No one knows but the father

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32 'But as for that day or hour, nobody knows it, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son; no one but the Father.

From here:
(New Jerusalem Bible)
from here:
catholic.org/bible/book.php?id=48

The passage says no one but the Father. Obviously this cannot be the case the Son and the Holy spirit must also know.

Why does it say no one but the Father, how is ths reconciled?
 
Pete said:
32 'But as for that day or hour, nobody knows it, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son; no one but the Father.

From here:
(New Jerusalem Bible)
from here:
catholic.org/bible/book.php?id=48

The passage says no one but the Father. Obviously this cannot be the case the Son and the Holy spirit must also know.

Why does it say no one but the Father, how is ths reconciled?
Click to expand...
well, it probably refers to Christ’s human nature. In Christ’s Human nature, before the Resurrection, or at least the Ascension, Christ did not know the literal time of the Second Coming. But obviously, in His Divine Nature He always knew.

Remember, prior to His death, Christ’s human knowledge was limited in a certain sense.

This would not preclude, however, that Christ knew in His Human nature the greater spiritual ages that the Church would traverse. He just wouldn’t have known how long they would last and when they would come in terms of literal years.

For example, Christ probably knew the following would be the succession of Church ages:

Pagans will resist will resist and persecute.
The Church will be freed and the first heretics will attack the Trinity and Incarnation
A religion will arise that utterly attacks the Trinity and Incarnation while retaining other elements (Islam)
Peter will fall morally and it will cause the Great Schism
The bishops will fall morally, causing the great heretical rebellion
Christians will divide astronomically, causing humanity to reject divine revelation and assitance and live only according to reason
finally, there will be a minor apostasy, a chastisement and a glorious reunion of Christians, followed by a great age of spiritual renewal and peace.
The Gentiles will apostatize again, and then the jews will convert, after which occurs the Second Coming.

But in terms of literal time duration, Christ, in His pre-death Human nature, would not have known the duration of these ages. he would only know their succession.

This is really what Christ seems to be stressing about “the day and the hour”. he means this: It is not important to know the literal times and durations of the ages, only to know what the ages are and their order of succession, and the meaning behind why the ages go as they do.
 
Hey that’s prety good!!!
The Holy Spirit must have also known.
 
I also have trouble reconciling this verse about “no one knows but the Father” with other verses like “the Father and I are one”. If Jesus is really one with the Father, then He should know this stuff!
 
Acts 1

6So when they met together, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

7He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.

Isaiah 43:25
"I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.

Jeremiah 31:34
No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the LORD. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Phil 2

5Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

6Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

7But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:

8And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

In Short, the when of the Second Coming and future events related to such were put within the authority of the Father. God can choose to forget something like our sin, therefore he can choose to not know such and such about the future, placing that aspect within the power, authority of the Father alone. Each member of the Trinity has areas of authority, roles concerning the works of God — salvation, resurrection, creation, etc., These roles or realms of authority are choosen by them as they seem best to them.
 
spauline said:
Are you being sarcastic? I’m sorry, I’m slow socially. 🙂
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Nah not sarcastic…not even sure how you got that Idea.

Anyway everyone always asks how Jesus could have not known something, well scripture dose say that Christ humbeled himself and became like us…the not knowing could have been part of being human that Jesus chose to experience.

HOWEVER knowone normaly comments on The Holy Spirit, and if He knew or not.
 
pete_:
32 'But as for that day or hour, nobody knows it, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son; no one but the Father.
Click to expand...
I am fine with the point that Christs human nature may not have known.

Its this bit that I do not understand.
pete_:
no one but the Father
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The Holy Spirit and the Son’s divine nature must have known or else they would not be omnipotent.
 
Daniel_Marsh said:
Acts 1

6So when they met together, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

7He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.

Isaiah 43:25
"I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.

Jeremiah 31:34
No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the LORD. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Phil 2

5Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

6Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

7But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:

8And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

In Short, the when of the Second Coming and future events related to such were put within the authority of the Father. God can choose to forget something like our sin, therefore he can choose to not know such and such about the future, placing that aspect within the power, authority of the Father alone. Each member of the Trinity has areas of authority, roles concerning the works of God — salvation, resurrection, creation, etc., These roles or realms of authority are choosen by them as they seem best to them.
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Thanks for your wel-researched response,but I find this explanation a little unsettling. It sounds like Jesus is saying, “The Father and I are one, except when I choose to conveniently ‘forget’ certain eternal mysteries like when the world will end.”
 
Cara_Serrano said:
Thanks for your wel-researched response,but I find this explanation a little unsettling. It sounds like Jesus is saying, “The Father and I are one, except when I choose to conveniently ‘forget’ certain eternal mysteries like when the world will end.”
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Or maybe Jesus is sitting on His own “right hand!”

Mark 16:19 So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.
 
I found this in the Summa Theologica.

He is said, therefore, not to know the day and the hour of the Judgment, for that He does not make it known, since, on being asked by the apostles (Acts 1:7), He was unwilling to reveal it; and, on the contrary, we read (Genesis 22:12): “Now I know that thou fearest God,” i.e. “Now I have made thee know.” But the Father is said to know, because He imparted this knowledge to the Son. Hence, by saying but the Father, we are given to understand that the Son knows, not merely in the Divine Nature, but also in the human, because, as Chrysostom argues (Hom. lxxviii in Matth.), if it is given to Christ as man to know how to judge–which is greater–much more is it given to Him to know the less, viz. the time of Judgment. Origen, however (in Matth. Tract. xxx), expounds it of His body, which is the Church, which is ignorant of this time. Lastly, some say this is to be understood of the adoptive, and not of the natural Son of God.

newadvent.org/summa/4010.htm
 
Knowing how to judge is not equal to knowing when the judgement will be. One can know how to do something, they may not know when they will have to do what they know how to do.
 
Pete said:
32 'But as for that day or hour, nobody knows it, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son; no one but the Father.

From here:
(New Jerusalem Bible)
from here:
catholic.org/bible/book.php?id=48

The passage says no one but the Father. Obviously this cannot be the case the Son and the Holy spirit must also know.

Why does it say no one but the Father, how is ths reconciled?
Click to expand...
It says exactly what it says: nobody knows except the Father. The Father is the aspect of God Who makes the decision.
 
Pete said:
32 'But as for that day or hour, nobody knows it, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son; no one but the Father.

From here:
(New Jerusalem Bible)
from here:
catholic.org/bible/book.php?id=48

The passage says no one but the Father. Obviously this cannot be the case the Son and the Holy spirit must also know.

Why does it say no one but the Father, how is ths reconciled?
Click to expand...
Jesus does not teach a theological lesson or declare a dogma on the Triune God when He makes this statement. Jesus’ uterrance does not include any specific reference to the Holy Spirit since the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Triune God, who eternally proceeds from the divine and eternal love that the Father has for the Son.

Further, Jesus uses similar words when He teaches His disciples who knows the Father and the Son:

Matthew 11:27
All things are delivered to me by my Father. And no one knoweth the Son but the Father: neither doth any one know the Father, but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal him.

There is no specific reference to the Holy Spirit in the verse above because Jesus wants everyone to focus on the relation between the Father and the Son, which is associated with the fact that the incarnation makes Jesus’ status and role primary in divine revelation. (The Son reveals the Father as His Logos).

When Jesus denies the knowledge of the day and hour, He underlines His human nature as well as reminds His followers that it is absolutely impossible to know the exact day and hour of the judgment. Nevertheless, this does not make Jesus an inferior god or a semi-God since He is the ONLY one to come on that day and at that hour to judge the world.

Finally, Jesus mostly likens the day of judgment to His wedding and the banquet prepared by the King for His son. Thus, only the Father decides with His own authority when His Son shall be married. 😉
 
Interesting discussion guys. Anyone still active on this thread?

I had some thoughts on this that get a bit deep but I wanted to develop some ideas that might lead to an explanation.

Consider the fact that 2nd Person of God, “The Son”, operates in a unique relational “bridging” role between God and Humanity. That is, the 2nd person is a kind of physical-spiritual conduit between God and Man that spans and couples two simultaneous aspects of humanity’s physical-spiritual nature to The Triune God. This is accomplished through Jesus’ Divine Spiritual and Divine Physical nature. I need to be careful here since its very easy to “go circular” in trying to express these concepts without creating logical co-dependencies that point to each other.

Here I visualize Jesus in two contexts - one context is “The Son” which is pure spirit that “is” with God eternally; that is “before Creation”, “now” and our future “now”. The other context is a proto physical-spiritual one that exists through the hypostatic union formed at the Incarnation. In other words I assert for consideration that the hypostatic union has always existed but it has existed in two modes. Before the incarnation it existed as an eternally willed but unexpressed, or unspoken, unsequenced “Word”. The incarnation was the expression of that eternal will, or if you will, an utterance of the “Word made flesh”. It was expressed at a point in time that follows the time-line dictated by Divine Providence. This is the other mode of the hypostatic union and in a sense it represents a door into God (heaven, the beatific vision) that is being unlocked and swung open (through Jesus’s life on earth). This time-line was set in motion through the creation of temporal existence when God first uttered a prefiguring “Word” through the expression “Let There Be Light” - an audible and spontaneous Divine pang of Love for The Son - an expression of Divine Nature that was impossible for God to hold back.

I conjecture that this creative act of God the Father is a synonym for “The Word Made Flesh”; it just takes “a while” in our reckoning for God to speak “The (phonetically long) Word” and for it to manifest itself to its objective end. In essence we can look at scripture as one continuous “Word” (as scripture was originally written without any punctuation). Our “time” and “events” in Divine Plan are all nuanced expressions of “The Word” spoken (actually sung) spiritually, as it were, in a Divine Language - unimaginably beautiful and beyond our senses and comprehension. That is, we can imagine God’s voice in uttering “The Word” as expressing a melodious heavenly love song; a song who’s meter, tempo, beat, key, chord and so on form the “ripples” that dance across the aether of heaven to sequence and invite our existence, lives and co-participation or for us to reject and be dissonant with the Song of Life (and salvation). But God wants a Choir. So we are each invited to progressively “be” and to participate, each to his own discovered talents, in “our” part of a Divine Choir - as we learn to join-in and please God. I could go on indefinitely here with metaphor but let me break to get to my point.

In a certain sense the objective end of Creation will be incomplete until Jesus completes His salvific role, which Humans co-participate in through willful cooperation and until and when God reveals all “His Children”. We are all literally in the womb of Creation (and Satan is trying to abort as many as he can) listening and participating to greater or lessor degree to God The Father’s voice.

So, then re-centering on the OP let me say from the contextual persistence I am trying to “paint” and momentarily hold through this expressed imagery that Jesus is our “narrow gate” into heaven through the Hypostatic Union. The door is open if we can follow Him through it.

Jesus knows in His 2nd Person the exact time and hour of His 2nd comming; as does the Holy Spirit. But in the hypostatic union in Jesus’ physical humanity Jesus elected to defer to God the Father to hold back this information from His intellectual knowledge. Through some mystery, Jesus has on our side of the hypostatic union (our side of the door) a created human soul. On the other side of the hypostatic union (through “the door” as it where “inside” God’s Heavenly Kingdom) Jesus is pure Spiritual being 2nd Person with an attached human-divine context. I think the key here is seeing that Jesus has a created human soul in His Humanity - which is an unsettling paradoxical mystery since being created it is by nature finite and could not contain Divinity in its full essence. This does not however deny Christ’s divinity since in mystery of the trinity, in the 2nd Person Jesus is of course simultaneously fully God - pure spirit with uncreated soul.

[sorry this is so long - continuing on next page]

James
 
[continued from above]

So, after all this long dialog let me conjecture that Jesus in His 2nd Person knows the exact hour of His 2nd comming and the end of the world. But in His 2nd Person “God The Son” elected with the Godhead (all 3 Divine Persons) to not infuse this information through full intellectual knowledge in Jesus “Son of Man”. Rather, the Triune God elected to inform Jesus’ created soul and intellect the sequence of the events necessary to convey prophecy. We can assume that there is Divine Wisdom at play here and perhaps Jesus had He consciously known this specific withheld information may have in His human nature altered his natural interactions in a way that may have constrained Him to speak freely and always truthfully to direct questions without having to be uncharitable by withholding and of “all revealed truth”. Also, there may be a principal here that Jesus is teaching - that God is above man and Jesus, even as the perfect man, is role playing the proper relationship that all men must have with God. And that is - “equality of God is not something to be grasped at”.

Just my ideas and I would appreciate comments. The hypostatic union is a complex concept that we humans will probably never fully understand while here on earth. But the notion of Jesus being both full man and full God does present the paradox of “what happens” to Jesus’ created soul - it seems redundant and limited given that God is God and no created soul could ever contain Him. I can only answer this paradox and apparent redundancy by observing that in Eucharist we get body, blood, SOUL and divinity of Jesus. It’s all there.

James
 
And now for something completely radical - a 2nd possibility.

Could it be that no “one” knows the exact hour or time except God becuase that hour is different for each person and it comes like a thief in the night? Could it be that the 2nd coming is contained within the context of each person’s own life context. This is consistent with how some mystic speculations conceptualize how angels can occupy space and time - they “contain” and encapsulate their reality within them.

This would mean that each of us has a supernatural dimension with at least the potential for divinity that God encapsulates in a hiearchy of spiritual beings descending through Jesus. This would be consistent with a heavenly hierarchy ( e.g. 9 choirs of angels) that is all interconnected and all experiences each other’s joys and honors to the full capacity of its heavenly station.

In other words, it might be that 2nd comming does not have a single time and we all have our own private 2nd comings and step into eternity (hopefully in the ascending direction) to meet Jesus and enter heaven at our death. I have not fully bumped this transient idea fully against scripture to see if contradicts anything. But I think it merits consideration as a working theory. The problem ares would be in the collective 2nd judgment. But I see this as really more of a case where God reveals to all souls each and every other soul’s final disposition and circumstances. This is so we can realize the cause and effect relationship for all our personal sins and merits through all of creation and recognize His Justice.

James
 
Pete said:
32 'But as for that day or hour, nobody knows it, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son; no one but the Father.

From here:
(New Jerusalem Bible)
from here:
catholic.org/bible/book.php?id=48

The passage says no one but the Father. Obviously this cannot be the case the Son and the Holy spirit must also know.

Why does it say no one but the Father, how is ths reconciled?
Click to expand...
They don’t have to know. Because of the Trinitarian nature of the Godhead, He is One but functions separately at the same time as far as His Persons are concerned.
 
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