AGNOETI. — A sect associated with Severian Monophysitism, so called because it attributes to the human soul of the incarnate Word ignorance (ἀγνόις in Greek) of certain things, and especially of the day of the Last Judgment. The head of the a. Temistio (v.), a disciple of Severo of Antioch. Shortly after Severo’s death (538), around 540, under Teodoro (535–67), the Monophysite patriarch of Alexandria, Temistio began to disseminate his doctrine. When Teodoro rejected him as a heretic, Temistio separated from him and became the teacher of a separate sect, which was called that of the a., or of the Themistians, in opposition to that of the Theodosians, who comprised the majority of the Severian Monophysites.
Long before Temistio, various orthodox Fathers who opposed Arianism had explicitly taught, or seemed to have taught, that Jesus Christ, insofar as he was man, was ignorant of various things, and particularly of the day of the Judgment. Concerned to defend the divinity of the Word against the Arians, and not having sufficiently explored the nature of the hypostatic union to know all its consequences, they had attributed to the humanity of the Savior ignorance of the day of the Judgment, which the Arians wished to attribute to the Word. Such an opinion could no longer be accepted after a century of discussions and speculations concerning the hypostatic union and, if anything, could appeal only to the Nestorians; and in this category Catholic and Monophysite polemicists classified the Themistians. Teodoro of Mopsuestia and Nestorio had been a. even before Temistio; and so Leporio (v.), who had taken refuge in Hippo in the time of s. Agostino and later recanted his error (PL 31, 1229).
There have always been some a. throughout the centuries, and there are even some in our own time. Although certain Fathers, such as s. Sofronio of Jerusalem and s. Giovanni Damasceno, branded agnoetism as heresy, it should rather be considered an error, given the strict sense in which the name heresy is understood today. This follows from a decree of the Holy Office of 7 June 1918, prompted by the agnoetist tendencies of certain contemporary theologians. The decree states that the following two propositions cannot be taught with certainty: 1) The doctrine declaring that the soul of Jesus Christ was ignorant of nothing, but knew in the Word, from the beginning, the past, the present, and the future—that is, everything God knows by the science of vision—cannot be held as certain; 2) The opinion of certain recent authors concerning the limited knowledge of Jesus Christ has as much right to be accepted in Catholic schools as the doctrine of the ancients concerning his universal knowledge.