Dist. 14
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-littera
----------------------------------------
# DISTINCTION XIV.

### Chapter I. *Whether the soul of Christ had wisdom equal to God, and whether it knows all things that God knows.*

Here it is necessary to ask, since the soul of Christ was wise with a gratuitous wisdom, whether it had wisdom equal to God, that is, whether it had or has knowledge of all things, that is, whether it knows all things that God knows. — Some hold that it has neither knowledge equal to God nor knows all things that God does, because in nothing is a creature made equal to the Creator. Since therefore that soul is a creature, it is in nothing made equal to the Creator, and therefore not in wisdom either. It does not, then, have wisdom equal to God, nor does it know all things that God knows. Likewise, if that soul has wisdom equal to God, then God does not have, in every good, a greater sufficiency than his creature. — They also bring forward authorities to prove the same. For the Prophet says, in the person of the man assumed: *Wonderful is thy knowledge made above me, and I shall not be able to reach it.* Expounding which, Cassiodorus says: « The truth of the human condition is shown, because the man assumed cannot be made equal to the divine substance in knowledge, or in anything else ». The Apostle also says: *No one knows the things that are of God, except the Spirit of God, who alone searches all things, even the deep things of God.* By these and many other reasons and authorities they rely who assert that the soul of Christ neither has knowledge equal to God, nor knows all things that God knows, because if it knows all things that God knows, then it knows how to create the world, it knows also how to create itself.

Responding to whom we say that the soul of Christ, through the wisdom freely given in the Word of God, to which it is united in such a way that it also understands perfectly, knows all things that God knows, but cannot do all things that God can do, nor does it grasp all things as clearly and distinctly as God; and therefore it is not made equal to its Creator in knowledge, even though it knows all things that he does; nor is its wisdom equal to the wisdom of God, because that wisdom is far more worthy and grasps all things more worthily and more perfectly than the wisdom of that soul. Therefore in knowledge too God has a greater sufficiency than that soul, which is more worthy than every creature. But that text of the Apostle which they bring forward: *No one knows the things that are of God except the Spirit of God, who alone searches all things*, makes for our side. For soon the Apostle adds: *But we have the Spirit of God*, that through the Spirit, which he had, he might show that he knew the deep things of God. But that soul above all others had *the Spirit of God*, to whom *the Spirit was not given by measure*, as John the Evangelist says. Therefore it had the gifts of the Holy Spirit without measure, and therefore wisdom too. That soul, then, knew all things. For if it knew some things and not others, it did not have knowledge without measure; but it did have knowledge without measure: therefore it knows all things. Fulgentius also, in a certain sermon, brings forward many things by which he asserts that that soul has knowledge of all things, using the authority of the Apostle, who says: *In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.* Which can also be proved by reason thus: no one knows anything that his soul is ignorant of; but Christ, by the concession of all, knows all things: therefore his soul knows all things. — But to that which they say: if it knows all things, then it knows how to create the world or itself; we respond that it has the *knowledge* of creating the world, but not the *power*, and of creating a soul; and it knows how God created it: it has therefore knowledge of itself as created, but not of itself as to-be-created, because it is not to-be-created, but created.

### Chapter II. *Why God did not give to that soul the power of all things, as he gave knowledge.*

But if it is asked why God did not give it the power of doing all things, as he gave knowledge; it can be answered that it is naturally capable of knowledge; and therefore that, of which it is naturally capable, was fittingly given to it without measure. But it was not given to it to be able to do all things that God does, lest it should be thought omnipotent, and through this God. Nevertheless perhaps God could not even bestow on it the power of doing all things, although the power of doing some things, which it cannot do. The soul of Christ therefore knows all things that God knows, in the Word of God, which it contemplates more clearly and more presently than every creature, as being united to it, in which also the Angels know both the things that are of God and the things that are to come.

But if that soul does not have as great a power as God, nor the man assumed as great a power as God; how then is that saying of Ambrose on Luke to be understood, where the Angel says of the Son to be born of the Virgin: *He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Most High?* He shall not, he says, be great because before the Virgin's bearing he was not great, but because the man was to receive in time the power which the Son of God has naturally, so that there might be one person, man and God. — Behold, he plainly says that the man was to receive in time the power which the Son of God had naturally. But if the man was to receive that power, then either the *person* or the *nature* of the man [was to receive it]; but not the person, because it always had and has it: therefore the nature; if the nature: therefore the soul. For concerning the flesh it is established that it could not receive it. — To which we say that this is to be understood of the person, but not insofar as it is of God, rather insofar as it is the person of the man. For the person of God and of man, of the Son of God and the son of man, is one, which, insofar as it is the person of God, always and naturally had omnipotence, but insofar as it is of man, did not always exist. That person, therefore, which had always been God's, was to be the person of the man; and according to this, that it was to be the person of the man, it was to receive in time the power which it had naturally and always had, insofar as it was the person of God. — According to this distinction that saying and the like can be soundly understood. Which distinction is necessary in many articles of the questions against the perplexed verbosity of certain men. But when there is agreement about the things, there is vain controversy in words.