THE
IGNORANCE OF JESUS
This is not a problem which is
raised by the Fourth Gospel in a particularly acute form. There are no passages
comparable to the saying of Jesus in Mark xiii. 32, where he expressly denies
knowledge of the time of the Parousia. The issue arises primarily out of two
questions of Christ. The first question is that to Andrew and his companion
‘What seek ye?’. Both Theodore and Cyril insist that this was not asked in
ignorance, but to provide the occasion for the beginning of useful conversation
(T. 34, 8-9; Cyr in. John i, 38). We do in fact use questions in that
kind of way, and no great problem arises. The second question is that asking
the whereabouts of the tomb of Lazarus. This is not quite so easily or
satisfactorily dealt with. Both again explicitly rule out the motive of
ignorance. Theodore declares that it was to show that the ensuing miracle was
not done with a motive of ostentation. Cyril suggests the positive purpose of
getting a good number of people to go in front and show him what he was looking
for, thereby attracting a large number to the site of the miracle (T. 162, 6-10;
Cyr. in John xi. 34). So that can be understood fully in terms of
historical realism. In social intercourse questions are used not only for their
primary purpose of gaining previously unknown information, but also for other
subsidiary purposes. The questions of Jesus are of this latter kind, and have
one of these subsidiary purposes in view (cf. the phrase οικονομων τι χρησιμον with reference to the question in
John xi. 34 [Cyr. in John viii. 29; 11, 51, 8]). But Cyril (who takes
the whole matter much further than Theodore) does not press the argument home
in this way. For him a question necessarily implies ignorance, and therefore
Jesus in asking a question σχηματιζεται
to be ignorant as man of what he knows as God (Cyr. in John viii. 29).
The word σχηματιζεται . . . does
not necessarily imply a pretense, though it is not easy to see how else it is
to be translated here. In the course of the discussion, he employs two other
synonyms for it—αγνοιαν σοφιζεται, υπεπλαττετο την ερωτησιν (Cyr. in John xi. 34; in
John viii. 29). This has given rise to considerable debate as to whether or not
Christ’s ignorance according to Cyril is to be regarded as real. This is not a
question which should be treated in isolation from the other aspects of
Christ’s humanity. Ignorance is a part of the human σχημα which Christ had adopted in his
incarnation; in that sense it must be regarded as real. But this ignorance
co-exists in the same person with a divine omniscience. The relationship
between them can only be expressed in the same kind of paradox with which Cyril
speaks of the Logos suffering impassibly.
It is interesting to notice that
Cyril uses another argument of a very different kind. He points out that the
Old Testament attributes to the Father the question ‘Adam, where art thou?’
which is of a nature very similar to that asked by Jesus in John xi. 34 (Cyril.
in John xi. 34). In the case of Genesis iii. 9 there is no question of
an incarnation. If therefore a question can legitimately be attributed to the
Father on the grounds of the necessarily anthropomorphic use of language about
God, it can be accounted for on the lips of Jesus in a similar way. If he had
pressed home this argument, Cyril could have avoided the whole question of
Christ’s ignorance as an incarnational problem in the course of actual exegesis
of the Fourth Gospel. But his concern in the commentary is not merely
exegetical but doctrinal, and within that wider sphere the problem is
inescapable.
Finally, both Cyril and Theodore
make one further point of importance. It would be absurd, they say, to ascribe
ignorance of the whereabouts of Lazarus’ tomb to one who knew about the fact of
his death from a distance (T. 162, 7-8; Cry. in John xviii. 29; in John
xi. 34). Thus a denial of ignorance on the part of the Jesus of the Fourth
Gospel need not be based on ancient Greek categories of omniscience, but on the
overall picture of the Johannine Christ presented by the Gospel itself. (Maurice
F. Wells, The Spiritual Gospel: The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel in
the Early Church [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960], 142-44; “T”
refers to Theodore of Mopsuestia, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum
Orientalium: Scriptores Syri, Series 4, Tomus III, interpretatus est J. M.
Voté [Louvain, 1940])
