true God and eternal life,” the Father or the Son. I am personally persuaded that a better case can be made for understanding θεός, theos, as referring to the Son. The case for the Father being the referent of “the true God” highlights the following features in the verse. First, reference to the Father is indirectly but clearly present in the genitives “of God” and the “his” following the two occurrences of “the Son.” Second, it is likely that the two occurrences of “true One” (τὸν ἀληθινόν,