(Continued from page 144)
Then, as to what is specifically alleged regarding the limitation of knowledge on Christ’s part. This is to set out on what is certainly a bold undertaking. It would need, to justify it, both clear indication of its necessity for complying with the general presentation of Him in the Gospels, and verification of a very strong order when it descends to such particulars as proof texts. How little the first is true we have in measure, seen. Will the second prove any better? The Gospel testimony in its totality does not fit in with a Christ so kenoticised as to be bereft of all knowledge superhuman. Can proof of such limitation be supplied from single features of it? There are three references given to prove that Christ’s knowledge and intelligence were of the ordinary human order. Mark 6:3838He saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? go and see. And when they knew, they say, Five, and two fishes. (Mark 6:38), “How many loaves have ye?” The question was asked, it is said, “because He did not know!” His request for information was prompted by His need of it! And that thus we see that for ordinary knowledge of ordinary things He was restricted to our ordinary channels of information! Remembering what another of the Evangelists, an eye-witness of the miracle too, has told us, “This he said to prove him, for he himself knew what he would do,” this is really too puerile to detain us.
John 11:3434And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see. (John 11:34). The like may be said of, “Where have ye laid him?” — “asked because He was not aware and wished to be informed of where His friend’s burying-place was.” That He who was conscious of the fact of His friend Lazarus’ death while still in the place where He stayed two days to allow it to occur in His absence, who timed His return to suit the circumstances, and who by His declaration at the beginning of this interesting course of events— “This sickness is not unto death but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby” —makes it evident how clearly He had precognition of the whole sad episode and its happy sequel. That He was dependent on ordinary means of information for this detail, really what can be said of this? An indication of His limited humanity found where every single feature might seem to declare Him God all-wise and all-powerful too! Could sympathetic interest in such a detail as the place of burial not prompt the question, without making such a call on imagination as to conceive Him who knew so much ignorant of this? Of these two supposed instances of Christ’s being reduced to requesting information in the sense of needing it ere He was conscious of a fact, it is hard to say which is furthest from proving that to be the case. The answer to them is so obvious, and has been so often given, that it is really incomprehensible that they should still be advanced as proving limitation of knowledge!
The only real occasion of momentary difficulty presents itself in the third reference now to be alluded to (Mark 13:3232But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. (Mark 13:32)). This is the great stronghold, invariably the proof text of all who assert limitation in our Lord’s knowledge. Being out of His own mouth also, this apparent repudiation of any knowledge of a superior grade seems all the more forcible. As has been recently admitted, however, the fact that this is the only occasion when there is any approach to a confession of ignorance on Christ’s part, and that even so it only refers to a single item not strictly cognate, leaves the contention somewhat inadequately supported. Solitary or not, however, the expression demands most careful consideration. For, on the face of it, it does occasion difficulty, this acknowledgment of ignorance, if such it be. If such indeed it be, for one of the first questions that readily prompt themselves immediately the difficulty is felt is—Can this really be an absolute and unqualified disclaimer on the Lord’s part of any light on the subject? Are we really to imagine Him personally and absolutely as much in the dark as, say, “men” or “angels,” concerning what is spoken of? Consider for a moment how strange that would he. After all that Christ claimed to know, and professed to reveal as to the future, that just here the store of His knowledge should give out!
This same prophetic discourse of the Lord’s, of which the verse forms a part is, remember, His emphatic reply to the request of His disciples for a sketch of the future. No mere disquisition on things moral, clothed in the imagery of Jewish Apocalyptic literature, is this; but given as true prophecy. And after all this opening out of what that future contains, particularly as given by Matthew in its fullness, the whole course of events evidently before the mind of the speaker right down to the consummation of the age, Himself filling no small but the chief role in them, after all this we are to imagine that Christ’s knowledge of the future, as of everything else, was of the same limited kind as our own, because He avows for Himself, in the capacity in which He was then speaking, unacquaintance with the day and hour of His own return and the establishment of His kingdom! In this case, as in the others, reason from what in the passage itself is apparent as to what Christ does know, and the kenotic interpretation sought to be put upon it will not stand. Any idea of absolute limitation as to the order or nature of His intelligence is seen to be quite incompatible with both the kind and extent of the knowledge already displayed. Granted that, as their expression has it, a lacuna or blank in His eschatology here appears. What of that? Does it follow inevitably that personally and in an unqualified sense the Teacher Himself was in a state of complete ignorance regarding the detail needed to fill it out. It did not belong to the class of things He was to intimate: does it follow therefore that it was beyond the range of those things with which He was intimate?
Any degree of intimacy, it is said, any kind of knowledge beyond that which men or angels possess, Jesus emphatically disclaims, “knoweth no man, no not the angels, neither the Son!” Is that so? Are we absolutely bound to give the verse just that construction? Does it necessitate that we take the intelligence of the three several parties mentioned, all round and in its entirety, as having a common denominator, so to speak? That would indeed be a large inference. Even the isolated verse itself gives too slender a basis for it. Think of it as applied to men and angels. Is it open to us to argue that the angelic and human intelligences are of the same order, because their non-intelligence of a certain matter is here affirmed as a common feature? Why then are they so clearly distinguished? so particularized?— “no man, not the angels.” Why again in the case of the latter is the negative so emphasized— “no man, no, not the angels?” —with the additional consideration also that the sphere of their activity (if the bearing of that on the scope of their knowledge is taken into account) so far transcends man’s— “no, not the angels which are in heaven”? Not much in common there really between the two orders of intelligences! It seems rather a case where, with quite a different, essentially different, denominator, in regard to a particular matter, and in a particular sense, a common numerator appears.
Only the more emphatically does that apply to “neither the Son.” If the fact that here is a matter of which even angels in heaven have no cognizance is so exceptional as to need such emphasis, how carefully must be weighed the still more unprecedented “neither the Son.” And if being classed with men in this proves nothing intrinsically in their case, how much less in the Son’s. The ministers of prophecy in Old Testament times knew what it was to have to seek out— “searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify” in the revelation of which they were the vehicle. Are we to imagine Christ Himself in the same condition of requiring it to be revealed whereto His prophetic announcement applied? Thereafter, the sufferings and subsequent glory of the Messiah which these announced, with the resulting economy of blessing, gave occasion for desire on the angels’ part to look into these things. Was the Messiah Himself in no better case than they when here in the capacity of Prophet He put Himself alongside them in disclaiming knowledge of a time-note in His eschatology?
To understand the Lord’s assertion, the great matter first of all seems to be not to carry it beyond the matter concerning which He used it. It applies to something special. Where are we authorized to make it general? This disavowal of official cognizance of the precise date of the prophetic crisis is, by the Kenotics, regarded as an unqualified declaration of nescience, which is to be taken as applying wholesale and all round to the whole sphere of our Lord’s consciousness. We are told, “It is the ascription of a real nescience, not of an ignorance operating in one part of His personality and not in the other, nor. an ignorance simply assumed for a certain purpose while a real omniscience remained latent, nor yet the pseudo-ignorance which meant that, while He knew this thing as He knew all others, He had no commission from His Father to communicate it to others.”
Now, it may be quite legitimate for some to scoff that “a god-man, possessing at one and the same time two wills and two separate kinds of knowledge, and using now this and now that as occasion arises, is at once a figment of theologians and a contradiction in terms.” But, for one who receives the account of the Gospels as inspired of God, the mysterious relation of divine and human, and the presence and activity of each in the sphere of His knowledge, as of all else in Christ’s person, revealed there, cannot be so curtly dismissed for the mere lack of an adequate explanation as to either the inter-operation of, or the connecting link between, the two. The fictitiousness of the theological conception is of little account. To it being a contradiction in terms, one must demur, so long, at least as long as there are no proper terms present for it to contradict. What do we know of essence, personality, or consciousness as applicable to God incarnate to make positive assertions as to Him psychologically? In our own personality even are there not depths enough unsounded? How much more in the one Personality where mystery is superimposed on mystery.
There used to be a phrase in common use in this connection in Presbyterian circles. “Communicatio proprietatum” was the rather clumsy and pedantic name for a principle which in its measure is simple and clear enough. Its usage was somewhat as follows. The term was reserved for occasions when the usage of language about Christ was such as seemed to interchange the divine and human, such as to attribute to Christ as God actions or prerogatives proper only to His human nature, and vice versa. As the Confession of Faith had it, “Christ in the work of mediation acteth according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself; yet by reason of the unity of the Person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in scripture attributed to the Person denominated by the other nature.” A scripture instance being the text, “Hereby perceive we the love [of God] because he laid down his life for us.” Not that we can therefore say “God died “; but that that Person who laid down His life, and did so as man, was also God. It is easy to see how such a principle as this “cornmunicatio proprietatum” is liable to abuse were it to be applied to actions, properties, or prerogatives of Christ where Scripture has not gone before us; but in itself it is a sounder and really much more intelligible system than this newer style of reasoning about His person makes for. Unlike the older principle, which might conceivably pass into over-subtlety of distinction, the characteristic feature of the modern theory is that of denying anything approaching the departmental, if so it might be called, in what Christ knew, said, or did, and resolving all assertions of His knowledge, speech, or action into absolute statements, true in the most unqualified way of the Lord Jesus in the unity of His person. We are on perilous ground here altogether; but as the quotation from Grant already alluded to has it, “The ways in which the Lord is presented to us in Scripture show how near to dual personality we have to come in any simple apprehension of its statements.”
With the Gospels in our hand will it be claimed that Christ Jesus, even as incarnate, had, and manifested as occasion called for it, His own intrinsic essential knowledge of things, knowledge proper to a divine person, and differing in kind as much as in degree from our knowledge which is always derivative and limited, that at the back of everything this remained intact. As Prof. Orr says, “Behind all human conditionings are still present the undiminished resources of the Godhead. Omniscience, omnipotence, all other divine attributes, are there though not drawn upon save as the Father willed them to be.” Omniscience, present though not drawn upon, quite meets the case of our verse here, “Neither the Son.” The idea of absolute nescience, of an unqualified negation of knowledge cannot be entertained if He who made the statement is to remain for us true God as to His person. Become partaker of flesh and blood, He who would not draw upon His omnipotence in commanding the stones to be made bread for His sustenance as a man, would not either in this case fall back upon what in His omniscience He could not but be cognizant of; but observing in full measure the conditions proper to the humanity He has taken, “the times and seasons which the Father hath set within His own authority,” are left there, and the prerogative of announcing or revealing them not usurped. In the capacity of Prophet the Son knows not officially of that day and hour.
Further, as the Son, still here in humiliation, though for the future all judgment committed unto Him, and as the God-appointed ruler in that kingdom reserved for Him till the arrival of this unrevealed day and hour, “neither the Son, but the Father” has a moral fitness and congruity all its own. For, in the working out of the divine purposes in regard to that kingdom, it is noteworthy that all is spoken of as carried into execution not by the Lord Jesus Himself; but by God the Father on His behalf. It is no question of Him asserting His disputed rights as divine; but of God the Father establishing Him in righteousness in that place of glory and honor He has so richly earned as man. To man it is, according to God’s counsel, that the world to come is to be subjected. And it is as Son of man Christ is to receive the kingdom and reign. All the emphasis is upon His manhood. And, as Bellett would say, morally this is perfect too, for in that consideration there cannot but be remembrance of the humble, emptied condition He assumed in becoming man, the servant-form and servant-place He took for God’s glory. Now Mark it is especially whose province it is to present the Son of God in His service; Christ as the true Servant. And in his Gospel alone, as has been often noticed, that last element in our verse, “neither the Son but the Father,” is to be found. Are we not then to see in it just such an added moral touch as is suited to the presentation of Him which that Gospel was divinely designed to give, and find assistance in understanding it from that very fact? How strong and beautiful an expression of the true servant-character there is here then in this abnegation of concern as to what properly lies with the Father to make good. “The servant knoweth not what his lord doeth.” It was more than the form of a servant Christ assumed in becoming man. The spirit and qualities proper to that position He showed forth to perfection in the humble path of dependence and obedience He trod. Fittingly from such a servant in such a path comes this disclaimer of knowledge of a matter not belonging to His sphere as such. The kingdom He is to receive in the capacity of a servant. Not by the right and title of what He was as God does He assume control, but on the ground of what He has done, and as the reward of all His toil in that unique path of obedience He trod is He invested by the Father with the administration of all things. All waits on the activity of God the Father for its establishment, and of such things even as the right hand and left hand place of honor in it Christ declares that they are not His to bestow, but are reserved for the Father’s appointment. What wonder then if, of the day and hour of its advent, the One who chooses to consider Himself less Heir-apparent than Heir-appointed disavows the knowledge. “Not mine to give” in the one case said the Lord. “Not mine to know” in effect He says here. Entire moral perfection.
May we not consider that the objection founded on this verse is effectually disposed of by such considerations, or, if difficulty remains, that it may yield to further study on such lines? It does, at all events, appear futile to seek light on it, or elucidation of the profound and mysterious question of how divine and human knowledge are united and were related to each other in the person of Christ in the days of His flesh, along the line of metaphysics or psychology. How much worse to found on this verse, and in this way, a denial of their co-existence! It is quite conceivable that we may never come to know the nature of the connecting link between the divine and human in Christ’s person. His own declaration, “No man knoweth the Son but the Father,” would prepare us for this. Many theories have been constructed to account for the relation between the two, many attempts made to forge an intelligible link between them. It was but to be expected that from the surveillance of theologians this would not long be omitted. Where the word itself had, with its usual disregard for mere mental perplexities, confined its testimony to the bare fact of the two natures in one Person, Christ Jesus, God and man, without concerning itself with explanations of the nature of their relation, dogmatic theology, which considers itself to have been bequeathed the task of thinking out, and construing to intelligence, doctrines implicit in the New Testament, has over and over again essayed to explain such relation. It was characteristic of that working of the human mind upon divine things which we call theology to make the attempt. Yet, the ingenuity of the various conjectures notwithstanding, failure is stamped upon them all.
[J. T.]
(To be continued)