There are so many “problem texts” for Trinitarian Christology that result in apologists for the doctrine having to engage in their own Christological heresies which run directly counter to defined orthodoxy. One such example would be Jesus’ own ignorance of the parousia in Matt 24:36 (cf. Mark 13:32). Trinitarian apologists, holding to the hypostatic union, which states that, even during mortality, Jesus was omnipotent, have to argue that Jesus was ignorant of the time of his final coming with respect to his humanity but knew the date of his parousia with respect to his divine nature. Apart from the fact the texts add no such qualification, ultimately, they have to “split” Jesus into two persons, a Christological heresy called Nestorianism.
On the issue of Jesus’ knowledge and his incarnation, the following offers a rather insightful look at how much Trinitarian formulations of Christology fall into Christological heresies such as docetism, a denial of the humanity of the Christ:
Source: A.N.S. Lane, “Christology Beyond Chalcedon,” in Christ the Lord: Studies presented to Donald Guthrie, ed. Harold H. Rowdon (Leicester: Inter-varsity Press, 1982), pp. 272, 276.
On the issue of Jesus’ knowledge and his incarnation, the following offers a rather insightful look at how much Trinitarian formulations of Christology fall into Christological heresies such as docetism, a denial of the humanity of the Christ:
Most contemporary defenders of Chalcedon recognize to defend the omniscience of Jesus’ human mind is undesirable.There are obvious difficulties in supposing that, in the plain and obvious sense of the words, the human mind of the Babe of Bethlehem was thinking, as he lay in the manger, of the Procession of the Holy Ghost, the theorems of hydrodynamics, the novels of Jane Austen and the Battle of Hastings. (E.L. Mascall, Christ, the Christian and the Church, p. 53)
But alongside the human ignorance they assert the simultaneous divine omniscience. Both of these are, on the Chalcedonian model, attributed to the historical Jesus Christ. It does not make sense to speak of the same one person being simultaneously ignorant and omniscient. This is not a biblical paradox but a docetic undermining of the biblical teaching on the true humanity of Christ . . . Christ’s ignorance presents a problem to those who start by thinking of the eternal Son as omniscient God. How could this divine person lose his omniscience? But if we start with the incarnate Son we see that his special knowledge arises out of his relation of dependence on the Father. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that in the eternal relationship between Father and Son the Son’s knowledge is derived from the Father. The same relationship would continue in the incarnation, but with a different outworking adjusted to the conditions of Christ’s manhood.
Source: A.N.S. Lane, “Christology Beyond Chalcedon,” in Christ the Lord: Studies presented to Donald Guthrie, ed. Harold H. Rowdon (Leicester: Inter-varsity Press, 1982), pp. 272, 276.
