II. These are but a few out of many illustrations of the

protection afforded by the doctrine of Christ’s Divinity to sundry imperilled truths of natural religion. Let us proceed to consider the illuminative or explanatory relation in which the doctrine stands to truths which are internal to the Christian revelation, and which themselves presuppose some definite belief respecting the Person of Christ.
Now our Lord’s whole Mediatorial work, while it is dis- charged through His assumed Humanity, is efficacious and complete, simply because the Mediator is not merely Man but God. As a Prophet, His utterances are infallible. As a Priest, He offers a prevailing sacrifice. Asa King, He wields an autho- rity which has absolute claims upon the conscience, and a power which will ultimately be proved to be resistless.
(a) A sincere and intelligent belief in the Divinity of Jesus Christ obliges us to believe that Jesus Christ, as a Teacher, is infallible. His infallibility is not a gift, it is an original and necessary endowment of His higher Nature. If indeed Christ had been merely man, He might still have been endowed with an infallibility such as was that of His own apostles. As it is, to charge Him with error is to deny that He is God. Unless God’s wisdom can be foolishness, or His veracity can be sullied by the suspicion of deceit; unless God can Himself succumb to error, or can consent to deceive His reasonable creatures; a sincere believer in the true Divinity of Jesus Christ will bow before His words in all their possible range of significance,
11 St. John iii. a, vir |
462 Modern denial of our Lora’s Infallidility.
as before the words of a literally infallible Master. So obvious an inference would only be disputed under circumstances of an essentially transitional character, such as are those which have perplexed the Church of England during the last few years. Deny that Jesus Christ is God, and you may or may not pro- ceed to deny that He is infallible. But confess His Godhead, and the common sense of men of the world will concur with the judgment of divines, in bidding you avoid the irrational as well as blasphemous conception of a fallible Deity. To main- tain, on the one hand, that Jesus Christ is God, and, on the other, that He is a teacher and propagator, not of trivial and uuimportant, but of far-reaching and substantial errors ;—this would have appeared to ancient Christendom a paradox so sin- gular as to be absolutely incredible. But we have lived to hear men proclaim the legendary and immoral character of con- siderable portions of those Old Testament Scriptures, upon which our Lord has set the seal of His infallible authority *. And yet, side by side with this rejection of Scriptures so deliberately sanctioned by Christ, there is an unwillingness which, illogical as it is, we must sincerely welcome, to profess any explicit rejection of the Clhurch’s belief in Christ’s Divinity. Hence arises the endeavour to intercept a conclusion, which might otherwise have seemed so plain as to make arguments in its favour an intellectual impertinence. Hence a series of sin- gular refinements, by which Christ is presented to the modern world as really Divine, yet as subject to fatal error; as Founder of the true religion, yet as the credulous patron of a volume replete with worthless legends; as the highest Teacher and Leader of humanity, yet withal as the ignorant victim of the prejudices and follies of an unenlightened age.
It will be urged by those who impugn the trustworthiness of the Pentateuch without denying in terms the Divinity of Christ, that such a representation as the foregoing does them a certain measure of injustice. They do not wish to deny that
* Colenso on the Pentateuch, vol. iii. p.623: ‘[In Matt. iv. 4, 7, 10]. we have quotations from Deut. viii. 3; vi. 16; vi. 13; x. 20. And it is well known that there are many other passages in the Gospels and Epistles, in which this book is referred to, and in some of which Moses is expressly mentioned as the writer of the words in question, e.g. Acts iii. 22; Rom. x. 19. And, though it is true that, in the texts above quoted, the words are not, indeed, ascribed to Moses, but are merely introduced with the phrase ‘It is written,’ yet in Matt. xix. 7 the Pharisees refer to a passage in Deut. xxiv. 1 as a law of Moses; and our Lord in His reply, ver. 8, repeats their language, and practically adopts it as correct, and makes it Ἢ Β own.
LECT.
Our Lord satd to be fallible as Man. 463
Christ, as the Eternal Son of God, is infallible. But the Christ Who speaks in the Gospels is, they contend, ‘a Son of man,’ and as such He is subject to the human infirmities of ignorance and error!, ‘Does He not profess Himself,’ they ask, ‘in the plainest words, ignorant of the day of the last judgment? Does not His Evangelist assure us that He increased in “ wisdom” as well as in stature? This being so, was not His human know- ledge limited; and was not error possible, if not inevitable, when He passed beyond the limits of such knowledge as He possessed 4 Why should He be supposed to speak of the Pen- tateuch with a degree of critical acumen, to which the foremost learning of His day and country had not yet attained? Take care,’ so they warn us, ‘lest in your anxiety to repudiate Arius and Nestorius, you deny the reality of Christ’s Human Soul, and become the unconscious associate of Apollinaris or of Eutyches. Take care, lest you make Chuistianity answer with its life for the truth of a “theory” about the historical trustworthiness of the Old Testament, which, although it certainly was sanctioned and put forward by Jesus Christ, yet has been as decidedly con- demned by the “higher criticism ” of the present day.’
Let us remark in this position, first of all, the indirect ad- mission that Christ, as the Eternal Son of God, is strictly infallible. Obvious as such a truth should be to Christians, Arianism, be it remembered, did not confess it. Arianism held that the Word Himself was ignorant of the day of judgment. Such a tenet was perfectly cousistent with the denial that the
1 Colenso on the Pentateuch, vol. i. p.xxxi: ‘It is perfectly consistent with the most entire and sincere belief in our Lord’s Divinity to hold, as many do, that, when He vouchsafed to become a ‘‘Son of Man,” He took our nature fully, and voluntarily entered into all the conditions of humanity, and, among others, intv that which makes our growth in all ordinary knowledge gradual and limited. We are expressly told, in Luke ii. 52, that ‘‘ Jesus increased in wisdom,” as well as in “stature.” It is not supposed that, in His human nature, He was acquainted, more than any educated Jew of the age, with the mysteries of all modern sciences ; nor, with St. Luke’s expressions before us, can it be seriously maintained that, as an infant or young child, He possessed a knowledge surpassing that of the most pious and learned adults of His nation, upon the subject of the authorship and age of the different portions of the Pentateuch. At what period, then, of His life upon earth, is it to be supposed that He had granted to Him, as the Son of Man, supernaturally, full and accurate information on these points, so that He should be expected to speak about the Pentateuch in other terms than any other devout Jew of that day would have employed? Why should it be thought that he would speak with certain Divine knowledge on this matter, more than upon — matters of ordinary science or history vu |
464 ° St. Luke ii. 52 considered.
Word was consubstantial with the Omniscient God; but it was utterly at variance with any pretension honestly to believe in His Divinity™. Yet it must be recorded with sorrow, that some writers who would desire nothing less than to uphold the name and errors of the opponent of Athanasius, do never- theless at times seem to speak as if it were seriously possible that the Infallible could have erred, or that the boundless knowledge of the Eternal Mind could be really limited. Let us then note and welcome the admission that the Eternal Son of God is literally infallible,even though it be made in quarters where His authority, as the Incarnate Christ, teaching unerringly substantial truth, is directly impugned and repudiated.
It is of course urged that our Lord’s Human Soul is the seat of that ‘fallibility’ which is insisted upon as being so fatal to His authority as a Teacher. Let us then enquire what the statements of Scripture on this mysterious subject would really appear to affirm.
1. When St. Luke tells us that our Lord increased in wisdom and stature ®, we can scarcely doubt that an intellectual develop- ment of some kind in Christ’s human Soul is indicated. This de- velopment, it is implied, corresponded to the growth of His bodily frame. The progress in wisdom was real and not merely apparent, just as the growth of Christ’s Human Body was a real growth. If only an increasing manifestation of knowledge had been meant, it might have been meant also that Christ only manifested increase of stature, while His Human Body did not really grow. But on the other hand, St. Luke had previously spoken of the Child
m §t. Athanasius comments as follows upon St. Mark xiii. 32, οὐδὲ ὁ Tids. Contr. Arian. Or. 111, c. 44: διὰ τοῦτο καὶ περὶ ἀγγέλων λέγων οὐκ εἴρηκεν ἐπαναβαίνων, ὅτι οὐδὲ τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον, ἀλλ᾽ ἐσιώπησε, δεικνὺς κατὰ δύο ταῦτα, ὅτι εἰ τὸ Πνεῦμα οἶδεν, πολλῷ μᾶλλον ὁ Λόγος ἣ Adyos ἐστὶν οἶδε, παρ᾽ οὗ καὶ τὸ Πνεῦμα λαμβάνει, καὶ ὅτι περὶ τοῦ Πνεύματος σιωπήσας φανερὸν πεποίηκεν, ὅτι περὶ τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης αὐτοῦ λειτουργίας ἔλεγεν" οὐδὲ 6 Ὑἱός" καὶ τούτου τεκμήριον, ὅτι ἀνθρωπίνως εἰρηκὼς, οὔδε ὁ Ὑἱὸς olde, δείκνυσιν ὅμως θεϊκῶς ἑαυτὸν τὰ πάντα εἰδότα. ὃν γὰρ λέγει Ὑἱὸν τὴν ἡμέραν μὴ εἰδέναι, τοῦτον εἰδέναι λέγει τὸν Πατέρα" οὐδεὶς γὰρ, φησὶ, γινώσκει τὸν Πατέρα εἰ μὴ ὁ Ὑἱός. πᾶς δὲ πλὴν τῶν ᾿Αρειανῶν συνομολογήσειεν, ὡς 6 τὸν Πατέρα γινώσκων πολλῷ μᾶλλον οἷδεν τῆς κτίσεως τὸ ὅλον, ἐν δὲ τῷ ὅλῳ καὶ τὸ τέλος ἐστὶ ταύτης.
Olshausen observes, in Ev. Matt. xxiv. 36,Comm. i. p.gog: ‘Ist aber vom Sohne Gottes hier die Rede, so kann das von ihm priidicirte Nichtwissen der ἡμέρα und Spa kein absolutes seyn, indem die Wesenseinheit des Vaters und des Sohnes das Wissen des Sohnes und des Vaters nicht specifisch zu trennen gestattet ; es muss vielmehr nur von dem Zustande der κένωσις des Herrn in Stande seiner Niedrigkeit verstanden werden,’
Ὁ St. Luke ii. 52: Ἰησοῦς προέκοπτε σοφίᾳ καὶ ἡλικίᾳ.
[ LEcT.
Our Lora’s ‘growth in knowledge’ 465
Jesus as ‘being filled with wisdom °, and St. John teaches that as the Word Incarnate, Jesus was actually ‘full of truth.’ St. John means not only that our Lord was veracious, but that He was fully in possession of objective truth P. It is clearly implied that, according to St. John, this fulness of truth was an element of that glory which the first disciples beheld or contemplated 4. This statement appears to be incompatible with the supposition that the Human Soul of Jesus, through spiritual contact with Which the disciples ‘beheld’ the glory of the Eternal Word, was Itself not ‘full of truth. St. John’s narrative does not admit of our confining this ‘fulness of truth’ to the later days of Christ’s ministry, or to the period which followed His Re- surrection. There are then two representations before us, one suggesting a limitation of knowledge, the other a fulness of knowledge in the human soul of Christ. In order to harmonize these statements, we need not fall back upon the vulgar ration- alistic expedient of supposing that between St. John’s represen- tation of our Lord’s Person, and that which is given in the three first Gospels, there is an intrinsic and radical discrepancy. If we take St. John’s account together with that of St. Luke, might it not seem that we have here a special instance of that tender condescension, by which our Lord willed to place Him- self in a relation of real sympathy with the various experiences of our finite existence? If by an infused knowledge He was, even as a Child, ‘full of truth,’ yet that He might enter with the sympathy of experience into the various conditions of our intellectual life, He would seem to have acquired, by the slow labour of observation and inference, a new mastery over truths which He already, in another sense, possessed. Such a co- existence of growth in knowledge with a possession of all its ultimate results would not be without a parallel in ordinary human life. In moral matters, a living example may teach with a new power some law of conduct, the truth of which we have before recognised intuitively. In another field of know- ledge, the telescope or the theodolite may verify a result of which we have been previously informed by a mathematical calculation’. We can then conceive that the reality of our © St. Luke ii. 40: πληρούμενον σοφίας.
P St. John i. 14: πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας.
4 Ibid.: ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ.
r In the same way, every man’s stock of opinions is of a twofold character ; it is partly traditional and partly acquired by personal investigation and thought. The traditionally received element in the mind, may be held, as ry with the utmost tenacity; and yet there is a real ‘increase in yi
466 Our Lorad’s statement in St. Mark xiii. 32,
Lord’s intellectual development would not necessarily be in- consistent with the simultaneous perfection of His knowledge. As Man, He might have received an infused knowledge of all truth, and yet have taken possession through experience and in detail of that which was latent in His mind, in order to corre- spond with the intellectual conditions of ordinary human life. But, let us suppose that this explanation be rejected’, that St. John’s statement be left out of sight, and that St Luke’s words be understood to imply simply that our Lord’s Human Soul ac- quired knowledge which It did not in any sense possess before. Does even any such ‘increase in wisdom’ as this during Christ’s early years, warrant our saying that, in the days of His min- istry, our Lord was still ignorant of the real claims and worth of the Jewish Scriptures? Does it enable us to go further, and to maintain that, when He made definite statements on the subject, He was both the victim and the propagator of serious error? Surely such inferences are not less unwarranted by the statements of Scripture than they are destructive of Christ’s character and authority as a teacher of truth! _
2. But it may be pleaded that our Lord, in declaring His ignorance of the day of the last judgment, does positively assign a specified limit to the knowledge actually possessed by His Human Soul during His ministry. ‘Of that day,’ He says, ‘ and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father t.’ ‘If these words,’ you wisdom,’ when this element is, so to speak, taken possession of a second time by means of personal inquiry and reflection. This is, of course, a very remote analogy to the Sacred Subject discussed in the text, but it may serve to suggest how the facts of an infused knowledge and a real προέκοπτε σοφίᾳ in our Lord’s Human Soul may have been compatible.
5 The following remarks of Dr. Klee will be read with interest. Dogmatik, p.511: ‘Der Menschheit Christi kann keine absolute Vollendung und Imperfectibilitiit der Erkenntniss von Anfang an zugelegt werden, weil dann Christus im Eingange in seine Glorie in Bezug auf sie unverherrlicht geblieben wire, was nicht wohl angenommen werden kann; weil ferner dann in Christo eine wahrhafte Allwissenheit angenommen werden miisste, was mit der menschlichen Natur und dem menschlichen Willen nicht wohl zu vereinbaren ist; und wenn Einige sich damit helfen zu kénnen glaubten, dass diese Allwissenheit immer nur eine aus Gnade mitgetheilte wire, so ist dayegen zu bemerken, dass die Menschheit dann aus Gnade auch die andern gittlichen Attribute, 2. B. Allmacht haben kénnte, und wenn man dieses mit der Entgegnung aus dem Felde zu schlagen glaubt, dass die Allmacht die Gottheit selbst, mithin absolut incommunicabel ist, so muss erwidert werden, dass die Allwissenheit ebenso Gottes Wesen selbst, somit unmittheilbar ist.’
t St. Mark xiii. 32: περὶ δὲ τὴς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης καὶ τῆς Spas, οὐδεὶς οἶδεν, οὐδὲ οἱ ἄγγελοι οἱ ἐν οὐρανῷ, οὐδὲ ὁ ids, εἰ μὴ ὃ Πατήρ. [
LECT.
how understood by great Western Fathers. 467
urge, ‘do not refer to His ignorance as God, they must refer to His ignorance in the only other possible sense, that is to say, to His ignorance as Man.’
Of what nature then is the ‘ignorance’ to which our Lord alludes in this much-controverted text? Is it a real matter-of- fact ignorance, or is it an ignorance which is only ideal and hypothetical? Is it an ignorance to which man, as man, is na- turally subject, but to which the Soul of Christ, the Perfect Man, was not subject, since His human intelligence was always illu- minated by an infused omniscience ἢ ἢ or is it an economical as distinct from a real ignorance? Is it the ignorance of the Teacher, who withholds from His disciples a knowledge which He actually possesses, but which it is not for their advantage to acquire *? or is it the ignorance which is compatible with implicit knowledge? Does Christ implicitly know the date of the day of judgment, yet, that He may rebuke the forwardness of His disciples, does He refrain from contemplating that which is potentially within the range of His mental vision? Is He deliberately turning away His gaze from the secrets which are open to it, and which a coarse, earthly curiosity would have greedily and quickly investigated y?
With our eye upon the literal meaning of our Lord’s words, must we not hesitate to accept any of these explanations? It is indeed true that to many very thoughtful and saintly minds, the words, ‘neither the Son,’ have not appeared to imply any ‘ignorance’ in the Son, even as Man. But antiquity does not furnish any decisive consent in favour of this belief; and it might seem, however involuntarily, to put an undue strain upon the plain sense of the passage. There is no sufficient ground for questioning the correctness of the text2; and here, as always, ‘if a literal explanation will stand, the furthest from the letter is commonly the worst.’ If elsewhere, in the course of these lectures, we have appealed to the literal force of the great texts in
® St. Greg. Magn. Epist. lib. x. 39. ad Eulog.: ‘Zn naturé quidem hu- manitatis novit diem et horam judicii, sed tamen hunc non ex natura humanitatis novit.’
x St. Aug. de Trin. i. 12: ‘Hoc enim nescit, quod nescientes facit, id est, quod non ita sciebat ut tunc discipulis indicaret.’ St. Ambros. de Fide, v. § 222: ‘Nostrum assumpsit affectum, ut nostré ignoratione nescire se diceret, non quia aliquid ipse nesciret.’ St. Hil. de Trin. ix. 62. See the passages accumulated by Dr. Newman, Select Treatises of St. Athanasius, p. 464, note f, Lib. Fath.
¥ So Lange, Leben Jesu, ii. 3, p. 1280.
* St. Ambr. de Fid. v. § 193: ‘Primum veteres non habent codices Greci, quia nec Filius scit,’ vat | Hha2
468 Our Lord’s statement in St. Mark xiii. 32,
St. John and St. Paul, as yielding a witness to the Catholic doc- trine, can we substitute for the literal sense of the passage before us, a sense which, to say the least, is not that suggested by the letter? If then we should understand that our Lord in His Human Soul was, at the time of His speaking, actually ignorant of the day of the last judgment, we shall find ourselves sheltered by Fathers of unquestioned orthodoxy®. St. Irenzus discovers in our Lord’s Human ignorance a moral argument against the intellectual self-assertion of his own Gnostic contemporaries > ; while he attributes Omniscience to the Divine Nature of Christ in the clearest terms. St. Athanasius insists that the explanation which he gives, restricting our Lord’s ignorance to His Human Soul, is a matter in which the faithful are well instructed 9, He is careful to assert again and again our Lord’s omniscience as God the Word; he attributes Christ’s ‘ignorance’ as Man to the condescending love by which He willed to be like unto us in all things4, and compares it, accordingly, to His hunger
® Klee says: ‘It was impossible, in virtue of the Hypostatic Union, to ascribe to the Human Soul of Christ an absolute science and a perfect knowledge. On this subject, however, there is a very marked difference between the Fathers.’ Dogmengeschichte, ii. 4.7. Of the Fathers cited by Klee the majority assert a limitation of knowledge in our Lord’s Human Soul.
> St. Iren. adv. Heer. ii. 28, 6: ‘Irrationabiliter autem inflati, audaciter inenarrabilia Dei mysteria scire vos dicitis; quandoquidem et Dominus, ipse Filius Dei, ipsum judicii diem et horam concessit scire solum Patrem, mani- fest® dicens, ‘“‘De die autem ill et hor4 nemo scit, neque Filius, sed Pater solus.” (Mare. xiii. 32.) Si igitur scientiam diei illius Filius non erubuit referre ad Patrem, sed dixit quod verum est; neque nos erubescamus, que sunt in questionibus majora secundum nos, reservare Deo. Nemo enim super Magistrum est.’ That St. Ireneus is here referring to our Lord’s humanity is clear from the appeal to His example. Of His Divinity he says (ii. 28, 7): ‘Spiritus Salvatoris, qui in eo est, scrutatur omnia, et altitudines Dei.’ Cf. Bull, Def. Fid. Nic. ii. δ» 8.
e St, Athan, contr. Arian. Orat. iii. ὁ. 45: οἱ δὲ φιλόχριστοι καὶ Χριστο- φόροι γινώσκωμεν, ὡς οὐκ ἀγνοῶν 6 Λόγος ἧ ἣ Adyos ἐστὶν ἔλεγεν, “ οὐκ οἶδα, οἷδε γὰρ, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἀνθρώπινον δεικνὺς, ὅτι τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἴδιόν ἐστι τὸ ἀγνοεῖν, καὶ ὅτι σάρκα ἀγνοοῦσαν ἐνεδύσατο, ἐν 7 dv σαρκικῶς ἔλεγεν. Dr. Mill resents the suggestion ‘that when even an Athanasius could speak (with the Scriptures) of the limitation of human knowledge in the Incarnate Son, the improved theology of later times is entitled to censure the senti- ment, as though impeaching His Divine Personality.’ On the Nature of Christianity, Ρ. 18.
4 Thid. c. 43: ἀμέλει "λέγων ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ περὶ τοῦ κατὰ τὸ ἀνθρώπινον αὐτοῦ" Πάτερ, ἐλήλυθεν ἡ ἡ ὥρα" δύξασόν σου τὸν Ὑόν" δῆλός ἐστιν ὕτι καὶ τὴν περὶ τοῦ πάντων τέλους ὥραν ὡς μὲν Λόγος γινώσκει, ὡς δὲ ἄνθρωπος ἀγνοεῖ" ἀνθρώπου γὰρ ἴδιον τὸ ἀγνοεῖν, καὶ μάλιστα ταῦτα. ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτο τῆς φιλαν- θρωπίας ἴδιον τοῦ Σωτῆρος, ἐπειδὴ γὰρ γέγονεν ἄνθρωπος, οὐκ ἐπαισχύνεται διὰ τὴν σάρκα τὴν ἀγνοοῦσαν εἰπεῖν, orn οἶδα, ἵνα δείξῃ ὅτι εἰδὼς ὡς a ἀγνοεῖ
LECT,
Ε
Te a ERE
Sore
explained by SS. A thanastus and Cyril Alex. 469
and thirst®. ‘To whom,’ exclaims St. Gregory Nazianzen, ‘can it be a matter of doubt that Christ has a knowledge of that hour as God, but says that He is ignorant of it as Manf?’ St. Cyril of Alexandria argues that our Lord’s ‘ignorance’ as Man is in keeping with the whole economy of the Incarnation. As God, Christ did know the day of judgment; but it was consistent with the law of self-humiliation prescribed by His infinite love that He should assume all the conditions of real humanity, and therefore, with the rest, a limitation of knowledge. There would be no reasonable ground for offence at that which was only a consequence of the Divine Incarnation’. You will remark, my brethren, the significance of such a judgment when advanced by this great father, the uncompromising opponent of Nestorian error, the strenuous assertor of the Hypostatie Union, the chief
σαρκικῶς, οὐκ εἴρηκε γοῦν, οὐδὲ ὁ Tids τοῦ Θεοῦ older, ἵνα μὴ ἡ θεότης ἀγνο- οὖσα φαίνηται" ἀλλ᾽ ἁπλῶς, “οὐδὲ ὁ Ὑἱὸς, ἵνα τοῦ ἐξ ἀνθρώπων γενομένου Ὑἱοῦ ἡ ἄγνοια ἢ.
© St. Athan. contr. Arian. Orat. iii. 6. 46: ὥσπερ γὰρ ἄνθρωπος γενόμενος μετὰ ἀνθρώπων πειιᾷ καὶ διψᾷ καὶ πάσχει, οὕτως μετὰ μὲν τῶν ἀνθρώπων ὡς ἄνθρωπος οὐκ οἶδε, θεϊκῶς δὲ ἐν τῷ Πατρὶ ὧν Adyos καὶ Σοφία οἶδε, καὶ οὐδέν ἐστιν ὃ ἀγνοεῖ. Of. ad Serap. ii. 9.
£ St. Greg. Naz. Orat. xxx. 15: καίτοι πῶς ἀγνοεῖ τι τῶν ὄντων ἡ Σοφία ὁ ποιητὴς τῶν αἰώνων, ὃ συντελεστὴς καὶ μεταποιητὴς, τὸ πέρας τῶν γενομένων ;
. ἢ πᾶσιν εὔδηλον, ὅτι γινώσκει μὲν, ὡς Θεὸς, ἀγνοεῖν δέ φησιν, ws ἄνθρωπος, ἄν τις τὸ φαινόμενον χωρίσῃ τοῦ vooumévov;. ... ὥστε τὴν ἄγνοιαν ὑπολαμ- βάνειν ἐπὶ τὸ εὐσεβέστερον, τῷ ἀνθρωπίνῳ, μὴ τῷ Θείῳ ταύτην λογιζομένους.
ε St. Cyril. Alex. Thesaurus, Op. tom. v. p. 221 : ὥσπερ οὖν συγκεχώρηκεν ἑαυτὸν ὡς ἄνθρωπον γενόμενον μετὰ ἀνθρώπων καὶ πεινᾷν καὶ διψῇν καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάσχειν ἅπερ εἴρηται περὶ αὐτοῦ, τὸν αὐτὸν δὴ τρόπον ἀκόλουθον μὴ σκανδαλίζε- σθαι κἂν ὡς ἄνθρωπος λέγῃ μετὰ ἀνθρώπων ἀγνοεῖν, ὅτι τὴν αὐτὴν ἡμῖν ἐφόρεσε σάρκα" οἷδε μὲν γὰρ ὡς Σοφία καὶ Λόγος dy ἐν Πατρί: μὴ εἰδέναι δέ φησι δι’ ἡμᾶς καὶ μέθ᾽ ἡμῶν ὡς ἄνθρωπος. But see the whole discussion of the bearing of St. Mark xiii. 32 upon the Homoousion (Thesaurus, pp. 217- 224). Certainly St. Cyril refers to the οἰκονομία, and he speaks οὗ Christ’s ‘saying that He did not know, on our account,’ and of His professing not to know ‘humanly.’ But this language does not amount to saying that Christ really did know, as Man, while for reasons of His own, which were connected with His love and φιλανθρωπία, He said He knew not. St. Cyril’s mind appears to be, that our Lord did know as God, but in His love He assumed all that belongs to real manhood, and, therefore, actual limitation of knowledge. The word οἰκονομία does not seem to mean here simply a gracious or wise arrangement, but the Incarnation, considered as involving Christ’s submission to human limitations. The Latin translator renders it ‘administrationi sive Incar- nationi,’ St. Cyr. Op. v. p. 218. St. Cyril does not say that Christ really did know as Man; he must have said so, considering the bearing of his argument, had he believed it. He thus states the principle which he kept in view: οὕτω γὰρ ἕκαστον τῶν λεγομένων ἐν τῇ οἰκείᾳ τάξει κείσεται" οὔτε τῶν ὅσα πρέπει γυμνῷ τῷ Λόγῳ καταφερομένων εἰς τὸ ἀνθρώπινον, οὔτε μὴν τῶν τα ae ἀναβαινόντων εἰς τὸν τῆς θεότητος λόγον. Thes. p. 253.
Vill
470 The heresy of the Agnocete.
inheritor of all that is most characteristic in the theological mind of St. Athanasius. It is of course true that a different belief was already widely received within the Church: it is enough to point to the ‘retractation’ of Leporius, to which St. Augustine was one of the subscribing bishopsh, But although a contrary judgment subsequently predominated in the West, it is certain that the leading opponents of Arianism did not shrink from re- cognising a limitation of knowledge in Christ’s Human Soul, and that they appealed to His own words as a warrant for doing soi.
‘But have we not here,’ you ask, ‘albeit disguised under and recommended by the sanction of great names, the old heresy of the Agnoete?’ No. The Agnoete attributed ignorance not merely to our Lord’s Human Soul, but to the Eternal Word. A-sect of the Monophysites, they imagined a confusion of Natures in Christ, after the Eutychian pattern, and then attri- buted ignorance to that Divine Nature into Which His Human Nature, as they held, was absorbed *, They were thus, on this point, in agreement with the Arians: while Eulogius of Alexandria, who wrote against them, admitted that Catholic fathers before him had taught that, as Man, Christ had been subject to a certain limitation of knowledge],
h Quoted by Petavius, De Incarn. xi.; ¢. 1, § 14. Leporius appears to have answered the Arian objections by restricting the ignorance to our Lord’s Human Soul, after the manner of St. Athanasius. He retracts as follows: ‘Ut autem et hinc nihil cuiquam in suspicione derelinquam, tune dixi, immd ad objecta respondi, Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum secun- dum hominem ignorare: sed nunc non solum dicere non presumo, verum etiam priorem anathematizo prolatam in hac parte sententiam.’ Leporius, however, seems really to have anticipated Nestorius in teaching a complete separation of our Lord’s Two Natures. Klee, Dogmengesch. ii. 4. 4.
i Compare Bishop Forbes on Nic. Creed, p. 146, 2nd ed. And see St. Hil, in Matt. Comm. c. 26, n. 4; Theodoret in Ps. xv. § 7, quoted by Klee.
K See Suicer in voc. ’Ayvonral, i. p.65: ‘Hi docebant divinam Christi naturam (hane enim solam post Unionem agnoscebant, tanquam absorpta esset plant humana), quedam ignordsse, ut horam extremi judicii.’ Eulogius of Alexandria, who wrote against them, denied any actual limitation of knowledge in Christ’s Manhood, but admitted that earlier Fathers had taught this, πρὸς τὴν τῶν ᾿Αρειανῶν μανίαν ἀντιφερόμενοι; but, as he thinks, because οἰκονομικώτερον ἐδοκίμασαν ἐπὶ τῆς ἀνθρωπότητος ταῦτα φέρειν ἢ παραχωρεῖν ἐκείνους μεθέλκειν ταῦτα κατὰ τῆς θεότητος. Apud Photium, Cod. 230, ed. Bekker. p. 284, 6, sub ἔῃ, Klee distinguishes between the teaching of those Fathers who denied that the Human Soul of Christ possessed unlimited knowledge, and that of the Agnoete, who ‘speaking of the Person of Christ without any limitations,’ maintained that He did not know the day of judgment. Dogmengeschichte, ii. 4. § 7.
1 It is remarkable that ‘die Ansicht dass Christi Menschheit gleich nach der Vereinigung mit dem Logos Alles wusste, als Irrthum des ae von
LECT,
Omuntiscience and limited knowledze. 471
‘At any rate,’ you rejoin, ‘if our Lord’s words are to be taken literally, if they are held to mean that the knowledge of His Human Soul is in any degree limited, are we not in danger of Nestorian error? Does not this conjunction of “ knowledge” and “ignorance” in one Person, and with respect to a single subject, dissolve the unity of the God-man™? Is not this intellectual dualism inconsistent with any conception we can form of a single personality? Cannot we understand the indisposition of later theologians to accept the language of St. Athanasius and others without an explanation, even although a sense which it does not of itself suggest is thereby forced upon it ?’
The question to be considered, my brethren, is whether such an objection has not a wider scope than you intend. Is it not equally valid against other and undisputed contrasts between the Divine and Human Natures of the Incarnate Son? For example, as God, Christ is omnipresent ; as Man, He is present at a particular point in space®. Do you say that this, however mysterious, is more conceivable than the co-existence of igno- rance and knowledge, with respect to a single subject ina single personality ? Let me then ask whether this co-existence of igno- rance and knowledge is more mysterious than a co-existence of absolute blessedness and intense suffering? If the Scriptural words which describe the sufferings of Jesus are understood literally, without establishing Nestorianism; why are we in danger of Nestorianism if we understand Him to be speaking of His Manhood, when He asserts that the Son is ignorant of the day of judgment? If Jesus, as Man, did not enjoy the Divine attribute of perfect blessedness, yet without prejudice to His full possession of it, as God; why could He not, in like manner, as Man, be without the Divine attribute of perfect knowledge ? If as He knelt in Gethsemane, He was in one sphere of existence All-blessed, and in another ‘sore amazed, very heavy, sorrowful even unto death;’ might He not with equal truth be in the
Villanova 1309 férmlich verurtheilt worden,’ Klee, Dogmatik, p. 511. Arnold attempted to maintain that his opinion was a necessary consequence of the Hypostatic Union, ‘Quantum citd anima Christi fuit unita Divini- tati, statim’ ipsa anima scivit omnia, que Deus scit; quia alias, ut dicebat, non fuisset cum θὰ una persona, precipue quia scire est circumstantia per- tinens ad suppositum individuale, et non ad naturam,’ Eimeric. Direct, inquis. ii, qu. 11. qu. by Klee, Dogmengesch. ii. 4, 8.
m Stier, Reden Jesu in Matt. xxiv. 36.
» Scotus Erigena first taught the ubiquity of our Lord’s Manhood; in more recent times it was prominently put forward by Luther, as an expla- an of his teaching on the Eucharist, See Hooker, Εἰ. P. v. 55. 2-7. ΨΗΣ
472 Superhuman range of our Lord's knowledge.
one Omniscient, and in the other subject to limitations of know- ledge? The difficulty 9 is common to all the contrasts of the Divine Incarnation ; but these contrasts, while they enhance our sense of our Lord’s love and condescension, do not destroy our apprehension of the Personal Unity of the Incarnate Christ P. His Single Personality has two spheres of existence ; in the one It is all-blessed, undying, and omniscient; in the other It meets with pain of mind and body, with actual death, and with a cor- respondent liability to a limitation of knowledge. No such limit- ation, we may be sure, can interfere with the completeness of His redemptive office. It cannot be supposed to involve any ignorance of that which the Teacher and Saviour of mankind should know; while yet it suffices to place Him as Man in a perfect sympathy with the actual conditions of the mental life of His brethren 4. If then this limitation of our Lord’s human knowledge be admitted, to what does the admission lead? It leads, properly speaking, to nothing beyond itself. It amounts to this: that at the particular time of His speaking, the Human Soul of Christ was restricted as to Its range of knowledge in one particular direction. For it is certain from Scripture that our Lord was constantly giving proofs, during His earthly life, of an altogether super- human range of knowledge. There was not merely in Him the quick and penetrating discernment of a very holy soul,—not merely ‘that unction from the Holy One’ whereby Christians instinctively ‘know all things’ that concern their salvation. It
© Bishop Ellicott, in Aids to Faith, p. 445: ‘Is there really any greater difficulty in such a passage [as St. Mark xiii. 32] than in John xi. 33, 35, where we are told that those holy cheeks were still wet with human tears, while the loud Voice was crying, “‘ Lazarus, come forth!” ’
P See Leibnitz’s reply to Wissowatius, quoted by Lessing, Sammtl. Schrift. ix. 277: ‘ Potest quis ex nostra hypothesi simul esse ille qui nescit diem judicii, nempe homo, et ille qui est Deus Altissimus. Que hypothesis nostra, quod idem simul possit esse Deus et homo, quamdiu non evertitur, tamdiu contrarium argumentum petit principium.’
4 See Klee, Dogmatik, p. 511: ‘Auch das kann nicht gesagt werden, dass die menschliche Natur, wenn sie nicht absolut vollkommen und imperfectibel ist, dann mit Unwissenheit behaftet ist; denn nicht-allwissend ist nicht unwissend, sonst war Adam vor seinem Falle schon, und sind die Engel und Heiligen in ihrer Glorie immerfort in der Unwissenheit. Unwissenheit ist Negation des nothwendigen und ziemenden Wissens, und solche ist in der Menschheit Christi nicht, in welche die ihr verbundene Gottheit alles zu ihrem Berufe gehérige und durch sie alles zum Heile der Menschheit ge- hérige iiberstr6mte. Darum war auch die Steigerung der Wissenschaft der Menschheit keine Erlésung derselben, und fallt der Einwand, dass, wenn die Menschheit etwas nicht gewusst hitte, sie eine erlésungsbediirftige gewesen wire, was doch nicht angenommen werden kénne, weg.’ [
LECT.
Superhuman rangeofChrist’s knowledgeasMan. 473
was emphatically a knowledge of hard matters of fact, not revealed to Him by the senses, and beyond the reach of sense. Thus He knows the exact coin which will be found in the mouth of the first fish which His apostle will presently take™ He bases His discourse on the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, on an accurate knowledge of the secret communings in which His conscience-stricken disciples had indulged on the road to Caper- naum’. He gives particular instructions to the two disciples as to the finding of the ass on which He will make His entry into Jerusalem t. He is perfectly cognizant of the secret plot- tings of the traitor, although no human informant had disclosed them" Nor is this knowledge supernaturally communicated at the moment; it is the result of an actual supra-sensuous sight of that which He describes. ‘Before that Philip called thee,’ He says to Nathanael, ‘ when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee x. Do you compare this to the knowledge of secrets ascribed to Elisha y, to Daniel, to St. Peter®? In these in- stances, as eminently in that of Daniel, the secret was revealed to the soul of the prophet or apostle. In the case of Christ we hear of no such revelation; He speaks of the things of heaven with a calm familiarity, which is natural to One Who knows them as beholding them ‘in Himself,’
Indeed, our Lord’s knowledge embraced two districts, each of which really lies open only to the Eye of the Most High. We will not dwell on His knowledge of the unsuspected future, a knowledge inherent in Him, as it was imparted to those prophets in whom His Spirit had dwelt. We will not insist on His knowledge of a strictly contingent futurity, such as is involved in His positive assertion that Tyre and Sidon would have repented of their sins, tf they had enjoyed the opportunities of Chorazin and Bethsaida®; although such knowledge as this, considering the vast survey of motives and circumstances which it implies, must be strictly proper to God alone. But He knew the secret heart of man, and He knew the hidden thought and purpose of the Most High God. Such a ‘discerner’ was He ‘of the thoughts and intents’ of human hearts4, so truly did His
t St. Matt. xvii. 27.
8 St. Luke ix. 47: ἰδὼν τὸν διαλογισμὸν τῆς καρδίας αὐτῶν.
* St. Matt. xxi. 2; St. Mark xi. 2; St. Luke xix. 30.
= St. John xiii. 11. x Ibid. i. 49. y 2 Kings vi. 9, 32.
* Dan. ii. 19. ® Acts v. 3. > St. John vi, 61: ἐν ἑαυτῷ. ο St. Matt. xi. 21.
4 Heb, iv, 12: xpitixds ἐνθυμήσεων καὶ ἐννοιῶν καρδίας,
Vu J
474. Superhuman range of Christ's knowledge.
Apocalyptic title, the ‘Searcher of the reins and hearts®,’ belong to Him in the days of His historical manifestation, that ‘He needed not that any should testify to Him of men, for He knew what was in man‘ This was not a result of His taking careful note of peculiarities of action and character manifested to the eye by those around Him, but of His ‘ perceiving in His Spirit’ and ‘knowing in Himself8’ the unuttered reasonings and voli- tions which were taking shape, moment by moment, within the secret souls of men, just as clearly as He saw. physical facts not ordinarily appreciated except by sensuous perception. This was the conviction of His apostles. ‘We are sure,’ they said, ‘ that Thou knowest all things)” ‘Lord, Thou knowest all things,’ cries St. Peter, ‘Thou knowest that I love Theei.’ Yet more, in the Eternal Father Jesus encounters no impenetrable mys- teries; for Jesus no clouds and darkness are round about Him, nor is His way in the sea, nor His path in the deep waters, nor His footsteps unknown. On the contrary, our Lord reciprocates the Father’s knowledge of Himself by an equivalent knowledge of the Father. ‘As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father*.’ ‘No Man knoweth Who the Son is, but the Father; and Who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him!” Even if our Lord should be speak- ing, in this passage, primarily at least, of His Divine omniscience, He is also plainly speaking of a knowledge infused into and possessed by His Human Soul, and thus His words supply the true foil to His statement respecting the day of judgment. If that statement be construed literally, it manifestly describes, not the normal condition of His Human Intelligence, but an excep- tional restriction. For the Gospel history implies that the knowledge infused into the Human Soul of Jesus was ordinarily and practically equivalent to omniscience. ‘ We may conjecture,’ says Hooker, ‘how the powers of that Soul are illuminated, Which, being so inward unto God, cannot choose but be privy unto all things which God worketh, and must therefore of necessity be endued with knowledge so far forth universal,
though not with infinite knowledge peculiar to Deity Itself ™’
e Rev. ii. 23. The message from Jesus to each of the angels of the seven Churches begins with the word οἶδα, as if in order to remind these bishops of His soul-penetrating omniscience.
1 St. John ii. 25: οὐ χρείαν εἶχεν ἵνα τὶς μαρτυρήσῃ περὶ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου" αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐγίνωσκε τί ἦν ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ. & St. Mark ii. 8; v. 30.
Β St. John xvi. 30: νῦν οἴδαμεν ὅτι oldas πάντα.
1 Thid. xxi. 17: Κύριε, ob πάντα οἶδας" σὺ γινώσκεις ὅτι φιλῶ σε. ᾿
Ε Tbid. x. 15. 1 St. Luke x, 22. m Kocl. Pol. v. 54. 7.
i LECT.
a Hi bs)
Limitation of knowledge ts not fallibility. 475
St. Paul’s assertion that ‘in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge®,’ may practically be understood of Christ’s earthly life, no less than of His life of glory. If then His Human Intellect, flooded as it was by light streaming from His Deity, was denied, at a particular time, knowledge of the date of one future event, this may be compared with that de- privation of the consolations of Deity, to which His Human affections and will were exposed when He hung on the Cross, ‘If ‘the Divine Wisdom,’ as Bishop Bull has said, ‘impressed its effects upon the Human Soul of Christ pro temporum ratione, in the degree required by particular occasions or emergencies®,’ this would be only one application of the principle recognised by St. Irenzeus and Theodoret, and rendered familiar to us by Hcoker. ‘As the parts, degrees, and offices of that mystical admin‘stration did require, which He voluntarily undertook, the beams of Deity did in operation always accordingly restrain or enlarge themselves P.’ If we cannot specify the motive which may have determined our Lord to deny to His Human Soul at one particular date the knowledge of one fact; we may presume that it belonged to that love which led Him to become ‘in all things like unto His brethren 4.’ That he was ever completely ignorant of aught else, or that He was ignorant on this point at any other time, are inferences for which we have no warrant, and which we make at our peril.
But it is not on this account alone that our Lord’s Human ignorance of the day of judgment, if admitted, cannot be made the premiss of an argument intended to destroy His authority, when He sanctions the Mosaic authorship and historical trust- worthiness of the Pentateuch. That argument involves a con- fusion between limitation of knowledge and liability to error; whereas, plainly enough, a limitation of knowledge is one thing,
1 Col. ii. 3: ἐν ᾧ εἰσι πάντες of θησαυροὶ τῆς σοφίας καὶ τῆς γνώσεως ἀπόκρυφοι.
© Bull, Def. Fid. Nic. ii. 5, 8: ‘Quippe divinam Sapientiam menti hu- mane Christi effectus suos impressisse pro temporum atione, Christumque, qua Homo fuit, προκόψαι σοφίᾳ, profecisse sapientia (Luc. 11. 52) adeoque pro tempore suze ἀποστολῆ5, quo ista scientid opus non habebat (this seems to hint at more than anything which the text of the New Testament warrants) diem judicii universalis ignorare potuisse, nemini sano absurdum videbitur.’
® Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 54.6. See Mr. Keble’s references from Theodoret (Dial. iii. t. 4, pars. i. 232) and St. Iren. Her. iii. 6. 10. 3.
.4 Petavius ventures on a suggestion, De Ine. lib, xi. 2. 1: ‘ Fieri potuit ut Ille, ceteroqui scientié perfusus et gratia, hoc unum ignoraret ad tempus; ita dispensante Divina Sapientia, quo tolerabiliorem hominibus predicando faceret diei ejusdem inscitiam.’ γι] '
476 Recent assailants of the Pentateuch make Our
and fallibility is another. St. Paul says that ‘we know in