Holy smoke man, that's the nature of the Trinity, God expresses himself in three different forms.It doesn't and if you read the subsequent verses, you'll see it's saying he's similar, in his behavior, to God.
You are twisting yourself into a pretzel to avoid reading the words as they are clearly written. The earliest Christian community at the time Paul was writing believed Christ was God in human form, according to the manuscript evidence.It is.
Yes, which was common. Jesusater Christians competed with other "prophets" who claimed to be godly.
(Christ) Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
It's the other way around. You are twisting like a pretzel to reinterpret clearly written words to mean something different.I think you're seeing what you want to see.
You didn't even know about Philippians until this thread, and now you're an expert on it? It seems like you didn't even know Paul knew the eyewitnesses Peter, James, John.
The bottom line is this:
any belief you had that up until the late first century Christians just thought Jesus was just a human with good teachings is categorically wrong based on the manuscript evidence.
