I don’t know why, but the “omnis” of God have always held a sort of fascination for me ((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.)). 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 up ((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.)).

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 heard a fascinating story this morning on NPR Morning Edition about a man whose blindness was corrected by doctors, but who still can’t see very well. As it turns out (and this really should come as no surprise), sight not only depends on hardware (your eyeballs) but has a pretty significant software component as well (neuron pathways in the brain). This man had lost his sight at the age of three, and, by the time it was restored at age 43, he had lost many of the neuron pathways necessary to drive the sight experience. Based on his hardware, he should have 20/20 vision, but, because of the state of his brain, he can make out only vague shapes and movement, but no detail. To really cure blindness, it turns out, we’ll need to figure out how to restore all those pathways in the brain.

The reason this story fascinates me is that I’ve recently been reading a lot about the kind of new birth Jesus talks about in John 3:3 where he says that we must be born again or we cannot see the kingdom of God. Elsewhere the new birth is compared to God opening one’s eyes so they can see him for who he really is and accept him by faith. The implication I see from this story is that, in our sinful and dead state, not only do we need new eyes, but a new heart, mind, and soul. We need to literally be reprogrammed or we cannot have our eyes truly opened. I think this is what second birth is really about. Of course, there are also accounts of Jesus literally healing the blind in the Gospels, and I see implications in this story for those accounts as well. God is the great physician, healing the whole person, hardware and software, able to perform miracles modern medicine and science can only speculate about.

You can read and listen to the story on NPR’s website: “Treating Blindness Takes More Than Meets The Eye” (listen).

I heard a great interview early this morning on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday. NPR’s Liane Hansen interviewed Charlie Hunter, a jazz musician who plays an instrument unlike any I’ve ever heard of before, a modified eight-string guitar. I’m given to understand an eight-string guitar is usually nothing more than a regular guitar with a slightly extended range, adding one string to the top and one to the bottom. However, Hunter has his guitar modified and tuned in such a way that his three bottom strings are genuine bass guitar strings and the other five are regular guitar strings, though he notes in the interview that he’s recently removed his top string and prefers to play without it since he felt it got in his way. Eight strings or seven, though, what’s fascinating is this guy is simultaneously playing the bass guitar, rhythm guitar, and solo guitar parts in real time! My dad plays both guitar and bass (though not simultaneously, of course), so I thought he especially would get a kick out Hunter’s unique instrument and style.

Hunter’s latest record has a nice jazzy, upbeat feel with the 7-string guitar plus a couple trombones, a trumpet, and drums. The few song clips they aired during the interview were really fun to listen to. Besides talking about his unique instrument and playing style, they also discussed his practice regiment, why he chose to record the album in mono instead of stereo, and how he is learning to play the drums because it informs the way he plays the guitar, so the interview was generally entertaining for all these reasons. I’m going to be looking around online for Hunter’s albums now.

You can listen to the article on NPR’s website: “Charlie Hunter Has ‘Neglected To Inform You’” (listen).

I got an invitation to Google Wave today (thanks, Cory!), so I’ve been playing around with it a bit. One of the default welcome messages that popped into my shiny new account included the following YouTube video. It’s a good overview of the system, and much shorter than the original 80-minute presentation, so I thought I would share it with you all here.

Right now I only have three contacts with Wave accounts, none of whom I really collaborate with much, so I don’t know if I’ll get much use out of the system early on. If anybody out there has a Google Wave account and wants to chat, click here to see my address. Oh, and you, my dear readers, will be the first to know if/when I’m allowed to invite other people to the party. Stay tuned.