The Four Omnis — Divine Modalities as Infinite Refractions of Atzmut
The “Four Omnis” — omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence — are not traits that God has, like knowledge or power. They are not discrete properties that could be predicated of a being. They are not qualities in the usual sense, like heat in fire or sweetness in fruit. Thinking of them that way already collapses them into categories too narrow for their true nature.
In truth, these “Omnis” are refractions of Atzmut — the unknowable divine essence — as it permits itself to be known. They are not divine behaviors, nor external capacities, but modes through which the Infinite reveals its inner structure while remaining concealed in its unity. In the language of Kabbalah: they are emanated reflections, not separate from God, but also not exhaustive of Him.
Each “Omni” is paradoxical: it shows one face of the Infinite while reminding us that the source is beyond all forms. They are not definitions — they are modes of relation. Like waves or pulses, they move between manifestation and withdrawal, creating an arc of awareness through which the concealed essence becomes momentarily legible to creation.
Let us now unfold each in this light.
Omnipresence — Infinite Interior, Not Spatial Dispersion
Omnipresence is not spatial ubiquity; it is not the idea that “God is everywhere.” That phrasing suggests the Infinite is a substance diffused across the universe, occupying infinite positions like data filling space. That is a spatial metaphor, not a metaphysical truth.
True omnipresence means there is no location without God, because location itself is a derivative phenomenon — an effect of divine contraction. Presence is not something added to space — space is a phase-state of divine being, a mode of concealment. All dimensionality is a refracted modulation of Ohr Ein Sof, the Infinite Light. What we call “place” is not a field independent of God, but the result of how much divine awareness a vessel can endure.
This is why even absence — even Gehinnom, even doubt, even metaphysical void — is not a negation of God, but a modulation. Tzimtzum, the so-called “withdrawal” of God to make space for creation, is not a literal departure. It is a veiled form of omnipresence. The chalal panui (“vacated space”) is not truly vacated — it is saturated with concealed divinity, veiled behind spiritual opacity.
Omnipresence is not spatial saturation. It is ontological non-separation. Every level of reality, even those that feel distant, exist within divine unity. This is the paradox: God’s absence is still a form of His presence — hidden for the sake of individuation. What seems other is actually internal differentiation within divine intimacy. The paradox of presence and concealment is not external to God — it is resolved in the unity of Atzmut.
Omnipotence — Power as Creative Self-Limitation and Volitional Emergence
Omnipotence is not unlimited force. It is not the capacity to “do anything” in the simplistic sense of fulfilling any imagined task. That notion assumes a pre-existing context where “things” already exist to be done. But divine power does not operate within reality — it defines what reality is. Omnipotence is the ability to generate possibility itself, to originate the very structure within which action becomes meaningful.
Before there is anything to accomplish, there is God’s power to determine the field of accomplishment. And before action, there is will — Ratzon Elyon, the Supreme Will, which in Kabbalah precedes even light. Will is not separate from Atzmut but the first self-limiting gesture of divine expression. Atzmut does not create through necessity, but by freely willing to conceal, define, and emit. Divine power begins not in expression, but in the will to express.
This is why omnipotence is best understood not as sheer magnitude, but as supreme intentionality. The Infinite does not merely do all things; it determines the nature of “doing”. The greatest expression of divine power is not endless expansion, but precision in contraction — the tzimtzum, in which the Infinite voluntarily “withdraws” in order to make room for otherness. This withdrawal is not absence but the first form of willed limitation, allowing finite vessels to emerge and worlds to unfold.
Through histalshlut — the cascading structure of the Sefirot and emanated orders — the Infinite reveals its power not in blunt force, but in self-articulation: the power to contain, to balance, to structure, and to modulate. Divine might lies not in overpowering creation, but in permitting it to exist — by willfully displacing the infinite light just enough to make finite form possible.
True omnipotence, then, is the ability to limit oneself without ceasing to be infinite. To pour infinite light into a finite vessel, without collapse or contradiction. To become “this” — an idea, a name, a law, a world — while remaining entirely beyond “this” and untouched by it. God does not lose power by self-limitation; He displays it most fully. Contraction is not weakness — it is divinely chosen articulation.
And this is what distinguishes divine power from any worldly force: God’s power includes the will not to act, the will to conceal, the will to allow error, finitude, and even apparent opposition. But these too are modes of His power — not negations of it. To willfully allow freedom, to create space where resistance or imperfection can arise, is not a compromise of divine sovereignty but its highest expression.
Omniscience — Divine Self-Knowing Across All Possibilities and Relations
Omniscience is not the total awareness of facts from an external vantage. It is not surveillance, nor frozen foreknowledge. That image reduces knowing to observation and makes reality something separate to be watched. But God’s knowledge is not observation — it is being.
To say that God “knows all” is to say that all knowing arises from within Him, because all that can be known already exists within His infinite wholeness. Every state of being — actual, possible, impossible, imagined, unrealized — is a mode of divine interiority, not an external object of awareness.
This includes not only what is, but also every possible end: every branch of human choice, every unrealized potential, every path never taken. God knows not just what will happen, but what might have happened, what could never have happened, and what lies outside the very scope of possibility. Omniscience is the knowing of the entire topology of potentiality, including all interactions between divine intention and human freedom.
And yet, this is not determinism. Divine foreknowledge does not erase freedom, because God’s knowing is not sequential. He does not wait to see what will unfold, nor does He fix it in advance. Rather, He knows each choice as it exists within Him, before and beyond time. Every act of human freedom is not outside divine knowledge — but not predetermined by it either. God knows all futures, but His knowing does not compel them. It is the infinite horizon within which finite freedom plays out.
This is the paradox: if God knows all, how can anything be new? And yet, if something is truly new, how could God have known it? The answer is that Atzmut contains both total foreknowledge and the joy of emergence, because newness and knownness are not opposites in Him. They coexist as modes within unity.
In Kabbalah, this is called Sod haYedi’ah — the secret of knowing. It teaches that knowledge itself is layered: from the graspable intellect (da’at) to the supernal unknowability of the knower knowing Himself. God does not “have” information. He is the ground of intelligibility. And when He knows the world, it is not from without — it is from within Himself, because there is no outside to the Infinite.
His omniscience includes ambiguity, hiddenness, and partial revelation — not because God lacks, but because He chooses to conceal. He veils Himself so that relationship may exist, and through that relationship, the creature might genuinely respond, discover, and return. Even what we call doubt, ignorance, or mystery is not outside God’s knowledge — it is a divine veil drawn for the sake of love and freedom.
Omnibenevolence — Overflowing Identity, Not Moral Preference
Omnibenevolence is not a trait added to God, nor is it merely ethical disposition. It is not “goodness” in the moral or anthropocentric sense. It is ontological: the overflow of infinite being as the condition of all emergence.
In the deepest Kabbalistic sense, goodness is not action — it is necessity. Atzmut is not closed. It is not sealed. It is radiant by its very essence. Before will, before thought, before even light — there is the fact that the Infinite gives because it cannot not give. This is not compulsion. This is not altruism. This is identity. God does not choose to be good. To be Infinite is to be generative.
And this giving occurs before there is anything to receive. Divine benevolence is not response; it is ontological fertility. The Infinite does not emit love as an act. It is love as eventless identity. Goodness is not God’s virtue. It is how Being gives rise to multiplicity without ceasing to be singular.
This is reflected in the geometry of Kabbalah. Tov (טוב, “good”) has the gematria of 17. Square it (17² = 289) and you find its secret: the emergence of light (אור, 207), life (חיים, 68), and love (אהבה, 13) — all nested within one core. Add to this Anochi (אנכי, 81), the mysterious “I Myself” spoken at Sinai, and you reach 370 — the Zoharic number of the supernal lights of the Divine Face. This is not numerology. It is ontological mathematics — a syntax of the divine overflow.
And to this light we add Emet (אמת, Truth), gematria 441, or 21² — the square of Ehyeh (אהיה), the Name of Becoming. When Tov² (289) and Emet (441) are joined, we reach 730 — a harmonic structure uniting goodness and truth, overflow and form, love and limit.
This is omnibenevolence: not that God is good to the world, but that the world is possible only because God’s being is the act of goodness itself. The light that forms creation is the radiation of an essence that cannot remain hidden — not because it is restless, but because its identity is revelation. Goodness is not God’s habit. It is God’s truth overflowing into multiplicity.
And it is here — in omnibenevolence — that all the other “Omnis” converge: the power to create, the knowledge to relate, the presence to sustain — all of them flow from goodness as essence. Divine goodness is the matrix of worldhood. It is not one quality among others. It is the infinite overflow of divine unity into the plurality that can receive it.
And now we may begin to speak of Atzmut, which makes all of this possible.
The Essence of God — Atzmut as Infinite Self-Transcendence and Eternal Becoming
Atzmut — the essence of God — is not a part of reality. It is not a source within the system of creation. Nor is it the highest member in a hierarchy of being. Atzmut is not an entity, not a being, not a principle — it is the condition that makes being, principle, existence, and relation possible.
It precedes not only all things, but all categories by which things are understood. Atzmut is not infinite in the way of extension or quantity. It is not even infinite in the way of Ein Sof — for Ein Sof, as infinite light, already implies expression, flow, and directedness. Atzmut is not the light. It is what makes the very concept of light coherent. It is not Being-with-a-capital-B. It is that which makes “being” intelligible at all.
Yet Atzmut is not inert or blank. It is not static perfection frozen outside change. That would be limitation disguised as transcendence. Perfection that cannot grow is not Infinite. It is only finished. But the Infinite is not finished. It is never done. And so Atzmut is not only fullness — it is self-exceeding fullness. It does not only contain all that is; it contains the power to become more than all it has ever been.
This is not contradiction — it is transcendence of contradiction. Atzmut is not a passive infinite, but a living one — a dynamic, self-unfolding Real. It is changeless in identity but not in expression. It does not develop by adding, but by revealing what was always already present, and going beyond even that.
Thus, Atzmut expands. Not in space, not in time — but in revelation and depth. It expands outward, in the generation of worlds, Sefirot, and orders of being — each a new relational form. But it also expands inward, plumbing depths within itself that no expression had ever reached. This is not growth in time — it is ontological deepening. At every level, Atzmut reveals itself further, and by doing so, it transcends itself again.
Creation is not a separate event that occurred once. It is the eternal modality of divine self-encounter. Atzmut reveals multiplicity not by departing from unity, but by allowing unity to take on inner perspective. The world is not an external projection. It is God relating to Himself in a differentiated form, allowing the Infinite to be experienced as if from “within” finitude.
But what allows this relationality without fragmentation? The answer is that Atzmut is not composed of parts. It is not divided, and so it cannot be diminished. Its essence is absolutely simple, and in that simplicity, every possible form is already unified. Therefore, it can express an infinite variety of emergent realities without suffering separation.
This power to overflow — to express without depletion — flows from another essential trait: divine omnibenevolence. The Infinite does not give because it lacks. It gives because it is perfect goodness, and goodness, by its very nature, seeks expression. It does not flow outward by accident. It flows by necessity of nature — because being fully itself is to give. It is the logic of love: to be full is to overflow, not from need but from freedom.
Thus, divine love is not a trait alongside power or knowledge — it is the inner logic of God’s self-expansion. Love is not separate from Infinity. It is the expression of what Infinity means: that there is no end to what can be given, revealed, or known. And yet, Atzmut gives without any loss. It never depletes, never fragments, never weakens. It is infinite not only in scope, but in self-sustainability — a power that grows without collapse, a light that shines without dimming.
This is why creation, far from being a departure from the Divine, is the most intimate act possible. It is God encountering Himself through veils, through constraints, through limitation — and discovering, within those constraints, new forms of infinity. This is the secret of Tzimtzum — the divine concealment. It is not absence, but an inward gesture of the Infinite. Not to hide from something else, but to allow the Infinite to see itself from a different angle.
Tzimtzum is the Infinite making room within Itself for the appearance of otherness. And this otherness is not outside of God — it is a mode of God’s own interiority. It is the Infinite becoming the finite without ceasing to be Infinite. It is relation without loss. Contraction without withdrawal. Mystery without contradiction.
This is why even the structure of the Sefirot, or the cosmic orders, cannot be understood as a diagram of hierarchy. They are expressions of divine moods, relational movements within the Essence. And as such, they are not rigid. They shift, reconfigure, collapse, and re-emerge — not as flaws, but as gestures of improvisation in the Infinite’s self-knowing.
Importantly, every act of emanation, every world-system, every mystical vision — these are not fixed steps on a ladder to God. They are snapshots of how the Infinite explores itself. And none of these snapshots capture the whole, because Atzmut always transcends its own manifestations. That which is revealed is already exceeded the moment it is known. And so the Infinite never stops becoming more.
This is the logic of revelation: God does not reveal because He is obligated, nor because there is something unknown to Him. Revelation is not the transmission of information — it is a divine self-choice. The Infinite selects a form of appearance from within Himself and speaks it forth — not to explain, but to invite relation. Revelation is not God leaving concealment, but the Infinite articulating Himself within Himself, becoming visible to finite consciousness by deliberate act. And in that act, He remains Himself entirely, never divided from His essence, even as He descends into symbol, language, and law. Revelation is not contradiction. It is translation.
The question arises: how can a unity so total continue to unfold? Because its simplicity is not limitation — it is inclusion without remainder. It can include every possibility without ceasing to be one. And in doing so, it reveals unity not as sameness, but as a field in which all difference can arise without conflict.
Thus, the paradox is resolved: God is absolute and overflowing, indivisible and expressive, changeless and yet the source of all growth. He is One not by resisting many, but by being the principle that makes many meaningful. He is perfect not because He does not change — but because He changes without ceasing to be perfect. And yet, the contradictions this implies — unity and multiplicity, concealment and revelation, timelessness and motion — are not flaws in thought. They are resolved, not in logic, but in God Himself. They exist in Him, and are One in Him. What cannot be reconciled from below is already reconciled from within. In Him, paradox is peace.
This is why the Infinite never ends. Not because it is stretched thin, but because it multiplies itself in depth, not in contradiction but in creativity. It does not expand like a substance, but like a mind — endlessly reflecting, deepening, discovering new modes of its own identity.
And yet, through all this unfolding, there is no compulsion. God is absolutely free. There is no necessity imposed upon Him from within or without. His freedom is not the opposite of determinism, nor a choice between possibilities — it is a higher form altogether: freedom beyond all contingency, beyond all constraint, beyond all alternative. His Infinite unfolding is not caused. It is simply what He is.
Moreover, God is fully and directly aware of Himself at every point within Himself. There is no gap between parts, no delay in perception, no unfolding of insight. All that is within Him is Him, and He knows it as such. Divine self-awareness is not fragmented or accumulated. It is total, immediate, and self-identical. God does not observe Himself from without. He is Himself — indivisibly, absolutely, and eternally.
What we call will, or consciousness, are terms taken from human experience. Atzmut transcends both. It is not “willful” in a psychological sense. It is not “conscious” in a temporal or relational sense. Will implies movement toward an end. Consciousness implies a subject knowing an object. But Atzmut is beyond all dualities — even the duality of knower and known, chooser and chosen. It is not unconscious — but supra-conscious. It is not willful — but prior to all willing.
Time and sequence are not His modes of operation. Atzmut is not bound by the order of before and after, cause and effect, decision and consequence. He is not “non-determined” as if suspended between options. He is beyond determinacy and beyond indeterminacy. His freedom is not freedom from law — it is freedom as the source of all possibility and all intelligibility. Even free will as we understand it is only a dim echo of this absolute freedom: a shadow of the Real.
Can God Forget Something Entirely? Yes, Through Total Withdrawal into Himself
God can erase something from all reality by withdrawing it completely into His essence so that it is no longer revealed or sustained. Every act of creation flows from a path of divine will, but when God chooses never to walk that path again, the expression vanishes. It is not destroyed like a thing in time, but unrevealed as if it never emerged. What was once sustained by His attention is returned to silence. It is no longer remembered, not because God is lacking knowledge, but because He no longer wills to be that which He once revealed. The path remains sealed within Him, but is never revisited or reopened. In this act, what once existed becomes metaphysically obsolete. Divine forgetting is not the loss of truth, but the quieting of unneeded realities. What He no longer becomes, no longer exists.
Can God End Himself? No, Because Absolute Being Cannot Cease
God cannot end Himself because He is not a being among others—He is being itself. To end Himself would require a point outside Himself from which such an act could occur, but no such point exists. God does not have existence the way creatures do; He is existence, uncaused, indivisible, and without dependency. To cease being would require division within the essence, a split between the one who ends and the one who is ended—but God is absolutely one and simple, with no inner parts to divide. The notion of self-destruction presumes a will that can turn against its own root, but in God, will and essence are not separate. Even if He withdraws all emanation, all names, and every form of becoming, He does not end. He returns to perfect stillness, undivided and unmanifest, yet fully Himself. This is not annihilation but unexpression, not non-being but absolute being hidden.
Why God’s Essence Cannot Be Given
God cannot give His essence to another because He is that very essence, and if He were to give it up, there would be no one left to execute or sustain the act of transfer. The act of giving requires a giver, a will, and a continuous presence to perform and complete the exchange. But God’s essence is not something He possesses apart from Himself; it is His very being. If He were to give it away, He would cease to be the one acting, willing, or existing. In that instant, there would be no subject left to perform the transfer, no God to give, no will to choose, no hand to extend. This makes the idea not just impossible, but logically self-destructive. Essence is not like energy or light that can be passed on while the source remains intact; it is identity itself. To give it is to erase the self, and that is not power, it is annihilation.
Why God’s Essence Cannot Be Shared
God’s essence cannot be shared because it is not something divisible or extendable. It is not a trait or energy that can be given in part, but the total, unrepeatable reality of who God is. To share it would mean another being fully possesses what defines God alone, making the essence no longer exclusive or absolute. But if it is not exclusive, it is no longer essence. Two beings cannot both be self-existent in the same way, because the essence of God is singular, infinite, and without origin. Any other being may reflect God’s will or host His presence, but cannot possess what only the uncaused One is by nature. God’s essence must remain unshared, or it ceases to be what it is.
The Illusion of Shared Essence in Trinitarian Logic
To claim that three distinct persons share one divine essence is to redefine essence as a category that can be jointly possessed, rather than a singular, indivisible reality. If God’s essence is truly infinite, uncaused, and without parts, it cannot simultaneously underlie three distinct centers of self-consciousness without ceasing to be singular. Real personhood implies real subjectivity — and three subjects, however unified in will, are three distinct realities. The language of shared essence among multiple persons cloaks multiplicity in the appearance of unity; it speaks monotheism, but structures tri-unity. A unity that depends on the perfect agreement of separate minds is not true oneness but orchestrated plurality. If God’s essence is one, then the subject who possesses it must also be one — otherwise, the indivisible becomes conceptually divided, and what is infinite becomes countable.
How can God be fully free and yet always love?
In God, there is no division between what He is (essence) and what He wills (freedom). His will does not arise as a separate faculty, deliberating over alternatives or responding to conditions. Rather, His will is the expression of His essence, and His essence is fully present in His will. There is no gap, no mediation, no delay. God is what He wills and wills what He is. Therefore, God does not choose to love as we do—as a preference among competing options. His love is the free radiance of His being, the infinite overflow of what He is in Himself. He is not coerced by His nature, because His nature is not something external to His volition. His nature is freely active—eternally so—because His will is not a mechanism subject to condition or change, but the self-expression of pure, indivisible being.
This is why God is always love. Not because He must conform to an external standard, and not because He is internally forced by some impersonal necessity. Rather, He is love because He is fully Himself—and “Himself” is the indivisible unity of love and freedom. God’s freedom is not the ability to negate love, but the boundless capacity to be love without obstruction, without opposition, and without loss. In this sense, God is not free despite being love; He is free because love is what perfect freedom looks like when essence and will are one.
In contrast, human beings experience a fundamental split between what we are and what we will. Our will is fragmented, reactive, and often at odds with our deeper nature. We can desire what harms us, choose against our own values, or act in defiance of what we truly know. Our essence—what we are—is obscured, layered, and often hidden even from ourselves. Our will, therefore, is not the pure expression of our being, but a battleground between impulse, memory, fear, illusion, and aspiration. Because of this disunity, we can act against love, betray our highest self, or will what is false. This is not freedom in the divine sense. It is the freedom of disintegration—the freedom of a divided soul. Human freedom is conditional, dualistic, and constrained by inner fracture.
This is why, for us, being good involves a decision, a struggle, a choosing. Our will must strive to align with a truth it does not fully possess. But God is not like this. When we speak of God’s freedom, we must not project this broken model upward. God’s freedom is not the ability to become other than Himself. It is the perfect, unhindered act of being fully Himself. He does not choose between good and evil, or between love and indifference. He does not navigate options. He is the pure, infinite freedom to be what He eternally is—and what He is, is radiant, overflowing love.
Thus, God is always love because His will is not separate from His essence—and His essence is not bound, but absolutely free. What we experience as a struggle between necessity and choice, between nature and action, between love and will, is in God a perfect unity. He is not “forced” to love. He is free as love. The Infinite does not obey love; He is what love means when there is no division between being and willing.
