a certain greater definiteness which was given to the denial. In the earlier mediaeval period writers speak of Christ in general terms as possessing even in His human soul the divine omniscience. Thus Fulgentius in the sixth century asserts that Christ, in virtue of the hypostatic union, certainly had in His human soul the full knowledge of the Godhead: He knows as man all that He knows as God, though not in the same manner; for as God He knows naturally, as man He knows in such a way as still to remain human1. And Alcuin (c. 790) asserts that 'the soul of Christ may not be held to have lacked in any respect the full knowledge of the Godhead, inasmuch as it formed one person with the Word 2.' This however, as Cassiodorus pointed out 3, was clearly avoid imputing mendacity to Christ by admitting a real ignorance of the day and hour in respect of His human experience: 'etsi suae divinitatis intuitu, aeque omnia praeterita scilicet praesentia atque futura perlustrando, diem quoque illum palam habebat, non tamen ullis carnis suae sensibus experiendo agnoverat.' But when commenting on Luke ii. 52 (hom. super Missus est ii. 10), he denies to our Lord, because He was God, all real growth as in human knowledge: 'non secundum quod erat, sed secundum quod apparebat intelligendum est. ... constat ergo quia semper Iesus virilem animum habuit, etsi semper in corpore vir non apparuit.' Ch. 9: 'vir [i. e. a grown man] igitur erat Iesus necdum etiam natus, sed sapientia non aetate, animi vigore non viribus corporis, maturitate sensuum non corpulentia membrorum ; neque enim minus fuit sapientia Iesus conceptus quam natus, parvus quam magnus.' All that he would admit then of ignorance of the day and hour is that He had not realized it in terms of human sensibility; or (like Gregory) that ignorant ex humanitate, He knew in humanitate.

1 Fulg. ad Ferrand. Ep. xiv. 26–32 (P. L. lxv. p. 420) 'novit anima Christi quantum illa [deitas] sed non sicut illa.' On the other hand, in the ad Trasimund. i. 8 (p. 231) he seems to admit a real growth in the knowledge of our Lord's human soul, according to Luke ii. 52.

2 de Fide S. Trin. ii. 11, 12 (P. L. ci. p. 31) 'non aestimandum est animae Christi in aliquo plenam divinitatis deesse notitiam, cuius una est persona cum Verbo.' He goes on to explain that Christ said that He did not know what He causes others not to know (as Augustine).

3 Cassiod. in Psalm. cxxxviii. 5 (P. L. lxx. p. 985, quoted by Peter

to ignore the truth that the human faculty essentially falls short of the divine. Thus Peter Lombard decides 1 that while Christ's human soul 'knew all things that God knows,' it did not apprehend them so clearly and perspicuously as God.

Later, again, St. Thomas Aquinas is found carrying definition further, and laying it down that Christ possessed both divine and human knowledge; and further, the human soul of Christ possessed knowledge of three kinds :

(i) scientia beata, i. e. the perfect human participation in the beatific vision, or the divine light by which Christ as man knew things as they exist in the eternal Word;

(ii) scientia indita vel infusa, by which Christ possessed the perfect knowledge of things as they are relatively to mankind;

(iii) scientia acquisita, the knowledge of things derived from experience. On this subject Aquinas professes that he has changed his opinion, and decides that Christ, though he already ab initio possessed perfect knowledge in His human soul by scientia infusa without reference to experience, also acquired that very same knowledge by sensitive experience2. This latter point remained in controversy between Thomists and Scotists, but it is purely Lombard) Veritas humanae conditionis ostenditur, quia assumptus homo divinae substantiae non potest adaequari vel in scientia vel in alio.' Therefore Christ in the person of the Psalmist cries Mirabilis facta est scientia tua ex me et non potero ad eam.'

1 Petr. Lomb. Sentent. iii. dist. 14. The opposite of Peter Lombard's proposition was condemned at Basle, Sess. xxii. ‘anima Christi videt Deum tam clare et intense quantum clare et intense Deus videt se ipsum.’

2 See Summa, p. iii. qu. ix. ff. We are inclined to ask with an objector mentioned by de Lugo 'quid ergo multiplicandae sunt tot scientiae in Christo circa eadem obiecta?'

academic. The subject is pursued with an infinite intricacy in later scholastics such as Suarez or de Lugo. But in the result it is affirmed in the strongest way and with complete unanimity that Christ's human soul was from the first moment of its creation what is commonly meant by omniscient, so that no place is left in it for faith or hope1, and the distinction of the divine and human consciousnesses is safeguarded only by metaphysical refinements: as by the affirmation that Christ knew in His human soul at the first instant of its creation and at every moment all reality or existence of every kind, past, present and future, with all its latent possibilities, but not the abstract possibilities of existence which He knew only as God 2.

It must however be noticed (1) that there is a general sense of doubt in all the scholastic literature as to how much of all this ratiocination is de fide; though Petavius decides that the opinion of those who recognize actual limitation of knowledge in the human soul of Christ, though formerly it received the countenance of some men of highest eminence, was afterwards marked as a heresy 3.'

(2) that many of the scholastic writers, such as de Lugo,

1 Summa, p. iii. qu. vii. art. 3, 4. 2 St. Thomas, l. c. qu. x. art. 2. de Lugo, de Myst. Incarn. disp. xix. 1. Cf. Petavius, de Incarn. xi. 3. § 6 The soul of Christ knew all things that are, or ever will be, or ever have been, but not what are only in posse not in fact.'

3 de Incarn. xi. 1. § 15. Among recent Roman Catholic writers, Dr. Hermann Schell, Katholisch Dogmatik (Paderborn, 1892), shows a disposition to criticize the scholastic determinations, and to assert the reality of the growth and limitations of our Lord's consciousness as man. But he is, apparently, so hampered by decisions believed to be authoritative that in the result his position is hardly intelligible.

profess to be deciding only what was true as a matter of fact about our Lord: it being admitted for instance that in abstract possibility the human mind of Christ might even have contracted actual error. This admission of the scholastics is valuable for us who feel that what we have gained from the more exact study of the Gospels is a conviction different from theirs of what was true in fact, so far as concerns the limitation of our Lord's human knowledge. This changed conviction of what was true in fact leads us to welcome their abstract admissions as to what might have been true without overthrowing the principle of the Incarnation 1.

By way of comment on these scholastic conclusions, there are two points to which it is worth while calling attention.

1. The earlier mediaeval and scholastic method appears to put the dogmas of the Church in a wrong place 2. The dogmas are primarily intended as limits of ecclesiastical thought rather than as its premises: they are the hedge rather than the pasture-ground: they block us off from lines of error rather than edify us in the truth. By them we are warned that Christ is no inferior being but very God; and that He became at His Incarnation completely man, not in body only but in mind and spirit; and that remaining the same one and divine person He yet subsists henceforth in two distinct

1 de Lugo, de Myst. Incarn. disp. xxi. 3. The inquiry is An [Christi] cognitio fuerit vel potuerit esse falsa? The answer is to fuerit, no; to potuerit esse, yes; according to the communis and verior opinion. Such fallibility, it is argued, need not have interfered with His teaching office; might have been allowed by the divine nature, &c.

2 I have tried to express the point also at somewhat greater length, in B. L. pp. 106, 108.

natures.

But thus warned off from cardinal errors, we are sent back to the New Testament, especially to the Gospels, to edify ourselves in the positive conception of what the Incarnation really meant. To Irenaeus, to Origen, to Athanasius, the New Testament is the real pasture-ground of the soul, and the function of the Church is conceived to be to keep men to it. But after a time there comes a change. The dogmas are used as the positive premises of thought. The truth about Christ's person is formed deductively and logically from the dogmas -whether decrees of councils or popes, or sayings of great fathers which are ranked as authoritative—and the figure in the Gospels grows dim in the background. Particular texts from the Gospels which seem contrary to current ecclesiastical teaching are quoted and requoted, but though, taken together, they might have availed to restore a more historical image of the divine person incarnate, in fact they are taken one by one and explained away with an ingenuity which excites in equal degrees our admiration of the logical skill of the disputant and our sense of the lamentably low ebb at which the true and continuous interpretation of the Gospel documents obviously lies.

2. The view of the Incarnation current in the Middle Ages, which, as has been said, tended to minimize the real apprehension of our Lord's manhood, had its roots not only in a one-sided zeal for the Godhead of Jesus, but also in a certain metaphysical conception of God.

What I must call the biblical idea of the Incarnation seems to postulate that we should conceive of God as accommodating Himself to the conditions of human life