Appendix D
One of the most common questions I get from readers is, "Where did the Church actually say that Jesus has a human soul?" It is a fair question. Many Christians grew up reciting the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed without ever being told there were five more ecumenical councils that filled in the picture. This appendix is meant as a quick reference — a single place you can turn to and find, in plain English, what each of the seven ecumenical councils said about Jesus Christ, why they said it, and why it matters for the argument of this book.
For each council I will give four pieces of information: when and where it was held, what wrong teaching (heresy) it was answering, the central definition or anathema it produced, and the significance for our larger case against physicalism. Where the Greek matters — and it often does — I will include the original term in transliteration with the Greek script in parentheses, followed by a plain-English explanation. The goal is not to make you a patristics scholar in twenty minutes, but to put the actual words of the Church's teaching at your fingertips.1
How to read this appendix. The seven councils together form what Timothy Pawl calls "Conciliar Christology" — the conjunction of every Christological claim made at the seven gatherings.2 No single council says everything. Nicaea I gives us Christ's full deity. Constantinople I rules out the denial of His human soul. Ephesus and Chalcedon define how the two natures relate. Constantinople II and III tighten the screws on the human nature. Nicaea II ties it all back to the Incarnation through the icon controversy. Read together, the picture is breathtakingly precise.
Date & Location: May–July 325, Nicaea (modern İznik, Turkey).
Heresy Addressed: Arianism — the teaching of the Alexandrian presbyter Arius, who held that the Son of God was a created being, the highest of all creatures but not eternally divine.
The fathers wrote what we now call the Nicene Creed (technically the original 325 version, before the additions of Constantinople I). The decisive line confessed the Son to be "begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father." The Greek term that did all the heavy lifting was homoousios (ὁμοούσιος) — "of the same substance" or "of the same being." Arius could agree that the Son was "like" the Father (homoiousios, ὁμοιούσιος). What he could not say was that the Son shared the Father's very being. Nicaea forced the issue by choosing the harder word.3
The single anathema attached to the creed condemned anyone who said "there was a time when the Son was not," or that He came from nothing, or that He was of a different substance from the Father.
If Arius had won, there would be no Incarnation in the orthodox sense. A creature, however exalted, cannot become incarnate as God-with-us — there is no God on the Son's side of the equation. Every argument in this book about the hypostatic union, the permanence of the Incarnation, and the dissolution problem of physicalism presupposes that the One who took on flesh is fully and eternally God. Nicaea I is where that line is drawn.
Date & Location: May–July 381, Constantinople.
Heresies Addressed: The Pneumatomachi (who denied the full deity of the Holy Spirit) and Apollinarianism (the teaching of Apollinaris of Laodicea, who held that in Christ the divine Logos took the place of a human rational soul).
This council expanded the Nicene Creed into the form most Christians still recite today, adding the longer paragraph on the Holy Spirit and the lines about Christ's birth, suffering, resurrection, and second coming. Just as importantly for our purposes, the council formally condemned Apollinarianism in its first canon, which anathematizes "the Apollinarians."4
Apollinaris had taught that Christ's humanity consisted of a human body and a lower "animal soul," but that the place of the human nous (νοῦς) — the rational soul or mind — was filled by the eternal Logos. He thought this preserved the unity of Christ. Gregory of Nazianzus answered him with the line that has shaped orthodox theology ever since: "What has not been assumed has not been healed."5 If the Son did not assume a human rational soul, then the human rational soul is not saved.
The Council's logic in one sentence. Salvation requires that Christ assume a complete human nature; a complete human nature includes a human rational soul; therefore Christ has a human rational soul. Deny any of those steps and the gospel collapses.
This is the first conciliar nail in the coffin of every Christology — ancient or modern — that tries to do without Christ's immaterial human soul. As I argue in Chapter 12, modern physicalism is not Apollinarianism in intent, but in structural effect it produces the same result: a Christ whose humanity has no immaterial rational soul. Constantinople I is the council that ruled this out.
Date & Location: June–July 431, Ephesus.
Heresy Addressed: Nestorianism — associated with Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who was widely understood (rightly or wrongly) to teach that the human Jesus and the divine Logos were two distinct persons loosely joined together.
The council, led by Cyril of Alexandria, accepted Cyril's Second Letter to Nestorius and the Formula of Union (433) as authoritative statements of the faith. Two phrases dominate. First, Mary is rightly called Theotokos (θεοτόκος) — "God-bearer" or "Mother of God" — because the one she bore is a single divine Person who has truly become human. Second, Cyril writes that the Word "united to himself hypostatically flesh enlivened by a rational soul" — in Greek, sarka empsychōmenēn psychē logikē (σάρκα ἐψυχωμένην ψυχῇ λογικῇ) — "flesh ensouled with a rational soul." That phrase, "flesh ensouled with a rational soul," will reappear at every subsequent council.6
The Formula of Union states it cleanly: "We confess, then, our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, perfect God and perfect man of a rational soul and a body."7
Ephesus does two things at once. It rules out splitting Christ into two persons, and it makes "rational soul and body" the standard formula for what Christ assumed. Notice how natural the body-soul language is: when these bishops want to say "complete human nature," they say "rational soul and body." A view of human nature that has no soul at all has, by definition, no place in this formula.
Date & Location: October 451, Chalcedon (across the Bosphorus from Constantinople).
Heresy Addressed: Eutychianism (also called Monophysitism) — the teaching of the monk Eutyches, who held that after the union the two natures became one nature, the human absorbed into the divine.
The Chalcedonian Definition is, without exaggeration, the single most important Christological statement in the history of the Church. The decisive lines are these:
So, following the saintly fathers, we all with one voice teach the confession of one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and a body … acknowledged in two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation.8
Four Greek adverbs describe how the natures relate: asynchytōs (ἀσυγχύτως, without confusion), atreptōs (ἀτρέπτως, without change), adiairetōs (ἀδιαιρέτως, without division), and achōristōs (ἀχωρίστως, without separation). The first two protect the distinctness of the natures; the last two protect their unity in one Person.
The four adverbs and the triduum mortis. Look closely at achōristōs — "without separation." If physicalism is true and Christ has no immaterial soul, then between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning the Son of God was not united to anything human. The two natures were separated for roughly thirty-six hours. That is precisely what Chalcedon forbids. Chapter 21 develops this argument in detail.
Two phrases here are decisive for our argument. The phrase "of a rational soul and a body" — Greek ek psychēs logikēs kai sōmatos (ἐκ ψυχῆς λογικῆς καὶ σώματος) — formally enshrines the body-plus-soul understanding of Christ's human nature. And the phrase "without separation" makes the permanence of the hypostatic union a non-negotiable feature of orthodoxy. Together, these two phrases form the heart of the case I develop throughout Part V of this book.
Date & Location: May–June 553, Constantinople.
Heresies Addressed: Lingering Nestorian-leaning teachings (the so-called "Three Chapters"), and revived forms of Origenism. The council's concern was to clarify and defend Cyrillian-Chalcedonian Christology.
This council issued fourteen anathemas. Several of them matter for our purposes. The fourth anathema condemns anyone who refuses to confess that the Word "was united by hypostasis with the flesh animated by a rational and intelligent soul."9 Notice the doubling — "rational and intelligent" — which slams the door on any reading that would whittle down the soul into something less than a fully rational human soul. The tenth anathema then declares: "If anyone does not confess his belief that our Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified in his human flesh, is truly God and the Lord of glory and one of the members of the holy Trinity: let him be anathema."10
Constantinople II makes two crucial moves. First, it formally condemns Apollinarianism a second time and in the strongest possible terms — Christ's humanity is a body united to a rational and intelligent soul, not just a body. Second, it locks in the Cyrillian "one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh" formula, which guarantees the personal continuity that physicalism cannot account for at the cross. As Pawl notes, this council formally protects the union from being denied as ineffable and personal.11
Date & Location: November 680 – September 681, Constantinople.
Heresies Addressed: Monothelitism (the view that Christ has only one will) and Monoenergism (the view that Christ has only one principle of operation or energy).
The fathers declared that Christ has two wills (thelēmata, θελήματα) and two principles of action or energies (energeiai, ἐνέργειαι) — one divine and one human — corresponding to His two natures:
We declare that there are two wills and principles of action, in accordance with what is proper to each of the natures of Christ.12
The human will, the council says, "follows" the divine will, freely submitting to it without contradiction. The biblical anchor is the Garden of Gethsemane: "Not my will, but yours be done" (Luke 22:42). This sentence makes no sense unless there are two distinct wills capable of being aligned. The council also reiterated, in a phrase echoing Chalcedon and Constantinople II, that Christ is "perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity … of a rational soul and a body."13
Why dyothelitism is fatal to physicalism. If wills are properties of natures, and Christ's human nature has its own genuine will, then Christ's human nature is the kind of thing that can will. A corpse cannot will. A pile of decaying tissue cannot will. Therefore Christ's human nature is not reducible to His physical body. Constantinople III all but writes the dualist conclusion onto the wall.
Constantinople III is the council that most directly secures the position I defend in Chapter 13. It rules that Christ has a fully functional human will, which presupposes a fully functional human soul, which presupposes a complete human nature that is more than just a body. Together with the strong implication of two intellects (drawn out by later theologians from the same dyothelite reasoning), this council leaves zero room for physicalism about Christ's humanity.14
Date & Location: September–October 787, Nicaea.
Heresy Addressed: Iconoclasm — the movement that sought to destroy holy images on the grounds that depicting Christ was idolatrous or impossible.
The council restored the veneration (proskynēsis, προσκύνησις) of icons, distinguishing it sharply from the worship (latreia, λατρεία) due to God alone. Crucially, it did so on Christological grounds. Because the eternal Son truly became human — truly took on a body that could be seen, touched, and depicted — His image can be made and honored. The council also explicitly reaffirmed the teaching of the previous six councils.15
Nicaea II adds no new Christological content but bolts down everything that came before. As Pawl observes, the council "reiterates in summary form the teaching of the previous six councils," making the whole package binding for both East and West.16 For our argument, Nicaea II is a reminder that the Incarnation is not a temporary arrangement that ends at the cross or at the ascension. The Christ who can be depicted in an icon today is the same Christ who will return at the end of the age — still God, still man, still one Person in two natures.
Step back from the details and notice the pattern. Each council adds one more piece, and not one of those pieces fits with physicalism. Nicaea I gives us a fully divine Son. Constantinople I and II rule out an incomplete human nature without a rational soul. Ephesus gives us the formula "rational soul and a body." Chalcedon makes the union permanent and the natures unmixed. Constantinople III gives us a human will, which only makes sense in a human soul. Nicaea II ties the whole tradition into a single binding witness.
I sometimes hear physicalist friends say, "I just take Scripture; I am not bound by extra-biblical councils." I understand the impulse, but I think it is mistaken on at least three levels. First, the councils were doing nothing other than reading Scripture together with extraordinary care. Second, every Protestant tradition that affirms "true God and true man" is already drinking from the well these councils dug. Third, and most importantly for this book's argument, even if you set the councils aside as merely a reliable witness to the biblical pattern, the biblical pattern itself testifies relentlessly to a body-and-soul Christ — as Chapters 7, 8, and 9 demonstrate.
The councils, in other words, are not a foreign overlay imposed on Scripture. They are a 462-year-long careful reading of Scripture, during which the brightest minds in the Church wrestled out the implications of the gospel for who Jesus is. When we hear them speaking of "rational soul and body" and "without separation" and "two wills," we are not hearing the Church drift away from the Bible. We are hearing the Bible echo back to us, sharper and clearer, after centuries of prayerful debate. And what it tells us — every single time — is that the One who became flesh did so completely, body and soul, and remains so forever.
1 The standard scholarly edition of the conciliar texts in English is Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990). I follow Tanner's translations as cited and discussed throughout Timothy Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). ↩
2 Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1, "The Content of Conciliar Christology." ↩
3 On the development of the term homoousios at Nicaea, see Oliver D. Crisp, Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered, Current Issues in Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), chap. 1, "Christology Reconsidered." For a contemporary analytic-theological treatment of the Son's full deity in light of the council, see Andrew Ter Ern Loke, The Origin of Divine Christology, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), chap. 1, "Introduction." ↩
4 First Council of Constantinople, Canon 1, condemning, among others, "the Apollinarians." See Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1, "Concerning the Human Nature of Christ," for the relevant texts and discussion. ↩
5 Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101 (To Cledonius). For analysis of Gregory's argument and its lasting place in orthodox theology, see Michael A. Wilkinson, Crowned with Glory and Honor: A Chalcedonian Anthropology, Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2024), 67. ↩
6 Cyril of Alexandria, Second Letter to Nestorius, accepted at Ephesus, as quoted and analyzed in Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1, "Concerning the Human Nature of Christ." ↩
7 Formula of Union (433), incorporated into the conciliar tradition through John of Antioch's letter and Cyril's response. See Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1, "Concerning the Human Nature of Christ." ↩
8 Council of Chalcedon, Definition of Faith. The same wording is repeated verbatim in the Exposition of Faith of the Third Council of Constantinople. See Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1, "Concerning the Person of Christ." ↩
9 Second Council of Constantinople, Anathema 4, as discussed in Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1, "Concerning the Human Nature of Christ." ↩
10 Second Council of Constantinople, Anathema 10, as quoted in Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1, "Concerning the Person of Christ." ↩
11 Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1, "Concerning the Hypostatic Union." For the larger argument against physicalist Christologies that this conciliar grounding makes possible, see John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 167. ↩
12 Third Council of Constantinople, Exposition of Faith, as quoted and discussed in Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1, "Concerning the Wills of Christ." ↩
13 Third Council of Constantinople, Exposition of Faith, as quoted in Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1, "Concerning the Person of Christ." ↩
14 On the strong implication that dyothelitism entails dyo-noetism (two intellects), see Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 5, "The Metaphysics of the Incarnation." Andrew Ter Ern Loke develops a related but distinct framework in A Kryptic Model of the Incarnation, Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology, and Biblical Studies (London: Routledge, 2014), chap. 4, "A New Kryptic Christology: The Divine Preconscious Model." ↩
15 Second Council of Nicaea, Definition. See Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1, "Introduction," for the council's role in summarizing the prior six. ↩
16 Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1, "Introduction." For a complementary theological reading of the conciliar legacy as anchoring a body-soul Christology, see Joshua R. Farris, An Introduction to Theological Anthropology: Humans, Both Creaturely and Divine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020), 211. ↩
Cooper, John W. Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000.
Crisp, Oliver D. Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered. Current Issues in Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Farris, Joshua R. An Introduction to Theological Anthropology: Humans, Both Creaturely and Divine. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020.
Loke, Andrew Ter Ern. A Kryptic Model of the Incarnation. Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology, and Biblical Studies. London: Routledge, 2014.
Loke, Andrew Ter Ern. The Origin of Divine Christology. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Pawl, Timothy. In Defense of Conciliar Christology. Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Tanner, Norman P., ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. 2 vols. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990.
Wilkinson, Michael A. Crowned with Glory and Honor: A Chalcedonian Anthropology. Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2024.