AGNOETÆ, (Gk. agnotai, "ignorant "): 1. Name of a sect of the fourth century, a branch of the Eunomians (q.v.), who followed the lead of Theophronius of Cappadocia. They were so named because they limited the divine omniscience to the present, maintaining that God knew the past merely by memory, and the future by divination (Socrates, Hist. eccl., v.24).

2. The name was borne also by the sect of the sixth century, founded by Themistius, a deacon of Alexandria, and sometimes called Themistians. They consisted chiefly of the Severian faction of the Monophysites, and maintained that as the body of Christ was subject to natural conditions, so also his human soul must be thought of as not omniscient. In support of their view they quoted Mark xiii. 32 and John xi. 34. The heresy was revived by the Adoptionists in the eighth century.