Mark 13:32 — ‘Nor the Son’: omniscience reserved to the Father alone

“But of that day or that hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father.”

Mark 13:32

Context: The Olivet Discourse

Mark 13 is the longest continuous discourse of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark. It is triggered by a disciple's remark about the massive stones and buildings of the temple (v.1) and Jesus' announcement that not one stone will be left upon another (v.2). On the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew ask in private: “When will these things be? And what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?” (v.4). The entire discourse is an answer to this question.

Jesus unfolds a twofold perspective: first, the signs that come before the end (vv.5-23: deceivers, wars, earthquakes, persecution of the community, the abomination of desolation); then the end itself with the coming of the Son of Man (vv.24-27); finally the parables of the fig tree (vv.28-31) and of the doorkeeper (vv.34-37). Between these two figurative discourses stands v.32 as an explicit limitation of what has been foretold: the day itself cannot be dated.

The rhetorical function of v.32 is therefore a warning against end-time speculation. Jesus names signs, but he names no date — and he grounds this in the fact that not even he himself knows this date. This pastoral point of the verse is lost in the trinitarian dogmatic narrowing. Mark 13:32 is not a philosophical statement about the metaphysical constitution of Christ; it is a pastoral warning: because not even the Son knows the date, the disciples must not speculate but watch (vv.33-37: blepete, agrypneite… grêgoreite).

The Markan composition is careful: the logion of v.32 closes a tightly constructed four-fold ring of knowing subjects. No one knows (general negation); neither the angels in heaven (those closest to the divine sphere); nor the Son (the highest earthly bearer of revelation); but only the Father. The series is played through ascendingly — and it does not break off at the Son. This is the decisive exegetical finding: the Son is explicitly placed below the Father and explicitly outside the omniscient subject.

The parallel passage Matthew 24:36 transmits the logion in nearly identical form. The text-critical point is important: the oldest and best manuscripts (B [Vaticanus], ℵ [Sinaiticus, in the codex of the original hand], family 13 et al.) read also in Matthew the ouk ho hyiós “nor the Son.” Later manuscripts (especially the Byzantine majority text) omit the phrase — a classic example of dogmatically motivated textual smoothing. Bruce Metzger (Textual Commentary) and the critical edition Nestle-Aland-28 firmly place the word in the original text. The Markan passage has no text-historical variance whatsoever; even the Old Syriac and Old Latin traditions carry the phrase. That is: text-critically the logion is one of the best-attested sayings of Christ in the Synoptics.

The Socinian core thesis

In the Socinian scriptural argument Mark 13:32 is a locus classicus: if the Son possesses the divine nature, the divine essence, and divine omniscience in the same manner as the Father, then he cannot at the same time fail to know something that the Father knows. According to classical doctrine (Anselm, Thomas), omniscience is an essential attribute of God; it is not divisible, not partial, not temporarily suspendable. Whoever loses it loses Godhead. Whoever never had it, never had Godhead.

The Racovian Catechism (1605), the principal theological document of the Polish Brethren and of the most mature Socinian dogmatics, explicitly places Mark 13:32 in the list of biblical proofs against the divine nature of Christ: “Seventh, when Christ lived on earth he said of himself that he certainly did not know the day of judgement, and that in such a way that he affirmed that it was known to the Father alone. But that highest God could not possibly fail to know anything.” The argument is syllogistically rigorous: God knows all things; Christ does not know all things; therefore Christ is not (the one) God.

The Socinian reading interprets Mark 13:32 affirmatively-christologically: Christ is indeed the exalted and sanctified Son of God, to whom the Father has revealed many things (cf. Matt 11:27; John 17:7-8), but not all. His knowledge is received, not self-possessed (autotheoía). And his mission is that of the obedient mediator to whom the Father has reserved the plan in its fullness. This self-relation of Christ to the Father is not a deficit but a structural feature of New Testament christology: everything Jesus knows he has received from the Father (John 8:28; 12:49; 17:8) — and the day of judgement is not among the things he has received.

The consequence is a clear hierarchy of subjects: the one God (Father) is the source, the exalted Son the recipient and mediator, the angels further servants of the message. Mark 13:32 sketches this hierarchy as a formally stratified list in which the Son stands explicitly below the Father and above the angels. This is the New Testament christology of mission and exaltation — not the christology of essential identity between two persons of a single God.

Central claim

Key terms

Five expressions decide the interpretation of Mark 13:32 linguistically and philologically:

oudeís oíden — “no one knows”

The Greek oudeís is a universal negation: “no one, nobody, absolutely no one.” It excludes every conceivable subject that is not expressly excepted. The single exception is expressly named in v.32: ei mê ho patêr “except (only) the Father.” The grammar is unambiguous: from the knowledge of the date everything is excluded; only the Father knows it.

The perfect oíden designates a habitual possession of knowledge, not a punctual cognition. The statement is therefore not: “at the moment it has not yet been revealed to the Son” (as if it were knowledge to be acquired later), but: “the Son simply does not possess this knowledge.” This precision of the tense choice makes the kenotic and communicatio escape routes difficult.

oude ho hyiós — “nor the Son”

The phrase intensifies the oudeís: not even the Son — although by the expectation of the hearers he might know it — knows the date. The intensification presupposes that the Son stands on a graded scale of revelatory proximity above the angels and below the Father. Whoever reads the Son as the essentially identical, omniscient second God shatters this scale: the intensification would then be impossible, because a second omniscient person would be equal to the first.

It is the only passage in the Synoptics where Jesus speaks of himself as “the Son” (ho hyiós) absolutely — without the addition “of Man” or “of God.” The phrase stands in clear correspondence to ho patêr “the Father.” The relational relationship Father ↔ Son is thus marked at the maximal linguistic level. Precisely in this highly relational context the asymmetric knowledge relationship is pronounced: the Father knows, the Son does not.

ei mê ho patêr — “but only the Father”

The exception formula ei mê is firmly established in the Gospels: “no one except…” It excludes strictly and names the single subject that the negation does not touch. That the sole exception is the Father is the christological point: the Father knows alone, in the strictest sense of the word. The angels do not know it; the Son does not know it; no human knows it. Father = the sole knower. This exclusive subject assignment is the hard core of the verse.

The expression mónos (“alone”) is added redactionally in Matthew 24:36: ei mê ho patêr mónos. By this the exclusivity is further emphasised. For the Socinians this is the parallel line to John 17:3 (mónos alêthinòs theós) and 1 Tim 6:16 (God, who “alone has immortality”): again and again, precisely against any distribution of divine predicates over several subjects, the “alone” is explicitly set.

peri tês hêméras ekeínês é tês hôras — “that day or the hour”

The reference is to concrete, temporal information: the date (hêméra) and the time of day (hôra) of the parousia event. Such temporal data belong to the most elementary knowledge an omniscient subject possesses. A restricted or “humanly” conducted consciousness that lacks such delimitable knowledge is not the consciousness of a subject essentially identical with the Father.

The specification also excludes theologically motivated evasions: one cannot claim that the Son merely did not wish to disclose the inner mystery of his return. The wording does not say “I do not say,” but “no one knows, but only the Father.” The difference is grave: a hermeneutical self-reservation is transformed into an objective difference of knowledge between Father and Son.

communicatio idiomatum — the dogmatic escape route

The patristic answer — classically formulated since Athanasius, developed by Cyril of Alexandria and then in the Chalcedonian horizon — runs: the “does not know” applies exclusively to the human nature of Christ, not to his divine. The communicatio idiomatum (communication of properties) permits one to ascribe statements about the human nature to the whole Christ — without thereby denying the divine nature.

The Racovian Catechism refutes this evasion in a separate section (§§ around Mark 13:32). Three counter-grounds are decisive: (1) the wording. Christ does not say “I do not know it according to my humanity,” but “neither does the Son know it” — absolutely. (2) the subject-logic. If one and the same person simultaneously knows all and does not know all, she contradicts herself. (3) the petitio principii: the whole escape presupposes that there are two natures in Christ — but this is precisely the point to be proved. The communicatio idiomatum is therefore not an answer to Scripture but an auxiliary construction designed to rescue the dogma from Scripture.

Comparison of interpretations

Sozzini in the original: The Racovian Catechism on Mark 13:32

The Racovian Catechism devotes an entire section to the question “in what way it contradicts Scripture that Christ should possess the divine nature itself which they ascribe to him.” It enumerates eight scriptural grounds. The seventh ground is Mark 13:32. It is the only point in this section where a single saying of Christ is presented as an independent, sufficient argument.

“Seventh, when Christ lived on earth he said of himself that he certainly did not know the day of judgement, and that in such a way that he affirmed that it was known to the Father alone. But that highest God could not possibly fail to know anything.”

Racovian Catechism, against the divine nature of Christ (1605)

The form of argument is a classical modus tollens: if Christ possesses the divine nature of the one God, then he knows all things. But Christ does not know the day of judgement. Therefore Christ does not possess the divine nature of the one God. The first premise — “God knows all things” — is classical doctrine of God (cf. Ps 139:1-6; 147:5; Isa 46:9-10; 1 John 3:20: “God is greater than our heart and knows all things”). The second premise — “Christ does not know all things” — is Mark 13:32. The conclusion is compelling.

The catechism does not soften the conclusion. It places it in a series of comparable sayings of Christ and apostolic statements, all of which lie along the same line:

“Finally, to pass over other things, the same Christ openly affirms that the Father is greater than he, by which he indicates that he is not as great as the Father; and he repeatedly calls the Father his God. Other holy writers also confirm this, and especially Paul, who likewise testifies that God is the head of Christ, and that just as we are of Christ, so Christ is of God, and that the Son will one day be subjected to him who subjected all things to him — none of which could be said of Christ if he possessed that divine nature.”

Racovian Catechism, on the relation of Christ to the Father

The decisive step follows in the next section of the catechism, where the Polish Brethren directly target the patristic escape of the two-natures doctrine:

“But to this and other similar objections those people reply that these things were said about Christ according to his human nature, not according to his divine. They do not do this rightly, partly because they take as granted the very thing that is in dispute — namely that the divine nature is in Christ — and partly because no room can be left for that distinction when something is denied of Christ absolutely and without any restriction.”

Racovian Catechism, against the two-natures distinction

This is the theological point of Sozzini and of the Polish Brethren: the two-natures answer is a petitio principii — it presupposes what it ought to prove. And it fails precisely at Mark 13:32, because the verse denies the Son omniscience “absolutely and without any restriction.” Whoever takes the verse seriously has surrendered the doctrine of the Trinity at a decisive point.

Overview of Sozzini's writings

Logical arguments

From Mark 13:32 the following theological-philological arguments against the essential-identical divinity of the Son emerge:

1. Argument from the essential attribute of omniscience. According to classical theology (Anselm, Thomas, the Reformed confessions), omniscience is an essential predicate of the one God. It is not divisible and not partial. Whoever does not have it is not the one God. According to Mark 13:32, the Son does not have it. Consequently the Son is not the one God in the essential-identical sense.
2. Argument from subject-logic. The subject of the negation “does not know” is not a nature but a person: “the Son.” Persons know or fail to know, not natures. To deny knowledge to a person is to deny it absolutely. Distribution by natures is a secondary auxiliary construction without textual anchoring.
3. Argument from the graded series. The series in v.32 (no one — angels — the Son — the Father) is a scale of revelatory proximity. The Son stands between the angels and the Father. An essentially identical second person of the one God could not be ranged in such a scale with angels.
4. Argument from petitio principii. The patristic answer (communicatio idiomatum) presupposes that Christ has two natures — but this is precisely the point to be proved. A solution that takes the disputed point as given is methodologically inadmissible.
5. Argument from the wording absolutely. The verse does not say “in one respect the Son does not know,” but absolutely: “nor the Son.” Absolute negations cannot be qualified by subsequently introduced distinctions without bending the wording.
6. Argument from tense. The perfect oíden designates habitual possession of knowledge. It is not “at the moment not yet learned” but “simply not in possession.” This undermines the kenotic auxiliary construction, which postulates a temporary suspension of knowledge.
7. Argument from John 5:19-20; 7:16; 8:28; 12:49. In the Johannine corpus — which orthodox theology invokes to ground essential identity — Jesus consistently says that he knows and teaches only what he has received from the Father. That is exactly the structure of Mark 13:32: received, not self-possessed knowledge. John and Mark converge in a christology of mission and revelatory transmission.
8. Argument from 1 Cor 15:28. Paul teaches that at the end the Son himself will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him. Here again: an asymmetric relation in which the Son is the one commissioned by the Father and finally subjected to him. The asymmetry of omniscience in Mark 13:32 fits precisely into this Pauline line.
9. Argument from Jesus' apologetic silence. If the verse were a trinitarian dogmatic cliff, Jesus would have had the opportunity to emphasise his essential-identical omniscience with the Father. Instead he explicitly formulates the difference. The argument from silence carries weight here: what should have spoken according to the trinitarian premise is silent.
10. Argument from the hermeneutics of humility. The simple, pastoral reading — Jesus exhorts his disciples to watchfulness because not even he knows the date — is the only one that preserves the pedagogical point of the passage. The trinitarian dogmatic reading turns an exhortation to humility and watchfulness into a cryptic statement about intra-divine differences of which the disciples could understand nothing.

Biblical cross-references

The following passages support, deepen, or illuminate the Socinian interpretation of Mark 13:32:

Objections and Socinian answers

Objection 1: “communicatio idiomatum — the verse applies only to the human nature.”

First, the answer is a classical fallacy of petitio principii: it presupposes what would have to be proved, namely that Christ has two natures. Scripture knows no explicit doctrine of two natures; this construction was first dogmatically fixed in the Chalcedonian formula of 451. If a scriptural argument is brought against essential identity and the answer consists in presupposing the two-natures doctrine as self-evident, the argument moves in a circle.

Second, the construction is logically ambivalent. Persons know or fail to know, not natures. If the same person simultaneously knows all and does not know all, she contradicts herself. The distribution “by nature” is a verbal rule, not a substantive ground. In any other application such a construction would be recognised as doublespeak.

Third, the wording is absolute. Christ does not say “with my human nature I do not know it, but I do with my divine.” He says: “nor the Son.” The subject is the whole person, and knowledge is denied to her absolutely. A subsequently introduced distinction of natures shatters the wording.

Fourth, the answer fails at the comparison point of the series. If the knowledge of the Father and the knowledge of the Son were essentially identical, the logion could not rank the Son below the Father. The graded series demands a real, not merely a nature-modified difference.

Fifth, Acts 1:7 says the same after the resurrection. If the natures answer were to suffice, a correction would have been necessary here: the risen one, in whom the divine nature reigns unbroken, says nevertheless the same as the pre-Easter Son. Scripture does not allow the kenotic auxiliary construction.

Objection 2: “Kenosis — the Son voluntarily laid aside his divine knowledge (Phil 2:7).”

Phil 2:7 itself says nothing about laying aside omniscience. The “emptying” according to its wording refers to the assumption of the “form of a servant,” i.e. to entry into a status of lowliness and obedience. A kenotic theory of a temporary essential reconfiguration is wrung from the verse only by considerable interpretive effort.

Essential predicates of God are not removable. If omniscience belongs to the essence of God (classical doctrine since Anselm), it cannot be temporarily withdrawn without modifying the essence itself. Whoever temporarily surrenders omniscience temporarily surrenders Godhead — but then the Socinian argument holds precisely for that time: the earthly Christ is not the essentially identical God.

Acts 1:7 verifies this. The exalted Christ, not the earthly, tells his disciples that the date remains “in the authority of the Father.” The temporal restriction of the kenotic theory is thus refuted by Scripture itself. The asymmetry between Father and Son persists also after the exaltation.

1 Cor 15:28 confirms it: at the end of the ages the Son himself is subjected to the Father — and this is the final eschatological relation. Whoever at the end of time is himself subjected to the Father is not the essentially identical-omniscient person of the same one God.

Finally: the kenotic theory is an adaptation of christology to the doctrine of the Trinity, not an exegesis of Scripture. It solves the problem of Mark 13:32 only by creating a new and greater problem — a God who temporarily lays aside his attributes and takes them up again. The Socinian reading, simpler and closer to Scripture, is to be preferred: the Son is and remains the man and Messiah sent by the Father.

Objection 3: “John 21:17 — ‘Lord, you know all things.’ Christ is therefore omniscient.”

John 21:17 is Peter's confession, not an objective predicate. Peter is broken in the scene; the three denials are present to him. The expression “you know all things” is idiomatically intensified here: “you know through and through what is in me.” Comparable hyperbolic formulations are found in several places of the NT (cf. John 16:30; 2 Sam 14:20 LXX of David). They are not to be pressed ontologically.

Moreover, after the resurrection Christ has entered into an exalted status in which the Father has given him “all authority” (Matt 28:18). What the exalted Christ knows he has received from the Father. This is Socinianly consistent: Christ knows many things — far more than the disciples suspect — and yet he does not know everything the Father knows. Acts 1:7 confirms this expressly precisely for the exalted Christ.

The hermeneutical principle is: plain and clear statements interpret intensifying hyperboles, not the other way round. Mark 13:32 is syntactically unambiguous and theologically precise. John 21:17 is an emotional confession. Whoever uses the hyperbole to bend the plain statement has reversed hermeneutics.

Objection 4: “John 10:30 — ‘I and the Father are one.’ That establishes essential identity.”

John 10:30 is expressly commented on by John 17:21-23: there Christ prays that the disciples may “be one, as we are one.” If the unity of Father and Son were the essential-identical ontological one, Christ would draw the disciples into the same essential identity — which is obviously not intended. The unity is therefore functional-relational, not ontological-essential.

Moreover, John 10:30 stands in the context of the question whether Christ can let the sheep be snatched out of the Father's hand (vv.28-29). The answer is: no one can snatch them out, because Father and Son cooperate in this protective function. The unity is unity of protection, of mission, of will — not unity of knowledge. Precisely this is confirmed by Mark 13:32: Father and Son are one in mission, but not one in omniscient possession of knowledge.

Hermeneutically the principle holds: Mark 13:32 is clear, John 10:30 is open to interpretation. It is methodologically wrong to reinterpret the clear by the ambiguous. The Socinian hermeneutic — the clear interprets the dark — links the two passages so that neither loses its point: Christ is one with the Father in commission and in protective function (John 10:30); but he does not know what the Father knows (Mark 13:32). Both statements are compatible without essential identity.

Objection 5: “If the Son is not omniscient, he cannot be a divine Saviour.”

Soteriological necessity is not biblical but Anselmian. Anselm's Cur Deus Homo (1098) inferred from a theory of infinite guilt of sin that the Saviour must be God and man at once. Scripture itself does not know this inference; it knows the mediator sent, sanctified, and exalted by the Father. Cf. 1 Timothy 2:5: “one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

For the Socinians soteriology is functional: Christ saves not because he is God but because he is empowered by God to establish the covenant, to confirm it by his dying, and to authenticate it by his being raised (cf. Acts 2:36; Heb 12:24). This soteriology requires no essential-identical omniscience; it requires mission, sanctification, and exaltation. Mark 13:32 does not contradict precisely this Socinian soteriology.

In fact the point is reversed: precisely because Christ does not know everything but remains faithful to the Father in obedience and dedication, his saving work is our model and entry into the new covenant. Heb 5:7-9 brings this to the point: from what he suffered he learned obedience — and so he became the Saviour of those who are tempted. An essential-identical, omniscient second person of the one God cannot in this sense learn, suffer, obey, and so save. Socinian christology ascribes no less to the Saviour; it gives his saving work precisely that human depth which Scripture itself emphasises.

Theological consequences

Related verses

The following passages support, deepen, or contrast the interpretation presented here:

• Mark 12:29 — The Shema: Jesus confesses the one God without counting himself among that one God.
• John 17:3 — The Father, alone true God: the same exclusive subject assignment as in Mark 13:32.
• John 20:17 — Christ goes to “his God”; whoever has a God is not himself that God.
• 1 Corinthians 8:6 — One God (the Father) and one Lord (Christ): a preposition-sharp separation of source and mediation.
• 1 Corinthians 11:3 — God as the head of Christ: the same asymmetric relation.
• 1 Corinthians 15:24 — The Son himself will be subjected: eschatological asymmetry.
• 1 Timothy 2:5 — One God, one mediator, the man Christ Jesus.
• Revelation 1:1 — The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him: Christ as recipient of the revelation.

Summary

Mark 13:32 is one of the textually best-attested sayings of Christ in the New Testament. Jesus himself says of himself that he does not know the day and the hour of judgement — neither the angels nor the Son, but only the Father. The wording is absolute, the subject-assignment exclusive, the series of knowing subjects graded.

The Racovian Catechism (1605) took up this saying as the seventh main argument against the essential-identical divinity of Christ in Socinian dogmatics. The patristic answer of the communicatio idiomatum is a petitio principii that presupposes what is to be proved and founders on the wording — “absolutely and without any restriction.” The kenotic variant contradicts Acts 1:7, where the exalted Christ repeats the same asymmetry of knowledge.

For the Socinians, Mark 13:32 is not a difficulty but a key passage: Jesus is the man and Messiah sent, sanctified, and exalted by the Father, to whom the Father has revealed many things — but not all. His saving work rests not on essential-identical omniscience but on mission, obedience, devotion, and exaltation. Whoever does not let the Son know what the Son himself does not know is not less than faithful to Holy Scripture — he is faithful to Jesus Christ, who himself says: ‘only the Father.’