What Jesus Knows (Mark 13:32)
”But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
If Jesus is the incarnate Word, how can there be things he does not know?
The passage can’t be plucked out and interpreted in isolation, but must be understood with other comments in which Jesus discusses the relationship of the Father and the Son. It is similar to Matthew 20:23, “To sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.” Yet it must be placed alongside Matthew 11:27, “All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him,” John 3:35, “the Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand,” and similar passages attesting to the divinity of the Son.
The Church Fathers pondered these passages as well, and St. Augustine developed the “form of the servant” interpretation based upon Philippians 2:6-7: “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.”
In De Trinitate Augustine argues that there is no contradiction in the Son being greater than the Father and the Father being greater than the Son, because Jesus is True God and True man. In his deity he is equal and in his humanity he is not: “The one is to be understood in virtue of the form of God, the other in virtue of the form of a servant, without any confusion.” Scripture passages are thus interpreted by the understanding the “two resonances in them, one tuned to the form of God in which he is, and is equal to the Father, the other tuned to the form of a servant which he took and is less than the Father.” When we start to understand the true meaning of the two natures of Christ, then numerous passages start to slide into place.
Augustine:
“In the form of God, all things were made by him (John 1:3); in the form of a servant, he himself was made of woman, made under the law (Galatians 4:4). In the form of God, he and the Father are one (John 10:30); in the form of a servant, he did not come to do his own will, but the will of him who sent him (John 6:38). In the form of God, as the Father has life in himself, so he gave the Son also to have life in himself (John 5:26); in the form of a servant, his soul is sorrowful to the point of death, and Father, he said, if it can be, let this cup pass by (Mattew 26:38). In the form of God, he is true God and life eternal (1 John 5:20); in the form of a servant he became obedient to the point of death, the death even of the cross (Philippians 2:8). In the form of God, everything that the Father has is his (John 16:15), and all yours is mine, he says, and mine yours (John 17:10); in the form of a servant, his doctrine is not his own, but his who sent him (John 7:16)”
