Ambrose on Active Knowledge

From Of Christian Faith, Book 5:

194. I ask then, whether He had this knowledge by reason of His Being, or by chance? For all
knowledge comes to us either through nature, or by learning. It is supplied by nature, as for instance
to a horse to enable it to run, or to a fish to enable it to swim. For they do this without learning. On
the other hand, it is by learning that a man is enabled to swim. For he could not do so unless he had
learnt. Since therefore nature enables dumb animals to do and to know what they have not learnt,
why shouldst thou give an opinion on the Son of God, and say whether He has knowledge by
instruction or by nature? If by instruction, then He was not begotten as Wisdom, and gradually
began to be perfect, but was not always so. But if He has knowledge by nature, then He was perfect
in the beginning, He came forth perfect from the Father; and so needed no foreknowledge of the
future.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s