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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2025
By the modern non-catholic mind the problem of Our Lord Jesus Christ’s knowledge of His Divinity is stated in terms of Consciousness. In other words, the mass of non-catholic writers on the nature and work of Jesus Christ ask, and in various ways answer, such a question as this : “Was Jesus Christ conscious of His Divinity?” For example, this statement of the great problem of the Jesus Christ of the Gospels was dominant in the recent conference of Modern Churchmen at Cambridge.
The Dean of Carlisle, whose historical scholarship is not necessarily akin to theology, said “that Jesus did not claim divinity for Himself. He may have called Himself, or more probably allowed Himself to be called, the Messiah or Son of God ; but never in any critically, well-attested sayings was there anything suggesting that His conscious relation to God was other than that of a man towards God” (Daily Telegraph, 13 Aug.). Here the phrase “conscious relation to God” seems to mean that Jesus Christ did not know and did not believe Himself to be God. He knew and believed Himself to be merely a man. In Dean Rashdall’s recent explanations he seems to assert that Jesus was God. We await his explanation of how Jesus could be God and not claim Divinity.
* The problem of Christ's acquired knowledge led St. Thomas to a change of opinion which he has humbly acknowledged in his Summa : " Therefore if in the soul of Christ there was no habit of acquired knowledge beyond the habit of infused knowledge, as appears to some and sometime appeared to me (III Sent. Dist 14), no knowledge of Christ increased in essence but only by experience. . . . But because it seems unfitting that any natural intelligible action should be wanting to Christ . . . it follows . . . that in the soul of Christ there was a habit of knowledge which could increase.
(Ad Im) . . . The acquired knowledge of Christ is caused by the active intellect which does not produce the whole at once but successively; and hence by this knowledge Christ did not know everything from the beginning but step by step, and after a time, i.e. in His perfect age ;—and this is plain from what the Evangelist says, viz. that He increased in knowledge and age together ” (IIIa. Qu. 12, Art. 2).