Did Jesus divest himself of omniscience to be fully human?

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The secular point of view latches on to God’s omniscience and insists that in his human nature, Jesus must be omniscient of all human things.
 
We don’t know if he was or not because nobody sat around and asked him when he was alive. If they had asked him he probably would have smiled and not answered.

I have read that his agony in the Garden was due not just to the fact that he’d have to suffer terrible pain for 3 hours, but due to the fact that he could see all of humankinds’ doings, good and bad, for the rest of humans’ time on earth, and he realized that so many people would reject him and his sacrifice and still turn away and do evil and end up in hell. He was comforted by seeing the people who actually would appreciate what he did and love him and do things like go to Mass and Adoration.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
We don’t know if he was or not because nobody sat around and asked him when he was alive. If they had asked him he probably would have smiled and not answered.

I have read that his agony in the Garden was due not just to the fact that he’d have to suffer terrible pain for 3 hours, but due to the fact that he could see all of humankinds’ doings, good and bad, for the rest of humans’ time on earth, and he realized that so many people would reject him and his sacrifice and still turn away and do evil and end up in hell. He was comforted by seeing the people who actually would appreciate what he did and love him and do things like go to Mass and Adoration.
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Yes, I get that.
He enters fully into the mystery of human suffering.

Here’s the point that many atheists, fundamentalists, and other critics of Christian theology conflate:
The onmiscience of God does not apply to Christ in his human nature.
Christ does not know the earth revolves around the sun, and in his human nature he doesn’t know that Kennedy was president in 1960.
People who would accuse our theology of inconsistencies on this point don’t understand what we mean by knowledge or by full human nature united with divine nature.

In the hypostatic union Christ knows the Father in the only way that matters: in love.
 
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How does that address the original question : Did Jesus divest himself of omniscience to be fully human?
 
KevinK said:
Did Jesus divest himself of omniscience to be fully human?
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The Son of God is the divine person, the Word, and assumed a human nature that includes a rational soul with will and intelligence, and a physical body. So Jesus Christ has both divine and human natures with divine and human minds. Pope Pius XII expressed:
“Hardly was he conceived in the womb of the Mother of God, when he began to enjoy the beatific vision” ( Mystici Corporis 75).
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The knowledge in Christ’s divine nature is co-extensive with Omniscience.
 
KevinK said:
How does that address the original question : Did Jesus divest himself of omniscience to be fully human?
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No the Second Person of the Trinity did not divest himself of his omniscience.
Christ is God, and God is eternal, or unchanging.

When Christ took on human nature, that human nature “grew in wisdom…” like any other human being. Christ was not born with knowledge of Joseph’s construction techniques. He grew in that knowledge. He would have also grown in knowledge of the scrolls. They were not infused into him at birth.

The perfect unity of human and divine natures in Christ does not violate either one. He is uniquely both natures, and unified in those natures. That’s not the way we think. We believe that operation of one must detract from the other. Not so in God’s kingdom.

At the end of the day, you have to confront the inadequacy of language and intellect to deal with this mystery.
 
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Wesrock said:
Generally, it’s understood that it was not knowledge that he could know by his human nature alone, or perhaps not knowledge that the Son was sent to reveal.
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This is a delightful thing about the Father, about God.
In Jesus saying that only the Father knows the day and the hour, he is not saying that the Father knows “Thursday, at 3 p.m.”
He is saying that the Father “ is knowing ” the day and the hour; the Father is experiencing the sight of the day and the hour eternally (and is experiencing the sight of Every day and Every hour eternally)

Jesus, even though he is from the beginning with the Father, being that he is human talking with his disciples, he humanly only “is knowing one thing at a time” then moves to knowing the next thing temporally.

The Father eternally knows Moses on the top of a mountain;
The Father eternally knows Elijah on the top of a mountain;
The Father eternally knows Jesus and three disciples on the top of a mountain;
But the Father does not eternally know this knowing “alone”; the Father “knows himself knowing Moses and knowing Elijah and knowing Jesus and 3 disciples together with them knowing the same thing when they know it temporally.”
The two prophets and Jesus and the three disciples have all been granted to share in knowing along with God the Father, and so they see each other in God’s seeing of them, in the Father’s seeing of them together.
This was Moses in his own time and Elijah in his own time and Jesus in his own time seeing each other in the Father’s time which is now.
This was not Moses and Elijah appearing after they had died.

The Father eternally is seeing the day and the hour of the end but he is seeing it together with all who see it when it comes, but we temporally do not know that yet and so it has not come.
All things happen on earth when we know together with God in his knowing that is how God can participate in temporal reality. Nothing is caused temporally until it is known both by God and by a temporal creature.

John Martin
 
Think about who Jesus is, and the way in which he condescends (theologically speaking).
If Christ even becomes sin and death in our stead, of what concern to him is omniscience?
In God’s complete love, he becomes intimately one with us in the incarnate Christ, “humbling himself to share in our humanity”. Intimately and completely.
 
Think about it.
What is omniscience?

It addresses your statement that Jesus could not have been fully human while being omniscience.
 
And Phil. 2:5-11. He did not “did not regard equality with God something to be grasped” but deliberately “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.”

Having said that, he had the knowledge available to a person fully open to the Holy Spirit, which is superior to the knowledge or recognition of reality available to those blinded by sin. He knew and comprehended far more than a person who is in enmity with God. It is clear, however, that He did not know what He chose to know, but what the Father chose for Him to know. He chose to be empty of anything not granted to Him by the Father and not provided by the Holy Spirit.

We can’t know what that is, I think.
goout said:
No the Second Person of the Trinity did not divest himself of his omniscience.
Christ is God, and God is eternal, or unchanging.
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I think Philippians makes it fairly clear that he was obedient to letting go of anything the Father saw fit to let Him do without. He did this by entirely by choice; as the Second Person of the Trinity, was in his power to do this.
“This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again. This command I have received from my Father.”
John 10:17-18
 
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It seems only in Christianity can something be omniscient (possessing all knowledge) while simultaneously not possessing all knowledge.
 
Mike_from_NJ said:
It seems only in Christianity can something be omniscient (possessing all knowledge) while simultaneously not possessing all knowledge.
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(a) that would be a Someone, not a something, and (b) it is entirely possible to possess something and yet to choose not to make use of it. Something can be yours, you can choose to relinquish control over it, and yet it can still be just as much yours and just as available to you as if you chose to use it.
 
KevinK said:
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Vico:
The knowledge in Christ’s divine nature is co-extensive with Omniscience.
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What does that mean?
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Christ’s divine nature is omniscient.
 
Mike_from_NJ

4h

It seems only in Christianity can something be omniscient (possessing all knowledge) while simultaneously not possessing all knowledge.
 
Exactly what I asked: Did Jesus divest himself of omniscience. Your answer appears to be YES.
 
KevinK said:
Exactly what I asked: Did Jesus divest himself of omniscience. Your answer appears to be YES.
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My answer is that he chose to know as much the Father chose to have Him know: no more, no less. I don’t know what that means.

For instance, in the Garden, He prayed: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will.” (Matt. 26:36) He said, “if,” which implies He acknowledged that He might not know for certain how things would unfold. If He was not actually on a “need to know” basis, He was certainly willing to be on a “need to know” basis. Yet He knew who betrayed Him–how? He knew what was in the hearts of other people–how? Just before He called Lazarus forth, He prayed, " Father, I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me.” (John 11:41b-42) To his parents, He said, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Lk 2:49) Was He asking them a question, because He really didn’t know, or was He reminding them something He knew they surely knew? The Gospel is ambiguous.

I believe that Jesus placed His omniscience and all else in the hands of the Father in utter obedience. There was nothing that belonged to Him as the Second Person of the Trinity that was not His to lay down freely. Like His life, however, He “grasped” nothing that belonged to being God, and in that way took on the obedience of a slave. He laid it down freely and He took it up again freely. His obedience was not extracted from him in any way, but was free submission. In that sense, there was nothing knowable that was not His to know, if He chose to know it.

Again: My answer is that I do not know exactly what He did or did not know. What I know is that He freely submitted in every respect to a human’s dependence on the Father. He grasped nothing that was His by right of being God, but accepted what was furnished and by that was the New Adam who lived His human life in the obedience and unity with God meant for all of humankind.
 
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What argument is there that the fully human Jesus was not omniscient?

Put one forward.
 
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