“For they asked: “How do the Christians hold that this Man as God when He did not even know the place where the dead Lazarus was lying?” And it is true that the Savior did ask the sisters of Lazarus, Martha and Mary: “Where have you laid him?” Therefore, they say: “Do you see that He did not know? Do you see His weakness? Is this man God? He did not even know the place!”

You are saying that Christ did not know because he said: “Where have you laid him?” Then the Father also failed to know, in paradise, where Adam was hiding. For the Father went about as if He were looking for Adam in the garden. And then He said: “Adam, where are you,” just as if He were asking “Where did you hide yourself?” Why did God not first mention the place where Adam used to approach Him with confidence and talk with Him? “Adam, where are you?” And what did Adam say? “I heard your voice as you walked in the garden; I was afraid because I am naked and I hid myself.”I; If you are calling this ignorance, then call Christ’s question ignorance also. Christ indeed did ask the women who were with Martha and Mary: “Where have you laid him?: But do you call this ignorance? What, then, will you say when you hear God asking Cain: “Where is your brother Abel?” What will you say? If  you call this a fault of ignorance on the part of the Father, then call Christ’s question a fault of ignorance. Listen to another proof from the sacred Scriptures. God said to Abraham: “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah has to come to me. Therefore shall go down and see whether or not their actions match the outcry against them which has come to me, so that I may know.” The one who knows all things before they come to pass, the God who searches hearts and minds. he who knows the thoughts of men is the one and only one who has said: “Therefore, I shall go down and see whether or not their actions match the outcry against them which comes to me, so that I may know.” If that means that God does not know, then Christ’s question means that Christ did not know. But neither was the Father in ignorance in the Old Testament nor, in the New Testament, did the Son fail to know. What, then, did the Father mean when he said: “I shall go down and see whether or not their actions match the outcry against them which comes to me, so that I may know?”

What the Father is saying is this: “A report came to me. But I wish again to test this rumor more exactly in the light of the facts. I do not do this because I do not know. I do it because I wish to teach men not to heed words alone nor to believe them recklessly if someone speaks them against another.” Men must believe what they hear only after they have first made an exact search and considered well the proof in the light of the facts. And this is why God said in another Scriptural passage: “Believe not every word.”For nothing is so destructive of men’s lives as for a person to give quick credence to whatever people say. The prophet David was proclaiming a divine revelation when he said: “Whoever slanders his neighbor in secret, him have I banished and pursued.”

You saw how there was no fault of ignorance in the Savior when he said: “Where have you laid him?” Nor was there any want of knowledge in the Father when he said to Adam: “Where are you,” or when he said to Cain: “Where is your brother Abel,” or when he said: “I shall go down and see whether or not their actions match the outcry against them which comes to me, so that I may know.” Is it not time now to  form ranks against those who say that it was through weakness that Christ first prayed and then raised Lazarus to life?