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 Abraham577    Gen. xxii. 12: see c. 64., 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.

71. Pater ideo solus diem scit, quia soli Filio non tacet: Filius nescit, quia nulli revelat.---Sed forte id, quod solum Patrem Filius ait scire, Filium, qui se nescire dixerit, nescire confirmet. Nisi plane Patrem 0338A solum scire dixisset, maximi periculi res intelligentiae nostrae relinqueretur, ne forte existimaretur ipse nescire. Nam cum in eo, quod nescit, dispensatio ei potius, absconditae scientiae, quam natura sit nesciendi; per id quoque nunc, quod solus Pater scit, non ignorasse credendus est: quia, sicut superius docuimus, scientia apud Deum, non cognoscendi id quod nescierit intelligentia est, sed loquendi. Et per id, quod solus Pater scit, Filius non intelligitur nescire; cum Filius idcirco nescire se dicat, ne et alii sciant: et Patrem ob id solum dicat scire, ne et ipse non nesciat. Si enim tunc cognovisse Deus dicitur, amari se ab Abraham, cum hoc non celavit Abrahae (Gen. XXII, 12); necesse est, ut et Pater diem ob id scire dicatur, quia non celaverit Filium, 0338B Deo scientiam non de repentina cognitione sumente, sed in tempore protestante. Si itaque et diem Filius secundum sacramentum nescit, ut taceat; e contrario necesse est, ideo diem Pater solus ostendatur scire, quia non tacet.