Jesus: God and Man | Worldview Apologetics Conference 2017
Dr. Craig was invited to speak at the Worldview Apologetics Conference hosted at Westminster Chapel in Bellevue, WA in April of 2017. In this lecture, Dr. Craig discusses the doctrine of Christ's incarnation and follows with a short Q&A session.
DR. CRAIG: The Christian doctrine of the incarnation states that Jesus is both God and man – truly God and truly man. If anything appears to be a contradiction surely this is it. How can someone be both God and human? How can the infinite and the finite be combined? Omnipotence and weakness, omnipresence and spatial limitation. God is self-existent, necessary, eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present. But human beings are created, dependent, time-bound, and limited in power, knowledge, and space. So how can one person be both human and divine? This is an objection to Christianity which is pressed not only by secular thinkers but also by Muslims, the second largest religion in the world, and therefore a question of urgent importance, I think, for Christians to address.
In case someone who feels hard-pressed by this question might be tempted to avoid the problem by denying that Jesus was either really divine or really human, let me say that the Bible just doesn't leave that option open to us. The New Testament affirms both the deity and the humanity of Jesus Christ. So it forces this problem upon us. Take, for example, the opening chapter of John's Gospel. In John's Gospel he describes Christ prior to the incarnation as the pre-existent Word of God who was in the beginning with God. He says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . The Word became flesh and dwelt among us . . . full of grace and truth.” On John's view, God the Word, the creator of all things, had become flesh and entered into human history about two thousand years ago in the land of Judea. The implication is just inescapable as well as the problem that it poses. Jesus was both human and divine.
As succeeding generations of Christians struggle to understand the doctrine of the incarnation some people tried to resolve this apparent contradiction only at the expense of denying either pole of the biblical teaching. For example, groups like the Gnostics and the Docetists denied that Christ was truly human – he merely appeared to take on human form. The flesh of Christ was an illusion or a disguise and his supposed sufferings were merely apparent. On the other hand, groups like the Adoptionists or the Eutychians denied instead the full divinity of Christ. Jesus of Nazareth was thought to be just a mortal man whom God adopted as his Son and assumed into heaven. In opposition to both of these groups on the left and on the right the early church repeatedly condemns as heretical any denial of either Christ's true humanity or Christ's true deity. However contradictory or mysterious it might seem, theologians staunchly stood by the biblical affirmation that Jesus Christ was truly God and truly man.
In time there arose in the early church two centers of theological debate about the incarnation: one in the city of Alexandria in Egypt, and the other in the city of Antioch in Syria. Both of these schools of thought were united in thinking that Christ was both human and divine, but they each offered a different way of understanding the incarnation. Let me try to explain these two different views since they can then serve as a springboard for my own proposal later on.
Both the Alexandrian and the Antiochian theologians presupposed that things have natures; that is to say, they have essential properties which determine what kind of thing they are. For example, a horse has a different nature than a pig, and both of these have different natures than a human being. According to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, the nature of a human being is to be a rational animal. That meant that a human being is essentially composed of a rational soul and a body. This understanding of human nature was accepted by the theologians of both Alexandria and Antioch. Moreover, on this view God also has a nature which includes such properties as being self-existent, eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, and so on. The dispute between Alexandria and Antioch basically boiled down to this: Did Jesus Christ have one nature or two natures?
The theologians of Alexandria argued that in the incarnation Christ had one nature which was a blend of divine and human elements. One of the most ingenious proposals to come out of this school was offered by the Laodicean bishop Apollinarius who died about AD 390. Apollinarius proposed that in the incarnation God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, took on a human body so that Jesus Christ had a human body but a divine mind or soul. God thus came to experience the world through a human body and to suffer in this body while remaining sinless and infallible in his person. Christ thus had a divine-human nature. He was both God and man composed of a divine soul and a human body.
The Antiochian theologians attacked Apollinarius’ view on two grounds. First, they argued that on Apollinarius’ view, Christ did not have a complete human nature. He only had a human body, but his soul was divine. Being truly human involves having both a human soul and a human body. What distinguishes man from the animals is not his body but his rational soul. The Antiochian theologians therefore charged that on Apollinarius’ view the incarnation amounts to God's becoming an animal; that is to say, taking on an animal body, not becoming a man. The second objection they raised was related to the first. Since the purpose of the incarnation was the salvation of humanity, if Christ didn't truly become a man then salvation was nullified. The whole rationale behind the incarnation was that by becoming one of us and identifying with his fellow human beings Christ could offer his sinless life to God as a sacrificial offering on our behalf. On the cross Jesus Christ was our substitute. He bore the penalty of sin that we deserved, and thus Jesus was the Savior of all who would place their trust in him. But if Christ was not truly human then how could he serve as our representative before God? His suffering therefore achieved nothing, and there would be no salvation. By denying Christ's full humanity, they charged Apollinarius undermined salvation through Christ.
For these reasons, in the year 377 Apollinarius’ view was condemned as heretical. I think the question that remains is whether Apollinarius’ view is totally bankrupt or whether it didn't contain a kernel of truth which might still be salvageable.
So what alternative did the Antiochian theologians have to offer? In contrast to the theologians of Alexandria, the theologians of Antioch insisted that in the incarnation Christ had two complete natures – one human and one divine. They held that God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, in some sense indwelt the human being Jesus from the moment of his conception in Mary's womb. One prominent bishop of the Antiochian school named Nestorius therefore objected to Mary's being called “the mother of God” or “the God-bearer” because what she bore was the human nature of Christ, not God, not the divine nature. Christ’s human nature included both a human body and a human soul which were somehow assumed or possessed by God the Son.
The problem with the Antiochian view in the eyes of its Alexandrian opponents was that it seemed to imply that there were two persons in Christ. First, there's the divine person – the second person of the Trinity who existed prior to Mary's miraculous conception. Second, there's the human person who was conceived and born by Mary. So you seem to have two persons – one human and one divine. We can think of it in this way. A human being is composed of a body and a soul. So if Jesus had a complete human nature including a human body and a human soul then why wouldn't there be a human person who began to exist at the moment of his conception and then who was indwelt by God the Son? But in that case you don't have a real incarnation. All you have at best is a human being who is indwelt by God. So the hapless Nestorius was therefore branded by his critics as destroying the unity of Christ's person, and his view was condemned as heretical in the year 431.
So what was to be done? Both views were condemned as heresies. Well, in order to settle the dispute between Antioch and Alexandria, an ecumenical council was called in Chalcedon in the year 451. The statement which was issued by the Council of Chalcedon is a profound and careful delineation of the channel markers for the doctrine of the incarnation. It seeks to affirm what is best in both schools’ views while condemning where they go wrong. Basically the statement affirms with Antioch the diversity of Christ's two natures, but it affirms with Alexandria the unity of his person. One person having two natures.
Let's read the Council's statement:
We confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; like us in all things except sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the difference of the natures being by no means taken away because of the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not divided or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ; …
So according to this statement Jesus Christ is one person with two natures – human and divine. The twin errors to be avoided are dividing the person and confusing the natures. The natures are distinct and complete, and the person is one in number.
Notice that the Council’s statement does not presume to tell us how one person can have two natures (one human and one divine). That's left to further theological debate. But what the Council insisted on is that if we’re to have a biblical doctrine of the incarnation we must neither fracture Christ's person into two persons nor blend his two natures into one nature. The question is how can this be done? Can a logically coherent and biblically faithful account of the incarnation be constructed? Many would deem this an impossible task. The incarnation they would say is a doctrine you either reject as a contradiction or you accept as a mystery. I disagree. I think that a logically coherent and biblically faithful account of the incarnation can be constructed, and that's what I propose to explain briefly in the next few moments. I'll develop it in three stages.
Step number one: I think that we should affirm with the Council of Chalcedon that Christ is one person who has two natures. The incarnation should not be thought of as God's turning himself into a human being. The incarnation is totally unlike stories in ancient mythology of the gods turning themselves into men or into animals for a time and then reverting back to being gods again. Christ was not first God and then a human being and then God again. Rather, he was God and man simultaneously. The incarnation is therefore not a matter of subtraction – of God's giving up certain attributes in order to become a human being. Rather, the incarnation is a matter of addition – God's taking on in addition to the divine nature that he already possessed another distinct nature, a human nature, as well. So in the incarnation, God the Son came to have two natures (one divine which he had always had from eternity, and one human which began to exist at the moment of its conception in Mary's womb). Thus he had all of the properties of divinity and all of the properties of humanity. The question is how can one person have two natures like this? That leads me to my second point.
Step number two: I suggest we should affirm with Apollinarius that the soul of Jesus Christ was God the Son. What Apollinarius rightly saw was the best way to avoid the Nestorian fallacy of having two persons in Christ is to postulate some common constituent shared by his human nature and his divine nature so that these two natures overlap so to speak. On Apollinarius’ proposal, the common constituent was the soul of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, Apollinarius apparently didn't think that Christ possessed a complete human nature which, as his critics rightly saw, undermined Christ's true humanity and so his saving work. But are these shortcomings of Apollinarius irremediable? I don't think so. Recall what human nature is – to be human is to be a rational animal. Since God doesn't have a body, he does not have an animal nature. But God is the ultimate rational mind. Therefore, God the Son already possessed prior to his incarnation rationality and personhood. Therefore, in taking on a human body God the Son brought to the physical body of Christ precisely those properties which would elevate it from a mere animal nature to a complete human nature composed of body and rational soul. The human nature of Christ cannot even exist independently of its union with God the Son. There would just be a corpse or a zombie. The humanity of Christ comes into being precisely in its union with God the Son and his flesh. Thus Christ does have two complete natures after all – a divine nature (which pre-existed from eternity) and a human nature (which came into being in Mary's womb in virtue of the union of God the Son with the flesh.
This reformulation nullifies the traditional objections to Apollinarianism. For, first, on this view Christ does have two complete natures – human and divine, including a rational soul and a body. Second, as a result Christ is truly human and so his death on our behalf is valid.
Notice that on this view Christ is not merely human since he was also divine. But nevertheless he was truly human and so could stand as our proxy before God bearing the punishment for sin that we might be freed from condemnation.
So far so good. Still the proposal is not yet adequate for if the soul of Jesus Christ just was God the Son then how can we make sense of the biblical portrait of Jesus as someone having an authentic human consciousness developing from infancy through manhood? Doesn't my proposal imply that Jesus was like some kind of a Superman merely dressed up as Clark Kent but not really susceptible to human limitations? Well, that leads to my third step.
I suggest that we affirm that the divine aspects of Jesus’ personality were largely subliminal during his earthly life. I suggest that the superhuman elements of Jesus’ person were mainly subconscious. This suggestion draws upon the insight of depth psychology, that there is much more to a person's consciousness than what he is aware of. The whole project of psychoanalysis rests on the fact that some of our behavior is rooted in deep springs of which we are only dimly aware, if at all. Think of a person suffering, for example, from multiple personality disorder. Here we have a very striking example of the eruption of subliminal facets of an individual's mind into distinct conscious personalities. In some cases of such schizophrenia there's even a dominant personality who is aware of all of the others and who knows what each of them knows but who remains unknown by them. Hypnotism also furnishes a very vivid demonstration of the reality of the subliminal. As Charles Harris explains, a person under hypnosis may be told certain facts and then instructed to forget them when he awakens so that he becomes ignorant of these facts, but Harris writes,
the knowledge is truly in his mind, and shows itself in unmistakable ways, especially by causing him to perform . . . certain actions, which, but for the possession of this knowledge, he would not have performed.[1]
For example, I've seen television programs with very amusing incidents of this phenomenon like a young man's being hypnotized and made to believe that a tree is a beautiful girl to whom he wants to propose marriage. Upon awakening from the hypnotic trance, he approaches the tree lovingly and offers his love to it and asks it to marry him. Harris goes on to say,
What is still more extraordinary, a sensitive hypnotic subject may be made both to see and not to see the same object at the same moment. For example, he may be told not to see a lamp-post, whereupon he becomes (in the ordinary sense) quite unable to see it. Nevertheless, he does see it, because he avoids it and cannot be induced to precipitate himself against it.[2]
Similarly, during his earthly incarnation, God the Son allowed only those facets of his person to be part of Jesus’ waking consciousness which were compatible with a typical human experience while the bulk of his knowledge, like the iceberg below the water surface, lay submerged in his subconscious. On the theory that I'm proposing then, Christ is one person but in that person the conscious and subconscious elements are differentiated in a theologically significant way. Unlike Nestorianism, my proposal does not imply that there are two persons any more than the conscious aspects of your mind and the subconscious aspects of your mind constitute two persons.
Such a theory provides a satisfactory account of Jesus as we see him portrayed in the Gospels. In his conscious experience Jesus grew in knowledge and wisdom just as a human child does. We don't have the baby Jesus lying in the manger contemplating the infinitesimal calculus. Possessing a typical human consciousness Jesus had to struggle against fear, weakness, and temptation in order to align his will with the will of his heavenly Father. In his conscious experience Jesus was genuinely tempted even though as God the Son he is incapable of sin. The enticements of sin were really felt and couldn't just be blown away like smoke. Rather, resisting temptation required spiritual discipline and moral resoluteness on Jesus’ part. In his waking consciousness Jesus was actually ignorant of certain facts though I think kept from error and often supernaturally illumined by the divine subliminal. Even though God the Son possesses all knowledge about the world from quantum mechanics to auto mechanics, there's no reason to think that Jesus of Nazareth would have been able to answer questions about such subjects so low had he stooped in condescending to take on the human condition. Moreover, in his conscious life Jesus experienced the whole gamut of human anxieties and felt physical fatigue and pain. My proposal also preserves the integrity and the sincerity of Jesus’ prayer life, and it explains why Jesus was capable of being perfected through suffering. He, like us, needed to be dependent upon his Father moment by moment in order to live victoriously in a fallen world and to carry out successfully the mission which the Father had given to him. The agonies in the Garden of Gethsemane were not mere play acting but represented the genuine struggle of the incarnate Son in his waking consciousness. All of the traditional objections against God the Son’s being the mind of Christ melt away before this understanding of the incarnation for here we have a Jesus who is not only truly divine but also who fully shares the human condition as well.
So, is my proposed theory of the incarnation true? I think we can only say: God knows! It would be presumptuous of me to say that this is true, but what I do claim is that the theory is both logically coherent and biblically faithful, and that is enough to show that it is therefore possibly true. And if it is possibly true then it removes any obstacle to the incarnation based upon the claim that it's a contradiction or a logical impossibility to say that Jesus Christ is both truly God and truly man. But I think that the theory does more than that as well. It also serves to elicit praise to God for his self-emptying act of condescension in taking on our human condition with all of its pains and struggles and limitations for our sake and for our salvation. As the apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 8:9, “Though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor that by his poverty we might become rich.”
All right, we have about 20 minutes for questions.
QUESTION: [off mic]
DR. CRAIG: Let me respond to that. I think that while people like to speak metaphorically sometimes about “we have a higher nature or divine nature” or Abraham Lincoln once spoke of “the better angels of our nature” that's not literally true in the sense in which Christ had a divine nature. Because, as I say, the divine nature entails such properties as omniscience, moral perfection, eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence. And I know that I don't have those attributes. So I think that we cannot say in the sense in which Christ had a divine and human nature that we have a divine and human nature. We have human natures that are sadly fallen and corrupted and badly need redemption, and that's the rationale of course for Christ's taking on our human nature in order to save us.
QUESTION: I’m curious what you think Jesus’ self-awareness was and if he wasn’t always self-aware when did that happen?
DR. CRAIG: This is an intriguing question. Since we know so little of Jesus’ boyhood it just leaves it ripe for speculation. But we do have that one story when he's about 12 years of age and his parents visit Jerusalem and he stays behind in the temple talking and debating with the scribes. Remember his parents come back frantic when they find out that he's missing from the caravan. They find him in the temple. How does he answer his parents? He said, “Didn't you know I must be about my Father's business.” Already there you have this filial sense of being God’s Son in a special way that set him apart. I think at least by the time of the baptism by John this is fully formed, and now he's ready to embark upon the ministry for which the Father has called him. In that baptism by John he fully identifies with us as fallen human beings and then begins his ministry. But I do think that the model helps us to avoid the Superman-Clark Kent model of Jesus’ self-awareness. It gives us a Jesus who has an authentic human awareness in the way that I described. I do think, as you say, it entails an awareness of his divinity and his uniqueness as the Son of God in a special sense, and that this is something that apparently grew over time. But nevertheless still a genuine human consciousness.
QUESTION: This actually has a negative connotation. What if someone raises an objection and says, “Does this mean Jesus was schizophrenic?”
DR. CRAIG: What I would say to that person is that's a low blow. Because clearly the appeal here to mental illness and multiple personality disorder is to show how you can have distinct consciousnesses in one person. These are not literally different persons. There is one person who due to mental illness has these distinct consciousnesses – different personalities if you will – but still one person. Therefore to cabel about that by saying, “That person's mentally ill. Is that what you're saying about Jesus?” – that's just not seriously engaging with the model. That's an unsympathetic pejorative way of looking at it. All this does is prove the point, I think, that you can have one person with multiple consciousnesses. And I'm claiming that in Christ we have such a thing.
QUESTION: I'm just a little unclear if you come to thinking about the incarnation with the doctrine of the Trinity in the background. Taking that in conjunction with the one, how that doesn't make Christ three persons in one?
DR. CRAIG: This is a great question. If you look at my fuller exposition of this material, it's found in the chapter on the incarnation in Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview that my colleague J. P. Moreland and I wrote together. It is preceded immediately in the book by a chapter on the doctrine of the Trinity. There I argue that in the Trinity we have three persons sharing one nature. So the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the incarnation are kind of mirror images of each other. In the Trinity you have multiple persons in a single nature; in the incarnation you have a single person with multiple natures. So they're kind of like mirror images. The one is multiple persons with a single nature; the other one is a single person with multiple natures. I would say the second person of that Trinity took on human flesh and became Jesus of Nazareth in the way I described.
QUESTION: Have ideas similar to yours been advanced in the past? That’s part one. And part two is: What has been the response of some of your theological and philosophical peers to it?
DR. CRAIG: Very good question. Obviously these ideas have been advanced. I already mentioned Apollinarius who was the inspiration for this. I believe it was a scholar named William Sandy who wrote about the divine subliminal of Christ and prompted my thinking about that. Certainly in books on the subject called Christology, which is the doctrine of Christ, you'll find antecedents to this. Some of my colleagues at Talbot were very leery about my resurrecting a heresy condemned by the early church and defending it even though one of my other colleagues in the philosophy department also holds a similar view. But in dialoguing with my colleagues, the late Dr. Robert Saucy in particular, it was clear that they didn't understand the view I was explaining. What really convinced the Dean that this is acceptable at the end of the day is that I made it very clear that it's only a proposal. I'm offering this as a possibility, not as the truth. And so long as it is possible it serves to defeat the objection that the doctrine of the incarnation is an incoherence. And the Dean says that's completely unobjectionable. So as a result things soon quieted down, and there's peace in the valley! Ha!
QUESTION: I was wondering if you could speculate a little bit on what would be the Son’s current state in his new body as it relates to his cognitive faculties? You are mentioning here before the resurrection he would have not all access to his omniscience. It would be in the subliminal state. It is a two-part question, I’ll try to be concise. The first part of the question is can you speculate as far as what is the state of his cognitive faculties right now with respect to his human nature? And is there any drawing of implications that you could look into as far as what our glorified bodies will allow with respect to our cognitive faculties?
DR. CRAIG: All right. With respect to the first, I like the word “speculation” that you used, because that is what this would be. It is to speculate. Theologians have typically differentiated two states of Christ – the state of humiliation which lasts from the virginal conception through his burial, and then the state of exaltation which begins with the descent into hell, his resurrection, and ascension to the right hand of God. I could well imagine that in the state of exaltation, the state of ignorance and limitation would end and that Jesus would now have full and free access to his divine faculties and cognitive abilities that he didn't have during the state of humiliation. I think that would make really good sense with the exaltation of Christ. I don't see that this has any implications for us because I don't think we have a divine nature, as I said, in this literal sense. But I would say that with the resurrection and our glorification will come complete psychological as well as physical healing. We are all of us broken persons. All of us bear the emotional scars of childhood and past experiences. Not only will the resurrection bring physical healing from every disease and infirmity and shortcoming, but it will also bring healing from every psychological or mental health disability or impairment that we have so that we become transparent, loving people. That, I think, is a great hope of the resurrection.
QUESTION: This raises a new question. In heaven, in contrast to Jesus, we will, as I understand it, still be finite beings limited in every respect but we will be without sin. I would like to ask you a question just for clarification. Very near the end of your lecture you said something to the effect that while Jesus has, as I understand, some capacity to understand everything about quantum mechanics and auto mechanics but he would not have had conscious access to that in his bodily existence.
DR. CRAIG: During his state of humiliation.
FOLLOWUP: OK. This is very helpful. Thank you.
QUESTION: I really like your proposed model. I think it is beautiful. However, I wonder how it could be 100% correct when the Bible talks about when people were thinking certain thoughts in their mind while Jesus was here on Earth and he actually knew what was going on in their hearts.
DR. CRAIG: Yes, there are certainly examples where Jesus exhibits clairvoyant knowledge and especially foreknowledge of the future – the Olivet Discourse and predictions of the fall of Jerusalem and so forth. In the same way that I affirmed earlier that Jesus did have a self-awareness of his identity as the unique Son of God, evidently his waking consciousness was sometimes informed by the divine subliminal of these sorts of clairvoyant and precognitive items of knowledge. I think that a biblically faithful portrait would have to acknowledge that sometimes this does occur.
QUESTION: This is going to show my own possible ignorance. Where does the Bible say that Jesus was actually limited in his divine knowledge? You gave the example of quantum mechanics and auto mechanics. Where does the Bible actually say that?
DR. CRAIG: The best example would be Mark 13:32 when he says of his second coming, “But of that day and that hour no man knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Jesus didn't know the date or time of his second coming.
FOLLOWUP: Is it possible that that wasn’t an aspect of his earthly existence? Maybe that was an aspect eternally as part of the Trinity; maybe he just didn’t know?
DR. CRAIG: What I would want to say is that he did have this knowledge in his subliminal. As the divine second person of the Trinity, of course he knew this. But it wasn't conscious.
QUESTION: What is the difference between the first Adam before he sinned and the second Adam (Christ, the last Adam) not sinning at all?
DR. CRAIG: Think about this. The difference between the first Adam and the second Adam (whom Paul identifies in Romans 5 as Christ) – the clear difference – is, obviously, that the first Adam had only a human nature whereas the second Adam had two natures. He was divine and human. So that is an ontological difference that you could not have a greater difference than that. It's the difference between God and man. So Adam, though he was innocent prior to the Fall, wasn't morally perfect whereas Christ, as the second person of the Trinity, shares in the moral perfection of God himself.
FOLLOWUP: Adam was named the son of God before he sinned, right?
DR. CRAIG: You mean Adam? Phrases like the son of God can be used in the Old Testament of Jewish holy men and especially Jewish kings who were thought of as God's sons. But Jesus, I think, uses the title “the Son of God” in a unique way that sets him apart from mere Jewish holy men and Hebrew kings. I try to show this in my book Reasonable Faith in the chapter on Jesus’ self-understanding.
QUESTION: You keep using the word “truly” instead of “fully.”
DR. CRAIG: Yes, that’s deliberate.
FOLLOWUP: Typically in popular Christianity we use the word “fully.” Is there a difference between the two?
DR. CRAIG: Yes. I love it when people catch these terminological nuances. It's misleading to say things like “Jesus was fully God and fully man” or “a hundred percent God and a hundred percent man” because if you say “fully” that means that was the entirety of Jesus. He was entirely God. But then he can't be man. Or if he's entirely man then he can't be God. What the creeds say like Chalcedon is he was truly God and truly man – vera homo, vera Deus. He had all the essential attributes of humanity and all the essential attributes of deity. But you're going to confuse people if you use words like “fully” or “a hundred percent.” What you really mean in saying he's fully divine and fully human is that he's truly divine and truly human, and that is the language of the creeds.
QUESTION: Is it OK to say three persons with the same nature?
DR. CRAIG: Yes.
FOLLOWUP: Why are we not called polytheists instead of monotheists?
DR. CRAIG: Because polytheists believe that there's more than one God, and Christians don't. Christians believe there are three persons, but there's only one God. If you're wondering how can three persons be one God, read the chapter in Philosophical Foundation for a Christian Worldview where I offer a model of the Trinity that I think makes good sense.
QUESTION: A lot of what I’m hearing is speculative theory. When you teach this stuff do you call it a speculative theory?
DR. CRAIG: I hope it's clear to everybody that I'm teaching this as speculative theory. I emphasized, as I did to my Dean, this is a proposal. This is a possible model and that is enough to defeat the Muslim and secular objection that the doctrine of the incarnation is an incoherence. And that is a huge accomplishment if you can do that. But it's not just a possibility. It's also biblically faithful, as I tried to show. I said here's a model of the [incarnation] that is possibly true and is biblically faithful. I think that that is a significant accomplishment. Remember the Council of Chalcedon doesn't tell us how Christ can be one person with two natures. What the Council of Chalcedon does, as it were, is lay down channel markers for safe speculation Christologically. You must neither divide the person nor confuse the natures. Don't divide the person or confuse the natures. But if you guide your ship between those channel markers you will be sailing in safe waters Christologically and can therefore speculate about a doctrine of the incarnation that will make good sense and be biblically faithful.
Thank you very much.