# omnipotens, omnisciens, omnipr[a]esens



## Scholiast

Salvete amici

This enquiry arises from a question put to me by a close friend who teaches Religious Studies.

There appears to be an established theological tradition, Catholic or Protestant, that God is addressed, or described as, _omnipotens, omnisciens, omnipraesens_ ['Almighty, all-knowing, all-present'].

My own researches (in e.g. _TLL_), show that this is not a formulation by any of the Latin fathers such as Augustine, nor does it appear in Aquinas. By around the Renaissance period, however, it appears to have become something of a commonplace, and then to have remained so for some time thereafter.

Can anyone here, please, identify the earliest known collocation of this rhetorically effective, if theologically vacuous, combination of ideas?

Σ


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## Snodv

I find "omnipotens, omnisciens, omni_*volens*" _in John Wiclif (1370's?) but cannot tell where he got it.


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## Scholiast

_gratias ago maximas_, Snodv.

I too have met _omnivolens_, in Latham’s _Revised Mediaeval Latin Word-List_ (1965 or thereabouts), but not in company with the other two words. Was this 'Wiclif' the John Wycliffe who gave his name to the famous 14th-century Bible translation?

I must get my facts right, because a letter (of protest) is going soon to the OCR exam-board.

Σ


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## Snodv

Yes, multiple spellings exist, same man.


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## Scholiast

Thanks again Snodv (# 4). Can you maybe retrieve from memory's recesses even an approximate context for this? The more intellectual ammo I have the better.

Σ


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## Snodv

Libenter!  From _Polemical Tracts Against the Sects.  _In "De Fundatione Sectarum," there appears this line "...quod Cristus sit verus deus et verus homo et sic omnipotens, omnisciens, et omnivolens sue ecclesie prodessendo."  In "De Ordinatione Fratrum [Friars is meant here]," we find "Cristus ergo omnipotens, omnisciens, et omnivolens non omitteret tam necessarium iuvamen ecclesie, sicut ex eorum permanencia fratres fingunt."  
I confess I found this online.


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## Scholiast

@Snodv, _gratias etiam plures_ 

You are a brick: this (# 6) is superb information, even if from an online source—nothing wrong with that. At first I read 'Polemical Tracts against the Scots', and saw red. But then I realised I was wrong, and I am very grateful.

Σ


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## Snodv

Funny.  I would have too...I am the descendant of immigrants from Ayrshire circa 1730.


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