Chapter 18

Conciliar Christology

Timothy Pawl's Defense of the Councils

Introduction

For nearly seventeen centuries, the Christian church has confessed that Jesus Christ is one person with two natures — fully God and fully human. Yet for almost as long, critics have insisted this confession is plain nonsense. How can one being be all-knowing and ignorant at the same time? All-powerful and weak? Unable to suffer and yet bleeding on a cross? To many philosophers, Chalcedon looks less like a careful definition and more like a pious shrug — a contradiction dressed up in Greek.

Enter Timothy Pawl. In his 2016 book In Defense of Conciliar Christology, Pawl takes the tools of modern analytic philosophy — predicate logic, modal logic, truthmaker theory — and uses them to do something quite specific. He does not try to peer inside Jesus' head and tell us what the Incarnation felt like, the way Andrew Loke does in his Kryptic Model. Pawl's goal is more modest, and in some ways more ambitious. He aims to show that the councils' definitions are not logically impossible. The contradictions, he argues, only look like contradictions until we examine them carefully. When we do, they dissolve.¹

This chapter has two goals. First, I want to introduce you to Pawl's approach in a way that does not require a logic textbook. Second, I want to show something that I think Pawl himself might not emphasize but that matters enormously for this book: his entire defense of the councils quietly presupposes that Christ has a human soul. Strip away the soul, and the very framework Pawl is defending collapses. Pawl is, whether he frames it this way or not, an ally of the dualist Christology this book is defending.

What Pawl Is Trying to Do — and What He Isn't

It helps to start with what kind of project Pawl is running. Loke (Chapter 17) gives us a model — a story about how the divine attributes are concealed at a "preconscious" level while Jesus lives a genuinely human conscious life. Loke is trying to explain the Incarnation. Pawl is doing something different. He is trying to defend the Incarnation against the charge that it is logically incoherent.²

The difference is important. Imagine someone hands you a math problem and says, "This is impossible — no number can satisfy these equations." You have two options. You can solve the problem and show them the number (that's like Loke's approach). Or you can show them that their proof of impossibility has a hidden flaw — that their argument doesn't actually work (that's like Pawl's approach). Both responses are valuable. Pawl is doing the second.

This is why Pawl is sometimes called a "minimalist." He is not committing himself to one specific picture of how the two natures interact in Christ's experience. He is showing that the conciliar definitions can be read in a way that is not self-contradictory. As he puts it, his job is to show that the orthodox claims survive logical scrutiny — the rest is up to other models.³

The Fundamental Problem

To understand Pawl's solution, we first need to feel the weight of the problem he is solving. He calls it the "Fundamental Problem" of Christology, and the basic shape goes like this.⁴

The councils tell us that Christ has two natures — one divine, one human. The divine nature has certain properties: omniscience, omnipotence, immortality, the inability to suffer (impassibility), and so on. The human nature has the opposite properties: limited knowledge, limited power, mortality, the ability to suffer (passibility), and so on. These pairs of properties — omniscient/non-omniscient, impassible/passible, immortal/mortal — are what Pawl calls "complementary predicates." Where one applies, its opposite cannot.

Now here is the trouble. The councils also tell us that there is only one Christ. The divine and human natures are not two persons doing different things in parallel. They belong to the one Person of the Son. So when we say "Christ is impassible" (because of His divine nature) and "Christ is passible" (because of His human nature), we are saying both things about the same Christ. And that, on the surface, looks like a flat contradiction. The same person cannot both have and lack the same property at the same time. That is the law of non-contradiction, and Christians, like everyone else, are bound by it.⁵

I find this a useful place to pause. If you have ever felt a flicker of doubt about whether the Incarnation really makes sense — if you have ever wondered, even quietly, whether saying "Jesus is fully God and fully man" is just a slogan with no real content — then you are feeling the pull of the Fundamental Problem. Pawl takes this seriously. He does not wave it away. He thinks Christians who have not engaged with this problem have not really thought about what they are confessing.

The "Qua" Strategy

Christian theologians have long answered this kind of objection with a small Latin word: qua, meaning "as" or "according to." Christ is omniscient qua divine — that is, with respect to His divine nature. Christ is limited in knowledge qua human — with respect to His human nature. The properties belong to different natures, not to the same nature. So, the claim goes, there is no real contradiction.

Pawl spends much of his book examining this strategy, and what he finds is fascinating. There is not just one "qua" strategy — there are several, and they are not equally good. He sorts them into four basic families: those that modify the assertion as a whole (the "A" strategy), those that modify the subject ("Christ-qua-human" becomes a kind of new subject — the "S" strategy), those that modify the predicate (the predicate is really "passible-qua-human" — the "P" strategy), and those that modify the copula, the little verb "is" itself (the "C" strategy).⁶ Each version has strengths. Each one runs into problems.

What Pawl himself eventually proposes is something different and, in my judgment, quite elegant. His preferred move is to question whether the predicates are really incompatible at all once we understand what they are doing.⁷ Take "passible," meaning "able to be causally affected." On Pawl's analysis, "passible" really means "having a nature that can be causally affected." And "impassible" means "having a nature that cannot be causally affected." Now, here is the move. For ordinary, one-natured beings — you, me, the family dog — these two properties really are opposites. If your only nature can be affected, then it is not the case that you have a nature that cannot be affected. Done.

But Christ is not a one-natured being. He has two. He has a nature (the divine) that cannot be affected. And He has a nature (the human) that can. Both statements are true at the same time, in the same sense, of the same Person — because the Person has two natures, each doing different metaphysical work. The "contradiction" only seemed to be a contradiction because we were unconsciously assuming that Christ has only one nature, the way we do.⁸

This is a striking move. It does not require us to bend the rules of logic. It does not require us to deny the law of non-contradiction. It simply asks us to read the predicates accurately, given the metaphysics the councils actually teach. I find this argument compelling, and I think most readers who give it a fair hearing will too.

Predications and the Communication of Attributes

Pawl's analysis also clarifies the ancient doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum — the communication of attributes. Christians have always said things like "God died on the cross" or "the Lord of glory was crucified." The early creeds happily speak of "one of the Trinity" suffering in the flesh. But how can God die? God is, by definition, immortal.⁹

Pawl's framework helps here. When Scripture says "they crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Corinthians 2:8), we are not saying the divine nature, considered in itself, was nailed to wood. We are saying that the Person — the Son, who possesses the divine nature — underwent crucifixion through the human nature He had truly assumed. The properties of the human nature can be predicated of the Person without being predicated of the divine nature. Pawl shows how this works at the level of formal logic, not just devotion.¹⁰ I will not develop this further here, since the communicatio is treated more fully in Chapter 14, but it is worth noting that Pawl's defense of the councils protects this central piece of biblical preaching.

The Concrete Nature View

One more piece of Pawl's framework deserves a quick mention. He defends what philosophers call the "concrete nature" view of Christ's human nature. On this view, the human nature Christ assumed is not a set of abstract properties (a list of qualities — "rationality, animality, and so on") but a particular, concrete thing — a real body united to a real rational soul.¹¹ Crisp argues for the same view in Divinity and Humanity, and the author of this book holds it as well.¹²

Why does this matter? Because persons take on concrete things, not abstract sets of properties. The Son did not "exemplify the property of being human" the way a triangle exemplifies three-sidedness. He really took to Himself a real human nature — flesh and blood and a thinking, feeling soul. The full development of the concrete-versus-abstract debate belongs to Chapter 19. For now, just notice this: Pawl, like Crisp and the author of this book, treats Christ's human nature as something real and complete, not a philosophical abstraction.

Where I Agree with Pawl

Pawl's defense of the councils is, in my judgment, one of the strongest pieces of work in contemporary analytic theology. I find his arguments largely convincing. Here is why I keep coming back to him.

First, he takes the councils seriously as theological documents, not as historical curiosities to be reinterpreted away. He starts with what Chalcedon, Constantinople II, and Constantinople III actually say, and he asks whether those exact claims can be defended. This is the right starting point.

Second, he is honest about the difficulties. He does not pretend the Fundamental Problem is easy or that critics are foolish. He gives the strongest possible version of every objection, then answers it. That kind of intellectual honesty is rare and worth modeling.

Third, his conclusions hold up. After hundreds of pages of dense argument, the conciliar definitions emerge not damaged but vindicated. A thoughtful Christian, Pawl shows, can confess Chalcedon with full intellectual integrity.¹³ That is no small thing.

Pawl and Loke as Complementary, Not Competing

Here is where I want to make a careful distinction. Some readers might think Pawl and Loke are rival theories — that you have to pick one. I do not think that is right. They are doing different things, and the work of one supports the work of the other.

Pawl shows that the conciliar claims are logically possible. Loke shows what the Incarnation might have been like in Jesus' lived experience. Pawl gives us the logical scaffolding; Loke gives us the lived content. Pawl shows the door is not locked; Loke walks us through the room beyond it.

I find both projects valuable, and I draw on both. Pawl's logical defense is what I reach for when an unbeliever or a skeptical philosopher tells me the Incarnation is incoherent. Loke's experiential model is what I reach for when I am trying to understand what it meant for Jesus to "grow in wisdom" (Luke 2:52) or to confess that He did not know "the day or the hour" (Mark 13:32). Pawl protects orthodoxy at the level of logic; Loke fills it out at the level of experience. The two together give us a stronger Christology than either alone.

The Soul Connection: Why Pawl's Defense Requires a Human Soul

Now I come to the part of this chapter that matters most for this book's argument. Pawl is a careful philosopher and a faithful defender of the councils. But I want to highlight something that, in my reading, runs all through his work, even when he does not stop to underline it: his entire defense presupposes that Christ has a complete human nature, including a real human rational soul.

Look at what Pawl is defending. He is defending the councils. And the councils are crystal clear about this point. Chalcedon (451) confesses that Christ is "truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and body" — in Greek, ek psychēs logikēs kai sōmatos (ἐκ ψυχῆς λογικῆς καὶ σώματος).¹⁴ This phrase is not decorative. It was placed there precisely to exclude Apollinarianism — the view that Christ had a human body but no human rational soul, with the divine Logos taking the place of the human soul (see Chapters 12 and 31). Constantinople II (553) reaffirms the same point, anathematizing anyone who teaches that the divine Logos itself functioned as Christ's mind. The councils Pawl defends do not just permit a human soul in Christ; they demand it.

This means Pawl's whole strategy — the qua-readings, the truthmaker analysis, the concrete-nature view — only works if there is a real, complete human nature for the predicates to apply to. And a "human nature," on the conciliar definition, is not just a body. It is a body and a rational soul. When Pawl says "Christ is passible qua human," what makes that statement true? On the dualist reading the councils require, the truthmaker is a real human nature — a body united to a soul that can really feel pain, really fear, really grieve. Take away the soul and we are left with a corpse-shaped predicate hanging in midair. There is nothing for "passible qua human" to be aptly predicated of, in the rich biblical sense, except a complete human nature.

This is why I read Pawl as an unwitting ally of substance dualism. He cannot defend the councils on physicalist anthropology, because the councils themselves are dualist. They define Christ's human nature as body-plus-rational-soul, and they anathematize those who deny the soul's role. If a Christian physicalist accepts Pawl's defense — and many do, since it is so widely respected — they are, perhaps without realizing it, accepting a defense of a Christology that requires the very thing they deny exists.

Wilkinson makes a parallel point in Crowned with Glory and Honor: a Chalcedonian Christology should shape our anthropology, because Christ is the paradigm human being. If Christ's human nature includes a soul, ours does too.¹⁵ Pawl's logical defense and Wilkinson's anthropological reading are pointing in the same direction. Once you take the councils seriously, dualism is no longer optional.

An Objection — and a Response

A physicalist might respond: "Sure, the councils used dualist language. But they were just using the categories of their day. We can keep the substance of their teaching and update the anthropology. 'Rational soul' just meant 'rational capacities,' and physicalists can affirm rational capacities arising from a brain."

This is a familiar move, and it has some surface appeal. But I do not think it works, for two reasons. First, the councils were not just using neutral categories that could be filled with any anthropological content. They were directly responding to Apollinarianism — a Christology that denied the soul. Their language is targeted, not generic. To say "the councils were just using the categories of their day" is to miss the polemical point of the very phrases at issue (a point developed at length in Chapter 31).

Second, even on the most generous reinterpretation, "rational capacities arising from a brain" cannot do the metaphysical work the conciliar tradition needs. Capacities are properties; the councils confess Christ assumed a concrete nature, not a property cluster. And the deeper Christological problems — the triduum mortis (Chapter 21), the dissolution of the hypostatic union at death (Chapter 22), the descent (Chapter 23), the personal identity of the risen Christ (Chapter 24) — all break apart on a brain-only reading. Pawl's defense is logically clean precisely because he does not have to deal with those problems. The dualist anthropology built into the councils protects him from them. The physicalist who borrows Pawl's defense is borrowing a defense that depends on the very thing physicalism denies.

Conclusion

Timothy Pawl has done the church a real service. With patience, rigor, and intellectual honesty, he has shown that the great Christological definitions of the councils are not the contradictions that critics have long claimed. The Incarnation is logically possible. The hypostatic union is not nonsense. A thoughtful Christian can confess Chalcedon with their head as well as their heart.

I commend Pawl's work warmly. I think the author of this book and Pawl are working in the same direction, even if from different angles. Where Loke gives us the experiential model and Pawl gives us the logical defense, together they protect a Christology that is both believable and beautiful.

But I have also tried to highlight something Pawl himself does not foreground: his defense only works because the councils he defends are already dualist. The councils confess Christ's complete human nature as body and rational soul — full stop. To defend the councils is to defend that anthropology. And that is one more reason, in addition to all the biblical and philosophical reasons we will see in chapters to come, that the soul is not optional. It is built into the very logic of the Incarnation. The Word made flesh — really, fully, conciliarly flesh — demands the soul.