John 17 — The Oneness Jesus Actually Prayed For

Jesus asked that His disciples be one — “even as we are one.” Whatever that oneness is, He prayed for men to receive it. That single fact decides the argument.

The Argument — Stated Fairly

The case is built on two texts. “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30), and the Savior’s great intercessory prayer, where He asks that His disciples “all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee” (John 17:21). Read together, they are said to prove that the Father and the Son are one being — one identical divine essence — and that the Latter-day Saint answer of “one in purpose” is a modern dodge invented to escape the plain sense of the words.

Grant the strong part of that, because it is strong. The unity John describes really is more than colleagues agreeing on a plan. It is mutual indwelling — the Father in the Son, the Son in the Father — and any answer that reduces it to committee harmony has flattened the text. Anyone who has heard “one in purpose” delivered as a slogan is right to find it thin.

So do not settle it with a slogan. Settle it with the chapter. John 17 is not a proof text that can be quoted at verse 21 and closed — it is a prayer, and the prayer keeps going. Read to the end of the sentence and the argument reverses.

Read the Prayer to the End

John 17:20–23

“Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us… And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.”

Count who is in the prayer. The Father. The Son. The eleven men in the room. And every person who would ever believe through their preaching — which includes the reader.

Now look at what He asks for them. Not a lesser unity. Not a resemblance of one. He asks that they be one “even as we are one” — and then, in case the standard were unclear, He repeats it a third time: “I in them, and thou in me.” The same mutual indwelling. Applied to disciples.

Put the Creed Inside the Verse

There is a simple test for any proposed meaning of a word. Substitute it into the sentence and read the result out loud.

The Council of Constantinople gave the word its technical definition, and Christendom has recited it ever since: the Son is “consubstantial to the Father” — of one substance, homoousios. Very well. Put that meaning into verse 22 and see what Jesus is made to say.

The Substitution

“That they all may be of one substance; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be of one substance in us… that they may be of one substance, even as we are of one substance.”

No creed teaches this. No council ever taught it. No one who quotes verse 21 believes it.

So the reading fails inside its own verse. The defender must now say that “one” means one substance in the first half of the sentence and something else entirely in the second half — in a single breath, in a single clause, joined by the word as.

Who authorized that switch? Not Jesus. Not John. The switch is required by the creed, and it is imposed on the verse to protect the creed. That is the exact procedure critics accuse the Latter-day Saints of — and here it is running in the other direction, on the very passage offered as proof.

The Best Counter — and Why It Fails

The serious answer is not the one usually given in a comment thread, so let it be stated at full strength. It runs like this: the word “as” (Greek kathōs) marks comparison, not equation. The disciples’ unity is analogical — a created participation in an uncreated life. The mutual indwelling of Father and Son is unique and unrepeatable; what believers receive is a real but derivative likeness of it. So verse 22 no more makes disciples consubstantial than “be ye perfect, even as your Father” makes them omniscient.

That is a real argument. It fails for three reasons, and each one comes out of the chapter itself.

First, an analogy must illuminate. You explain the unknown by the known — that is what an analogy is for. But if the divine oneness is a mode of being with no creaturely parallel whatsoever, then Christ, on the last night of His life, in His final prayer, chose to illustrate the unknowable by pointing at something that shares nothing with it. What were eleven Galilean men supposed to understand? The comparison was given to teach. An analogy that teaches NOTHING is not an analogy.

Second, the verse names the mechanism. Jesus does not leave the oneness undefined and mysterious — He says how it is produced: “And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one.” Given glory is the cause; oneness is the result. Now ask the obvious question. Can a substance be handed over as a gift? Nobody gives away their essence. Whatever oneness verse 22 describes, it is achieved by something being GIVEN — which is precisely what a shared substance can never be.

Third, the analogy still runs the wrong way. The passage was brought forward to prove what “one” means when it is said of the Father and the Son. But the only working definition of “one” anywhere in the chapter is the one Jesus applies to disciples — glory given, name kept, word received, love shared. If that content is denied to the Father and the Son, the verse has been emptied to save a doctrine it was never asked about.

What the Grammar Actually Settles

In John 10:30 the word rendered “one” is hen — neuter. Greek had a masculine form available, heis, and it is not the word John used. Trinitarian commentators grant this freely and draw their own conclusion from it, but on the first point there is no dispute at all: Jesus did not say that He and the Father are one person. Modalism dies right there, in the grammar, before any council convenes.

What the neuter positively means is settled by watching how the New Testament uses it elsewhere. And it is used, in the identical construction, of two ordinary men.

“One” Said of Persons Who Are Not One Being

• 1 Corinthians 3:8 — “he that planteth and he that watereth are one” — Paul and Apollos, same construction as John 10:30. Two men. Two beings.
• 1 Corinthians 6:17 — “he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit” — a believer, made one with Christ.
• Genesis 2:24 — “they shall be one flesh” — a husband and wife, who remain two people.
• Acts 4:32 — the believers “were of one heart and of one soul” — thousands of them.

Are Paul and Apollos of one substance? Is a married couple a single being? The word carries a real and profound unity in every one of these places, and in not one of them does it collapse two persons into one. The vocabulary simply does not do what the argument needs it to do. It never did.

The Prayer Itself Presupposes Two

Before the chapter says a word about oneness, its opening line has already settled the question of number. Jesus lifts His eyes and speaks to Someone.

Two Persons, in the Same Chapter and the Same Gospel

• John 17:3 — “that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” He names the Father as the only true God and Himself as the sent one.
• John 17:5 — the glory “which I had with thee before the world was.” You are not with yourself.
• John 17:24 — “thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” Love requires a lover and a beloved.
• John 5:19 — “the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do.”
• John 14:28 — “my Father is greater than I.”
• John 20:17 — risen from the tomb: “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.”
• Matthew 3:16–17 — at the Jordan: the Son in the water, the Spirit descending, the Father speaking from heaven. Three, at once, in three places.
• Acts 7:55–56 — Stephen, filled with the Holy Ghost, sees “the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God.” He counts two.

A being does not pray to Himself, glorify Himself with a glory He asks to receive, call Himself greater than Himself, or stand at His own right hand. The unity in John 17 is real, total, and perfect — and it is a unity of two, which is the only kind of unity the word has ever described.

What the Oneness Consists Of

Jesus never leaves the term floating. Four times in the chapter He says what makes the oneness: the name given and kept (v. 11), the word received (v. 8), the glory given (v. 22), and the love of the Father dwelling in them (v. 26).

And notice the direction it moves. “I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.” This oneness does something to those inside it. It perfects them. It makes them like what they have been joined to — which is exactly what the rest of the New Testament promises.

Where That Perfecting Ends

• 1 John 3:2 — “we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.”
• Romans 8:17 — “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.”
• Revelation 3:21 — “will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.”
• 2 Peter 1:4 — “partakers of the divine nature.”
• Matthew 5:48 — “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

Every one of those is the same promise as verse 22, stated by a different apostle. The glory is given. The likeness is real. And the Book of Mormon says the identical thing about the Godhead in the identical language — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are “one” (3 Nephi 11:27, 36), while the Father has “a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s” (D&C 130:22). Distinct beings. Perfect unity. Exactly what the prayer describes.

The Verdict

John 17 is not evidence for one divine being. It is the strongest evidence in the New Testament against that reading, because it is the one place where the Lord defines His oneness with the Father — and He defines it by asking that men be brought into it.

This is what Jesus prayed: that His disciples be one, even as He and the Father are one. This is what He said it would take: glory given, a name kept, a word received, love dwelling in them. This is what Paul wrote: that a planter and a waterer are “one,” and that a believer joined to the Lord is “one spirit” with Him. This is what the apostles saw: a Son in the water and a Father speaking from heaven, a Savior standing at the right hand of God. This is what John promised at the end of it: that we shall be LIKE HIM, for we shall see Him as He is.

Against all of that stands a single technical term, defined three centuries later in a language Jesus never spoke, which cannot be substituted into the verse it is supposed to explain without producing a sentence no Christian on earth believes.

Reject the oneness of the Godhead as the Gospel of Jesus Christ teaches it, and you have not rejected Joseph Smith. You have rejected John 17:21, John 17:22, John 17:3, John 20:17, and the plain meaning of the word “one” everywhere else it appears in your Bible. The Father and the Son are one. The disciples are invited into the same oneness. Both halves of that sentence came out of the same mouth, on the same night, in the same breath — and the Gospel is the only place where both halves are still allowed to mean what they say.

For the doctrine of the Godhead set out in full, see The Godhead vs. the Trinity and The Algebra of the Godhead.