The opening sentence of the Gospel according to John is crucial to Hayathology, especially for the understanding of Temporality as a moving image of Eternity.
The Chinese verb “you”(有) can be translated as “was/is” because its tense is “imperfect”. In this respect Chinese grammar resembles Hebrews grammar which also has the distinction only between perfect and imperfect, but no distinction of past, present, and future.
Do you think the sentence “In the Beginning was the Word” narrates a historically past event, or the state of affairs which “was the case” a long time ago, e.g. 6000 years ago, or 15 billion years ago before Big-Bang? Is “the Word’s being with God” only in the past? Isn’t it more suitable to say “the Word is God” rather than to say “the Word was God”? Greek grammar uses “aorist” when it narrates a historical event as if it were a point lying on the temporal coordinate of the linear
sequences of events. The verb “on” is “imperfect”, and does not represent a point-like past of the chronological table of the world history. It narrates not only the past state of affairs, but also the present/ future states of affairs.
In other words, the so-called “Pre-existence of the Word” essentially involves the element of “Becoming” at each instant of Time.
I would like to cite another key sentence from the Gospel of John 8-58:
eipen autoiV o ihsouV amhn amhn legw umin prin abraam genesqai egw eimi.
Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am.
Here, umin prin abraam genesqai (before Abraham was) is “aorist”, and represents the historical past states of affairs as appoint-like instant on the linear coordinate time, but Jesus’ answer is not “I was” but “I am” i.e. egw eimi.
As “egw eimi o wn” is God’s name to Hebrews, this reply “I am” is deeply connected with God’s self-revelation of his name to Moses, i.e. “I am who am”.
Under the influences of Greek ontology, theologians in the past usually considered “Before Abraham was, I am” signifies the Eternity of Christ. They do not think that such lofty phrase is absolutely not applicable to ordinal human beings because Eternity and Temporality does not intersect with each other. But would not such theologians side with those who did not believe in Jesus and stoned him? I would like to affirm the really real existence of such intersection between Eternity and Temporality, or rather, the dynamical relatedness of Temporality with Eternity at every instant of time.
