Christ's Acquired, Experimental Knowledge

Thesis III: The soul of Christ likewise possessed a progressive experimental or empirical knowledge (scientia acquisita).

This thesis represents the common teaching of theologians. Beyond the divine knowledge Jesus enjoyed as man through the beatific vision, and beyond the angelic knowledge infused directly into His human soul, He also possessed acquired knowledge — the specifically human knowledge gained through sense perception and the natural use of reason.

This kind of knowledge was not, strictly speaking, indispensable to the perfection of His intellect. But alongside the state that was His by virtue of the beatific vision, Christ also assumed the “wayfaring” state proper to mortal life on earth, on the way to our heavenly home.¹ As a wayfarer, He was entitled to the mode of knowledge fitting that earthly pilgrimage. Though the beatific and infused knowledge already gave Him everything experience could teach, He was still able, in a sense, to “learn” — to become acquainted, from a different vantage point (that of human experience), with what He already knew by other means. Such knowledge, though limited in value, is not without its use. Just as the angels’ “morning knowledge” does not make their “evening knowledge” worthless, even though the two differ only in mode and origin, not in content — so Christ’s acquired knowledge may have added genuinely new dimensions to what He already knew. Was His actual, lived experience of suffering not something quite different from the mere prior concept of His Passion already present to His intellect? “And whereas indeed He was the Son of God, he learned obedience by the things which he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8).

The Argument from Christ’s Complete Human Nature

That Christ genuinely possessed acquired knowledge follows from the fact that He was a fully and properly constituted man, equipped with every natural human faculty, sensitive and intellectual alike. His nature demanded experimental knowledge; to deny this would smell of Docetism.²

St. Thomas argues the point from the Aristotelian and Scholastic distinction between the intellectus agens (agent intellect) and the intellectus possibilis (possible intellect):³ “Nothing that God planted in our nature was lacking in the nature assumed by God the Word. Now it is clear that in human nature God planted not only the possible intellect but also the agent intellect. Hence it must be said that in Christ’s soul there was not only a possible intellect but an agent intellect as well. And if God and nature do nothing in vain in other cases…, much less would anything be in vain in Christ’s soul. But whatever lacks its own proper operation is in vain. Now the proper operation of the agent intellect is to produce intelligible species in act, by abstracting them from sense-images [i.e., through the process of abstraction]. It must therefore be said that in Christ there were certain intelligible species received in His possible intellect through the action of His agent intellect — which is exactly what is meant by acquired knowledge, which some call experimental.”⁴ In modern terms: Christ’s human soul, like any human soul, formed universal ideas by abstracting intellectual concepts from sense images. St. Luke tells us Jesus “advanced in wisdom” (Luke 2:52), which, applied to natural experience, must mean a real inward increase, not merely an outward manifestation.⁵ “How did the Wisdom of God advance?” asks St. Ambrose, and answers: “Let the order of the words instruct you. There is advance in age, and advance in wisdom — but it is human wisdom. He places ‘age’ first precisely so you would understand it of His manhood, since age belongs not to Divinity but to the body. So if He advanced in the age of a man, He advanced in the wisdom of a man — and human wisdom advances through the senses.”⁶ St. Thomas: “Both the infused knowledge and the beatific knowledge of Christ’s soul were the effect of an agent of infinite power, who can operate the whole all at once; and so in neither of these did Christ advance — He possessed each perfect from the beginning. But acquired knowledge is caused by the agent intellect, which does not operate the whole all at once but successively; and so, with respect to this knowledge, Christ did not know everything from the start, but gradually, over time — that is, by the time of full maturity. This is clear from the fact that the Evangelist mentions His advancing in knowledge and in age together.”⁷

How Far Did This Knowledge Extend?

As the last line above suggests, St. Thomas held that Christ’s experimental knowledge genuinely increased, gradually exhausting everything knowable through the agent intellect. To explain how such a “natural omniscience” (not omniscience in the strict sense) was possible, various theologians have proposed more or less elaborate theories. Suarez, De Lugo, and, among modern writers, Tepe adopted the theory of a scientia per accidens infusa — a view St. Thomas himself had taught as a young man but retracted in the Summa.⁸ Others, like Cardinal Cajetan, held that Christ’s natural experimental knowledge reached its full perfection through the successive presentation, by angelic ministry, of every object making up the physical universe — fish, birds, beasts, the stars, and so on — directly to His senses. Durandus, Marsilius, Gabriel Biel, and Cardinal Toletus took a middle position: the knowledge Christ gained by the exercise of His natural faculties, though ineffably perfect, was never actually infinite. It seems enough to say that Christ represents the unattainable ideal of all empirical and natural knowledge — whatever Adam and Solomon could not learn by natural means, and knew only through a special infused grace, belonged to Christ’s connatural perfection instead, acquired gradually as He grew. This view safeguards the Logos’s dignity while doing full justice to the genuineness of Christ’s human nature. Experimental knowledge is, admittedly, less perfect than either beatific or infused knowledge — but even finite, it still perfects and ennobles the one who possesses it.⁹

Further Reading

W. Humphrey, The One Mediator, pp. 252 sqq., London, n.d. — J. Kirschkamp, Das menschliche Wissen Christi, Würzburg 1873 — J. M. Harty, “The Modern Kenotic Theory,” in the Irish Theological Quarterly, Vol. I (1906), Nos. 1 and 2 — E. J. Hanna, “The Human Knowledge of Christ,” in the New York Review, Vol. I (1905-6), Nos. 3 and 4, and Vol. III (1908), Nos. 4 and 5 — E. Schulte, Die Entwicklung der Lehre vom menschlichen Wissen Christi bis zum Beginn der Scholastik, Paderborn 1914 — Lépicier, De Incarnatione Verbi, Vol. I, pp. 395 sqq. — M. Lepin, Christ and the Gospel, Philadelphia 1910 — J. Kleutgen, Theologie der Vorzeit, Vol. III, pp. 244 sqq., Münster 1870 — Bellarmine, Controversiae de Christo, l. IV, c. 1-5 — J. Lebreton, Les Origines du Dogme de la Trinité, Note C, pp. 447 sqq., Paris 1910 — F. J. Hall, The Kenotic Theory, pp. 176 sqq., New York 1898 — M. Waldhauser, Die Kenose und die moderne protestantische Christologie, Mainz 1912 — J. Marie, De Agnoetarum Doctrina, Zagreb 1914.

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