“Christ didn’t know He was God”, “Jesus didn’t realise His divinity until after the Resurrection”, “Christ gradually came to understand that He was the Messiah”.  How many times have we heard these and similar refrains in recent years?  Unfortunately it’s not all that uncommon and sometimes, alas, emanates even from the pulpit itself.  As I hope to demonstrate shortly, the Church’s teaching on this topic has always been clear and consistent despite efforts by some to distort it.  However, in addition to mapping some of the main magisterial pronouncements on this topic it is worth taking the time to explore it at a deeper theological level.  The study of Christ’s human knowledge can be a very exciting area of theology and will hopefully provide some stimulus for meditation on the wonder of the Incarnation which we ponder in the first Joyful Mystery of the Rosary.  To this end we will have to dig further than the Church’s statements on this topic and delve into St Thomas Aquinas’ exposition.

Firstly, it is very important to clarify that it is precisely Christ’s human knowledge that is the topic here.  This in turn requires that we remember that the person of Christ, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, has two intellects which requires us to distinguish which one is being referred to.  Our basic Christology tells us that Christ has both a human and divine nature. Christ can give two answers to the question “what are you?”. As a man Christ possesses a rational soul with its own intellect and will.  It is important to note however, that Christ is not a human person, He is the divine second person of the Trinity.  This case in which we have a complete human nature but not a human person is indeed a mystery, but it is beyond the scope of this article.

No one in his right mind would doubt that Christ in His divine intellect knew that He was God. By definition, should the divine intellect lack any knowledge it wouldn’t be the divine intellect that we are speaking of.  The question being considered here is did Christ in His human knowledge know that He was God and if so from what point in time?  Also, what else besides did Christ know in His human knowledge?

The Church’s answer to the first two questions, as we will see in a moment, has been and is ‘yes’ and ‘from the moment of His conception’ respectively.  All of which may come as a surprise to some.

To fully appreciate what the Church has said a few distinctions in Christ’s human knowledge need to be made.  Traditionally, Christ’s human knowledge is classified in three classes, His beatific, infused and experimental knowledge.  Generally it is a failure to recognise and understand the role of each of these types of knowledge that leads to error on this topic.  Magisterially speaking the Church’s teaching is strongest with respect to both the first and last of these divisions.  The existence of Christ’s infused knowledge is the least well attested to on these grounds but has always been the dominant theological opinion and has a reasonably strong speculative foundation.  Nonetheless, only the knowledge by way of the beatific vision will be considered in any detail here.

Doubt as to Christ’s self knowledge of His identity as God and the Messiah has gained currency in recent times with the onset of the modernist crisis.  It is in the condemnation of modernism that we find our first statement on this matter in Lamentabili Sane where Pius X condemned the proposition that “Christ did not always possess the consciousness of His Messianic dignity”.  The ‘always’ here makes clear that there was never a time when Christ’s human intellect did not know that He was the Messiah.  There was no ‘gradual’ understanding on His part.  This latter point received stronger impetus around forty years later when Pius XII wrote his majestic Mystici Corporis Christi.

As an aside, it should be pointed out that the only sense in which Christ’s knowledge can be said to ‘progress’ is when referring to His experimental knowledge.  Even here we are not speaking of new knowledge as such but a new way of knowing what He already knew by means of His beatific and infused knowledge.  As an analogy one could consider the difference between reading about a famous person or art work and meeting them or seeing it in person.

Returning to Pius XII, in paragraph 75 the Pope first writes of Christ’s knowledge and love for us as God:  

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. 

In contrast to this Pius then speaks of the knowledge and love of the Redeemer that began from the time He took upon Himself our own mortal flesh: 

But the knowledge and love of our Divine Redeemer, of which we were 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. 

Since Pius wrote his encyclical in 1943 it has become a fashion to dismiss this teaching as somehow superseded. While the notion that the mere passage of time can somehow diminish the truth or otherwise of a teaching is exceedingly weak, our age is particularly susceptible to this kind of laxity in thought.

The Church’s most extensive presentation of its doctrine since that time, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, also teaches on the topic of Christ’s human knowledge.  Unfortunately the paragraph on Christ’s human knowledge has been at times misinterpreted by a failure to realise that the Catechism starts by speaking of His experimental knowledge in paragraph 471: 

This human soul that the Son of God assumed is endowed with a true human knowledge. As such, this knowledge could not in itself be unlimited: it was exercised in the historical conditions of his existence in space and time. This is why the Son of God could, when he became man, "increase in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man", and would even have to inquire for himself about what one in the human condition can learn only from experience. 

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. 

The question that does not receive definitive reaffirmation here is precisely when Christ began to enjoy this knowledge.  If there was any cause for doubt that the Magisterium no longer teaches what it did on this point, it was removed in November of 2006 when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released a doctrinal Notification on the works of Father Jon Sobrino, SJ, a liberationist type theologian.

In paragraph eight entitled ‘The Self-consciousness of Jesus’ the earlier cited passage from Mystici Corporis is explicitly quoted followed by sections from John Paul II’s  Novo Millennio Ineunte and the just cited Catechism of the Catholic Church.  It prefaces these quotations by stating: 

Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God, enjoys an intimate and immediate knowledge of his Father, a “vision” that certainly goes beyond the vision of faith. The hypostatic union and Jesus’ mission of revelation and redemption require the vision of the Father and the knowledge of his plan of salvation. 

With this magisterial backdrop a more in-depth examination of the content of this teaching is possible by following the treatment given in the Summa Theologicae III Q 9.

St Thomas first considers the knowledge of Christ in general before reserving a separate question[1] for each of beatific, infused and experimental knowledge in that order.

In his general treatment, after arguing that Christ should have another knowledge besides the divine (i.e human knowledge) which perfects the human soul that belongs with his human nature, he argues for the presence of each type of knowledge in Christ separately.

St Thomas’ argument for the beatific knowledge in Christ is relatively simple.  He brings to bear on this topic the principle that nothing is brought into act except by that which is already in act.  For example, you can only heat something by that which is already hot. You can’t heat something with a (relatively speaking) cold object.  Now the beatific vision is that immediate knowledge which the souls of the Blessed have of the divine essence, by which they know God immediately without the intervention of any medium.  On this earth man is potentially able to grasp this knowledge.

The next step in St Thomas’ argument is to consider how we are brought to this knowledge. Citing Hebrews 2:10 he argues that it is by Christ’s humanity that we are brought to this knowledge of God, “for it became Him, for Whom are all things, and by Whom are all things, Who had brought many children unto glory, to perfect the author of their salvation by His passion”.  Since Christ’s humanity is the cause by which we are brought to this knowledge it must necessarily be in act with respect to this knowledge.  The clincher to this can’t be stated any more eloquently than in St Thomas’ final sentence: “And hence it was necessary that the beatific knowledge, which consists in the vision of God, should belong to Christ pre-eminently, since the cause ought always to be more efficacious than the effect”.

St Thomas’ argument for the other two divisions of Christ’s human knowledge won’t be discussed here.  Continuing with the discussion on Christ’s beatific vision St Thomas has a distinct question on the topic with four very interesting articles of inquiry.

Firstly, he asks whether Christ comprehended the divine essence.  His answer to this is a firm ‘no’.  In the Incarnation, St Thomas informs us, Christ’s human nature keeps the properties of a creature.  Since no creature can possibly comprehend the divine essence, this is true also of Christ’s human intellect.  Note carefully that Christ in His divine intellect obviously fully comprehends Himself.  Indeed, only God can fully understand God.  It is His human intellect that we are speaking of here.

The second point of inquiry, however, involves a more nuanced treatment.  He asks whether “[t]he Son of God knew all things in the Word.”  In other words, did Christ know everything by virtue of possessing the beatific vision?  St Thomas says this depends on how we interpret the phrase “all things.”  At this point we need to back up slightly.  How much knowledge one has by virtue of the beatific vision depends on how well one has that vision (which for the saints is differentiated according to their level of merit).  However, the intellect never fails to know in the Word everything which at least pertains to its own self.  Going back to Christ, because He is King and Judge of all creation, everything to some extent belongs to Him since they are all subject to Him.  This means if we understand the expression “all things” to mean ‘all that in any way whatsoever is, will be, or was done, said, or thought, by whomsoever and at any time’ then Christ can be said to know all things in the Word.  However if we take the phrase “all things” in a broader sense to include also things that could happen but never will happen, then the answer is slightly different.  Of those contingencies which are in the divine power alone, Christ does not comprehend all in the Word, for this would mean a thorough knowledge of the divine power and therefore the divine essence which we previously saw is not possible.  Having said that, Thomas notes that Christ knows all ‘possibles’ which come from the power of creatures “for it comprehends in the Word the essence of every creature, and, consequently, its power and virtue, and all things that are in the power of the creature”.

From this the next question naturally arises, does Christ know the infinite in the Word?  Our instinctive response would probably be to answer ‘no’.  But as the scholastic dictum says “rarely affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish”.  So a couple of distinctions need to be made. Firstly, it is probably important to note that the concept of infinity is a rather difficult one.  There are many different sorts of infinity.  The difficulty of talking about infinity can be appreciated by reading St Thomas’ replies to the specific objections in this article which become rather involved.  Secondly, Thomas distinguishes between knowing a thing and entirely comprehending that thing.  For instance, we ourselves in Heaven will know God, directly even, but that does not imply that we will be able to comprehend him.

The first premise in Thomas’ argument is the convertibility of being and truth.  Knowledge regards being since truth is being as known by an intellect.  From this the main distinction is made that a thing can be in being either actually or potentially.  Thomas remarks that “knowledge primarily and essentially regards being in act, and secondarily regards being in potentiality, which is not knowable of itself, but inasmuch as that in whose power it exists is known [emphases added]”.  From here he makes the common sense observation that Christ’s soul does not know the infinite in the first sense simply because there are not an infinite number of beings in act even if we include everything that has or will exist.  This still keeps the door open with respect to the second mode that things may be.  On this score because Christ knows all that is in the power of the creature, as said above, and because this has an infinite number of possibilities the soul of Christ knows the infinite.

Finally, the last question that remains to be asked is how well does Christ’s perception of the Beatific vision ‘match up’ with all other creatures that behold God’s glory, all the angels and saints in Heaven?  In this case the instinctive answer is the right one: Christ’s soul perceives the beatific vision more clearly than any other created intellect.  Because His soul is united to the person of the Word, it is closer to it than any other creature.  The closer you are to the sun the more of its light you receive.  Like being next to the foundation of a spring, Christ’s soul participates more fully in the light of vision than any other created intellect.

We must keep in mind that the beatific vision which Christ’s soul possessed even from the moment of conception is something more wondrous and inexhaustible than can be expressed in words, as is the fact of His possessing it.  By examining the main contours of just one aspect of Christ’s human nature, we can begin to appreciate the depth of the mystery of the Incarnation. Christ as man always knew He was God.