Commenting on Jesus having said to have increased in wisdom and knowledge, Simon Francis Gaine, in a volume attempting to defend traditional Chalcedonian Christology, admitted that the prima facie reading of Luke 2:52 (a text LDS often appeal to as being problematic to the Hypostatic Union) and other like-texts in the New Testament are sound:
While no biblical text explicitly attributes error to Christ, our objectors can without any difficulty find texts that clearly say that he ‘grew’ in knowledge and that he did ‘not know’ something, indicating the presence of natural human knowledge with its essential limitations. O’Collins refers to the fact that Luke 2.52 states of Christ that, after his return to Nazareth as a boy, he ‘grew in wisdom (προέκοπτεν σοφίᾳ). Though this might be taken to refer to a growth in extraordinary wisdom of the kind Christ soon demonstrates in the Gospel narrative and has already indicated in the temple during his boyhood stay in Jerusalem (v. 47), its immediate connection with the fact that Christ grew ‘in stature’ suggests it includes a natural childhood acquisition of knowledge. To this testimony to childhood growth are added indications in the Gospels that Jesus continued to acquire knowledge as an adult through asking questions. Not that the very fact that Jesus asked questions and received answers proves that he was thereby increasing in knowledge, something that has been evident to exegetes since patristic times. The asking of questions is after all a common teaching method, where the teacher already knows the answer to the question. The point is to bring others to knowledge, and Christ was able to make use of this technique as much as any other teacher. However, there are occasions when his questioning can strike one from context as a genuine seeking out of knowledge for himself rather than a pedagogical exercise in bringing his hearers to some special knowledge . . . For example, when he arrived at Bethany after the death of Lazarus, he asked where the tomb was located (Jn 11.34) . . . there is also the fact that the Gospels sometimes say that Jesus ‘wondered’ at something—for example, he marvelled at the words of the centurion in Matthew 8.10, which suggests surprise at something that was new for him, that he did not know before. Finally, Jesus is said to have left Judea for Galilee when he ‘knew’ (εγνω) or ‘came to know’ that the Pharisees had heard about the extent of his ministry, leaving the clear impression that Jesus had obtained a new piece of information (Jn 4.1) (Simon Francis Gaine, Did the Saviour See the Father? Christ, Salvation, and the Vision of God [London: T&T Clark, 2018], 133-34, emphasis added)
Elsewhere, while attempting to defend Chalcedonian Christology in light of Mark 13:32, Gaine engages in a lot of nonsensical reasoning as did the patristic commentators he relies upon:
Christ’s words were often taken not to be saying that he did not know, but in some complicated way or other to be saying that he did know. His not knowing was often relegated, somewhat implausibly, to conditions that he did not in fact obtain. For example, he was taken to be saying that he would not know but for the fact that the Father knew and had made it known to him (Basil, Ep., 236.2), or that he would not have known, had he been a mere man (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orationes, 30.15). Abstracting from the hypostatic union, he would not have had this knowledge in his humanity, but on account of the union he did (maximum, Quaestiones et Dubia, 66). However, it is one thing to say that these assertions are in themselves theologically acceptable, but another to say that they give us a plausible theological interpretation of the particular meaning of this saying. The same may be said for Augustine, who put forward an interpretation that had Christ speaking not about what he did not know or even directly of what he did know, but about what he was not making known. Augustine was aware that ‘know’ could be used in a different way from a claim to knowledge: when someone says they ‘do not know’ someone, they may be expressing rejection of that person as Jesus says he will do to many in Matthew 7.23: ‘I never knew you.’ Augustine effectively invented a further figure of speech to fit the case of Mark 13.32: when Christ said he did not know the day, he was in fact saying that he was not making it known to the disciples. Thus when he also said that the Father did know, he was actually meaning that the Father had in fact made it known to the Son (De Diversis Quaestionibus LXXXIII, 60). In contrast to all these positions, Epiphanius had the merit of speaking both of Christ’s genuine not knowing and of this within the circumstances that did really obtain (Ancoratus, 21). However, by interpreting Christ to be saying that he did not know the day and hour in terms of his actually bringing it about, that is, as an experienced present reality produced by his own action, Epiphanius unfortunately reduced Christ’s words in their context to a rather trivial statement: that this or any other o the events foretold in Christ’s discourse was not yet known to him in terms of his actually bringing htem about could hardly have been news to the disciples, who were looking for knowledge of the future (v. 4). Finally, several Fathers saw Christ as speaking of an ignorance that was effectively feigned (Basil, Ep., 8.6). On account of his assumption of human nature, which could not be the source of knowledge of the future, they supposed that Christ would legitimately pretend to his disciples that he did not know when he in act knew from a non-human source.
Similar difficulties were encountered in the interpretation of those passages that bear witness to Christ’s growth in knowledge. Sometimes the Father seemed to accept a real growth in Christ’s knowledge, when they quoted Luke 2.52 against those who in some way denied Christ’s humanity, such as the Apollinarians. Commenting on this passage, Ambrose said that infancy ‘through lack of human wisdom knows nothing of those whom it has not learned to recognise’ (De Incarnationis Dominicae Sacramento, 7.74). However, in many other passages, the Father explicitly set aside a real growth in Christ’s knowledge for a growth in a manifestation of his wisdom (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orationes, 43.38), a change in attitude towards his wisdom from those who encountered it (Cyril, Thesaurus, 28), or a growth in the wisdom of his headers(John of Damascus, Expositio Fidei, 3.22). (Ibid., 140-41, italics in original).
In light of such gymnastics, I am just glad that Latter-day Saints have the true, Biblical Jesus.
