Through the exhortation of a brother in Christ, I have been learning about the Hypostatic Union. I am perplexed by a statement of Christ in Matthew 24:36 and I am wondering how this is reconciled with the doctrine of the hypostatic union. Jesus says, "But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only."
I would not have a problem if the Jesus said, "The Son does not know the day or the hour" because then we could say that he was speaking about his human nature. But he does not say this. He puts his statement in a negative form to exclude all persons, but a single member of the Trinity. And because he included, "the Son," it makes clearer the distinction that it is not his humanity he speaks of, but his distinction in the Trinity.
If I am unclear, the problem is this: how is Christ the fullness of God in His omniscience, knowing all things, and at the same time, not knowing the day nor the hour. If anyone suggests Monophysitim, I will call you on it. Please comment.
3 comments:
John,
For the sake of my lack of theological-term prowess, can you tell me if these are correct definitions?
hypostatic union: Jesus being both God and Man at the same time. (I had to look that one up...) Are there other implications of this that you are particularly thinking of?
monophysitism: The idea that Christ really only had one nature. (Had to look that up, too.) Does this typically imply Jesus only having a divine nature or a human nature?
Now that I finally understand your post...hmm...
John MacArthur's (I know, I know) position is that complete omniscience was an attribute that Christ voluntarily gave up while on earth. That seems a bit too "loop-hole-y" to me, though it at least a reasonable option.
Other commentaries seem to say that Jesus was talking about His human nature at the moment rather than His divine nature. I guess He did do that from time to time—hence His title of "Son of Man."
I dunno. I can't say I have any wise thought of my own. But I'm curious to see what folks come up with. :-)
David,
Thank you for defining the terms, except that for hypostatic union, I would add that Jesus had two distinct natures, divine and human, while being one person. Monophysitism takes Christ to have a new nature being both divine and human, but still one nature.
While I think those commentaries are valuable, I don't think they get at the issue. If Jesus said, "no one knows...except the Father," it is irrelevant to what nature Christ was referring. According to what Jesus said, we might assume the Holy Spirit does not know the day nor the hour either. Anyway, I am not looking to diminish Christ's or the Holy Spirit's diety. I am asking how do we look at this text with its intended meaning while still maintaining orthodoxy.
I think one possiblity is that by "Father", Christ was using the term to refer to God in general including the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The problem with this view is that it opens the door to mean Trinity anywhere he uses Father. I don't like that solution.
Another possiblity is that by no one, Christ did not really mean no one. The problem with this is that we cannot take Christ at his word, unless there is a historic lingustic basis that "no one" at that time did not really mean "no one.
Yeah--I think we have some issues if "no one" doesn't really mean "no one." It messes with passages such as "no one comes to the Father but through me" in ways that I don't even want to think about. (It's the same Greek word, but, since I know nothing about Greek, I can't comment on context or anything else enlightening.)
Maybe there is some other option?
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