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| CHRIST THE PANTOCRATOR from Palermo Cathedral |
Father Schrader has very kindly given his permission for the reproduction of his paper here at Vexilla Regis and later in FOUNDATION.
WHEN DID CHRIST KNOW THAT HE IS GOD?
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| Archbishop Bathersby in his Cathedral at concelebrated Mass. |
(In May of this year
we drew attention to Brisbane Archbishop John A. Bathersby’s Advent Pastoral of
2006, which repeated a favourite theme of His Grace, which is at variance with
the Church’s teaching, and we corrected it with one example of Papal Teaching.
We discovered the following presentation of the truth written by a brilliant
young American Priest, Father Dylan Schrader, and he has kindly agreed to us
reproducing it here and in due course in FOUNDATION.)
A Brief Explanation
of the Catholic Answer by Rev. Dylan Schrader.
The Background :
Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, from the moment of the
Incarnation, has two natures: divine and human. He has, therefore, two
intellects and two wills. His divine intellect is identical with that of God
the Father and God the Holy Spirit and is absolutely omniscient, knowing all
real and all possible things. His human intellect, since it is created, cannot
be absolutely omniscient. Moreover, the natural human way of knowing is to
acquire knowledge from the senses, to form judgments, and to reason.
The question: 1) When
did Christ, in his human intellect, know that He is God the Son; and 2) what is
the nature of this knowledge?
The answer: 1))
Christ, in His human intellect , knew that He is God from the first moment of
the Incarnation, that is, from the first moment of His conception; 2) the
nature of this knowledge is the knowledge of vision, namely, the knowledge that comes from the immediate vision
of God (the Beatific Vision).
The explanation:
Christ’s human intellect had different types of knowledge :
1) Beatific
knowledge: The direct, immediate, face- to- face vision of the divine essence
and of other things in the divine
essence, which is the source of their reality.
2) Infused knowledge
: Knowledge that comes from individual concepts that are poured into the
intellect by God .
3) Acquired knowledge
: Knowledge that comes through experience, through the senses, judgments, and
reasoning.
The common
objections:
1) Christ’s human
intellect could not have known anything when He was a zygote.
2) Christ is fully human and therefore did not have
the beatific knowledge on earth.
3) The Bible says
that Christ “grew in wisdom”(Luke 2 : 52).
4) Christ does not
know the day of final judgment according to the Bible (Mt. 24 : 36; Mk 13:32).
5) The Beatific
Vision is incompatible with Christ’s suffering on earth.
The replies:
1) While acquired
knowledge requires the development of the brain and sensory organs, this is not
the case for beatific knowledge. The intellect is a faculty of the soul and is
immaterial; it does not require a bodily organ to function, although its normal way of functioning is to be
joined to a bodily organ and to make use of images in the imagination , etc.
Beatific knowledge, however, is not normal human knowledge. It is not derived
from the senses but from the direct, intellectual vision of the divine essence.
Therefore, beatific knowledge can be had without a bodily organ. The saints (
excepting the Blessed Mother of course) ), for example, have the Beatific
Vision as separated souls.
2) There is no
contradiction between beatific knowledge and human nature. If there were, then
going to Heaven would make us less than human, and God would be contradicting
Himself to call us to the Beatific Vision. The Beatific Vision, as explained
above, does not depend on the resurrected body. Therefore, there is no
intrinsic reason why man on earth could not have the Beatific Vision. On earth,
Christ as a man was simultaneously a comprehensor
( a possessor of heavenly glory) and
a viator (a wayfarer).
3) The Bible is
correct. Either it means that Christ began to show forth His wisdom more and
more ( an interpretation supported by the Church Fathers), or it means that He
grew in His acquired knowledge. There is no contradiction in saying that Christ
learned things that He already knew,
for He came to know them in a new way( i.e., with a different type of
knowledge). Thus, already knowing the geographical layout of Palestine since
His conception, when He was old enough He actually walked the streets of
Palestine. His eyes took in the scenery around Him, etc. Already knowing the
precise day and hour of His death on the cross, Our Lord actually had to live
through the hour and endure the experience of being crucified and dying.
4) The Church teaches
that Christ did know, even as man,
the day of final judgment. The Bible expresses it the way it does to indicate
that Christ considered Himself not sent to reveal the day of final judgement.
It is worthwhile to reproduce at length what Pope Gregory the Great wrote on the
subject:
“(But) concerning
that which has been written that neither the
Son, nor the angels know the day and the hour ( Cf. Mark 13:32), , indeed,
your holiness has perceived rightly, that since it most certainly should be
referred not to the same son according to that which is the head, but according
to His body which we are…. He ( Augustine) also says….that this can be
understood of the same son, because omnipotent God sometimes speaks in a human
way, as He said to Abraham: Now I know that you fear God (Gen. 22:12), not
because God then knew that He was feared, but because at that time He caused
Abraham to know that he feared God. For, just as we say a day is happy not
because the day itself is happy, but because it makes us happy, so the
omnipotent Son says He does not know the day which He causes not to be known ,
not because He Himself is ignorant of it, but because He does not permit it to
be known at all. Thus also the Father alone is said to know, because the Son
(being) consubstantial with Him, on account of His nature, by which He is above
the angels, has knowledge of that, of which the angels are unaware. Thus, also,
this can be the more precisely understood because he Only-begotten having been
incarnate, and made perfect man for us, in His human nature indeed did know the
day and the hour of judgment but nevertheless He did not know this from His
human nature. Therefore, that which in (nature) itself He knew, He did not know
from that very (nature), because God – made- man knew the day and the hour of
the judgment through the power of His Godhead….Thus, the knowledge which He did
not have on account of the nature of His humanity by reason of which, like the
angels, He was a creature this, He denied that He, like the angels, who are
creatures had. Therefore (as) God and man He knows the day and the hour of
judgment; but on this account, because God is man. But the fact is certainly
manifest that whoever is not a Nestorian can in no wise be an Agnoeta. For with
what purpose can he, who confesses that the wisdom itself of God is incarnate
say that there is anything which the Wisdom of God does not know? It is written:
In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God….All things were made by him (John 1 :
13). If all, without doubt also the Day of Judgment and the hour. Who,
therefore, is so foolish as to presume to assert that the Word of the Father
made that which He does not know? It is written also: Jesus knowing, that the Father gave Him all things into His hands
(John 13:3). If all things, surely both
the Day of Judgment and the hour. Who, therefore, is so stupid as to say that
the Son has received in His hands that of which He is unaware? With regard to
the place, however, where He says to the women about Lazarus,Where have you placed him? ( Jn. 11:34),
we have understood what you have also understood, that if they deny that the
Lord knew where Lazarus was buried, and for that reason He had asked, they are
without doubt compelled to acknowledge that the Lord did not know in what place
Adam and Eve had hidden themselves after their sin, since He said in Paradise Adam where are you? ( Gen3:9) or when
He chastises Cain saying,Where is your
brother Abel? ( Gen. 4:9) If He did not know, why did He add not much
later: Your brother’s blood cries to me
from the ground?[1]
5) The Beatific
Vision does produce spiritual joy, but does not exclude intense suffering in
the body or in the lower faculties of the soul. Thus, even while seeing His
Father, our Saviour experienced fear at the prospect of death and great
physical pain during His Passion.
Actually Christ’s beatific knowledge gave Him knowledge, even as a man, of each
and every sin that would ever be committed and allowed Him to offer His
sufferings and death as satisfaction for every
sin. This intimate knowledge of the sheer weight of humanity’s
sinfulness caused Him to sweat blood (Lk. 22:44)
The consequences of
denying Christ’s beatific knowledge:
1) If Christ acquired knowledge of His Divine
identity, then this knowledge must be based on faith, since it cannot be from
reason alone. In other words, God the Father would have had to reveal to Christ
that Christ is God the Son. The faith of the Church would then be based on
Christ’s faith. Moreover, Christ’s human intellect would have to believe that
it belongs to God Himself (i.e., that it is the human intellect of God) rather
than knowing this with certainty because
it sees its union with the Word.
2)Christ’s human
intellect, even if it had been given infused knowledge by God, would have had
to know everything pertaining to His mission as the Redeemer through individual
concepts. Given the universal scope of His Redemption , this would have been
impossible, since He would have had to reflect on one person, sin, or grace
after another without being able to grasp in His mind each and every person,
sin, or grace all at one time. If Christ had the Beatific Vision, however, His
human intellect would have had knowledge of all people and all individual sins
and graces simultaneously by seeing them in the divine essence ( the
source of their reality) rather than through separate concepts. Thus,
throughout His Passion, Our Lord, in His humanity, was able, through His
beatific knowledge , to offer up His sufferings for every member of the human
race specifically(cf. Gal. 2:20), as satisfaction for every individual grace
that would ever be given.
3) Christ’s human
will would not have been explicitly conformed to His Divine will for a portion
of His life on earth. He could not will what He did not know. Without this
conformity of His human will to His Divine, He would not have been our Priest,
Mediator, or Redeemer until later in His life.
The more recent
statements of the Magisterium:
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| Pope Saint Pius X |
In 1918, the Holy
Office responded to a series of questions on the knowledge of the human soul of
Christ:
Question: Whether the
following propositions can be safely taught:
1. It is not certain
that there was in the soul of Christ, as He lived among men, the knowledge
which the blessed, that is comprehensors possess.
2. Neither can the
opinion be called certain which states that the soul of Christ was ignorant of
nothing but rather knew from the beginning in the Word all things , past,
present , and future, or all things which God knows with the knowledge of
vision.
3) The belief of
certain more recent thinkers on the limited knowledge of Christ’s soul is not
less to be accepted in Catholic schools than the opinion of the ancients on its
universal knowledge.
Response: In the
negative.[3]
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| Venerable Pope Pius XII |
In Mystici Corporis, Pius XII
explains: (Ed. This is the
quote we used to refute Archbishop Bathersby’s assertions)
Now the only-begotten
Son of God embraced us in His infinite knowledge and undying love even before the
world began. And that He might give a visible and exceedingly beautiful
expression to this love, He assumed our nature in Hypostatic union: hence – as Maximus
of Turin with a certain unaffected simplicity remarks – “in Christ our own flesh
loves us”. But the knowledge and love of our Divine Redeemer, of which we were
the the object from the first moment of His Incarnation, exceed all that the
human intellect can hope to grasp. For hardly was he conceived in the womb of
the Mother of God , when He began to enjoy the Beatific Vision, and in that
vision all the members of His Mystical Body were continually and unceasingly
present to Him, and He embraced them with His Redeeming love. O marvelous condescension of
Divine love for us! O inestimable dispensation of boundless charity! In the
crib, on the Cross, in the unending glory of the Father, Christ has all the
members of the Church present before Him and united to Him in a much clearer and more loving
manner than that of a mother clasps her child to her breast, or than that with
which a man knows and loves himself.[4]
In 1966, the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a letter (Cum oecumenicum concilium ) on some
misinterpretations of the Second Vatican Council. Among other errors, the
Congregation mentions :
Even the adored
Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ is attacked, since in the consideration of
Christology such concepts of nature and person have been employed as are hardly
compatible with the dogmatic definitions. A certain Christological humanism
creeps in on account of which, Christ is reduced to the condition of an
ordinary man who gradually acquired the consciousness of His Divine Filiation.
His virginal conception, the miracles, and the Resurrection itself are admitted as far as the words go, but in
reality they are reduced to the merely natural order.[5]
The Catechism of the
Catholic Church:
But at the same time,
this truly human knowledge of God’s Son expressed the Divine life of His person.
“The human nature of God’s Son, not by
itself but by its union with the Word , knew and showed forth in itself
everything that pertains to God.”Such is first of all the case with the
intimate and immediate knowledge that the Son of God made man has of his
Father. The Son in His human knowledge also showed the Divine penetration he
had into the secret thoughts of human hearts.
By its union to the
Divine wisdom in the person of the Word incarnate, Christ enjoyed in His human
knowledge the fullness of understanding of the eternal plans He had come to
reveal. What He admitted to not knowing in this area, He elsewhere declared
Himself not sent to reveal.[6]
The Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church :
The Son of God
assumed a body animated by a rational human soul. With His human intellect
Jesus learned many things by way of experience; but also as man the Son of God
had an intimate and immediate knowledge of God His Father. He likewise understood
people’s secret thoughts and He knew fully the eternal plans which He had come
to reveal.[7]
[1] Gregory the Great, Sicut
acqua (600), in Heinrich Denziger and Adolf Schonmetzer, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et
declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, 36th ed. ( Freiburg: Herder, 1965)
[henceforth : DS], 474-476. Translation from The Sources of Catholic Dogma (Loreto Publications, 2007). The last
lines are my own translation, since they are not present in the English
translation of the older edition of Denzinger.
[2] Pius X , Lamentabili sane (1907), n.35. DS 3435
[3]
AAS 10 (1918), p. 282. DS 3645-3647. My translation.
[4]
Pius XII, Mystici Corporis (1943) , n.75.DS 3812
[5] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cum Oecumenicum concilium, in A.A.S.
58 (1966), p660, n.5 My translation.
[6]
Catechism of the Catholic Church, nn. 473-474
[7] Compendium
of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n.90.
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