Dist. 14, Art. 3, Q. 2
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/3/d/14/q/bon-sent-III-d14-a3-q2
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### Question II. *Whether Christ advanced according to that kind of knowledge.*

Secondly it is asked whether Christ advanced according to that kind of knowledge. And that he did, it seems.

1. To the Hebrews, chapter five: *He learned obedience from the things which he suffered*; but *to learn* is to advance in knowledge: therefore, etc.

2. Likewise, on that passage of Luke, chapter two: *Jesus advanced in age and wisdom*; the Gloss: «As it belongs to the flesh to advance in age, so to the soul to advance in grace and wisdom»: therefore, just as Christ advanced according to the flesh by growing in age, so it seems that he advanced according to the soul by growing in knowledge.

3. Likewise, «Christ assumed the things which he had planted in our nature»; but Christ planted in our nature that «from many sensibles there comes to be one memory, from many memories one experience, from many experiments one universal, which is the principle of art and of knowledge»: therefore, if this manner of proceeding makes the soul advance in knowledge, it seems that Christ's soul advanced in knowledge.

4. Likewise, either the agent intellect in Christ was able to abstract universal forms from material conditions, or it was not. If it was not able: then it was impotent; if it was able, since such a mode of abstracting is a way into knowledge, it seems that Christ advanced in knowledge.

5. Likewise, he who apprehends and retains something which he had not previously apprehended learns something and advances in knowledge; but the common sense in Christ apprehended something and retained some sensibles which it had not previously apprehended nor composed, and the imaginative power in Christ retained all of it: therefore it seems that Christ's soul was advancing and learning.

**On the contrary:** 1. Gregory, on that passage of Luke: *Jesus advanced* etc.: «He advanced, not that he himself became wiser with time, but that he gradually displayed to others, in time, the same wisdom of which he was full».

2. Likewise, Damascene: «Those who say that he advanced in wisdom do not venerate the union which is according to the hypostasis»: therefore, if anyone should say that Christ advanced in knowledge, he seems to do injury to the uncreated Wisdom united to him.

3. Likewise, Christ had the fullness not only of the grace that makes pleasing, but also of the grace freely given: if therefore the knowledge which he had from the Word in himself was a knowledge of the grace freely given, then it was full in Christ from the first beginning of his condition: therefore it was not increasing in him.

4. Likewise, Christ's soul had the species of knowable things; but by the same account by which it had the species of one knowable thing, by the same account it had those of all; but it is impossible that two forms of the same species be both in the same thing and according to the same respect: therefore it was impossible that Christ's soul should receive new forms or new species: therefore it could not advance in knowledge.

5. Likewise, matter is not in potency to a form

which it has in act, for the reason that «every recipient must be stripped of the form of what is received»: therefore, if Christ's soul from the beginning had in itself the species and notion of all created things, it seems that it could no longer receive new knowledge, and therefore could not advance in knowledge.

### Conclusion.

> Christ's soul advanced, not according to the knowledge of simple notion, but according to the knowledge of experience.

**I respond:** For the understanding of what has been said, it must be noted that, besides the knowledge which Christ's soul had in the Word, it had a twofold mode of knowing, as has been said before: for it had the knowledge of simple notion in the intellect, and the knowledge of experience in the sense. The knowledge of simple notion consisted in the habits and species bestowed upon Christ's soul itself from the first beginning of its condition by the benefit of the Creator; but the knowledge of experience consisted in the uses of the exterior senses. — Since therefore the impressed habits and species were in Christ's soul in every kind of fullness, hence it is that Christ could not advance by the knowledge of simple notion. But because the exterior sense was being turned anew to something to which it had not previously been turned, hence it is that he was advancing by the knowledge of experience. — In accordance with which Ambrose says that «in him the human sense advanced»; and the Apostle says that *he learned obedience from the things which he suffered*; and the Gloss on that passage of the Psalm: *Who bestows understanding on me*: «Even unto death my lower part instructed me, namely the assumption of flesh, that I might experience the darkness of mortality». — And thus Christ's soul, although it did not advance according to the knowledge of simple notion, nevertheless advanced according to experiential knowledge. But that advance of experiential knowledge in Christ differed in two respects from the advance of our knowledge: namely in one, that Christ was not advancing by coming into the knowledge of a thing previously unknown, but that what he previously knew in one mode, namely by simple notion, he knew in another mode, namely by experience. In another it also differed, because our advance is according to existence, but Christ's advance was only according to appearance.

And according to this the response to the proposed question is clear; the response to the reasons on either side is also for the most part clear. For the reasons which show that Christ was not advancing in cognition or knowledge proceed from an advance not only according to appearance, but also according to existence, not only according to the knowledge of experience, but also according to the knowledge of simple notion. And therefore those reasons are to be conceded, because they conclude what is true.

1. 2. *To that* which is first objected to the contrary from the authority of the Apostle and from the authority of Bede in the Gloss, it must be said that each authority is understood of the knowledge of experience.

3. *To that* which is objected, that this is natural, namely that from many sensibles there comes to be one memory; it must be said that there is a twofold mode of knowing through experience: one, which is a way into the acquisition of knowledge; the other, which is a way into the exercise of knowledge, so that what was previously known theoretically may afterwards be known practically. And the first mode of experience is found in the discovery of knowledge, the second consists in the use of knowledge already acquired; and in the first there is a motion from the unknown to the known, but in the second there is a way or process from what is known in one mode, so that it may be known in another mode. — And the first mode regards the imperfection of fallen nature on account of the attached ignorance, but the second regards the state of innocence, in which the habit of knowledge would have preceded its use, and the knowledge of simple notion would have preceded the knowledge of experience; and this mode was in Christ and not the other, because, as will be shown below concerning the state of fallen nature, Christ ought not to assume the defect of ignorance. But the Philosopher, in the aforesaid progress of knowledge, proceeds according to the state of fallen nature, which need not be found in Christ.

4. *To that* which is objected, that the agent intellect in Christ was able to abstract; it must be said that the abstraction of a species from material conditions is ordered, in one way, to generating a habit, but in another way it consists in the judgment of that which is apprehended through the sense, a judgment, I say, made by the intellect. And the first was not in Christ, since his intellect had the habits and species of things, whereas that abstraction would be ordered to the acquisition of a habit and of a knowledge not yet acquired, and so would have attached to it the defect of ignorance. But the second was in Christ, yet from this it does not follow that he learned anything anew, or advanced in knowledge, but only that he considered something with the intellect roused by the lower power.

5. *To that* which is objected, that his sense was able to compose and to retain; it must be said that that does not make an advance in speculative cognition, but in experimental cognition, since the things which the sense composed or divided were more known in the intellect, not only as to their essences, but also as to their comparisons, according to which compositions and divisions can be formally varied. Hence it is otherwise concerning the cognition of things in Christ and in any Angel. For the Angels were able to advance in the cognition of things by composing and dividing and comparing, even by the knowledge of simple notion, although they did not receive new species; but Christ not at all, on account of the fullness and perfection of cognition which it was fitting that his soul should have from the first beginning of its condition.