Tackling Tradition 83: Could Yeshua Read Minds?

From time to time, you run into someone who thinks that Christ’s being theandric means that He automatically knew what other people thought because, “Jesus is God in flesh,” without thinking about what that really means or entails.  That’s why it’s important to know & understand terms like “theandric” & incorporate them into everyday faith & practice, &, if at all possible, their everyday speech. 

As to His divinity —- omniscience.   As to His humanity— He muddled through just like the rest of us.  Therefore not omniscient.    Why? Because Yeshua has a fully human soul/spirit.  

Jesus Had A Human Mind: The fact that Jesus “increased in wisdom” (Luke 2:52) says that he went through a learning process just as all other children do — he learned how to eat, how to talk, how to read and write, and how to be obedient to his parents (see Heb. 5:8). This ordinary learning process was part of the genuine humanity of Christ.

(Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, p.967)

If Yeshua could learn & grow (Luke 2:52) it stands to reason He could be deceived as to His humanity, though not His divinity.  

And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

Of the main texts Matt. 9:4, Mark 2:8, Luke 6:8, John 2:24 - 25, & John 4:17 - 18)  only one of them indicates He knew extraordinary information revealed to His human nature by His Godward nature.   The others are those in which He was confronted by His enemies & is telling us that He knew how people think —-> not meticulous thought processes like Superman if Superman could read minds. 

When people argue that Yeshua was able to read people’s hearts & minds in a literal sense, analogous to Mr. Bester, Lyta Alexander, or Talia Winters in Babylon 5, they are, theologically speaking, deifying His humanity.  

Yeshua had (and still has) a rational human soul; God did not take the place of Yeshua’s soul/spirit.  To be a mundane human on this earth is to be unable to read the minds of other people. 

 God Himself is omniscient — Yeshua as to His bona fide human nature was NOT omniscient, & the Bible doesn’t portray Him that way.  Otherwise, you wind up with Him giving the appearance of being human, which deifies His human nature or makes Him some sort of Gnostic or quasi-Gnostic being or super/overbeing who had the appearance of being human but was really just God in a human body or something along those lines. 

When you appeal to God’s omniscience as a means to assert that Yeshua knew the thoughts of other people in a global ongoing sense, not just in one or more specific cases, like the Woman At the Well you wind up diminishing His humanity & overstating His divinity.  

God’s omniscience is exhaustive, meticulous, perfect, universal, & absolute in every way.    That makes it a package deal.  You can’t very well say that Yeshua knew everything the people around him thought without having to say He also knew what they knew in an ongoing, global, exhaustive, meticulous, & perfect sense.   If true, that undermines what the Bible teaches about His childhood.  

One of the essential attributes of man is our finitude.   As to His humanity, Yeshua was finite just like you & me.  

O LORD, Hear our prayer(s)!