In John 14:28, Jesus says, “You heard that I said to you, ‘I leave, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.” In western trinitarian theology, this passage, especially the last clause “the Father is greater than I,” has been downplayed if not neglected because it appears to pose a threat to the equality between the Son and the Father. In trinitarian discussions in the West, John 14:28 becomes an embarrassing passage to be mentioned and most of the time, if it is mentioned, the reaction is to explain away the subordination connotation that it might imply.
The popular interpretation of John 14:28 in western theology is this: The Son is less than the Father in the form of a slave, namely, in his human nature or human state. However, does this passage really limit the meaning of the Son’s being less than the Father to only the incarnation of the Son? While saying this sentence, does Jesus not at all hint anything about the eternal or immanent Trinity?
With these questions, this paper revisits John 14:28 to explore what it means when Jesus says “for the Father is greater than I.” The writer will retrieve the history of the interpretations of this passage, focusing on the two traditions. One tradition is the view described above, which gradually becomes dominant in the West and is held by Cyril of Alexandria, Theodore, Ambrose, and Augustine and others among the church fathers. The other tradition features a trinitarian explanation, interpreting John 14:28 in view of the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son. While being equal in substance, the Father is greater than the Son because the Son is begotten from the Father and the Father is unbegotten. This view is held by the majority of the early church fathers, including Tertullian, Novatian, Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Hilary of Poitier, Marius Victorinus, and John Chrysostom. Both interpretations in church tradition, as some scholars have observed, are less concerned with the context of John 14:28 but “more interested in later Christological and Trinitarian debates” (Reimund Bieringer, “‘. . .because the Father is greater than I’ (John 14:28): Johannine Christology in Light of the Relationship between the Father and the Son”).
Thus, this paper will examine the context of this passage and try to provide a plausible interpretation. The conclusion is that although one cannot determine precisely what Jesus means here, he definitely means that the Father is greater than he in some sense and this sense is not only limited to his human nature or incarnate state based on the context of this passage.