The Knowledge of Christ I: Why Christ Has Human Knowledge and the Beatific Vision (ST III, q.9, aa.1-2)

Orientation #

He opens with the prayer and says “after question nine, now he’s going to take up the knowledge of Christ”; later a student notes that question eight, on Christ as head, is what makes the causal argument here fitting (prev. lecture). He ends at the break, leaving the next article for afterward. The previous class treated q. 8 on Christ’s headship; the next continues q. 9 with aa. 3-4 on infused and acquired knowledge.

The class, in order #

1. The plan of question 9 (“what knowledge did Christ have”) #

Two things to consider: what kind of knowledge Christ had (more than one kind), then each kind in particular. Four articles on knowledge in general: (1) some knowledge besides the divine; (2) the knowledge the blessed have, “those who have grasped the end, the comprehensores”; (3) an innate knowledge, “one that was poured into him” [ed.: infused]; (4) acquired knowledge, “through experience.” (He says “third” twice in listing; the count is four.)

2. Article 1, objections and sed contra (“some knowledge besides the divine”) #

Point: the three objections deny any created knowledge in Christ.

• Obj. 1: knowledge is for knowing things; Christ knew all things by divine knowledge; so other knowledge is superfluous. His aside: the same question can be asked of the blessed — if they see all in God, “why would my Euclidean geometry still be there?”
• Obj. 2: a lesser light is blocked by a greater, as stars by the sun; all created knowledge is a “very lesser light” to the uncreated; so no other knowledge shone forth in Christ.
• Obj. 3: union was made in the person; some posit a scientia unionis by which Christ knew what pertains to the Incarnation more fully than anyone; since the personal union contains two natures, one knowledge for both. He finds the force of this “a little hard to see”: presumably one person, so one knowledge.
• Sed contra: Ambrose (one of the four or five major Western doctors), On the Incarnation: God in the flesh took on the perfection of human nature, the sense of man, “not an inflated sense of flesh” (rendering uncertain from the recording); created knowledge pertains to the sense of man.

3. Article 1, the body: three reasons (“took on a complete human nature”) #

Point: given that Christ took a complete human nature — not body only (against heretics making the divinity stand in for the soul), nor a merely sensing soul (then “he’d be a beast still”) but a rational soul — created knowledge is necessary for three reasons.

1. Perfection of his soul. The soul by itself is in ability to understandable things; sometimes we understand actually, sometimes only in ability; so Aristotle, De Anima III, compares it to a tablet on which nothing is yet written, by reason of the possible understanding in which all things can be. Aside: after treating the senses and reason, Aristotle says the soul is in some way all things, since by sensing and understanding we take in the natures of other things. He read SCG II ch. 46 that morning (beginning of the third part of book II): six reasons why the universe needs intellectual creatures; the sixth: in well-ordered things, first is to second as second to third. “Interesting proportion”: the human soul, highest in the material world, is in some way all things, as God in a more perfect way is all things. What is ability but not act is imperfect unless reduced to act; it would not be suitable for the Son of God to take an imperfect human nature, because through it he was to bring the whole human race to perfection, and “it’s the perfect that brings the imperfect to perfection”; otherwise “the soul of Christ would be more imperfect than all the souls of other men.” “I’m convinced by that argument.”
2. Each thing is for the sake of its operation (De Caelo II): the eye for seeing, the ability to play the piano for playing; so Christ would have an understanding soul in vain, frustra, if he understood nothing by it, and this belongs to created knowledge. Aside: Aristotle’s title in Greek was “about the universe”; the Greek word can mean the heavens or the whole universe, so Latin De Caelo et Mundo; second book in natural philosophy after the Physics; it treats the earth too.
3. Some created knowledge belongs to the nature of the human soul: that by which we naturally know the first beginnings, “the axioms” — the whole is more than a part, nothing is a beginning of itself. Hence he translates scientia by “knowledge,” not “science,” since it is taken here broadly for any knowledge of the human soul. Nothing natural was lacking in Christ; so the sixth synod condemned those denying two knowledges or two wisdoms in Christ. “Beautiful. I couldn’t say it better myself.”

4. Student objection: is a nature born without knowledge imperfect? (“born without knowledge is not an imperfect human nature”) #

Point: a student (relaying a brother influenced by “a certain philosopher”) objects that human nature born without knowledge is simply how human nature is, and that fittingness suggests Christ should be “like us in all things except sin.”

• His reply: Christ perfects us in knowledge and grace, so his human nature, as a tool of his divinity for perfecting us, should be perfect for that “from the very beginning”; John: we saw the only-begotten “full of grace and truth,” as if one follows on the other. Christ’s human soul has the beatific vision (not his divine knowledge of himself), also an infused knowledge like the angels’, and a completely human acquired knowledge.
• Student: whenever anyone goes from potency to act in knowledge, is Christ causing it? He: we’ll see how in particular; he is the source of higher, supernatural knowledge such as faith; of natural knowledge as God, “the light who enlightens every man” — which he sometimes takes of the natural light of reason, since not all are enlightened by faith. Student: “the light came into the world, and men preferred darkness” (John) is a different light from the divinity.
• The argument is from fitness, “but even more than that”: the perfect is what perfects other things.
• Privation vs. imperfection: a privation is not having what one is able and ought to have. Thomas’s dog that cannot see until the ninth day is not called blind in the strict sense; a newborn boy who cannot generate is not impotent as a privation. But to have the ability to know and not actually know is still an imperfect state, the blank tablet; even that would be unfitting for Christ, whose nature is taken as a tool.
• Student: at twelve he taught in the temple and could have earlier; perhaps his intellect acquired vast knowledge quickly. He: “let’s leave it up in the air,” since Thomas will distinguish three kinds and this may be true of one of them.

5. Acquiring what one already knows; dialectic and demonstration (“acquiring knowledge he already has”) #

Point: a student asks whether acquired knowledge in Christ is knowledge he already has; he answers that it is a different kind of knowledge, not the same thing known by different modes.

• Example: in seeing God as he is, he will see the truth of the Pythagorean theorem and everything he naturally wants to know, all at once; but he will not cease to know Euclid’s demonstration at the end of Book One — “I’ll see that last theorem and its human proof better.”
• Thomas, on how human knowledge remains with the more divine, compares dialectic and demonstration: dialectic is a way to knowledge, but arriving at demonstration does not destroy it; one can “come back and do the dialectic even better.”
• Plato vs. Aristotle: Plato’s dialogues represent dialectic in a mind on the way to truth; Aristotle’s dialectic is that of a man who has seen the truth and come back and ordered it, going “directly towards the truth.” Good teaching should imitate discovery, but without the dead ends. Reading Plato he finds things Aristotle took but “all kind of jumbled up.” Example: Euthyphro — is it pious because it pleases the gods, or does it please them because it is pious? — the question Aristotle must have asked of the first definition of the good, “what all want”: good because wanted, or wanted because good; Plato does not put the two together; another dialogue speaks beautifully of happiness, and Aristotle “puts it right in place.”
• So the lesser, dialectic, is not eliminated by the perfected; “I’ll be able to carry a tune probably in heaven” — his wife informs him of his melodic mistakes.

6. Article 1, replies (“uncreated operation, which is the very substance of God”) #

• Ad 1: Christ knows all through divine knowledge by an uncreated operation that is God’s very substance; recall from the knowledge of God that for God to be and to know are the same, else he would be in potency and not pure act; Aristotle saw this in Metaphysics XII: “this is what God is: life itself.” Aside: had Aristotle read “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” he would have thought “this guy’s really God.” That act cannot be the human soul’s, being of another nature; so without other knowledge the soul would know nothing — this is why he said “more imperfect than all men” — and be assumed in vain.
• Ad 2: two lights of the same order (both illuminating) — the sun obscures the candle; but greater in the order of illuminating and lesser in the order of illumined — the lesser is increased, as the air by the sun. The objection is “a little bit metaphorical”: the sun does not make the air darker.
• Ad 3: from the side of the things united, knowledge is placed in Christ as regards each nature; through the union, what is of God is attributed to man and vice versa; but from the side of the union no knowledge, because knowledge pertains to the nature, while the union is to the personal being.

7. Return to the fittingness objection (“He’s not imperfect. That’s the force”) #

Point: the students press the objection again; he and they locate its force.

• He: is it appropriate that God assume something imperfect in knowledge? A student: perfectly born baby has two eyes, two hands — no lack; he: ability to know is still not perfect compared to act.
• Student: original sin obscures perfection; he: original sin does not affect knowledge that way. Adam had infused knowledge, being “the teacher in the sense of mankind,” a position like Christ’s, less so; his children would presumably have gotten knowledge in time. So not surprising Thomas sees Christ so.
• Student: the error makes Christ “a regular Joe,” a human weakness; another: it confuses kinds of knowledge — lacking sense knowledge would not rule out acquiring knowledge from experience; Bonaventure: his experience was not like ours in every way, since we go from not knowing to knowing, he from knowing one way to knowing another. He notes Thomas’s order: from the division down to the knowledge some want to limit him to.
• The brother’s real complaint: then Christ “wasn’t like us in all things except sin,” a superhuman. Being born with knowledge does not destroy human nature; “He’s not imperfect. Oh darn… That’s the force of the argument.” Nor did he have original sin or emotions in turmoil. Aside: that morning’s Mass reading on Adam and Eve discovering their nakedness — their emotions no longer under reason.

8. Article 2, objections and sed contra (“the knowledge of the blessed”) #

• Obj. 1: the blessed know by partaking the divine light, Ps. 35 “in your light we shall see light”; Christ had the divinity itself substantially, Col. 2 “the whole fullness of divinity bodily” — to be said properly, not that the body had the whole divinity; so no knowledge of the blessed. He: he had it essentially in his divine nature, but in his human?
• Obj. 2: that knowledge makes blessed, John 17:3 “this is eternal life, that they might know you… and Jesus Christ.” Aside: Thomas, on faith as “the substance of things hoped for” (Hebrews), gives faith two parts, about the divinity and the humanity of Christ, from this text. Christ was blessed by personal union, Ps. 64 “blessed whom you have chosen.” Student: would he be blessed as man if united but without the vision? “He would be, but he wouldn’t know it.”
• Obj. 3: knowledge is either by nature or above nature; the vision is above nature; Christ had a higher supernatural knowledge, the divine; so no need. He: enough to be blessed as God, not as man.
• Sed contra: he fully knew God even as man, John 8 “I know him and keep his word.”

9. Article 2, the body: act before ability; Christ the cause (“reduced to act by that which is in act”) #

1. What is in ability is reduced to act by what is in act: ability cannot give itself what it does not have. So Aristotle, Metaphysics IX: the beginning of things is not matter, most in ability, but pure act; in a thing, ability is before act, but simpliciter act is before ability. Aside: those who put matter first make “the second kind of mistake outside of speech,” confusing what is so simply and so in some way; Feuerbach says man’s mind is infinite (infinite in some way, not simply); Meno says you cannot investigate what you don’t know (not known simply, but in some way).
2. What heats must be hot.
3. Man is in ability to the blessed knowledge, the vision of God, ordered to it as end, capable of it as made to the image of God.
4. Men are led to this end by Christ’s humanity, Heb. 2:10, “lead many sons to glory… through his Passion.”
5. So that knowledge belongs most excellently to that man, since the cause is more potent than the caused. Student: key here is Christ as head, so q. 8 was fitting; he agrees — a certain “perfection of humility” too.

• Digression (from a talk with Warren Murray): imitate Christ or the saints? Paul: “be imitators of me as I am of Christ”; one imitates a saint as closer, insofar as he imitates Christ, not as perfect. “Be perfect as your heavenly Father”: Plato, the perfect is the measure of the imperfect; Aristotle agrees, but a measure must be known, so in politics or ethics the measure is the virtuous man you know. The young manager after his father died: “what would the old man have done?” — the intern imitates the experienced doctor, the young ballplayer the veteran; no example of Christ’s athletic ability “except walking on the water.”

10. Article 2, replies and the kenosis (“uncreated blessedness… a certain created blessedness”) #

• Ad 1: divine and human natures joined secundum personam, not according to nature or essence; distinction of natures remains; so the soul of Christ, part of human nature, is perfected for blessed knowledge, seeing God through his essence, by a partaken light. Essential knowledge of God cannot be what Christ has in his human nature; it must be partaken.
• Ad 2: from the union that man was blessed by uncreated blessedness, as he was God; but besides it a created blessedness was needed, constituting his soul in the ultimate end of human nature. Ridiculous for the soul leading us to blessedness not to be blessed. He gave up a lot for us, “but not that.” Student: the problem is wanting the kenosis, the emptying, to include this; Pius XII condemned it (he thinks); a long-standing problem.
• Ad 3: the vision is above the rational soul’s nature in one way — it cannot arrive by its own power — and by its nature in another — it is capable of it as image of God; the uncreated knowledge is in all ways above the nature. Student: does he need a knowledge above the human if he already has one? He: this is not above it the way the divine nature is.
• Vote: take the break.

His words #

• comprehensores: “those who have grasped the end”; the blessed
• innate / poured-into knowledge: his rendering [ed.: infused knowledge]
• knowledge (for scientia): taken “in a large sense” for any knowledge of the soul, hence not “science”
• ability: his rendering [ed.: potency]; “in ability… reduced to act”
• tabula: Aristotle’s tablet on which nothing is yet written
• possible understanding: “in which all things can be” [ed.: possible intellect]
• about the universe / De Caelo et Mundo: Aristotle’s second work in natural philosophy
• frustra: in vain; a thing without its operation
• first beginnings / axioms: what reason naturally knows (whole more than part)
• sixth synod: condemned denial of two knowledges or two wisdoms in Christ
• privation: not having what you are able to have and should have
• tool: Christ’s human nature as instrument of his divinity
• simpliciter: simply, vs. “in some way”; the “second kind of mistake outside of speech”
• scientia unionis: knowledge attributed to the union rather than to a nature
• kenosis: the emptying (student’s term)
• book of Wisdom (ninth, twelfth): his name for the Metaphysics

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III q. 9 prologue, a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III q. 9 a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, De Anima III (tablet; soul in some way all things)
• Aristotle, De Caelo II (each thing for its operation)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics XII (God is life), IX (act before ability)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles II ch. 46
• Ambrose, On the Incarnation
• Plato, Euthyphro; Meno
• Scripture: John 1 (full of grace and truth; light enlightening every man; men preferred darkness), John 8, John 17:3, John 14 (inferred: “I am the way, the truth, and the life”), Col. 2, Ps. 35, Ps. 64, Heb. 2:10, Hebrews on faith (inferred: 11:1), Sermon on the Mount, Paul “be imitators of me”
• Bonaventure (student), Pius XII condemnation of kenosis (student)

His questions #

• If the blessed see all things in God, why would my Euclidean geometry still be there? It is a different knowledge; the lesser is not eliminated but seen better, as demonstration does not destroy dialectic.
• Why is it not suitable that the Son of God take on an imperfect human nature? Because through it he was to bring the human race to perfection, and the perfect perfects the imperfect.
• Is a human nature born without knowledge an imperfect nature? Not a privation in the strict sense (dog before the ninth day), but ability without act is still an imperfect state, unfitting for a nature taken as a tool of the divinity.
• Who is the source of natural knowledge? As God, Christ is — the light enlightening every man; of supernatural knowledge, faith, as man too.
• Is he acquiring knowledge he already has? No: a different kind of knowledge, not the same thing by different modes.
• Would Christ be blessed as man if united in person but without the vision? He would be, but he wouldn’t know it.
• Should you imitate Christ or the saints? Imitate a saint who is closer to you insofar as he imitates Christ; a measure must be known.
• Does he need a knowledge above the human if he already has the divine? Blessed knowledge is not above human nature the way the divine nature is; the soul is capable of it as image of God.
• Could Christ’s intellect simply have acquired vast knowledge very quickly? Left open (“leave it up in the air”) until the three kinds are distinguished.