Did Jesus know quantum mechanics?

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–This is not a debate thread. If you haven’t got anything useful to post here, please don’t post it. Thanks :)–

This is a thread for those who may be more knowledgeable than I am on this topic. A while back, I recall researching on the nature of Jesus’ intellect and a question I remember being asked was that “did Jesus know quantum mechanics” (or replace “quantum mechanics” with any highly advanced and specialized field). I remember the early Church Fathers dealt with a question like this, and the consensus was “No”.

This thread has two questions. I would prefer it if you could answer both, but I don’t mind if you answer either one:
  1. Does anyone here know which early Church Father dealt with this topic (I’ve forgotten now, unfortunately)?
  2. Could Jesus be truly omniscient without knowing highly advanced science? And if he did know, why didn’t he make any scientific achievement(s)?
The second question however, is predicated on the first. I recall (and I’m pretty sure of this) that the early Church Fathers gave a good answer to a similar question posed in the thread, but I can’t remember who gave it. If you could post a link or even offer a name, I would be grateful.

Thanks 😉
 
I’m sorry, I don’t have any Patristic references at hand. But it is Catholic doctrine that Jesus is one Person with two natures: God and Man. It is one’s nature which determines one’s abilities and actions.

As God, yes, Jesus knew quantum mechanics and everything else.
As man, no, he did not know quantum theory, and his knowledge was limited by his human intellect.
 
Bohm_Bawerk said:
–This is not a debate thread. If you haven’t got anything useful to post here, please don’t post it. Thanks :)–

This is a thread for those who may be more knowledgeable than I am on this topic. A while back, I recall researching on the nature of Jesus’ intellect and a question I remember being asked was that “did Jesus know quantum mechanics” (or replace “quantum mechanics” with any highly advanced and specialized field). I remember the early Church Fathers dealt with a question like this, and the consensus was “No”.

This thread has two questions. I would prefer it if you could answer both, but I don’t mind if you answer either one:
  1. Does anyone here know which early Church Father dealt with this topic (I’ve forgotten now, unfortunately)?
  2. Could Jesus be truly omniscient without knowing highly advanced science? And if he did know, why didn’t he make any scientific achievement(s)?
The second question however, is predicated on the first. I recall (and I’m pretty sure of this) that the early Church Fathers gave a good answer to a similar question posed in the thread, but I can’t remember who gave it. If you could post a link or even offer a name, I would be grateful.

Thanks 😉
Click to expand...
  1. No
    2)Yes. Because He did want to.
 
Bohm_Bawerk said:
  1. Could Jesus be truly omniscient without knowing highly advanced science? And if he did know, why didn’t he make any scientific achievement(s)?
Click to expand...
If Jesus in the second person of the Holy Trinity (the image of the invisible God), then yes.

If no, then we have a problem, Houston. 😛

As far as why he didn’t make any scientific achievements – perhaps it is because scientific achievement has nothing to do with our eternal salvation.
 
Jesus’ mission here on earth at that time was to open salvation to all, not to achieve scientific advancement. As God, surely He would understand quantum physics, viral mutation, microneurosurgery, or any highly specialized area of endeavor. However, that was not His mission. He wasn’t from an extraterrestrial source to impart specific knowledge to terrestrial humans living in an Iron Age (or maybe it was the Bronze Age, I can’t recall right now.) And His mission on earth didn’t require any of that.
 
The laws of physics were at His service. That in my view implies a certain kind of comprehensive knowledge even if not expressed with numbers.
 
He had perfect knowledge, and in his whole being, not just His head.

How could you raise somebody from death, unless you fully knew and could command the law of entropy? How could you walk on water, unless you had knowledge and command of the law of buoyancy? How could you multiply a food source for thousannds of people, unless you had command of mass properties? How to walk through a closed door, unless you had full command of the quantum states of the material of your soma?

To exert control of anything, you at the very least have to understand it.

ICXC NIKA
 
Bohm_Bawerk said:
  1. Does anyone here know which early Church Father dealt with this topic (I’ve forgotten now, unfortunately)?
  2. Could Jesus be truly omniscient without knowing highly advanced science? And if he did know, why didn’t he make any scientific achievement(s)?
Click to expand...
Greetings Bohm Bawerk, 🙂

I love your questions as they are sincere and are obviously coming from your arduous search. It is evident in your questions that they are imposing themselves as you are thinking and searching for God. May God bless you abundantly and may you find him.

Knowledge of Jesus Christ:
“Moreover, a created intellect is simply perfect only when, besides the vision of things in God, it has a vision of things in themselves; God only sees all things comprehensively in Himself. The God-Man, besides seeing them in God, would also perceive and know them by His human intellect. Finally, Sacred Scripture favours the existence of such infused knowledge in the human intellect of Christ: St. Paul speaks of all the treasures of God’s wisdom and science hidden in Christ (Colossians 2:3); Isaias speaks of the spirit of wisdom and counsel, of science and understanding, resting on Jesus (Isaiah 11:2); St. John intimates that God has not given His Spirit by measure to His Divine envoy (John 3:34); St. Matthew represents Christ as our sovereign teacher (Matthew 23:10). Beside the Divine and the angelic knowledge, most theologians admit in the human intellect of Jesus Christ a science infused per accidens, i.e., an extraordinary comprehension of things which might be learned in the ordinary way, similar to that granted to Adam and Eve (cf. St. Thomas, III., Q. i, a. 2; QQ. viii-xii; Q. xv, a.
SOURCE:
PETER LOMBARD, Liber Sent., III, dist. 13-14, and ST. THOMAS, ST. BONAVENTURE, SCOTUS, DIONYSIUS THE CARTHUSIAN on this passage; Summa, III, QQ. viii-xii, and sv, a. 2, and VALENT., SUAREZ, SALMERON, on these chapters; MELCHIOR CANUS, De Locis, XII, xiii; PETAVIUS, I, i sqq.; THOMASSIN, VII; LEGRAND, De Incarn., dissert. ix, c. ii; MALDONATUS, A LAPIDE, KNABENBAUER, etc., on Luke, ii, 52, and Mark, xiii, 32; FRANZELIN, De Verb. Incarn., p. 426. A number of works have been quoted during the course of the article.
2).” newadvent.org/cathen/08675a.htm

I think that you will find the answer to your question in learning about the Hypostatic Union. Jesus was God incarnate, the Word and the second person of the Trinity incarnate, he was not a human born of Mary who let’s say became possessed by the Word. The Word became incarnate in the womb of Blessed Mother Mary and this for all eternity. How much God loves us! In what great and high esteem he holds human beings!

Jesus had two natures, the human and the divine and is one person. Our Lord Jesus knew and knows everything the Word as God knew. So, when he walking the dirt roads of Nazareth he knew all the Word knew.

Why did he not boast and present so innovative or discoveries, I think because he respects and loves us. It would be silly for God to show off and after all he came so that we may be saved.

Here is a nice criticism of a bad article that may bring some light to the point:

The fact is, that he utterly fails to grasp the Catholic dogma of the Hypostatic Union. The latter means that when the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity took a human body and human soul in the womb of the Virgin Mary, He united both body and soul to His own divine Person. Thus, divinity and humanity are inseparably united in the Man Jesus Christ. Although His humanity remains humanity, it is always the humanity of God the Word. In Christ Jesus there is no human individual or human person distinct from God the Son.

DeCelles’ articles reproduce the Nestorian heresy which separated the Man Jesus from His divinity. Nestorius had agreed to a certain union of God and man in Christ but, in St. Thomas’ words, denied “that there was only one Person Who was both God and man.” Catholic teaching is that Christ was personally God, and in addition to the human knowledge He acquired through the use of His senses, He possessed divine knowledge, and this not only as God but also as man. It is to renew ancient Arian and Nestorian blasphemies to allege that Jesus as man was ignorant of anything, made mistakes and errors, and lacked the perfect knowledge of all that God must know.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=6538
 
This is a nice article too… I am still reading it…

As a matter of fact, the Son Whom the Blessed Virgin conceives and to Whom she gives birth, is at the same time represented and declared in the Gospels to be the Son of God: “Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a Son, and thou shalt call His name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:31-32). Shortly after the Annunciation Elizabeth, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, saluted Mary as the Mother of God: “And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me” (Luke 1:43)?cathtruth.com/catholicbible/hypost.htm

CCC:
467 The Monophysites affirmed that the human nature had ceased to exist as such in Christ when the divine person of God’s Son assumed it. Faced with this heresy, the fourth ecumenical council, at Chalcedon in 451, confessed:

Following the holy Fathers, we unanimously teach and confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity and consubstantial with us as to his humanity; “like us in all things but sin”. He was begotten from the Father before all ages as to his divinity and in these last days, for us and for our salvation, was born as to his humanity of the virgin Mary, the Mother of God.
We confess that one and the same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division or separation. The distinction between the natures was never abolished by their union, but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together in one person (prosopon) and one hypostasis.

483 The Incarnation is therefore the mystery of the wonderful union of the divine and human natures in the one person of the Word.

503 Mary’s virginity manifests God’s absolute initiative in the Incarnation. Jesus has only God as Father. “He was never estranged from the Father because of the human nature which he assumed. . . He is naturally Son of the Father as to his divinity and naturally son of his mother as to his humanity, but properly Son of the Father in both natures.”

Here is a link to the search result on Jesus’s knowledge and the comments of the Fathers:
newadvent.org/utility/search.htm?safe=active&cx=000299817191393086628%3Aifmbhlr-8x0&q=Jesus+knowledge&sa=Search&cof=FORID%3A9

Peace,

Abba
 
Just to reiterate what Abba quoted above from the Council of Chalcedon:
“We confess that one and the same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division or separation. The distinction between the natures was never abolished by their union, but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together in one person (prosopon) and one hypostasis.”

The distinction between the two natures was not abolished but rather preserved.
As God, (i.e., when acting in accord with His divine nature) Jesus knew all things.
As man, (i.e., when acting in accord with His human nature) Jesus’ knowledge was limited.
 
If you think you know quantum mechanics, you don’t know quantum mechanics.
 
Since Jesus was like us** in all things except sin **there is no reason to suppose He was omniscient while He lived on this earth.
 
tonyrey said:
Since Jesus was like us** in all things except sin **there is no reason to suppose He was omniscient while He lived on this earth.
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Yes, Jesus was fully man. As man, he could not be omniscient; omniscience is not within human nature.

As God, yes, he is omniscient.
 
This is a very fascinating thread. I hope it gets alot of replies, I’ll be watching it.
🍿
 
tonyrey said:
Since Jesus was like us** in all things except sin **there is no reason to suppose He was omniscient while He lived on this earth.
Click to expand...
Jesus was Divine. He came to us as a human and He experienced humanness. He was still God.
 
There are two natures in Jesus Christ - one divine and one human. These two natures are not commingled. They remain distinct, yet they are substantially joined together in the hypostatic union. With respect to knowledge in particular, Aquinas states that Jesus possessed infused knowledge (scientia infusa), which is the knowledge all real things of the past, the present and the future, including, the beginning of creation. It also means that Jesus knew things in their proper nature by intelligible species proportioned to the human mind.

So yes, Jesus did know quantum mechanics.
 
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