This questioning of mine is going to fall under some assumptions of the broader Christian worldview, but I trust my atheist friends here will indulge me by playing Santa's Advocate, and will diligently attack my puzzle. 
Merriam-Webster offers two definitions for "omniscient":
1: having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight
2: possessed of universal or complete knowledge
Simple enough. I'm treating "understanding," "insight," "knowledge," and "awareness" as essentially synonymous, at least in this case. The discrepancy between the two definitions, then, seems to hinge on "infinite" vs. "complete," and that's where my puzzle begins.
Noted Christian philosopher Dallas Willard writes in his essay Language, Being, God, and the Three Stages of Theistic Evidence:
"Most importantly for present interests, since the series of causes for any given state is completed, it not only exhibits a rigorous structure as indicated, but that structure also has a first term. That is, there is in it at least one "cause," one state of being, which does not derive its existence from something else. It is self-existent.
"If this were not so, Voyager's passing Triton, or any other physical event or state, could not be realized, since that would require the actual completion of an infinite, i.e. incompletable, series of events. In simplest terms, its causes would never 'get to' it." - http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=42
Now anyone who's familiar with this line of reasoning knows that he's referring to the Kalam Cosmological Argument, but I don't want to discuss anything about that at the moment. Rather, I'm struck by one peculiar thing...
"[...] would require the actual completion of an infinite, i.e. incompletable, series of events."
That's interesting. According to the Christian worldview, humanity will eventually be assimilated into heaven or hell (or a movement for some from the latter to the former after a 'purification,' depending on your theology), and in those places we will exist everlasting through an everlasting succession of paradisaical events.
But wait. This everlasting succession of events represents, following Willard's terminology, "an infinite, i.e. incompletable" series. If we contrast this with the above definitions of "omniscient" we find a fork with two roads:
1. "Omniscience," for God, representsthe incompletable knowledge of a series of incompletable events.
2. "Omniscience," for God, represents a complete knowledge of an incompletable series of events. But one cannot "know everything" if "an everything to know" doesn't exist. We cannot, in this case, be mumbling this or that about finitude.
Defining God's "omniscience" as "God's incompletable knowledge" doesn't sound much like the "omniscience" we're used to hearing or reading about (you know, the kind that smells of absolutism). Neither does the other option, for that matter. If "incompletability" characterizes God's knowledge, is it logically possible that he does not know what I'm doing right now? Or is my current event swept up in the hurricane of incompletability? How exactly are we supposed to think about "incompletable"?
For the record, I'm perfectly comfortable with a God who isn't omniscient--whatever that means.
Merriam-Webster offers two definitions for "omniscient":
1: having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight
2: possessed of universal or complete knowledge
Simple enough. I'm treating "understanding," "insight," "knowledge," and "awareness" as essentially synonymous, at least in this case. The discrepancy between the two definitions, then, seems to hinge on "infinite" vs. "complete," and that's where my puzzle begins.
Noted Christian philosopher Dallas Willard writes in his essay Language, Being, God, and the Three Stages of Theistic Evidence:
"Most importantly for present interests, since the series of causes for any given state is completed, it not only exhibits a rigorous structure as indicated, but that structure also has a first term. That is, there is in it at least one "cause," one state of being, which does not derive its existence from something else. It is self-existent.
"If this were not so, Voyager's passing Triton, or any other physical event or state, could not be realized, since that would require the actual completion of an infinite, i.e. incompletable, series of events. In simplest terms, its causes would never 'get to' it." - http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=42
Now anyone who's familiar with this line of reasoning knows that he's referring to the Kalam Cosmological Argument, but I don't want to discuss anything about that at the moment. Rather, I'm struck by one peculiar thing...
"[...] would require the actual completion of an infinite, i.e. incompletable, series of events."
That's interesting. According to the Christian worldview, humanity will eventually be assimilated into heaven or hell (or a movement for some from the latter to the former after a 'purification,' depending on your theology), and in those places we will exist everlasting through an everlasting succession of paradisaical events.
But wait. This everlasting succession of events represents, following Willard's terminology, "an infinite, i.e. incompletable" series. If we contrast this with the above definitions of "omniscient" we find a fork with two roads:
1. "Omniscience," for God, representsthe incompletable knowledge of a series of incompletable events.
2. "Omniscience," for God, represents a complete knowledge of an incompletable series of events. But one cannot "know everything" if "an everything to know" doesn't exist. We cannot, in this case, be mumbling this or that about finitude.
Defining God's "omniscience" as "God's incompletable knowledge" doesn't sound much like the "omniscience" we're used to hearing or reading about (you know, the kind that smells of absolutism). Neither does the other option, for that matter. If "incompletability" characterizes God's knowledge, is it logically possible that he does not know what I'm doing right now? Or is my current event swept up in the hurricane of incompletability? How exactly are we supposed to think about "incompletable"?
For the record, I'm perfectly comfortable with a God who isn't omniscient--whatever that means.
