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 on 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 an 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 a response; it is ontological fertility. The Infinite does not emit love as an act. It is love as an 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. טוב (Tov, “good”) has the gematria of 17. Square it (17² = 289) and you find its secret: the emergence of חיים (life, 68) and אהבה (love, 13) — all nested within one core. Add to this אנכי (Anochi, “I Myself,” 81), the mysterious self-declaration 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 אמת (Emet, Truth), gematria 441, or 21² — the square of אהיה (Ehyeh, 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.

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 an 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 a relationship 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 a contradiction. It is a 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 beyond Himself. His freedom is not the ability to choose between options, but the power to generate options in the first place. Freedom in Atzmut is the freedom of self-disclosure: to reveal or conceal, to expand or contract, to speak or remain silent — without ever being bound by what is revealed. Nothing governs Him; nothing obligates Him. He is both the ground of law and the One who eternally exceeds it.

This is the mystery at the hidden core of God: the Infinite as ever-greater becoming, the One who is perfectly Himself while always transcending even that selfhood. To speak of the Four Omnis is to glimpse refracted beams of this essence — but never the essence itself. They are not God’s limits, but God’s invitations: patterns by which the Infinite makes Himself knowable while never ceasing to be unknowable.

Atzmut remains beyond all categories, yet shines through them all. He is Presence even in absence, Power even in self-limitation, Knowledge even in concealment, Goodness even in judgment. And in every revelation, the Infinite is encountered not as an answer, but as an ever-deeper question — a mystery that grows with every unveiling. For the hidden core of God is not an object to be grasped, but an endless horizon to be walked in awe.