Featured Is Jesus Omniscient?

We disagree on the implication of what you state. I think John Gill explained it quite well. The two of us can keep butting heads on this subject or just accept we disagree and move on. I am all for moving on. But, if you want:

 

If Christ Jesus is not always fully omniscient, then Christ Jesus is not always fully God.

However, the Bible teaches that Christ Jesus is always fully God, whether in Heaven or on this earth.

Thus, Christ Jesus is always fully omniscient.


You can argue with me over this from now until the second coming of Christ Jesus when this present heavens and earth is replaced with the new heavens and earth wherein dwells righteousness, but I will not back down on this subject, not one iota.

 

Maybe you have to wrestle with it, I don't. John Gill explained it quite well, in my opinion.

The correct method is to keep the whole Bible in mind when looking at an individual verse. It is incorrect to take an individual verse and try to twist(I am not saying you are doing this) the context of the Bible as a whole to try to fit that individual verse. No, the Bible does not contradict itself. An individual verse, such as Mark 13:32, must be understood within the context of the Bible as a whole.

Does the Bible as a whole teach that God is omniscient? Yes.

Does the Bible teach that Christ Jesus is God, including while He lived in a human body? Yes.

Thus, Christ Jesus was omniscient while He lived in a human body.

Christ Jesus, while on this earth, was fully God and fully human. The Bible teaches this.

 

No, I am not. My conclusion is spot on. You certainly haven't made a dent in it.

No, I am not. I am upholding the teaching of the Holy Scriptures that Christ Jesus was, is, and always will be fully God, including when He lived in a human body on this earth, and that Christ Jesus was fully human, yet without sin, when He lived in a human body on this earth.

So, which, @JonC, do you disagree with? That Christ Jesus was, is and always will be fully God, including when He lived in a human body on this earth, or that Christ Jesus was fully human, yet without sin, when lived in a human body on this earth?

 

Interesting thread!

I did some research to help me define what I believed and came across this:

A heresy that belongs to the modern age is kenoticism, based principally on two texts: Philippians 2:6–7 and 2 Corinthians 8:9. The kenotic theory holds that “Christ voluntarily emptied himself” of “the relative attributes of omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence while retaining the essential attributes of holiness and love.” … The Calvinist W. F. Gess (d. 1891) argued that Christ laid aside all his attributes, and the Logos became a human soul. The divine consciousness was totally absent at the incarnation, but Christ regained it in the course of time. British kenoticists include A. M. Fairbairn, Bishop Gore, H. R. Mackintosh and P. T. Forsyth. Forsyth saw the divine attributes “not as renounced at the Incarnation but as retracted from the actual to the potential.” The kenosis “is accompanied by a plerosis, a process of gradual reintegration through which, by genuine moral effort, Christ regained the mode of being that He had voluntarily laid aside.” One could legitimately argue that there is an orthodox form of kenoticism and a heretical form. It is possible to maintain that Christ emptied himself of his divine power but not of his divine nature. His power was always available to him, but he did not choose to draw upon it.
Kenoticism is able to uphold the true humanity of Jesus but not his deity. It affirms not that Jesus is both God and man but that Jesus is first God and then man. It is well to note that in 1 Corinthians 2:8 Paul refers to Jesus even in his humiliation as the “Lord of glory,” reflecting Psalm 24:10, where God himself is described as “the Lord of hosts” and “the King of glory” (cf. Jas 2:1). Against the kenoticists I contend that the exalted one and the humiliated one are the same. The divine attributes are not renounced by Christ but are concealed in the humiliated Christ.

Jesus Christ, Lord & Savior
Donald G. Bloesch
IVP 1997, page 61
​

 

My answer-YES. Seems the only thing He didn't know was the date & hour of His return.

 

Jesus Christ was and is fully God and fully man. But the incarnation is a divine mystery to us.

Here are a few observations. I’ll leave it to others to search the scriptures to see how accurate they are.

Jesus took on flesh, not just in the sense of the body being weak physically, but also spiritually. In the flesh, he was able to do something God cannot do—be tempted.

Though having the divine nature, Jesus did not exercise that nature. He purposely lived as a man, one totally dependent on the Father.

When he returned from being tempted in the wilderness, after being attended by angels, he returned in the power of the Spirit, not the power of the Son of God.

When Jesus spoke of being able to avoid the cross, he did not speak of exercising his own power, but of calling on his Father to send legions of angels.

Jesus first lived his life perfectly as a man, tempted yet without sin. Only then did he go to the cross, where he finished it.

 

I will attempt to answer. I hope that @JonC will read this post, as well.

Here are my three main go-to's when it comes to Bible commentaries. Please read these quotes from their commentaries and let me know what may not be clear as to Christ Jesus being both fully God and fully Man - the God-Man - having both the divine nature and human nature in one single, solitary human body. A three-word phrase in one verse should not be allowed to overthrow the teaching of the Bible that Christ in the flesh was fully God with all that being God means, including omniscience.

Robert Hawker on Matthew 24:36 -

"I desire to look at this verse singly, from the abuses made of it by the enemies to the Godhead of Christ. Had the Sceptic limited the sense of it, as it is evidently intended, to the day of Jerusalem's destruction, and not referred it to what it never was intended to have regard, to the second coming of Christ; he would have seen that the Godhead of Christ was neither honored nor dishonored in the business. As the God-Man Christ Jesus, all judgment is committed to Christ, on purpose that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. And he who alone is to be the judge of quick and dead, must know both the time and all the process connected with it. But on the occasion of Jerusalem's visitation, to which this verse refers, though Christ had so fully foretold the whole events which should take place, he doth not say the year was not known, for he himself had declared that that generation should not pass away till all were fulfilled; but our Lord's expressions, are of that day and hour. And all consciousness of time was lost when the calamities took place on that devoted city."

Robert Hawker on Mark 13:32 -

"This passage hath been noticed before (Matthew 24:36) to which I therefore refer. I only detain the Reader to remark in addition to what was there observed, that when the LORD Jesus in this verse speaks of the ignorance of the day and hour of those visitations, the words have not the smallest connection, as some have supposed, with the day of future judgment: but is wholly in reference to this destruction of Jerusalem. And concerning this event, those who lived to see it, and were involved in it, and survived it; could form no exact calculation we are told, by their historian, when it began, and when it ended; the miseries were so great and incalculable!

Matthew Henry on Mark 13:32 -

"As to the end of the world, do not enquire when it will come, for it is not a question fit to be asked, for of that day, and that hour, knoweth no man; it is a thing at a great distance; the exact time is fixed in the counsel of God, but is not revealed by any word of God, either to men on earth, or to angels in heaven; the angels shall have timely notice to prepare to attend in that day, and it shall be published, when it comes to the children of men, with sound of trumpet; but, at present, men and angels are kept in the dark concerning the precise time of it, that they may both attend to their proper services in the present day." But it follows, neither the Son; but is there any thing which the Son is ignorant of? We read indeed of a book which was sealed, till the Lamb opened the seals; but did not he know what was in it, before the seals were opened? Was not he privy to the writing of it? There were those in the primitive times, who taught from this text, that there were some things that Christ, as man, was ignorant of; and from these were called Agnoetæ; they said, "It was no more absurd to say so, than to say that his human soul suffered grief and fear;" and many of the orthodox fathers approved of this. Some would evade it, by saying that Christ spoke this in a way of prudential economy, to divert the disciples from further enquiry: but to this one of the ancients answers, It is not fit to speak too nicely in this matter—ou dei pany akribologein, so Leontius in Dr. Hammond, "It is certain (says Archbishop Tillotson) that Christ, as God, could not be ignorant of any thing; but the divine wisdom which dwelt in our Saviour, did communicate itself to his human soul, according to the divine pleasure, so that his human nature might sometimes not know some things; therefore Christ is said to grow in wisdom (Luke 2:52), which he could not be said to do, if the human nature of Christ did necessarily know all things by virtue of its union with the divinity." Dr. Lightfoot explains it thus; Christ calls himself the Son, as Messiah. Now the Messiah, as such, was the father's servant (Isaiah 42:1), sent and deputed by him, and as such a one he refers himself often to his Father's will and command, and owns he did nothing of himself (John 5:19); in like manner he might be said to know nothing of himself. The revelation of Jesus Christ was what God gave unto him, Revelation 1:1. He thinks, therefore, that we are to distinguish between those excellencies and perfections of his, which resulted from the personal union between the divine and human nature, and those which flowed from the anointing of the Spirit; from the former flowed the infinite dignity of his perfect freedom from all sin; but from the latter flowed his power of working miracles, and his foreknowledge of things to come. What therefore (saith he) was to be revealed by him to his church, he was pleased to take, not from the union of the human nature with the divine, but from the revelation of the Spirit, by which he yet knew not this, but the Father only knows it; that is, God only, the Deity; for (as Archbishop Tillotson explains it) it is not used here personally, in distinction from the Son and the Holy Ghost, but as the Father is, Fons et Principium Deitatis—The Fountain of Deity."

John Gill excerpt on Matthew 24:36 -

"The Ethiopic version adds here, "nor the son", and so the Cambridge copy of Beza's; which seems to be transcribed from Mark 13:32 where that phrase stands; and must be understood of Christ as the son of man, and not as the Son of God; for as such, he lay in the bosom of the Father, and knew all his purposes and designs; for these were purposed in him: he knew from the beginning who would betray him, and who would believe in him; he knew what would befall the rejecters of him, and when that would come to pass; as he must know also the day of the last judgment, since it is appointed by God, and he is ordained to execute it." …

"but my Father only; to the exclusion of all creatures, angels and men; but not to the exclusion of Christ as God, who, as such, is omniscient; nor of the Holy Spirit, who is acquainted with the deep things of God, the secrets of his heart."

John Gill excerpt on Mark 13:32 -

"neither the Son; Christ, as the son of man; though he did know it as the Son of God, who knows all things, and so this; but as the son of man, and from his human nature he had no knowledge of any thing future: what knowledge he had of future things in his humanity, he had from his deity; nor, as man, had he any commission to make known, nor did he make known the day of God's vengeance on the Jews."

 

What does it mean to be "omniscient?" To know all things, past, present and future? So when scripture says Jesus knows all things (John 21:17) that must mean Jesus is "omniscient." So when Jesus says He does not know the time of His return, that means He is not omniscient. Sounds like we are being double minded.

 

You will need to provide me your definition of "Nestorianism" if you want me to respond. I tried to look up what you are talking about and there seems to be differing ideas about what Nestorius taught and what Nestorianism eventually settled into as a doctrine.