Doubts

queries
Father Richard Barrett answers readers' questions WAS JESUS ALWAYS (mart, of his own Divinity? Or did he gradually become aware of it? Or was it suddenly revealed to him in his latter years?
THEREARE SOME catechists who argue that children under the age of eight years should not be taught the divinity of Jesus because it confuses them.
For them Jesus is their best friend. As one catechist said to me, It does them no favours by complicating matters and bringing God into the equation." Well, it is our job to complicate the equations of life. Speaking of equations the problem of the children may be mathematical and the problem of the catechists may be spiritual. Regarding the first one could point out that children often get stuck on the mathematics of the doctrine because they employ symbols for addition according to which 1+ 1+1 = 3 (three gods) when they should try multiplication symbols so that 1x1x1 = 1 (one god). As for the second it may be that some catechists are still treading water somewhere between what Paddy Purnell calls the Uncle George image of God and the Wendy House school of Christology, for which Jesus was just a very nice man.
There are two common responses to the reader's query. There are those who say a resounding "no" and these tend to begin from what we call a low ascending Christology and there are those who say a resounding -yes", but these begin from a high descending Christology. For the fast the temptation is adoptionism the man who became a god, and for the second the temptation is docetism the god who never quite managed to become a man. Those are the risks so now we can deal with the substance of the question. Questions about the self-consciousness of Jesus are fraught with one major problem it is difficult to get into someone's mind for certain and speak with absolute conviction as to what he is thinking. The general convention for an historical figure is to depend on materials left behind like writings or speeches, and for these we depend upon those who heard and recorded his words and deeds (DV 10). John records Jesus as distinguishing between himself and the Father (Jn 10:30; 10:38) for the sake of his Jewish hearers. This makes sense as pre-Christian monotheistic Jews would have found a claim by Jesus to be theos or God absolutely unpalatable. Yet despite this no-go area Jesus clearly did claim that there was an otherness about him that was not shared by other human beings or even by heaven-sent emissaries. From other sources we know that the charge brought against him was one of blasphemy or claiming to be divine (Mk 2:7; 14:64; Jn 10:33,36). Jesus had given the impression that he had a unique relationship with theos or the Father. So Jesus did not claim to be God in the way that his hearers understood this direct appellate, that is, he did not claim to be Yahweh or abba, that is, the Father. Nowhere does he say ego eimi theos (I am God). This would have meant the Father.
So even if he did not claim to be the Jewish God openly, did Jesus know he was divine? Luke's gospel tells us that Jesus the boy "advanced in wisdom, age and favour before God and human beings" (Lk 2:52). This implies that his knowledge was cumulative and so would rule out the view that he was omniscient from his very beginnings on earth. It seems that when the Word became flesh he assumed the whole human package bar sin. Lonergan is helpful here when he states in his important and as yet untranslated work De Verbo incurnato that Jesus' two natures, human and divine, would not have meant two wills, but may have involved two levels of cognitive activity, the divine slipping gemr of inspiration into the human. This is Lonergan's way of explaining the gospel accounts of the prophecies of Jesus. There are some scripture schol ars who have difficulty even with the possibility of prophecy on the part of Jesus, but this seems a tad unconvincing given that they often permit prophecy to other ordinary figures in the Old Testament. It may be that here we touch the limitations of some reductionist methods of scripture scholarship according to which only a low ascending vision of Jesus ispermissible from the gospels. But if Jesus did not know he was divine then the entire economy of salvation, church, sacraments, pneumatology and teaching falls apart. But Jesus' sayings like "before Abraham was I am" would certainly indicate an awareness of his own preexistence as the Son.
Some scripture scholars force a sharp division between Scripture. and Tradition and so respond to the query on the basis of scriptural data only feeling that, say, the contribution of the Fathers of Chalcedon (451) cannot be said to be as inspired as the dicta of Scripture. But Scripture is the product of Tradition as one court theologian pointed out to me on this matter recently. The Word of God is organic and is unpacked throughout history in line with the promise of Jesus to the apostles "And he will lead you into all truth" (Jr, 16:1215). Prophecy is one thing, but omniscience is another and the words of Jesus himself would seem to rule out omniscience: "But of that day or that hour nobody knows, not even the angels in heaven or the Son, but only the Father." (Mk 13:32). Omniscience then is ascribed only to the Father.
The titles Jesus used of himself reflect his concern to avoid confusion in the minds of his rigidly monotheistic hearers. Thus the favoured expression "Son of Man" gives way among his school of disciples to "the Christ" and even "the Son of the Living God" (Mk 8:29) and eventually among the schoolturned-college to "the Lord" and then "God" (Jn 1:1; 20:28; Heb 1:8).
This reflects an evolution in the minds of the disciples, but not necessarily in the mind of Christ. Mark clearly presents Christ as directing the gradual manifestation of his true and secret identity. The transfiguration is the turning point then, but Pentecost is the moment when all doubt is scattered and the school of disciples becomes a college of apostles preaching and teaching in the name of the Lord (Acts 2-15). This living exposition of the true identity of Jesus, as in so much else in the Church, only found formal doctrinal definition later when its truth was challenged by Arius and others.
Thus the Council of Chalcedon defined his one divine personality sharing in two natures as an article of faith (DS 302). This would suggest that high descending Christology is the way forward.