 17:3 effectively denies the deity of Jesus is what He says in v5:

And now, Father, [you] glorify me with yourself with the glory which I had with you before the world was.

καὶ νῦν δόξασόν με σύ, πάτερ, παρὰ σεαυτῷ τῇ δόξῃ ᾗ εἶχον πρὸ τοῦ τὸν κόσμον εἶναι παρὰ σοί.

The inventiveness of the dawah propagandists at this point excites our admiration, even if their attempts at exegesis miserably fail. At times, this has included the idea of the pre-existence of human souls, a concept wholly alien to the Bible. Another of their suggestions is that of divine prescience, of God having in His mind from all eternity to honor the Messiah, an exegesis that wins a prize for desperation. Finally, when all else fails, the dawah propagandists run to the works of the liberal Catholic scholar Raymond Brown, their “go-to guy” for exegesis, just as the agnostic scholar Bart Ehrman is their constant reference for textual criticism.

It need hardly be said that whatever Brown’s credentials, he was not the infallible exegete that they seem to imagine, and his writings are not like Papal ex cathedra statements for the faithful. However, we should examine what Brown says on the matter (Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (xiii-xxi), London/Dublin/Melbourne: Geoffrey Chapman, 1971, p. 743). Ironically, it is not to his exegesis that the dawah propagandists turn, but to his reference to textual variants in v5. This is what he writes:

which l had with you. Seemingly some of the Greek textual witnesses once read ēn, a form of the verb “to be,” in place of eichon, a form of the verb “to have.” Among the Latin Fathers and in some Ethiopic mss. there is support for the reading: “that glory which was with you” or “that glory by which I was with you.” Boismard, RB 57 (1950), 396 q, followed by Mollat in SB, suggests the originality of a text without any connecting verb (“that glory with you”), a reading for which there is some evidence in other Ethiopic mss. and in the Diatessaron.

before the world existed. Instead of “existed” (einai), some Western witnesses read “came into existence” (ginesthai). This may be under the influence of viii 58, “Before Abraham even came into existence [ginesthai], I AM.” If einai is the correct reading, this is the only example in the NT of the preposition pro with a present infinitive (BDF, §403). The verb “to be” is characteristically used of the Son in this Gospel; he is, while all other things come into existence.

Of course, the dawah propagandists never elaborate on the textual variants as delineated by Brown. The reason for this is obvious – these variants are hardly earth-shattering. Brown shows that the renderings that flow from the first variant “that glory which was with you” or “that glory by which I was with you” do not alter the meaning of the standard reading. The same is true of the second variant, which would read “And now, Father, [you] glorify me with yourself with the glory which I had with you before the world came into existence.” In neither case would it change the meaning of the verse – that Jesus, as the Son, existed with the Father before Creation, and shared His glory. Significantly, the dawah propagandists never mention any of this.

It is also significant that Brown exegetes the text on the basis of the standard reading, indicating that he did not find the variants of convincing weight (pp. 753-754): “In xvii 5 the glory that Jesus requests is identified with the glory that Jesus had with the Father before the world existed. Later in 24 this glory will be said to stem from the love that the Father had for Jesus before the creation of the world… The relation that xvii 5 established between the ultimate glory of Jesus and his pre-creational glory helps to explain why the first action of the glorified Jesus is that of a new creation in imitation of Genesis…” So, Brown sees the standard reading as normative. The same is true for commentators in general. Bruce Metzger’s famous Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament: A companion volume to the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (London/New York: United Bible Societies, 1971) does not address it – presumably because the variants were of no consequence.

We turn now to the issue of the variant manuscripts themselves. Our colleague Mazkir comments:

τῇ δόξῃ ᾗ εἶχον – Here the relative pronoun [ᾗ] (as often happens) has been attracted into the case of the antecedent noun to which it refers (τῇ δόξῃ). Strictly, grammatically, it should be in the case appropriate to the function it serves in the relative clause (drawing only its gender and number from its antecedent). In this sentence, grammatically-speaking, it should be in the accusative case [ἣν] as the direct object of the verb in the relative clause [εἶχον].

The only manuscript evidence which Nestlé-Aland offers in support of the reading ἣν, however, is its being the original reading in Codex Sinaiticus, which is clearly a grammatical correction of the otherwise widely-attested reading ᾗ. (The reading ᾗ is also, as deficilior lectio, most likely original — for why would a scribe change perfectly grammatical ἣν to ungrammatical ᾗ?).

Uncial manuscripts having been written without breathings, this obviously ‘grammatically correcting’ reading ἣν of Codex Sinaiticus [although it may not, of course, have originated with this ms] has then been misconstrued as the 3rd person sg. imperfect of the verb ‘to be’ [which would have a smooth breathing, of course], and this misconstrual of a ‘grammatical correction’ is most likely what is behind the Latin Fathers and Ethiopic mss. to which Brown refers.

As for Boismard’s article [‘Critique Textuelle et Citations Patristiques,’ Revue Biblique Vol. 57, No. 3 (Juillet 1950) 388-408], to which Brown refers, page 396, the relevant point is footnote (1) on that page. Mazkir continues:

Brown writes “Among the Latin Fathers…” — Novatian and Augustine, in fact, are the only Latin Fathers Boismard mentions as offering, in place of the glory which I had, what he calls “a quite curious variant”, viz., the glory which was. Boismard adds, “which, truth to say, does not offer great sense.” It is a grammatical correction which has been misconstrued as a verb.

Boismard goes on to suggest that there are good reasons (which he doesn’t go into) for thinking that the Diatessaron may have had no verb here — the glory with you — as also apparently found in some Ethiopian mss. And he then queries, “Would it be rash then to think that in Jn. 17:5 the primitive text also did not carry any verb …?”

This ‘correction plus subsequent misconstrual’ by Novatian and Augustine leaves εἶχον in the sentence redundant. Boismard and Mollat’s suggested solution of omitting the verb entirely (which the ancients may have come up with in the Diatessaron, if Boismard is right in that regard, and in the Ethiopan mss. to which he refers) looks like a counsel of despair, a cutting of the Gordian knot, solving drastically the dilemma of choosing between was and had!

The Nestlé-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece 28th edition (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012, p. 359) states in its Apparatus that the variant ginesthai is attested in D* (D2; Irlat Epiph), which denotes the original reading of the fifth century Codex Bezae (D), along with the second (later) corrector of this ms, a Latin rendering of Irenaeus (c. 395 according to the edition) and Epiphanius (fourth century). All of this is surely late – especially the Ethiopic material to which Brown makes reference, which cannot be older than the sixth century (Bruce Metzger and Bart Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: its transmission, corruption, and restoration, New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 4th edition, pp. 119-120, observe: “…none of the extant manuscripts of the version is older than perhaps the tenth century and most of them date from the fifteenth and later centuries…”). We should also note Codex Bezae (D; 05; MS Nn. 2.41), which contains the four Gospels in the Western order (Matthew, John, Luke and Mark) with several omissions, and is a Greek-Latin diglot. An important book on textual criticism is that by Kurt and Barbara Aland (Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the critical editions and to the theory and practice of modern textual criticism, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2nd edition 1989, 1995, pp. 109, 110), which indicates that Codex Bezae was probably written by someone whose first language was Latin, and this may have influenced the rendering in John 17, and the Alands are definite that earlier renderings than that of Codex Bezae are to be preferred. They describe Codex Bezae as:

A Greek-Latin diglot (Greek text on verso), written in sense lines (for convenience in liturgical reading), this has been the most controversial of the New Testament uncials, the principal witness of the text called “Western,” although it was written in either Egypt or North Africa, probably by a scribe whose mother tongue was Latin. The Latin text is related to the accompanying Greek text, standing independently of the main Latin tradition, and probably representing a secondary product…

When D supports the early tradition the manuscript has a genuine significance, but it (as well as its precursors and followers) should be examined most carefully when it opposes the early tradition.

Mazkir comments on the textual matters directly relating to John 17:

Note in John 1:15 (30), the Baptist uses the verb ginesthai of the one coming after him having been before him. The two verbs, although not identical, are frequently used interchangeably — or, I should say, ginesthai is often used without the idea of process or of coming into being. (Cyril of Jerusalem quotes using εἶναι but comments using ginesthai). The only evidence which Nestlé-Aland gives in support of ginesthai is D* (denoting the original reading of Codex Bezae in the 5th century), along with D2 (the second corrector of the ms, who reverses the first corrector’s emendation of the original reading in the ms), the Latin rendering of Irenaeus (from c. AD 380), and Epiphanius (d. 403). The implication is that all the other standard witnesses read εἶναι. Boismard, in the article mentioned above, lists Irenaeus’ Latin text of his Adv. Haer., Novatian (d. 251), Augustine, Jerome, Rufinus (d. 411), Vigilius Tapsitanus (d. 484), Avitus of Vienne (d. 525?), and (probably) Hippolytus of Rome (d. 235) as preserving this reading, but Origen, Didymus of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Severus of Antioch, Ephraem, Denys bar-Salibi, Irenaeus’ Armenian text, Eusebius of Caesarea, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria (14 times!), John of Damascus, Gaudens of Brescia (d. 410) and Hilary all have einai.

In the light of this, we can understand why commentators pay the variant readings scant attention. They do not even reach the scale of the proverbial storm in a teacup, but rather approximate to the level of a droplet of drizzle in the Pacific Ocean. One can only speculate about the reasons the dawah propagandists refer to this.

1. The Glory that the Son had with the Father before the world existed

We turn now to the actual exegesis of 17:5. What did Jesus mean by “glory” there? Brown (op.cit., p. 751) writes:

…it is a visible manifestation of majesty through acts of power. The glory that Jesus asks for is not distinct from the glory of the Father, for the sayings in viii 50 and xii 43 rule out ambition for any glory except the glory of God. “The hour” will bring Jesus back to the Father, and then the fact that he and the Father possess the same divine glory will be visible to all believers. The particular act of power that will make visible the unity of Jesus and the Father will be the gift of eternal life to believes; (vs. 2, “to all that you have given him”). The giving of eternal life is intimately related to the work that Jesus has been doing on earth (vs. 4) and brings that work to a completion, for his works on earth were signs of his power to give eternal life…

This explains why we should read that Jesus possesses glory but asks for it, as Brown continues:

Jesus’ request for glory may seem strange since John has made it clear that Jesus possessed and manifested glory throughout his ministry. The “We have seen his glory” of the Prologue immediately follows the reference to the Word’s becoming flesh (i 14). At Cana (ii 11) Jesus revealed his glory to his disciples; see also xi 4, 40, xii 28. Yet the glory of Jesus during the ministry was seen by way of sign, even as his life-giving power was exercised by way of sign. In “the hour” we have passed from sign to reality, so that “the hour” is the time for “the Son of Man to be glorified” (xii 23). When “the hour” is complete, eternal life can truly be granted in the gift of the Spirit (xx 22).

To understand further, we quote Hurtado (pp. 374-375):

One of the recurrent themes in GJohn is divine “glory”; it is attributed both to God and to Jesus. One of the most extraordinary references is in 12:37-43. After describing the unbelief of Jesus’ contemporaries in 12:37-38 as fulfillment of the words of Isaiah 53:1, the author (in 12:39-40) cites Isaiah 6:10 as further explanation of this unbelief. Then we are told in 12:41 that Isaiah “saw his glory and spoke about him.” In the immediate context, the antecedent of “his” and “him” has to be Jesus… Thus 12:41 seems to claim baldly that Jesus was the glorious figure seen in the prophetic vision described in Isaiah 6:1-5!

It is helpful to quote Isaiah 6 to comprehend the significance of “glory” here:

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train[a] of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is YHWH of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”

4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, YHWH of hosts!”

So, when Isaiah saw the Glory of YHWH, he actually saw the Glory of the pre-Incarnate Jesus! It is helpful to explore further the concept of Glory in the Old Testament. Jacob explains this in some detail (Edmond Jacob, Theology of the Old Testament, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1955, 1958, 1971, pp. 79-81):

The fundamental idea expressed by the root kbd is that of weightiness. Kabod designates whatever had weight... Since anything weighty inspires respect and honour, kabod not only denotes the obvious objective reality but the feeling which is experienced towards what inspires respect. This double meaning is particularly evoked where the glory of God is concerned. God reveals his glory, but his creatures must also give glory to him, as in Ps. 29.1; Jos. 7.19; Is. 42.8; 48.11. This glory is what God possesses in his own right, it is a kind of totality of qualities which make up his divine power; it has close affinity with the holiness which is of the nature of deity and it is a visible extension for the purpose of manifesting holiness to men…

Kabod is always conceived as something concrete… Kabod is always intended to be seen… The glory appeared to the children of Israel in the form of devouring fire at the top of the mount. Ex. 29.43: God meets with the children of Israel in the tent and he will be sanctified by his glory.

Ex. 40.34ff: When Moses had completed the construction of the tent, the cloud covered the tent and the glory of Yahweh filled the place…

According to Ezekiel the kabod is not merely the manifestation of God is concrete form, it is identical with him…

The kabod is very closely linked with the Temple; by it God consecrates the temple as the place of his presence… the temple is the normal place of his residence, as is brought out by 43.2ff…

Another Old Testament scholar, Eichrodt essentially concurs with Jacob’s presentation, notably the concept of Glory as a position of honor, and the visibility of the divine Glory (Walter Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, Volume Two, trans. J. A. Baker, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967, p. 30): “Kābōd denotes that which is ‘heavy’, ‘weight’; and when used of something ‘weighty’, that which distinguishes a man and wins him respect, primarily suggests the outwardly visible, whether it be wealth, for which kābōd can actually be used as a synonym, or an outward position of honour, power and success. Hence even God’s kābōd, his glory or majesty, includes an element of appearance, of that which catches the eye.” Anderson confirms this, and enables us to understand the paradox of humans being unable to look upon God’s essence and the fact that His Glory is indeed visible (Bernhard W. Anderson, Contours of Old Testament Theology, Minneapolis: Fortress Press: 1999, p. 110):

… “glory,” a term that pervades the Old Testament and the New (Hebrew.. kabod, e.g., Isa, 6:3; 40:5; Greek doxa, John 1:14; 15:8). Hebrew kabod has various meanings. It basically means “weight” and thus applies to a person of weight or importance. When applied to God, it refers to God’s visible manifestation. usually as radiance or resplendent light (later, the Shekinah). Only in this symbolic sense is God visible, otherwise no human being may see God (Exod. 33:20).

The twofold aspects of glory as outlined by Jacob confirms what Brown suggests about the dual nature of glory in the Gospel of John – it is the “totality of qualities which make up his divine power” and something His creatures must give to Him. Two other aspects are especially relevant. First, “it is a visible extension for the purpose of manifesting holiness to men”, which ties-in with John 17:4 where Jesus states: “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.” Second, in John 1:14 we read: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the Unique [One] from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The Greek is: “Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός, πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας.”·

Note how the Glory of God was tangibly present and visible in the Tabernacle and Temple. Now, in Jesus, the same is true. The word ἐσκήνωσεν eskēnōsen, usually translated “dwelt” is probably bettered rendered as “tabernacle”. So, the Word came as flesh and tabernacled among us, and we saw His Glory, the Glory of the Unique [One] of the Father. The unique Glory of the Unique One of the Father was visible in the Word (who was with God, and was Himself God) who came as flesh and tabernacled among us. Kaiser comments (Walter C. Kaiser, Toward an Old Testament Theology, Grand Rapids; Zondervan, 1978, 1991, p. 119):

The single most important fact in the experience of this new nation of Israel was that God had come to “tabernacle” (sdkan), or “dwell,” in her midst. Nowhere was this stated more clearly than in Exodus 29:43-46 where in connection with the tabernacle it was announced:

There [at the entrance] I will meet with the sons of Israel, and it shall be sanctified by My glory. I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar... I will dwell (“tabernacle”) among the sons of Israel, and I will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt, that I might dwell among them: I am the Lord their God.

…One of the most frequently repeated formulas of the promise would be:

I will be your [their] God;
You [they] shall be My people.
And I will dwell in the midst of you [them].

In its very first announcement, the dwelling of God was connected with the tabernacle. In fact, one of the names of the tent-sanctuary of God was miškān, which clearly was related to the verb šakān, “to tent, dwell, tabernacle.”

We can see now what Jesus meant in John 17:5 when He prayed that His pre-existent Glory which He enjoyed with the Father prior to Creation be restored to Him – via the Cross. His Glory was manifested on the Earth by His miraculous signs – John 2:11: “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.” Again, and related to the visibility of divine Glory, note what Jesus says to Martha at the resurrection of Lazarus in John 11:40: “Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?’” However, the Glory that Jesus experienced from all eternity in Heaven was clearly of a greater magnitude to this limited experience of Glory on the Earth. This is underscored by Jesus request “glorify me with the glory that I had with you before the world was” – obviously, the Glory Jesus had on Earth was not comparable to the greater glory in Heaven previously experienced with the Father.

Having examined what the Glory of God, meant in the Old Testament, we should consider its import in the New Testament, specifically the Gospel of John. Guthrie comments (op. cit., pp. 90-91):

There is a strong OT background to the frequent references to the glory of God. Whereas the Hebrew word for ‘glory’ (kābôd) was used of anything which possessed splendour, honour, conspicuousness, it soon came to have a special significance when applied to God. It came in fact to stand for the revelation of God, as when the psalmist maintained that the heavens declare the glory of God (Ps. 19:1). OT history is seen as a record of God’s revelation of his glory in his activities on behalf of his people. A more developed sense of the same idea is the use of ‘glory’ to denote the presence of God in a theophany, which was later to become known in Jewish theology as the Shekinah (šekînâ). But it is the translation of the Hebrew kābôd into the Greek doxa which provides the key for understanding the NT idea of the glory of God. We shall note that in the NT there are two senses in which doxa is used, as visible glory (in the sense of seeing the glory of God) and as uttered praise (in the sense of ascribing glory to God)…

John makes clear in his account that the glory which he and others had observed in the ministry of Jesus had a divine source (Jn. 5:41 ff.). Indeed the glory of Jesus Christ is again inextricably bound up with the glory of God (Jn. 1:14; 11:4, 40; 13:31). Whatever glorifies the Son of man is said to glorify God (13:31 f.). The essential point to notice is that God is not only assumed to be glorious, but is the pattern for the measuring of glory in others, even in the case of his Son (cf. Jn. 17:5). No glory can be greater than God’s.

It follows that Jacob’s outline of the nature of Glory in the Old Testament does indeed carry on into the New. In relation to the Gospel of John, the Gospel has a particular emphasis on Jesus as both the revelation and revealer of God, 1:18: “No one has ever seen God; the Unique [One] [Himself] God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. θεὸν οὐδεὶς ἑώρακεν πώποτε·μονογενὴς θεὸς ὁ ὢν εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρὸς ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο.” Remember our earlier point about the invisibility of God yet the visibility of His Glory. Jesus, the embodiment of divine Glory, reveals the Father, which should be linked to what Guthrie states about the Glory of God in the Old Testament coming “to stand for the revelation of God”. The Glory is the Revealer, and in the Gospel of John, the Revelation embodied. Observe how this echoes 17:4: “…this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ…”, and v26: “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

One problem for the dawah activists misusing John 17:3 while evading the full force of v5 is that Isaiah 42:8 states: “I am YHWH; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.” Why would Jesus, if not divine, ask for something that would be frankly blasphemous as to share in the unique, pre-existent, pre-mundane Glory of God – in effect, to be deified? Hurtado (op. cit., p. 380) comments in regard to Isaiah and the Gospel of John: “It is difficult to think that the author of GJohn somehow missed these emphatic statements. Even if he had missed or chosen to ignore them, we can be sure that the Jewish critics of Johannine christological claims, who are commonly seen as reflected in the objections voiced to Jesus' claims in GJohn, would have pointed to these statements in Isaiah.” We have seen that John refers to Isaiah 6 in relation to the Glory of YHWH and applies it to Jesus (12:41: “Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him.”). Yet John in his comments applies these attributes to Jesus. By asking for the restoration of pre-mundane Glory, Jesus effectively claims deity for Himself.

This must be emphasized - what existed before Creation is obviously God, and Jesus claimed to have participated in the Glory of God prior to Creation. This brings us back to the beginning of the Gospel of John - 1:1-3, 9-10:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made…

9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. 2 οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν. 3 πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὃ γέγονεν…

9 ἦν τὸ φῶς τὸ ἀληθινὸν ὃ φωτίζει πάντα ἄνθρωπον ἐρχόμενον εἰς τὸν κόσμον.

10 Ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ἦν, καὶ ὁ κόσμος δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ ὁ κόσμος αὐτὸν οὐκ ἔγνω.

The Logos, the Word, was with God and was God, and created all things. So, Jesus as the Word was the Creator. There is a consensus among scholars of all theological hue that John 1:1 reflects Genesis 1:1, e.g. Lindars (p. 82): “In the beginning: a deliberate allusion to Gen. 1.1…” Evans elaborates further (Craig A. Evans, Word and Glory: On the Exegetical and Theological Background of John’s Prologue, Sheffield: JSOT press, 1993, pp. 77-78.): “Even a casual reader of Scripture cannot help but hear the echo of Genesis 1-2 in the opening verses of the Johannine Prologue. Although there are not many verbal agreements, the conceptual parallels are obvious and quite significant.” Culpepper agrees with this, and points to its implications as Scripture: (R. Alan Culpepper, “The Prologue as Theological Prolegomenon to the Gospel of John”, Jan G. van der Watt, R. Alan Culpepper, and Udo Schnelle [Eds.], The Prologue of the Gospel of John Its Literary, Theological, and Philosophical Contexts. Papers read at the Colloquium Ioanneum 2013, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016, p. 5)

John is unique among the Gospels in connecting Jesus with God’s work in creation. Raymond Brown observed that “the fact that the Word creates means that creation is an act of revelation.” By beginning with the words, “In the beginning,” John creates a clear echo of the opening words of the Book of Genesis, and perhaps suggests that this Gospel should be regarded as scripture – a continuation of the record of the mighty acts of God in creation, in history, and in the people of Israel.

This being so, we should consider the nature of the Genesis Creation account. Genesis is partly an anti-pagan polemic, and an apologetic work for monotheism. Whoever Creates is God, and there is only One God. God in His prescience inspired Moses to write the Genesis account as, in part, a monotheistic polemic against the views of the surrounding peoples in Egypt, Canaan and Mesoptamia. We encounter no theogonies (births of gods), no sexual activity between deities, no battle of the gods and no slaying of deities, as in their cosmogonies (creation accounts). In fact, there could be no sexual activity between the deities, nor any combat or killing of other deities either, for the simple reason, quite apart from ethical or ontological concerns, there is only one God! Creation was purely an act of the unique God. Consider Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃

His creation is not brought into effect by sexual activity or by shedding the blood of some other deity, but simply through His word – note the recurring statement “God said”. Unlike some of the pagan cosmogonies, there is no indication in Genesis of pre-existing matter of any form. Before God created, there was nothing – and God created out of nothing. Above all, creation was uniquely an act of God. There were no other deities, and even heavenly beings such as the angels did not create or even aid in creation. Therefore, unlike the cosmogonies of the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Canaanites, in Genesis (and the Tanakh in general), the office of Creator and the Being of God point to the same deity – the terms Creator and God are therefore synonymous – cf. Ecclesiastes 12:1: “Remember also your Creator”. Whoever creates is God, and only God creates. The Biblical God is the God whose first recorded act is to create.

This brings us back to the evangelistic nature of the Gospel of John, and Jesus’ prayer referring to those who will believe because of the witness of the Apostles. In John 10:16, Jesus indicates the global reach of His evangelistic work: “And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” Initially, this meant the Gospel would go out into the Graeco-Roman world, whose chief god was Zeus/Jupiter, son of Cronus/Saturn, son of Uranus/Caelus. The Greeks had no sacred Scriptures as such, but Hesiod’s Theogony records their legends (Hesiod, Theogony; Works and Days, trans. by Catherine M. Schlegel and Henry Weinfield, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2006, pp. 27-28) :

105 That I may hymn the sacred race of those who never die,
They who were born of Gaia (Earth), Ouranos (starry Sky),
And Nux (the dusky Night) as well as Pontos (the salt Sea).
Say firstly how the first ones, gods and Earth, first came to be,
And rivers and unbounded ocean with its furious swell,
110 And the shining stars and broad firmament over all,
112 And how they shared the riches and the honors that then followed,
113 And how they took possession of Olympos many-hollowed.
114 Speak all these things, Muses, from your high Olympian home:
115 From the beginning, tell me which of these was first to come.
Chasm it was, in truth, who was the very first; she soon
Was followed by broad-breasted Earth, the eternal ground of all
The deathless ones, who on Olympos’s snowy summits dwell,
And murky Tartaros hidden deep from Earth’s wide-open roads,
120 And Eros, the most beautiful among the deathless gods Limb-
loosener he is of all the gods and of all men:
Thought in the breast he overwhelms and prudent planning; then
Out of Chasm Erebos and black Night both were born,
And then from Night came Ether and came Day as well in turn;
125 For Night conceived them, having joined with Erebos in love.
Now Earth first brought forth Ouranos, the starry Sky above,
An equal to herself, so he could cover her around,
And she might serve the deathless gods as firm, eternal ground.
She bore the hills, the gracious haunts of mountain goddesses then-
130 The Nymphs, who range the wooded hills and up and down each glen;
And without sweet desiring love, she bore the barren Sea,
Pontos, the raging salt-sea swell; and when she had lain with Sky,
She bore deep-eddying Ocean and Koios and Kreios too,
Hyperion, father of the Sun, Iapetos also,
135 And Thea and Rhea and Themis and, in turn, Mnemosyne,
Phoebe the golden-crowned one, Tethys lovely to see;
And after these the youngest came, Kronos, crooked and sly,
The cleverest of all her children and his father’s enemy.

Note how the initial Creation was by more than one deity, and involved sexual intercourse between Gaia (Mother Earth) and Ouranos (Sky) in an incestuous sexual act, rather than being the work of one, unique deity by His Word. According to the Library of Apollodorus Book I:VIII, Men not Women) were created by the Titan Prometheus (Apollodorus, The Library, Volume I, trans. by Sir James George Frazer, London: William Heinemann/New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1921, p. 51): “Prometheus moulded men out of water and earth and gave them also fire, which, unknown to Zeus, he had hidden in a stalk of fennel.” According to Hesiod (op. cit., Works and Days, tp. 59) the first woman, Pandora, was created by Zeus through Hephaistos and other deities as a punishment for Men:

55 “Now you rejoice at having stolen fire, outwitting me:
Much misery both for yourself, yourself and men to be.
To them in recompense for fire, I shall bequeath a woe,
Which they will cherish in their hearts, although it lays them low.”
So spoke the father of gods and men, and laughed out loud; then bade
60 Hephaistos, the famed artisan, at once to mix and knead
Water and earth, and put in strength and speech distinctly human,
Make it in aspect like a deathless goddess, but a woman,
A lovely maiden and in her form desirable to men…
80 And called this woman the All-Gifted one, Pandora, because the divine
Olympians all gave her a gift and as a gift did give
Her as a woe to mortal men, who must earn their bread to live.

It can be seen how vastly different the cosmogonies of the Bible and Hellenistic mythology were, and we should remember that the Gospel of John was written in the Hellenistic city of Ephesus in Asia Minor in the 90s. The impact of the message of the Gospel there can be imagined – Creation was the work of a unique God, not a pantheon, and Jesus was the Creator. Unlike Prometheus, who was powerless to prevent Zeus from punishing him for giving fire to Man, Jesus was returning via the Cross to His pre-mundane glory. Jesus was the Creator of all things – the Cosmos, Men, women, everything. Further, John 17 tells us that He had authority over all flesh. Nor was He, in terms of His deity, born – He existed before Creation, since He was the Creator, and He was returning to His position of eternal Glory which He had enjoyed before the Creation.

The various commentators are agreed on this – He returns to His pre-existing glory, as Lindars comments on 17:5 (p. 520): “…the glorifying for which Jesus prays is conceived of as the restoration of a pre-existing glory. The phrases in thy own presence and with thee are almost identical, and are certainly identical in meaning. Jesus does not simply pray for vindication as the Son of Man, but for …the descent and return of the Revealer from the heavenly realm.” Barrett (p. 504) concurs: “παρὰ σεαυτῷ, that is, by causing me to return to the position I enjoyed before the incarnation; cf. παρὰ σοί, and with both cf. 1.1, πρὸς τὸν θεόν. The glory, that is, is the heavenly glory of Christ; the prayer is a prayer for exaltation and ascension. After the crucifixion the Son of man will ascend where he was before (6.62). With πρὸ τοῦ τὸν κόσμον εἶναι cf. 8.58.” Carson (p. 557) comments:

What is clear is that Jesus is asking to be returned to the glory that he shared with the Father before the world began, i.e. before creation… Haenchen (2. 502) rightly observes that this means the incarnation entailed a forfeiture of glory… This does not mean that Jesus is asking for what might be called a ‘de-incarnation’ in order to be returned to the glory he once enjoyed. When the Word became flesh (1:14), this new condition was not designed to be temporary. When Jesus is glorified, he does not leave his body behind in a grave, but rises with a transformed, glorified body (to use a Pauline category; cf. notes on ch. 20) which returns to the Father (cf. 20:17) and thus to the glory the Son had with the Father ‘before the world began’.

Morris (Leon Morris, The Gospel According To John: The English Text with Introduction, Exposition and Notes, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971, pp. 638-639) also agrees with the idea that Jesus was returning to pre-incarnate Glory:

Now Jesus prays God to glorify him. He looks for glory in the last place that people would look for it, namely in the cross. And he sees this glory for which he prays as linked with his preincarnate glory with the Father. There is a clear assertion of Christ’s preexistence here (we have already seen such a claim, 1:1; 8:58; 16:28). There is also the claim that he had enjoyed a unique glory with the Father in that preexistent state. And now, as evil men are about to do their worst to him, he looks for the Father to glorify him again in the same way.

We need hardly quote anyone else, given the unanimity of thought on the issue. It is clear that Jesus was claiming divine pre-existence, on parity with the Father. This is linked to what has been termed the “Descent-Ascent Schema”. That is, Jesus descended from Heaven – from the Father – and would return thence by the Cross. In 3:13 Jesus tells Nicodemus: “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man”, and in 6:62: “Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” In 16:28, Jesus states; “I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father”. Jesus was going to be restored to His pre-mudane position of Glory – which means He is God.

CONCLUSION

The dawah propagandists have to engage in severe theological and exegetical gymnastics to manipulate John 17:3-5 to mean something other than its obvious, plain interpretation. They also have to ignore the general tenor of the Gospel - the “Descent-Ascent Schema”, the evangelistic character of the book, its display not only of the deity of Jesus but also His two natures, supremely displayed in John 17. They latch on to minor textual variant issues mentioned by Brown, but ignore how late and unimportant they are, as well as ignoring that Brown himself pays them no heed in his exegesis of the passage. It is the Qur’an that has misled them in this, with its false accusation that Christians say that there are three gods, and its deliberate ignoring of the Christian doctrine of the Hypostatic Union. Unfortunately, their misdirection by the Qur’an leads them to grossly misinterpret this passage in John 17, which actually proves the opposite of what they claim.