John 5:26 says the Father “granted” the Son to have life in himself. If it was granted, it wasn’t intrinsic.

The grant language is real and should not be talked around. What the verse says is that the Son possesses life the same way the Father does, in himself, as the Father has it, which is not how creatures have life. The classical reading is that the Son eternally receives from the Father what the Father eternally has, so the granting is not an event that made the Son something he was not. Whether that reading is right is a theological question; the textual fact is that the Son’s way of having life is compared to the Father’s, not to a creature’s.