The Incarnation: Problems & Solutions
Dr. Craig defines The Incarnation, describes some of its issues, and then provides a solution and explanation of his view.
DR. CRAIG: The incarnation refers to the fact that the second person of the Trinity assumed or took on a human nature in addition to the divine nature that he already had. So the incarnate second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, had two complete natures: a divine nature and a human nature.
QUESTION: All right. What exactly is supposed to be the logical problem that that presents?
DR. CRAIG: The logical problem is that when you look at the attributes of the divine nature and the attributes of a human nature, they seem to shut each other out. God is omnipotent, but Jesus was an ordinary person who grew weary and weak and would be sleepy and eventually could die. God is omnipresent, but Jesus of Nazareth was a man who lived in first century Palestine and walked the hills of Galilee. God is incorporeal, but Jesus of Nazareth had a human body that was conceived by the Virgin Mary and then grew and eventually died. God is omniscient, but Jesus of Nazareth admitted that he didn't know the date of his second coming which was known only to God the Father. So the difficulty is that these divine and human attributes seem to be mutually exclusive. This has led to the allegation on the part of secularists and Muslims that the Christian doctrine of the incarnation is an incoherence.
What the Council of Chalcedon did was to set down, as it were, boundary markers that enabled theologians to know what was the safe channel within which they could move for orthodox Christological speculation. The watchword of Chalcedon is that you must neither divide the person nor confuse the natures. You mustn't divide the person of Christ into two persons. There was not a divine person and a human person – the man Jesus. There was only one person who had two natures. So you must not divide or separate the person. But on the other hand you must not confuse the natures. You can't try to blend the two natures together. The two natures are distinct and both possessed by the one person, but you mustn't blend them together as Apollinarius tried to do.
QUESTION: You lay out at the end of your chapter on the incarnation, and you call this the neo-Apollinarianism view. Can you just describe that for us?
DR. CRAIG: My view is a rehabilitation if you will of Apollinarianism – to try to remove its deficits but preserve its insights. The first plank in this Christology would be to affirm with Chalcedon that in Christ we have one person with two complete natures. It seems to me that that is correct. Secondly, I want to say with Apollinarius that the Logos is the rational mind of Jesus. So Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity. Therefore, there is only one person in Christ. There is not a human person. There is no man Jesus of Nazareth who is a human person. You have a divine person who has a human nature. Now what about the problem that in the incarnation then there is no human soul of Jesus? If the soul or the rational mind of Jesus is the divine Logos? Well, what I would say is that the divine Logos brings to the humanity of Christ everything it needs in order to become a complete human nature. What you have already there is a biological body – a hominin body. It's not fully human. Why? Because it doesn't have a rational mind. But in the Logos you have a rational mind, a person. And by the fusion of the Logos with the hominin body of Jesus you have then a complete human nature. A human nature that begins to exist at conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary and that has both a soul and a body and therefore is a complete human nature. But it is God incarnate.
The problem with the Christology thus far is that it looks like Superman disguised as Clark Kent. You have the little baby Jesus lying in the manger with the consciousness of the divine Logos contemplating the infinitesimal calculus and quantum mechanics which is a monstrosity. So how do you get a genuine human consciousness in Jesus? I think what you say is that the divine elements of his person were largely confined to his subconscious during his earthly life. Depth psychology has revealed to us that the conscious human life is just the tip of the iceberg, and there is this vast subliminal self that is subconscious, and often the roots of our behavior are not conscious but lie deep within our subconscious. So I would imagine the waking human consciousness of Jesus undergirded and guided by this divine subconsciousness. I think that gives us a portrait of Jesus that is very faithful to the biblical portrait. It gives us a Jesus who didn't know the time of his second coming in his waking consciousness, who could be tempted, who could feel anxiety and tiredness and weakness, and yet who was truly God. It gives us a Jesus who grew in knowledge and wisdom from the time of his infancy to his adulthood. It gives us a Jesus who could experience moral growth through trial and testing. I find this differentiation between the subconscious and conscious life of Jesus to be one that is very helpful. So those are basically the three planks of the neo-Apollinarian Christology that I defend.