#936 Persons, Souls, and the Incarnation
April 20, 2025Dr. Craig,
First, let me express my deep admiration for your extensive contributions to Christian apologetics and philosophy. Your work has been a tremendous resource for those seeking to defend and understand the faith. However, I’m grappling with a tension between your latest views on human nature and your Neo-Apollinarian Christology, and I’d greatly value your clarification on how these positions align.
In a recent interview on August 29, 2024, you stated: “human persons are souls that each of us is identical to his soul so we are not composite entities we are souls who have bodies” (YouTube interview, timestamp 1:25-1:48). This suggests that the soul is the essential, defining component of human nature, with the body playing a secondary role.
In contrast, your Neo-Apollinarian model of the Incarnation, as articulated in Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview and various Reasonable Faith podcast episodes, posits that the divine Logos replaces Jesus’ human soul, uniting with a human body to form his human nature (Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, Chapter 30).
This raises a challenge for me: if the soul is the primary element that constitutes human nature—as your anthropology indicates—and Jesus possesses a divine Logos rather than a human soul, how can he be considered “truly human” in a way comparable to us? It seems that, within your framework, Jesus might lack the critical component of human nature, namely a human soul.
Could you please clarify how you reconcile these two positions? Specifically, how does Jesus’ possession of a divine soul, rather than a human one, enable him to be “truly man,” given that you identify the soul as the fundamental essence of human nature?
Thank you for your time and for shedding light on this important question.
Tom
United States
Dr. craig’s response
A
The key to answering your question, Tom, is realizing that I do not, in fact, “identify the soul as the fundamental essence of human nature.” For that to be the case, our souls would have to be essentially human. But I see no reason to think that rational souls come in different kinds. I’m more inclined to think that the reason our souls are human is because they are united with hominin bodies. Were they united with, for example, Klingon bodies, then we would be Klingon souls rather than human souls.
The point of my argument was that human persons are not body/soul composites, things made up of a material part and an immaterial part. Rather, I just am my soul, and I have a hominin body. My soul is human in virtue of its connection with a hominin body.
I trust that you can now see that my newly found conviction concerning the personhood of the soul goes beautifully with a neo-Apollinarian Christology. The second person of the Trinity assumes in the incarnation a hominin body and so comes to be a human soul. Of course, he is not merely human, but also divine. That is characteristic of orthodox Christology.
Here as well a correction is in order: on my neo-Apollinarian Christology the Logos does not “replace” Jesus’ human soul, as you say; rather he is the human soul of Jesus. This is the difference between a replacement thesis and an identity thesis. This distinction is very important and plays a role in other theological doctrines. For example, when Thomas Aquinas affirms that God’s essence is existence, is this a replacement thesis or an identity thesis? Interpreters have differed on this question. On the replacement thesis, God has no essence. But on the identity thesis, God has an essence and it is existence. That example may seem hairsplitting; but in the case of the incarnation, it is vitally important to understand that in assuming flesh the Logos does not replace the human soul of Jesus, but rather becomes the human soul of Jesus.
- William Lane Craig