AGNOETI. – A sect linked to Severian Monophysitism, so named because it attributes to the human soul of the incarnate Word ignorance (ἐγνούσας in Greek) of certain things, and in particular of the day of the last judgment. The leader of the A. was the Alexandrian deacon Themistius (v.), a disciple of Severus of Antioch. Shortly after the latter’s death (538), in the year 540, under Theodore (535–67), Monophysite patriarch of Alexandria, Themistius began to spread his doctrine. When Theodore rejected him as a heretic, Themistius separated from him and became the master of a distinct sect that called itself the A. or the Themistians, in opposition to the Theodosians, who gathered the majority of Severian Monophysites.
Long before Themistius, various orthodox Fathers who fought Arianism had positively taught, or seemed to have taught, that Jesus Christ, as man, had been ignorant of various things, and in particular of the day of judgment. Concerned to defend the divinity of the Word against the Arians, and without having sufficiently explored the nature of the hypostatic union to grasp all its consequences, they had attributed to the humanity of the Savior the ignorance of the day of judgment that the Arians wished to attribute to the Word. Such an opinion could no longer be accepted after a century of discussion and speculation on the hypostatic union, and, if anything, it could only appeal to Nestorians; and in this category Catholic and Monophysite polemicists classified the Themistians. Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius had been A. even before Themistius; likewise the “Yellow Monk” Leporius (v.), who had taken refuge in Hippo in the time of St. Augustine and later disavowed his own error (PL 31, 1229).
There have always been some A. in the course of the centuries, and there are even some in our own time. Although certain Fathers, such as St. Sophronius of Jerusalem and St. John Damascene, branded agnoetism as heresy, it must rather be regarded as an error, given the strict sense in which the term “heresy” is taken today. This is borne out by a decree of the Holy Office dated 7 June 1918, prompted by the agnostic tendencies of certain contemporary theologians. The decree states that the following two propositions cannot be taught with certainty: 1) that it cannot be held as certain that the soul of Jesus Christ knew nothing by ignorance, but knew in the Word, from the beginning, the past, the present, and the future—i.e., all that God knows by the science of vision; 2) that the opinion of certain recent authors on the limited knowledge of Jesus Christ has as much right to be accepted in Catholic schools as the doctrine of the ancients on His universal knowledge.