Christ's Acquired Knowledge: Did He Know All Things, Grow in Knowledge, or Learn from Men? (ST III, Q.12, aa.1–3)

Orientation #

He opens by continuing his own reflection from last time on the three words of Christ from the cross in Luke and the three in John, then reads a closing paragraph of Pius XI’s Miserentissimus Redemptor. Then he turns to q. 12 on the acquired or experiential knowledge of Christ’s soul, whose four articles he lists; this class covers aa. 1–3 and breaks after a. 3. The next class takes up whether Christ received knowledge from the angels and whether his soul had omnipotence.

The class, in order #

1. The words from the cross and Mary as reparatress (“blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy”) #

He ties the three Lucan words together by mercy: mercy to his crucifiers (“Father forgive them”), mercy to the penitent thief, mercy for himself (“Father into thy hands”). In John he links the second and third: “I thirst” shows both his thirsting for our salvation and his hunger to do the Father’s will; because he suffers out of love and obedience the suffering is meritorious, so “it is consummated” follows. How “behold your Son / behold your Mother” ties in he leaves still thinking about that. The Pius XI paragraph supplies a link: she “offered him as a victim by the cross” — almost as if he were in obedience to her as well — and by her mystic union with Christ is piously called a reparatress, advocate of sinners, mediatrix of grace.

2. The plan of q. 12 and a. 1’s objections (“whether by this knowledge Christ knew all things”) #

Four questions: whether by this knowledge he knew all things; whether he progressed in it; whether he learned from any man; whether he took anything from the angels. He warns that experimentalis should be rendered experiential, not “experimental” — Christ did not do experiments. Objections to a. 1: (1) this knowledge is acquired by experience, and he did not experience all things; (2) man acquires knowledge through the senses, and not all sensibles fell under his senses; (3) quantity of knowledge follows the number of things known, so this knowledge would equal the infused and the beatific — unfitting. Sed contra: nothing imperfect is in Christ’s soul, and the imperfect is what admits addition.

3. Why acquired knowledge is placed in Christ’s soul (“lest its action be idle”) #

The reason (from q. 9): the suitability of the agent intellect, lest its action be idle. The agent intellect acts on the images, separating out something universal and so actually intelligible, which then acts on the possible intellect. Plato did not need this, having universals actually existing; Aristotle saw that was not true and posited this other power, of whose act we are to some extent aware. As the possible intellect is that by which it can become all things, the agent intellect is that by which all things can be made (De anima III). So: as by infused knowledge his soul knew all to which the possible intellect is in any way in potency, by acquired knowledge it knew all that the agent intellect’s action can reach. This is what made Thomas change the opinion he held in the Sentences.

Student exchange. Objection: if the agent intellect were not actualizing the possible intellect it would be idle anyway — and how can it actualize a possible intellect already actualized by infused knowledge (Christ would already have geometry)? His answer: these are different kinds of knowledge and different habits; infused geometry is a different form — by one form he might know many things at once, where acquired knowledge takes separate thoughts. Infused geometry is better than acquired, and the beatific vision better still. “You have no experience of it — that’s the whole point.”

De Koninck’s example, attached to knowing many things by one thought: inscribe a square in a circle, bisect repeatedly, and the circle is the limit of the polygons; understanding a limit as never reached but always approached, you see the irreducibility of the two kinds of figure and yet seem to know polygon and circle by one thought. Here our mind strives in its weak way to be a little like the angelic mind, which by one thought knows distinctly what a circle and what a square are. De Koninck called it a sign of the decadence of the modern mind that this was not found striking.

To a further question whether infused geometry would look different in doing a proof: infused knowledge is not discursive — the angels do not syllogize, though they know what a syllogism is; they do not acquire knowledge through discourse.

4. The fourfold division of discourse (“is there any other way of knowing one thing through another?”) #

From the proemium (and repeated in the reply to obj. 1): reason knows one thing through another — effect through cause, cause through effect, like through like, opposite through opposite. He finds this in many places in Thomas and uses it when expanding the definition of reason; it seems to him exhaustive — if there is no dependence (cause/effect either way), no likeness, and no opposition, what other way could one thing help in knowing another? A student adds that we constantly say “what is it like?”, which is why our Lord spoke in parables.

5. Replies of a. 1: how far the discursive power reaches (“he did not know simply all things”) #

• Ad 1: knowledge of things can be acquired not only by experience of those things but through experience of others, since by the light of the agent intellect man goes from causes to effects (geometry), effects to causes (especially natural philosophy), like to like, opposite to opposite. So from what he did experience Christ could reach knowledge of all of them.
• Ad 2: some sensibles were subject to his senses, and from these, by the excellentissima vis rationis, he reached others — e.g. seeing the heavenly bodies he could comprehend their powers in the lower effects not subject to his senses. He glosses vis rationis by Shakespeare’s definition of reason as “capability for large discourse, looking before and after.”
• Ad 3: he did not know simpliciter all things, but what is knowable to man by the agent intellect’s light; by this knowledge he did not know the essences of the separated substances (the angels), nor past or future singulars — which he did know by infused knowledge.

Asides. Hesiod (in Aristotle’s Ethics, repeated by Thomas, Boethius, Machiavelli): best is he who discovers things himself, next he who learns from the discoverer, and he who can do neither is “useless” — Thomas charitably adds, useless as regards acquiring knowledge. His own playful version: wits, dimwits, and dimwits — he counts himself a dimwit, with an upper level (those who know whom to learn from) and a lower. Cajetan on Thomas: he seems to have inherited the mind of all the Fathers because he so reverenced them. Thomas speculates that Christ loved John as a teacher loves a really good student. A student asks whether Christ could reason from common experience to DNA or subatomic particles: “Maybe so” — he thinks Thomas’s position implies Christ would be ahead of any experiential knowledge we could have in any age; another student notes the fledgling atomic theories of some Greek philosophers.

6. Article 2: did he progress in this knowledge? (“Christ went forward in wisdom and age and grace”) #

Objections: (1) as by beatific and infused knowledge he knew all things without progress, so here; (2) progress is something imperfect, and no imperfect knowledge can be placed in Christ (with Augustine’s line that perfection is imperfectible); (3) Damascene: those who say Christ advanced in wisdom and grace as receiving an addition do not venerate the union — and not to venerate the hypostatic union is impious. Sed contra: Luke 2:52, and Ambrose, that he advanced according to human wisdom, i.e. what is acquired in the human way by the light of the agent intellect. He stresses the sed contra takes the words as they stand — a real progress in knowledge, not merely a greater manifesting.

7. Thomas corrects himself (“although elsewhere I have written otherwise”) #

Twofold progress in science: (a) in its essence, the habit being increased; (b) in its effect, when with the same habit one shows others lesser things first and greater and subtler later. In the second way Christ manifestly progressed, as in age, doing greater works showing greater wisdom and grace. But infused knowledge was not increased (he had it all fully from the start), much less the beatific (and the same holds for us: seeing God face to face we shall not keep growing), and divine science cannot be increased (Prima Pars, on God’s unchangeableness). If there were no habit of acquired knowledge — “as seems to some, and as it once seemed to me” — no knowledge in Christ would increase in essence but only by experience, i.e. by turning the infused intelligible species to the images newly received by sense. He glosses this rejected position: as if knowing perfectly what a man is, he merely applies it — “there’s a man, there’s a man” — learning nothing. But since it is unfitting that a natural intelligible act be lacking in Christ, abstraction from images being natural to man, and the agent intellect being in a way higher than the possible as agent to patient, this act is to be placed in him; whence a habit of science that can increase, since after the first intelligible forms the agent intellect can abstract others from further phantasms. “You see how hard these questions are.”

He locates the earlier admission: q. 9, a. 4 (the article on the threefold knowledge), where Thomas writes quamvis aliter alibi scripserim — the other place being the commentary on the Sentences. A student recalls the earlier use of Luke 2:52 taken as mere manifestation: he traces it to q. 7, a. 12, obj. 3, on whether the grace of Christ could increase. Footnote in this edition: “some have said” refers to Albert the Great and Bonaventure on the Sentences (Alexander of Hales also named in the discussion); he notes Thomas often disagrees with Albert without naming him, out of respect for his teacher.

8. Replies of a. 2 (“he had it perfect from the beginning”) #

• Ad 1: infused and beatific knowledge are effects of an agent of infinite power, who can do the whole at once; the acquired is from the agent intellect, which does not act all at once but successively — so from the beginning Christ did not know all things by it, but bit by bit, and at a later and perfect age; which is clear from the evangelist joining progress in knowledge with progress in age.
• Ad 2: this knowledge was always perfect for its time, though not perfect simply and according to nature, so it could receive growth. Illustration: his granddaughter Sophia, “Lady Wisdom,” at two or three — “if you’re mostly good you go to heaven, if you’re mostly bad you go to purgatory” — perfect knowledge for her age.
• Ad 3: Damascene’s words are against those who say simply that there is addition to Christ’s knowledge, especially the infused knowledge caused in his soul from the union to the Word; not of growth in the knowledge caused by the natural agent. So the increase does not infringe on the hypostatic union: this knowledge is his not because of the union but because he is a man.

Aside: the opening prayer asks the angels to “arouse us to consider more correctly” — Thomas was so aroused by his guardian angel; he hopes ours will do the same. Asked whether Bonaventure ever came round: “eventually.”

9. Article 3: did Christ learn from any man? (“there is not to be taught, but to teach”) #

Objections: (1) Luke 2 — found in the temple questioning and answering, which belongs to a learner; (2) learning from a man’s teaching seems nobler than from the senses, since in the teacher’s soul the intelligible forms are in act, in sensible things only in potency, and he did take experiential knowledge from sensibles; (3) by a. 2 he did not know all things from the beginning but progressed, and one hearing significant speech can learn what he did not know. Sed contra: Isaiah 55:4, “I have given him for a witness, a leader and a preceptor” — and of a preceptor it belongs to teach, not to be taught. He adds Aristotle’s dictum that the wise man does not learn from others.

Body: in each genus the first mover is not moved by that species of motion — the first alterer is not itself altered (the old example of the sun). Christ is constituted head of the Church, indeed of all men, and not only of all he sees by grace but of all who receive from him the teaching of truth — “for this I came into the world, that I might give testimony to the truth” (John 18). Therefore it was not fitting to his dignity that he be taught by any man.

Asides: the risk of trying to teach someone who already knows — Monsignor Dionne cutting him off with “I know where you’re going.” Alphonsus Liguori’s Meditations on the Passion quotes instead “I came to cast fire upon the earth” — Thomas quotes the other words at the head of the Summa contra Gentiles; both purposes are true, and the difference shows the difference of the two works. A grandchild, Lucy: “I do it myself.”

10. Replies of a. 3 (“the Lord asks not that he might learn, but that he might teach”) #

• Ad 1: Origen — he questioned in order to teach; from one fountain of teaching flows both asking and answering wisely; hence all were stupefied at his prudence and answers. He compares this to Socrates’ method, and cites Matthew 22 (inferred), where Christ asks whose son David is and brings out the apparent contradiction of David calling him Lord; in Mark’s gospel the people were delighted and it is left hanging.
• Ad 2: the learner does not take knowledge immediately from the intelligible forms in the other’s mind but through sensible vocal sounds, signs of intellectual conceptions; and as men’s words are signs of their understanding, so creatures are signs of God’s wisdom — “he poured out his wisdom upon all his works” (Ecclesiasticus). He connects this to the second definition of nature: there is something of art in things whereby they move to their end. Therefore, as it is worthier to be taught by God than by men, it is worthier to get knowledge from sensible creatures than from the teaching of man. Example: St. Anthony, asked by the philosopher from Alexandria where his books were, pointed to nature — “this is my book.” Aside on the beauty of expression: “Lend me your ears” from Julius Caesar, more vivid than “listen”; in a contemporary you meet no line you want to remember.
• Ad 3: Christ progressed in experiential knowledge as in age, and just as a fitting age is required for a man to gain knowledge by discovery, so also for learning from another; and the Lord did nothing unfitting to his age. So he did not lend his hearing to teaching speeches except at the time when he could by the road of experience attain that grade of science. Gregory on Ezekiel: in his twelfth year he deigned to question men on earth, since in the course of reason the word of doctrine is not vouchsafed before the age of perfection. A student asks whether this means that at eighteen or twenty-one he would not have deigned to question: the point is rather that he would not have gone to the temple at five — twelve is when one comes of age under the law, so it was adequate to his age.

His words #

• experiential knowledge — his preferred rendering of scientia experimentalis; “didn’t mean to do experiments” [ed.: acquired/experimental knowledge].
• acting upon understanding — intellectus agens [ed.: agent intellect].
• undergoing understanding / possible understanding — intellectus possibilis [ed.: possible intellect].
• ability — [ed.: potency].
• poured-in knowledge — scientia infusa [ed.: infused knowledge].
• blessed knowledge — the knowledge of beatitude, the beatific vision.
• went forward / progressed — profecit, advanced.
• wits / dimwits / dimwits — his playful version of Hesiod’s three ranks (his own three names, as he gives them).
• excellentissima vis rationis — “the most excellent power of his reason,” i.e. his discursive power.
• reparatress — Pius XI’s title for the Blessed Virgin.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 12, prologue and a. 1 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, ST III, q. 12, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, ST III, q. 12, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies)
• Pius XI, Miserentissimus Redemptor, final paragraph
• Luke 2:52; Luke 2 (finding in the temple); Isaiah 55:4; John 18:37; Ecclesiasticus (God poured his wisdom over all his works)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, De anima III (agent and possible intellect); Nicomachean Ethics (Hesiod’s three ranks)
• Thomas Aquinas, ST III, q. 9, a. 4 (“although elsewhere I have written otherwise”); ST III, q. 7, a. 12, obj. 3; Prima Pars on God’s unchangeableness; commentary on the Sentences; Summa contra Gentiles, opening
• Damascene; Ambrose; Augustine; Origen; Gregory, On Ezekiel; Cajetan; Albert the Great, Bonaventure, Alexander of Hales (edition’s footnote)
• De Koninck, article on knowing by limits; Alphonsus Liguori, Meditations on the Passion; Shakespeare, Hamlet (inferred) and Julius Caesar; Matthew 22 (inferred) and Mark’s parallel; Maritain (reported second-hand, unread by him); Heisenberg; St. Anthony and the Alexandrian philosopher

His questions #

• Why is it fitting that those three words in John stand together? — The second and third link by love and obedience making the suffering meritorious; how “behold your Mother” ties in he is still thinking about — helped by Pius XI’s “she offered him as a victim by the cross.”
• Why place acquired knowledge in Christ’s soul at all? — Lest the action of the agent intellect be idle; abstraction from images is natural to man.
• How can the agent intellect actualize a possible intellect already filled by infused knowledge? — They are different habits under different forms; infused knowledge knows many things by one form, acquired by separate thoughts.
• Is there any other way of knowing one thing through another than cause, effect, like, opposite? — He finds none; the division seems exhaustive.
• Did Christ by this knowledge know all things? — Not simpliciter: only what the agent intellect’s light reaches — not angelic essences, not past or future singulars.
• Could he reason from common experience to things like DNA or subatomic particles? — “Maybe so” — Thomas’s position seems to put him ahead of any experiential knowledge of any age; left loose.
• Did Christ progress in this knowledge in its very essence, or only in manifesting it? — In its essence: the habit of acquired science really increased; Thomas corrects his earlier opinion in the Sentences.
• Does that offend against the hypostatic union, as Damascene suggests? — No: Damascene speaks of addition to the knowledge caused by the union; this knowledge belongs to Christ as man, from the natural agent.
• Did Christ learn anything from any man? — No: as head and preceptor of all men, and as first mover in the genus of teaching, it was unfitting to his dignity; in the temple he questioned in order to teach.
• Why did he question only at twelve? — Not because questioning would be unfitting later, but because nothing he did was unfitting to his age; twelve is coming of age under the law.