Chapter 16

The Two-Minds View — Thomas Morris and the Dual-Consciousness Model

Introduction: A Landmark Contribution and an Ongoing Debate

In our previous chapter, we examined kenotic Christology — the view that the Son of God emptied Himself of certain divine attributes in order to become incarnate — and found it wanting. Kenoticism faces devastating objections: it requires a divine Person to shed essential properties, it threatens the Trinity's unity, and it contradicts the Chalcedonian Definition's insistence that the divine nature remains "without change." But if kenoticism fails, how do we make sense of the Incarnation? How can one and the same Person be omniscient and limited in knowledge, omnipotent and genuinely weak, omnipresent and located in first-century Palestine?

In 1986, the philosopher Thomas V. Morris published a groundbreaking book called The Logic of God Incarnate that offered a bold answer.¹ Morris proposed what he called the "two-minds" view of the Incarnation. According to this model, the incarnate Christ had two distinct minds — a divine mind with the full scope of omniscience, and a human mind that grew and developed as Jesus grew from infancy to adulthood. The two minds existed simultaneously within one Person, related by what Morris called an "asymmetric accessing relation": the divine mind had complete access to everything in the human mind, but the human mind did not have full access to the divine mind.

Morris's proposal was genuinely creative and profoundly influential. It revived interest in analytic philosophical approaches to the Incarnation, and it remains one of the most widely discussed models in contemporary Christology. Scholars like Wayne Grudem, John Feinberg, and Jay Wesley Richards have adopted versions of Morris's framework.² Gerald O'Collins, Oliver Crisp, Richard Sturch, and Richard Cross have also developed and defended versions of a two-consciousness Christology.³ Anyone working in philosophical Christology today must reckon with Morris.

In this chapter, I want to do three things. First, I want to present Morris's view carefully and fairly, because it deserves that treatment. It is a serious, sophisticated proposal that solves real problems. Second, I want to identify the significant strengths of the two-minds model — the things Morris gets right and that any adequate Christology must also get right. Third, and most importantly, I want to explain where I think the two-minds view runs into trouble, how it differs from the kryptic model that I defend (which will be presented in full in Chapter 17), and why both models absolutely require a human soul — making physicalism about human nature incompatible with either approach.

Let me say at the outset that my disagreement with Morris is a family disagreement, not a fundamental opposition. Morris and I agree on far more than we disagree about. We both affirm that Christ is one divine Person with two complete natures. We both reject kenoticism. We both insist that the divine attributes are not surrendered at the Incarnation. We both believe that Christ had a genuine human mind with limited knowledge, real emotions, and authentic experiences. The question between us is narrower but still important: Did Christ have two simultaneous streams of conscious experience, or one?

1. The Historical and Philosophical Context

To understand why Morris's proposal mattered so much, we need to appreciate the intellectual landscape he entered. By the mid-twentieth century, many theologians had grown uncomfortable with traditional Chalcedonian Christology. Liberal scholars openly denied it, dismissing the idea that Jesus could be both fully divine and fully human as logically incoherent. Even among those who wanted to affirm the creeds, there was a widespread sense that the Chalcedonian formula was merely a mystery to be accepted, not a claim that could be philosophically defended.

This is where Morris stepped in. Trained in analytic philosophy, he believed that the tools of careful conceptual analysis could show that the Incarnation — one Person, two natures — is not logically contradictory. His project was not to explain away the mystery but to demonstrate that the central Christian claim about Jesus is at least logically possible. That in itself was a major achievement. As Timothy Pawl later observed, Morris did as much as anyone to analyze the logic of the Incarnation.⁴

Morris's starting point was a distinction that he drew between "common" human properties and "essential" human properties. A common human property is one that most human beings happen to have — like living on the surface of the Earth, or having two biological parents, or being sinful. An essential human property is one that a being must have in order to qualify as human at all.⁵ These two categories are not the same. Just because every human being we have ever met has a certain property does not mean that property is essential to being human.

This distinction turns out to be critically important for Christology. Consider: some theologians have argued that sinfulness is essential to being human, and since Jesus was sinless, He was not truly human. Morris's response is elegant. Sinfulness is a common human property — most humans are sinful — but it is not an essential one. A human being who was perfectly sinless would still be fully human. He would just be an uncommon member of the human kind. Similarly, having limited knowledge might be a common property of humans, but it is not obvious that it is essential. If a human being somehow had access to divine knowledge, that would make him an extraordinary human, but not necessarily a non-human.⁶

Morris also introduced a crucial distinction between being "merely" human and being "fully" human. To be fully human is to possess all the properties that are necessary and sufficient for membership in the human kind. To be merely human is to be fully human and nothing more — to have no properties that exceed human nature. Orthodox Christianity has never claimed that Jesus was merely human. The claim is that He was fully human and also fully divine. He had everything required for genuine humanity, plus the complete divine nature besides.⁷

As Morris himself put it, critics of the Incarnation usually go wrong not because they have too exalted a view of God, but because they have "an incorrect, metaphysically flawed conception of humanity." They assume that being human requires being only human — that having divine properties automatically disqualifies someone from being human. But that assumption, Morris argued, confuses common properties with essential ones and collapses the distinction between "fully" and "merely."⁸

Andrew Loke, whose kryptic model I will present in Chapter 17, explicitly acknowledges the value of these Morrisian distinctions and builds on them. He agrees with Morris that we must be careful not to import non-essential common properties into our definition of what it means to be human, especially when assessing the Incarnation. A person who has a "divine preconscious" — knowledge stored at a level below conscious awareness — would be an extraordinary human, but not a non-human.⁹

2. Morris's Two-Minds Model: A Detailed Exposition

With these philosophical foundations in place, Morris developed his central proposal. In The Logic of God Incarnate, he argued that when we think about Christ, "we must recognize something like two distinct minds or systems of mentality."¹⁰ Morris identified these as:

First, the eternal mind of God the Son — the divine consciousness that encompasses the full scope of omniscience, is empowered by the resources of omnipotence, and is present in power and knowledge throughout the entirety of creation.

Second, a distinctly earthly mind — a human consciousness that came into existence and grew and developed along with the conception, human birth, and growth of Christ's earthly life.

These two minds are not separate or independent in the way that your mind and my mind are separate. They both belong to one and the same Person — the eternal Son of God. But they are genuinely distinct: the divine mind knows everything; the human mind knows only what a first-century Jewish man would know through normal human experience (plus whatever the divine mind chose to share with it).

2.1 The Asymmetric Accessing Relation

The heart of Morris's model is what he called the "asymmetric accessing relation" between the two minds. This relationship works in one direction only: the divine mind had full and complete access to everything in the human mind — every thought, every feeling, every experience — but the human mind did not have full access to the divine mind. The human mind could access the divine mind only on occasion, when the divine mind allowed it.¹¹

Think of it this way. The divine mind contains the human mind — the way a floodlight contains a spotlight's beam. The spotlight illuminates a small area of a dark field. The floodlight illuminates the entire field, including the area where the spotlight shines. The floodlight "sees" everything the spotlight sees, plus everything else. The spotlight "sees" only its own narrow beam. That is the asymmetric relation: the divine mind contains the human mind's content and more, while the human mind has access only to its own limited range of awareness.

This is a one-way containment. The divine mind is aware of the human mind's experiences — the joy, the sorrow, the fatigue, the hunger, the temptation. But the human mind is not continuously aware of everything in the divine mind. When Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, the human mind was genuinely grieving. The divine mind knew that Jesus would raise Lazarus in moments. But the human mind's grief was real — it was not contaminated by the divine mind's knowledge, because the information flow was controlled.

2.2 Morris's Analogies

Morris recognized that his proposal was unusual and would need supporting analogies to make it plausible. How can one person have two minds? Morris offered four types of analogy to illustrate the possibility.

The computer analogy. Imagine two computer programs, one of which contains the other but is not contained by it. The larger program has access to everything the smaller program does, but the smaller program cannot access everything in the larger one. Morris suggested that the relationship between the divine mind and the human mind is something like this: the divine mind is the comprehensive program that includes and encompasses the human mind's operations.¹²

The dream analogy. Consider a dreamer who is having a vivid dream with a large cast of characters. The dreamer himself is one of those characters, experiencing the dream "from within" — feeling the emotions, interacting with other characters, perceiving the dream world as though it were real. But at the same time, the dreamer "as sleeper" is somehow aware, at an overarching level of consciousness, that the whole thing is just a dream. There are two levels of awareness: the character's awareness (limited, immersed in the dream) and the sleeper's awareness (comprehensive, knowing it is a dream). Morris suggested that the incarnate Christ's experience might be something like this: the human mind experiences life "from within" the human condition, while the divine mind maintains the overarching awareness of everything.¹³

The subconscious analogy. Twentieth-century psychology tells us that the subconscious mind stands in an asymmetric accessing relation to the conscious mind. The subconscious stores vast quantities of information, memories, skills, and dispositions that are not currently in conscious awareness. The conscious mind can access only a fraction of this at any given moment, while the subconscious "knows" far more than what is consciously available. Morris saw this as an illustration of how the divine mind (like the subconscious) could contain vastly more information than the human mind (like the conscious mind) without the human mind being constantly overwhelmed.¹⁴

The split-brain and multiple personality analogy. Cases of brain hemisphere commissurotomy (in which the connection between the brain's two hemispheres is severed) and cases of multiple personality seem to suggest that a single human being can have two or more ranges of consciousness simultaneously. Morris appealed to these cases as evidence that one individual can host two streams of mental life. He argued that in such cases, the two ranges of consciousness are not two persons — if a therapist eliminates a troublesome alternate personality, the therapist has not killed a person. So having two ranges of consciousness within one individual does not necessarily mean having two persons.¹⁵

We will return to assess these analogies later in the chapter, because their adequacy is a central question in the debate.

2.3 Morris on Abstractism and the Nature of Christ's Humanity

It is worth pausing here to note an important feature of Morris's model. Morris held what scholars call an "abstractist" view of Christ's human nature. On abstractism, a nature is a set of properties — the properties that are necessary and sufficient for something to belong to a given kind. To be human is to instantiate the properties that define humanity. Christ is human because He possesses all the properties essential to being a member of the human kind.¹⁶

This contrasts with a "concretist" view, on which a nature is a concrete particular — an actual body, an actual soul — rather than a set of abstract properties. As Joshua Farris explains, on concretism, human beings are human in virtue of the concrete particulars that compose them: a body and a soul. The soul endows the individual with powers of rationality, moral awareness, imagination, and free will. The body provides the physical substrate for interaction with the material world.¹⁷

The distinction matters for our purposes because the author of this book holds a concretist view. Christ's human nature is not merely a collection of abstract properties that He instantiates; it is a concrete body-soul composite — a real human body united to a real human soul. This is the view assumed by the ecumenical councils, which spoke of Christ assuming a "rational soul and a body." The Chalcedonian fathers were not talking about abstract properties; they were talking about concrete realities.

Morris's abstractism is not necessarily incompatible with substance dualism — one can hold that the essential properties of being human include the property of having a soul. But Morris's model does not foreground the soul in the way that a concretist model does, and this has implications for how the model relates to the book's central argument about physicalism. We will return to this point in section 7.

3. The Strengths of the Two-Minds View

Before engaging with the criticisms, I want to be very clear about what Morris gets right. The two-minds view has genuine and substantial strengths that should not be overlooked. Any alternative model — including the kryptic model I will present in Chapter 17 — must match or exceed these strengths in order to be preferred.

3.1 Preserving Full Deity

The first and most obvious strength of Morris's model is that it preserves the full deity of Christ. Unlike kenotic Christology, which requires the Son to surrender divine attributes, the two-minds view affirms that the divine mind remains fully omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent throughout the Incarnation. The Son never ceases to know all things, to be all-powerful, or to be present everywhere. The divine attributes are not emptied, diminished, or set aside in any way. This means that Morris avoids the devastating essential-properties objection that we raised against kenoticism in Chapter 15: if omniscience is essential to divinity, then a being who ceases to be omniscient ceases to be God. On Morris's view, the Son never ceases to be omniscient. His divine mind retains the full scope of divine knowledge.

This also means that the Trinity's unity is preserved. The Son remains homoousios — "of one substance" — with the Father and the Spirit. All three Persons share all divine attributes equally. The Son does not become a "diminished" member of the Trinity during the Incarnation. This is a significant advantage over kenoticism, and it aligns perfectly with the Chalcedonian Definition's insistence that the divine nature exists in Christ "without change" (atreptōs, ἀτρέπτως).

3.2 Preserving Genuine Humanity

The second strength is equally important. Morris's model preserves the genuine humanity of Christ. The human mind is not a sham or a pretense. It is a real mind with genuine cognitive limitations, authentic emotional responses, and authentic experiences. The human mind does not know the day of Christ's return (Mark 13:32). The human mind grows in wisdom and stature (Luke 2:52). The human mind is "very sorrowful, even to death" in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:38). The human mind is genuinely tempted (Hebrews 4:15). None of these experiences are playacting. The human mind's ignorance, growth, sorrow, and vulnerability are all real.

This is critically important because, as Gregory of Nazianzus famously insisted, "what is not assumed is not healed."¹⁸ If Christ did not have a genuine human mind with genuine human limitations, then He did not truly share our experience, and His work of salvation is compromised. Morris's model ensures that Christ's human experience is authentic. He really did learn carpentry. He really did experience fatigue at Jacob's well (John 4:6). He really did not know when He would return. The human mind is not merely going through the motions while the divine mind secretly knows everything — the human mind's limitations are genuine.

3.3 Avoiding the Kenotic Problem

Third, and closely related to the first strength, Morris's model avoids the fundamental problem of kenoticism: it does not require any change in the divine nature. As we argued in Chapter 15, divine attributes are essential properties of divinity. God cannot cease to be omniscient and remain God, any more than a triangle can cease to have three sides and remain a triangle. Morris's two-minds view sidesteps this problem entirely. The divine nature does not change. The divine mind does not lose anything. Instead, a new mind — a human mind — is added. The Son gains something (a human mind, a human nature) without losing anything divine. This is addition, not subtraction.

3.4 Explaining Simultaneous Omniscience and Ignorance

Fourth, and perhaps most distinctively, Morris's model provides a clear and intuitive explanation for how Christ can be omniscient and limited in knowledge at the same time. This is one of the hardest puzzles in Christology. The Gospels present us with a Jesus who reads people's thoughts (Matthew 9:4), prophesies the future (John 13:1), and knows things that no ordinary human could know (John 1:48) — and yet also a Jesus who grows in wisdom (Luke 2:52), does not know the day of His return (Mark 13:32), and asks genuine questions (Mark 5:30).

How can one Person be both omniscient and ignorant? Morris's answer is elegant: He is omniscient in His divine mind and limited in His human mind. These are not contradictory properties of one mind; they are properties of two different minds belonging to one Person. The divine mind knows the day of Christ's return. The human mind does not. There is no contradiction because the knowledge and the ignorance reside in different cognitive systems.

4. Richard Swinburne's "Divided Mind" Model

Before we move to the criticisms, it is worth noting that Morris was not the only philosopher to propose a two-consciousness Christology. Richard Swinburne developed a related but distinct version, which he called the "Divided Mind" model. Understanding Swinburne's version helps us see both the appeal and the difficulties of the general approach.

Swinburne drew on Sigmund Freud's theory that a person can have two systems of belief that are to some extent independent of each other. In performing certain actions, a person acts on one system of beliefs and is not guided by the other, and vice versa. Although all of a person's beliefs are in principle accessible — they would not be that person's beliefs unless the person had privileged access to them — the person may refuse to admit certain beliefs to conscious awareness.¹⁹

Swinburne offered two illustrations. First, a mother may refuse to acknowledge to herself the belief that her son is dead. If asked whether she believes he is dead, she honestly says "No" — because that answer is guided by the beliefs she is currently conscious of, not by the deeper knowledge she is suppressing. Second, we can sometimes perform two quite separate tasks at once — having a conversation with one person while writing a letter to another — and in directing each task, quite distinct sets of beliefs are involved.²⁰

Swinburne suggested that a divine Person could, in becoming incarnate and acquiring a human belief-acquisition system, keep the resulting beliefs to some extent separate from the divine knowledge system. The result would be a divided mind in which the beliefs of both parts are consciously acknowledged — the divine part knowing all things, and the human part knowing only what human experience provides.²¹

Swinburne's version is slightly different from Morris's in important ways. Where Morris speaks of the human mind as a "proper part" contained within the divine mind, Swinburne speaks of two systems of belief that the incarnate Person keeps partially separate. But both models share the same fundamental commitment: Christ has two simultaneously conscious cognitive systems, one divine and one human. And as we will see, both models face the same fundamental objection.

5. The Two Subjects Worry: The Central Objection

We now come to the most serious challenge facing the two-minds model. If Christ has two simultaneous streams of consciousness — a divine consciousness and a human consciousness, each with its own "I-thoughts," its own perspective, its own experiential content — does this not imply that there are two subjects of experience? Two experiencers? And if there are two subjects, are there not two persons? This would be Nestorianism — the heresy that Christ is not one Person but two. The early church condemned Nestorianism at the Council of Ephesus in 431, and it remains one of the most serious Christological errors.

This is the objection that Andrew Loke has pressed most forcefully, and I find his arguments compelling. Let me walk through the reasoning carefully.

5.1 The Self-Consciousness Problem

Loke's first argument focuses on self-consciousness — the capacity for "I-thoughts."²² Consider what the two-minds model implies. The Logos, through His human range of consciousness, is consciously aware of Himself being consciously unaware of the day of His coming (cf. Mark 13:32). At the same time, the Logos, through His divine range of consciousness, is aware of Himself being consciously aware of the day of His coming. In other words, the Logos would be simultaneously aware of Himself being consciously aware of the day and aware of Himself being consciously unaware of the day.

As Tim Bayne observed, neither Morris nor Swinburne provided an adequate account of Christ's self-consciousness — His "I-thoughts." Bayne noted that one would assume Christ's "I" thoughts had the same referent regardless of which consciousness they occurred in. Surely it would be possible for Christ to think of Himself (as Himself) in either consciousness.²³ But if the same "I" is simultaneously conscious of knowing something and conscious of not knowing that same thing, we have a contradiction. The only way to avoid the contradiction is to say that the two "I-thoughts" have different referents — but then we have two selves, not one.

Loke argues that the two-minds model actually implies not just two but three consciousnesses. First, there is the human consciousness in which the Logos might say, "I am not aware of myself being consciously aware of the day of my coming." Second, there is the divine consciousness in which the Logos might say, "I am aware of myself being consciously aware of the day of my coming." Third, there must be a "subject consciousness" of the Logos in which He might say, "I am aware of myself being consciously unaware of the day of my coming in my human nature, and aware of myself being consciously aware of the day of my coming in my divine nature, at one and the same time."²⁴

This third consciousness — the overarching "subject" awareness — creates three different and contradictory self-consciousnesses. One self-consciousness says "I don't know." Another says "I do know." A third says "I both know and don't know, depending on which nature I'm considering." Loke argues that three contradictory self-consciousnesses imply three selves, which makes the situation even worse than Nestorianism.

5.2 The I-Thou Relationship Problem

Loke's second argument is related but distinct. On the two-minds model, the human consciousness and the divine consciousness could encounter and address each other simultaneously. They could exist in a simultaneous I-Thou relationship — the human mind addressing the divine mind, and vice versa. But the possibility of such an I-Thou relationship implies two persons, as Garrett DeWeese has argued.²⁵ An I-Thou relationship is by definition a relationship between two subjects. If Christ's human consciousness can address His divine consciousness as "Thou," then there are two persons there, not one.

It is worth noting that there is no account in the New Testament of the human consciousness of Jesus addressing the divine Logos as a separate "you." When Jesus prays, He prays to the Father — not to His own divine nature. This is what we would expect on the kryptic model (one consciousness) but harder to explain on the two-minds model (two consciousnesses that could theoretically address each other).

Both of Loke's arguments have the same logical structure, which can be laid out clearly:

Premise 1: If the two-consciousness model is true, then X. (Where X = two contradictory self-consciousnesses, or the possibility of an I-Thou relationship between the two consciousnesses.)

Premise 2: If X, then Nestorianism is true.

Premise 3: Nestorianism is false.

Conclusion: Therefore, the two-consciousness model is false.²⁶

The argument is logically valid. A defender of the two-minds view must either deny that the model has the implications claimed in Premise 1, or deny that those implications entail Nestorianism (Premise 2).

5.3 Timothy Pawl's Response

In fairness, the two-minds view has sophisticated defenders who push back against these arguments. Timothy Pawl, whose conciliar Christology we will examine in Chapter 18, has responded to Loke's objections at length.²⁷ Pawl argues that the proponent of both conciliar Christology and the two-consciousness view has two options: deny that the two-consciousness model really does have the implications Loke says it does (deny Premise 1), or deny that those implications entail Nestorianism (deny Premise 2).

Regarding the self-consciousness argument, Pawl questions whether the two states of awareness — SC1 ("I am consciously unaware of the day") and SC2 ("I am consciously aware of the day") — are truly inconsistent. Pawl applies the same "qua" strategy he uses throughout his work: SC1 and SC2 are not predicated of the Person simpliciter, but of the Person qua His human nature and qua His divine nature, respectively. On Pawl's framework, inconsistency arises only when contradictory predicates are applied to the same subject in the same respect, which the reduplication strategy prevents.²⁸

Regarding the I-Thou argument, Pawl questions what exactly is required for an "I-Thou" relationship. If it requires personhood on the part of both the "I" and the "thou," then the proponent of the two-minds view will deny that the two natures qualify as persons. The human nature and the divine nature are not persons on conciliar Christology — there is only one Person (the Logos). The natures are faculties by which the one Person is conscious, not subjects in their own right. Pawl argues that Loke's argument begs the question by assuming that having two ranges of consciousness automatically means having two persons, when that is precisely the point in dispute.²⁹

Pawl's response is philosophically rigorous, and I do not wish to dismiss it lightly. However, I find that it does not fully alleviate the worry. Even if we grant that the "qua" strategy removes the formal logical contradiction, the phenomenological problem remains. What is it like to be Christ, on the two-minds view? Is there one unified experiential perspective, or two? If there are two, then there is still a nagging sense that we have something more like two subjects than one — even if we resist calling them "persons" in the strict conciliar sense. Loke's definition of personhood — drawn from the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, identifying a person as a subject with traits such as moral agency, rationality, self-consciousness, and the ability to enter into relationships with other persons — seems to describe exactly what each consciousness in the two-minds model possesses.³⁰

Pawl is aware of this concern. He argues that the conciliar fathers used a different definition of "person" (hypostasis) from the philosophical one, and that the fact that Christ's human nature satisfies a philosophical definition of personhood does not mean it is a person in the conciliar sense.³¹ This is a fair point — Chapter 19 will discuss the anhypostasia-enhypostasia distinction in detail — but it does not entirely dissolve the intuitive worry. If something walks like a person, talks like a person, thinks like a person, and is self-conscious like a person, calling it a "nature" rather than a "person" may be stipulative rather than explanatory.

6. Problems with the Analogies

As we saw, Morris offered four analogies to make the two-minds model plausible: computer programs, dreams, the subconscious, and split-brain/multiple personality cases. How well do these analogies hold up?

6.1 The Computer Analogy

Morris's first analogy — two computer programs, one containing but not contained by the other — is, as Loke points out, largely irrelevant to the question at hand. Computer programs are not persons. They do not have self-consciousness. The fact that one program can contain another tells us nothing about whether one person can have two simultaneous streams of consciousness.³² The analogy illustrates a formal containment relation, but it says nothing about what it is like (experientially) for a single subject to contain two conscious perspectives. Since the question is precisely about the unity of personal experience, an analogy drawn from non-conscious entities is of limited help.

6.2 The Dream Analogy

The dream analogy is more interesting but also more problematic. Morris suggested that a dreamer can simultaneously experience the dream from within (as a character) and be somehow aware that it is just a dream (as the sleeper). But Morris himself acknowledged that "in such experiences the dreamer is very rapidly alternating between two perspectives, in which case it would provide no analogy at all."³³ If the dreamer is rapidly switching between perspectives rather than maintaining two simultaneous perspectives, then the analogy does not support the claim that one person can have two simultaneous consciousnesses. At best, it supports the claim that one person can rapidly switch between two perspectives — but that is a different claim, and it is actually more consistent with a model where there is one consciousness that can access different levels of information at different times (which is closer to Loke's kryptic model).

6.3 The Subconscious Analogy

Morris's third analogy — the subconscious mind standing in an asymmetric accessing relation to the conscious mind — is perhaps the most illuminating, but it actually undermines the two-minds view rather than supporting it. Here is the problem: the subconscious is not a second stream of consciousness. It is precisely the opposite — it is a store of information that is below the threshold of consciousness. You have vast amounts of knowledge stored in your memory right now (your phone number, the lyrics to songs you learned years ago, how to ride a bicycle), but you are not currently conscious of any of it. The subconscious is not a second "experiencer" — it is background knowledge that can be activated into the one stream of consciousness when needed.

As Loke astutely observes, this analogy actually provides no evidence for the two-consciousnesses view at all. Instead, it provides an excellent analogy for the model Loke himself defends — the Divine Preconscious Model — in which the divine attributes exist at a "preconscious" level below the threshold of conscious awareness, available when needed but not constituting a second stream of consciousness.³⁴ The subconscious analogy, in other words, is an argument for Loke's position, not for Morris's.

6.4 The Split-Brain and Multiple Personality Analogies

Morris's fourth analogy — cases of brain hemisphere commissurotomy and multiple personality disorder — is the most controversial. Morris argued that these cases show that one individual can have two ranges of consciousness without being two persons. If an alternate personality is eliminated through therapy, the therapist has not killed a person — so two ranges of consciousness do not necessarily imply two persons.

Loke responds on several fronts. First, the interpretation of these cases is extraordinarily difficult, and it is debatable whether dissociative conditions ever truly involve two simultaneous streams of consciousness within a single subject, as Tim Bayne has argued.³⁵ Second, even if we grant that split-brain cases produce two simultaneously conscious minds (which is itself a very big "if"), the reasons already given above — that two contradictory self-consciousnesses imply two selves, and that the possibility of an I-Thou relationship implies two persons — provide good grounds for thinking that each discrete range of consciousness would itself be a person. In that case, Morris's attempts to find an analogue for his model of the Incarnation would fail anyway.³⁶

Third, Morris does not offer any convincing reason why splitting the brain could not produce two persons. If the splitting of an embryo at an early stage of pregnancy can result in two persons (identical twins), why cannot the splitting of the brain also result in two persons? And if it can, then the split-brain case does not help Morris's argument at all.³⁷

Fourth, there is in fact no convincing evidence of two simultaneously conscious minds after a brain hemisphere commissurotomy. Bayne has argued persuasively that consciousness in the split brain may simply switch between hemispheres, so that at any one time the patient has only a single stream of consciousness.³⁸ If that is the case, then the split-brain data provide no analogy for two simultaneous consciousnesses at all.

Similarly, Swinburne's analogies do not fare much better under scrutiny. Swinburne's analogy of performing two tasks simultaneously — having a conversation while writing a letter — is not quite analogous to his model. His model requires Christ to have a divided mind in which contradictory beliefs of both parts are simultaneously and consciously acknowledged, producing two different self-consciousnesses. Doing two tasks at once does not involve two self-consciousnesses with contradictory self-referential beliefs.³⁹ And Swinburne's analogy of the mother who refuses to acknowledge a true belief is actually a case of one stream of consciousness with suppressed beliefs — which, again, is closer to Loke's model than to a genuine two-consciousness view.

7. Additional Criticisms of the Two-Minds View

7.1 The Spotlight/Floodlight Problem

Morris's spotlight/floodlight analogy, while vivid and memorable, creates a subtle but important problem. If the human mind is a "proper part" of the divine mind — a spotlight contained within a floodlight — then this seems to make Christ's human nature a subdivision of His divine nature rather than a genuinely distinct nature. On the Chalcedonian Definition, Christ has two complete natures that are united "without confusion." But if the human mind is a part of the divine mind, then the human nature is contained within the divine nature, and the distinction between them becomes unclear.

This is the opposite of the Nestorian error but perhaps equally problematic. Nestorianism separates the natures too radically; the spotlight/floodlight analogy may conflate them. If the human mind is a "region" within the divine mind, then Christ's humanity is a subset of His divinity — and that sounds more like a form of monophysitism (one nature absorbing the other) than like genuine two-nature Christology.

To be fair, Morris would likely resist this characterization. He would say that the human mind is a distinct cognitive system that happens to be contained within the divine mind's scope of awareness — not that it is literally a portion of the divine mind's substance. But the language of "containment" and "proper part" naturally invites the conflation, and critics have not been wrong to press the point.

7.2 The Theopaschite Problem

The two-minds model raises a difficult question about divine suffering. If the divine mind has complete access to everything in the human mind — every thought, every sensation, every experience — then the divine mind presumably experiences Jesus' suffering, temptation, and growth. When Jesus was scourged, the human mind experienced the pain. But so did the divine mind, since the divine mind had full access to everything in the human mind. Does this mean that the divine nature suffered?

This is the ancient theopaschite controversy: the question of whether God suffered on the cross. Traditional theology has generally affirmed that Christ suffered "according to His human nature" but not "according to His divine nature." The divine nature is impassible — it does not undergo suffering in the way that creatures do. But on Morris's model, where the divine mind has direct, conscious access to the human mind's experience of suffering, it becomes very difficult to maintain that the divine nature is untouched by that suffering. The divine mind is not merely aware that the human mind is suffering (the way you might be aware that a friend is suffering); it has full and direct access to the suffering itself — it experiences the suffering as part of its own conscious content.

This does not necessarily refute the two-minds model. Some theologians (and the author of this book) affirm a qualified passibility — the view that God does have genuine emotional responses to His creatures (see the companion book The Heart of God). But even on a qualified passibility view, there is a difference between the divine nature experiencing emotions in response to creatures and the divine nature directly experiencing physical pain through a human body. The two-minds model seems to push the divine nature's involvement in Christ's suffering further than many theologians would be comfortable with.

7.3 The Unified Experience Problem

Perhaps the deepest intuitive problem with the two-minds view is this: it makes Christ's experience fractured. On Morris's model, there are two experiential perspectives, two streams of consciousness, two vantage points on the world. The human mind sees one thing; the divine mind sees another. The human mind is ignorant; the divine mind knows. The human mind is tempted; the divine mind is unmoved.

But was this really what it was like to be Jesus? Did Jesus experience two parallel lives — one human and one divine — running alongside each other like two parallel tracks on a railroad? The Gospels do not give this impression. They present us with a single person living a single life, having a single stream of experience, who sometimes said things that revealed divine knowledge and sometimes revealed human limitation. The impression is not of two conscious perspectives but of one conscious perspective that had unusual depth — one person who was more than He appeared to be.

This is one of the key reasons I prefer Loke's kryptic model over Morris's two-minds model. On Loke's model, there is one stream of consciousness — a genuinely human conscious experience. The divine attributes are present but concealed at the preconscious level, not constituting a second conscious perspective. This provides a more natural account of the unified personal experience that the Gospels portray. We will develop this point fully in Chapter 17.

8. Points of Agreement: What Morris and the Author Share

Before moving to the critical question of the soul, I want to emphasize again the significant common ground between Morris's view and the position defended in this book. We agree on far more than we disagree about, and it is important to see the two-minds debate in its proper perspective.

First, we agree that Christ is one divine Person with two complete natures, divine and human. This is the nonnegotiable core of Chalcedonian orthodoxy, and both the two-minds view and the kryptic model are attempts to explain how this can be so.

Second, we agree that the divine attributes are not surrendered at the Incarnation. The Son remains fully omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. The disagreement is about how these attributes relate to Christ's human experience — whether they are actively conscious (Morris) or preconscious (Loke) — not about whether they are retained.

Third, we agree that Christ has a genuine human mind with genuine limitations. His human knowledge was limited. His human emotions were real. His human experiences were authentic. Neither of us thinks Jesus was playacting or pretending.

Fourth, we agree that kenoticism is unacceptable. The Son did not empty Himself of divine attributes. Both the two-minds model and the kryptic model are explicitly designed to preserve full deity without kenotic self-emptying.

Fifth — and this is the point most relevant to this book's argument — we agree that Christ must have a human soul. This brings us to the chapter's most important section.

9. The Soul Connection: Why Both Models Require Substance Dualism

Whatever our disagreements about the number of conscious perspectives in Christ, Morris and Loke agree on something foundational: the incarnate Christ must have a human soul. And this agreement has devastating implications for physicalism.

9.1 Why Morris's Model Requires a Soul

On Morris's two-minds view, Christ has a genuine human mind — a real cognitive system with its own content, its own beliefs, its own experiential perspective. This human mind is not identical to the divine mind; it is a distinct mental system with genuine cognitive limitations. The question is: what is the bearer of this human mind?

On substance dualism, the answer is straightforward. The human mind is a faculty of the human soul. The Son assumed a human nature consisting of a body and a soul, and the human mind is an operation of that soul. The soul is the immaterial substance that grounds the human mind's existence and provides the metaphysical "home" for human cognitive activity. The divine mind, by contrast, is a faculty of the divine nature. The asymmetric accessing relation that Morris describes — the divine mind accessing the human mind but not vice versa — is a relation between two immaterial cognitive domains: the infinite divine mind and the finite human soul's mind.

On physicalism, the picture is radically different. If there is no soul, then the "human mind" is just the brain — the physical organ inside Jesus' skull. The human mind's beliefs, experiences, emotions, and cognitive limitations are all neural events — patterns of electrochemical activity in biological tissue. And the asymmetric accessing relation that is central to Morris's model becomes a relation between the divine mind (an infinite, immaterial, omniscient consciousness) and a lump of gray matter weighing roughly three pounds.

This creates deep metaphysical problems. What does it mean for an infinite, omniscient, immaterial divine mind to "access" a finite physical brain? How does the divine mind "contain" the brain's neural activity as a "proper part"? The language of containment, access, and part-whole relations makes sense when we are talking about two cognitive domains — one infinite and one finite — that are both immaterial. But when one of the relata is a physical organ, the metaphysics become strained. Are neurons a "proper part" of the divine mind? Is electrochemical activity "contained within" omniscience?

On dualism, the human mind is a faculty of the human soul — an immaterial substance that provides a natural metaphysical partner for the divine nature. The soul can interact with the divine nature because both are immaterial, even though one is finite and the other is infinite. On physicalism, the human mind is just a brain, and the relationship between the divine nature and a physical organ is far more difficult to conceptualize.

9.2 Why Loke's Model Also Requires a Soul

Loke's kryptic model, which I will present in full in Chapter 17, has the same dependency on the soul. On Loke's model, the divine attributes (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence) are present at a "preconscious" level — like information stored in memory that is not currently in conscious awareness. The human conscious experience is seated in the human soul; the divine preconscious is the divine nature. The soul provides the metaphysical substrate for human consciousness, while the divine nature provides the "location" for the preconscious divine attributes.

On physicalism, there is no soul. The human consciousness is just brain activity. But the "preconscious" divine attributes — including omniscience, which has infinite informational content — cannot be "stored" in a finite physical brain. Neural connections cannot contain infinite knowledge. The kryptic model presupposes a distinction between the soul (seat of human consciousness) and the divine nature (seat of the divine preconscious), and this distinction collapses if the soul is replaced by a brain. This argument will be developed in detail in Chapter 17.

9.3 The General Problem for Physicalism

The underlying issue is the same for both models. Both Morris and Loke assume that Christ's human mind is a genuine mind — not merely a brain. It is a cognitive system with its own content, its own perspective, its own operations. It is the kind of thing that can stand in meaningful cognitive relationships with the divine nature. On dualism, this is perfectly natural: the human mind is a faculty of an immaterial soul, and immaterial substances can interact with other immaterial realities (including the divine nature). On physicalism, the "mind" is just the brain, and the brain is a physical organ that operates by electrochemistry and neural firing patterns. The brain is not the kind of thing that can "stand in an asymmetric accessing relation" to the divine mind, or "contain the divine preconscious," or serve as one pole of a two-nature metaphysical union.

As argued throughout this book, the Incarnation requires that Christ's human nature include an immaterial soul. The soul is what makes the human nature a complete nature — body and soul together, as the ecumenical councils insisted. Without the soul, we are left with the physical body alone as the entirety of Christ's human nature. And as we will argue in detail in Chapters 20-22, a purely physical human nature creates devastating problems for the Incarnation: the hypostatic union is destroyed at the cross (Chapter 21), the descent to the dead becomes impossible (Chapter 23), personal identity through death and resurrection is undermined (Chapter 24), and the permanent Incarnation is jeopardized (Chapter 26).

The two-minds model and the kryptic model disagree about the number of conscious perspectives in Christ. But they agree that Christ's human nature must include a soul. And that agreement is fatal to physicalism.

10. The Two-Minds View, the Kryptic Model, and the Councils

How do the two models relate to the ecumenical councils? This is an important question, because any adequate Christological model must be compatible with the conciliar definitions.

10.1 Chalcedon

The Council of Chalcedon (451) defined that Christ has two complete natures — divine and human — united in one Person "without confusion, without change, without division, without separation." Both the two-minds model and the kryptic model are compatible with this definition. Both affirm two natures, one Person, and the four Chalcedonian adverbs. The difference is in how they explain the psychological experience of the one Person who possesses two natures. Chalcedon did not specify whether Christ had one or two streams of consciousness; it specified the ontological structure (two natures, one Person) without addressing the phenomenological question.

10.2 Constantinople II

The Second Council of Constantinople (553) condemned Apollinarianism — the heresy that Christ lacked a human rational soul (nous). As we argued in Chapter 12, this condemnation is directly relevant to our topic. Both the two-minds model and the kryptic model affirm that Christ has a human rational soul with its own cognitive capacity. On both models, there is a genuine human mind — whether it constitutes a second stream of consciousness (Morris) or the single conscious perspective of a more complex Person (Loke). Both models therefore satisfy Constantinople II's requirement.

Physicalism, by contrast, denies that Christ has a human rational soul at all. If the human mind is just the brain, then there is no immaterial nous, no rational soul, no immaterial cognitive capacity. This is, as we have argued repeatedly, structurally identical to Apollinarianism: the denial that Christ's human nature includes a rational soul. Whether one denies it by saying the Logos replaced the human soul (Apollinarius) or by saying there is no such thing as a human soul (physicalism), the Christological result is the same — a human nature that lacks what the councils said it must have.

10.3 Constantinople III

The Third Council of Constantinople (681) affirmed dyothelitism — that Christ has two wills, divine and human, operating in harmony. Both the two-minds model and the kryptic model are compatible with dyothelitism. On Morris's view, each mind has its own will — the divine mind wills according to the divine nature, and the human mind wills according to the human nature. On Loke's view, the human will operates at the conscious level, and the divine will is always present and harmonious, with the human will freely conforming to the divine will (as in Gethsemane; cf. Chapter 14's treatment of Luke 22:42).⁴⁰

On physicalism, the "human will" is a brain state — a neural event. Can a neural event meaningfully "will" in the sense that the councils intended? Can a pattern of electrochemical activity "freely submit" to a divine will? The councils assumed that the human will is a faculty of the human soul — an immaterial capacity for rational self-determination. Reducing this to neurology strips it of its moral and metaphysical significance.

11. The Key Difference: One Consciousness or Two?

We can now state the fundamental difference between the two-minds view and the kryptic model with precision. Both models affirm that Christ is one divine Person with two complete natures, divine and human. Both affirm that the divine attributes are retained, not surrendered. Both affirm a genuine human mind with real limitations. Both require a human soul. The disagreement is about consciousness.

Morris says: Christ has two simultaneous streams of consciousness — a divine consciousness that knows all things, and a human consciousness that knows only what a human mind could know. These two consciousnesses coexist within one Person, related by an asymmetric accessing relation.

Loke says: Christ has one stream of consciousness — a genuinely human conscious experience. The divine attributes (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence) are present at the preconscious level — available when needed (e.g., for miracles, prophecy, supernatural knowledge) but not constantly flooding the human conscious experience. The divine preconscious is the divine nature; the human consciousness is the human soul's cognitive operation.

On Morris's model, there are two experiential perspectives — two "what-it-is-like-to-be" viewpoints — within one Person. On Loke's model, there is one experiential perspective — one "what-it-is-like-to-be" viewpoint — with the divine attributes operating behind the scenes. Morris gives us a Christ who is simultaneously experiencing everything from two vantage points. Loke gives us a Christ who is experiencing everything from one vantage point — a human one — while His divine powers and knowledge are held in reserve at a level below conscious awareness.

I believe Loke's model is superior for several reasons that I will develop in Chapter 17. The kryptic model avoids the two-subjects worry. It provides a more natural account of Jesus' unified personal experience as portrayed in the Gospels. It avoids the part/whole complications of Morris's spotlight/floodlight analogy. And ironically, Morris's own best analogy — the subconscious mind — actually supports Loke's position rather than his own.

But I want to stress again that this is a disagreement within orthodoxy. Morris's model is not heretical. It is a serious philosophical proposal that takes the Incarnation seriously and defends it rigorously. My preference for Loke's model is a judgment about which framework better explains the data — not a judgment that Morris's framework falls outside the bounds of Christian orthodoxy. Both models are compatible with the councils, both require a human soul, and both are incompatible with physicalism.

12. Comparing the Two Models: A Summary

It may be helpful to draw the comparison between the two models in a clear and systematic way.

Regarding what happens to the divine attributes during the Incarnation: Morris says the divine attributes remain fully active in the divine mind, which is consciously aware of everything at all times. Loke says the divine attributes are retained but concealed at the preconscious level — present but not flooding the human conscious experience.

Regarding how many consciousnesses Christ has: Morris says two — a divine consciousness and a human consciousness, operating simultaneously. Loke says one — a genuinely human consciousness, with divine attributes available at the preconscious level.

Regarding how Christ can be omniscient and limited: Morris says He is omniscient in His divine mind and limited in His human mind. Loke says He is omniscient at the preconscious level and limited at the conscious level.

Regarding how Christ performs miracles and displays supernatural knowledge: Morris says the divine mind either directly acts or shares information with the human mind through the asymmetric access relation. Loke says the divine preconscious is "activated" into consciousness when the Father wills it — divine knowledge or power rises from the preconscious to the conscious level for a specific purpose.

Regarding the threat of Nestorianism: Morris's model faces the two-subjects worry — two simultaneous consciousnesses may imply two persons. Morris denies this, arguing that the minds are related as part to whole. Loke's model avoids this worry entirely by positing only one conscious perspective.

Regarding the requirement for a human soul: Both models require a human soul. Morris needs the soul as the bearer of the human mind. Loke needs the soul as the seat of human consciousness and as the metaphysical complement to the divine preconscious.

Regarding compatibility with physicalism: Neither model is compatible with physicalism. Both require an immaterial human mind that is more than a brain.

13. Implications for the Book's Central Argument

Where does this leave us in relation to the book's central thesis — that physicalism about human nature is incompatible with orthodox Christology?

The answer is clear: it reinforces the thesis powerfully. The two-minds view and the kryptic model represent the two most sophisticated contemporary philosophical models of the Incarnation. They disagree about some things, but they agree on the necessity of a human soul. A physicalist cannot adopt either model. If Christ has no soul, then neither the two-minds framework nor the kryptic framework can work.

Morris's model requires a human mind that is a genuine cognitive system — not merely a brain. The asymmetric accessing relation, the containment metaphor, the spotlight/floodlight analogy — all of these presuppose that the human mind is an immaterial cognitive domain that can stand in meaningful relations with the divine mind. A brain cannot serve this function. A brain is a physical organ, not an immaterial mind. The asymmetric accessing relation between the divine mind and a brain is metaphysically problematic in a way that the relation between the divine mind and a human soul is not.

Loke's model requires a human soul even more explicitly. The divine preconscious needs the divine nature as its metaphysical "location." The human consciousness needs the soul as its metaphysical seat. If the soul is replaced by a brain, then the preconscious divine attributes — including omniscience, which has infinite informational content — must somehow be "stored" in a finite physical organ. This is not merely implausible; it is impossible. Infinite knowledge cannot be housed in finitely many neural connections.

The implications extend beyond these two models. As we will see in Part V of this book (Chapters 20-29), physicalism creates devastating problems for the Incarnation at every turn: the triduum mortis, the descent to the dead, the resurrection, the ascension, the permanent Incarnation, Christ's sinlessness, and the Trinity itself. The problems that physicalism creates for the two-minds view and the kryptic model are just one part of a much larger pattern of failure.

This is why the debate between Morris and Loke, while important and fascinating in its own right, is secondary to the larger debate between dualism and physicalism. Morris and Loke disagree about consciousness. But they agree about the soul. And it is the soul that matters most for the Incarnation.

14. Other Voices in the Conversation

Before we conclude, it is worth briefly noting how some other important scholars relate to the two-minds debate.

14.1 Joshua Farris on Abstractism and Concretism

Joshua Farris, in An Introduction to Theological Anthropology, provides a helpful analysis of how Morris's abstractist Christology compares with concretist alternatives. Farris notes that on Morris's abstractist view, Christ is human because He possesses all the properties necessary and sufficient for membership in the human kind — not because He assumed a concrete body-soul composite. This contrasts with a concretist view, on which Christ's human nature is a concrete particular: a body and a soul, each contributing specific powers and capacities.⁴¹

Farris observes that a dualist concretist account naturally generates a "three-part Christology": the divine nature, the human body, and the human soul. This maps neatly onto the Chalcedonian language of the Logos assuming a "rational soul and a body." But a materialist concretist account creates a serious problem: upon Christ's death, if there is no soul, Christ would cease to be human. There would be no part of His human nature that persists through death, which threatens His representational work on behalf of humanity during the intermediate state.⁴²

Farris's analysis reinforces the point we have been making. Whether one approaches Christ's human nature abstractly (Morris) or concretely (the position of this book), the inclusion of an immaterial component — a soul — is crucial for maintaining the coherence of the Incarnation through death and resurrection.

14.2 Oliver Crisp on the Two-Minds View

Oliver Crisp, in Divinity and Humanity, discusses the two-minds model as one of several possible frameworks for understanding the Incarnation. Crisp is broadly sympathetic to the two-consciousness approach, though he recognizes its difficulties. Notably, Crisp is also sympathetic to the kryptic alternative, and his treatment of krypsis in his chapter on kenosis provides useful philosophical analysis of the options.⁴³ Chapter 17 will engage more extensively with Crisp's assessment of the kryptic model.

14.3 The Broader Analytic Theology Discussion

The debate between the two-minds view and its alternatives is part of a larger renaissance of analytic Christology that includes scholars like Richard Cross, Brian Leftow, Stephen Davis, Thomas McCall, and many others. What is striking about this broader conversation is how consistently the participants assume — either explicitly or implicitly — that Christ's human nature includes some form of immaterial mentality. Whether the discussion is about two consciousnesses, one consciousness, abstract natures, concrete natures, or composition Christology, the assumption of substance dualism (or at minimum some form of property dualism) runs through virtually the entire conversation. Physicalism is almost entirely absent from serious analytic Christology — and for good reason. The models that analytic philosophers of religion construct simply do not work without an immaterial soul.

Conclusion: A Worthy Model, a Better Alternative, and a Fatal Problem for Physicalism

Thomas Morris made a genuinely important contribution to Christology. His two-minds model rescued the Incarnation from the charge of logical incoherence. It preserved full deity without kenosis. It preserved genuine humanity without docetism. It provided a clear framework for understanding how one Person could be simultaneously omniscient and limited in knowledge. And it launched a new era of analytic philosophical engagement with the central doctrine of the Christian faith.

At the same time, the two-minds model faces real difficulties. The two-subjects worry — the concern that two simultaneous consciousnesses imply two persons — has not been fully resolved, despite the sophisticated defenses offered by Pawl and others. Morris's analogies, while creative, ultimately fail to provide convincing evidence that one person can have two simultaneous streams of consciousness. The subconscious analogy, ironically, better supports Loke's competing model. The spotlight/floodlight metaphor risks conflating the two natures. And the phenomenological question — what is it like to be Christ? — receives a more natural answer from the kryptic model's single-consciousness framework than from the two-minds model's dual-consciousness framework.

In Chapter 17, I will present Loke's kryptic model in detail and argue that it offers a more compelling account of the Incarnation. But I want to close this chapter by returning to the theme that unites Morris and Loke, and that drives this entire book. Both the two-minds view and the kryptic model absolutely require that Christ possess an immaterial human soul. The human mind — whether conceived as a second consciousness (Morris) or as the single conscious perspective of a more complex Person (Loke) — cannot be reduced to a brain. It is a genuine mind, a genuine cognitive system, a genuine faculty of an immaterial soul. On physicalism, there is no soul, no immaterial mind, no metaphysical substrate for the human cognitive perspective. There is only a brain. And a brain cannot do the work that either Morris or Loke needs the human mind to do.

This is the bottom line. If physicalism is true, neither of the two most sophisticated philosophical models of the Incarnation is workable. The two-minds view collapses because the asymmetric accessing relation between the divine mind and a mere brain is metaphysically incoherent. The kryptic model collapses because a finite brain cannot house the divine preconscious. Both models need the soul. And the soul is exactly what physicalism denies.

The Incarnation demands the soul. The councils demand the soul. The two best philosophical models of the Incarnation demand the soul. Physicalism cannot provide it. And that, in a nutshell, is why physicalism fails the Incarnation.

Bibliography