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Regarding Mark 13:32

 




But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. - Mark 13:32



How can Christ be God and also not know everything? This poses an issue for Christians since God is supposed to know everything and yet Christ does not know the time or the hour. How do Christians reconcile with this? 


First Rebuttal: Christ does not know the hour in his human nature only but knows the time and hour in his divine nature

There are a few issues with this argument. First of all, this argument posits that Christ has two sets of knowledge, which assumes that Christ is two persons. This is a heresy called Nestorianism which is condemned by both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.

However, even if this rebuttal came from a Protestant, they would need to explain how Christ being one unified person would have two sets of knowledge. Having two natures does not make it so that he would not know the time or the hour since the divine nature is embodying the same person of Christ that his human nature is.


Second Rebuttal: Christ actually did know the time or the hour because the Greek word can mean to declare

The first issue with this rebuttal is that if they made this argument they would need to concede that every single English Translation of the Bible is corrupted since no English Translated Bible makes it known to the reader that Christ declared instead of Christ knows. 

The second issue is that Christians use the verse 1 Corinthians 2:2 to suggest that Christ declared instead of knew since here it makes it seem like Paul declared instead of knowing anything but Christ and him crucified. This is easily explained by the fact that phrases like "I know nothing" are used to express not knowing something and not everything. For example, if your mother comes to you and asks you about something wrong you've done, and you reply with, "I don't know anything, " are you literally saying that you don't know anything or that you don't know anything about this specific thing? 

Furthermore, in Mark 13:33 Christ says "Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is." Here the word know is used to mean possessing knowledge which is the same word used in Greek for know as is used in Mark 13:32, otherwise how it would be make sense for us to watch and pray if we don't declare the hour? Mark 13:33 is talking about possessing knowledge.

Here are the interpretations of the some of the Early Church Fathers:

But, beyond reason inflated [with your own wisdom], you presumptuously maintain that you are acquainted with the unspeakable mysteries of God; while even the Lord, the very Son of God, allowed that the Father alone knows the very day and hour of judgment, when He plainly declares, But of that day and that hour knows no man, neither the Son, but the Father only. If, then, the Son was not ashamed to ascribe the knowledge of that day to the Father only, but declared what was true regarding the matter, neither let us be ashamed to reserve for God those greater questions which may occur to us. For no man is superior to his master. - Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book II, Chapter 28

when His disciples asked about the end, suitably said He then, 'no, nor the Son,' according to the flesh because of the body; that He might show that, as man, He knows not; for ignorance is proper to man. If however He is the Word, if it is He who is to come, He to be Judge, He to be the Bridegroom, He knows when and in what hour He comes, and when He is to say, 'Awake, you that sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light Ephesians 5:14.' For as, on becoming man, He hungers and thirsts and suffers with men, so with men as man He knows not; though divinely, being in the Father Word and Wisdom, He knows, and there is nothing which He knows not. - Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians, Discourse III

Finally, the argument that the Greek word, "οἶδεν", which is used for the word "know" in Mark 13:32 can mean declare is not supported by the definition of the word. The word cannot be used other than to express the possession of knowledge according to all the definitions of the word. 


What do scholars say:

Jesus' apparent denial of knowledge about the day and hour of the end was felt to be a severe problem by later orthodox theologians; as Jerome (Commentary on Matthew 4) puts it, our verse makes "Arius and Eunomius rejoice," because it seems to support their position that the Son is inferior to the Father. Seemingly in response to this Christological problem, Luke leaves out all of Mark 13:32, and some later manuscripts (e.g., X) omit "nor the Son" from our passage and frequently from its Matthean parallel (it is absent in the Vulgate, most Syriac and Coptic witnesses, and the Majority Text; the omission, moreover, is already attested by Origen; see Ehrman, Textual Corruption, 91–92). For similar reasons, some church fathers assert unconvincingly that "nor the Son" was not part of the original text but had been introduced into it by the Arians (see, e.g., Ambrose, On Faith 5.16.191–93; Jerome, Commentary on Matthew 4).

    The phrase "nor the Son," however, was too firmly rooted in Christian memory to be dealt with in this cavalier manner, so other hermeneutical strategies became necessary. As Luz (Matthew, 3.213–14) notes, later church interpreters are almost unanimous in claiming, on the basis of passages such as Matt 11:27; John 10:15; 16:15; and Acts 1:7, that Jesus did know the time of the end (cf. the survey in Oden and Hall, 191–93, and especially the fascinating article by Madigan, "Christus Nesciens"). After all, he knew the signs of the future judgment, so he must have known its day and hour as well (see, e.g., Ambrose, Exposition of Luke 8.35; On Faith 5.16.206–7). Many, like Augustine (On the Trinity 1.12.1), assert that the meaning of the verse is that although Jesus himself knew the "hour," he withheld knowledge of it from his disciples. One of most common proof texts is Acts 1:7, "It is not for you [disciples] to know the times or periods": Christ does not say, "It is not for me to know" but ". . . not for you to know," implying that he himself does know (see Ambrose, On Faith 5.17.212; Jerome, Commentary on Matthew 4; Augustine, Question 60). A less frequent solution is that of Athanasius (Four Discourses Against the Arians 3.46), who claims that Christ knew the hour in his divine nature but not in his human one. These interpretations all fly in the face of the plain sense of the verse, but for orthodox theologians it was "simply not imaginable that the text could mean what it states, nor could Jesus mean what he explicitly declares" (Madigan, "Christus Nesciens," 261). As the Arians realized, however, and as theologians in our own day have rediscovered, the admission of ignorance in Mark 13:32 has its own theological importance; Ebeling (Dogmatik 2.473), for example, understands Jesus' ignorance of the day and hour as a necessary part of his participation in the limitations of human existence. - Joel Marcus, Mark 8-16, Page 913-914.


One of the problems confronting the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation of the Son of God concerns Jesus’ knowledge. The Incarnation is traditionally understood as the metaphysical union between true divinity and true humanity in the one person of Jesus Christ.1 However, being divine seems to entail being omniscient, but the New Testament portrays Jesus as being apparently limited in knowledge. For example, according to Mark 13:32 Jesus said ‘But of that day or hour (of the future coming of the Son of Man) no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son (i.e. Jesus), but the Father alone.’ This seems to imply that Jesus was ignorant of something, namely the timing of the Son of Man’s future coming. It seems logically impossible that any single individual could be omniscient on the one hand, and be limited in knowledge on the other. - Andrew Loke, The Incarnation and Jesus’ Apparent Limitation in Knowledge, Introduction


In this article, I will focus on a relatively recent solution to this problem known as kenoticism or kenotic theology. Kenoticism derives its name from the Greek word kenosis which means ‘emptying’. It is the view that when Christ became incarnate, he freely ‘emptied’ himself of certain divine properties. I will restrict my comments exclusively to the property of omniscience. On various occasions, the gospels describe Christ as lacking knowledge of certain true propositions. For example, in Mark 13.32, Christ claims not to know the date of the parousia or second coming. - Joel Archer, Kenosis, omniscience, and the Anselmian concept of divinity, Page Introduction









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