‘Very Truly, I Tell You, Before Abraham was, I am’: A Theological Treatise on the Concept of Time in John’s Gospel

Abstract

This essay analyses temporal peculiarity in John’s Gospel, identified as eschatological and narratological in nature. Part one employs historical‐critical and literary‐critical exegesis to explain the interrelation and function of these peculiarities, while part two derives a temporal metaphysic from the exegesis to explain the concept of time in the Gospel. This exposition is used to make sense of the Gospel’s claim that the one who possesses eternal life will never die. The essay concludes that the Gospel’s future and realised eschatology act as reflections of one another, and argues that the future eschatological scheme functions as a distension of the realised scheme.