Abstract
Call the claim, common to many in the Christian intellectual tradition, that Christ, in virtue of his created human intellect, had certain, infallible exhaustive foreknowledge the Foreknowledge Thesis. Now consider what I will call the Conditional: If the Foreknowledge Thesis is true, then Christ’s created human will lacked an important sort of freedom that we mere humans have. Insofar as many, perhaps all, of the people who affirm the Foreknowledge Thesis also wish to affirm the robust freedom of Christ’s human will, the truth of the Conditional would be most unwelcome to them. I consider an argument in support of the Conditional from the necessary conditions for deliberation, arguing that the argument fails.
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Notes
Very many Orthodox Christians would consider these, not just the earliest, but the only seven Ecumenical Councils. Very many Protestant Christians consider some proper subset of these councils as binding, in some sense. Catholics accept not only these seven councils as authoritative, but also the following fourteen councils, from the Fourth Council of Constantinople in 869–870 through The Second Vatican Council in 1962–1965.
The first two sections of this paper—that is, the introduction and the section setting up the knowledge and freedom of Christ—closely follow and in some places repeat the wording of another piece I have written on similar issues. See Pawl, Timothy. “The Freedom of Christ and Explanatory Priority.” Religious Studies FirstView (2013): 1–17. doi:10.1017/S0034412513000309.
Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils 2 Volume Set (Georgetown University Press, 1990).
This claim, all by itself, is consistent with the divine intellect not knowing some “things,” for instance, the future free actions of creatures, or counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, provided that such “things” aren’t there to be known.
The Lutheran confessions seem to be an outlier here. The Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord VIII, para. 74 claims: “For upon Him the Father poured without measure the Spirit of wisdom and power, so that, as man, He has received through this personal union all knowledge and all power in deed and truth. And thus all the treasures of wisdom are hidden in Him, thus all power is given to Him, and He is seated at the right hand of the majesty and power of God.” And the same Declaration makes it clear, at VIII para. 26, that what was received through the personal union was received at the first moment of the union, so that Christ, at the beginning of his earthly life, had all knowledge and power. “The Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord—Book of Concord,” accessed February 7, 2013, http://bookofconcord.org/sd-person.php#para74.
See ST III q.11 a.1 resp.
Thomas Aquinas, The Disputed Questions on Truth (in Three Volumes), trans. Robert Schmidt (Henry Regnery Co., Chicago, 1954). QDV q.8 a.4 resp.
To see some discussion of this universal consensus, see John Clifford Murray, The Infused Knowledge of Christ in the Theology of the 12th and 13th Centuries (Windsor, Ontario, 1963).
Aquinas uses the present tense in the above quotation, but I use the past tense here. That might lead one to think that Aquinas only really means that Christ now knows the future, and that he did not mean to claim that Christ knew the future during his earthly ministry. Aquinas, however, affirms that Christ, during his earthly ministry, had knowledge of all things past, present, and future. For instance, he writes, “Hence by this knowledge [acquired knowledge] He did not know the essences of separate substances, nor past, present, or future singulars, which, nevertheless, he knew by infused knowledge, as was said above” (ST III q.12 a.1 ad.3.) Also on this point, Aquinas claimed that Christ knew the future by means of the beatific knowledge he had in virtue of the beatific vision, and that this knowledge was received at his first moment of conception. See ST III q.33 a.3. Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1981). All quotations from the Summa are taken from this translation unless otherwise noted.
What then of the passages that appear to entail ignorance in Christ of some present or future state? For instance, when he says no one, not even the Son, knows the day and hour of the coming judgment, but only the Father (Mark 13:32), or when scripture says Christ grew in wisdom and stature (Luke 2:52). How are these claims consistent with the claim that Aquinas and others make that Christ knows all things, past, present, and future? Here Aquinas travels well-worn roads. To see them presented, look to Pawl, Timothy. “The Freedom of Christ and Explanatory Priority.” Religious Studies FirstView (2013): 1–17. doi:10.1017/S0034412513000309. See footnote 12.
See Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma (Loreto Publications, 2002), para. 248. St. Gregory was discussing Christ’s knowledge of the coming Final Judgment, but his argument is that Christ, as creator of all, is knower of all. And since knower of all, knower of the Final Judgment. This form of argument, if viable, would also show that Christ knows all other future states as well. Gregory goes so far as to call the opposing view foolish, asking who can be so stupid as to hold it.
See “Certain Propositions on the Knowledge of the Soul of Christ,” a decree from the Holy Office (now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) later confirmed by Pope Benedict XV, in which the Holy Office answers in the negative to both the following questions. Can it be safely taught at seminaries that it is not the case that “the opinion [can] be called certain which has established that the soul of Christ was ignorant of nothing, but from the beginning knew all things in the Word, past, present, and future, or all things that God knows by the knowledge of vision?” Can it be safely taught at seminaries that “the opinion of certain more recent persons on the limited knowledge of the soul of Christ is to be accepted in Catholic schools no less than the notion of the ancients on universal knowledge?” Ibid., para. 2,184–2,185. Put otherwise, the Holy Office taught, and the then-Pope confirmed, that seminaries cannot teach that it is not certain whether Christ knew all things, past, present, and future in his human intellect. On a related note, Pope Pius the XII, in his encyclical letter Mystici Corporis, taught that Christ’s human intellect was aware of all the members of his mystical body from the beginning of his incarnation. (Ibid., para. 2,289.).
The form of argument here is as follows. Assume Conciliar Christology. Now assume the Foreknowledge Thesis. If the Foreknowledge Thesis is true, then Christ’s created human will lacked an important sort of freedom that we mere humans have. Thus, Christ’s created human will lacked an important sort of freedom that we mere humans have. The initial assumption of Conciliar Christology is to forestall responses to the argument that deny a human will for Christ, or that affirm two persons in Christ (or two Christs), one human, and one divine.
See ST III q.18 a.4.
Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, para. 263.
There are other arguments that one could put forward to show the truth of the conditional: If Conciliar Christology and the thesis that Christ, in virtue of his human nature, knows all future states are true, then Christ was not free. For instance, see the argument from Agency discussed by David Hunt and Tomas Kapitan. See: Tomis Kapitan, “Agency and Omniscience,” Religious Studies 27, no. 1 (1991), pp. 105–120; David P. Hunt, “Omniprescient Agency,” Religious Studies 28, no. 3 (1992), pp. 351–369; Tomis Kapitan, “The Incompatibility of Omniscience and Intentional Action: A Reply to David P. Hunt,” Religious Studies 30, no. 1 (1994), pp. 55–66; David P. Hunt, “The Compatibility of Omniscience and Intentional Action: A Reply to Tomis Kapitan,” Religious Studies 32, no. 1 (1996), pp. 49–60; Tomis Kapitan, “Acting and the Open Future: A Brief Rejoinder to David Hunt,” Religious Studies 33, no. 3 (1997), pp. 287–292. E.J. Coffman presents an argument inspired by Kapitan’s argument in his E. J. Coffman, “Omniprescience and Tough Choices,” Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 3 (2011), pp. 471–488. There are also other problems lurking in the area of the disparate knowledges of Christ. See, for instance, Michael Gorman, “Personal Unity and the Problem of Christ’s Knowledge,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 74 (2000): 175–186.
See: Kapitan, “Agency and Omniscience”; Hunt, “Omniprescient Agency”; Kapitan, “The Incompatibility of Omniscience and Intentional Action”; Hunt, “The Compatibility of Omniscience and Intentional Action”; Kapitan, “Acting and the Open Future.”
E.J. Coffman presents an argument inspired by Kapitan’s argument in Coffman, “Omniprescience and Tough Choices.” His argument focuses on making choices between multiple options, each of which is viewed as epistemically possible by the chooser, and of which there is no one uniquely rational choice to make. The argument that he considers is similar to mine insofar as both focus on the effects of foreknowing what one will choose, but different from mine insofar as his focuses on choosing and epistemic possibility, whereas mine focuses on deliberating and being certain one will not choose a certain “option.”
See ST I–II q.14.
See Nicomachean Ethics, book 3, chap. 3.
This translation is Alfred Freddoso’s, available at:http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/TOC.htm.
Let a human agent be an agent with a human nature. So, both Christ and Peter count as human agents in this sense of the term. Note that this principle is distinct from the principle that David Hunt argues against. He argues that the following is false: If S is certain that she will A, then she cannot deliberate about Aing. The principle I employ here is not the same, insofar as my principle is about certainty of not doing something, whereas his is about certainty of doing something. See his David P. Hunt, “Two Problems with Knowing the Future,” American Philosophical Quarterly 34, no. 2 (1997), pp. 273–285., where he discusses this claim under the heading of the Problem of Agency.
Eddy Nahmias, “Close Calls and the Confident Agent: Free Will, Deliberation, and Alternative Possibilities,” Philosophical Studies 131, no. 3 (2006), pp. 627–8.
Aristotle, Aristotle: On Interpretation. Commentary By St. Thomas and Cajetan, trans. Jean Oesterle (Marquette University Press, 1962), 112.
Kevin Timpe considers this question. See Kevin Timpe, Free Will in Philosophical Theology (Bloomsbury, Forthcoming). Also, see Jesse Couehoven, “The Necessities of Perfected Freedom,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 14, no. 4 (2012), pp. 396–419.
Aquinas makes the same point, that some actions do not require deliberation (those done by art or by rote) in ST I–II q.14 a.4.
This is what we do this in the game Would You Rather.
See Matthew 21: 12–13; Mark 11:15–17; Luke 19:45–46; and John 2:13–17. Here I am including all the things that Christ is doing at that time. So, for instance, if he is walking and talking at the same time, then by the term “running the moneychangers out of the temple,” I mean to include both the walking and the talking (and whatever else he is doing then).
Recall that I am using the term “running the moneychangers out of the temple” to refer to all the things Christ is doing at this time. It refers to the whole conjunction of acts that go together to make up all that Christ does at t1.
Mark 11:17. This and all other biblical quotations are taken from the Douay-Rheims translation, available at biblegateway.com.
Aquinas seemed to think something similar. He writes (ST III. q.18, a.4, ad.2), when considering a similar objection about Christ’s will: “Therefore it is plain that doubt or inquiry belong to choice not essentially, but only when it is in an ignorant nature.”
Acknowledgements I thank Michael Gorman for his comments and discussion on this and related topics, and also for his, by his own account, ‘kinda mischievous’ question about Christ’s human freedom given his human foreknowledge, which was the impetus of this article. I thank Kevin Timpe for organizing the Writing Retreat and Workshop on Divine Freedom, held in Tallahassee, FL, March 2012, as well as all the participants: Ryan Byerly (who gave excellent comments on the paper), Justin Capes, David Hunt, Brian Leftow, Hugh McCann, Alexander Pruss, and Tina Talsma. I thank W. Matthews Grant, Robert Gressis, Benjamin Hart, Faith Pawl, Michael Rota, Meg Schmitt, and Eleonore Stump for helpful discussion and comments on this article. Work on this article was generously supported by the Notre Dame Center for Philosophy of Religion and the John Templeton Foundation, both in the form of an Analytic Theology Summer Stipend, and in the form of a year-long Analytic Theology Research Fellowship.
References
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Tanner, N. P. (1990). Decrees of the ecumenical councils 2 volume set . Washington: Georgetown University Press.
The solid declaration of the formula of concord—Book of concord. http://bookofconcord.org/sd-person.php#para74. Accessed February 7, 2013.
Timpe, K. (2013). Free will in philosophical theology. Bloomsbury, Forthcoming.
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Pawl, T. The freedom of Christ and the problem of deliberation. Int J Philos Relig 75, 233–247 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-014-9447-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-014-9447-4