It could be, by Colwell’s rule, translated as a noun. It doesn’t have to be both, although it could be. The word was God could be referring to the fact that the word was the one and only true God.
I am not interested in apocryphal literature. Where in the old testament do you see the word as an attribute of God?
I forgot what your argument is for why using theios wouldn’t work for your point. Do you mind pointing me to it? Just give me the comment number and I can read it.
When the quote mentioned Metatron I assumed kabbalah. Regardless, I am only interested in OT usage, not Jewish commentaries. There are some pretty wild ideas in the apocrypha and Talmud.
I said whether he is right or wrong(and he could very well be right, I can see his logic), it still is talking about the Holy Spirit. It calls him the Comforter, a term that usually refers to a person who comes to help someone. It is a masculine word but I am not sure that I am right that the gender implies personality since in this case it could just be the word form, especially since there is no female or neuter form that I am aware of. However, that being said, the word comforter is normally(always?)applied to a person that helps, not a helping force. I suppose that you might use your personification argument here but if you read the passage, just like in all the other passages you are trying to use that argument in, it doesn’t fit. It sounds like a person as you read it, not a force and the word fits that reading. Likewise the personal demonstrative fits well with personhood.
Again, I am interested mainly in biblical use.
When Jesus uses it, he uses personification, as the Proverbs do.(I assume you mean when he says, 'wisdom is justified of all her children".) That is not how the Spirit is spoken of. It is descriptive prose with no indication of personification. For example, “for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.”
When Jesus applies the term son of God to himself, he uses it in the way that the Jews understood was blasphemous if he were not God in the flesh. So when he applies it to himself, he does mean Yahweh.
Sorry but I am not buying that. Despite reading a conversation in which I repeatedly say that God is one person, you ask me if I think God is two persons, and ask if I am a binitarian. Despite reading a conversation in which I repeatedly say the Holy Spirit is not a person, you conclude that I believe the Holy Spirit is a person. You cannot have drawn those conclusions from a proper reading of what I wrote.
Make sure you make a list of all the Second Temple Period texts he cites which show that Second Temple Period Jews believed God was two persons. While you’re here, do you agree with Hurtado when he says this?
“As should be clear to any serious reader, in the NT Jesus is not worshipped “as God” (whatever that may mean) but, instead, with reference to God, as the Son of God, as the Lord appointed by God, as the “image” of God, etc. To be sure, Jesus is referenced as sharing the divine name and glory, and OT texts originally referring to “God” (YHWH) are interpreted with reference to Jesus, and, most importantly, in earliest Christian circles Jesus is accorded the sorts of reverence that are otherwise reserved for deities in the Roman era. So, there can be no question whether the exalted Jesus is treated in the NT as “divine.” But, at the same time, the NT (and early Christian writers generally) also distinguish God and Jesus, while also relating them uniquely to each other.”
Just wondering.
I think you’ll need to do more than simply make these assertions. Can you demonstrate that the Jews did not believe that omnipotence, omniscience, or omnipresence were God’s essential qualities? This is just ad hoc reasoning.
Reading these kind of questions is like reading questions from YECs who ask “But if the flood was local, why did Noah need to build an Ark?” and “But if Adam wasn’t the first human who ever existed, why did Jesus say he was?”. What I mean by that, is that they’re asked as if they’ve never been asked before, and as if the person asking is unaware of anyone who has ever responded to these questions before.
I agree with the “Adam Christology” view of this passage, which is found in the works of James Dunn, James McGrath, Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, JR Daniel Kirk, and others. Briefly, Christ is depicted as a second Adam who was likewise presented with the temptation of making himself equal to God, but who instead humbled himself and became obedient to God.
Yes.
Ok to me that doesn’t answer the question “How could it be said of God that He was tempted in every way just as we are?”, especially given that God cannot be tempted as we are.
Yes, it’s right there, Jesus is the eikon of God, the image of God. The same description used of Adam. Note how Colossians 1 repeatedly differentiates between Jesus and God, instead of saying that Jesus is God.
The Jews certainly would have been, so it’s quite surprising that there’s no evidence that the Jews of the first century reacted to claims that God was tempted in the wilderness by the devil.
Theology, as I explained. They dropped a word from the Greek text and translated as if it wasn’t there. In this regard they rendered the text similar to some other Bible translations which lean towards a docetic view of Jesus.
HCSB: “when He had come as a man in His external form” (God wearing a “man suit”)
BW: “by having a human appearance” (again, God only appearing to be a human)
CEV" “he became like one of us” (again, “like one of us”, but not actually one of us)
No, it’s because you asked me about my view of verses 7-8, so I quoted verses 7-8 and gave my view of them. You asked me specifically “when did he empty himself and what was it he was emptying himself of?”, and I answered that specifically.
I’m sorry but as long as you keep simply repeating your claims without evidence, dismissing the lexical evidence and socio-historical context which is recognized as the necessary cognitive framework of the text by standard scholarship, and claiming any scholar who disagrees with you is “simply wrong” just because you say so, there is no point in continuing the discussion. Look at your last post; it’s just a repeat of your assertions.
This is exactly how you treat other subjects, such as the age of the earth and evolution (“it has no evidence whatsoever. It is nonsense”); many assertions, but no evidence. Fundamentalist views of theology are as deficient as fundamentalist views of science.
Perhaps asking a lot here, but could you provide either a link to a blog post, or a link to a Google Books passage, or a brief couple-paragraph quote that could orient the curious reader to this view, in slightly more depth?
It seems this passage is emerging as one of the more critical ones supporting a traditional high Christology, as we see for instance in @Vouthon’s reply to you, so it would be helpful to dive into the weeds a bit. (I don’t have time for things to get too too weedy these days, but would love to read something short about it.)
Simply reading the text and how God reveals himself. He doesn’t reveal himself as God, the all-knowing, all-powerful, eternal, but as God, who delivered you from Egypt. Remember, I didn’t say “how the Jews perceived God,” but how he is revealed in scripture. Neither does scripture doesn’t start with, “God, the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal, created the heaven and the earth…”
It doesn’t matter if you buy it or not. The fact is that seems to keep slipping from you is that sometimes you’re not the clearest writer, you seem to assume that every time your point doesn’t get across someone must have misread you. In fact, in numerous instances, your writing simply isn’t that clear. When you write that “I don’t think the Holy Spirit and the Father are the same person” (or something), an easy implication that could be received is because they are different persons. In fact, you should have qualified your statement with “because I don’t think the Holy Spirit is a person at all”. In countless instances, I see you trying to cram a bunch of points and statements into a small amount of space, and sometimes you simply use language that simply doesn’t get across. I could give many examples, but my frustration over this (and I imagine others have had this problem in this thread and others) simply requires me to point it out so you can try to realize that you need to simplify and spread out your language a bit more, and make qualifiers over statements that can be easily mistaken.
And no, I don’t agree with Hurtado that Jesus isn’t worshipped “as God”, just as you disagree with the vast majority of scholars (and Hurtado included) over the pre-existence of Jesus. Hurtado’s opinions aren’t a litmus test for reality. If he meant that Jesus isn’t worshipped in the sense that you might specifically worship the Father, perhaps he has a point. Otherwise, I’m aware of some two instances in the NT where it is stated that worship is due to God (such as Revelation 19:10, 22:9) and it is certainly never stated that anyone besides God in the NT deserves worship (except maybe when Satan tries to make Jesus worship him, although it is stated that whereas God is the God of all, Satan is the God of this world).
I must repeat to you not to respond to my points until my full response is posted.
I already quoted three statements of mine which deny that the Holy Spirit is a person. As I have pointed out, beaglelady understood me perfectly well, and the entire conversation she and I have been having has been focused specifically on her arguing the Holy Spirit is a person and me arguing that it isn’t.
Thanks, I didn’t think you did. But the important issue is that now you have realized that he has not been making the argument that you thought he was making. I expect that you’ll promptly start dropping Hurtado from your scholarly lineup.
Goodness, Jonathan. I keep saying that you should wait until my big post. I will only provide one more response to your recent points before I wait to compact everything in my next reply.
I already quoted three statements of mine which deny that the Holy Spirit is a person.
Oh yes, three scattered around dozens of your highly compacted and extremely long responses. I did not follow the conversation with beaglelady beyond my notice of her long quote of John 14. Do you really think I was going to keep recorded track of every midway sentence you’ve made in our discussion? Again, a large number of your words can be easily misunderstood given the ways you’ve made them. When your point doesn’t get across, you should try to qualify them instead of telling others that they are skim-reading you or whatever else nonsense. This is meant as constructive criticism to help you out, so I am going to assume you’ll take it as such in order to have more clear discourses in the future.
Thanks, I didn’t think you did. But the important issue is that now you have realized that he has not been making the argument that you thought he was making. I expect that you’ll promptly start dropping Hurtado from your scholarly lineup.
Sorry, but what Hurtado has established is just too good to drop him (and I actually never claimed Hurtado said Jesus is “worshipped as God”, so this could be taken as a strawman). Has he provided evidence Jesus was not worshipped “as God”? No. Has he provided evidence that Jesus was worshipped and given the name of YHWH and a bunch of other things? The answer is absolutely correct. That’s just too good. As you quoted Hurtado writing earlier, it depends on the inferences you make from these statements. A lot of what Hurtado historically argues is correct, but I think his inferences could do more work (if I have any place to criticize Hurtado). Anyways, I’ll get to reading that book now (I actually realized I have a good amount of free time this weekend) before I shank you.
And I’ll also repeat this:
Goodness, Jonathan. I keep saying that you should wait until my big post. I will only provide one more response to your recent points before I wait to compact everything in my next reply. Again, you should wait to respond to me once I’ve put everything on the table as it is really annoying for me to collect all the scattered previous comments otherwise. Seriously.
I for one freely admit I have only been skimming this Very Long Conversation. But the back-and-forths with Beaglelady about whether the Holy Spirit is a person are hard to miss. They’re not buried in 10-page responses but easily accessible in pithy comments which, I’m almost certain, are more numerous than three.
I’m just a fly on the wall, here but this seemed a bit beyond the pale.
I was not following the discussion of Jonathan vs beagelady at all besides noticing a single long quote of John 14. I thought the entire thing was about whether the Holy Spirit is distinct from the Father, rather than as a person. Since, Jonathan has stated that he thinks they are distinct even though the Spirit isn’t even a person, Jonathan made an analogy here between the ‘difference’ of him and his hand which I must talk about later. Nothing about what I wrote is pithy.
Do you think I’ve been making sense? I’m not done, but I see the Holy Spirit interceding for believers who don’t know how to pray, giving gifts (on an individual basis), leading Jesus into the desert for his temptation ordeal, and so forth. Not sure a personification of something or another could do all these things.
Why did you stop there? I agree that Jesus and God are different persons. All things in heaven and on earth were created through Jesus and for him. The full passage I quoted is:
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation,
16 for all things in heaven and on earth were created in him—all things, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions, whether principalities or powers—all things were created through him and for him.
17 He himself is before all things and all things are held together in him.
18 He is the head of the body, the church, as well as the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he himself may become first in all things.
19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in the Son
20 and through him to reconcile all things to himself by making peace through the blood of his cross—through him, whether things on earth or things in heaven.
Here’s a very brief summary of how Adam Christology applies to this passage in Philippians. It’s important to note that this interpretation is in opposition to an incarnational interpretation of Philippians 2.
“Some interpreters have understood Phil 2:6–7 in terms of Christ’s preexistence, making kenōsis virtually equivalent to INCARNATION. Others have applied an Adam CHRISTOLOGY, in which Christ, like ADAM, was in the form (i.e., image) of God, but did not repeat the mistake of Adam who, perhaps motivated by “selfishness or conceit” (v. 3a) and “looking to his own interests” (v. 4a), grasped at prerogatives reserved for God alone (see Gen 3:4–7). In this case, the kenōsis motif in Phil 2:7 dramatically expresses Christ’s choice to accept the status of a slave to others (compare vv. 3b and 4b).”, Mark D. Given, “Kenosis,” ed. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2006–2009), 491.
Here’s a larger explanation of Adam Christology in its broader context. Let me know if you need more.
It depends on how you define “high Christology”, since the term has been diluted considerably recently, so it now includes people who don’t believe Jesus is God or was worshiped as God by his earliest followers, and now simply means the belief that Jesus was “in some way divine”.
Do you mean God never reveals Himself as God, the all-knowing, all-powerful, eternal?
Yes, and I’m waiting for you to demonstrate this. But if you want to make claims about first century Jewish beliefs, you’re going to need evidence that they believed what you say. If you’re not going to make claims about first century Jewish beliefs, and you’re just talking about how you interpret the Bible, then I’ll respectfully disagree and we can end the discussion at this point.
I’m interested in understanding what Jesus and his disciples and earliest followers thought about God. I find it telling that in their preaching of the gospel (as recorded in Acts in particular), they missed the opportunity to tell people “We have good news, God came here, and unfortunately He died, but then He got better!”.
I think that’s a real sleight of hand, since the depiction of God as the creator of the heavens and the earth is specifically intended to demonstrate those supernal qualities, such that the citation of God as creator elsewhere in the Bible and other Jewish literature is almost used as a shorthand for the essential supernal qualities of God.
I didn’t stop there, I acknowledged the entire chapter; I cited “Colossians 1” in my response. I just didn’t quote all the verses you had quoted since I didn’t see the need to repeat a whole bunch of verses in my post, given we both knew the verses under discussion (and since I cited the entire chapter, not just some of the verses).
Yes, but not in the sense you think.
You are not addressing the point I made. The point I made is that Paul differentiates between God and Jesus, the way he differentiates between God and himself. Paul does not differentiate between “God the Father” and “God the Son”, as Trinitarians do. that would be a mere differentiation of persons. Paul differentiates between “God” and “Jesus” in the same manner that he differentiates between “God” and “I”. This demonstrates Paul does not believe Jesus is God.
And I have responded to this. I cited the entire chapter, not simply the six verses you quoted. I also pointed out that Jesus is identified as the image of God, not identified as God. The image of X is not X. The image of God is not God. The image of Adam is not Adam. Jesus is also the firstborn, which is difficult to do if you’ve always existed since the eternal past, and you were never really born.
I have not read most of the objections to the fact that Jesus is God, but have found @beaglelady comments interesting. One aspect that kenosis often misses is that Christ came as man - there are some interesting comments in the site “Eclectic Orthodoxy” (this is not promotional), and this quote from a discussion may be useful for this topic;
" The divine Son does not literally “change” into a human being–that would be mythology. In the Incarnation God does not divest himself of his divine nature; rather he assumes himself the human nature he has created and lives under its condition of finitude. Moreover, God had originally created human nature to be the proper receptacle for his enfleshment in the world, so it’s not as if in the Incarnation God is doing something alien to his nature or contrary to his original plans. As St Maximus the Confessor states: “For the Word of God, who is God, wills always and in everything to bring about the mystery of his embodiment”
But not “subsumed” as God, or as a member of a “Godhead”. Hurtado views these as post-apostolic developments.
Yes, and I have already acknowledged (several times), that he says this. But this does not make Jesus God, as Hurtado points out.
Because they are in contention. People like Korvexius have been contending them. That’s exactly why this thread is called “Does the Bible really say Jesus was God?”, because that has been the issue under contention in this thread. Korvexius has claimed that the Bible does say Jesus is God, and that his followers did believe and teach he was God, and so does beagelady. Korvexius has been arguing mainly for binitarian belief in the first century, whereas beaglelady has been arguing for Trinitarian belief in the first century.
If you understand these sacred authors believed Jesus was a pre-existent divine agent of creation co-eternal with God (the Father), ad if you believe that these views are binding on Christians, then why not hold those views? Why abandon those views for different views, such as the Trinity? Hurtado at least has an argument for this. He believes that Jesus’ self-revelation is not binding on Christians, and nor are the views of the sacred authors, so Christians are free to develop their own doctrinal views of Jesus and thus reach the Trinity independent of (and even in contradiction to), what Jesus said about himself.
That is debatable, which is why there are scholars debating it.
I already said this was Ehrman’s view. I even quoted Ehrman saying this. Why are you saying something that I have already said, as if it’s news to me?
Yes. But this “preexistence” trope includes figurative (non-ontological), pre-existence, such as the pre-existence of the Law and the pre-existence of the Tabernacle. It is a matter of careful interpretation as to whether pre-existence is ontological or not, in such passages as a pre-existent Enoch or Melchizedek. Hurtado points this out.
“It is sometimes difficult to determine whether in a given text the figure has an independent, heavenly existence or some other kind of prior reality in the mind or plan of God, so to speak. Nevertheless, the evidence shows that in ancient Jewish tradition there was a freedom, a tendency perhaps, to link particular characters of exceptional importance to the heavenly and pretemporal state.”, Larry W. Hurtado, “Pre-Existence,” ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin, and Daniel G. Reid, Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 744.
This issue is not as clear cut as many would prefer.
I believe he asserts it, but does not prove it. What he does acknowledge is that later Christians added the pre-existence belief to the exaltation belief.
We have evidence from Second Temple Judaism demonstrating that not all divine beings were thought to incarnate in human form and subsequently get exalted by God to new roles that He’d pre-planned from the beginning. On the issue of pre-existence, I’ll quote Hurtado.
“Pre-existence is attributed to Christ in a number of NT passages (e.g., Jn 1:1–18; Heb 1:1–3), including several Pauline passages, according to most scholars. But there is disagreement about which, if any, Pauline passages express the doctrine of the pre-existence of Christ, about the conceptual sources of this doctrine, and about what the expressions of Christ’s pre-existence meant.”, Larry W. Hurtado, “Pre-Existence,” ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin, and Daniel G. Reid, Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 743.
Note the part in bold. He goes on to say this.
“As well, Paul’s letters suggest what may be an allied concept of the precosmic divine predestination of believers (see Election and Predestination).”, Larry W. Hurtado, “Pre-Existence,” ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin, and Daniel G. Reid, Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 743.
We get into murky waters if we’re going to assert that believers in Christ pre-existed.
Again, I have already said that this is precisely what Hurtado argues. Earlier in this discussion I quoted him saying this.
This is not true. I have consistently drawn a distinction between Hurtado’s views and my views. If you looked on his blog you could even find me arguing with him about his views. I have never represented Hurtado’s views as anything other than what Hurtado believes. Given your acknowledgment that you have entered this discussion late and have not read all the previous posts, you should be particularly wary of making unsubstantiated claims about what I have and haven’t said.
I believe there’s some sleight of hand here. When you say “the early Christians”, which early Christians do you mean? But leaving that aside, yes Hurtado and probably most other scholars believe that “the early Christians” (for a specific value of “the early Christians”), believed that Jesus was actually a pre-existent, co-eternal divine being and agent of creation with God the Father who had incarnated, died, resurrected and then subsequently been exalted by God to a new role as the recipient of cultic worship by being subsumed into the worship already paid to God the Father. I have already made this clear myself. I even quoted several scholars representing this view.
I know. And? No one is saying anything different about Hurtado’s view.
Of course I don’t, and I have made this totally clear. That’s one of the reasons for this entire thread.
Can we just be clear about this, please? That is exactly the distinction I have made consistently. Please stop falsely misrepresenting me as saying Hurtado’s view is the same as mine, or as saying or implying that incarnational Christology is not standard in scholarship.
I don’t think it’s a problem, because I am not alone in this. I have already addressed the point about the consensus, and about “extraordinary evidence”, and since you didn’t respond to it I’ll let my comments stand.
Again you quote Erhman saying something I have already quoted Ehrman as saying. This is completely redundant. You keep quoting Erhman as if you’re disproving what I’ve said about Ehrman, when in fact you’re quoting the same arguments by Ehrman as I have quoted from Ehrman. You are just repeating what I have already said about his views.
He has gone beyond this. He has argued specifically that despite believing this, the earliest Christians did not worship Jesus as God. Instead, they differentiated him from God, despite including him in worship previously reserved for God.
As Hurtado points out, this was not a difficulty for the first century Christians since they did not worship Jesus as God. Despite their eventual belief (according to Hurtado), that Jesus was a pre-existent being who had been the agent of creation, then later incarnated, and still later been exalted by God, they did not believe Jesus was God. consequently, there was no tension in their beliefs; there was still only one God, the Father. It was only when Jesus came to be understood as God, that the logical contradiction arose which challenges monotheism.
I have already cited Hurtdao saying that Christians later decided they had to figure out how Jesus could be divine given that God had told them to worship Jesus. It was one of the points I made to Korvexius. He believed they worshiped Jesus because they believed he was divine, whereas I pointed out that Hurtado says they came to believe he was divine because God had told them to worship him.
Again you are not saying anything I have not already cited Hurtado as saying.
[quote=“Vouthon, post:312, topic:37535”]
We are agreed inasmuch as Hurtado does not believe the earliest Christians factored ontological categories into their ruminations upon the relationship between Jesus and God the Father, although he did state:[/quote]
I think they did factor some ontological categories into their understanding of Jesus, because they used them. What they didn’t do, was use ontological categories which defined Jesus as God.
Yes I do. But note again what Hurtado says after this (you cut it off previously, I quoted it in full, and you have cut it off again); “But it seems to me that the question involves an inferential step beyond simply noting what the NT texts say”. In my view we need to ask what it meant for them to place Jesus in the ontological category of “human”, which to the first century Jews was a category incompatible with “God”.
I’ll finish with a few points.
You didn’t respond to me pointing out that you twice quoted Hurtado while omitting his important qualification of his own words (typically the last sentence in his statement).
In response to my statement that “The earliest Christians did not worship him as God”, you claimed “This is simply not true”, and then (incredibly), cited Hurtado. It seems that you (like Korvexius), simply did not know Hurtado’s actual position on this, and you (like Korvexius), misread Hurtado as making the case that the earliest Christians worshiped Jesus as God. As I have demonstrated in a direct quotation from Hurtado, the earliest Christians did not worship Jesus as God (you didn’t respond to this quotation). This speaks directly to the topic of this thread; “Does the Bible really say Jesus was God?”. The answer, according to the evidence in the New Testament itself, is “No”. This is why the “emerging consensus” has now formed around a much weaker claim.
You didn’t respond to the point I made about Hurtado’s understanding of Jesus as divine. As I pointed out, Hurtado does not believe the early Christians saw Jesus as divine in an ontological sense, but in a relational and transactional sense. This is why Hurtado says that Jesus is functionally divine, and says that it is not proper to say the New Testament views Jesus as ontologically divine.
Um, no. I said (primarily–that is, first and mainly) that God primarily reveals himself relationally.
Are you suggesting that Genesis 1:1 was the first and earliest writing about the Jewish God?
That will take a lot of work that I don’t have the time and energy for right now, but as I come across stuff I’ll bring it up.
I guess if you want to take three or four verses that say something about God and overwhelm all the others so you make the three or four the “main ones” I guess you can do that (heck, “we” have done that for centuries), but I’m pretty sure first-century Jews were not doing that. But again, for another time.
And yet neither did they say, hey! God is right here right now and all-powerful so watch yourselves! Even to pagans, Paul references God’s relational nature.
Ok well even if He does, how does that actually affect the issue at hand? The issue at hand is whether or not first century Jews would be perfectly willing to suggest that God somehow became non-omnipotent, non-omniscient, and non-omnipresent, while still being God.
Not at all. I’ve argued that it was written during the Babylonian exile, well after many other passages of Scripture.
I don’t think there are only three or four verses which say something about God. I think there are many verses which speak of His omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. Additionally, there are plenty of passages in the Second Temple Period literature which indicate God was thought of in these terms.
I don’t see how that’s relevant to my point. But since you’re talking about how Paul preached to pagans, let’s see how he did it.
Acts 17:
24 The God who made the world and everything in it, who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by human hands,
25 nor is he served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives life and breath and everything to everyone.
What an opening; he gets right to the point about God’s power and sovereignty over the universe, how He needs nothing, and how He sustains everything. No surprise there.
Because God can be human and still “himself” if his primary (i.e., most relevant characteristics) are not the “omnis.”
That’s what I figured. So what is the relevance of Genesis 1:1 when it comes to God’s primary self-revelation? I think you look to the patriarchs for that…
You mentioned “sleight of hand” before. Power, sovereignty, self-sufficiency–sure. But he didn’t describe God using the “omnis.”
In fact, if you start with the “omnis” and extrapolate to their logical conclusion, you have the ineffable, unreachable, immutable Deity…one who cannot be known, one who never changes, one who is static, who never “changes his mind,” etc. And this is where many end up in their understanding of God.