Joe:

While Jesus thinks he is casting out a demon, the Father is really curing epilepsy. But instead of revealing this knowledge to Jesus, he lets him remain wrong in his belief and even allows him to talk about it in front of his disciples.

I’ve not been following this discussion in too much detail, but I don’t recall anybody saying that. I wonder if part of the problem here is our western mania for categorisation: either this is a medical problem, or it is demon possession.

Another possibility: demons exploited vulnerable people – indeed, partly exploited the very belief that epilepsy and mental illness were demonic – in order to oppose the ministry of Jesus.

More generally, I think we should also avoid the word “ignorant” in this context, as the word is too much of a value-judgment. First-century people weren’t “ignorant” of what centuries of scientific and medical research have unearthed; they just “didn’t know” it.

So while I instinctively shy away from saying Jesus was “ignorant” of something we know today, I don’t have any problem with saying Jesus “didn’t know” about these issues during his earthly ministry. The alternative is a Star Trek theology in which (as Raja pointed out) Jesus knew all sorts of things – medical, scientific, historical (to us) – that could have saved or improved the lives of countless millions of people, but chose not to, presumably to avoid violating some divine equivalent of the Prime Directive.

Now that may be true (despite the snarky way in which I’ve expressed it), but it is far from unproblematic – and has little or no support from the text, in contrast to a view which says that Jesus’ knowledge during his earthly ministry was in some way limited (which has Matthew 24:36 and parallels in its support, for starters).

How do we decide what we can be certain of today, and what won’t be found to be folk superstition in another 2,000 years?

We can’t! Isn’t it great? (jn)

We’ll just have to make do with things like the following:

Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, “was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25); and he alone is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29); and “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6); furthermore, “All have sinned,” and “they are now justified without merit by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…by his blood” (Romans 3:23-25).