Is Jesus God If He Did Not Know the Time of His Return?

Christians believe that Jesus of Nazareth was God. And they generally believe that God is omniscient, thus knowing everything, including all about the future. However, Jesus told his apostles that he would be killed, rise from the dead, ascend to heaven and someday return to earth, and he added that he did not know the day of his return. If Jesus was God, how could he not have known when he would return, since the Father knew it? As a former Trinitarian, I used to believe that Jesus was and is God. But I began to question it when I read in the Bible that he said he didn’t know the time of his return. It caused me to undertake a serious quest for Jesus’ identity. What is this saying?

Shortly before Jesus’ death and resurrection, he taught his apostles about the future, including the end of the world/age. He said of his return at that time, “But of that day and/or hour no one knows, not even the angels of/in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Matthew 24:36; Mark 13:32). This saying has stirred much scholarly debate.

Church fathers were divided about these words of Jesus. Iranaeus, the most respected theologian of the 2nd century, opposed Greek religio-philosophy more than most church fathers did. It stressed the perfection of deity by asserting that absolute knowledge, which includes complete knowledge of the future, was the supreme perfection. But Iranaeus, like all apologist church fathers of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, believed that Jesus was God with certain qualifications. He said of God the Father, “God holds the supremacy over all things,” including over Jesus, and that he does “excel” him in knowledge. Iranaeus therefore believed that Jesus was God, but to a lesser extent than the Father was. Athanasius, church father in the 4th century, disagreed, as did nearly all succeeding church fathers. He argued for the maximalist view of Jesus’ foreknowledge, that by being “very God” in every sense he must have known the day of his return. Athanasius treated Jesus’ saying by applying the two-nature method of exegesis to it. That is, Jesus did not know in his human nature, but he did know in his “Godhead,” that is, his divine nature. There have been other opinions. Thomas Aquinas and many other church theologians proposed that Jesus said these words while pretending ignorance. And Augustine posited that it was not the Father’s will for Jesus to know at that time. But this view does not solve the problem of the impugning of Jesus’ supposedly full deity.

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Author: Kermit Zarley

Keywords: Trinity, Triunity, Trinitarianism, Trinitarian, Arianism, Arian, Three in one, Three gods, Three gods one person, Triune, Three persons in one God, Socinian, Socinianism, Socinian heresy, Jesus God, God the Son, omniscience, omniscient