by R. Lucas Stamps and Brandon D. Smith

In his earthly ministry, what did Jesus know and when did he know it?

The relationship between Jesus’s divine and human natures raises all sorts of questions about his attributes and his relationship to the Father and Holy Spirit. One of those questions relates to Jesus’s knowledge in the incarnation. On the one hand, he seems to exercise the divine attribute of omniscience (or at least some sort of divine/prophetic knowledge that exceeds typical human knowledge) in places like John 4:16-19 and Matt. 9:4 (cf. 1 Chron. 28:9; Ps. 139:4). On the other hand, he seems to have limited knowledge in ways similar to any typical human (Matt. 24:36).

How does this work? We will offer a brief primer of the main issues at hand, but we recommend consulting the footnotes for recommended reading and additional thoughts. We will start by laying out some basic theological guardrails in this discussion.

Setting the Foundation

Before we move into an attempt to answer this question, we should first ask the question from the right foundation. First, our answer should be rooted in creaturely humility, acknowledging that the hypostatic union is a mystery that is only partially knowable via revelation.[1] Second, in order to confess Christ rightly, Christians must affirm the Chalcedonian Definition of 451.[2] With respect to this discussion in particular, a selection from Chalcedon gives us guardrails:

one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. . .

According to Chalcedon, then, we must uphold the hypostatic union: Jesus is truly God and truly man, two natures united in one person, without any sacrifice of either nature or any blending of the natures. This helps us avoid classic heresies such as Apollinarianism (Jesus had a human body but a divine mind) and Nestorianism (Jesus was two persons with two loosely-connected natures), as well as modern kenoticism (Jesus surrendered certain divine attributes in order to live within the constraints of humanity in the incarnation). This also reminds us that there is one person or subject—namely, the Word made flesh (John 1)—who acts.
 

Working Through the Issues

With that foundation in place, let us discuss the issues at hand. In particular, we want to highlight the theological tensions we must address.

1.  If the Son is truly and fully God, then there cannot be any un-utilized divine attributes. God is pure act. God possesses all of his attributes necessarily because they are properties of his eternal, immutable, undivided, and simple divine nature. God is not composed of parts that can be partitioned from one another. We do not merely say, “God loves people at times and shows his wrath at other times;” rather, we should say, “God is love and God is just.” His attributes are intrinsic to his nature. So, if the Son could surrender the use of his divine attributes, he would not be God.

We do not want to say, then, that the Son divests himself of his divine attributes or even of his divine functions.[3] Indeed, Scripture tells us that he is “the exact imprint of God’s nature” and continues to “uphold the universe by the word of his power” in and through this divine nature (Heb. 1:3). When Scripture speaks of any limitations on Christ, these statements must be understood as a function of his human nature. But, as Chalcedon affirmed, the properties of the divine nature are preserved in the hypostatic union. This interpretive strategy is known as partitive exegesis: the practice of discerning whether a passage is speaking about the Son of God as such or speaking about the Son in his incarnate state. This strategy emphatically does not entail Nestorianism (the two-persons heresy) because it is the same subject, the Person of the Son, who is the subject of both kinds of predication.

Further, assuming that he has put his divinity on the shelf, as it were, introduces a Trinitarian problem. For example, if the Son “turned off” his access to his divine attributes/functions, what does this say about the unity of the Trinity? Are the persons distinct agents who can be doing things unilaterally or disconnected from each other? Did the Father and Spirit have to pick up the slack for the Son in his incarnation? Such a view would seem to tend in a tritheistic direction, conceiving of the persons of the Trinity as distinct centers of consciousness and will who carry out distinct operations. In truth, all of the external actions of the Trinity—in creation, providence, redemption, and judgment—are inseparably and indivisibly carried out by all three divine persons. We should not confuse the economic missions of the persons (e.g. the Son was incarnated, not the Father) with some sort of division of operation, will, or purpose in the Godhead.

So Philippians 2:5-11, for instance, is not indicating that he ceased to be divine or divested himself of his divine functionality. Rather, the “emptying” or “humility” are related to his putting on flesh and walking among us, not his ceasing to be the eternal Son in any sense (cf. John 1:1-14).[4] This leads to the second issue to discuss.

2.  If the Son is truly and fully human, then there must be limitations to his knowledge in some meaningful sense. The extra Calvinisticum is a helpful way to think about this. Though attributed to Calvin, the idea predates Calvin and is rooted in the patristic era. This sentiment put simply is: without ceasing to be what he was, he assumed what he was not. Christ is true God, with all the divine attributes fully and eternally actualized, but at the same time he is true Man, with genuine human limitations and frailty.

In his incarnation, he took on the limitations of human flesh that he might learn obedience (Heb. 5:8), grow in wisdom (Luke 2:52), and undo the work of Adam (Rom. 5). The person of Jesus is truly and fully man, yet without ceasing to be truly and fully God. Scripture affirms both in tension, so that Apollinarianism and Nestorianism are two heretical ditches on the side of the road, and modern kenoticism is a spike in the road to swerve around.

Again, Chalcedon is helpful by encouraging us to affirm that the properties of both divinity and humanity are preserved and not confused. We must hold this mystery in tension without over-explaining. Gregory of Nazianzus helps us here, asserting that we must learn how to parse passages that refer to his divinity (“the higher diviner expressions”) and passages that refer to his humanity (“the lower and more human”).[5]
 

Approaching an Answer

Was Jesus omniscient? Yes and no. If we take the biblical data together, we must say that, on the one hand, he clearly possesses divine attributes such as omniscience/divine knowledge; on the other hand, he clearly has real human limitations and a dependence on the Father. These two truths must be held in tension, without making the mistake of so many ancient heretics by saying more than we can or should. As Gregory of Nazianzus warns, good theologians know when to speak and when to be silent.[6]

It is our conclusion, then, that we can approach an answer based on the tension in the biblical data that Chalcedon seeks to clarify. As we have explained above, we do not want to assert that Jesus ceased to be divine, divested himself of divine attributes, had a superhuman blend of divine attributes and human limitations, and/or relied entirely on the Holy Spirit to perform divine functions.

Rather, we want to affirm that the Son of God remains omniscience in his divine nature. In his human nature, he at times seems to demonstrate access to supernatural or exceedingly high prophetic knowledge, but at other times operates within more common limitations of human knowledge. The mind is proper to nature, so it would not be right to speak of a single mind in the person of Jesus (as in Apollinarianism). One might consider Thomas Morris’s argument,[7] that the divine and human minds in the incarnate Christ operate in an asymmetrical relation: the divine mind has access to all of the contents of the human mind, but the human mind receives revelation from the divine mind according to the will of God.[8] In any event, we must affirm that this one person is the one who acts.

In the case of a classic example in Matthew 24:36 (“Now concerning that day and hour no one knows—neither the angels of heaven nor the Son—except the Father alone”), we could conclude that (1) the incarnate Christ chose not to access or was not given access by the Father to this divine knowledge according to his human nature in this moment (though it would seem proper to say that he had full access to it given his divine nature and Nestorianism lurks if we dichotomize too much). and/or (2) has hidden this from us (or, at the very least, those asking the question in the first place) for reasons not fully known to us apart from the fact that it is not knowledge meant for us, as he says in a related discussion with the disciples in Acts 1:7.

We believe these options (1) make sense of the tension in Scripture; (2) protect the Chalcedonian definition; (3) do not venture too far into the realm of speculation; and (4) avoids the various heresies mentioned above.[9]

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[1] See Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ. See also Athanasius, On the Incarnation.

[2] By this statement we do not mean that a person must confess, believe, and recite the Chalcedonian Creed in order to be regenerate. We only want to assert that the Chalcedonian definition defines Christological orthodoxy and has guarded the church from Christological heresies, many of which are concerns in this discussion.

[3] Sometimes a distinction is made between ontological kenoticism, according to which the Son actually divests himself of supposedly non-necessary divine attributes, and functional kenoticism, according to which the Son simply chooses not to access divine attributes that he, in some sense, still latently possesses. We think both versions pose theological, Trinitarian, and Christological problems.

[4] Another problem for all kenotic views lies in the fact that the incarnation is ongoing. The Son remains united to his glorified human nature for all eternity. If genuine humanity necessitates a divestiture of divine attributes or functions, then it would seem to be a one-way ticket: if the Son remains eternally incarnate, and if being incarnate is logically inconsistent with possessing the full range of divine attributes, then the self-emptying would seem to be permanent. Some kenotic theorists, such as Ronald Feenstra, try to mitigate against this concern by saying that kenosis is necessary for becoming incarnate, not necessarily for being incarnate. But even in his exalted state, the glorified Christ’s humanity remains human. Even if we speak of human glorification in terms of theosis, or deification, even this transfiguration does not make the glorified human one with the divine essence. The Creator-creature distinction is still preserved.

[5] See particularly the third oration in Gregory of Nazianzus, Five Theological Orations.

[6] This phraseology is owed to Christopher A. Hall, Learning Theology with the Church Fathers, 59.

[7] See Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate.

[8] We can speak of this relation in Trinitarian terms. It is the whole Godhead as God who reveals divine knowledge to the human mind of Jesus. But we can still say that the incarnate Son submits the Father by the power of the Spirit. It is here, in the context of the Chalcedonian vision, that a genuine Spirit Christology can take shape. The Son is empowered by the Spirit in and through his human nature. But, because of inseparable operations, it is the divine power of the whole Godhead that flows to Christ’s humanity.

[9] Special thanks to Billy Marsh for his helpful feedback on an earlier draft.