July 16, 2009

What the Son Doesn’t Know

Category: Bible - NT - Mark,Bible - NT - Matthew,Theology - Christology :: Permalink

In Mark 13:32, Jesus says, “Of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (cf. Matt. 24:36).  That’s somewhat puzzling.  Is it a limitation on Jesus’ omniscience, as if God the Father knows things that God the Son doesn’t?  That can’t be.  So is it saying that Jesus as a man doesn’t know things that God the Son knows?  Even so, that’s still puzzling.

A friend of mine argued once for a different approach:  When Jesus says that even the Son does not know the day and hour, he said, he is speaking of knowing something in order to pass it on to others.  Neither the angels nor the Son has been given the knowledge of the day and hour in the sense that neither is commissioned to reveal it and make it known to us.

I haven’t studied this passage and so I won’t claim that this is the right interpretation.  But the other day, I was reading Augustine’s exposition of Psalm 10 (Psalm 9, part 2, for Augustine).  In that exposition, he mentions those passages in Mark 13 and Matthew 24.  Lo and behold, he says exactly what my friend said:

What, then, is so hidden as that which is said to be hidden even from the judge himself, not as far as his knowing it is concerned, but as regards his revealing it?   (Expositions of the Psalms, 1:158, emphasis mine).

Posted by John Barach @ 5:39 pm | Discuss (0)

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