Catholic New Testament scholar, Raymond Moloney, wrote the following about the earliest approaches to the knowledge of Jesus and explanations for Jesus’ ignorance of things in the Gospels, especially not knowing when the Second Coming would take place (Mk 13:32):
The First Patristic Period: 2ND and 3RD Centuries
In this, the first of the four patristic periods, Gnosticism and docetism are the enemies of the hour, with their threat to the doctrine of Christ’s full humanity. For this reason, writers like Irenaeus will appeal to texts like Mk 13:32 to underline the limitations of Christ’s knowledge and so the reality of his humanity.
But inflated beyond reason [with your own wisdom], you presumptuously maintain that you are acquainted with the unspeakable mysteries of God; while even the Lord, the very Son of God, allowed that the Father alone knows the very day and hour of judgment, when he plainly declares, ‘But of that day and hour knows no man, neither the Son, but the Father only,’ If then, the Son was not ashamed to ascribe the knowledge of that day to the Father only, but declared what was true regarding the matter, neither let us be ashamed to reserve for God those greater questions which may occur to us. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, II, 28, 6)
Origen, on the other hand, provides a salutary warning against concluding too much from the fact that Christ asks questions, as in Mk 5:30-31. After all, in the Old Testament, even the Almighty can ask questions: ‘Adam, where are you?’ (Gen 3:9. See also Gen 4:9. Thus Origen, In Mattaeum commentarii 10.14 [PG 13:865]) At the same time, Origen seems to accept the evidence of Mt 24:36 (Mk 13:32) as to real ignorance in Christ.
About that day and hour, no one knows neither the angels of heaven nor the Son only the Father (Mt 24:36). According to this passage the Saviour includes himself among those who are ignorant of that day and hour. In the saying, ‘No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him’ (Mt 11:27), he tells us that he knows the Father. Rightly might one ask how he who knows the Father does not know the day and hour of the end, and why the Father should conceal this from the Son. There must definitely be some reason why the time of the end is hidden from the Saviour and he is left in ignorance about it. Someone will go so far as to say that the man who is Saviour is understood to grow in wisdom, age and grace before God and human beings. H who developed so as to surpass all in knowledge and wisdom, but not so that perfection (of knowledge) should come to him before he has completed his life-work ([Greek: oikonomia; Latin: dispensation]. There is nothing extraordinary if this is the only thing out of all possible items which he did not know, namely the day and hour of the end. It is also possible that when he said he knew not the day nor the hour of the end, he said it before completing his life-work, but that after completing it he said no such thing – after God had exalted him and given him the name which is above all names. For afterwards the Son knew, receiving knowledge from the Father even about the day and hour of the end, so that not only the Father should know about it but the Son also. (Origen, In Matthaeum commentarii, ser. 55 [PG 123:1686])
In this period we notice that the approach of these writers, when compared with later on, is uncomplicated. Knowledge, or the lack of it, is attributed directly to the one subject, Jesus, without distinction of natures. (Raymond Moloney, “Patristic Approaches to Christ’s Knowledge, Part 1” Milltown Studies no. 37, Spring 1996, 65-81, *here, pp. 67-68, emphasis in bold added)
