Mark 13:32
However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows.
This makes no sense. If Jesus is God then he must know what God knows.
He does. But what this passage helps illustrate for us is that there are aspects about the Incarnation that are still befuddling and, in fact, paradoxical. And that's okay.
So how can Jesus, who is God, say that He does not know the day or the hour? Well, presumably the same way that Jesus, who is God and therefore cannot die, did in fact die.
How can God who knows all things not know something? How can God who cannot suffer suffer? Excellent questions, and ones which one could endlessly speculate about, but which honestly would only remain speculation.
If Jesus has two natures, a God nature and a Human nature, then the Human nature has a different mind to the God nature...that's two people in one body, not one person.
Except, of course, Christ
is one undivided Person. The Divinity and humanity are neither separate nor confused; it is because there is no separation between the two natures that His Person remains one. This was the chief reason for the rejection of Nestorianism.
Nestorius was the Patriarch of Constantinople who argued that Mary could only be called Christ-bearer, and not God-bearer, because she only conceived and gave birth to the humanity of Christ. This view was sharply criticized by significant theologians such as St. Cyril of Alexandria. Without getting terribly deep into the nitty-gritty, the essence of the debate was that by separating the Divinity and humanity into two distinct prosopa (Greek for "persons") as Nestorius did essentially made the human Jesus something other than the Divine Logos. As though there was the Divine Logos who joined to the human person of Jesus at conception. The orthodox response to this is that Christ's Person is undivided. The Logos did not unite Himself to a human person, rather the Logos took upon Himself human nature. There is only one Person, the Divine Logos who is also human by the union with human nature.
While I did say I wouldn't get into the nitty gritty, it is helpful to bring out two somewhat obscure concepts in Christology: Enhypostasia and Anhypostasia.
Anhypostasia is a term that means that Jesus' humanity has no hypostasis--personhood if you will--of itself.
Enhypostasis is a term that means that the Logos "personalizes" the humanity. The Logos is the Person, and by way of His Incarnation this Divine Person is also totally and utterly and completely human--with a human mind, will, body, and soul.
This means that Mary did not conceive a nature, but a Person. The Person she conceived is truly God from all eternity, and also truly human. It means that what died on the cross wasn't a nature, but a Person, the One who died on the cross is truly God and truly human. Which is why we say that God was born, and also that God suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried.
In that case Jesus the Human is not God... and whatever it was that died on the cross was not God.
Jesus the human is the same Jesus the Eternal Son and Logos. They're one and the same. There isn't a Divine Jesus and a human Jesus--there's only Jesus.
This Trinity thing just doesn't work.
There are things about Christian theology which are weird, complicated, and even paradoxical.
-CryptoLutheran
