68. Manifestly, therefore, the ignorance of God is
not ignorance but a mystery: in the economy of His actions and
words and manifestations, He does not know and at the same time He
knows, or knows and at the same time does not know. But we must
ask, whether it may not be through the Son’s infirmity that He
knows not what the Father knows. He could perhaps read the
thoughts of the human heart, because His stronger nature can unite
itself with a weaker in all its movements, and by the force of its
power, as it were, pass through and through the feeble nature.
But a weaker nature is powerless to penetrate a stronger: light
things may be penetrated by heavy, rare by dense, liquid by solid, but
the heavy are impenetrable to the light, the dense to the rare, and the
solid to the liquid: the strong are not exposed to the weak, but
the weak are penetrated by the strong. Therefore, the heretics
say, the Son knew not the thoughts of the Father, because, being
Himself weak, He could not approach the more powerful and enter into
Him, or pass through Him.