On the Human Knowledge of Christ, Part 1

     For the next few days I will be posting, with slight editing and in short manageable segments, a paper I submitted on 3 Dec 1976 in Dr. Frank Stagg's New Testament Theology class at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.  My personal inclination is to take the Bible at face value but the issues discussed in the paper are important because others do not always do so.

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     "There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the life of Jesus."  So says the highly respected Albert Schweitzer.  Many modern theologians have felt this same way.

     There is a problem in recovering the exact words of Jesus but to declare that nothing can be known of Jesus or of his mind is a mistake.  It is also an error to declare that everything possible is known about the mind of Jesus.

     Dr. Frank Stagg, for many years a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary spoke to the issue; "The student of the New Testament cannot afford to be intimidated by what has been written in disparagement of a 'self-interpretation of Jesus.'  It is not naive to understand Jesus as concerned with his own identity and mission."

     It is also not naive to attempt to study the question of Jesus' personality, especially that part of the subject dealing with his human knowledge.

     Inherent in any study of Jesus' human knowledge is the question of Christology.  One part of this question which must necessarily come up is the problem of whether admitting that Jesus did not have absolute knowledge is also to declare that he could be in error.

     Traditional Roman Catholic scholastic theology attributed to Jesus a human knowledge of all created things of the past, present, and future, at least as far as these things were related to Jesus' work in salvation.  The scholastics also believed that Jesus possessed the beatific vision  from the moment of His conception in Mary's womb.  "Scholastic theology is not content that the soul of Christ knows all, but will have it that it knows all in all ways."  Earlier, Jerome, Augustine, Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Cyril of Alexandria all attributed no ignorance and no mental development to the Christ-child.

     The Catholic Fathers all rejected the apocryphal Childhood Gospels but they did not attack or condemn the portrayal of Jesus' childhood as being one of absolute perfection.

     The New Testament writers seem to have felt this same reluctance to attributing any sort of limitation to Jesus, especially concerning His inward nature.  They do admit that He underwent moral and spiritual growth.  They seem to regard Him as statically perfect.  This is the ground on which the Fathers and the later scholastics built.

     There is a middle view spoken of by Benjamin Warfield, "One fresh from reading the gospel narrative will certainly fail to understand the attitude of those, who we are told exist, who for example, 'admit his growth in knowledge during childhood,' 'yet deny as intolerable the hypothesis of a limitation of his knowledge during his ministry."

     Some theologians, such as E. L. Mascall and C. K. Barrett, believe that Jesus was in error on some points.  Barrett said it was necessary for Him to be in error to be fully human.