B. THE PERSONHOOD OF CHRIST:
TWO NATURES IN ONE DIVINE PERSON

6. THE PERFECTIONS OF THE HUMAN NATURE AND KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST

Since the human nature of Christ is the human nature of the Son of God, and since Christ in that nature is the head of men and Angels, it is natural to expect that it will have the excellence that is possible to a human nature. This precisely the case: in knowledge and power, the human nature of Christ possesses all the perfection possible to a human nature.

From the point of view of knowledge, it would have been absurd for God to give Christ a human mind without endowing it with all the knowledge possible to it. As God, Christ possessed the perfection of the Divine knowledge. As God, Christ knew everything that could be known about God and the world, about the past, the present and the future. But still, the perfection of the human nature of Christ demands that the soul of Christ should know everything that a human soul may know, and in the way in which it is possible for a human soul to know anything.
     
This means that the soul of Christ must have been enriched from the beginning with the vision of God. If Christ was to make it possible for other men to see God, certainly He must have seen God with His own human intellect. Obviously, this vision of God in the human intellect of Christ cannot be equal to the infinitely perfect vision of God which is proper to God alone. But since Christ, in His human nature, is the head of all creatures, He will see in His vision of God all that can be known about creatures ----- that is, He will see everything that is real about creation: all that has been, that is, or will be. He will not see everything that is possible to God within His human nature; for only God can fully realize the infinite power of God. In addition, the human soul of Christ possesses infused knowledge, just as the souls of the dead know by infused knowledge, since they no longer have sensory organs. Since knowledge of this kind exists in a created mind, it must exist in the human mind of Christ. Surely God would not allow the mind of His own human nature to lack any perfection, Through this infused knowledge Christ would know everything possible for a created intellect to know. He would not know the essence of God through this intellect, but He would know the essence of God through His beatific vision.  Lastly, the human intellect of Christ could acquire knowledge just as other men obtain it. Through the senses He would come to learn the world in which men live; by the power of His mind He would come to understand the meaning of things just as other men do. It follows, then, that while the vision of God in the soul of Christ and the infused knowledge in His soul could not grow or increase, the acquired knowledge on the soul of Christ could increase. This is the meaning of the statement in Sacred Scripture that the Boy Christ advanced in wisdom.

Neither His beatific vision of God nor His infused knowledge increased, but His natural acquired knowledge was augmented. Naturally, since the human nature of Christ was a perfect human nature, since the power of Christ's mind was never weakened or darkened by sin, even the acquired knowledge of Christ surpasses the knowledge of all other men. We do not say that Christ, in this way, knew even things of which He had not experienced, such as the internet or the atomic bomb. But His mind grasped the essence of all things. Naturally, too, since Christ is God, it was not fitting that Christ should learn anything either from angels or men. God is the source of all knowledge; therefore, even in His human nature, He acquired all that He knew without any Angelic or human teacher.