It is an anthropomorphism, like God "walking" in the Garden of Eden, or "repenting" of having made man, or "changing His mind" about destroying Nineveh, or being "angry" at sin. Put another way, it is describing God in the sense of how He, or His action, appears to us (in a way we can understand), but is not describing Him as He is in Himself, which we simply cannot understand,
There are three problems with this claim. First, those terms are metaphors which presuppose some truth. For instance, God "changing his mind" requires that God cause some effect in the world at t1 and another effect at t2. The "changing" of God's mind of course is a mere metaphor, but the
reality that God brings about two different effects at two different times is still required in order for the metaphor to be true. So every metaphorical assertion presupposes some positive assertion regarding God.
Second, those terms specifically refer to
effects of God as they appear to us. For instance, we say God is angry when the effect is punishment. However, I cannot see how a similar move can be made regarding divine knowledge since it is an attribute completely independent of creatures, it refers to God's life
ad intra in addition to
ad extra.
Third, if you are correct in saying that the word knowledge when applied to God is a mere metaphor, and not, as the Thomists claim, a literally true predication, albeit applied analogically, then why is it any more appropriate than any other adjective we might want to use to describe God? Or to push a similar problem, why would I be incorrect if I denied God had knowledge?
Yet, if you deny a cause-and-effect relationship between prayer and its answer, then talking about the "efficacy" of prayer is merely a convenient fiction.
But Christians, East and West, hold that prayer has efficacy.
You are conflating "exemplar" with "type". What you said is correct regarding "type" but not regarding "exemplar". Type refers to possible worlds; exemplars to the actual world.
I don't know. Since I think the future does exist and Aquinas does not, I think this may modify how we are using those terms. I don't know if Aquinas would use "exemplar" as applying to an actually existing, present state of affairs. But regardless, this is a semantics issue and I may just be wrong about how the tradition is using those terms.
That is a non sequitur. If God's knowledge of contingent truths and non modal collapse entail complete dissimilarity between God and human knowledge, then a doctrine of analogy will not do, whereas a complete dissimilarity will. Granted, you will say I haven't proven the antecedent, but neither have you proven its falsity.
The only answer is that God's knowledge is not really a property, and that, I would argue, makes Divine knowledge completely dissimilar to human knowledge.
1. You haven't proven the antecedent, meaning you haven't shown that Western theology does not have the resources to handle the problem we are discussing. I am not arguing that Eastern theology doesn't have a separate, possibly useful or even potentially correct approach. What I am saying is that you haven't shown that Western theology fails. So I don't have to show that the antecedent is false, only that you haven't shown it to be true.
2. This could get lost in the terminology of "property." But what I am saying is that God's knowledge that contingent propositions are true is not entirely grounded intrinsic to God. Or at least it is not grounded in God in such a way that if God had known something else, i.e. in a different possible world, God would be intrinsically different.
Well there is just that type of theology, isn't there, in the East. So the problem can actually be solved by disregarding Western theology.
I am not as familiar with Eastern theology. But I am skeptical of your characterization that the Eastern approach is essentially the same as Maimonides and denies we can have any positive knowledge of God. To the extent that this is an accurate representation of Eastern thinking, I think it carries with it the problem of making any sense of any faith claims we Christians have to make about God.
Not at all. It's the only way to save Western theology from this conundrum. But once you make God's knowledge (at least of contingent truths) a mere external but not internal (intrinsic) property of God, then you changed the meaning of "God is omniscient" - he would intrinsically be the same God if He knew only necessary truths but no contingent ones, and therefore, He does not know all contingent truths merely by virtue of His nature.
Dissected in detail here:
https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2015/05/divine-simplicity-and-gods-contingent-knowledge-an-aporetic-tetrad.html
"He does not know all contingent truths merely by virtue of his nature." I do not know what you mean by this. If you mean that God's knowledge of contingent truths does not depend simply on God knowing himself, as Aquinas seems to think, then I agree but do not see this as problematic. On the other hand, if you are saying that God needs some sort of vehicle or lens by which to know contingent truths, then I deny this.
Regarding the blog post you link to, I agree with Vallicella that the approach is to deny (3). Matthews Grant's article I think does a good job at making this plausible. However, in order to deny (3), as Vallicella alludes to, we need not adopt
belief externalism since we do not have to think of God's knowledge as a species of true belief.
In the comments, pertaining to the discussion of God and Schmod, I would point out two things briefly. First, I don't think Schmod is a possible being to begin with making the comparison hard as a thought experiment. Second, I agree with Vallicella's finally comment in the combox, it undermines the argument.