Jesus' self knowledge

• Jesus being fully God and fully human raises the questions of his free will, his knowledge, his creation etc
• Medieval theology responded with three kinds of knowledge Jesus might have:

  • Knowledge of the divine reality of God, face-to-face, and al the created realities (scientia visionis)
  • an infused knowledge (scientia infusa)
  • Knowledge of life in the normal way of human life (scientia experientiae)
• Karl Rhaner suggests a genuinely human consciousness must have an unknown future in front of it, if Jesus was constantly conscious of God's awareness all the time, then his experience was hardly human
• Rhaner thought of describing human self-awareness as an onion, many layers.

  We have deep within us better understandings of our self which is not always on the surface of consciousness.
• The expression of fear in Gethsemane or uncertainty in the desert or on the cross makes sense if Jesus' human self-consciousness was close to the surface but his divine self-consciousness was deep within
• Gerald O'Collins challenges the possibility of answering these kind of questions

  1. It is difficult to undertake any study of the inner world of any being (especially Jesus)
  2. Before anyone can say that Jesus was the saviour they must have an appreciation of the complexity of Knowledge and the multi-layered structure of experiencing reality
  3. Consciousness is not the same as knowledge of a separate object. Knowledge of a separate object takes place without reflection, but consciousness always involves a degree of reflection