omniscience

Omniscience is the capacity to know everything infinitely, or at least everything that can be known about a character including thoughts, feelings, life and the universe, etc. In monotheism, this ability is typically attributed to God. There is a distinction between:

• inherent omniscience: the ability to know anything that one chooses to know and can be known and,

• total omniscience: actually knowing everything that can be known.
  

Many modern theologians argue that God's omniscience is inherent rather than total, and that God chooses to limit his omniscience in order to preserve the freewill and dignity of his creatures.

Nontheism often claims that the very concept of omniscience is inherently contradictory.

Some theists argue that God created all knowledge and has ready access thereto. Some believe this statement invokes a circular time contradiction: presupposing the existence of God, before knowledge existed, there was no knowledge at all, which means that God was unable to possess knowledge prior to its creation. There are several flaws in this reasoning.

God "created" knowledge while eternally possessing it in full. Is this really any more paradoxical than God having no beginning and no end?

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