Commenting
on Jesus not knowing the time of the parousia
during his mortality (Mark 13:32; cf. Matt 24:36), Irenaeus of Lyons wrote:
But, beyond reason inflated [with your own
wisdom], ye presumptuously maintain that ye 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 that hour knoweth 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. For no man is superior to his master. If any one,
therefore, says to us, "How then was the Son produced by the Father?"
we reply to him, that no man understands that production, or generation, or
calling, or revelation, or by whatever name one may describe His generation,
which is in fact altogether indescribable. Neither Valentinus, nor Marcion, nor
Saturninus, nor Basilides, nor angels, nor archangels, nor principalities, nor
powers [possess this knowledge], but the Father only who begat, and the Son who
was begotten. Since therefore His generation is unspeakable, those who strive
to set forth generations and productions cannot be in their right mind,
inasmuch as they undertake to describe things which are indescribable. For that
a word is uttered at the bidding of thought and mind, all men indeed well
understand. Those, therefore, who have excogitated [the theory of] emissions
have not discovered anything great, or revealed any abstruse mystery, when they
have simply transferred what all understand to the only-begotten Word of God;
and while they style Him unspeakable and unnameable, they nevertheless set
forth the production and formation of His first generation, as if they
themselves had assisted at His birth, thus assimilating Him to the word of
mankind formed by emissions. (Against
Heresies 2.28.6 [ANF 1:401]; comments in square brackets in original)