In an earlier post on this blog, I argued that the doctrine of the Trinity is ultimately incoherent; all of the existing interpretations of this doctrine are contradictory, so it has no determinate meaning. But what about the doctrine of the Incarnation — that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine? This doctrine was developed throughout the 5th century AD, and centers around the claim that Jesus has two natures (physeis), a human one and a divine one. Many unitarians argue that the Incarnation, like the Trinity, is contradictory and incoherent. Is that right?
The incoherence of Christ’s two natures
According to ‘orthodox’ Christology, the single person Jesus is both fully divine and fully human at the same time. On its face, this seems to imply multiple contradictions, because fully divine persons have certain attributes (such as omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence) that are incompatible with the limited attributes of fully human persons. This was recognized in the early church; for example, the Council of Nicaea II in 787 declared, “the one and same Christ [is] both invisible and visible lord, incomprehensible and comprehensible, unlimited and limited, incapable and capable of suffering, inexpressible and expressible in writing.” Thus, every orthodox theologian must affirm at least five apparent contradictions:
- The one and same Christ is both invisible and visible.
- The one and same Christ is both incomprehensible and comprehensible.
- The one and same Christ is both unlimited and limited.
- The one and same Christ is both incapable and capable of suffering.
- The one and same Christ is both inexpressible and expressible in writing.
Historically, this apparent contradiction has been explained by the idea that Jesus has two natures (Gk: physeis), a fully divine nature and a human nature. His divine attributes are held qua his divine nature, and his human attributes are held qua his human nature. This is how Christ’s attributes are explained, for example, in the Tome of Leo, a fifth-century document written by Pope Leo I, which was affirmed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 as the correct basis of the two-natures doctrine. Leo’s Tome says that it was Jesus’ human nature which wept, hung on the cross, was pierced, and said, “The Father is greater than I” (John 14:28), while his divine nature resurrected Lazarus, turned day into night, opened the gates of paradise, and said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).
What exactly is a “nature” (physis)? This has been understood in one of two ways: either as an abstract set of attributes held by a thing, or as a concrete thing which exists by itself. If the abstract interpretation of “nature” is correct, then to say that Jesus has a fully divine nature and a fully human nature simply means that he, as a person, has a full set of divine attributes and a full set of human attributes. This clearly doesn’t solve the contradiction between divine and human attributes, it just restates it in different terms.
For this reason, the concrete interpretation of “nature” has been used more by orthodox theologians. This can be seen in the Tome of Leo itself; only a concrete, existing thing can weep, hang on a cross, raise the dead, and speak. Timothy Pawl has defended orthodox Christology along this very line of reasoning — the apparent contradiction between “unchangeable” and “changeable,” for example, can be reconciled if the term “unchangeable” is interpreted to mean “has a concrete nature that is unchangeable” (and the same for “changeable”). [1] Christ, as the only person with two concrete natures, can therefore have two conflicting attributes that would only be contradictory if applied to a person with only one concrete nature.
However, a problem with this account arises if we consider other attributes. God is necessarily omniscient, and the man Jesus did not know all things (cf. Mark 13:32; Luke 2:40; John 8:40); God can’t be tempted, and Jesus was tempted in every way like us (cf. Matt. 4:1-11; Heb. 2:18; 4:15; Jas. 1:13). Knowledge and temptation aren’t had by impersonal concrete natures, but by persons (what would it mean for an impersonal nature to “know” or be “tempted” by something?). If both of Jesus’ natures have such attributes, it seems that Jesus is two persons, which is the ‘heresy’ of Nestorianism, incompatible with ‘orthodox’ Christology. Pawl argues that Jesus’ human nature would have been limited in knowledge and temptable if it were a separate person, which resolves the problem. [2] However, this fails to grapple with the Scriptural data, which say that Jesus was really unaware of certain facts and was really tempted like us (Mark 13:32; Heb. 2:18; 4:15).
In summary, the idea that Christ (a single person) has two natures, because of which he can have inconsistent attributes without contradiction, appears to be incoherent. If we interpret “nature” as an abstract set of attributes, then it does nothing to resolve the apparent contradictions. On the other hand, if we interpret “nature” as a concrete, existing thing with its own attributes, then it seems that we have two persons in Christ, because the two natures differ in knowledge and temptability (attributes that are held by persons rather than impersonal natures).
The incoherence of Christ’s consciousness
We’ve now seen how the idea of “two natures” in Christ leads to incoherence. However, this isn’t the only problem with ‘orthodox’ Christology. If we consider how Christ experiences the world, the Christology of the creeds appears to affirm an inconsistent triad. In logic, an inconsistent tetrad is a set of four propositions that lead to a logical contradiction if taken together; therefore, one or more of the propositions must be denied. The inconsistent tetrad implied by the Incarnation is:
- God is necessarily omnipresent and omniscient.
- Jesus is only one person (i.e., has one first-person perspective).
- Jesus has a human first-person perspective.
- Jesus is God (i.e., has a nature that is divine in the same way as the Father).
First, let’s see why all these propositions are inconsistent. To briefly define our terms, a “first-person perspective” is a way that an entity experiences the world, and a “person” is something that has a first-person perspective. The way that a human experiences the world is through one’s senses (some combination of sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste) mediated through one’s body. Based on all our experience, it appears that the human first-person perspective is necessarily limited; although it’s plausible that God could allow someone to have an ‘out-of-body experience’ where they perceive things outside of the range of their body (e.g., 2 Cor. 12:1-4), such OBEs are still seen from a single point of view. If, for the sake of argument, every human has a soul that can exist apart from their body (contra Genesis 2:7), the human first-person perspective is still a single, limited POV.
In contrast, God, because he is necessarily omnipresent and omniscient (according to Claim 1), experiences everything in the universe all at once. The divine first-person perspective, therefore, is incompatible with the human first-person perspective; the former has an infinite and unlimited POV, whereas the latter has a single, limited POV. One person (i.e., an entity with a single first-person perspective) cannot have both a divine and human first-person perspective. Therefore, if Jesus was one person (Claim 2), he cannot have a human first-person perspective (Claim 3) in addition to a fully divine first-person perspective (Claim 4). The tetrad of claims is inconsistent; logically, all four cannot be true at the same time, because they entail a contradiction.
How can Incarnation Christology get around this inconsistent tetrad? Anyone who adheres to orthodox Christology must deny one or more of these claims for their position to be logically coherent. Claim 1 can’t be denied by any monotheist, because it follows from the fact that the God of monotheism is the ground of all being who sustains all existence. Nothing can live or exist apart from him, as confirmed in the Scriptures (e.g., Job 12:7-10; 34:13-15; Ps. 104:29-30; Acts 17:25-28), and assumed by all the early church theologians. Because nothing can exist apart from God, he must exist where anything else exists (omnipresence), and must have maximal knowledge about everything (omniscience).
Claim 2 could be denied by an orthodox theologian, though not without some difficulty. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 explicitly affirmed that Jesus is only one person and not two persons (“our Lord Jesus Christ... [is] one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son”). There’s some ambiguity here, as the later Council of Constantinople III in 681 declared that Jesus has two wills (divine and human), the latter of which perfectly submits to the former. This could be taken to mean that Jesus has two centers of consciousness, as argued by Richard Swinburne and Thomas Morris. However, this view is only consistent with the creeds in a “restricted” form, where Jesus has one stream of consciousness, one first-person perspective, shared by two minds (a modified affirmation of Claim 2). [3] The fact that Jesus is only one person (i.e., has one first-person perspective) should also be self-evident from the Scriptures, which consistently portray Jesus as a single person with singular pronouns.
Claim 3 has been denied by some orthodox theologians, such as Athanasius, who claimed that Jesus’ consciousness was fully omnipresent and omniscient even while “existing in a human body, to which he himself gives life” (On the Incarnation 17). But it’s not clear how this can be distinguished from Docetism, the belief that Jesus merely appeared to be a man, which was explicitly denied by the authors of the New Testament (e.g., John 1:14; 8:40; Rom. 5:15-19; 1 Cor. 15:20-22, 45-49; 1 Tim. 2:5; 1 John 4:2; 2 John 7; Heb. 2:6-9, 14-17). If Jesus was omnipresent and omniscient, not experiencing the world through his body but merely puppeteering that body, then in what sense did he “become man,” as the creeds require every orthodox theologian to affirm? And if that is “becoming man,” how did God not “become man” when he previously manifested in a human body (e.g., in Exodus 24:9-11)? Furthermore, the 381 Council of Constantinople and 431 Council of Ephesus affirmed that Jesus’ human nature includes a “human rational soul,” against the Apollinarians who claimed otherwise.
Finally, as should be obvious, no ‘orthodox’ theologian can deny Claim 4. The claim that Jesus has a fully divine nature, to the same extent as the Father is divine, is implied by the trinitarian interpretation of homoousios (“same essence”) that was asserted about Jesus and the Father at the 381 Council of Constantinople and every ecumenical council afterward. Unlike the claim that Jesus is a man (Claim 3), this claim is not made anywhere in the Scriptures; at most, this claim is barely implicit in the Bible, and was only decided after three hundred years of debate in the proto-orthodox church. [4]
Thus, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to deny any of the claims of the inconsistent tetrad and remain within the bounds of ‘orthodoxy.’ The only claims that could potentially be denied are Claim 2 and Claim 3. The denial of the former is nearly or fully Nestorian, as it means that Jesus had two first-person perspectives (which implies that he/they was/were two persons). [5] The denial of the latter is nearly or fully Docetic and/or Apollinarian, as it means that Jesus was merely puppeteering his body, without adding anything to God’s first-person perspective, like in the theophanies of the Old Testament (e.g., Exodus 24:9-11). [6]
But what if the tetrad of claims isn’t inconsistent after all? Some orthodox theologians insist that Jesus had one (human) first-person perspective, and his divine ‘mind’ was merely in his subconscious, although his (human) conscious mind may or may not have been able to access it at will. [7] This might seem to resolve the inconsistent tetrad, but in reality it amounts to a denial of either Claim 1 or 4. As the ground of all being, God actively sustains the existence of all things (Acts 17:25-28); he’s not merely potentially omnipresent and omniscient (which would be a denial of Claim 1), but actually so. The orthodox theologian may object that the Father continues to sustain all things while Jesus is incarnated as human; however, this means that Jesus is not fully divine in the same way as the Father (denial of Claim 4). The tetrad of claims continues to be inconsistent. In order to affirm Claims 1, 3, and 4, it must be said that Jesus actively has two streams of consciousness, which amounts to a denial of Claim 2 (that Jesus is one person).
The incoherence of Christ’s death
We’ve already seen that orthodox Christology implies a contradiction about Christ’s consciousness. Jesus, who is one person, cannot have both a fully human and fully divine first-person perspective, as the two are incompatible. In fact, another set of inconsistent claims about Christ is implied by orthodox Christology, this time about his death:
- God cannot die.
- Jesus died.
- Jesus is God.
...by nature the Word of God is of itself immortal and incorruptible and life and life-giving, but since on the other hand his own body by God’s grace, as the apostle says, tasted death for all, the Word is said to have suffered death for us, not as if he himself had experienced death as far as his own nature was concerned (it would be sheer lunacy to say or to think that), but because, as I have just said, his flesh tasted death.
Likewise, the Tome of Leo, affirmed at the 451 Council of Chalcedon, states:
To pay off the debt of our state, invulnerable nature was united to a nature that could suffer; so that in a way that corresponded to the remedies we needed, one and the same mediator between God and humanity the man Christ Jesus, could both on the one hand die and on the other be incapable of death.
Once again, this runs into the problem of what it means to say that two contradictory attributes can be held qua two different natures.
If the two natures are understood as abstract sets of attributes that are held by a single person, then this simply mean that Jesus (as divine) could not die and (as human) died, which is an obvious contradiction. If the two natures are understood as concrete things, one of which could not die and one of which died, it seems that we have two persons here, because “death” is something that happens to a person, not an impersonal nature. If they are understood as two different types of attributes, such that Jesus ‘human-died’ but did not ‘divine-die,’ what does this mean? Does it just mean that his bodily functions ceased, while his conscious experience (omnipresent and omniscient) remained exactly the same? If so, this can’t be understood as “death” without making the term meaningless. This latter view is hard to distinguish from Docetism, as it means that Jesus was only ‘human’ insofar as he puppeteered a human body.
Finally, what if we deny Claim 3, that Jesus has a nature that is fully divine to the same extent as the Father? Ironically, this is the only one of the three claims that can’t be denied by any orthodox theologian (because it’s explicitly affirmed by the creeds), as well as the only claim that isn’t explicitly affirmed in the Scriptures (at best, it’s an inference which took three hundred years to discover). The orthodox theologian is therefore faced with a trilemma. They must either affirm the creeds and deny Claim 1 and/or 2 (which are explicitly affirmed by the Scriptures), affirm Claims 1 and 2 in agreement with the Scriptures and deny the creeds, or show how the triad of claims is somehow consistent (which so far has proved fruitless).
The mysterian objection
What if, as some orthodox theologians do, we simply say that the Incarnation is a mystery that can’t be understood by humans? Of course, there are some things that we can never understand about God, because his ways are far above ours (Isa. 40:28; 55:8-9; Rom. 11:33-36; 1 Cor. 2:11). This is much different than the claim that our faith may include true contradictions. Most people will agree that contradictions, by definition, cannot be true, and with good reason: we know from classical logic that a contradiction, if true, would entail the truth of every single proposition (known as the “principle of explosion”). [9] Even if it were possible for God to create a contradiction, such as a square circle or a married bachelor, this would break reality in a way that we know from experience has never happened.
For this reason, mysterian theologians typically shy away from the claim that the Incarnation implies a true contradiction. (For a mysterian account which does argue that the Incarnation is truly contradictory, and that contradictions can be both true and false, by applying a non-classical system of logic, see Jc Beall’s The Contradictory Christ.) Instead, they argue that even though the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation haven’t yet been interpreted in a way that’s non-contradictory, there may be a non-contradictory interpretation out there that we simply don’t yet (or can’t) understand. [10] Therefore, unitarians and other detractors of these doctrines aren’t justified in claiming that they’re contradictory.
However, as I argued in my article on the incoherence of the Trinity, this approach ends up destroying the very doctrine that it seeks to save. If the doctrine of the Incarnation can’t be understood by anyone, then those who affirm it are merely repeating a shibboleth that has no determinable meaning, just because the church says that they must, and ‘heretics’ like unitarians are shut out just for the crime of failing to believe a meaningless statement! We can’t even know whether this doctrine is taught in the Scriptures, because we don’t know what it means! Thus, the measure of true faith becomes one’s willingness to blindly follow authority and repeat a statement that is utterly void of determinate meaning. I have a hard time believing that God expects this of us.
Conclusion
The doctrine of the Incarnation, as described in the ecumenical councils of ‘orthodox’ Christianity, is incoherent in several ways. First, it explicitly attributes at least five pairs of contradictory attributes to Christ, and tries to reconcile this via the idea of Christ’s ‘two natures.’ However, if we interpret each nature as an abstract set of properties, it fails to resolve the contradiction, and if we interpret them as concrete things instead, it implies that there are two persons in Christ. Second, it also implies a contradiction about Christ’s consciousness, by requiring us to affirm an inconsistent tetrad of claims about how Jesus experiences the world. Finally, it also requires us to affirm the inconsistent triad that (1) God cannot die, (2) Jesus died, and (3) Jesus is God.
Rather than accepting an incoherent and meaningless doctrine solely on the basis of church authority, it would be better for Protestants, if not also Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, to return to the Scriptures and see if it really requires us to affirm this doctrine. Fortunately, it doesn’t. The New Testament never explicitly says that Christ has a nature that is fully divine to the same extent as the Father — this view took centuries for the early church to develop after the NT was written. On the contrary, it presents Jesus as “a man attested by God” who was “made Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:22, 36); the perfect, sinless, human Lamb who was exalted to become Lord of the universe because of his obedience to his God. [11]
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[1] Timothy Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay (Oxford: OUP, 2016); note that although Pawl’s account isn’t strictly contradictory, I believe he is (unintentionally) changing the subject, as the councils state that it’s “the one and same Christ” who has these attributes, rather than one or another of his concrete natures.
[2] Dale Tuggy, interview with Timothy Pawl, Dr. Timothy Pawl’s In Defense of Extended Conciliar Christology – Part 2, Trinities, podcast audio, 14 October 2019, 22:10.
[3] Tim Bayne, “The inclusion model of the Incarnation: problems and prospects,” Religious Studies 37 (2001): 125-141.
[4] For the history of development of Christian theology in the 1st through 4th centuries, see my blog post series about “The evolution of early Christian theology.” See also R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318-381 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark Ltd., 1988) for a great scholarly treatment of how trinitarianism emerged from the theological upheavals of the 4th century AD.
[5] Nestorianism is the belief that Jesus is two persons, which was officially condemned by the catholic church at the 451 Council of Chalcedon.
[6] Docetism is the belief that Jesus merely appeared to be human, which was condemned by the creedal declaration that Jesus “became man.” Apollinarianism is the belief that Jesus was merely a divine soul within a human body, completely replacing the human soul, which was condemned by the catholic church at the 381 Council of Constantinople.
[7] For an explanation and defense of this view, see Andrew Loke, “The Incarnation and Jesus’ Apparent Limitation in Knowledge,” New Blackfriars 94 (2013), 583-602.
[8] Although I believe that death is the cessation of existence, this is supposed to be an inconsistent triad implied by ‘orthodox’ theology, and ‘orthodox’ theology believes that the soul continues to exist after death. On the other hand, everyone agrees that death is the cessation of normal life functions, otherwise death is literally meaningless.
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion
[10] Dale Tuggy, “Trinity [4.1],” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 20 November 2020, accessed 5 May 2024, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/#NegMys.
[11] To see what the Scriptures actually teach about the nature of God and Jesus, see my blog post, “The Biblical Case for Unitarianism.”
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