KNOWLEDGE
675
KNOWLEDGE
of two elements, one external, the other depending
only on the nature of the mind; not the filling up of
empty shells — a priori mental forms or categories —
with the unknown and unknowable reality. Even
abstract knowledge reveals reality, although its object
cannot exist outside of the mind without conditions
of which the mind in the act of knowing divests it.
Knowledge is necessarily proportioned or relative to the capacity of the mind and the manifestations of the object. Not all men have the same keenness of vision or hearing, or the same intellectual aptitudes. Nor is the same reality equally bright from all angles from which it may be viewed. Moreover, better eyes than human might perceive rays beyond the red and the violet of the spectrum; higher intellects might un- ravel many mysteries of nature, know more and bet- ter, with greater facility, certainty, and clearness. The fact that we do not know everything, and that all our knowledge is inadequate, does not invalidate the knowledge which we possess, any more than the hori- zon which bounds our view prevents us from perceiv- ing more or less distinctly the various objects within its limits. Reality manifests itself to the mind in different ways and with varying degrees of clearness. Some objects are bright in themselves and are per- ceived immediately. Others are known indirectly by throwing on them light borrowed elsewhere, by show- ing by way of causality, similarity, analogy, their connexion with what we already know. This is essen- tially the condition of scientific progress, to find con- nexions between various objects, to proceed from the known to the unknown. As we recede from the self- evident, the path may become more difficult, and the progress slower. But, with the Agnostic, to assign clearly defined boundaries to our cognitive powers is unjustifiable, for we pass gradually from one object to another without break, and there is no sharp limit be- tween science and metaphysics. The same instru- ments, principles, and methods that are recognized in the various sciences will carry us higher and higher, even to the Absolute, the First Cause, the Source of all reality. Induction will lead us from the effect to the cause, from the imperfect to the perfect, from the contingent to the necessary, from the dependent to the self-existent, from the finite to the infinite.
And this same process by which we know God's ex- istence cannot fail to manifest something — however little — of His nature and perfections. That we know Him imperfectly, by way chiefly of negation and anal- ogy, does not deprive this knowledge of all value. We can know God only so far as He manifests Himself through His works which dimly mirror His perfections, and so far as our finite mind will allow. Such knowl- edge will necessarily remain infinitely far from being comprehension, but it is only by a misleading con- fusion of terms that Spencer identifies the unknowable with the incomprehensible, and denies the possibility of any knowledge of the Absolute because we can have no absolute knowledge. Seeing "through a glass" and " in a dark manner " is far from the vision " face to face " of which our limited mind is incapable without a special light from God Himself. Yet it is knowledge of Him who is the source both of the world's intelligi- bility and truth, and of the mind's intelligence.
(See also Agnosticism, Certitude, Epistemolgoy, Faith.)
RouRQU ARD, Z)oc(rine de la connaissanced'aprrs Saint Thomas d'Aquin (Paris, 1S77); Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowl- edge (New York, 1899); Farges, Etiide des bases de la connais- sance et de la croyance (Paris, 1908); Gardair, De la connais- sance (Paris, 1895); Hobhouse, The Theory of Knowledge (London, 1896); Hooper, The Anatomy of Knowledge (London, 1906); James, Principles of Psychology (New York, 1S90): L\vv,Philosophy of Knowledge (New York, 1897); Liberatore, Ddla conoscenza intellettuale (Rome, 1873); Maher, Psychology (New York, 1900); Ormond, Fourulations of Knowledge (New York, 1900) ; Pesch. Jnstitutiones psychologictB (Freiburg, 1897). Various articles in Revue de Philosophie (1908) under the gen- eral title, EnquHe sur le problhne de la connaissance.
C. A. DUBRAY.
Knowledge of Jesus Christ, as treated in this ar-
ticle, does not mean a summary of what we know
about .Jesus Christ, but a siu-vey of the intellectual
endowment of Christ. Jesus Christ possessing two
natures, and therefore two intellects, the human and
the Divine, the question as to the knowledge found in
His Divine intellect is identical with the question con-
cerning God's knowledge. The Arians, it is true,
held that the Word Himself was ignorant of many
things, for instance, of the day of judgment; in this
they were consistent with their denial tliat the Word
was consubstantial with the Omniscient God. The
Agnoeta?, too, attributed ignorance not merely to
Christ's human soul, but to the Eternal Word. Suicer,
s. V.' Ay m-nral, I, p. 65, says: "Hi docebant divinam
Christi naturam . . . quaedam ignorasse, ut horam
extremi judicii ". But then, the Agnoetae were a sect
of the Monophysites, and imagined a confusion of
natures in Christ, after the Eutychian pattern, so as
to attribute ignorance to that Divine nature into which
His human nature (as they held) was absorbed. An
honest profession of the Divinity of Christ necessitates
the admission of omniscience in His Divine intellect.
I. Kinds of Knowledge in Christ's Human Intellect. — The Man-God possessed, not merely a Divine, but also a human nature, and therefore a hu- man intellect, and with the knowledge possessed by this intellect we are here mainly concerned. The integrity of His human nature implies intellectual cognition by acts of its human intellect. Jesus Chi'ist might be wise by the wisdom of God; yet the humanity of Christ knows by its own mental act. If we except Hugh of St. Victor, all theologians teach that the soul of Christ is elevated to participation in the Divine wisdom by an infusion of Divine light. For the soul of Christ enjoyed from the very beginning the beatific vision; it was endowed with infused knowledge; and it acquired in the course of time experimental knowl- edge.
(1). The Beatific Vision. — Petavius (De Inearna- tione, I, xii, c. 4) maintains that there is no contro- versy among theologians, or even among Christians, as to the fact that the soul of Jesus Christ was endowed with the beatific vision (see Heaven) from the begin- ning of its existence. He knew God immediately in His essence, or, in other words, beheld Him face to face as the blessed in heaven. "The great theologians freely grant that this doctrine is not stated in so many words in the books of Sacred Scripture, nor even in the writings of the early Fathers ; but recent masters in theology do not hesitate to consider the contrary opinion as rash, though it was upheld by the pre- tended Catholic school of Glinther. The basis for the privilege of the beatific vision enjoyed by the human soul of Christ is its Hypostatic Union with the Word. This union implies a plenitude of grace and of gifts in both intellect and will. Such a fullness does not exist without the beatific vision. Again, by virtue of the Hypostatic Union the human nature of Christ is assumed into a unity of Divine person; it does not appear how such a soul could at the same time re- main, like ordinary human beings, destitute of the vision of God to which they hope to attain only after their stay on earth is over. Once more, by virtue of the Hypostatic Union, Jesus, even as man, was the nat- ural son of God, not a merely adoptive child; now, it would not be right to debar a deserving son from see- ing the face of his father, an incongruity that would have taken place in the case of Christ, if His soul had been bereft of the beatific vision. And all these rea- sons show that the human soul of Christ must have seen God face to face from the very first moment of its creation.
Though Scripture does not state in explicit terms that Jesus was favoured with the beatific vision, still it contains passages that imply this privilege: Jesus speaks as an eyewitness of things Divine (John, iii, 11
