I more often come across the tendency to de-divinize Christ in theology, at least in these Modernist times.
I’m comforted that Catholic theology takes into consideration the hypostatic union of
both Divine
and human natures. As such, there’s Catholic doctrine which binds Catholic theology with regard to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
The Church teaches that because Christ was man, in his humanity he could not have “infinite” knowledge, since
as man, that is, strictly considering his human knowledge, his capacity to know was necessarily finite. It is only in this sense that Christ was not “absolutely omniscient” in his human capacity for knowledge.
But this does not mean that he had human ignorance. You don’t need to be a infinite person to know what man
can know. Consequently, he did not have ignorance or uncertainty within his human intellect about the truth (i.e. he did not have doubt). Because of the hypostatic union, his humanity was in union with Truth from the very moment of his conception. He is the way, the Truth and the life.
Many times I read that his “agony” or “difficulty” in the garden of gethsemane, for example, was a manifestation of “doubt.” Such a conclusion is incongruent with Catholic doctrine. As
Teneas states here #
29 , what Christ was called to endure was certainly not easy. We can learn from the manner in which he faced such difficulties. However, as Ven. John Henry Newman states, a thousand difficulties do not make a single doubt.
Christ’s freedom from ignorance was denied by the Arians, the Nestorians, and a monophysitic sect of the 6th century (Agnoetes). However, Patriarch Euologius of Alexandria taught:
“Christ’s humanity which was taken up in the hypostasis of the inaccessible and substantial wisdom of Christ cannot be ignorant of anything of the past or of the future.”
Pope Gregory the Great approved the teaching (cf. Denzinger 248).
Related to this, the Council of Constantinople II, AD 553, canon 12, asserted:
If anyone defends the impious Theodore of Mopsuestia, who said one was God the Word, and another the Christ…who gradually…was improved by the progress of His works…let him be anathema. (D 224)
Benedict XV, in a decree of his Holy Office, June 5, 1918, taught that
"[it can be called certain] that the soul of Christ was ignorant of nothing, but from the beginning knew all things in the Word, past, present, and future" (D 2184), rejecting as false opinion the theory of the limited knowledge of the soul of Christ (D 2185). In St. Pius X’s refutation against the errors of the Modernists, *Lamentabili *(1907), he condemns the proposition that “Christ did not always have the consciousness of His Messianic dignity.” (D 2035).
I don’t believe Christ ever “faked” ignorance, but he was a Teacher who often asked questions that he knew the answer to as a way of allowing his disciples to think through the answer for themselves. He also, at times, answered in a ancient way which expressed in essence: that is something that you are not supposed to know (e.g., the hour of the Eschaton). I don’t find anything “fake” or deceptive about such discourse.
Consequently, while the incarnate Christ did not possess infinite omniscience, from the perspective of Catholic doctrine, Christ was never ignorant of his Messianic mission, nor anything which can be comprehended by human cognition, past, present, or future.
