Question · FaithLogic
If Jesus is God, why does he say he does not know the day or hour (Mark 13:32)?
Because the eternal Son took a complete human nature, including a real human mind that "increased in wisdom" (Luke 2:52). Things can be true of him as man that are not true of him as God. The same Gospels say he knows people's thoughts and "knows all things" (John 16:30; 21:17), and John 16:15 says "everything that the Father has is Mine." The saying itself is a call to stay watchful because the time is deliberately hidden — and the disclosure of the day is reserved to the Father (Acts 1:7).
In more depth
The objection reads one sentence in isolation. Put it back in its Gospel and three things change.
In John's Gospel the disciples tell Jesus, "Now we know that You know all things" (John 16:30); after the resurrection Peter says, "Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You" (John 21:17). Jesus perceives thoughts directly (Mark 2:8), "knew all men" and "knew what was in man" (John 2:24–25). And John 16:15: "Everything that the Father has is Mine." A flat claim that the Son lacks knowledge cannot be the point.
Historic Christian teaching is that the Son did not merely appear human — he took a complete human nature, body and rational human soul, without ceasing to be God (Definition of Chalcedon, 451). He "increased in wisdom and stature" (Luke 2:52). Statements can therefore be true of the one person according to his humanity that are not true of him according to his deity. As God the Son he upholds all things (Hebrews 1:3); in the days of his earthly ministry he did not carry the timing of the end in his human consciousness. This is the same person, two ranges of experience — not two gods, and not a demoted one.
The whole discourse is a command to be ready because the time is hidden: "Be on your guard and stay alert! For you do not know when the appointed time will come" (Mark 13:33). Jesus lists who does not disclose the day — angels, the Son — precisely to end date-setting. After the resurrection he says the same thing another way: "It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has set by His own authority" (Acts 1:7). The timing is reserved to the Father as the one who sends.
None of the Fathers concluded the Son was a creature; every one of them held his full deity and read the verse inside it. Athanasius (Against the Arians 3.42–50) argues that the Word, as the Father's own Wisdom, knows all things, and that the ignorance belongs to the human nature he took for us. Gregory of Nazianzus (Oration 30.15) assigns the not-knowing to the manhood, not the Godhead. Basil (Letter 236) offers both that the Son's knowledge, like his being, has its source in the Father, and the "economic" reading that he withholds rather than lacks the day. Augustine (On the Trinity 1.12) takes "he did not know" as a form of speech — it was not his to make the disciples know.
In the Matthew parallel (24:36) some later manuscripts drop "nor the Son." That omission is a scribal softening; the harder reading is original. The wording of Mark 13:32 has never been in doubt — and the church has always been able to hold it together with the deity of Christ.
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