prompt

First of all, let me say that I am not doing theodicy. I’m not doing theodicy. I don’t agree with theodicy as a concept or a legitimate or a helpful endeavor. That said, the common understanding is that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. I’m thinking of Pascal who said, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God of the philosophers. Now, it seems to me that this concept of God as omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent is a rather dry, almost mathematical concept and does not strike me as something that feels or sounds like the scriptures. Now, I’m sure that there are people who have developed proof texts for this concept, but especially when I read the Old Testament, I don’t see anywhere where it says God is omnipotent. I see people that are rejoicing and that are ascribing all these great adjectives to God. And I see people throughout the whole emotional spectrum, if I can use my own engagement as well as the testimony of others, because I don’t think that I’m in a position to make a definitive or declaratory assessment of the Psalms. And surely I’m not the first person to have this thought. And moreover, I’m sure that even someone like Aquinas, with all of his technical scaffolding, would have qualifiers and nuance that would prevent God from being reduced to a mathematical formula. And so I don’t want to get into theodicy, I don’t want to get into process theology or open theism. Those are all just diversions. But what can we say about the etymology, not the etymology, but the, you know, where is this idea of omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, where does it come from? At best it seems like a fragment of a larger system that has been taken out of its context. And it doesn’t feel like something that one could love, or that is love, or that even mentions the Trinity, for example.