The charge
that the New Testament statements about the “day and the hour” destroy
Trinitarian doctrine rests on a cluster of exegetical and metaphysical
misunderstandings whose pedigree stretches from the second-century Monarchians
through the fourth-century Arians down to present-day anti-Trinitarians. A
Thomistic response must proceed on three levels: the text of Scripture read in
its canonical totality, the patristic consensus that shaped the dogmatic
definitions, and the metaphysics of the Incarnation and of divine knowledge.
Only within that triple horizon can Mark 13:32, Acts 1:7 and analogous passages
be weighed without anachronism.
First, the
literary context. In Mark’s eschatological discourse Jesus enumerates created
orders—“heaven and earth,” “angels in heaven,” “the Son”—in order to
establish an absolute epistemic gap between creaturely time and the
transcendent counsel by which the Father determines the parousia.
Nothing in the syntax compels the inference that the Son as such is ignorant;
rather, Jesus is speaking in the prophetic persona of the Servant who, in
Isaiah’s idiom, “does nothing of himself” and whose teaching
deliberately withholds what the disciples “cannot bear” (Jn 16:12). This
pedagogical reserve re-emerges after Easter in Acts 1:7, where the risen Lord
repeats almost verbatim the prohibition against apocalyptic timetables. It is
therefore hermeneutically arbitrary to wrench Mark 13:32 from that two-stage
discourse and read it as a metaphysical disavowal of omniscience. The function
of the saying is ascetical: to silence eschatological curiosity and impose
vigilance. As Augustine remarks (Trin. I 12), Christ “makes others ignorant
by saying he does not know,” just as God tests Abraham not to learn but to
reveal what was already known to God.
Patristic
exegesis is unanimous on this pedagogical key. Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea,
Gregory of Nazianzus, Cyril of Alexandria and Augustine distinguish between
what the Word possesses per se as consubstantial life and what he economically
communicates ad extra. When the Arians brandished Mark 13:32, Athanasius
replied that the verse refers to the Son’s οἰκονομία, not to his θεότης: “as God he knows, as
Teacher he withholds” (Or. III 46). Gregory of Nazianzus insists that it is
“the flesh-bearing form” that is said not to know, lest the faithful “adore
a naked Deity without the veil” (Or. 29 17). Pope Gregory I will later
enshrine the same reading: Christ knows in his humanity, but only because his
humanity subsists in the person of the Word, and he may elect not to render
that knowledge communicable (scientia incommunicabilis). The Church
therefore branded as Agnoetae those who ascribed genuine ignorance to Christ’s
humanity, precisely because such ignorance would contradict the communicatio
idiomatum guaranteed by the hypostatic union.
Aquinas
systematises the patristic data with unrivalled clarity (ST III, q. 9–12).
Christ’s one human intellect exercises three modes of cognition. The beatific
vision, granted from the first instant of conception, is a direct intuition of
the divine essence in which all truths are implicitly contained. Infused
knowledge (scientia infusa) endows the humanity with habitual
propositional truths proportioned to his mission. Acquired knowledge grows
historically through experience. If a datum pertains to the salvation he came
to reveal, it falls within the scope of infused knowledge and can be expressed
at will; if it lies outside that scope, it remains incommunicable, even though
virtually present in the beatific vision. Thus Aquinas can affirm that Christ “knows
the day and hour in two ways and does not know it in a third,” without
incoherence: he knows simpliciter in the beatific vision; he knows secondarily
by infused habit, should he choose to apply that habit to the object; he “does
not know” relative to the office of revelation, because revealing it would
frustrate the moral purpose of the discourse (ST III, q. 15, a. 10 ad 2).
Hence Christ
possessed three kinds of knowledge as man: the beatific vision (intuitive
vision of God), infused knowledge (a supernatural illumination exceeding that
of any creature), and acquired knowledge (gained experientially through his
human faculties). The “ignorance” ascribed to Christ in Mark 13:32, as
Augustine, Gregory the Great, and many others taught, refers not to any
imperfection or deficiency in the Word as such, but to the economy of
revelation and the limitations proper to Christ’s assumed human nature—limitations
freely embraced for the sake of our redemption (Philippians 2:6-8). Indeed,
even in his humanity, the Church teaches that Christ's soul, being
hypostatically united to the divine Person, possessed all knowledge necessary
for the accomplishment of his salvific mission, including the day of judgment,
though not all knowledge was “communicable” or disclosed in his prophetic
office. Thus, as Aquinas observes, Christ may be said “not to know” in the
sense of not making known, or not knowing in the manner appropriate to his
office as the revealer of the Father at that particular moment.
It is a
category error, then, to suppose that a limitation in communicable, human, or
prophetic knowledge constitutes an ontological limitation upon the divine
nature itself. This is precisely the error of the Agnoetae heresy, roundly
condemned by the Fathers. As Gregory the Great wrote to Eulogius of Alexandria:
“He knows the day and the hour in his humanity, but not from his humanity;
what he knows as man, he knows through the power of his divinity.” This is
no mere evasion, but a careful articulation of the metaphysical reality that,
although the human nature of Christ is not omniscient per se, it is
never separated from the Logos, who is omniscient per se.
This
Thomistic framework also dissolves the alleged silence concerning the Holy
Spirit. When Jesus distinguishes himself and the angels from “the Father,” he
is using “Father” in the economic sense of principium operationum, the
fountain from whom both the Word and the Spirit are eternally spirated and by
whom the missions of Son and Spirit are historically sent. To say that “only
the Father” knows is to say that the knowledge of the parousia is
incommunicable from the intra-divine principle to the creaturely order until
the economy renders it manifest. It is no more a denial of the Spirit’s
omniscience than Jesus’ statement “my doctrine is not mine” (Jn 7:16) is
a denial that the doctrine belongs to the Word. Appropriation language assigns
operations to one person to highlight relational origin, not to imply
ontological deficiency in the other persons.
Hence the
supposed silence regarding the Holy Spirit's knowledge in Mark 13:32 is an
argument from silence—a fallacy easily avoided by reading the totality of
scriptural testimony. The New Testament consistently attributes omniscience to
the Spirit (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:10-11: “the Spirit searches all things,
even the depths of God... no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the
Spirit of God”), and thus no reasonable reading would take Mark 13:32 as a
literal exclusion of the Spirit’s omniscience, any more than it would deny the
Father’s omnipotence when a passage fails to mention it explicitly. The
dominical saying singles out the Father as the arche (principle, source)
of the Trinity—consistent with Trinitarian doctrine—not as the sole possessor
of divine knowledge in a unipersonal sense.
The reading
of Revelation 14 advanced by anti-Trinitarians ignores Johannine symbolism. The
“one like a Son of Man” is the Danielic figure to whom universal
judgment is given (Dn 7:13–14); his receiving angelic exhortation functions
typologically, echoing Daniel’s visions where angels mediate heavenly decrees
to prophetic seers. Within apocalyptic convention such an exchange does not
prove ignorance; it dramatizes the liturgical cooperation of heavenly orders
with the enthroned Lamb. Indeed, earlier in the same book the risen Christ
proclaims, “I was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the
keys of Death and Hades” (Rv 1:18), a self-designation that presupposes
exhaustive sovereignty over eschatological moments. Revelation 1:1, far from
contradicting this, displays the taxis of the economic Trinity: the Father as arche
without origin, the Son as mediator of revelation, and the Spirit as the
prophetic breath speaking to the churches (Rv 2:7). At no point does the text
suggest a hierarchical deficit of knowledge within the Godhead.
Hence the
assertion that the “Son of Man” in Revelation is presented as an angelic
figure is not sustained by critical scholarship or the development of New
Testament Christology. The “one like a son of man” motif (Daniel 7:13;
Revelation 1:13; 14:14) is consistently interpreted in the New Testament as a
messianic, divine-human title, uniquely fulfilled in Christ, not as a mere
angel among angels. The reception of the message “from another angel” in
Revelation 14:15 does not render Christ angelic any more than the reception of
the Spirit at the baptism or the voice from heaven at the Transfiguration
undermines his divinity. Rather, these are symbolic of Christ’s mediatorial
office and the proper roles within the economy of salvation, not ontological
statements about his nature.
The
complaint that the dual-nature doctrine is a post-biblical contrivance betrays
historical amnesia. Every document of the New Testament attributes to Christ
prerogatives that Israelite monotheism reserves to YHWH—creation (Jn 1:3),
judgment (Jn 5:22), worship (Mt 28:17), theophanic glory (Phil 2:10–11)—and
simultaneously affirms his genuine humanity subject to growth (Lk 2:52) and
passion. Chalcedon’s “without confusion or division” merely provides the
metaphysical grammar to hold together what the canonical witnesses already
conjoin. Nor is mystery a resort to irrationality. Mystery, in the scholastic
sense, is a truth that exceeds but does not violate reason; it can be
negatively circumscribed and positively harmonized with all data once
revelation supplies its principle. To dismiss mystery is to mistake
transcendence for contradiction. This union is not a mere juxtaposition but a
true and intimate union at the level of personhood (hypostasis). The
distinction between nature (what one is) and person (who one is) is not
artificial, but metaphysically necessary for coherently articulating the
Incarnation without lapsing into either Nestorianism (dividing Christ into two
persons) or Eutychianism (mixing the natures into a tertium quid).
Hence the
claim that the doctrine of Christ’s dual nature is an artificial, post-biblical
construct is contradicted by the testimony of both the New Testament and the
earliest Christian writings. John 1:1-14, Colossians 2:9, Philippians 2:5-11,
and Hebrews 1:1-4, among others, unmistakably teach the full deity and true
humanity of Christ. The Church’s dogmatic definitions (Nicaea, Constantinople,
Ephesus, Chalcedon) are not “inventions” but authoritative syntheses of the
apostolic deposit, responding to heresies that denied either Christ’s divinity
or his humanity. The fact that the technical vocabulary (e.g., “hypostasis,”
“ousia”) emerged in the patristic period does not undermine the doctrine’s
scriptural foundation; it merely reflects the Church’s task of defining, not
inventing, the content of divine revelation.
The
assertion that the Son’s reception of revelation from the Father (Revelation
1:1) indicates ontological inferiority confuses the immanent Trinity
(the eternal relations within the Godhead) with the economic Trinity
(God’s action in salvation history). According to the classical doctrine, all
that the Son has, he has from the Father (John 16:15: "All that the Father
has is mine"); this eternal procession is not an act of subordination but
the very mode of the Son’s equality with the Father (cf. Augustine, De
Trinitate, I.12). In the economy, the Son is sent, reveals, mediates, and
intercedes, but these actions manifest, not compromise, his essential equality
with the Father. To borrow Aquinas’s formula, “the principle is not greater
than that which proceeds, except according to the manner of origin, not
according to nature.”
Nor does
the claim that Jesus “nowhere claims a dual nature” withstand scrutiny. The
entirety of Christ’s self-revelation presupposes a consciousness and authority
both utterly unique and divine (“Before Abraham was, I AM”—John 8:58; “He
who has seen me has seen the Father”—John 14:9), alongside an evident
participation in human limitations (“I thirst”—John 19:28; “My soul
is sorrowful unto death”—Mark 14:34). The resultant theological tension is
not a later imposition, but the very datum to which the Church’s Christology is
a faithful response.
As for the
charge that mystery is invoked to avoid difficulties, it is a profound
misunderstanding of the Christian tradition’s understanding of “mystery.” “Mystery”
in the Christian sense is not the abandonment of reason, but the humble
confession of the creature’s finite capacity to comprehend the infinite God,
especially in the central mysteries of the faith (Trinity, Incarnation,
Eucharist). This is not a retreat from evidence, but the recognition that, as
Aquinas notes (ST I, q. 1, a. 5), revelation, as the self-disclosure of the
transcendent God, necessarily surpasses the grasp of natural reason, though it
never contradicts it.
The
objection that the dual nature of Christ is philosophically incoherent is, in
fact, an assertion of fideistic empiricism rather than an argument. The unique
singularity of the Incarnation is no argument against its coherence; rather, it
points to its transcendence above created analogies. The distinction between
confusion and division, as articulated at Chalcedon, affirms that the
properties of each nature are preserved even in the unity of the person.
A word on
the Jehovah’s Witness proposal of “selective foreknowledge.” By conceding that
God may voluntarily refrain from knowing particular futures, the position
abandons the very premise used to demote the Son. If omniscience can coexist
with voluntary non-cognition in the Father, then the Son’s purported
ignorance—granting for argument’s sake that it were real—would not disqualify
him from deity. The JW argument undercuts itself. Classical theism, by
contrast, defines omniscience as knowledge of all truth values; voluntariness
applies to the decision to reveal or to actualize certain truths, not to the
possession of them. Hence the scholastic axiom: Deus non potest sibi
ignorantiam adjicere—God cannot add ignorance to himself—because ignorance
would be a privation incompatible with pure act.
The
Watchtower’s peculiar theory of “selective omniscience” is not only unbiblical
but conceptually incoherent. Classical theism maintains that God’s knowledge is
not discursive or contingent, but identical with his essence; he knows all
things past, present, and future, not by observation but by eternally causing
their being. To suggest that God “chooses not to know” certain things is to
collapse the distinction between the Creator’s simple, eternal act of knowing
and the creature’s limited, temporal cognition. If the Father can “choose not
to know,” then ignorance of the future cannot be taken as evidence of
non-divinity in the Son. In effect, the Watchtower’s own logic undercuts the
very objection they make against orthodox Christology.
Finally,
the Thomistic vision situates Christ’s human not-knowing within the mystery of kenosis
(Phil 2:7). The Word “empties” himself not by surrendering attributes but by
assuming a created nature capable of temporal learning and docility to the
Father’s will. The one person ensures that whatever is predicated of either
nature is predicated of Christ; yet the modes of predication differ. The
subject “Son” can truly say “I do not know” insofar as he speaks from
the vantage of his created intellect engaged in pedagogical economy, while the
same “Son” possesses uncreated scientia that eternally comprehends the
term of history. To pose the alternatives “either Christ is omniscient or he is
ignorant” is therefore to impose a univocal epistemology upon a hypostatic
union that transcends such flat categories.
In sum, the
alleged dilemma dissolves when Scripture is read within its canonical scope,
when patristic exegesis is heeded, and when the metaphysical precision of
Aquinas is applied. The Trinity is not embarrassed by Mark 13:32; rather, the
verse becomes a luminous instance of how the eternal Son, remaining what he is,
chooses in the humility of his mission to direct the faithful away from
speculative curiosity toward the practical vigilance of hope. The Thomistic
synthesis secures both the absolute divinity of Father, Son and Spirit and the
genuine humanity of the Incarnate Word, thereby preserving the coherence of
biblical revelation against every reduction, ancient or modern.
The
challenge presented above is rooted in category errors—failing to distinguish
between nature and person, between economic and immanent Trinity, and between
communicable and incommunicable knowledge. The Catholic doctrine does not rely
upon “contorted arguments,” but upon a coherent metaphysical framework,
consistent exegesis, and the accumulated wisdom of the Church. The difficulties
posed by passages such as Mark 13:32 are neither ignored nor explained away,
but carefully integrated into the total mystery of Christ, who is at once true
God and true man. Far from being a problem for the Trinity, they are a
confirmation of the apostolic faith that “the Word became flesh and dwelt
among us” (John 1:14)—a mystery ever-ancient, ever-new, and worthy of faith
and adoration.
