The Verse Arius Loved

There was a passage which Arius could give to any catechumen and thus cause the entire room to go silent: "But concerning that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven or the Son, but only the Father" (Mark 13:32). In this statement the Son is speaking about himself and drawing a distinction between what he knows and what the Father knows. In response the Nicene party quoted Colossians 2:3, which says that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ, and this reply is satisfactory in that respect. Yet it does not address the more difficult issue. Although Colossians 2:3 might claim that the Son is omniscient, Mark 13:32 still upholds its original assertion, and every orthodox commentator from the fourth century onward has had to offer an explanation as to how both statements can be included in the same Bible.

The pressure stems from the structure of the verse and not from any single word; Jesus establishes an ascending sequence: at first there is no human being, then the angels, and then the Son. Each stage is higher than the one below it and at the same time is excluded. In Matthew's version the tightness of the sequence is achieved through the word μόνος, which indicates that the Father is alone (Matthew 24:36). If you compare this with what is said in John 16:15—that is, that everything which the Father has is mine—and with the judgment which the Father has committed to the Son in John 5:22–27, you will realise that the tension is not something which has been artificially introduced by systematic theologians; it is already there in the text itself. In contrast, Luke says that the child grew in wisdom (Luke 2:52), and Hebrews states that he learned obedience from what he suffered (Heb 5:8). A Christology that cannot accommodate both of these groups of statements will at some point break down, and that failure will not be limited to one area alone.

Which is why the verse should not be contented with just being a footnote; for if it is interpreted in one sense then Arius is obtained, since according to him the Son is a creature because creatures are ignorant. If, on the other hand, it is interpreted in the opposite sense, one comes to the nineteenth-century kenoticism of Thomasius and Gess, in which the eternal Word gives up his omniscience in order to meet the situation and thus replaces a subordinationist Son with a mutable God. Open theism reaches the same verse from a different perspective by treating divine ignorance as a real and live category rather than as a christological issue. Francis Gumerlock, who in his 2007 article in the Trinity Journal looks at the patristic material, notes that some of the Fathers also understood the verse in a pastoral manner as a direct warning to those who fix dates for events. This approach to the verse remains valid throughout all the available exegetical interpretations and the history of American prophecy charts proves that it has never been unnecessary.

Basil focused on the grammar and translated εἰ μή in a rather literal way, resulting in the clause reading as "nor the Son, if not the Father", which he understood to mean that the Son could not have knowledge unless that knowledge came from the Father. By interpreting it in this way, the verse establishes Christ's omniscience on the grounds of his eternal origin. Although this interpretation is ingenious, it fails because of Matthew's μόνος, which Basil is compelled to redefine so that it stands in contrast to the angels and not to the Son. In contrast, Augustine adopted a different method: in the Scriptures the expression "God knows" often means "God reveals", as is shown when God tells Abraham after the Aqedah, 'now I know that you fear me' (Gen 22:12). Thus, the Son does not reveal the day. Gumerlock's objection is decisive; if the gloss is applied consistently throughout the whole verse, the outcome is a statement about who has and has not made public the date, with the Father retaining the announcement to himself, which is a defensible theological view and clearly not what the ascending series is doing. Gregory of Tours proposed that the terms 'son' and 'father' are not Trinitarian here at all but are instead figures for the Church and for Christ, since the original majuscules contained no capital letters to settle the question. Aquinas gave the point a place of honour in the Catena Aurea. The passage still requires us to believe that Mark, who has Jesus praying Abba, Father, in Gethsemane two chapters later, intended something entirely different by the same pair of words here.

Athanasius adopted the fourth option and concluded that ignorance was an aspect of human nature; although the Word is present, the flesh is not, and it is the flesh that is ignorant. On the ground that he had become man, Athanasius stated that he had no doubt about saying that he did not know. Gregory of Nazianzus presented this principle as an axiom, namely that he knows as God but does not know as a man, and that the ignorance must be referred to his human nature. The formula is clear and clear enough to be dangerous. When Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret used similar expressions, their opponents understood it in a different way, interpreting it as implying a human Jesus who acquired divine knowledge in stages from a Word which lived in him as a tenant. Pope Vigilius condemned precisely that view: anyone who holds the opinion that Christ could know only what the indwelling divinity made known to him. Fulgentius responded that the hypostatic union gives the human soul of Christ knowledge of the infinite divinity, since the Spirit was given to him without limit. The Agnoetae in sixth-century Egypt renewed the argument on the basis of Mark 13:32 and reached the same conclusion.

The anthropological method is still the right one, as Gregory the Great states to confirm this. Although the incarnate Son knew the day of judgment in his human nature, he did not know it by means of that nature; the knowledge which he obtained through his human nature was not knowledge which resulted from that nature, since God enabled man to know the time by the power of his divinity. Gregory also says that no one who is not a Nestorian can be an Agnoite. The difference between in and from is in fact the whole doctrine, and it is expressed in just two prepositions. It is not the natures which know things, but the persons who know them, and in this case there is one person. When Jesus says that the Son does not know, he is referring to himself in his human nature and in the way in which that nature knows—a way which is acquired, developmental, and finite—the way that Luke describes when the boy grows in wisdom. In this he is not asserting that there is a gap in the divine consciousness of the Word nor that there is a separate compartment within himself; the repeated qualifying phrase is not an evasion, but is the only grammatical way for someone to admit that one subject is both consubstantial with the Father and consubstantial with us.

It is worth noting the state of the rest of the system. Once you have made your interpretation of Mark 13:32, you have already committed yourself as to what happened in Gethsemane, concerning the cry from the cross, and in relation to the obedience which Hebrews speaks of. Only a Christ whose humanity is genuine enough to grow, to be surprised, and to pray in suffering can serve as our forerunner and high priest and in whom we are hid and with whom we are raised. Athanasius understood that the flesh had to be truly ours if the exchange was to have any effect at all. On the other hand, Gregory believed that the flesh had to belong to God if the exchange was to have any value. If we accept both of these views, then Mark 13:32 is no longer an embarrassment and starts to act as evidence: the eternal Son took on a human mind and brought it down to the point of saying and meaning, 'I do not know'.