I don’t know why, but the “omnis” of God have always held a sort of fascination for me1. I think everybody has heard of three of them: omnipotence (all-powerful), omniscience (all-knowing), and omnipresence (everywhere-present). A couple years ago I stumbled upon omnibenevolence (all-good).
I’ve been reading the book of Job and got a little mind-boggled this morning and went looking for context and background to help me understand what I was reading. I started with Wikipedia, not because I think it’s a really good resource for understanding the scriptures, but just because it’s as good a place as any to start. Lo and behold, in the Wikipedia article on the Book of Job, I came across two “omnis” I had never heard before: omnisapience (all-wise), and omniliberty (all-sovereign, or all-free—able to do whatever he pleases), though I can’t seem to find omniliberty anywhere else on the Internet, and wonder if whoever added it to Wikipedia just made it up2.
Are there other “omnis” I’ve never heard of? Can anybody recall any others I haven’t listed here? Is it possible that all God’s attributes can be expressed as “omnis”? 
- I guess, really, the attributes of God in general have always fascinated me. I started, but never finished, reading a book called What is God?: An Investigation into the Perfections of God’s Nature, a survey of all God’s attributes—immanence, transcendence, aseity, etc. Fascinating stuff. I should pick that book up again. [↩]
- See this Google search. Interestingly, this post is already the number one result after having been published a little under two hours ago! Virtually all other results are copies/quotes of the Book of Job Wikipedia article. [↩]
God is certainly omnisapient, but I’m not sure “omniliberty” is a word. The second part of the word (liberty) isn’t latin, so I’m pretty sure it’s made-up.
I did a search, and I came up with “omnitemporal”, which describes God as timeless.
Philosophers came up with the omnis, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent. . . God does not reveal Himself that way in the Bible. The omnis are Greek, philosophical ideas that may or may not fit with God’s true nature. To give you an example, omnipresent asserts that God is everywhere and in everything. This is really eastern pantheism. God’s awareness or knowledge may extend to all things, but He isn’t in all things. He has no presence in evil. He put Himself into creation, yet He is independent of creation.
Omnipotent is similar. Once God created, He works within time and the laws that He created to organize the world. In a sense, He may have limited himself. Jesus limited Himself even more when He became a man. God appears to limit Himself to logic. He does not do things that are contradictory or irrational. He purposefully limits His power.
God also seems to value freedom more than we imagine. We can’t have true freedom without the possibility of making a bad choice. If we were only free to make good choices, we would be programed, not free. He allows us the freedom to rebel, error and sin. It can have dreadful consequences. A friend of mine wrote a book called, “The God who Risks.” Freedom is risky business. God is reluctant to snuff us out because we sin. If “good” means, one does not allow any evil to exist. Well, there would be no humans on the planet, me or you. Moses asked God who He was. He responded, “Slow to anger and quick to compassion.” That’s how He rolls.
I appreciate that for some people this gets personal. They may have been powerless and abused by someone. They want to know why God didn’t intervene? This is hard. Remember, if God doesn’t exist, this exploitative behavior is normal. Jesus truly understands. He lived a pure life; a life without sin or fault. His own creatures spit on Him, humiliated, assaulted, scourged, tortured, nailed, crucified and speared Him in the side. I think He can empathize with what it is like to fall into the hands of evil men.
I thought there were more words than that. Doug Bachelor of amazing facts in his 10 commandments series of 14 shows. The second show towards the end mentions a whole lot of omnis. His a very well educated on this. Give it a try.