In Matthew 24:35-37, we read:
“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven,
but my Father only. But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the
coming of the Son of man be” (KJV).
This passage appears to suggest that Jesus does not know the exact
time when he will return. How can this be, if Jesus is God and, thus,
is omniscient?
I subscribe to Derek Leman’s
Daily Portion. Derek was a Messianic Jewish rabbi. His Daily Portion
presents a passage from the Torah and a passage from the Gospels, along
with brief quotations of scholarly commentaries. I have enjoyed reading
the Daily Portion because Derek usually notices the sorts of things
that I would notice—-the sorts of things that I would find interesting
if I were reading those commentaries.
On Matthew 24:36-51, Leman quotes from Dale Allison and W.D. Davies, Matthew: A Shorter Commentary
(New York: T&T Clark, 2004). Allison and Davies discuss how
ancient church fathers wrestled with the idea of Jesus not knowing the
time of his own return:
“Older Christian theology often struggled with Jesus’ declaration of
ignorance. Luke omitted the saying, as did certain copyists of Matthew
and Mark. Origen wondered whether Jesus was referring to the church of
which he is the head. Ambrose attributed ‘nor the Son’ to an Arian
interpolation [i.e., he did not think it was genuine but that copyists
who doubted Jesus’ divinity added it]. Athanasius suggested Jesus only
feigned ignorance. The Cappadocians thought the Son did not know the
date on his own, but only through the Father; or as Gregory Nazianzen
put it: ‘He knows as God and knows not as man.’ Chrysostom, in a prize
example of bad exegesis, simply denied that Jesus was ignorant of
anything: ‘neither is the Son ignorant of the day, but is even in full
certainty thereof.’ So too Cassiodorus, citing Jn 21:17 and contending
that ‘nor the Son’ means that the Son did not make others know. But
modern Christian theology, emphasizing with the creeds that Jesus was
‘true man,’ has come to terms with our saying as an expression of
kenosis [the truth from Philippians 2 that the Son emptied himself of
certain divine privileges to descend into humanity].”