Chapter 9

Christ's Human Nature in the Epistles — Paul, Hebrews, and the Apostolic Witness

The Gospels show us Jesus walking the dusty roads of Galilee, weeping at a friend's grave, and crying out from the cross. But the Gospels are not the only witness to Christ's humanity. When we turn to the apostolic letters — especially Hebrews and Paul — we find a different kind of testimony. Here the apostles step back from the narrative and tell us what Christ's humanity means: why He had to become like us, what His prayers and tears accomplished, and how His coming saves us. And the picture they paint is the same one the Gospels paint. Jesus is fully human. Not partly human. Not human-like. Fully and truly one of us — body and soul.¹

That last phrase — "body and soul" — is the heart of this chapter. The apostolic writers consistently affirm that Christ shares the whole of human nature with us. He has a body that bleeds and a soul that suffers. He has a will that chooses obedience. He has an inner life that learns, prays, and reverently submits to the Father. And this complete humanity, the apostles insist, is essential to His role as our mediator, high priest, and savior. Strip out Christ's human soul, and the very logic of redemption that the apostles develop falls apart.²

Hebrews 2:14–18 — "In Every Respect"

If I had to name the single most important verse in the New Testament for the question this book is asking, I would point to Hebrews 2:17. Listen to the whole passage:

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. (Heb 2:14–18 ESV)

The phrase that does the heavy lifting here is "in every respect." In Greek it is kata panta (κατὰ πάντα). Literally, this means "according to all things" or "in all things." The author of Hebrews chose a sweeping, comprehensive phrase. He did not write kata tina ("in some things") or kata ta dynata ("in those things possible for him"). He wrote kata panta. All things. Everything that being human involves.³

Now, what does it mean to be human? That is the question this whole book is wrestling with. As I have argued in Chapters 3 and 4, the biblical answer — confirmed by careful philosophical reflection — is that human beings are made of two substances joined into one whole: a body and a soul. We are not just walking biology. We are embodied souls. So when Hebrews says Jesus was "made like his brothers in every respect," and "his brothers" are body-and-soul creatures, the obvious conclusion follows: Jesus too has a body and a soul. He shares all of what makes us human. Not just the meat. Not just the blood. The whole package. As Wilkinson puts it, the eternal Son took on "flesh and blood" so as to be "made like his brothers in every respect," and this enfleshment is what crowned Him with glory and honor as the true Son of Man — the man par excellence whose full humanity defines our humanity.⁴

But here is where a careful physicalist might push back. "Yes," they might say, "Jesus is like His brothers in every relevant respect. But the soul is not a real respect, because the soul does not exist. So 'every respect' just means every way that human beings really are — and we are bodies, full stop." This is a clever move, but I do not think it works.

The move is question-begging. It assumes physicalism in order to defend physicalism. The writer of Hebrews chose the most universal phrase available in Greek to describe how completely Jesus shares our nature. To then add, "of course this excludes the soul, because there is no soul" is to import an anthropology into the text that the text does not assume. The burden of proof should fall on the one who wants to insert a hidden exception into kata panta, not on the one who reads it the way the author wrote it.⁵ And even if we granted that "every respect" means "every relevant respect," I have already shown in earlier chapters that the soul is the most theologically relevant feature of human nature. The soul is the seat of moral agency, the locus of our relationship with God, the part of us that survives death and awaits resurrection (cross-reference Chapter 3). A physicalist who tries to escape kata panta by appealing to relevance has chosen the worst possible exception — saying, in effect, that Christ shared with us everything except the very part of us that most needs saving.

This is essentially the move that Apollinarius made in the fourth century — and the church rejected it. As Gregory of Nazianzus famously said, "What is not assumed is not healed."⁶ If Christ did not assume a human soul, He cannot heal the human soul. Hebrews 2:17 closes that escape route. The Son was made like us in every respect. The soul is included.

Hebrews 5:7–8 — "In the Days of His Flesh"

The second passage I want to look at carefully comes a few chapters later:

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. (Heb 5:7–8 ESV)

Two phrases jump off the page. First, "in the days of his flesh." The Greek is en tais hēmerais tēs sarkos autou (ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ). This is a striking expression. It implies that there was a particular stretch of time during which the Son existed in "flesh" — that is, in the embodied human condition. The phrase only makes sense if Christ's existence is not identical with His flesh. If Jesus simply is His body, then "the days of His flesh" is just the days of His existence, full stop. But the writer treats Christ's "fleshly" existence as a particular phase — as something that began at the Incarnation and is distinct from His pre-existence and His glorified state. There is, in other words, an "I" who was present "in" the flesh during certain days. That "I" is the eternal Son. And the human nature He took on is not only flesh — it is flesh assumed by the divine Person, with a human soul as its inner life.⁷

Second, "he learned obedience through what he suffered." This is one of the most striking statements in the New Testament. The eternal Son learned. He suffered. He was tutored by His own pain. Now think hard about what that means. Learning is a deeply mental and spiritual activity. It requires a learner — a subject who undergoes change, who is shaped, who acquires something he did not have before. On a fully physicalist account of Christ's humanity, "learning" must reduce to neurochemical changes in a first-century Palestinian brain. The "obedience" Jesus learned must be a pattern of synaptic firings. Is this what the writer of Hebrews means? Surely not.⁸

Wilkinson notes that the humanity of the incarnate Son is "so personal and plenary" that even God-the-omniscient now knows experientially what it is to be human in a way that was not possible by mere observation.⁹ That observation cuts deep. Before the Incarnation, God knew about pain by knowing all things. After the Incarnation, the Son knows pain by feeling it. Experiential knowledge requires an experiencing subject — a soul that can suffer, learn, and pray. A brain alone cannot pray. A brain alone cannot have "reverence." That kind of language demands an inner self that loves the Father, fears death, and chooses obedience. It demands a soul.

One brief note before I move on. Hebrews 4:15 — "in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin" — belongs to this same line of thinking. Genuine temptation is not just a spike in dopamine. It is the experience of a will being pulled, drawn, attracted to something — and choosing not to give in. That requires a will that can be drawn. On dualism, the will is a faculty of the soul; temptation is a real spiritual experience that the soul resists. On physicalism, "temptation" collapses into a brain state, and "resisting" collapses into a different brain state. The full theological development of Christ's sinlessness belongs to Chapter 27, but the temptation language of Hebrews 4:15 fits seamlessly with the inner-life language of Hebrews 5:7–8.¹⁰

Hebrews 10:5–10 — "A Body You Have Prepared for Me"

The third passage I want to develop is Hebrews 10:5–10. The author quotes Psalm 40:6–8 and applies it to Christ:

Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, "Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.' " … And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Heb 10:5–7, 10 ESV)

Two things deserve close attention. First, look at the grammar of "a body you have prepared for me." The body is prepared for someone. There is a recipient. Someone is on the receiving end of this body. Who? The pre-existent Son. The body is not the Son. The body is given to the Son. He is the one who steps into the world and says, "Behold, I have come."¹¹

This is exactly the structure of the Incarnation as the church has always understood it. The eternal Son, who already exists, assumes a human nature — a body and a soul — at a point in time. He is the personal "I" who comes; the human nature is what He takes up. As Wilkinson and the Chalcedonian tradition put it, the Son is the who; the body and soul together are the what.¹² If we pretended that Christ's human nature is just a body, the structure of "a body you have prepared for me" would be incomplete: a body without a soul is not yet a fully human nature.

Second, look at the will. "I have come to do your will, O God." Whose "I" is speaking? Not just a body — bodies do not speak in the first person. Not the Father — the speaker is addressing the Father. Not the Holy Spirit — the speaker is the one offering the body. The speaker is the Son. And He is described as the one who comes willing to do the Father's will. This is enormously significant. The Son's intention to obey is a personal, volitional act. As I will argue more fully in Chapter 14, the human will of Christ is a faculty of the human soul. The willingness expressed in Hebrews 10:7 is not the involuntary firing of neurons; it is the conscious, free obedience of the incarnate Son acting through His complete human nature.¹³

If you take the soul out of this passage, the verbs no longer work. "Coming," "willing," "doing the Father's will" — these are not actions a body can perform on its own. They are acts of a Person, expressed through a complete human nature. Hebrews 10:5–10 is a passage that quietly assumes substance dualism (or something very close to it) about both Christ and us. Without it, the writer's claim that "by that will we have been sanctified" loses its punch. Sanctification is not a brain rewiring. It is the offering of a willing soul through a willing body, and we are sanctified by joining ourselves to that offering.

The Pauline Witness — A Brief Survey

Paul does not develop Christ's humanity at the same length as Hebrews. But several passages work in the same direction.

In Romans 8:3, God sends His own Son "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (en homoiōmati sarkos hamartias, ἐν ὁμοιώματι σαρκὸς ἁμαρτίας). The word homoiōma ("likeness") is doing careful theological work. Christ's flesh is real human flesh — not a phantom or appearance. But it is "likeness of sinful flesh," not "sinful flesh" itself. As Gordon Fee puts it (paraphrasing), the similarity lies in Christ's full humanity; the dissimilarity is that He never ceased to be God and never sinned.¹⁴ On the dualist reading, the flesh of Christ is genuinely flesh, but the Person who inhabits that flesh is the divine Son united to a sinless human soul.

In Galatians 4:4, Christ is "born of woman, born under the law." "Born of woman" affirms a real, ordinary human birth. "Born under the law" affirms genuine participation in the human moral and covenantal condition. Bodies are not under law; persons are. A purely physical organism cannot be "under the law" in any meaningful sense — only a being with a moral inner life can.¹⁵

In 1 Timothy 3:16, Christ "was manifested in the flesh" (ephanerōthē en sarki, ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκί). The aorist passive verb implies a prior reality being revealed — the pre-existent Son made visible in human form. Once again, the structure is: a prior Someone, now appearing in flesh.

And in 1 Timothy 2:5, "there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." The full theological weight of the present tense ("is") for the permanent incarnation belongs to Chapter 26. But notice the implication for our chapter: a mediator between God and men must share fully in both natures. Mediation requires a real, complete human nature on Christ's side — body and soul — and a real divine nature on God's side. Both meet in the one Person of the Son.¹⁶

The Best Physicalist Counter — and a Response

I want to be fair to the strongest version of the physicalist response. A thoughtful Christian physicalist might say something like this: "I agree that Hebrews and Paul affirm Christ's full humanity. I agree that He prayed, learned, suffered, and willed obedience. But all of that can be done by a fully embodied person without an immaterial soul. The brain is plenty rich enough to support genuine prayer, real moral agency, and authentic suffering. So the apostolic texts do not require dualism — they only require that Christ was fully human in whatever way humans are fully human."¹⁷

This is a fair move within a physicalist framework. But it runs into two big problems. First, it makes the Christological argument completely dependent on the prior anthropological argument. If physicalism about humans is wrong (as I have argued in Chapters 3–5), then physicalism about Christ is wrong. The texts of Hebrews and Paul keep insisting that Christ shares our nature — so His nature is whatever ours is. Second, even granting the physicalist's framework, the apostolic texts are awkwardly worded for a strict materialist. Why does Hebrews say "in the days of His flesh" rather than simply "during His life"? Why does it speak of a body that was "prepared for" the Son rather than a body that was the Son? Why does Paul speak of Christ being "manifested in flesh" rather than simply being "born"? These phrasings keep treating the body as something assumed, given, or worn — language that fits naturally with a Person taking up a body-soul human nature, and that fits awkwardly when "the body" is supposed to be the whole of Christ's humanity.

Synthesis and Conclusion

Let me draw the threads together. The apostolic letters consistently picture Christ as a complete human being. He shares "in flesh and blood" (Heb 2:14). He was "made like his brothers in every respect" (Heb 2:17). He "offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears" and "learned obedience" (Heb 5:7–8). He came in a body "prepared for" Him, with a willing "I" who said, "Behold, I have come to do your will" (Heb 10:5–7). Paul tells us He came "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Rom 8:3), "born of woman, born under the law" (Gal 4:4), "manifested in the flesh" (1 Tim 3:16), and stands now as "the man Christ Jesus" — the one mediator between God and us (1 Tim 2:5).

These passages affirm Christ's complete humanity — including His inner life of prayer, learning, willing, and reverent submission. That inner life cannot be reduced to brain chemistry without trivializing the very passages the apostles wrote to comfort and instruct us. When Hebrews 4:15 promises that we have a high priest who can "sympathize with our weaknesses," it does so on the assumption that He has experienced what we experience. Sympathy of that depth requires shared experience, and shared experience requires a shared nature, and a shared nature, on the biblical view, includes a soul.¹⁸

Wilkinson's Chalcedonian anthropology helps us see what is at stake. If Christ is the man par excellence, and His complete human nature includes a body and a rational soul, then our humanity — defined in light of His — also includes a body and a soul.¹⁹ The apostolic letters confirm this from the other direction: they tell us that Christ is what we are, in every respect. The road runs both ways — and on both lanes the traffic moves toward dualism, not away from it.

The Old Testament adds further weight to this picture. The messianic prophecies — the Suffering Servant who pours out His nephesh to death (Isa 53:12), the Messiah whose nephesh will not be abandoned to Sheol (Ps 16:10), the pierced one who is mourned with anguish (Zech 12:10) — anticipate exactly the kind of soul-bearing Messiah the apostles describe. Chapter 10 will take up that material in detail.²⁰

So when we read the apostolic letters, we are not reading the writings of materialists. Paul, the writer of Hebrews, the apostles all agree: the Son became one of us. All of us. Not a costume. Not a shell. A real body, a real soul, a real human life, taken up by the eternal Son and joined to His divine nature in the unbreakable union of His Person. That is the Christ they preached. That is the Christ we worship. And that is the Christ whom physicalism, for all its modern sophistication, cannot quite manage to keep whole.