Nope and actually the very best you could do with John 8:58, would be that it was Jesus' answer to who came first, Jesus or Abraham and not that he was claiming to be God.
For the Jews twisted his words "your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day (the time of his coming to Israel) and saw it and was glad" and replied asking Jesus, "you are not yet fifty years old and yet you have seen Abraham" and therefore his answer was a matter of who came first and not about Jesus being God.
Furthermore, even Tertullian understood what the words "And God was the Logos" coupled with "and the Logos was "pros" The God" truly meant and he expresses it in his own words below.
Therefore he is guilty of twisting the knowledge that was given him, in making the Logos out as another person of God and just like he attempted to argue that our logos is within us who are made in his image also and which is totally ridiculous.
Here is his very words on this below and if you click on the link (
Against Praxeas 5) it will open up the whole of what he wrote about this also.
<p>In Greek, "Word" is Logos, and it carries a much wider meaning than "word" does. It's the word from which we get "logic." The early churches were almost as prone to translating it "reason" as they were to translating it "word."
Here's Tertullian's very interesting explanation of what logos is:
Observe, then, that when you are silently conversing with yourself, this very process is carried on within you by your reason, which meets you with a word at every movement of your thought … Whatever you think, there is a word … You must speak it in your mind …
Thus, in a certain sense, the word is a second person within you, through which in thinking you utter speech … The word is itself a different thing from yourself. Now how much more fully is all this transacted in God, whose image and likeness you are? (Against Praxeas 5)
Logos is that voice you hear inside yourself when you are thinking. At least, that's a rough estimation of what logos means. Tertullian goes out of his way to describe it as "a second person within you" because he's bringing up the Logos of God as a second Person of the Trinity.
God, according to the early churches, has always had logos inside of him.
Notice, Tertullian rightly sees the word Logos as God, to be referring to God as personified in his thinking and reasoning and logic and the words, "and the Logos was pros The God" to be meaning that God was reciprocating with his own thinking, reasoning and logic the same as we do who are made in his image.
Therefore he was without excuse that after seeing this he still twisted the meaning of John's words and made the Logos to be another person of God's nature and then to mean that we also have another person in our nature who are made in his image also and as if we are two persons in one being which is total foolishness.
Below are Paul's very words and which reveal what Tertullian did with his knowledge on this issue.
Romans 1: 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal (that which cannot die) God for images made like a mortal (that which can die) human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
The above is exactly what Tertullian became guilty of after having seen the truth about the Logos referring to God in his thinking, reasoning and logic and the words, "and the Logos was pros The God) as meaning that God was reciprocating with his own mind and thinking and reasoning and logic, he then still twisted the Logos to be referring to another person instead of the single person and being of God like John was expressing in all of this.
The only thing that John was making a distinction of within the single being and person of God in his prologue, was The God in his full being with The God as personified in his thinking and reasoning and logic and he being a monotheistic Jew, was never wanting you trins to be taking this to mean the he was speaking of two God's or of two literal persons who were the same God.