Knowledge of Jesus Christ
"Knowledge of Jesus Christ," as used in this article, does not mean a summary
of what we know about Jesus Christ, but a survey of the intellectual endowment
of Christ.
Jesus Christ possessing two natures, and therefore two intellects, the human
and the Divine, the question as to the knowledge found in His Divine intellect is
identical with the question concerning God's knowledge. The Arians, it is true,
held that the Word Himself was ignorant of many things, for instance, of the day
of judgment; in this they were consistent with their denial that the Word was
consubstantial with the Omniscient God. The Agnoetae, too, attributed ignorance
not merely to Christ's human soul, but to the Eternal Word. Suicer, s.v.
Agnoetai, I, p. 65, says: "Hi docebant divinam Christi naturam . . .quaedam
ignorasse, ut horam extremi judicii". But then, the Agnoetae were a sect of the
Monophysites, and imagined a confusion of natures in Christ, after the Eutychian
pattern, so as to attribute ignorance to that Divine nature into which His human
nature (as they held) was absorbed. An honest profession of the Divinity of Christ
necessitates the admission of omniscience in His Divine intellect.
I. KINDS OF KNOWLEDGE IN CHRIST'S HUMAN INTELLECT
The Man-God possessed, not merely a Divine, but also a human nature, and
therefore a human intellect, and with the knowledge possessed by this intellect
we are here mainly concerned. The integrity of His human nature implies
intellectual cognition by acts of its human intellect. Jesus Christ might be wise
by the wisdom of God; yet the humanity of Christ knows by its own mental act. If
we except Hugh of St. Victor, all theologians teach that the soul of Christ is
elevated to participation in the Divine wisdom by an infusion of Divine light. For
the soul of Christ enjoyed from the very beginning the beatific vision; it was
endowed with infused knowledge; and it acquired in the course of time
experimental knowledge.
(1) The Beatific Vision
Petavius (De Incarnatione, I, xii, c. 4) maintains that there is no controversy
among theologians, or even among Christians, as to the fact that the soul of
Jesus Christ was endowed with the beatific vision (see HEAVEN) from the
beginning of its existence. He knew God immediately in His essence, or, in other
words, beheld Him face to face as the blessed in heaven. The great theologians
freely grant that this doctrine is not stated in so many words in the books of
Sacred Scripture, nor even in the writing of the early Fathers; but recent masters
in theology do not hesitate to consider the contrary opinion as rash, though it
was upheld by the pretended Catholic school of Günther. The basis for the
privilege of the beatific vision enjoyed by the human soul of Christ is its
Hypostatic Union with the Word. This union implies a plenitude of grace and of
gifts in both intellect and will. Such a fullness does not exist without the beatific
vision. Again, by virtue of the Hypostatic Union the human nature of Christ is
assumed into a unity of Divine person; it does not appear how such a soul could
at the same time remain, like ordinary human beings, destitute of the vision of
God to which they hope to attain only after their stay on earth is over. Once
more, by virtue of the Hypostatic Union, Jesus, even as man, was the natural son
of God, not a merely adoptive child; now, it would not be right to debar a
deserving son from seeing the face of his father, an incongruity that would have
taken place in the case of Christ, if His soul had been bereft of the beatific vision.
And all these reasons show that the human soul of Christ must have seen God
face to face from the very first moment of its creation.
Though Scripture does not state in explicit terms that Jesus was favoured with
the beatific vision, still it contains passages that imply this privilege: Jesus
speaks as an eyewitness of things Divine (John, iii, 11, sqq.; I, 18; I, 31 sq.); any
knowledge of God inferior to immediate vision is imperfect and unworthy of Christ
(I Cor., xiii, 9-12); Jesus repeatedly asserts that He knows the Father and is
known by Him, that He knows what the Father knows. There is a difficulty in
reconciling Christ's sufferings and surpassing great sorrow with the beatitude
implied in His beatific vision. But if the Word could be united with the human
nature of Christ without allowing Its glory to overflow into His sacred body, the
happiness of the beatific vision too might be in the human soul of our Lord
without overflowing into and absorbing His lower faculties, so that He might feel
the pangs of sorrow and suffering. The same faculty may be simultaneously
affected by sorrow and joy, resulting from the perception of different objects (cf.
St. Thom., III, Q. xiii, a. 5, ad 3; St. Bonav., in III, dist. xvi, a. 2, q. 2); the martyrs
have often testified to the ecstatic happiness with which God filled their souls, at
the very time that their bodies were suffering the extremity of torment.
(2) Christ's Infused Knowledge
The existence of an infused science in the human soul of Jesus Christ may
perhaps be less certain, from a theological point of view, than His continual and
original fruition of the vision of God; still, it is almost universally admitted that
God infused into Christ's human intellect a knowledge similar in kind to that of
the angels. This is knowledge which is not acquired gradually by experience, but
is poured into the soul in one flood. This doctrine rests on theological grounds:
the Man-God must have possessed all perfections except such as would be
incompatible with His beatific vision, as faith or hope; or with His sinlessness, as
penance; or again, with His office of Redeemer, which would be incompatible with
the consummation of His glory. Now, infused knowledge is not incompatible with
Christ's beatific vision, not with His sinlessness, not again with His office of
Redeemer. Besides, the soul of Christ is the first and most perfect of all created
spirits, and cannot be deprived of a privilege granted to the angels. Moreover, a
created intellect is simply perfect only when, besides the vision of things in God,
it has a vision of things in themselves; God only sees all things comprehensively
in Himself. The God-Man, besides seeing them in God, would also perceive and
know them by His human intellect. Finally, Sacred Scripture favours the
existence of such infused knowledge in the human intellect of Christ: St. Paul
speaks of all the treasures of God's wisdom and science hidden in Christ (Col.,
ii, 3); Isaias speaks of the spirit of wisdom and counsel, of science and
understanding, resting on Jesus (Is., xi, 2); St. John intimates that God has not
given His Spirit by measure to His Divine envoy (John, iii, 34); St. Matthew
represents Christ as our sovereign teacher (Matt., xxiii, 10). Beside the Divine
and the angelic knowledge, most theologians admit in the human intellect of
Jesus Christ a science infused per accidens, i.e., an extraordinary
comprehension of things which might be learned in the ordinary way, similar to
that granted to Adam and Eve (cf. St. Thom., III., Q. i, a. 2; QQ. viii-xii; Q. xv, a.
2).
(3) Christ's Acquired Knowedge
Jesus Christ had, no doubt, also an experimental knowledge acquired by the
natural use of His faculties, through His senses and imagination, just as happens
in the case of common human knowledge. To say that his human faculties were
wholly inactive would resemble a profession of either Monothelitism or of
Docetism. This knowledge naturally grew in Jesus in the process of time,
according to the words of Luke, ii, 52: "And Jesus advanced in wisdom, and age,
and grace with God and men". Understood in this way, the Evangelist speaks not
merely of a successively greater manifestation of Christ's Divine and infused
knowledge, nor merely of an increase in His knowledge as far as outward effects
were concerned, but of a real advance in His acquired knowledge. Not that this
kind of knowledge implies an enlarged object of His science; but it signified that
He gradually came to know, after a merely human way, some of the things which
he had known from the beginning by His Divine and infused knowledge.
II. EXTENT OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF JESUS CHRIST
It has already been stated that the knowledge in Christ's Divine nature is
co-extensive with God's Omniscience. As to the experimental knowledge
acquired by Christ, it must have been at least equal to the knowledge of the most
gifted of men; it appears to us wholly unworthy of the dignity of Christ that His
powers of observation and natural insight should have been less than those of
other naturally perfect men. But the main difficulty arises from the question as to
the extent of Christ's knowledge flowing from His beatific vision, and of His
infused amount of knowledge.
(1) The Council of Basle (Sess. XXII) condemned the proposition of a certain
Augustinus de Roma: "Anima Christi videt Deum tam clare. Et intense quam
clare et intense Deus videt seipsum" (The soul of Christ sees God as clearly and
intimately as God perceives Himself). It is quite clear that, however perfect the
human soul of Christ is, it always remains finite and limited; hence its knowledge
cannot be unlimited and infinite.
(2) Though the knowledge in the human soul of Christ was not infinite, it was
most perfect and embraced the widest range, extending to the Divine ideas
already realized, or still to be realized. Nescience of any of these matters would
amount to positive ignorance in Christ, as the ignorance of law in a judge. For
Christ is not merely our infallible teacher, but also the universal mediator, the
supreme judge, the sovereign king of all creation.
(3) Two important texts are urged against this perfection of Christ's knowledge:
Luke, ii, 52 demands an advancement in knowledge in the case of Christ; this
text has already been considered in the last paragraph. The other text is Mark,
xiii, 32: "Of that day or hour no man knoweth, neither the angels in heaven, nor
the Son, but the Father." After all that has been written on this question in recent
years, we see no need to add anything to the traditional explanations: the Son
has no knowledge of the judgment day which He may communicate; or, the Son
has no knowledge of this event, which spring from His human nature as such, or
again, the Son has no knowledge of the day and the hour, that has not been
communicated to Him by the Father. (See Mangenot in Vigouroux, "Dict. de la
Bible", II, Paris, 1899, 2268 sqq.)
Since the time of the Nestorian controversies, Catholic tradition has been
practically unanimous as to the doctrine concerning the knowledge of Christ (cf.
Leporius, "Libellus Emendationis", n. 40; Eulogius Alex., "in Phot.", cod. 230, n.
10; S. Gregorius Magnus, lib. X, ep. xxxv, xxxix; Sophron., "Ep. Syn. ad
Sergium"; Damascenus, "De Haer.," n. 85; Nat. Alex., "Hist. Eccl. in saec.
sext.", n. 85). As to the Fathers preceding the Nestorian controversy, Leontius
Byzantinus simply surrenders their authority to the opponents of our doctrine
concerning the knowledge of Christ; Petavius represents it as partly undecided;
but the early Fathers may be excused from error, because they wrote mostly
against the Arian heresy, so that they endeavoured to establish Christ's Divinity
by removing all ignorance from His Divine nature, while they did not care to enter
upon an ex professo investigation of the knowledge possessed by His human
nature. At that time there was no call for any such study. After the patristic
period, Fulgentius (Resp. ad quaest. tert. Ferrandi) and Hugh of St. Victor
exaggerated the human knowledge of Christ, so that the early Scholastics asked
the question, why God's Omniscience was incommunicable (Lomb., "Liber
Sent.", III, d. 14). But even at this period, at least a modal difference was
admitted to exist between the Omniscience of God and the human knowledge of
Christ (cf. Bonav. in III., dist. 13, a. 2). Soon, however, theologians began to limit
the human knowledge of Christ to the range of the scientia visionis or of all that
actually has been, is, or will be, while God's Omniscience embraces also the
range of the possibilities.
PETER LOMBARD, Liber Sent., III, dist. 13-14, and ST. THOMAS, ST. BONAVENTURE, SCOTUS,
DIONYSIUS THE CARTHUSIAN on this passage; Summa, III, QQ. viii-xii, and sv, a. 2, and
VALENT., SUAREZ, SALMERON, on these chapters; MELCHIOR CANUS, De Locis, XII, xiii;
PETAVIUS, I, i sqq.; THOMASSIN, VII; LEGRAND, De Incarn., dissert. ix, c. ii; MALDONATUS, A
LAPIDE, KNABENBAUER, etc., on Luke, ii, 52, and Mark, xiii, 32; FRANZELIN, De Verb. Incarn., p.
426. A number of works have been quoted during the course of the article.
A. J. Maas
Transcribed by Thomas M. Barrett
Dedicated to the Poor Souls in Purgatory
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VIII
Copyright © 1910 by Robert Appleton Company
Online Edition Copyright © 1999 by Kevin Knight
Nihil Obstat, October 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor
Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
The Catholic Encyclopedia: NewAdvent.org