Passage

Revelation 1.8

Book: Revelation · NASB95

Verse

"'I am the Alpha and the Omega,' says the Lord God, 'who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.'" (Revelation 1:8, NASB95)

Immediate context (±2 verses)

NASB95 (NASB95)

"6. and He has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father, to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. 7. Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. So it is to be. Amen."

"8. 'I am the Alpha and the Omega,' says the Lord God, 'who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.'"

"9. I, John, your brother and fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance which are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. 10. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet," (Revelation 1:6-10, NASB95)

Setting

Speaker: ambiguous and theologically loaded. The verse begins "I am the Alpha and the Omega", but who is the I? Two possibilities:
The Lord God (Father), legei kyrios ho theos, "says the Lord God." Most natural reading; Father speaking.
Christ Himself, given Revelation 22:13 (clearly Christ: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end") and the parallel structure of 1:7's "He is coming" (Christ's parousia), some scholars read 1:8 as Christ speaking. Most conservative scholarship reads 1:8 as the Father, while noting that the same titles are also given to Christ explicitly in 22:13, making the verse functionally Trinitarian.
Audience: John of Patmos (the Apostle traditionally), receiving the Apocalypse for transmission to the seven churches (Revelation 1:4, 11).
Location: John on the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea, exiled there for "the word of God and the testimony of Jesus" (1:9).
Time period: traditionally late first century, c. AD 90-96 during the persecution under Domitian. Some scholars argue for an earlier date (mid-60s under Nero); the late date remains the majority position.

Theological reading

The verse is one of the densest Christological / theological-proper statements in the NT, nearly every phrase is a divine title:

"I am the Alpha and the Omega", egō eimi to alpha kai to ō. Alpha (A, Α) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet; Omega (Ω) is the last. The phrase means "I am the first and the last, the beginning and the end of all things." This title:

Echoes Isaiah 41:4 ("I, the LORD, am the first, and with the last I am He"); 44:6 ("I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides Me"); 48:12 ("I am He, I am the first, I am also the last").
Is applied to Christ explicitly in Revelation 22:13: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end", Jesus speaking.
The transfer of the YHWH-title from Father to Son is one of the strongest Christological assertions in Revelation.

"Says the Lord God", legei kyrios ho theos. The double divine title, kyrios (LXX-rendering of YHWH) + theos (God), pulls together the deepest OT divine vocabulary.
"Who is and who was and who is to come", ho ōn kai ho ēn kai ho erchomenos. A Greek paraphrase of the divine name YHWH (from hayah, "to be"; see H1961 - hayah). The threefold formula:

Ho ōn, "the One who is" (present), directly echoes the LXX of Exodus 3:14, egō eimi ho ōn.
Ho ēn, "the One who was" (imperfect, eternal past).
Ho erchomenos, "the One coming" (the parousia / second coming, future). The formula appears 4 times in Revelation (1:4, 1:8, 4:8, 11:17, slightly varied), structuring the whole apocalypse.

"The Almighty", ho pantokratōr. See G3841 - pantokrator. The LXX rendering of YHWH Tzeva'ot / El Shaddai, the title of universal sovereignty.

The verse layers four maximally-loaded divine titles in one short sentence. Whether read of Father or Son (or as Trinitarian-functional), it asserts comprehensive deity of the speaker.

Christological argument

The decisive argument for Christ's deity from Revelation: in 1:8 kyrios ho theos pantokratōr uses the divine titles, and in 22:13 the same titles are explicitly applied to Christ:

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." (Revelation 22:13, NASB95, context makes this Jesus speaking)

"And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." (22:12-13)

The very titles applied to kyrios ho theos pantokratōr in 1:8 are claimed by Jesus in 22:13. Either Jesus blasphemes by claiming the Father's titles (impossible per orthodox Christology) or He shares them, i.e., He is fully divine.

Patristic. Athanasius (Discourses Against the Arians III.4, c. AD 358) cites the Alpha-Omega formula as a deity-of-Christ proof; Cyril of Alexandria develops the same. The Eastern Orthodox iconography of Christos Pantokrator takes Revelation 1:8 plus the Christological titles of the gospel and Pauline corpus as the iconographic warrant: Christ is the all-ruling Lord of the universe.

Reformation. Calvin (Harmony of the Last Books of the Bible / Revelation commentary): the verse "vindicates the eternal divinity of Christ." The Westminster Confession 8 cites Revelation 1:8 / 22:13 alongside John 1.1 / Colossians 2.9 / Titus 2.13 to ground Christ's full deity.

Modern conservative. Greg Beale (Revelation NIGTC, 1999) and Richard Bauckham (The Theology of the Book of Revelation, 1993; The Climax of Prophecy, 1993) develop the pantokrator / Alpha-Omega Christology of Revelation as a major structural argument for Trinitarian theology. Leon Morris (Revelation TNTC, 1987) and Robert Mounce (Revelation NICNT, 1997) sustain the same.

Key words

G3841 - pantokrator, pantokratōr (Almighty), the LXX rendering of YHWH Tzeva'ot
G2962 - kyrios, kyrios (Lord), the LXX rendering of YHWH
G2316 - theos, theos (God)
H1961 - hayah, Hebrew root behind the ho ōn / ēn / erchomenos formula
H3068 - YHWH, the divine name underlying the titles