God’s self-ignorance

Matthew Levering ( Scripture and Metaphysics ) argues that God’s self-knowledge and His knowledge of creation stand and fall together. If His knowledge of the latter is limited, so is His knowledge of Himself: “Could God perfectly comprehend himself if he did not comprehend to what his power extends? In other words, could sheer Act comprehend himself if he did not know all the finite modes in which he could, as cause, share his existence? Could a cause know himself exhaustively if he did not exhaustively know the effects that could proceed from himself. Clearly, the answer is no. In knowing himself, God must therefore know (in himself) all the effects that could proceed from him as cause” (citing the Summa 1, 14, 5 on this last point).

Open theism thus can’t stop with saying that there are blank spots in God’s knowledge of creation; there must be un-fathomable depths in God Himself.