Chapter 7

The Full Humanity of Christ — Body AND Soul in Scripture

Introduction: Why Christ's Complete Humanity Matters

In the previous chapter, we examined the overwhelming biblical evidence that Jesus Christ is fully God — the eternal Son, the second Person of the Trinity, sharing the very nature and identity of the one God of Israel. That truth is glorious. But it is only half the story. The equally stunning claim of the Christian faith is that this same eternal Son became fully human. Not partly human. Not mostly human. Not human in appearance only. Fully, completely, genuinely human.

And here is where everything we have been building toward in this book comes to a critical point. When we say Jesus is "fully human," what exactly do we mean? What does a complete human nature include? Is it just a body — a physical organism made of flesh, blood, bones, and a brain? Or does a complete human nature include something more — an immaterial soul that thinks, feels, wills, and survives the body's death?

I believe the answer to that question is the single most important issue in this book. The thesis of this chapter is straightforward: The New Testament presents Jesus as possessing a complete human nature — not merely a human body, but a genuine human body AND a genuine human soul or spirit — and this completeness is essential for the saving work He came to accomplish.

As we argued in Chapters 3 and 4, human beings are composed of two distinct substances: a material body and an immaterial soul. The Bible consistently teaches this, and the philosophical evidence supports it. If that is what a human being is — a body-soul composite — then when the Son of God became human, He must have assumed both a body and a soul. To assume anything less than a complete human nature would mean He did not truly become one of us. And if He did not truly become one of us, He cannot save us.

This chapter will unfold in several stages. First, we will explore the powerful theological principle behind Christ's complete humanity — the ancient axiom that "what is not assumed is not healed." Second, we will preview the key biblical passages that reveal Christ's human soul and spirit, passages that will receive their full exegetical treatment in Chapters 8 and 9. Third, and most extensively, we will engage with Michael Wilkinson's groundbreaking argument for what he calls "Chalcedonian anthropology" — the idea that Christ's human nature, as defined by the great councils of the church, should shape and norm our entire understanding of what it means to be human. Finally, we will confront the physicalist challenge head-on. If physicalism is true and there is no such thing as a soul, then every reference to Jesus' soul or spirit in the New Testament must be radically reinterpreted — and, as we will see, the results are devastating.

The Soteriological Foundation: "What Is Not Assumed Is Not Healed"

In the fourth century, a bishop named Apollinarius of Laodicea proposed a solution to a genuine problem in Christology. The problem was this: How can Jesus be one person if He has a complete divine nature and a complete human nature? Would that not make Him two people? Apollinarius's answer was to deny that Christ had a full human nature. Specifically, Apollinarius taught that in the Incarnation, the divine Logos (the eternal Word, the Son of God) replaced the human rational soul — the nous (νοῦς), the mind. Christ had a human body, and perhaps a lower animal soul for basic life functions, but His rational mind was the divine Logos itself.¹

Apollinarius was not a villain. He was a respected bishop trying to protect a vital truth: that Jesus is one person, not two. His concern was real. But his solution came at a terrible cost — it meant that Jesus was not fully human. He had a human body but lacked a human mind. And the church recognized immediately that this was a fatal problem.

The most powerful response came from Gregory of Nazianzus, one of the great Cappadocian Fathers, in his famous Epistle 101 to Cledonius. Gregory declared what has become the most well-known sentence in the entire Apollinarian controversy: "What is not assumed is not healed" — in Greek, to gar aproslepton, atherapeuton (τὸ γὰρ ἀπρόσληπτον, ἀθεράπευτον).² This is sometimes rendered, "That which He has not assumed He has not healed." The logic is simple and devastating:

Think about it this way. Where does sin really happen? Is it in our toes? Our kidneys? Our bones? No. Sin happens in the deepest part of who we are — in our hearts, our wills, our minds, our desires. The Bible consistently locates sin in the inner person: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick" (Jeremiah 17:9, ESV). "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander" (Matthew 15:19, ESV). It is the soul — the rational, willing, desiring inner self — that is the primary locus of human rebellion against God.

Now imagine that the Son of God came to save us, but He only took on a body. He assumed flesh, blood, bones, and a brain — but no soul. He entered the physical dimension of human existence but not the spiritual dimension. Would that save us? It would be like a doctor who treats a cancer patient's broken arm while ignoring the cancer itself. The broken arm is a real problem, yes. But the cancer is the deadly problem. If the doctor does not address the cancer, the patient will die — no matter how perfectly the arm is set.

Gregory saw this clearly. If Christ did not take on a human soul — with all its capacities for thought, emotion, decision, temptation, and moral struggle — then He did not enter into the deepest dimension of human brokenness. His atonement would address the body but not the soul. The cure would miss the disease.³

As Wilkinson puts it in his analysis of the Apollinarian controversy, the church rejected Apollinarianism precisely because it "vitiates both the humanity of Christ and the salvation of humanity in Christ." Gregory insisted that "if only half Adam fell, then that which Christ assumes and saves may be half also; but if the whole of his nature fell, it must be united to the whole nature of Him that was begotten, and so be saved as a whole."⁴ Adam fell completely — body and soul. So Christ must assume both body and soul to save us completely.

We will explore the Apollinarian controversy in full detail in Chapter 12 and the conciliar response in Chapter 31. For now, the principle is what matters: the completeness of Christ's humanity is not optional. It is the foundation of our salvation. If He did not assume a human soul, then the human soul is not healed. And if we have argued correctly in Chapters 3 and 4 that human beings do have immaterial souls, then Christ must have assumed one.

This principle has direct and devastating implications for physicalism. If physicalism is true — if there is no such thing as an immaterial soul — then there is nothing for Christ to assume beyond a body. The physicalist might say: "That's fine — there is no soul to redeem, because there is no soul to fall." But this response collides head-on with the biblical evidence. Scripture presents sin as something that happens in the heart, the soul, the inner person — not merely in the neurons of a physical brain. And the councils of the church, as we will see in Chapters 11 through 14, explicitly insisted that Christ possesses a "rational soul" (psychē logikē, ψυχῆ λογική) as part of His complete human nature.⁵ Physicalism cannot deliver what the councils demand.

The Biblical Evidence: Christ's Soul and Spirit in the New Testament

Before we turn to the broader theological argument, let us briefly survey the New Testament evidence that Jesus possesses a human soul and spirit. These passages will receive their full exegetical treatment in Chapters 8 (the Gospels) and 9 (the Epistles), so we will present them here in preview form. But even a quick survey reveals something striking: the New Testament consistently attributes to Jesus an inner life — a soul that grieves, a spirit that He commits to the Father, an emotional and volitional center — that is described in the same soul-and-spirit language used for all human beings.

Jesus' Soul in Anguish

In the Garden of Gethsemane, on the night before His crucifixion, Jesus told His disciples: "My soul (psychē, ψυχή) is very sorrowful, even to death" (Matthew 26:38; cf. Mark 14:34, ESV). The word Jesus uses is psychē — the standard Greek word for "soul." He does not say, "My body is sorrowful" or "My brain is distressed." He identifies the subject of His anguish as His soul — the inner dimension of His person that feels, that suffers, that bears the crushing weight of what is about to happen.⁶

This matters enormously. If Jesus has a human soul — a genuine psychē — then He possesses the same kind of immaterial inner life that all human beings possess. His sorrow is not merely a neurochemical event in a first-century Palestinian brain. It is the real, felt anguish of a human soul facing the cross. We will explore this passage in depth in Chapter 8.

Jesus Commits His Spirit to the Father

At the moment of His death on the cross, Jesus cried out: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (pneuma, πνεῦμα)!" (Luke 23:46, ESV). This is one of the most significant statements Jesus ever made, and its implications for our question are immense. Jesus entrusts something — His pneuma, His spirit — to the Father's care. This act of committing His spirit presupposes several things: first, that His spirit is a real entity, not a metaphor; second, that it can be separated from His body at death; third, that it continues to exist after the body dies; and fourth, that it can be received and kept safe by the Father.⁷

On physicalism, none of this makes sense. If Jesus is nothing more than a physical organism, then at death He simply ceases to function. There is nothing to "commit" to the Father, because there is no spirit to commit. The words become a meaningless gesture — a dying man speaking nonsense to no one. But Jesus does not treat His words as meaningless. He speaks with confidence, with intention, with the assurance that He — His spirit — will survive His body's death and be safe in His Father's hands. The full exegesis of this passage appears in Chapter 8.

Jesus Is Moved in His Spirit

When Jesus arrived at the tomb of His friend Lazarus, the Gospel of John records that "he was deeply moved in his spirit (pneuma) and greatly troubled" (John 11:33, ESV). The Greek is vivid: enebrimēsato tō pneumati (ἐνεβριμήσατο τῷ πνεύματι) — He was stirred with powerful emotion in the deepest part of His being, in His spirit. And then: "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). The tears are physical — they belong to His body. But the deep emotional stirring that produced those tears is located in His pneuma, His spirit — the immaterial inner self.⁸

This is not an isolated occurrence. In John 12:27, Jesus says, "Now is my soul (psychē) troubled." In John 13:21, we read that "Jesus was troubled in his spirit (pneuma)." Again and again, the Gospels locate the emotional and volitional center of Jesus' experience in His soul or spirit — not in His physical body or brain. We will examine these passages in detail in Chapter 8; here we note the consistent pattern.

Christ Made Like Us in Every Respect

The book of Hebrews makes a remarkable claim about the completeness of Christ's humanity. The author writes: "Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things... Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect (kata panta, κατὰ πάντα)" (Hebrews 2:14, 17, ESV). The phrase kata panta is comprehensive and unqualified — it means "in all things," "in every way." If human beings share in flesh and blood, Christ partook of the same. If human beings possess souls, Christ possesses a soul. The "every respect" language is all-encompassing — it leaves no room for an exception.⁹

A physicalist might object: "But 'in every respect' only means 'in every relevant respect' — and since there is no soul, the soul is not relevant." But this response simply begs the question. It assumes physicalism is true in order to dismiss the evidence. The Greek phrase is kata panta, not kata tina (in certain things). And as we argued in Chapters 3 and 4, human beings do have souls. If that argument stands, then "in every respect" includes the soul, and Christ must have one. The full exegesis of Hebrews 2:14–18 appears in Chapter 9.

The Cumulative Pattern

When we step back and look at the broader New Testament portrait of Jesus, a clear pattern emerges. The biblical writers consistently describe Jesus as having an inner life — a soul that grieves, a spirit that He commits to the Father at death, emotions that are rooted in His pneuma, a will that freely submits to the Father's will, and an experience of human life that goes far deeper than physical brain activity. They use the same soul-and-spirit vocabulary for Jesus that they use for all human beings. Nowhere do the biblical writers describe Jesus' inner life in neurological or physical terms. They never say, "Jesus' brain produced neurochemicals associated with sadness." They say, "My soul is sorrowful."

This consistent use of soul-and-spirit language for Jesus is not accidental. The biblical writers assumed — as the entire culture of Second Temple Judaism assumed, and as the church has affirmed for two thousand years — that human beings are body-soul composites, and that Jesus, as a fully human being, possesses both.¹⁰

Christ as the Paradigm Human: Wilkinson's Chalcedonian Anthropology

We come now to what I consider one of the most important and innovative arguments in contemporary theology — an argument that has profound implications for the debate between dualism and physicalism. It comes from Michael Wilkinson's recent work, Crowned with Glory and Honor: A Chalcedonian Anthropology.¹¹ Wilkinson proposes something that might seem surprising at first, but becomes deeply compelling the more you think about it: Christology should norm our anthropology. That is, our understanding of what it means to be human should be grounded in and governed by our understanding of what it means for Christ to be human.

This reverses the usual direction of influence. Normally, when theologians and philosophers discuss human nature, they begin with human beings in general — What are we? Are we physical organisms? Body-soul composites? Something else? — and then they apply their conclusions to Christ. They start with anthropology and work toward Christology. Wilkinson argues that this has it backward. We should start with Christ — who He is, what His human nature consists of, as defined by Scripture and the ecumenical councils — and then let that shape our understanding of humanity in general.¹²

Why does Wilkinson think this? Because Christ is the paradigm human being. He is the "second Adam" (1 Corinthians 15:45), the "firstborn among many brothers" (Romans 8:29), the one in whose image all humanity is being renewed (Colossians 3:10). If any human being can tell us what human nature truly is, it is Jesus Christ. He is not an exception to humanity — He is the pattern, the prototype, the one who shows us what it truly means to be human. As Wilkinson puts it, Jesus is the man — man par excellence — and His human constitution should define and govern our understanding of man par ordinaire.¹³

The Biblical Warrant for a Christological Anthropology

Wilkinson's argument is not merely a philosophical preference. He grounds it in Scripture. The Bible presents Jesus as the paradigmatic human being in several interconnected ways.

First, Jesus is the image of God. Colossians 1:15 calls Him "the image of the invisible God." While all human beings are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26–27), Jesus is the image of God in a unique and definitive way. He is the original; we are the copies. If we want to know what human beings are supposed to be — what human nature looks like when it is perfectly conformed to God's design — we look at Jesus.¹⁴

Second, Jesus is the Redeemer who creates a new humanity. Paul's Adam-Christ typology in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 presents Jesus as the "second Adam," the head of a new human race. Just as all humanity fell in Adam, so all who belong to Christ are being renewed in His image (Romans 8:29; 2 Corinthians 3:18). This redemptive work presupposes that Christ's own human constitution corresponds to ours. He must be genuinely and completely human in the same way we are, in order for His obedience and atoning death to be effective on our behalf. If Christ lacks something essential to our nature — say, a soul — then His humanity does not correspond to ours, and the entire Adam-Christ typology collapses.¹⁵

Third, the incarnation itself demands ontological correspondence. As Wilkinson argues, Scripture does not merely declare the Son to be human by divine fiat. The Father does not just "deem" the Son human. Rather, the eternal Son's incarnation results in His being an actual, ontological human being — "like us in every way" (cf. Hebrews 2:17), except without sin. This requires that His human constitution and ours share the same fundamental structure. If we are body-soul composites, then He is a body-soul composite. There must be a genuine ontological analogy between His human being and ours.¹⁶

The Chalcedonian Definition and What It Tells Us About Human Nature

Wilkinson's argument draws heavily on the Chalcedonian Definition of AD 451 — the most important Christological statement in the history of the church. We will analyze the Definition in full detail in Chapter 11. For now, what matters is what Chalcedon says about Christ's human nature. The Definition explicitly states that Christ is "truly man of a rational soul (ek psychēs logikēs, ἐκ ψυχῆς λογικῆς) and a body."¹⁷

Read that again carefully. The council did not say Christ is "truly man of a body." It said "truly man of a rational soul and a body." This was no accident. It was a deliberate, anti-Apollinarian clause. The Fathers at Chalcedon were explicitly affirming, against Apollinarius and all who would deny it, that Christ's human nature is composed of two things: a rational soul and a physical body. A complete human nature, on the Chalcedonian understanding, is not a body alone. It is a body-soul composite.

Now here is where Wilkinson's argument becomes so powerful. If the Chalcedonian Definition tells us that Christ's human nature consists of a rational soul and a body — and if Christ is the paradigmatic human being — then what does that tell us about our human nature? The answer is clear: our human nature, too, must consist of a rational soul and a body. What is true of the man must be true of mere man. Chalcedonian Christology, extended consistently into anthropology, yields a Chalcedonian anthropology — one that affirms the body-soul constitution of every human being.¹⁸

Wilkinson puts it this way: the church "is both warranted and wise to pursue a Christological definition of human being grounded in the Chalcedonian definition of Christ's human being."¹⁹ The best categories for understanding what we are as human beings are the same categories the church has used for centuries to confess what Christ is as a human being. And those categories include a rational soul.

Person and Nature: The Chalcedonian Distinction

Wilkinson does not stop at the simple point that Christ has a body and soul. He goes further, developing a full-blown Chalcedonian anthropology that draws on the person-nature distinction that is central to Chalcedonian Christology. This is a more technical element of his argument, but it is worth understanding because it reveals just how deeply Christology can inform our understanding of human nature.

In Chalcedonian Christology, there is a crucial distinction between person (hypostasis, ὑπόστασις) and nature (physis, φύσις). Christ is one person — the divine Son — who subsists in two natures — a divine nature and a human nature. The person is the "who" — the acting subject, the "I" who thinks, wills, and acts. The nature is the "what" — the set of properties and capacities that make a being what it is. In Christ, one divine person subsists in and acts through two complete natures.²⁰

Wilkinson observes that in contemporary theological anthropology, these two categories — person and nature — tend to get conflated. Most models of human nature define the human person as nothing more than the human nature itself. On some views, the "person" is simply the whole body-soul unit. On others, the "person" is the soul. On still others, the "person" is some specific capacity of the soul, like consciousness or self-awareness. But all of these approaches, Wilkinson argues, fail to maintain the person-nature distinction that is so central to Christology.²¹

Wilkinson's proposal is bold: just as the divine person of the Son subsists in a human nature (body and soul) in the incarnation, so each human person — a created hypostasis — subsists in a human nature (body and soul). We are person-nature beings, not merely nature beings. Our primary ontological identity is a personal hypostasis — a creaturely analogue of God the Son incarnate — who subsists in and acts through a particular body and soul.²²

Now, the full details of Wilkinson's person-nature anthropology go beyond what we need for this chapter. The point that matters for our argument is the more basic one: Chalcedonian Christology presupposes that Christ's human nature includes a body and a soul. If we take Christ as the paradigm for human nature, then human nature includes a body and a soul. Physicalism, which denies the existence of the soul, contradicts the Chalcedonian definition at its most explicit point.

The Methodological Revolution

I want to pause here and make sure we grasp the significance of what Wilkinson is proposing. He is not just making an argument about one theological topic. He is proposing a methodological revolution in how we think about human nature.

In most theological discussions about what a human being is, the debate proceeds like this: philosophers and theologians argue about the nature of the mind, the problem of consciousness, the relationship between brain and soul, and other questions from within the discipline of philosophy of mind. Then, once they have settled on a view of human nature — physicalism, dualism, or something else — they apply that view to Christ. They ask: "Given our view of human nature, what does this mean for the Incarnation?"

Wilkinson flips this around. He says: "We already know what Christ's human nature is, because the church has defined it. The councils, guided by Scripture, have told us that Christ's human nature consists of a rational soul and a body, united in one person with His divine nature. Now let us take that definition and use it to inform our understanding of human nature in general."²³

This is a powerful move because it changes the burden of proof. On the standard approach, the dualist must argue for the existence of the soul from philosophy and biblical exegesis, and then apply that conclusion to Christ. On Wilkinson's approach, the existence of the soul in Christ is already established by the conciliar definitions. Any anthropology that denies the soul is not just philosophically contested — it is Christologically condemned. The councils explicitly affirmed that Christ has a rational soul. They explicitly condemned Apollinarianism, which denied it. Any view of human nature that denies the soul is, at the very least, in serious tension with the church's authoritative Christological teaching.

As Farris notes in his survey of theological anthropology, the Chalcedonian framers used the language of "rational soul" with a clear background assumption about what constitutes a human being. Their anthropology was not an afterthought — it was woven into the very fabric of their Christological confession.²⁴ When Chalcedon says Christ is "truly man of a rational soul and a body," it is not merely making a Christological point. It is, implicitly but necessarily, making an anthropological point: a rational soul is part of what it means to be truly human.

The Foreword's Insight: Person-Nature Ontology

It is worth noting that Wilkinson's proposal has garnered significant attention in the scholarly community. In the foreword to Crowned with Glory and Honor, the significance of the person-nature distinction for anthropology is clearly articulated. The insight is this: if Christ, the paradigmatic human being, is defined by a person-nature ontology — where the divine person of the Son subsists in a human nature consisting of body and soul — then merely human beings should be defined by the same kind of person-nature ontology. A human person subsists in a human nature consisting of body and soul. This means that "most anthropological discussions of humans use the term 'person' to refer to a human nature alone," which conflates what Chalcedonian Christology carefully distinguishes.⁴⁹

The practical significance of this insight for our argument is immense. If contemporary anthropological models — whether dualist or physicalist — have been working at the level of nature alone, they have been missing half the picture. They have been asking, "What is a human nature made of?" (body only, or body and soul?) without asking the deeper question, "What is the relationship between the person and the nature?" Wilkinson's Chalcedonian anthropology answers both questions at once: a human being is a human person who subsists in a human nature composed of body and soul. And the warrant for this answer comes not from philosophical speculation but from Christology — from the way the church has defined Christ's own human being for nearly two millennia.

I find this deeply compelling. For too long, the debate between dualism and physicalism has been conducted as though it were purely a question of philosophy of mind. Wilkinson reminds us that it is, at its heart, a theological question — and that the church has already answered it. The Chalcedonian Definition does not merely tell us about Christ. It tells us about ourselves. It tells us that human nature includes a rational soul. And that answer, rooted in the authoritative teaching of the ecumenical council, carries more weight than any philosophical argument on either side of the debate.

The Problem with Starting from Anthropology

Wilkinson is keenly aware of what goes wrong when we move in the other direction — when we start with a philosophical anthropology and then apply it to Christ. This is precisely what happened with Apollinarianism. Apollinarius started with a particular view of human nature (a trichotomist view: body, lower soul, and rational mind) and a particular Christological concern (preserving the unity of Christ's person), and concluded that the divine Logos must replace the human mind. His anthropology drove his Christology — and the result was heresy.²⁵

Wilkinson observes that something similar happens with modern physicalism. Christian physicalists like Nancey Murphy and Joel Green begin with a philosophical commitment to physicalism — the view that human beings are entirely physical organisms — and then attempt to fit Christ into that framework. If there is no soul for any human being, then there is no soul for Christ. Christ's human nature is simply His physical body (or physical organism). But as the Apollinarian controversy showed, reducing Christ's human nature by removing a component — whether the mind (Apollinarianism) or the soul (physicalism) — creates devastating Christological problems. The direction of influence matters. If we start with a deficient anthropology and apply it to Christ, we will end up with a deficient Christology.²⁶

Six Theses of Chalcedonian Anthropology

Wilkinson summarizes his proposal in six theses that deserve careful attention. I will present them briefly and note their significance for our argument:

First, because the man Jesus Christ is the revelation of human being, He is ontologically definitive for our human being. This means that Jesus is not just one more data point about what it means to be human — He is the definitive data point. His human constitution reveals the fundamental design of all humanity.²⁷

Second, Scripture presents a biblical analogy between the man and mere man in the work of Christ that requires a sufficient correspondence between His human being and ours. The redemptive work of Christ depends on a genuine structural correspondence between His humanity and ours. If His human nature is fundamentally different from ours — if He has a soul and we do not, or if He lacks a soul that we possess — then the correspondence breaks down and the redemption fails.²⁸

Third, the Chalcedonian Definition presents a dogmatic analogy between the divine and human being of Christ according to a person-nature distinction that invites an extension into anthropology. The categories Chalcedon uses to define Christ — person and nature — are not unique to Christ. They are the categories of orthodox ontology, and they can (and should) be extended to define ordinary human beings as well.²⁹

Fourth, Chalcedonian Christology identifies the personal hypostasis of the divine Son as the person of Christ and the ontological location for the union of His natures. This means that the "who" in Christ is the divine Son — the personal subject who acts through both His divine and human natures.

Fifth, the man Jesus Christ is the divine person of the Son subsisting in and acting through a human nature (body and soul). Notice the parenthetical: "body and soul." For Wilkinson, this is non-negotiable. A human nature that lacks a soul is not a complete human nature.

Sixth, mere man — ordinary human beings — should be understood as a human person subsisting in a human nature (body and soul). Just as the divine person of the Son subsists in a human nature composed of body and soul, so each human person subsists in a human nature composed of body and soul.³⁰

The upshot of Wilkinson's argument for our purposes is clear. If Chalcedonian Christology defines Christ's human nature as consisting of a body and a soul, and if Christ's human nature is paradigmatic for all human nature, then all human beings have bodies and souls. Physicalism — which denies the soul — is incompatible with Chalcedonian Christology and the Chalcedonian anthropology that flows from it.

The Intersection of Christology, Anthropology, and Soteriology

Wilkinson's argument reveals something that many theologians have missed: the debate between dualism and physicalism is not merely a philosophical puzzle about the mind-body problem. It is a deeply Christological and soteriological issue. How we understand human nature determines how we understand Christ's human nature, which in turn determines how we understand salvation. These three doctrines — anthropology, Christology, and soteriology — are inextricably linked.

Wilkinson himself recognizes this connection. He points out that the current debate in anthropology between dualist and physicalist models is stuck in a stalemate precisely because both sides limit their discussion to the categories of body and soul (or body and mind). They work at the level of nature alone, asking what a human nature consists of. But they overlook the deeper question of personhood — the "who" that subsists in and acts through the nature. And this oversight creates, as Wilkinson describes it, a "theological aporia" — an unresolvable difficulty — at the intersection of Christology, anthropology, and soteriology.³¹

I believe Wilkinson is exactly right. And I want to draw out the implications of his argument for the specific thesis of this book. If we follow Wilkinson's lead and allow Christology to norm anthropology, then physicalism is not just one philosophical option among many. It is an anthropology that contradicts the church's authoritative definition of Christ's human nature. It is an anthropology that, if applied to Christ, would reduce His human nature to a physical body without a rational soul — which is exactly what Apollinarius proposed. And it is an anthropology that, if applied to soteriology, means Christ did not assume the deepest and most broken part of our being — the soul where sin takes root.

The stakes could not be higher. This is not an academic debate about technical metaphysics. It is a debate about whether Christ is fully human, whether His salvation reaches the deepest part of who we are, and whether the church's two-thousand-year confession about Christ's human nature still stands.

The Concrete Nature View and Christ's Body-Soul Composite

Before we turn to the physicalist challenge, it is worth noting one more important theological commitment that informs our argument. Throughout this book, I hold what is known as the concrete nature view of Christ's human nature. We will develop this in full detail in Chapter 19. But a brief explanation is helpful here because it connects directly to the body-soul question.

The concrete nature view says that Christ's human nature is a concrete particular — a specific, individual, real body-soul composite — rather than an abstract property or set of properties. When the Son of God became incarnate, He did not assume the abstract property of "humanness." He assumed a real, concrete, individual human nature: a specific body and a specific soul, united together as a body-soul composite. This is a real, particular thing — not a concept or a category.³²

Why does this matter? Because on the concrete nature view, Christ's human nature is not some vague or general thing. It is a particular body and a particular soul. It is as specific and real as any human being's nature. And just as my human nature consists of my particular body united to my particular soul, Christ's human nature consists of His particular body united to His particular soul. The soul is not an optional extra. It is part of the concrete particular that constitutes His human nature.

On physicalism, the concrete nature view faces a serious problem. If Christ's human nature is a concrete particular — but there is no soul — then Christ's human nature is simply a physical body. It is a single-component nature, not a two-component composite. But the councils, as we have seen, define Christ's human nature as a two-component composite: a rational soul and a body. The concrete nature view and the Chalcedonian definition together demand that Christ's human nature includes both components. Remove the soul, and the nature is incomplete.³³

The Physicalist Challenge: What Happens When the Soul Disappears

We have seen the biblical evidence for Christ's human soul, the soteriological foundation in Gregory's axiom, and Wilkinson's powerful argument that Christ's human nature should norm our anthropology. Now we must confront the physicalist challenge directly. What happens to the biblical portrait of Jesus if physicalism is true? What happens if we deny that Christ — or anyone — has an immaterial soul?

The answer is deeply troubling. If Christ has no soul, then every reference to His soul (psychē) or spirit (pneuma) in the New Testament must be radically reinterpreted. And when we see what those reinterpretations look like, we discover that physicalism does not just alter our understanding of a few texts. It trivializes the most profound moments of redemptive history.

Gethsemane Reduced

On physicalism, when Jesus says, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death" (Matthew 26:38), what He really means is something like: "My brain is currently producing neurochemicals associated with sadness and distress at elevated levels." The anguish of Gethsemane — the moment when the Son of God faced the full horror of bearing the sins of the world — becomes a neurochemical event. The deep, personal, spiritual agony that the Gospel writers describe with such gravity and reverence becomes nothing more than a first-century Palestinian brain doing what brains do when they are stressed.

Is this really what Matthew and Mark intended to convey? When Jesus told His disciples, "My soul is sorrowful," did He mean "My brain is producing stress hormones"? The suggestion borders on the absurd. The word psychē in this context clearly refers to the deepest part of Jesus' personal experience — the inner self that suffers, the seat of His emotional and spiritual life. The Gospel writers are describing something that goes far beyond brain chemistry.³⁴

The Cross Reduced

On physicalism, when Jesus cries out, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" (Luke 23:46), what He really means is something like: "I am about to cease functioning as a biological organism." There is no spirit to commit. There is no Father's hands to receive it. There is only a dying body and the end of all conscious experience. The majestic final words of Jesus on the cross — words of trust, confidence, and surrender — become a meaningless gesture. Jesus is committing nothing to no one, because on physicalism, there is nothing immaterial to survive His body's death.³⁵

This is not merely a different interpretation. It is a fundamental denial of what the text actually says. Jesus says He is committing His pneuma — His spirit — to the Father. He uses a deliberate, intentional verb (paratithemai, παρατίθημαι — "I entrust, I commit into safekeeping") that presupposes the spirit is a real thing that can be entrusted to someone's care. On physicalism, the text simply does not mean what it says.

The Emotional Life Reduced

On physicalism, when John tells us that Jesus "was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled" at Lazarus's tomb (John 11:33), what is really happening is nothing more than a set of electrochemical reactions in Jesus' brain producing an autonomic response that we call "emotion." The deep, personal, spiritual stirring that John describes with such power and gravity — the word embrimaomai (ἐμβριμάομαι) connotes a groaning or snorting with strong emotion, like a horse bridling — is reduced to neural firing patterns.³⁶

And when Jesus weeps, on physicalism, His tears are nothing more than a lacrimal gland response triggered by brain states. There is no soul that grieves. There is no spirit that is stirred. There is only a body producing tears in response to stimuli. The beauty and depth of Christ's compassion — the God-man weeping at the grave of His friend, moved in the deepest part of His being by the devastation of death — is flattened into a biological reflex.

The Will Reduced

The physicalist reduction also affects our understanding of Christ's human will. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed, "Not my will, but yours, be done" (Luke 22:42, ESV). As we will explore in detail in Chapter 14, this text is the primary biblical basis for dyothelitism — the doctrine that Christ has two wills, a human will and a divine will, defined at the Third Council of Constantinople in AD 681. The human will genuinely desired to avoid the suffering of the cross. The divine will was set upon accomplishing the Father's redemptive plan. And the human will freely submitted to the divine will. This is a deeply personal, deeply spiritual act — the most profound act of obedience in all of human history.

On physicalism, what is the "human will" of Christ? It is a brain state. It is a pattern of neural activity that we label "desire" or "intention." The most momentous moral decision in the history of the cosmos — the Son of God choosing, in His human will, to go to the cross for the sins of the world — becomes a competition between neural firing patterns in a first-century brain. One set of neural patterns ("avoid the cross") was overridden by another set of neural patterns ("obey the Father"). There is no soul that wills. There is no inner self that chooses. There is just a brain processing inputs and producing outputs.⁵⁰

Can a brain state "submit" to a divine will? The very idea seems incoherent. Submission is a personal, volitional act — it requires a genuine agent who chooses to subordinate their own desire to another's purpose. Neural firing patterns do not submit. They are determined by the physical laws governing electrochemical activity. But a soul — a genuine immaterial agent with the power of self-determination — can submit. Christ's human soul, in Gethsemane, genuinely chose to accept the Father's will. That is the kind of act that only a personal agent can perform.

Growth in Wisdom Reduced

Luke tells us that "Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man" (Luke 2:52, ESV). This is a stunning statement about the incarnate Son. He grew. He learned. He developed intellectually and spiritually. On the kryptic model that I hold (developed fully in Chapter 17), this reflects the genuine growth of Christ's human conscious experience. His divine omniscience was present at the preconscious level — available but not constantly flooding His human awareness. His human soul genuinely grew in knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, just as ours do.⁵¹

On physicalism, "growth in wisdom" is merely brain development. As Jesus' brain matured from infancy through childhood and adolescence, new neural connections formed, synapses strengthened, and cognitive capacity increased. There is nothing mysterious or spiritual about it — it is the same biological process that occurs in every developing human brain. But is this really all that Luke means? When he says Jesus grew in "favor with God," is he describing a neurological process? Surely the concept of growing in one's relationship with God — in spiritual maturity, in prayerful communion, in moral depth — points to something that goes beyond brain chemistry. It points to the growth of a soul.

The Language Problem

There is a deeper issue here that physicalists must face. The biblical writers never — not once — describe Jesus' inner life in neurological or physical terms. They never say, "Jesus' brain was distressed." They never say, "Synaptic activity in Jesus' prefrontal cortex increased." They consistently and exclusively use the same psychē and pneuma vocabulary to describe Jesus' inner life that they use to describe all human beings' inner lives. And, as we argued in Chapter 3, this vocabulary in its biblical usage refers to an immaterial soul or spirit — a real, inner, personal dimension of the human being that is distinct from the body.³⁷

The physicalist must claim that the biblical writers were simply wrong about the nature of what they were describing. They thought they were talking about an immaterial soul, but they were really talking about brain activity. They used soul-and-spirit language because they did not know about neuroscience. If they had known, they would have used different language.

But this creates a severe problem for anyone who takes the Bible seriously as God's inspired Word. If the biblical writers were systematically wrong about the nature of Jesus' inner life — if they incorrectly described neurological events as spiritual events, brain states as soul states — then how much confidence can we have in the rest of their testimony? If they got the basic nature of Christ's human experience wrong, what else did they get wrong? This is not a minor hermeneutical adjustment. It is a wholesale revision of the biblical portrait of Christ.³⁸

The Apollinarian Parallel: A Preview

We will develop this argument in full detail in Chapter 12, but it is important to preview it here because it connects directly to everything we have discussed. I believe that physicalism about Christ's human nature is, in its structural logic, a modern form of Apollinarianism.

Let me be clear: I am not saying that Christian physicalists are intentionally Apollinarian. Apollinarius denied that Christ had a human rational soul because he believed the divine Logos replaced it. Physicalists deny that Christ has a human soul because they deny that anyone has a soul. The motivations are different. The theological context is different. But the result is the same: Christ ends up without a human soul.

And the result is what the councils condemned. The councils did not say, "You must affirm Christ's human soul, unless your reason for denying it is that you are a physicalist." They said, "Christ has a rational soul." Full stop. The Chalcedonian Definition says He is "truly man of a rational soul and a body." Constantinople II (553) explicitly anathematized the denial of Christ's human rational soul.³⁹ Whether you deny it because the Logos replaced it (Apollinarianism) or because souls do not exist (physicalism), the denial falls under the same condemnation.

Loke makes this point powerfully in his analysis of the conciliar tradition. The early church fathers recognized that the Incarnation requires the Son to possess "a full human psychology, specifically a rational intellect." Apollinarianism was rejected because, as J. N. D. Kelly summarizes the patristic reasoning, "it was man's rational soul, with its power of choice, which was the seat of sin," and therefore the soul must be assumed if it is to be redeemed.⁴⁰ This is precisely the logic we have been developing throughout this chapter. The soul is where sin lives. The soul is what needs to be healed. Christ must have a soul to save us. And any view that denies Christ's soul — whether Apollinarianism or physicalism — undermines the very foundation of our redemption.

Again, we will develop this parallel much more carefully in Chapter 12. But I want the reader to see how the pieces fit together. Gregory's axiom, Wilkinson's Chalcedonian anthropology, the biblical evidence for Christ's soul, and the Apollinarian parallel all converge on the same conclusion: Christ must have a genuine human soul. Physicalism, by denying the soul, cannot deliver what the Incarnation requires.

Responding to Physicalist Objections

Before we conclude, we should consider how physicalists might respond to the arguments presented in this chapter. Several objections are worth addressing.

Objection 1: "Psychē just means 'life,' not 'soul'"

Some physicalists argue that the Greek word psychē does not refer to an immaterial soul but simply means "life" or "self." On this reading, when Jesus says, "My psychē is sorrowful," He is just saying, "I am sorrowful" — with no metaphysical implications about an immaterial substance.⁴¹

I addressed this objection at length in Chapter 3 when we examined the range of meaning of psychē and nephesh. It is true that these words can sometimes mean "life" or "self" in certain contexts. But in contexts where the soul is distinguished from the body — and especially in contexts involving death, departure, or the separation of the inner self from the outer body — the words clearly refer to something more than biological life. When Jesus commits His pneuma to the Father at death, the "life" reading makes no sense. You do not "commit your life into someone's hands" when your life is simply ceasing. You commit something — an entity, a self, a spirit — that you believe will survive the moment of death. As Cooper argues, in death-and-departure contexts, the soul-and-spirit language refers to the immaterial self that separates from the body.⁴²

Objection 2: "The biblical writers used the language of their time, not metaphysical precision"

Another physicalist response is to say that the biblical writers were simply using the culturally available vocabulary of their time. They spoke of "souls" and "spirits" because that was how first-century people talked about inner experience. But they were not making metaphysical claims about the existence of immaterial substances.

This objection has some surface plausibility, but it proves too much. If we adopt the principle that the biblical writers' metaphysical language cannot be taken as making real metaphysical claims, then we lose the ability to draw any metaphysical conclusions from Scripture. Did the biblical writers mean anything metaphysical when they said God is "spirit" (John 4:24)? Did they mean anything metaphysical when they said we will be "raised" with a "spiritual body" (1 Corinthians 15:44)? The selective application of this hermeneutical principle — accepting the metaphysical claims we agree with while dismissing the ones we don't — is intellectually inconsistent.⁴³

Moreover, the principle that the Bible's language reflects real truths about the world — not just cultural conventions — is foundational to orthodox Christianity. The claim that "God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1) is not merely a cultural way of saying something happened; it is a truth claim about reality. The claim that "the Word became flesh" (John 1:14) is not merely a first-century idiom; it is a metaphysical claim about the Incarnation. Likewise, the claim that Jesus committed His "spirit" to the Father at death is not merely a cultural convention; it is a truth claim about what happened when Jesus died.

Objection 3: "We can affirm Christ's complete humanity without affirming a soul"

The most common physicalist response is to insist that Christ can be fully human even without a soul, because human beings do not have souls. On this view, a "complete" human nature is simply a complete physical organism — a body with a brain that produces consciousness, emotions, thoughts, and will. Christ's human nature is complete because His body is complete. There is no soul to be missing.

This objection is really the heart of the dispute. And it brings us back to the central argument of this book. If the arguments in Chapters 3 and 4 are correct — if the Bible teaches body-soul dualism and the philosophical evidence supports it — then human beings do have souls, and a "complete" human nature must include one. But even if we set aside those arguments for a moment, the Christological evidence is independently compelling. The councils explicitly define Christ's human nature as consisting of a rational soul and a body. The physicalist who says, "Christ is fully human without a soul," is directly contradicting the Chalcedonian Definition. The physicalist is not just disagreeing with a philosophical argument — they are disagreeing with the church's authoritative definition of what constitutes a complete human nature.

As Wilkinson powerfully argues, the current debate between dualism and physicalism is "locked in a stalemate" precisely because both sides are working at the level of human nature alone, without grounding their anthropology in Christology.⁴⁴ Wilkinson's proposal breaks the stalemate by pointing to a higher authority than philosophical argument alone: the conciliar definition of Christ's human nature. And that definition says "rational soul and body" — not "body alone."

Objection 4: "The councils were using the philosophy of their time"

A final physicalist objection targets the councils themselves. Some physicalists argue that when the Chalcedonian Definition speaks of Christ having a "rational soul," the Fathers were simply using the dominant philosophical framework of their day — Platonic or Aristotelian soul-talk — and that this philosophical framework can be updated or replaced with a modern physicalist framework without changing the theological substance.

This is an important objection, and it deserves a careful response. It is true that the Fathers of Chalcedon operated within a philosophical context that included Platonic and Aristotelian categories. But the claim that Christ has a rational soul was not a philosophical add-on to the Definition. It was the theological substance of the Definition. The entire Apollinarian controversy was about whether Christ has a rational soul. Gregory's axiom — "what is not assumed is not healed" — is a soteriological argument, not a philosophical one. The councils were not saying, "Christ has a rational soul because Plato taught that souls exist." They were saying, "Christ has a rational soul because the salvation of the human soul requires it."⁴⁵

To strip the "rational soul" language from the Chalcedonian Definition and replace it with a physicalist framework is not to update the council's philosophy. It is to deny the council's theology. It is to say that the very thing the council was defending — the completeness of Christ's human nature against Apollinarian reduction — does not actually matter. This is not a minor adjustment. It is a fundamental reinterpretation that would have been unrecognizable to the Fathers who wrote it.

The Connection to the Author's Companion Works

The arguments in this chapter connect to several themes developed more fully in my companion books. In Beyond the Grave: A Biblical and Theological Case for Postmortem Salvation, Chapters 5 through 8 present the comprehensive biblical and philosophical case for substance dualism, including the evidence from veridical near-death experiences. The NDE evidence provides remarkable empirical support for the claim that the soul can exist and function apart from the body — which is precisely what Christ's soul did during the three days between His death and resurrection. If the soul can survive the body's death, as the NDE evidence suggests, then Christ's soul survived His body's death on the cross, preserved the hypostatic union through the triduum mortis, and was active during the descent to the dead. The connection between NDE evidence and Christology is developed fully in Chapter 5 of this book.⁴⁶

In The Heart of God: Does God Feel?, I argue that God has genuine emotional responses. This is directly relevant here because Christ's human emotions — His grief, His compassion, His anguish — are genuine expressions of His human soul. On physicalism, those emotions are merely neurochemical events. On the view I defend, they are real experiences of a genuine human soul — and, through the hypostatic union, they are also windows into the emotional life of God Himself. Christ's weeping at Lazarus's tomb is not just a human brain producing tears. It is the Son of God, in His human soul, grieving over the devastation that death has brought into His Father's good creation.⁴⁷

Synthesis: The Full Humanity of Christ Requires a Soul

Let us draw together the threads of this chapter's argument. We have approached the question of Christ's complete humanity from multiple angles, and every angle points in the same direction.

From soteriology: Gregory of Nazianzus's axiom — "what is not assumed is not healed" — establishes that Christ must have assumed every part of human nature that needs redemption. Since the soul is the primary seat of sin, moral failure, and alienation from God, Christ must have assumed a soul. Without it, the deepest dimension of our brokenness remains untouched.

From the biblical evidence: The New Testament consistently describes Jesus as having a human soul (psychē) and spirit (pneuma) — an inner life that grieves, that He commits to the Father at death, that is stirred with deep emotion, that is troubled by what lies ahead. This language is not metaphorical or merely conventional. It reflects the same body-soul anthropology that runs throughout Scripture.

From Christological anthropology: Wilkinson's argument that Christ is the paradigm human being — and that Christology should norm anthropology — means that any anthropology that denies the soul is Christologically inadequate. The Chalcedonian Definition explicitly states that Christ is "truly man of a rational soul and a body." If Christ has a soul, and Christ is the paradigm human, then human beings have souls.

From the failure of physicalist reinterpretation: Physicalism must reduce every reference to Christ's inner life to brain activity. "My soul is sorrowful" becomes "My brain is stressed." "Into your hands I commit my spirit" becomes "I am about to stop functioning." These reductions trivialize the most profound moments of redemptive history and contradict the plain meaning of the biblical text.

From the Apollinarian parallel: The councils condemned the denial of Christ's human soul — whether the denial comes from Apollinarius or from physicalism, the result is the same. Christ ends up without the very thing the councils insist He must have.

Looking Ahead: The Gospels, the Epistles, and the Councils

This chapter has established the theological and biblical framework for the claim that Christ has a human soul. In the chapters that follow, we will develop this claim in much greater detail.

Chapter 8 will provide the full exegetical treatment of the Gospel passages we have previewed here — Gethsemane, the cross, the emotional life of Jesus, His growth in wisdom, and the dyothelitism (two wills) that His inner life reveals. We will dig deeply into the Greek text, engage with scholarly commentaries, and show that the Gospels present a portrait of Christ's inner life that is irreducible to physical brain activity.

Chapter 9 will turn to the Epistles — especially Hebrews, Paul, and the other apostolic writings — and show that the same body-soul anthropology that runs through the Gospels also shapes the apostolic understanding of Christ's human nature. The "every respect" language of Hebrews 2:17, the "in the days of his flesh" language of Hebrews 5:7, and the mediatorial Christology of 1 Timothy 2:5 all point to a Christ whose humanity goes far beyond the physical.

Chapter 10 will reach back into the Old Testament, showing that the messianic prophecies — especially Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, and Psalm 16 — anticipate a coming figure whose inner life, suffering, and survival beyond death presuppose more than a merely physical existence.

And in Part III (Chapters 11–14), we will examine the councils in detail — from Nicaea to Constantinople III — and show that the church's authoritative Christological teaching has always presupposed and required that Christ possess a complete human nature including a human rational soul.

The road ahead is rich and rewarding. But the foundation has been laid. Christ is fully human. His humanity includes a body and a soul. And any view of human nature that denies the soul — any form of physicalism — cannot account for the Christ of Scripture, the Christ of the creeds, and the Christ who saves.

Conclusion

We began this chapter by asking what it means for Jesus to be "fully human." The answer, we have seen, is not simple or abstract. It is theologically loaded, soteriologically necessary, and Christologically non-negotiable. A full human nature — whether Christ's or ours — is not a body alone. It is a body and a soul. A body without a soul is not a complete human being. It is a corpse.

The Son of God did not merely put on human flesh the way you might put on a coat. He took to Himself a complete human nature — a real, concrete, body-soul composite. He did this because our salvation required it. He assumed what we are — body and soul — in order to heal what we are. He bore our sins not only in His body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24) but in His soul — the soul that was "sorrowful even to death," the spirit that He committed to the Father's care.

Gregory was right. What is not assumed is not healed. Wilkinson is right. Christ's human nature should norm our anthropology. And the councils were right. Christ is "truly man of a rational soul and a body." Physicalism, I believe, cannot deliver this. It cannot give us a Christ with a complete human nature. It cannot give us a Christ whose humanity reaches into the deepest part of our brokenness. And it cannot give us a Christ who saves — completely, truly, body and soul.

In the next chapter, we will see this truth come alive in the Gospels, as we examine the rich inner life of Jesus Christ — His emotions, His suffering, His will, and His death — through the lens of His human soul.⁴⁸

Bibliography

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