That Day and Hour? (Part One)

Witnesses argue that since the Son did not know something that the Father knew (the day and the hour), he cannot also be Almighty God, equal with the Father. (Matthew 24:36) “How could the Son not know things the Father knows – if they are coequal?” (February 1, 1984 Watchtower, p. 7) The same point is made elsewhere. “If Jesus were part of Almighty God, however, he would know the same facts as his Father. So, then, the Son and the Father cannot be equal.” (What Does the Bible Really Teach?, p. 204; cf. August 1, 1996 Watchtower, p. 31) Now, this passage does present a difficulty to the orthodox Trinitarian, since prima facie it counts against the Deity of the Son. However, we postpone the resolution of this problem until later. For now we are content simply to show that this line of reasoning, even if it were sound, is not available to Witnesses given one of the commitments central to their doctrine of God.

Witnesses teach that, though God is capable of knowing all things, he has decided to forget some things about the past (the life patterns of the incorrigibly wicked), has chosen to be ignorant of some things that were once present (as he did with respect to the condition of Sodom and Gomorrah prior to sending the angels), and refrains from knowing some, evidently most, of the future. In brief, he can limit his knowledge. How then, can they argue that the Son cannot be Almighty God[1] because he does not know something? It is not merely that he does not know something or other. If that was the claim, then they would have to deny that the Father is Almighty God. But it is that the Son does not know something that one indisputably divine person, the Father, knows that is the issue they point to. And more specifically something that the Father determined. While it is true in actuality that the Son qua God would have to know this, it is hardly clear that they can make this point. In other words, since they imagine the doctrine of the Trinity affirms that each person has his own intellect and will, and believe that one who is God can choose to limit his factual knowledge, they cannot simply assert the following supposedly impossible[2] counterfactual: if Jesus were coequal with the Father, then he would know every fact that the Father knows. From their perspective why would it be impossible for Jesus, as Almighty God, to voluntarily choose to not know something?

We acknowledge that it would be bizarre, even setting aside the erroneous conception of the Trinity that their theology imagines we affirm, for one person of the Trinity to defer to the decision of another without also knowing all of the specifics of that decision. But, it would be no more absurd than many of the things that Witnesses say about God, such as him supposedly limiting his own knowledge in irrational and improvident ways, which was the central focus of a previous chapter. If it is believed that a divine person can voluntarily limit his knowledge, it cannot simply be assumed that this divine person must know every fact that another divine person knows. Indeed, merely to believe that a divine person can limit his knowledge affords a strong reason to conclude that, if there is more than one divine person, their knowledge does not need to be coextensive with each other. Hence, we believe that our point ultimately lands. Witnesses cannot coherently argue that for the Son[3] to be Almighty God, equal with the Father, that as God he must have known the day and the hour.

[1] As can be seen from one of our quotations, they imagine that the doctrine of the Trinity teaches that the Son is part of Almighty God. This shows that they do not grasp what we are saying. But we believe that this error can be ignored for the purposes of this argument.

[2] Impossible, that is, because they don’t think God could be triune.

[3] Or the Holy Spirit, for that matter, about whom they make the same point.

 

You are My God

    In Answer to Maximinus the Arian, Book I, Chapter VII, Augustine writes the following paragraph, which I find to be a convincing refutation of the claim that, since the Father is called the God of the Son by either the Son himself or by the Apostles, the Son must not be equal in Divinity with the Father. (Note: that the citations from the Psalms in the quotation are given using the Catholic numbering.)

“Seventhly, I said, "We acknowledge the Son as so great a God that we say that he is equal to the Father. Therefore," I said, "it was pointless for you to want to prove to us with testimonies and many words what we firmly profess." To these words of mine I added an argument in which I explained why, though the Son is equal to the Father, he still calls him his God, where he says, I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God (Jn 20:17). You had introduced this testimony from the gospel by which you thought that you proved that the Son was not equal to the Father. Hence, in my response to you on this point, I said that the Father is also God for the only-begotten Son, because the latter became man and was born of a woman. This is what he says in the Psalm in which he foretold what was to come, From the womb of my mother you are my God (Ps 21:11). Thus the Son showed that the Father is his God because the Son became man. As a man, he is born from the womb of his mother, and God was born of the virgin insofar as he is man. And so he who begot the Son out of himself is not only his Father; he is also his God, since he created him from the womb of his mother. When you wanted to respond to this, you spoke at length and produced many testimonies which gave you no help. You were, nonetheless, utterly unable to find a way to interpret the words, From the womb of my mother you are my God, although you mentioned these same words of holy scripture. I utterly fail to see why you quoted in that place the testimony of another Psalm where it says, The beginning with you, in the day of your power, in the splendors of the saints, from the womb I begot you before the morning star (Ps 109:3). After all, it is not the person of the Son who says, "From your womb," or, "From your belly" you are my God. Even if we understand here that ineffable generation from the womb of the Father, what it says is that from out of himself, that is, from his substance God begot God, just as, when he was born from the womb of his mother, a human being begot a human being. In each act of generation we see that the substance of the one born is not different from the substance of the parents. The substance is different in the cases of God the Father and of the human mother, but the substance is not different in the case of God the Father and God the Son, just as there is not a different substance in the case of the human mother and the human son. Listen to what the Son says in prophecy. He says, From the womb of my mother you are my God. Do not try to obscure with many irrelevant words matters that are perfectly clear. He who fathered the Son out of his own womb is also his God from the womb of his mother, not from his own. You were, of course, unable to make any response to this.” (Arianism and Other Heresies, pp. 252-253)

    Now, this may sound awfully convenient to an Arian, but that does not render it a specious argument. It behooves the Arian to find in Scripture where the Son calls the Father God (or Scripture calls the Father the God of the Son) apart from his becoming a man. One possibility that comes to mind is Hebrews 1:9. According to the Apostle, the Father said to the Son, whom the Father had just called God (ὁ Θεὸς) in Hebrews 1:8, the following words. “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of joy above your companions.” (Cf. Psalm 45:7) Here, it may be suggested that the Father is called the God of the Son apart from the incarnation, a suggestion evidently bolstered by the reference to the Son not merely as man but as God in v. 8. However, this suggestion manifestly fails, for while Psalm 45, like Psalm 22, was written before the incarnation of the Lord, they are prophetic in nature and take into consideration his taking on the form of a servant. That he is also called God does not detract from this fact, since he who became a man is still God. And from the reference to the Son as one who “loved righteousness and hated lawlessness” as being the basis of his being “anointed . . . with the oil of joy” indicates that this passage refers to the Son as a man, thereby removing any necessity in supposing that the Son qua God is meant. Hence, Hebrews 1:9 does not disprove the argument Augustine makes, namely, that it is only in virtue of becoming a man that the Father is said to be the God of the Son.