In one of my posts last year, I argued that the doctrine of the incarnation – that Jesus is a fully divine and fully human person – is ultimately incoherent, because it can’t be interpreted in a non-contradictory way. In particular, there are three main ways that this doctrine appears to be contradictory: because God’s attributes and human attributes are incompatible; because one person can’t have both a divine and a human consciousness; and because Jesus couldn’t have died if he was divine. However, like the Trinity, the incarnation might not be contradictory if it’s understood within the framework of classical theism that was accepted by the people who formulated this doctrine. In this post, I’ll try to show how the incarnation might be coherent if it’s interpreted in this framework.
(Note: Again, just because the incarnation can be coherent doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s true. But unitarians, non-Chalcedonian trinitarians, and Chalcedonians should be intellectually honest and interpret each others’ doctrines in the strongest possible way.)
The problem of the incarnation
According to the creed promulgated at the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451), “one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ... [is] perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, truly God and truly human”. This creed is considered to be the definition of orthodox (Chalcedonian) Christology (OCC). However, this seems to lead to several contradictions, since God’s attributes are incompatible with human attributes. The Council of Nicaea II (AD 787) declared, “the one and same Christ [is] both invisible and visible lord, incomprehensible and comprehensible, unlimited and limited, incapable and capable of being affected, inexpressible and expressible in writing.” Therefore, every adherent of OCC must affirm at least five apparent contradictions:
1. Christ is invisible and visible.
2. Christ is incomprehensible and comprehensible.
3. Christ is unlimited and limited.
4. Christ is incapable and capable of being affected.
5. Christ is inexpressible and expressible in writing.
The law of non-contradiction states that nothing can be both A and not-A at the same time and in the same way. In order to make these axioms self-consistent, an adherent of OCC must say that Christ doesn’t have these conflicting attributes at the same time and/or in the same way. Here, I’ll focus on the fourth claim, that Christ is incapable of being affected (impassible) and capable of being affected (passible), as a test case.
Solutions to the problem
The reduplicative move
The most common way that OCC theologians try to solve the Problem is by appealing to the doctrine of Christ’s two natures. The Council of Chalcedon proclaimed that Jesus has “two natures... the distinction between natures is in no way taken away by the union, but the property of each nature is preserved, and concur in one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons”. Based on this, many theologians take the route of saying that Christ isn’t impassible and passible in the same way, because he’s impassible qua his divine nature and passible qua his human nature. This move is known as reduplication.
4*. Christ is impassible qua divine and passible qua human.
However, this revised claim is imprecise. The statement that “Christ is passible qua human” could be interpreted in three different ways, depending on which word “qua human” modifies. In other words, it could mean that “Christ-qua-human is passible,” that “Christ is-qua-human passible,” or that “Christ is passible-qua-human.”
If it’s interpreted the first way (“Christ-qua-human is passible”), then we have three different things here: Christ, Christ-qua-human, and Christ-qua-divine. But are these three things identical or not? If they are, then this does nothing to solve the Problem because impassible and passible are still being predicated of the same thing in the same way. If they aren’t identical, then the predicates that are true of Christ-qua-divine and Christ-qua-human (“impassible” and “passible,” respectively) can’t be truly predicated of Christ simpliciter. But this is contrary to OCC, which says that Christ’s divine and human attributes are truly applied to Christ himself, not just two different parts of him.
If it’s interpreted the second way (“Christ is-qua-human passible”), then there must be two different ways to predicate attributes of Christ: being-qua-divine and being-qua-human. But this would require an unusual system of logic that allows predicating attributes of the same thing in different ways; in our standard system of logic, “is-qua-X” simply collapses into “is” (Pawl 2020, 49-50). For that reason, this interpretation can be pretty safely discarded.
If it’s interpreted the third way (“Christ is passible-qua-human”), then “passible” means something different when it refers to God and when it refers to humans. But traditionally, theologians have held that attributes are predicated analogically of God and humans, that is, in a similar way, and not univocally (in exactly the same way) or equivocally (in a totally different way). This interpretation of OCC requires us to predicate some attributes equivocally of God, which would make it difficult or impossible to know anything about God (since our words mean totally different things when applied to him), which leaves the OCC adherent with no basis for his belief. Thus, I think this interpretation is self-undermining, since it would mean that OCC itself has no determinable meaning.
In summary, it seems that reduplication doesn’t really work, because the statement that “Christ is passible qua human” is imprecise, and any way we clarify it leads to more problems. It’s not surprising to me that this fails, since the reduplicative move also doesn’t work when applied to other contradictions. A square circle isn’t possible even if we say that it’s “four-sided qua square” and “no-sided qua circle.”
Redefining our terms
Another solution to the Problem has been proposed by Tim Pawl (2014). Pawl argues that, rather than redefining what it means for Christ to be impassible and passible, we can redefine the terms “impassible” and “passible.” Rather than meaning “unable to be causally affected,” impassible can mean “has a nature that is unable to be causally affected,” and passible can mean “has a nature that is able to be causally affected.” Since Christ’s divine nature is impassible in the original sense, and his human nature is passible in the original sense, Christ himself is both impassible and passible in the revised sense, without any contradiction.
4**. Christ has a nature that is impassible and a nature that is passible.
This solution may be unpalatable to modern analytic philosophers, since it requires Christ’s natures to be concrete things that can exhibit attributes. In modern philosophy, natures are typically seen as abstract sets of attributes, in which case this solution would do nothing to solve the Problem, since it would just mean that Christ has a set of attributes that includes impassibility and a set of attributes that includes passibility.
However, within classical Christian metaphysics, natures are seen as concrete things that can exhibit attributes. Because God is simple, the divine nature is identical to him, so at least one of Christ’s natures is concrete. Likewise, the Chalcedonian creed defines Christ’s human nature as “a rational soul and body”, which is concrete. The Tome of Leo, which was accepted as authoritative at the Council of Chalcedon, certainly assumes the concreteness of Christ’s natures. Leo says that Jesus’ human nature 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). Therefore, given the metaphysical framework presupposed by OCC, it’s coherent to say that Christ’s divine nature is impassible while his human nature is passible.
Pawl’s solution to the Problem runs into its own difficulties when we look at other incompatible divine and human attributes. For example, God isn’t temptable but Jesus was tempted, and God is omniscient but Jesus was limited in knowledge. Knowledge and temptation seem like attributes that properly belong to persons, which would mean that Christ is two persons, a conclusion that OCC explicitly rejects.
Pawl (2020, 5-7) notes that “person” means something different in classical Christian metaphysics than it does today. For the writers of the Chalcedonian creed, it meant hypostasis (Greek) or suppositum (Latin), that is, the largest ontological whole with a rational nature. Consider this: I’m a person, and no part of me (such as “me minus my pinky toe”) is a person, otherwise there would be many different people occupying the same space as me. But if I lose my pinky toe, I’m still the same person. In an analogous way, Christ’s divine and human natures make up an ontological whole, even if (per impossibile) their separation would result in two distinct persons (since Christ’s human nature includes a rational soul).
A disarmingly easy solution?
The law of non-contradiction states that nothing can be both A and not-A at the same time and in the same way. The first solution surveyed above seeks to show that in the same way doesn’t apply to the apparent contradictions of OCC, and the second solution seeks to redefine the terms so that both A and not-A doesn’t apply. What if instead at the same time doesn’t apply? After all, God is timeless, which means that he exists at no time (outside our time stream altogether). Christ could be impassible timelessly and passible at a certain time, omniscient timelessly and limited in knowledge at a certain time, and so on, without contradiction. His divine nature would still be able to act within time, because God’s timeless action can produce temporal effects. The fact that (as far as I know) no modern analytic theologian has suggested this as a solution gives me some pause, but it seems by far the easiest and most plausible solution to me.
Classical theism and the incarnation
Does classical theism make the incarnation incoherent? After all, if God is immutable (without change) and impassible (unable to be causally affected), how could he become human? It seems that for God to become human, he would have to change. This is true, but it could be an extrinsic change, not a change intrinsic to the divine nature; in fact, OCC seems to require this, since the Chalcedonian definition says that the divine nature wasn’t changed by the incarnation. God can become human by uniting a human nature to himself, without himself undergoing movement, in the same way that I can become shorter than Abby if Abby grows taller than me, without myself undergoing change in height.
The classical theistic model of the incarnation is called terminative assumption. A human nature, by itself, isn’t a person. Human natures are usually terminated (completed) by human persons, but a human nature could theoretically be terminated by a divine person, by being united with a person who has a divine nature (Dolezal 2022). In this way God could assume a human nature without subtracting or adding anything to himself.
Alin Cucu (2018) seeks to demonstrate that another tenet of classical theism, divine timelessness, is incompatible with the incarnation. Prior to the incarnation, God isn’t united to a human nature, whereas after it, he is united to a human nature. But since God doesn’t undergo temporal succession, from his perspective both things are true of him at the same time, which is a contradiction. This objection relies on an assumption that Brian Leftow (2018) refers to as Time’s Way: that the way things are in time must be the way they are for God, which classical theists reject. From our perspective, God would go from not being incarnate to being incarnate, but from God’s perspective, his single timeless action includes making himself incarnate.
The incarnation and Christ’s consciousness
Here is a set of four inconsistent claims:
Divine Transcendence (DT): the first-person perspective of God is incompatible with the first-person perspective of humans
Unity of Consciousness (UC): Jesus has one first-person perspective
Humanity of Christ (HC): Jesus has a human first-person perspective
Divinity of Christ (DC): Jesus has a divine first-person perspective
These claims are inconsistent because DT, HC, and DC together entail that Jesus has two first-person perspectives (a divine one and a human one), which contradicts UC. But it seems that OCC adherents must affirm all four claims. DT is true in every Christian theism, especially classical theism; denying UC implies Nestorianism (that Jesus is two persons) which OCC rejects; denying HC or DC leads to some kind of kenoticism or Apollinarianism, respectively, both of which OCC rejects.
Does this show that the incarnation is logically incoherent? Well, “first-person perspective” isn’t really a well defined term. To get at the concern here, maybe it would be better to talk about the unity of conscious states. It seems plausible that the conscious states of a one person are unified into a single, overarching conscious state, the conjunction of the individual states. But people have different overarching conscious states at different times – it’s not like our total conscious experience is the same at all times. This gives us the following modified claim:
Unity of Consciousness (UC): the individual conscious states of one person are unified into a single big conscious state at one time
If Jesus is one person, as OCC asserts, then UC must be true of him. But this also shows us a way out of the inconsistency in the claims. Since God is timeless, it’s possible for one person to have both the divine conscious state and human conscious states; the former is experienced at no time (timelessly), and the latter are experienced at different times.
This also means that God is the only thing that could in principle become incarnate, because he’s the only timeless thing. If we assume that demons exist, and that they can enter and possess humans, they still couldn’t become incarnate. This is because both demons and humans are temporal – their conscious states exist in the same time stream – so their conscious states would conflict. The demon-possessed human might be only a demon in a human body, or a demon and a human person, or even possibly a third thing (a demon-human mixture), but it couldn’t be a single person who is fully demon and fully human. (This also means that a non-classical-theistic God, who exists in the same time stream as creation, couldn’t become incarnate.)But is it really possible for a timeless, immutable conscious experience and temporal conscious experiences to belong to the same person? Even if it doesn’t obviously entail a contradiction, it seems so intuitively paradoxical. Still, as long as it’s not actually contradictory, it’s logically possible. Furthermore, OCC actually affirms that it’s impossible to fully understand the hypostatic union (how Christ’s natures are united in one person). The Council of Ephesus (AD 431) affirmed that the incarnation happened “in an unspeakable, inconceivable manner”.
I think an analogy can help to understand how this is possible. The analogy of an author writing a story is often used to explain divine timelessness: the author doesn’t exist within the story’s time stream, but writes outside of it altogether. To extend this analogy, the incarnation could be considered like the author’s self-insert character in the story. Even though the actions of every characters are caused by the author, the self-insert character is relevantly different from the other characters so as to be the same person as the author. Moreover, this fact isn’t really analyzable in more specific terms than the affirmation that “this is the author’s self-insert.” The difference is that the characters in a story aren’t sentient beings, which is why this is only an analogy (but it doesn’t hurt the point being made by the analogy).
The incarnation and Christ’s death
Here’s another set of inconsistent claims:
1. God cannot die.
2. Christ is God.
3. Christ died.
It’s clear that these claims entail a contradiction (namely, that Jesus can’t die and that he died). But the claims are imprecise within the framework of OCC, because “God” could refer to the divine nature or to a person who has the divine nature. Which sense of “God” is meant here? If it means the divine nature, then claim 1 is definitely true, but claim 2 is false. OCC denies that Jesus is identical to the divine nature. If it means any person who has the divine nature, then claim 2 is true, but claim 1 is false. A person who has the divine nature can die by assuming a human nature and dying as a human.
How can a person who has a divine and a human nature die as a human? Let’s take the strongest possible view of death: that people cease to exist when they are dead. Can we say that Christ ceased to exist between his death and resurrection if he has the divine nature? Actually, yes! God is timeless, existing at no time relative to creation, so it takes nothing away from him if he didn’t exist for three days. Likewise, we can say that Jesus didn’t exist prior to his human life, because sans incarnation he exists timelessly (not at any time). In fact, classical OCC insists that Jesus had a beginning in time; the Tome of Leo, which was accepted at the Council of Chalcedon, affirms that “while remaining prior to time, [the Son of God] began to exist in time”.
If classical OCC is compatible with Christ dying according to the strongest possible view of death (ceasing to exist), then it’s certainly compatible with weaker views of death, such as ceasing to be conscious (soul sleep) or the separation of the conscious soul from the body. Therefore, the apparently inconsistent triad of claims turns out to be consistent after all. The divine nature cannot die, but a person with the divine nature can die as a human, and Christ is the latter according to OCC.
Conclusion
In this post, we looked at the claims of orthodox (Chalcedonian) Christology to see if they could be interpreted in a logically coherent way. At first, OCC seems to entail multiple contradictions, since God’s attributes are incompatible with human attributes. But if God exists timelessly, then Jesus doesn’t have his divine attributes at the same time as his human attributes, which removes the contradiction. The same fact of God’s timelessness also removes several other apparent contradictions about Jesus’ consciousness and his death. Therefore, OCC is logically coherent if combined with the tenets of classical theism, especially divine timelessness. However, it seems that it would be logically impossible for a temporal God to become incarnate.
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