We cannot agree with Mr. Gore in the argument with reference to St. John's Gospel which we have already quoted at length. The passages he cites seem to us to be rather assertions of the truth that all which the Divine Son possesses or the Son of Man receives is possessed and received as a gift from the Father than to be indications of a limited message given by the Father to our Lord in His Humanity that he may impart it to others. If so, these passages have no special bearing on the particular question in the way in which they are quoted.1

The argument from silence,' that our Lord 'never enlarges our stock of natural knowledge, physical or historical, out of the Divine Omniscience' (p. 150), does not appear to us to be of value. It would be in accordance with what we know of the purposes of the Incarnation that our Lord, even if fully acquainted with all facts of history and science, should not reveal these in His teaching.

So far, putting aside for the moment two single texts of very great importance, we have considered the evidence which the Gospels themselves present. We are led to think that such a consideration does not show signs of ignorance in our Lord as Man. The questions, the prayers, the cry from the Cross, the wonder, in our opinion afford less reason for thinking that He was ignorant than is afforded for believing that His knowledge was unlimited, so far as knowledge which a human mind can receive is concerned, by the facts in His Ministry to which we have referred.

We must notice next the two important passages we have hitherto put aside. It is said by St. Luke of our Lord in His childhood that He 'advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men.'' Does this statement mean that our Lord, in His human mind, was gaining knowledge of which he had formerly been ignorant? We do not think it does. That may be at first sight the easiest interpretation of the words. Students know that interpretations which at first sight are easiest are often incorrect. True exegesis requires that a passage be considered in relation to all else which bears on the same subject.

1 It is doubtful how St. John iii. 34, should be interpreted; see Westcott in loco. But if 'he' is interpreted of the Father, and the gift is to the Humanity of Christ, as the passage is cited in the lectures, the meaning appears to be opposite to that required by Mr. Gore's argument. Such an imperfect knowledge, corresponding to a message of definite content,' as is supposed in our Lord's human mind, would be the result of giving 'by measure.'

2 St. Luke ii. 52.

It cannot be questioned that a man may go through a real process of acquiring knowledge which he already possesses. 'A man might determine, by admeasurement of parts, that the square of the hypothenuse was equal in area to the squares of the sides, and yet afterwards come to the same conclusion by reasoning.'1 'The telescope or the theodolite may verify a result of which we have been previously informed by a mathematical calculation.' Similarly, our Lord might know all things from the first in His human mind by reason of its union with His Divine nature, while He acquired knowledge in experience by the processes through which men learn.

2

It may be said to us, 'You interpret "wisdom" as you cannot interpret "stature."' Yes; but we interpret' wisdom' as we must interpret 'favour with God.' At the moment of His conception Jesus Christ was the well-beloved Son, in the fulness of the Divine favour. Yet He advanced in favour with God.' He who from the first enjoyed as Man in the fullest degree the favour of the Father, in another sense gradually grew in favour as His perfect holiness was translated into action by will and words and deeds. In like manner, He who as Man was from the first perfectly wise advanced in experience.

There is one passage more: 'Of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.'3 Of this verse there have been different interpretations in ancient and modern times. St. Athanasius explained it as a statement that the Son of Man was ignorant either actually in His human mind, or so far as the results of the exercise of His human faculties were concerned; St. Basil of the truth that the Son of God only knows by the gift of the Father; 5 St. Augustine of a mere withholding from the disciples of the knowledge which our Lord actually possessed.“

1 Wilberforce, Doctrine of the Incarnation, p. 72.

Liddon, Bampton Lectures, p. 457.

3 St. Mark xiii. 32.

4 St. Athan. Orat. c. Arian. iii. 42-50; De Incarn. et c. Arian. vii. Cf. Irenæus, C. Hær. II. xlii. 3, xliii. 2, 3. There is some doubt, as indicated above, as to the meaning of St. Athanasius; see Library of the Fathers-Select Treatises of St. Athanasius, pp. 461, 462, 464-6, 468, 469. Some have thought Irenæus did not mean more than that the knowledge was derived from the Father.

St. Basil, Ep. 236 (al. 391); in Ep. 8 (al. 141) he mentions another view as possible.

St. Aug. De Trin. i. 23. Cf. St. Chrys. In Mat. Hom. on xxiv. 36; In Act. Ap. on i. 6; St. Ambr. Expos. Luc. viii. 34-36; De Fide, v. xvi.-xviii.; St. Cyr. Alex. Thesaurus, xxii., although there is some diffi

To Archdeacon Wilberforce it was merely an assertion that our Lord did not know through the use of His human faculties; to Dr. Liddon it was a declaration of a human ignorance of one specified fact on the part of the Son of Man, who in all other respects was omniscient; to Mr. Gore it expresses a part of our Lord's habitual ignorance as Man of all which was not specially revealed to Him by the Father, or learnt in the ordinary course of life. The interpretation of St. Augustine, widely held as it has been within the Church, does not appear to us to satisfy the meaning of Christ's words. The other interpretations we have mentioned all seem to us to be possible in themselves. But we would point out that the probability of the explanation given by Mr. Gore depends on the value of the arguments from other passages we have shown reasons for setting aside, and that, apart from these, the most which could be based upon this one verse would be the opinion defended with great skill by the Bampton Lecturer for 1866.4 It follows that whether the human mind of our Lord was or was not ignorant of the one fact of the time of His second coming, there is no ground supplied by this passage for so extensive a nescience on the part of the Son of Man as Mr. Gore's position requires. And it is not to be forgotten that, in the discourse of which the verse forms part, our Lord was speaking with a very minute and accurate knowledge of many future details.

We have gone through, as fully as our space allows, the evidence of the Gospels on the human knowledge of our Lord. It is a question involved in many difficulties, but to ourselves, looking for the moment at the Gospels alone, the most probable view appears to be that our Lord throughout His human life was habitually possessed as Man of all the knowledge which it is possible for a human mind to contain.

Nor is this view inconsistent with St. Paul's description of the Incarnation by the words ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν. The context shows that the meaning of this phrase is the possession of culty in ascertaining the meaning of St. Ambrose and St. Cyril. There is a similar doubt about the opinion of St. Ephraim the Syrian, which would be of interest: see In Script. Serm. exeg. on St. John xi. 43; Adv. Scrutatores Serm. xxvi. xxx. lxxvii.-lxxix. (Õpp. Syr. t. ii. pp. 391, 392, t. iii. pp. 47, 54, 142-8), and cf. the notes in the Library of the FathersSelect Works of St. Ephrem the Syrian, pp. 190, 348-59.

1 Wilberforce, Doctrine of the Incarnation, pp. 69–72. Cf. St. Greg. Mag. Ep. x. 39.

2 Liddon, Bampton Lectures, pp. 458-67. Cf. Petavius, De Incarn.

XI. ii. I.

3 Gore, Bampton Lectures, p. 149.

5 Phil. ii. 7.

4

Liddon, ibid.

humanity and the consequent possibility of humiliation and suffering and death.'

The opinion we have expressed is very strongly supported by the consideration of the Catholic doctrine of the Person of our Lord. His Manhood is indissolubly united with His Godhead in one Divine Person. All His human acts and words and thoughts are acts and words and thoughts of God. This makes certain His entire infallibility; it makes highly probable His complete knowledge. It is true that in the humiliation of the Incarnation He submitted Himself to hunger and thirst and weariness and death. But this is a different thing from the Divine Person withholding knowledge from the human mind in which He acted, and which was the mind of God. To speak of the voluntary withholding of knowledge by the Divine Person from His own human mind seems to us to ignore what the nature of knowledge implies.

We are in the presence of a stupendous mystery, which calls for restrained thoughts and guarded words. But to ourselves the consideration, both of Holy Scripture by itself and of the teaching of the Catholic Creeds points to a high probability that our Lord, in His human mind, knew all things which a human mind can receive, as the same consideration makes certain that as Man He could neither sin nor err. And the extent to which the belief which we have expressed spread throughout the Church, though never made a matter of faith, is not, we think, to be ignored.

4. We deeply regret that Mr. Gore has repeated the opinion he has elsewhere expressed that our Lord's teaching has no bearing on particular questions of Old Testament criticism. Whatever be the facts about some details, a real Mosaic legislation, including Deuteronomy xxiv. 1, and Leviticus xii. 3, an historical Flood, a true history of Jonah, are, we

1 Notice the connexion of thought in verses 7-8 and the grammatical construction of verse 7. Cf. Pearson, Exposition of the Creed, art. ii. : All the words together are but an expression of Christ's exinanition, with an explication showing in what it consisteth, which will clearly appear by this literal translation-But emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. Where if any man doubt how Christ emptied Himself, the text will satisfy him, by taking the form of a servant; if any still question how He took the form of a servant, he hath the Apostle's resolution, by being made in the likeness of men. . . . As, therefore, His humiliation consisted in His obedience unto death, so his exinanition consisted in the assumption of the form of a servant, and that in the nature of man.'

2 See St. Thom. Aq. Summa Theologica, III. x. 1-3; Petavius, De Incarn. XI. iii., De Deo, vII. iv. ; Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, v. liv. 7.

think, imperatively required by the words of Christ. We are unable to see that our Lord's reference to Psalm cx.2 is of such a kind as to leave His infallibility and honesty unaffected if that Psalm was not written by David. And the inferences which thus are drawn with regard to the Old Testament would still, in our opinion, be rightly made, even on a view of ignorance in our Lord's human mind which we are not prepared to admit, since the appeal, the warning, the argument, are to us a real part of the teaching of Christ.

VI. In the seventeenth century one of the greatest theologians of the English Church thought a need of his time to be an exposition of Christian doctrine after the scholastic method.3 Twelve years ago the present Bishop of Rome urged upon his clergy the study of the schoolmen. It may be well for English Churchmen of the present day to consider words from sources so different.

In suggesting that the scholastic methods have lessons for ourselves, we take as our own words of Bishop Pearson:

'I am not one who would recall you from light to darkness, from the clearness of recovered literature to barbarism. I desire rather, with the fullest light from the sacred writings, to break into the very recesses of the school, and to put to flight whatever of darkness is there.' 5

What are the conditions under which we may use the schoolmen to help us to a valuable system of Christian thought?

In the first place, we must make the right use of Holy Scripture. While we recognize the worth of the deuterocanonical books, we must keep quite clear the real distinction of the books which are proto-canonical. We must summon to our aid all critical helps. We must spare no pains to ascertain the true text and history, the true interpretation of each part, of the Old and New Testaments. The study of languages, of manuscripts, of versions, of schools of interpretation, of other sacred books, of history and archæology, must lie behind our use of the Bible.

1 See St. Matt. xix. 8; St. Mark x. 3; St. John vii. 19, 22, 23; St. Matt. xxiv. 37; St. Luke xvii. 26; St. Matt. xii. 41; St. Luke xi. 32. St. Matt. xxii. 41-5; St. Mark xii. 35-7; St. Luke xx. 41-4. Pearson, Lectio i. (Lectionum ratio et methodus, quare scholastica')

3

in Minor Works (ed. Churton), i. 1–9. Cf. p. lvii.

4

The Encyclical letter dated August 4, 1879, was reprinted in the edition of Aquinas now in course of publication at Rome, i. pp. iii.-xvi. Pearson, ibid. p. 3.