39. Christ's Acquired Knowledge and the Agent Intellect

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Lecture Notes

Main Topics #

Christ’s Three Kinds of Knowledge #

• Beatific Vision: Direct unchanging knowledge of God as He is
• Infused Knowledge: Divinely poured-in knowledge; not acquired through experience
• Acquired/Experiential Knowledge: Knowledge gained through the agent intellect acting upon sensible images; grows over time

The Problem of the Idle Faculty #

Thomas argues Christ must have acquired knowledge because:

• The agent intellect is a natural power of the human soul
• If this power had no activity in Christ, it would be purposeless (actio otiosa)
• This represents a change from Thomas’s earlier position in the Sentences
• The agent intellect abstracts universal intelligible forms from particular sensible images

Knowledge Without Direct Experience #

Christ could know things he did not directly experience through four types of rational discourse (discursio):

1. From causes to effects (as in geometry)
2. From effects to causes (as in natural philosophy)
3. Through similitude (knowing one thing through likeness to another)
4. Through opposition (knowing contraries through their opposites)

Key Arguments #

Article 1: Can Christ Know All Things Through Acquired Knowledge? #

Objections:

• Christ did not experience all things, so how could he know them all?
• Not all sensible things were subject to his bodily senses
• If he knew all things by acquired knowledge, it would be equal to his infused and beatific knowledge (which seems unfitting)

Thomas’s Resolution:

• Knowledge can be acquired not only through direct experience but through the power of the agent intellect to reason from one thing to another
• From things he experienced, Christ could reason to knowledge of things unexperienced
• Qualification: Through acquired knowledge, Christ knew all things knowable to human nature, but NOT:
  • The essences of separated substances (angels)
  • Past and future singulars
  • Things requiring infinite power to know

The Three Powers of the Soul #

The human soul possesses three powers relevant to knowledge:

1. The acting upon understanding (intellectus agens) - that by which all things can be made understandable
2. The undergoing understanding (intellectus possibilis) - that which receives intelligible species
3. The will - the rational appetite

If the agent intellect had no activity in Christ, it would lack the proper operation of its nature.

Comparison to Platonic vs. Aristotelian Epistemology #

• Plato: Forms existed actually outside the mind, so could be known directly without abstraction
• Aristotle: Corrected this; the agent intellect must abstract universal intelligible forms from particular sensible images
• Christ’s acquired knowledge follows the Aristotelian necessity: even with infused and beatific knowledge, he needed the agent intellect to function properly according to human nature

Important Definitions #

Intellectus Agens (Agent Intellect / Acting Upon Understanding) #

• The active power of the human mind that abstracts universal intelligible forms from particular sensible images
• Compared by Aristotle to light illuminating colors
• Essential to all human knowledge acquisition
• In Christ, this power must have activity to avoid being idle (purposeless)

Experientia / Scientia Experimentalis (Experiential Knowledge) #

• Knowledge acquired through the natural operation of the agent intellect upon sensible experience
• Increases successively over time
• Involves turning to phantasms (mental images)
• Connatural to the human soul in its embodied state

Discursio (Discourse / Reasoning) #

• The movement of reason from one known thing to another unknown thing
• Characteristic of human knowledge as opposed to angelic instantaneous knowledge
• Occurs both in acquiring knowledge and in demonstrating what is already known

Species / Intelligible Species #

• The intelligible forms received in the possible intellect
• In infused knowledge, Christ knows many things through fewer universal intelligible species
• In acquired knowledge, he knows diverse specific natures through diverse intelligible species

Examples & Illustrations #

The Heavenly Bodies Example #

Just as Christ could know the powers of heavenly bodies and their effects on lower terrestrial things without directly experiencing all those effects, he could reason from observed causes to knowledge of effects never directly sensed. This demonstrates the power of discursive reasoning.

Euclid and Geometric Knowledge #

Knowledge of geometry from Euclid is a perfection of the learner, not of geometry itself. This illustrates the distinction between being simply (simpliciter) and being in some way (secundum quid) - a distinction essential to understanding how accidents (like acquired knowledge) perfect substances (like Christ’s soul) without being superior to them.

DeConnick’s Example of the Limit of Polygons #

Berquist cites an article where DeConnick discusses understanding a circle as the limit of polygons with increasing sides. This shows how the human mind can, in a weak way, approach angelic knowledge by knowing distinct things through a single unified thought - a sign of the striving of human reason toward divine-like understanding.

Hesiod’s Hierarchy of Learners #

Hesiod (quoted in Aristotle’s Ethics and repeated by Thomas and Boethius):

• Best: The man who can discover things himself
• Good: The man who can learn from one who discovered them
• Worst: The man who can neither discover nor learn (useless as regards knowledge acquisition)

Berquist playfully extends this: the “wits” (wit = know), “dimwits” (those who cannot discover but can learn), and lower-level dimwits (those who cannot learn either).

Notable Quotes #

“The acting upon understanding is that by which all things can be made understandable, as is said in the third book about the soul.”

“Although Christ would not have experienced all things in the material world, from those nevertheless that he had experienced, he could by this good discursive power of his mind arrive at a knowledge of all of them.”

“By this knowledge, the soul of Christ did not know simply all things, but those things which through the light of the acting upon understanding are knowable for man.”

“Best of all is the man who can discover these things himself. Next is the man who can learn them from the man who discovered them. But the man who can neither discover them from himself nor learn them is useless [as far as acquisition of knowledge is concerned].”

Questions Addressed #

Can Christ Know All Things Through Acquired Knowledge? #

Resolution: Christ can know all things knowable to human nature through acquired knowledge by reasoning from experienced things to unexperienced things through the four types of discourse. However, he cannot know through this knowledge alone:

• The essences of separated substances (angels)
• Past and future particulars
• Things requiring infinite power to know

These he knew through infused knowledge instead.

Why Must Christ Have Acquired Knowledge? #

Resolution: The agent intellect is a natural power of the human soul. If this power had no activity (actio) in Christ, it would be idle and purposeless, which is unfitting. Therefore, Christ must have possessed genuine acquired knowledge that grew over time, even though he simultaneously possessed perfect infused and beatific knowledge.

How Can Acquired Knowledge Coexist with Infused and Beatific Knowledge? #

Resolution: They are three different habits of knowledge. Christ’s infused knowledge might know many things through one universal intelligible form, whereas his acquired knowledge would know diverse specific natures through diverse intelligible species. Both can be perfect in their respective orders without contradiction.