71. But perhaps it may be held to confirm the Son in His confession of ignorance that He says the Father alone knows. But unless He had plainly said that the Father alone knows, it would have been a matter of the greatest danger for our understanding, since we might have thought that He Himself did not know. For, since His ignorance is due to the economy of hidden knowledge, and not to a nature capable of ignorance, now that He says the Father alone knows, we cannot believe that He does not know; for, as we said above, God's knowledge is not the discovery of what He did not know, but its declaration. The fact that the Father alone knows, is no proof that the Son is ignorant: He says that He does not know, that others may not know: that the Father alone knows, to shew that He Himself also knows. If we say that God came to know the love of Abraham [1084] , when He ceased to conceal His knowledge, it follows that only because He did not conceal it from the Son, can the Father be said to know the day, for God does not learn by sudden perception, but declares His knowledge with the occasion. If, then, the Son according to the mystery does not know the day, that He may not reveal it: on the other hand, only by the fact that He has revealed it can the Father be proved to know the day.
72. Far be it from us to imagine vicissitudes of bodily change in the Father and Son, as though the Father sometimes spoke to the Son, and sometimes was silent. We remember, indeed, that a voice was sometimes uttered from heaven for us, that the power of the Father's words might confirm for us the mystery of the Son, as the Lord says, This voice hath not come from Heaven for My sake but for your sakes [1085] . But the divine nature can dispense with the various combinations necessary for human functions, the motion of the tongue, the adjustment of the mouth, the forcing of the breath, and the vibration of the air. God is a simple Being: we must understand Him by devotion, and confess Him by reverence. He is to be worshipped, not pursued by our senses, for a conditioned and weak nature cannot grasp with the guesses of its imagination the mystery of an infinite and omnipotent nature. In God is no variability, no parts, as of a composite divinity, that in Him will should follow inaction, speech silence, or work rest, or that He should not will, without passing from some other mental state to volition, or speak, without breaking the silence with His voice, or act, without going forth to labour. He is not subject to the laws of nature, for nature has received its law from Him: He never suffers weakness or change when He acts, for His power is boundless, as the Lord said, Father, all things are possible unto Thee [1086] . He can do more than human sense can conceive. The Lord does not deprive even Himself of the quality of omnipotence, for He says, What things soever the Father doeth, these the Son also doeth in like manner [1087] . Nothing is difficult, when there is no weakness; for only a power which is weak to effect, knows the need of effort. The cause of difficulty is the weakness of the motive force; a force of limitless power rises above the conditions of impotence.
73. We have established this point to exclude the idea that after silence God spoke to the Son, or after ignorance the Son began to know. To reach our intelligence terms must be used applicable to our own nature: thus we do not understand communication except by word of mouth, or comprehend the opposite of nescience except as knowledge. Thus the Son does not know the day for the reason that He does not reveal it: the Father, He says, alone knows it for the reason that He reveals it to the Son alone. But, as we have said, Christ is conscious of no such natural impediments as an ignorance which must be removed before He can come to know, or a knowledge which is not His before the Father begins to speak. He declares the unity of His nature, as the only-begotten, with the Father, by the unmistakable words, All things whatsoever the Father hath, are Mine [1088] . There is no mention here of coming into possession: it is one thing, to be the Possessor of things external to Him; another, to be self-contained and self-existent. The former is to possess heaven and earth and the universe, the latter to be able to describe Himself by His own properties, which are His, not as something external and subject, but as something of which He Himself subsists. When He says, therefore, that all things which the Father has, are His, He alludes to the divine nature, and not to a joint ownership of gifts bestowed. For referring to His words that the Holy Spirit should take of His [1089] , He says, All things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine, therefore said I, He shall take of Mine: that is, the Holy Spirit takes of His, but takes also of the Father's: and if He receives of the Father's, He receives also of His. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, and does not receive of a creature, but teaches us that He receives all these gifts, because they are all God's. All things that belong to the Father are the Spirit's; but we must not think that whatever He received of the Son, He did not receive of the Father also; for all that the Father hath belongs equally to the Son.
74. So the nature of Christ needed no change, or question, or answer, that it should advance from ignorance to knowledge, or ask of One Who had continued in silence, and wait to receive His answer: but, abiding perfectly in mysterious unity with Him, it received of God its whole being as it derived from Him its origin. And, further, it received all that belonged to the whole being of God, namely, His knowledge and His will. What the Father knows, the Son does not learn by question and answer; what the Father wills, the Son does not will by command. Since all that the Father has, is His, it is the property of His nature to will and know, exactly as the Father wills and knows. But to prove His birth He often expounds the doctrine of His Person, as when He says, I came not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me. [1090] He does the Father's will, not His own, and by the will of Him that sent Me, He means His Father. But that He Himself wills the same, is unmistakeably declared in the words, Father, those whom Thou hast given Me, I will, that, where I am, they also may be with Me [1091] . The Father wills that we should be with Christ, in Whom, according to the Apostle, He chose us before the foundation of the world [1092] , and the Son wills the same, namely that we should be with Him. His will is, therefore, the same in nature as the Father's will, though to make plain the fact of the birth it is distinguished from the Father's.
75. The Son is ignorant, then, of nothing which the Father knows, nor does it follow because the Father alone knows, that the Son does not know. Father and Son abide in unity of nature, and the ignorance of the Son belongs to the divine Plan of silence, seeing that in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. This the Lord Himself testified, when He answered the question of the Apostles concerning the times, It is not yours to know times or moments, which the Father hath set within His own authority [1093] . The knowledge is denied them, and not only that, but the anxiety to learn is forbidden, because it is not theirs to know these times. Yet now that He is risen, they ask again, though their question on the former occasion had been met with the reply, that not even the Son knew. They cannot possibly have understood literally that the Son did not know, for they ask Him again as though He did know. They perceived in the mystery of His ignorance a divine Plan of silence, and now, after His resurrection, they renew the question, thinking that the time has come to speak. And the Son no longer denies that He knows, but tells them that it is not theirs to know, because the Father has set it within His own authority. If then, the Apostles attributed it to the divine Plan, and not to weakness, that the Son did not know the day, shall we say that the Son knew not the day for the simple reason that He was not God? Remember, God the Father set the day within His authority, that it might not come to the knowledge of man, and the Son, when asked before, replied that He did not know, but now, no longer denying His knowledge, replies that it is theirs not to know, for the Father has set the times not in His own knowledge, but in His own authority. The day and the moment are included in the word times': can it be, then, that He, Who was to restore Israel to its kingdom, did not Himself know the day and the moment of that restoration? He instructs us to see an evidence of His birth in this exclusive prerogative of the Father, yet He does not deny that He knows: and while He proclaims that the possession of this knowledge is withheld from ourselves, He asserts that it belongs to the mystery of the Father's authority.
[1094] We must not therefore think, because He said He did not know the day and the moment, that the Son did not know. As man He wept, and slept, and sorrowed, but God is incapable of tears, or fear, or sleep. According to the weakness of His flesh He shed tears, slept, hungered, thirsted, was weary, and feared, yet without impairing the reality of His Only-begotten nature; equally so must we refer to His human nature, the words that He knew not the day or the hour.
[958] St. John x. 30.
[959] Col. ii. 8, 9.
[960] Subsistentis Christi = subsistentia distincti Christi (see footnote in the Benedictine Edition). God the Father dwelt in Christ. But the Dweller must be personally distinct from Christ, in Whom He dwelt: and as the only distinction between the Father and Christ is that of Begetter and Begotten, therefore the words God dwelt in Christ' prove the generation of Christ.
[961] St. John xiv. 9.
[962] Ib. x. 38.
[963] Ib. 30.
[964] Ib. xvi. 15.
[965] St. Mark x. 18 (cf. St. Matt. xix. 17, St. Luke xviii. 19). The Greek is oudeis agathos, ei me heis ho theos, save one, even God' (R.V.). The application of this text by the Arians depends upon the omission of the article ho.
[966] St. John xvii. 3.
[967] St. John v. 19.
[968] Ib. xiv. 28.
[969] St. Mark xiii. 32; cf. St. Matt. xxiv. 36.
[970] Alluding to St. John xvii. 3, quoted in c. 2.
[971] St. Matt. x. 32, 33.
[972] The three periods referred to in these three sentences are 1) before the Incarnation: we can assign only to His Godhead the words Christ uses in reference to this period, because He was not yet man. 2) The Incarnation: we must distinguish whether He is speaking of Himself as man or as God. 3) After the Resurrection, when His manhood remains, but is perfected in the Godhead.
[973] Col. ii. 8-10.
[974] Phil. iii. 21.
[975] Phil. ii. 10, 11. The Greek is eis doxan, k.t.l. to the glory of God the Father' (R.V.). There is also another reading in Hilary's text in this place, in gloriam' instead of in gloria;' but the latter is demanded by the context. See c. 42.
[976] Col. ii. 11, 12.
[977] Ib. 13-15.
[978] See I. 13.
[979] St. John x. 17, 18.
[980] Ib. ii. 19.
[981] 1 Cor. i. 24.
[982] 2 Cor. xiii. 4.
[983] Rom. vi. 10, 11.
[984] St. Mark x. 18; cf. St. Matt. xix. 17; St. Luke xviii. 19, and note on c. 2 of this book.
[985] St. Matt. xi. 28, 30.
[986] Ib. xix. 16.
[987] Rom. x. 4.
[988] St. Matt. xv. 24; cf. x. 6.
[989] Cf. Rom. viii. 3, "What the law could not do;" and Gal. iii. 11 ff., "No man is justified by the law in the sight of God....The law is not of faith."
[990] St. John xiii. 13.
[991] St. Matt. xxiii. 10.
[992] i.e. including personal distinction from the Father, cf. c. 1, and note.