By JOHN YOUNG
One sometimes hears, in homilies and elsewhere, that the Church has a greater appreciation of Christ’s humanity since Vatican II than previously. It is claimed that His Divinity was emphasized in a way that detracted from His humanity, but now we have a more realistic picture.
According to this allegedly realistic view, Jesus was at first very much in the dark about His identity; He didn’t know He was God, perhaps becoming aware of this when He was baptized by John in the Jordan.
It is also alleged that He made mistakes, apparently thinking, for example, that the end of the world was close. When He was touched by the woman with an issue of blood, He had to ask who had touched Him because He didn’t know.
His human will, it is suggested, could clash with His Divine Will: in the Garden of Gethsemane He had to struggle to bring His human will into conformity with His Divine Will.
He also had doubts, according to this view, as when He cried out on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Actually, these claims have no foundation in the teaching of Vatican II, but are implicitly excluded there. For the council insists on the harmony of Scripture and Tradition, and on the Magisterium of the Church as the only authentic interpreter of both Scripture and Tradition.
The Constitution on Divine Revelation (n. 10) insists that Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred Deposit of the Word of God, and that the task of interpreting the Word of God, whether written or handed on, “has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.”
But the constant teaching of the Church contradicts the claims noted above about the knowledge and will of Jesus Christ when He was on Earth. We see this if we consider the various modes of knowledge in the human mind of Christ, as taught by the Church.
Firstly, He had ordinary human knowledge derived from sense experience, and which developed as He grew older. For example, He had to learn to speak. Secondly, it seems certain that He had infused knowledge directly from God. Thirdly, the Church teaches that He had the Beatific Vision all through His life on Earth: that is, He saw God face-to-face and had vast knowledge through that Vision.
In his encyclical on the Mystical Body of Christ, Pope Pius XII says this: “From the time He was received into the womb of the Mother of God, He has forever and continuously had present to Him all the members of His Mystical Body and embraced them with His saving love.”
The claim that He made mistakes is incompatible with the truth that He was a Divine Person, for it would mean that God made mistakes: even though such mistakes were in His human mind they would still be the mistakes of a Divine Person, for in everything that He did it was the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity who did them.
Was His knowledge imperfect? The answer is certainly yes if we are speaking of His acquisition of knowledge through His five senses; His experiential knowledge increased over time. On this level, when the woman touched Him, He didn’t know at first who had done so (although He knew it through His supernatural knowledge).
He never doubted, for doubt would be unfitting for a Divine Person. His words on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” don’t imply doubt. They are in response to the jeers of His enemies, and are the opening words of Psalm 22 (21), and would have recalled the whole Psalm to the minds of His enemies.
That Psalm predicts the very sufferings He was undergoing, including the words, “They have pierced my hands and feet, I can count all my bones, they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots.” The closing verses of the Psalm proclaim the great success of His saving work.
It is alleged that He thought the end of the world was close, but no text can be cited which implies this. On the contrary, He stated that no one knows when the end will come. (The fact that He said even the Son doesn’t know is taken as evidence that He was ignorant of this in His human mind, but Catholic theology interprets this to mean that the time of the end is not part of the Revelation He came on Earth to proclaim.)
Another false allegation is the claim that, in the Garden of Gethsemane, His human and Divine wills were in opposition. In fact, there was no opposition. He expressed His intense fear of the sufferings He was facing, but the conformity of His human will with the Divine Will is shown in His words, “Not my will, but thine be done.” The words “not my will” express His repugnance at the thought of the coming suffering, but not opposition to the Divine will.
Two extremes need to be avoided: that of a Gnostic tendency to diminish the true humanity of Christ, and the much more common error today of diminishing His Divinity. That is not surprising in today’s materialistic world.
But we have the constant teaching of Sacred Tradition, we have express statements by the Church’s Magisterium, we have the firm teaching of orthodox Catholic theologians. All of these rule out the erroneous speculations which have become widespread today.
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