Chapter 17

The Kryptic Model — Loke's Divine Preconscious Christology

(The Author's Position)

Introduction: Why We Need a Better Model

In the previous two chapters, we examined two of the most influential modern models of the Incarnation. In Chapter 15, we looked at kenotic Christology — the idea that the Son of God "emptied Himself" of certain divine attributes like omniscience and omnipotence in order to become human. We saw that kenoticism, despite its devotional appeal, faces devastating logical problems. If the Son truly gave up divine attributes, then in what sense did He remain fully God during His earthly life? Divine attributes, as we argued, are essential properties — they belong to God's very nature. A being who ceases to be omniscient is not God "in a humble mode." That being has simply ceased to be God. Kenoticism's attempt to explain the genuinely human limitations of Jesus comes at an unacceptable cost: it undermines the full deity of Christ that the Council of Chalcedon insisted upon.

In Chapter 16, we turned to Thomas Morris's two-minds view — the proposal that Christ had two complete and simultaneous centers of consciousness: one divine and one human. Morris's model preserves Christ's full deity far better than kenoticism. The Son retains all His divine attributes, including omniscience, through His divine mind. At the same time, He experiences genuine human limitations through His human mind. Morris uses the image of a spotlight (the human mind, focused and limited) and a floodlight (the divine mind, all-encompassing). However, the two-minds view faces its own significant difficulty. If Christ has two full, simultaneous streams of consciousness — two complete "experiencers" — then in what sense is He one person? The worry is that two centers of consciousness look an awful lot like two persons, which would be Nestorianism, the heresy that there are two separate persons in Christ. Morris denies this conclusion, but many scholars have found his denial unconvincing. If there are two "I's" — two subjects having their own complete experiences at the same time — then the unity of Christ's person is seriously threatened.

So here is where we stand. Kenoticism preserves the unity of Christ's consciousness (one experience) but sacrifices His full deity. The two-minds view preserves Christ's full deity (all divine attributes retained) but threatens the unity of His person. What we need is a model that can do both — a model that preserves the Son's full possession of all divine attributes and maintains the unity of His personal experience. We need a framework in which Christ is genuinely one person with one conscious life — a life that is truly, authentically human in its day-to-day experience — while the divine attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence remain fully intact, available but not constantly flooding His human awareness.

I believe that Andrew Ter Ern Loke's Kryptic Model of the Incarnation — specifically his "Divine Preconscious Model" — provides exactly this framework. It is, in my view, the most compelling and coherent model of the Incarnation available today. This chapter will present Loke's model in detail, show how it solves the classical problems that have puzzled Christians for centuries, compare it favorably with its competitors, and — most critically for this book's argument — demonstrate why the kryptic model requires an immaterial human soul and therefore collapses if physicalism about human nature is true.

17.1 The Idea of Krypsis: Concealment, Not Emptying

The heart of Loke's model rests on a single Greek word that makes all the difference: krypsis (κρύψις), meaning "hiding" or "concealment." This word stands in deliberate contrast to the more familiar kenosis (κένωσις), meaning "emptying." The distinction between these two words captures the entire difference between Loke's model and the kenotic models we rejected in Chapter 15.

Kenoticism says the Son emptied Himself of divine attributes — He gave them up, set them aside, or surrendered them. Krypsis says the Son concealed His divine attributes — He hid them, veiled them, voluntarily restrained them from conscious access. The attributes are present but concealed, not eliminated but voluntarily held below the threshold of waking awareness. Think of the difference this way. If you turn off a powerful searchlight, the light is gone — you cannot turn it back on at will because the power has been disconnected. That is what kenoticism says happened to Christ's divine attributes: the power was shut off. But if you dim that searchlight — turning it down so low that it barely glows, while all the power is still connected and available to be turned back up at any moment — then the light is still there, just concealed. That is krypsis. The divine attributes are like a powerful searchlight that has been dimmed, not turned off.

This distinction has deep roots in Christian history. As Loke notes, the term "kryptic Christology" comes from the theological debates between the Lutheran schools of Giessen and Tübingen in the 1620s.¹ These Lutheran theologians argued over whether Christ's divine attributes were actively exercised during His earthly life or were somehow concealed. But the idea itself goes back much further. The inherited exegetical tradition before the rise of nineteenth-century kenoticism generally interpreted the "self-emptying" of Philippians 2:7 not as a literal loss of divine properties but as a voluntary concealment — the Logos chose to veil His divine glory behind the form of a servant.² As we discussed in our treatment of Philippians 2:5–11 in Chapter 15, the Greek word ekenosen ("emptied himself") does not have to mean "emptied himself of something." It can be understood metaphorically as "he made himself nothing" — a statement about taking the form of a servant, not about losing divine attributes.³

Oliver Crisp, in his important treatment in Divinity and Humanity, provides an independent philosophical assessment of krypsis that confirms its superiority over kenoticism. Crisp argues that the Incarnation should be understood not as a "giving up" but as a "taking on." In his words, the king humbles himself by becoming a servant as well as being a king — not by ceasing to be a king. The Word takes on a human nature in addition to His divine nature, without relinquishing any divine prerogatives.⁴ Crisp develops what he calls "divine krypsis, or divine self-concealment," in which the Word restricts the access that Christ's human nature has to the divine attributes — but the divine nature itself is never restricted. The Word continues to exercise all His divine attributes fully; it is only through the human nature that access to certain divine properties is limited.⁵

This is an extremely important distinction. On krypsis, the Son does not restrict His divine attributes per se. He continues to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent in His divine nature — sustaining the universe, knowing all truths, governing all things — throughout the entire time of the Incarnation. What happens is that the human nature of Christ does not have access to these divine properties in ordinary, day-to-day conscious experience. The human nature experiences genuine limitations: genuine fatigue, genuine lack of conscious knowledge about certain things, genuine dependence on the Father. But behind the scenes, at what Loke calls the "preconscious" level, the divine attributes are fully intact and available.

This brings us to the core of Loke's distinctive contribution: the Divine Preconscious Model.

17.2 The Divine Preconscious Model: How It Works

To understand Loke's model, we need to begin with some basic terminology from psychology. Loke carefully defines three levels of the mind: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious.⁶

The conscious refers to what you are actively aware of right now — the thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and experiences that are currently "in front of your mind." As you read this page, your conscious awareness includes the words on the page, the feeling of the book or screen in your hands, and whatever thoughts you are having about the argument.

The subconscious refers to all the mental contents that exist outside of your current consciousness. It can be divided into two parts. The preconscious includes mental contents that are not currently in your consciousness but are accessible to consciousness by directing attention to them.⁷ Here is a simple example: you know your phone number. Right now, before I mentioned it, you probably were not consciously thinking about it. But the moment I said "your phone number," you could bring it to mind instantly. That knowledge was in your preconscious — not currently in awareness, but immediately available when you chose to access it. The same is true of your knowledge of how to ride a bicycle, the name of your childhood best friend, or the fact that 2 + 2 = 4. These are all pieces of knowledge that you "have" at every moment, even though you are not consciously thinking about all of them at once.

The unconscious, by contrast, includes repressed mental contents that are not accessible to direct examination. These are memories, instincts, and wishes that are blocked by repression — you cannot bring them to consciousness simply by choosing to think about them.⁸

The distinction between the preconscious and the unconscious is crucial for Loke's model, and it is a point where Loke deliberately differs from earlier versions of the "divine subconscious" model proposed by scholars like Millard Erickson. Erickson had suggested that Christ's divine omniscience was held in the unconscious — meaning it was blocked from access in a way that Christ could not freely overcome.⁹ But Loke points out that this creates a serious problem. If divine omniscience is trapped in the unconscious and cannot be accessed, then in what sense does the Logos still possess omnipotence? An omnipotent being who cannot access His own knowledge at will is not truly omnipotent. The knowledge is effectively lost — hidden behind a wall of repression that even the divine Person cannot penetrate. That looks a lot more like kenoticism than krypsis.¹⁰

By placing the divine attributes in the preconscious rather than the unconscious, Loke solves this problem. The divine knowledge is not repressed or blocked — it is accessible. The Logos can direct His attention to it at any time. He simply chooses, voluntarily and freely, not to access it during His ordinary human experience. Just as you are not consciously thinking about your phone number at every moment but could recall it instantly if you wanted to, so the incarnate Logos is not consciously aware of all truths at every moment — but could access that knowledge instantly through His divine preconscious if He chose to do so, or if the Father willed it.¹¹

17.2.1 The Structure of the Incarnate Christ

With these definitions in hand, we can now state Loke's model. According to the Divine Preconscious Model (DPM), before the Incarnation, the Logos (the Second Person of the Trinity) existed as a mind without a body — an immaterial Person with a divine nature.¹² At the Incarnation, several things happened simultaneously:

First, the Logos's mind came to include a consciousness and a preconscious. Certain divine properties — above all omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence — were placed in the divine preconscious (which Loke calls "Part A" of Jesus' preconscious).¹³ This means that at the Incarnation, the Logos no longer had a constant conscious awareness of all truths. The knowledge was still there — stored, as it were, in Part A — but it was not flooding His waking experience.

Second, a human preconscious (Part B of Jesus' preconscious) and a human body were created. The human preconscious functioned exactly as yours or mine does — it stored memories, learned skills, and knowledge accumulated through ordinary human experience. The human body was a genuine physical body, subject to hunger, fatigue, pain, and death.

Third, the consciousness of the Logos acquired human properties that were newly created. In particular, a certain extent of the consciousness's capacity to function was made dependent on the brain of the newly created human body. This is what gave the incarnate Logos the capacity to experience physical pain, to have sensations through physical organs, and to have natural human desires for food, sleep, and rest.¹⁴

The result is a three-part concrete Christology: one divine Person with three "parts" (using "part" in a broad, not strictly material, sense):¹⁵

(1) The concrete divine nature — consisting of the divine preconscious (Part A) and the aspect of the consciousness having access to the divine preconscious. This is the "location" of divine properties like omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence.

(2) The human body — a physical body created at the Incarnation, subject to all the ordinary limitations and experiences of embodied human existence.

(3) The human soul — consisting of the human preconscious (Part B) and the aspect of the consciousness that has human properties. Loke is careful to specify that the "human soul" is understood as the immaterial part of the person, and that it is "distinct but not separate from the divine nature." The human soul and the divine nature are two distinct aspects of the immaterial part of Christ. The immaterial part of Jesus — His one unified soul — has two aspects: a human aspect (the human soul) and a divine aspect (the divine nature). The human aspect has all the properties essential to a human soul; the divine aspect has all the properties essential to a divine nature; and these two aspects are distinct from each other — there is no tertium quid, no confusing mixture of the two natures.¹⁶

This is worth pausing over, because it shows how carefully Loke's model aligns with the Chalcedonian definition. The two natures are united "without confusion, without change, without division, without separation." They are distinct (no confusion) but united in one Person (no division). The human nature is genuinely and completely human; the divine nature is genuinely and completely divine. And there is only one Person — one "I," one self-conscious subject of experience — who is the Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity.

17.2.2 One Consciousness, Not Two

This is where Loke's model most clearly distinguishes itself from Thomas Morris's two-minds view (discussed in Chapter 16). Morris proposes that Christ had two consciousnesses — two complete streams of experience running simultaneously. The divine mind knows all things and experiences everything from the divine perspective; the human mind knows limited things and experiences the world from a human perspective. Morris's Christ is like a person watching two movies at the same time — one on a wide screen and one on a small screen — with both experiences happening simultaneously in the same person.

Loke, by contrast, insists that Christ had only one consciousness.¹⁷ There is one stream of conscious experience — and it is a genuinely human stream. The incarnate Logos does not experience two parallel lives; He experiences one life, a human life, from a human perspective. He sees through human eyes, feels with human hands, thinks with a consciousness that has human properties, and grows in knowledge through ordinary human learning processes. The divine attributes are present — they are real, they are possessed — but they are at the preconscious level, not at the conscious level. They are behind the scenes, not on the stage.

Loke provides a helpful analogy. Think of a single consciousness that has multiple aspects happening at the same time. Right now, as you read this page, your visual experience of the words is distinct from your tactile experience of your fingers holding the book or resting on a table. These are different aspects of your experience — but they are aspects of one unified consciousness, not two separate consciousnesses.¹⁸ In a similar way, the incarnate Logos has one consciousness that has a divine aspect (access to the divine preconscious) and a human aspect (the human properties of the consciousness). These are distinct aspects of one unified consciousness, not two separate consciousnesses. This avoids the "two subjects" worry that plagues Morris's two-minds view.

I find this distinction extremely persuasive. When I read the Gospels, I encounter one Jesus — one Person living one life, having one set of experiences. He does not seem to be juggling two parallel streams of awareness. He grows tired at Jacob's well. He weeps at Lazarus's tomb. He is surprised by the faith of the centurion. He agonizes in Gethsemane. These are the experiences of a single conscious subject who is genuinely experiencing human life from the inside. The kryptic model makes better sense of this than the two-minds view, because it gives us one experiencer, not two.

17.3 How the Kryptic Model Solves the Classical Problems

For centuries, theologians and philosophers have wrestled with a set of apparent contradictions at the heart of the Incarnation. How can Christ be both omniscient and limited in knowledge? How can He be both omnipotent and weak? How can He be both omnipresent and located in one place? These are not trivial puzzles — they are the very questions that led some early Christians into heresies like Apollinarianism (denying Christ's full humanity to protect His deity) or Arianism (denying Christ's full deity to protect His humanity). Let us see how Loke's Divine Preconscious Model handles each of these problems.

17.3.1 The Problem of Omniscience and Limited Knowledge

The problem is starkly stated in Mark 13:32: "But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." Here Jesus Himself says He does not know the time of His own return. But if He is God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, then He is omniscient — He knows all things. How can an omniscient being not know something?

On kenoticism, the answer is that the Son gave up His omniscience. He truly became ignorant. But as we argued in Chapter 15, this is deeply problematic. A being who lacks omniscience simply is not God — omniscience is an essential divine attribute. If the Son ceased to know all things, He ceased to be fully divine.

On the two-minds view, the answer is that Christ's divine mind knows the day and the hour but His human mind does not. The statement in Mark 13:32 expresses what the human mind knows (or rather, does not know). This is better than kenoticism — it preserves the Son's omniscience. But it raises the "two experiencers" problem: if the divine mind is consciously aware of the day and the hour at the very same moment that the human mind is not, then there are two simultaneous perspectives on the same question within one person. This looks dangerously like two persons.

On the kryptic model, the answer is elegant. Jesus is omniscient — at the preconscious level. The knowledge of all truths, including the day and the hour of His return, is present in Part A of His preconscious (the divine preconscious). But at the level of His conscious human experience, this knowledge is not being accessed. Jesus' human conscious experience genuinely did not include knowledge of the day or hour. He was not pretending not to know; His waking human awareness genuinely did not contain this information. But the information was there — present in the divine preconscious, available if the Father willed its access.¹⁹

Loke's analogy is illuminating. A world-famous mathematician knows calculus. But right now, as she eats lunch and discusses the weather with a friend, she is not consciously thinking about calculus. If someone asked her, "Do you know calculus?" she could honestly answer, "Yes, I do" — even though that knowledge is not in her current conscious awareness. It is in her preconscious. In the same way, the incarnate Logos knows all truths — this knowledge resides in His divine preconscious — but His waking human experience at any given moment does not include conscious awareness of all those truths. When Jesus says "the Son does not know" the day or hour, He is describing His conscious human experience — not making a statement about the total content of His divine preconscious.²⁰

What about Jesus' growth in knowledge? Luke 2:52 tells us that "Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man." On the kryptic model, this growth in wisdom occurred through the human preconscious (Part B) and the human aspects of the consciousness. Jesus learned Aramaic from His mother. He learned carpentry from Joseph. He studied the Torah in the synagogue. He accumulated knowledge and skills in exactly the way any human child does — through His human mind, by ordinary processes of learning and experience. This learning process did not add anything to the content of the divine preconscious (Part A), which already contained all truths. But it did add to the content of the human preconscious (Part B), which started with very little and grew over time.²¹

I find this deeply satisfying. It means that when the boy Jesus sat at the feet of the rabbis in the Temple and amazed them with His understanding (Luke 2:46–47), He was genuinely learning and growing. He was not playacting. His human mind was genuinely developing. And yet the divine knowledge was there all along, held in reserve, accessible if needed. The moments when Jesus displayed supernatural knowledge — knowing people's thoughts (Matthew 9:4), knowing Nathanael before meeting him (John 1:48), predicting Peter's denial (Matthew 26:34), knowing the future of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41–44) — were moments when the divine preconscious was accessed, when information from Part A was brought into consciousness.²²

17.3.2 The Problem of Omnipotence and Genuine Weakness

The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus, "wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well" at Sychar (John 4:6). He was genuinely tired. His body was genuinely fatigued. But the same Gospel insists that "all things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made" (John 1:3). How can the Creator of the universe, who holds all power, become genuinely weary?

On the kryptic model, the answer involves two levels. At the divine preconscious level, Christ retains omnipotence. He has the power to do all logically possible things. Indeed, Loke argues that the divine preconscious could function as an infallible "autopilot," holding the universe together (Colossians 1:17) throughout every moment of the Incarnation, without requiring the Logos to be consciously directing these operations at every instant.²³ Just as the divine preconscious could store omniscient knowledge without the consciousness actively processing it, so the divine preconscious could exercise omnipotent power — sustaining the universe, governing natural laws, upholding all things by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:3) — without the incarnate Logos consciously willing each action in His waking human experience.

But at the same time, Loke makes an important point about omnipotence: having omnipotence does not require the continuous utilization of that omnipotence in all activities.²⁴ An omnipotent being can freely choose to refrain from using His omnipotence when performing certain activities. The incarnate Logos chose to walk to Sychar using the finite strength of His human body. He chose not to teleport, not to fly, not to make His body immune to fatigue. He could have done any of these things — His omnipotence was available in the divine preconscious — but He voluntarily chose to do these activities by the limited power of His human muscles and sinews. The result was genuine fatigue, genuinely experienced at the conscious level.

Loke uses an analogy drawn from Erickson: imagine the world's fastest sprinter choosing to run with his legs tied together.²⁵ The sprinter could untie his legs at any time. He retains his full ability to run at world-class speed. But in this self-restricted state, he genuinely struggles. His difficulty is not pretend — the effort, the strain, the slowness are all real experiences, even though they are voluntarily chosen. Similarly, Jesus could have accessed His divine omnipotence at any time. But in His self-restricted state, the experiences of fatigue, hunger, and physical limitation were genuinely felt. He was not pretending to be tired; He was tired, because He had voluntarily chosen to do His activities by human strength alone.

This is why Jesus could perform miracles when the occasion demanded it — healing the sick, calming the storm, multiplying the loaves — while also experiencing genuine human limitations in His daily life. The miracles were moments when the divine preconscious was accessed, when the power of Part A was brought to bear on specific situations. The daily experiences of hunger, thirst, and exhaustion were the result of the Logos doing ordinary activities through His human body alone, without accessing the power of the divine preconscious for those tasks.

17.3.3 The Problem of Omnipresence and Spatial Location

How can Christ be omnipresent — present everywhere — and yet located in Palestine? When Jesus was walking through Galilee, was He also present in Rome, in China, and at every point in the universe?

On the kryptic model, omnipresence is understood (following Aquinas) in terms of God's knowledge and power with respect to every point in space. Since the divine preconscious held the knowledge of all truths, the incarnate Logos had knowledge of every point in space in His divine preconscious. Since the divine preconscious held omnipotent power and functioned as an infallible autopilot sustaining all things, the incarnate Logos was causally active at every point in space through His divine preconscious. Therefore, the incarnate Logos was omnipresent in virtue of His divine preconscious — He knew and was active at every point in space — even while His physical body was spatially limited and moved from place to place in Palestine.²⁶

The human body of Christ was in one place at a time — walking through Capernaum, sailing on the Sea of Galilee, hanging on the cross at Calvary. The human conscious experience was spatially located, seeing what human eyes could see from that location. But at the preconscious level, the divine nature's knowledge and power extended to every point in the universe. The Logos was holding all things together in Rome, in the furthest galaxy, at the bottom of the ocean — all through the divine preconscious — while His human body walked the dusty roads of Judea.

17.4 The Kryptic Model and Dyothelitism: One Willer, Two Wills

As we discussed in detail in Chapter 14, the Third Council of Constantinople (681) defined that Christ has two wills — a divine will and a human will. This doctrine is called dyothelitism (from the Greek dyo, "two," and thelēma, "will"). The opposite view — that Christ has only one will — is monothelitism, and it was condemned as a heresy. The clearest biblical evidence for dyothelitism is Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane: "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done" (Luke 22:42). The presence of "my will" and "yours" presupposes two distinct wills: Jesus' human will, which shrinks from the suffering of the cross, and the Father's will (in harmony with the Son's divine will), which ordains the cross for the salvation of the world.

Some critics might wonder: if the kryptic model posits only one consciousness, does it not imply only one will — and thus fall into monothelitism? Loke addresses this directly and argues that DPM is not monothelite.²⁷

The key insight comes from the work of Demetrios Bathrellos, who studied the dyothelitism of Maximus the Confessor — the seventh-century theologian who was the great champion of the two-wills doctrine. Bathrellos shows that Maximus understood dyothelitism not as requiring two "willers" but as affirming one "willer" who wills by means of two distinct faculties or capacities.²⁸ On DPM, Jesus is one willer — one self-conscious Person. But He has two will-faculties by which He wills. He has a human will because His consciousness has human properties that allow Him to be influenced by desires natural to human nature — the feeling of physical pain, the desire for food and rest, the shrinking from suffering. He has a divine will because He has divine desires and determination when He accesses part of His divine preconscious and wills according to it.²⁹

Think of it this way. You are one person — one willer. But you can will through different faculties. You can will an action based on your bodily desires (your stomach growls, and you will to eat), or you can will an action based on your intellectual convictions (you know you should fast, and you will to refrain from eating). You are one person making both decisions, but you are drawing on different aspects of your nature. In a similar way, the incarnate Logos is one willer who wills through two faculties: a human will (rooted in the human properties of His consciousness and His human preconscious) and a divine will (rooted in His divine preconscious and His access to divine purposes).

In Gethsemane, then, we see the human will expressing its natural desire — "Remove this cup from me!" — while the divine will (in harmony with the Father's will) determines that the cross is the path to salvation. The human will freely submits to the divine will: "Not my will, but yours be done." This is not a conflict between two persons; it is one Person whose human faculty shrinks from suffering but whose divine faculty (and whose human faculty, in free obedience) embraces the Father's plan. The kryptic model, with its one consciousness and two wills, makes beautiful sense of this scene — perhaps better than either the kenotic model (which has only one will, the human will, since the divine attributes have been surrendered) or the two-minds view (which has two complete consciousnesses each with its own will, raising the specter of internal personal conflict).

17.5 Advantages over Kenoticism

Having presented the kryptic model in detail, we are now in a position to see why it is superior to its competitors. Let us begin by comparing it with kenoticism — the view we examined and rejected in Chapter 15.

First, the kryptic model preserves the Son's full possession of all divine attributes. On kenoticism, the Son surrenders omniscience, omnipotence, or omnipresence — He no longer has them. On the kryptic model, He still has them; they are simply held at the preconscious level rather than at the conscious level. No essential divine property is lost. The Son remains fully God at every moment of the Incarnation.

Second, the kryptic model satisfies Chalcedon's "without change." The Chalcedonian definition states that the two natures of Christ are united "without change" — the divine nature is not altered by the Incarnation. On kenoticism, the divine nature is altered: attributes are removed. This violates the Chalcedonian boundary. On the kryptic model, the divine nature is not altered — no attribute is removed, lost, or diminished. What changes is only the mode of access that the consciousness has to the divine attributes. The attributes themselves are unchanged.³⁰

Third, the kryptic model preserves the unity of the Trinity's attributes. If the Son ceases to be omniscient during the Incarnation, while the Father and the Spirit remain omniscient, then the three Persons no longer share identical essential attributes. This threatens the unity of the divine nature — the doctrine that all three Persons share one and the same divine essence. On the kryptic model, the Son remains omniscient (at the preconscious level), so all three Persons continue to share the same essential attributes.³¹

Fourth, the kryptic model avoids the logical impossibility of an essentially omniscient being becoming ignorant. If omniscience is an essential property of God — a property without which God would not be God — then it is logically impossible for God to cease being omniscient. You cannot have a square without four sides; you cannot have a triangle that is also a circle; and you cannot have a God who does not know all things. Kenoticism asks us to accept that an essentially omniscient being became non-omniscient. The kryptic model avoids this entirely: the Son never ceases to be omniscient. His omniscience simply operates at the preconscious level rather than at the conscious level.³²

17.6 Advantages over the Two-Minds View

The kryptic model also has significant advantages over Morris's two-minds view, which we examined in Chapter 16.

First, the kryptic model avoids the "two subjects" worry. On Morris's model, there are two complete consciousnesses within one person — each having its own experiences, its own knowledge, its own perspective. The divine mind knows all things while the human mind is ignorant of some things; the divine mind never sleeps while the human mind loses consciousness in sleep; the divine mind experiences divine joy while the human mind agonizes in Gethsemane. This looks like two experiencers — two "I's" — even though Morris insists it is one person. As we discussed in Chapter 16, critics like Thomas Senor, Brian Hebblethwaite, and others have argued that two simultaneous and complete streams of consciousness amount to two persons, not one.³³

On the kryptic model, there is one conscious experiencer. The incarnate Logos experiences one life — a human life. He sees through one pair of eyes, thinks with one consciousness (which has human properties), and has one stream of experience at any given moment. The divine preconscious is not a second "experiencer" — it is a storehouse of knowledge and power that is available but not actively being experienced. This is far more natural and far less vulnerable to the Nestorian charge.³⁴

Second, the kryptic model provides a more natural account of Jesus' unified personal experience. When we read the Gospels, we encounter one person living one life. Jesus does not seem to be simultaneously experiencing two lives — a divine life of omniscient awareness alongside a human life of limited experience. He seems to be living one life, with occasional moments of supernatural knowledge or power breaking through. The kryptic model captures this beautifully: one conscious life, lived from a human perspective, with the divine preconscious providing occasional access to divine knowledge and power when needed.

Third, the kryptic model avoids the problems of Morris's spotlight/floodlight analogy. Morris compared the human mind to a spotlight (focused, limited) and the divine mind to a floodlight (broad, unlimited), with both operating simultaneously. But if the spotlight is entirely contained within the floodlight — if the human consciousness is a proper part of the divine consciousness — then the divine consciousness already includes the human experience, and it is not clear that the human consciousness is genuinely limited or genuinely distinct. And if the two are side by side — if the human consciousness is not contained within the divine but runs alongside it — then we are back to two subjects.³⁵ The kryptic model avoids this dilemma by having only one consciousness (with human properties) and placing the divine knowledge at a different level entirely — the preconscious — rather than in a parallel conscious stream.

17.7 Was Jesus Pretending? The Genuineness of Christ's Human Experience

One of the most important objections to any kryptic model is this: If Jesus had access to divine omniscience in His preconscious — if He could have known the day and the hour, the thoughts of every person, the future of every event — then was He not pretending to be ignorant? Was His human experience genuine, or was it a kind of cosmic play-acting?

Loke addresses this objection directly and at length.³⁶ His answer is that Jesus was not pretending, and the reason lies in the very nature of the preconscious.

Consider again the analogy of the world's fastest sprinter running with his legs tied. The sprinter could untie his legs at any time. He has the ability to run at full speed. But in his self-restricted state, the struggle is real. His muscles genuinely strain against the binding. His pace is genuinely slow. His effort is genuinely difficult. He is not pretending to struggle; he is struggling, even though the struggle is voluntarily undertaken. The self-restriction does not make the experience inauthentic — it makes it a genuine experience of chosen limitation.³⁷

In the same way, the incarnate Logos chose to restrict His conscious access to His divine preconscious. In this self-restricted state, states of mind such as the lack of conscious awareness of certain future events, the sensations of fatigue, the experience of hunger, and the anguish of suffering truly occurred in the mind of Jesus and were truly experienced by Him. He was not simulating ignorance; His conscious awareness genuinely did not include certain information. He was not simulating fatigue; His human body was genuinely exhausted. He was not simulating emotional distress; His human soul was genuinely sorrowful, even to death (Matthew 26:38).³⁸

This is consistent with the New Testament's insistence that Jesus was "made like his brothers in every respect" (Hebrews 2:17) and that He "in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). The kryptic model affirms that Jesus was made like humans in the "religiously significant sense" — He was able to experience the desires, limitations, and temptations that humans face.³⁹ The fact that He also possessed a divine preconscious with divine properties does not negate His genuine humanity, any more than having a photographic memory would negate someone's genuine humanity. The divine preconscious makes Jesus more than merely human — He is truly but not merely human — but it does not make Him less than truly human.

Could Jesus have been tempted if He had a divine preconscious? Yes. As Loke notes, James 1:13 says that "God cannot be tempted." But this can be understood to mean that a divine person cannot be tempted being divine simpliciter — in His divine nature alone. It does not exclude the possibility that a divine person who has freely chosen to take on a human nature could experience genuine human desires and therefore genuine temptation through that human nature.⁴⁰ The divine preconscious ensured that Jesus would never yield to temptation — His divine will was always in harmony with the Father — but the temptation itself was real, felt at the conscious human level, and genuinely resisted by the human will.

17.8 The Kryptic Model and Historical Roots

Although Loke's Divine Preconscious Model is a modern proposal that draws on concepts from psychology and analytic philosophy, it has deep roots in Christian theological history. The idea that Christ's divine attributes were somehow "veiled" or "concealed" during the Incarnation — rather than surrendered — has been the majority view throughout church history.

The pre-kenotic exegetical tradition, as Loke and others have noted, generally interpreted the "self-emptying" of Philippians 2:7 in terms of krypsis rather than kenosis.⁴¹ The Son did not empty Himself of divine attributes but rather took the form of a servant — He veiled His divine glory in human flesh. This is the view reflected in the beloved Christmas hymn "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing," which includes Charles Wesley's magnificent line: "Veiled in flesh the Godhead see / Hail the incarnate Deity." The Godhead is veiled — concealed, hidden behind flesh — not diminished or eliminated.

The medieval theologian Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308) anticipated Loke's model in a remarkable way. Scotus suggested that Christ's soul could not indeed receive all truths at the same time in consciousness, but could know any item singly — Christ could be aware of any fact He turned His attention to, throughout an infinite range of truths. He could have been aware of the time of His return, had He chosen, but He did not so choose.⁴² This is strikingly similar to Loke's preconscious model: knowledge that is available upon choosing to access it, but not held in consciousness at all times.

The Lutheran debates of the seventeenth century produced explicit "kryptic" Christologies. The theologians of Giessen argued for the kenosis — that Christ actually gave up the use of His divine attributes during His earthly life. The theologians of Tübingen argued for the krypsis — that Christ retained and even used His divine attributes but did so secretly, in a hidden manner.⁴³ Loke's model is a modern, philosophically sophisticated development of the Tübingen position, though it differs from the Lutheran formulations in important ways (particularly in its assumption of substance dualism and its use of psychological categories like the preconscious).

Even the great defender of kenotic theology, C. Stephen Evans, acknowledges the significance and originality of Loke's contribution. Evans wrote that Loke's book "presents an original and important new model for understanding the Incarnation, one that has some interesting virtues and that avoids some of the problems in other models."⁴⁴ This is a generous acknowledgment from someone who remains a kenotic theologian.

17.9 Engaging Crisp's Independent Assessment of Krypsis

Oliver Crisp's treatment of divine krypsis in Divinity and Humanity provides important independent confirmation and development of the kryptic approach. While Crisp wrote before Loke published his monograph (Crisp's book appeared in 2007, Loke's in 2014), Crisp's analysis of krypsis aligns remarkably well with Loke's model and helps us see why krypsis is superior to both ontological and functionalist kenosis.

Crisp makes a crucial distinction. On functionalist kenosis, the Word restricts the exercise of His divine attributes per se — He restricts the exercise of certain divine attributes in toto, not just in the person of Christ but altogether. On krypsis, the only restriction is in the human nature of Christ. The Word continues to exercise His divine attributes fully in His divine nature; it is only the human nature that does not have access to these divine properties. The Word does not restrict Himself; He restricts the access that the human nature has to the divine attributes.⁴⁵

This is a profound insight, and it maps perfectly onto Loke's DPM. The divine preconscious continues to function at full capacity — sustaining the universe, knowing all truths, exercising omnipotence. What is limited is only the conscious human experience — the human mind, dependent on the brain, does not have access to all the contents of the divine preconscious. The limitation is at the level of the human nature, not at the level of the divine nature. The divine nature is not altered, diminished, or restricted in any way.

Crisp also notes that krypsis avoids the need to abandon divine immutability. If the only "change" at the Incarnation is that the Word takes on a human nature in addition to His divine nature — without any alteration to the divine nature itself — then the divine nature is unchanged. The Word's essential properties are the same before and after the Incarnation. What is new is the addition of a human nature, not the subtraction of divine attributes.⁴⁶

I find the convergence between Crisp's philosophical analysis and Loke's Divine Preconscious Model highly significant. Two scholars working independently, from different philosophical starting points, arrived at essentially the same conclusion: the best way to understand the Incarnation is through concealment, not emptying. The Son veiled His divine attributes in human flesh — He did not surrender them. This gives me considerable confidence that the kryptic approach is on the right track.

17.10 The Critical Connection: Why the Kryptic Model Requires a Human Soul

We have now seen how the kryptic model works, how it solves the classical Christological problems, and how it compares favorably with its competitors. But we have arrived at the most important section of this chapter — the section that connects the kryptic model directly to the central argument of this entire book.

The kryptic model requires a human soul. It cannot work on physicalism. If physicalism about human nature is true — if human beings are nothing more than physical organisms, with no immaterial soul — then the kryptic model collapses entirely. Let me explain why.

17.10.1 The Preconscious Needs a Metaphysical Substrate

The kryptic model posits that Christ has a divine preconscious — a "place" (speaking metaphysically, not spatially) where divine omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence reside during the Incarnation. But where exactly is this preconscious? What kind of reality does it have? What is its metaphysical substrate — the "stuff" or "framework" in which preconscious states are organized and maintained?

On Loke's model, the answer is clear: the divine preconscious belongs to the divine nature, which is immaterial. The human preconscious belongs to the human soul, which is also immaterial. The two preconscious "parts" are distinct aspects of the immaterial part of Christ.⁴⁷ The physical brain is the organ through which certain aspects of the consciousness function — it provides the capacity for physical sensation, bodily desires, and interaction with the material world — but the preconscious (both divine and human) is an immaterial reality, not a brain state.

Loke explicitly states that DPM "assumes substance dualism (the view that the mind is a non-physical entity distinct from the physical body)."⁴⁸ This is not an optional feature of the model that could be removed without affecting the rest. It is a foundational assumption without which the model cannot work. And there are good reasons why.

17.10.2 A Finite Brain Cannot Contain Infinite Knowledge

If physicalism is true, then human mental life — all of it — is constituted by brain states. There is no immaterial mind, no soul, no preconscious that exists apart from the physical neural networks of the brain. Every thought, memory, belief, desire, and act of will is a pattern of electrochemical activity in neurons.

Now consider what the kryptic model requires. The divine preconscious must contain omniscience — knowledge of all truths. This is not a large but finite collection of facts; it is an infinite body of knowledge, including knowledge of all mathematical truths, all possible worlds, all future contingents, and the nature of God Himself. As Richard Sturch has observed, there appears to be a metaphysical limit to how much information and power a physical body can hold.⁴⁹ A physical brain, however large and complex, is a finite organ with a finite number of neurons and a finite number of possible synaptic configurations. It simply cannot contain an infinite amount of information. The content of divine omniscience exceeds the storage capacity of any physical system — indeed, it exceeds the storage capacity of the entire physical universe.

On substance dualism, this is not a problem. The divine preconscious is immaterial — it belongs to the divine nature, which is not subject to the physical limitations of finite neural networks. Infinite knowledge can reside in an immaterial divine mind because immaterial substances are not subject to the spatial and informational constraints that govern physical matter.

But on physicalism, there is nowhere for the divine preconscious to reside except in the physical brain. And the physical brain cannot house infinite knowledge. Therefore, on physicalism, the kryptic model is impossible.

17.10.3 The Human Preconscious Also Needs a Soul

The problem extends beyond the divine preconscious. The kryptic model also requires a human preconscious (Part B) — the immaterial aspect of Christ's human mind that stores memories, learned skills, and accumulated knowledge. On Loke's model, this human preconscious is part of the human soul. It is distinct from the divine preconscious (Part A) and distinct from the physical brain, though it interacts with the brain through the consciousness.

On physicalism, the human preconscious would simply be brain states — patterns of neural activity. But here is the problem: if both the divine preconscious and the human preconscious are just brain states, then how are they distinguished? On physicalism, Part A and Part B of the preconscious would both be neural patterns in the same physical brain. How do you physically separate "the divine knowledge stored in neural pattern A" from "the human knowledge stored in neural pattern B"? What physical feature of the brain marks the boundary between divine omniscience and human memory of how to make a table?

On substance dualism, the answer is straightforward. The divine preconscious belongs to the divine nature (an immaterial reality); the human preconscious belongs to the human soul (a distinct immaterial reality). They are distinct because they are aspects of different immaterial substances — the divine nature and the human soul — even though they are both aspects of the one immaterial Person who is the Logos. But on physicalism, there are no immaterial substances, no divine nature distinct from physical states, and no human soul distinct from the brain. The entire structure of the kryptic model — with its carefully delineated Parts A and B, its divine nature and human nature, its preconscious and conscious levels — collapses into a single physical organ: a three-pound human brain. And a three-pound brain cannot be the seat of infinite divine knowledge and finite human experience at the same time.

17.10.4 The Soul as the Seat of Human Consciousness

On the kryptic model, the soul plays a specific and irreplaceable role. The human soul is the seat of Christ's genuinely human conscious experience. It is the aspect of Christ's immaterial being that has human properties — human thoughts, human emotions, human will, human memory. The divine nature is the "location" of the preconscious divine attributes. The soul is the "location" of the conscious human experience. Together, the soul and the divine nature are the two immaterial aspects of Christ, united in one Person, with the physical body as the material aspect.

On physicalism, there is no soul to serve as the seat of human consciousness — only a brain. And a brain cannot house the divine preconscious. So on physicalism, you have a brain that is supposed to be (a) the seat of human consciousness, (b) the seat of the human preconscious, and (c) the seat of the divine preconscious, all at once. The first two roles might be plausible for a physical brain (though, as we argued in Chapters 3–4, there are independent philosophical reasons to reject physicalism even about ordinary human consciousness). But the third role — housing infinite divine knowledge and omnipotent power in a finite physical organ — is flatly impossible.

This is why Loke explicitly affirms substance dualism as a prerequisite for DPM. He directly addresses the physicalist alternative and rejects it:

"The problem with a physicalist account of the Incarnation is that, if the Logos becomes a purely physical entity at the Incarnation, then it would seem to be metaphysically impossible for him to possess divine properties such as having the knowledge of all truths, having the power of omnipotence, etc., as there seems to be a metaphysical limit as to how much information and power a physical body can hold. Such a limitation would entail Ontological Kenoticism."⁵⁰

This is the critical connection. If you begin with physicalism — if Christ has no immaterial soul — then you are forced into kenoticism. And if you are forced into kenoticism, then you face all the devastating problems with kenoticism that we identified in Chapter 15: the loss of full deity, the violation of Chalcedon, the disunity of Trinitarian attributes, and the logical impossibility of an essentially omniscient being becoming ignorant. Physicalism does not just create problems for the kryptic model; it pushes you toward a model that has already been shown to fail.

17.11 Merricks's Physicalist Christology and Its Failure

At this point, it is worth briefly engaging with the most significant physicalist attempt at a Christology — Trenton Merricks's proposal that the Logos "becomes a purely physical body" at the Incarnation. In Chapter 8 of Christian Physicalism?, R. T. Mullins provides an extensive analysis of this physicalist approach and its problems, including a helpful discussion of Loke's DPM as the dualist alternative.⁵¹

Merricks argues that we should reject substance dualism and that the Incarnation should be understood as the Logos becoming a purely physical human organism — a body with a brain but no immaterial soul. Merricks argues that the standard dualist account of the Incarnation has problems of its own — particularly the difficulty of explaining what links the soul to the body and what makes one particular body "Christ's body" rather than just any body.⁵²

But as Loke and others have pointed out, Merricks's physicalist Christology faces a much more serious problem than any difficulty facing dualism. If the Logos becomes a purely physical entity, then how can He possess divine properties like omniscience and omnipotence? A physical brain, as we have noted, has finite informational and causal capacity. It cannot contain infinite knowledge. If the Logos's entire existence during the Incarnation is physical, then He cannot possess omniscience — which means He has given up omniscience — which means we are back to ontological kenoticism.⁵³

Moreover, as Luke Van Horn has argued in his critique of Merricks, a physicalist Incarnation creates what we might call the "Two Sons Worry" — a concern that Mullins develops in detail in Christian Physicalism?. On physicalism, Christ's human nature (being a complete physical organism with a functioning brain) would constitute a fully functioning human person apart from the Incarnation. If the body-brain that the Logos assumed would have been a complete person on its own (having consciousness, will, rationality, and all the other properties that make a physical organism a person on the physicalist view), then when the Logos assumes it, we seem to have two persons — the divine Logos and the human person constituted by the body-brain. This is Nestorianism.⁵⁴

The kryptic model avoids this problem completely. On DPM, the human nature does not constitute a separate person because it never existed independently. The human preconscious (Part B) and the human body were created at the moment of Incarnation as aspects of the one Person who is the Logos. The human nature has no independent personal existence apart from the Logos — this is the classic doctrine of anhypostasia, which we will explore in depth in Chapter 19. Because DPM involves only one consciousness and one self-consciousness, there is no second "person" lurking within Christ's human nature. The human nature is complete as a nature (it has everything essential to human nature: a body and a soul) but it is not a separate person (it has no independent personal existence).⁵⁵

17.12 The Kryptic Model and the Communicatio Idiomatum

The communicatio idiomatum (κοινωνία ἰδιωμάτων, literally "communication of properties" or "sharing of attributes") is the principle that the properties of both natures — divine and human — can be truthfully predicated of the one Person of Christ. Because both natures belong to one Person, we can say "God suffered on the cross" (a human property attributed to the divine Person) and "this man created the universe" (a divine property attributed to the human Person). As we discussed in Chapter 14, the communicatio idiomatum is a direct consequence of the hypostatic union: because both natures are united in one Person, whatever is true of either nature can be attributed to the Person.

But the communicatio idiomatum has been a source of endless difficulty. If we predicate divine properties of the Person, and human properties of the Person, and the Person is one, then doesn't the Person have contradictory properties? Is the Person omniscient and ignorant at the same time? Omnipotent and weak? Immortal and mortal?

The kryptic model handles this elegantly using what Loke calls a "weak" version of the communicatio idiomatum. Following a concrete-parts Christology, the incarnate Logos is made up of two main concrete parts. One part (the divine preconscious and the aspect of consciousness having access to it) exemplifies the divine nature. The other part (the human consciousness, human preconscious, and human body) exemplifies the human nature. Contradictory properties can then be attributed to the same Person in different respects — that is, with reference to different parts or natures.⁵⁶

Loke uses the analogy of a lollipop. A lollipop can be red (at the top) and not-red (at the stick) at the same time. This is not a contradiction, because the contradictory properties are exemplified in different respects — in respect of different parts. In the same way, the one Person of Christ is omniscient in respect of His divine nature (the divine preconscious) and limited in knowledge in respect of His human nature (the human consciousness and human preconscious). He is omnipotent in respect of His divine nature and limited in power in respect of His human nature. He is immortal in respect of His divine nature and mortal in respect of His human nature (His body, whose vital functions ceased at death).⁵⁷

This is essentially the same strategy that Timothy Pawl uses in his In Defense of Conciliar Christology — the "qua" strategy, which we will examine in detail in Chapter 18. Christ is omniscient qua divine and limited in knowledge qua human. The apparent contradiction dissolves when the properties are relativized to the appropriate natures. Loke and Pawl arrive at very similar conclusions on this point, though from different starting points: Loke from a psychological model of the preconscious, Pawl from modal and predicate logic. I find the convergence of these two independent analyses highly significant. Both scholars show that the communicatio idiomatum is logically coherent once we properly understand the two-natures framework.

17.13 The Kryptic Model and the Intermediate State

One of the most powerful arguments of this book — developed in full in Chapters 21 and 22 — is that physicalism creates a devastating problem for the Incarnation during the triduum mortis (the three days between Christ's death and resurrection). On physicalism, when Jesus died, His human nature (which is His physical body, on the physicalist view) ceased to function. There is no immaterial soul to survive death. Therefore, the Son of God was no longer united to a human nature during the triduum. The Incarnation was interrupted. The hypostatic union was dissolved.

On the kryptic model, this problem does not arise. As Loke explicitly states, "DPM is clearly not Apollinarian, as it affirms that the human properties of the conscious and human preconscious were created at the Incarnation. In comparison with the proposals of Erickson and Craig, according to DPM it is clear that in the intermediate state Jesus did not become God simpliciter, for he still had the conscious that had human properties and a human preconscious in that state, and therefore remained truly God and truly human."⁵⁸

In other words, when Jesus died on the cross, His physical body ceased to function — but His consciousness (with its human properties) and His human preconscious (Part B) continued to exist in a disembodied state. The human soul survived death. And the divine preconscious (Part A) was, of course, entirely unaffected by physical death. So during the triduum mortis, the incarnate Logos continued to possess both a divine nature and a human nature — the human nature now consisting of the human soul without the body, and the divine nature unchanged. The hypostatic union was not dissolved. The Incarnation was not interrupted. Christ remained "truly God and truly human" even between His death and His resurrection.

This is why the Apostles' Creed can say that Christ "descended to the dead" — because there was a Christ to descend. His human soul, united to the divine Person of the Logos, went to the place of the dead. As we will explore in Chapter 23, this is precisely what Peter declares in his Pentecost sermon: "you will not abandon my soul to Hades" (Acts 2:27, quoting Psalm 16:10). Christ's soul went to Hades — it existed, it was conscious, it was active — and the Father did not abandon it there but raised Jesus from the dead on the third day.

On physicalism, none of this is possible. There is no soul to survive death, no soul to descend to Hades, no soul to maintain the hypostatic union during the three days in the tomb. The kryptic model's ability to handle the triduum is yet another powerful reason to prefer it — and yet another reason to affirm the immaterial soul that makes it possible.

17.14 The Kryptic Model and Loke's Complementarity with Pawl

Before we conclude, it is worth noting how Loke's kryptic model relates to Timothy Pawl's conciliar Christology, which we will examine in the next chapter. These two scholars are not opponents; I see them as complementary allies whose work, taken together, provides a powerful and comprehensive account of the Incarnation.

Pawl's project is primarily defensive. He uses the tools of analytic philosophy — modal logic, predicate logic, metaphysics — to show that the Christological definitions of the ecumenical councils are logically coherent. Pawl does not try to "explain" the Incarnation in the way that kenotic or kryptic models do. He does not propose a psychological model of Christ's experience. His goal is more modest but no less important: to show that the claims the councils make — one Person, two natures, two wills, each nature complete and unchanged — are not self-contradictory. His goal is coherence, not explanation.

Loke's project is both defensive and constructive. Like Pawl, he shows that the Incarnation is coherent. But he goes further: he proposes a specific model of how the two natures relate in Christ's experience — how the divine and human interact in one Person with one consciousness. Loke explains what it might have been like to be the incarnate Logos — not in exhaustive detail (we cannot fully know what it is like to be a God-man, any more than we can know what it is like to be a bat, as Thomas Morris and Thomas Nagel have both observed⁵⁹), but in enough detail to show that the Incarnation is possible and to rebut the charge that it is incoherent.

I see these two projects as addressing different aspects of the same question. Pawl shows that the Incarnation is possible (the "what" — what the councils claim is coherent). Loke shows how the Incarnation works (the "how" — how the two natures relate in one Person's experience). Together, they provide a powerful two-pronged defense of orthodox Christology against skeptics who charge that the Incarnation is logically impossible.

Both scholars also share a crucial commitment that is central to this book's argument: both assume that Christ has a complete human nature that includes an immaterial soul. Pawl defends the conciliar definitions, and those definitions explicitly state that Christ's human nature consists of a rational soul and a body (ek psychēs logikēs kai sōmatos — "from a rational soul and a body").⁶⁰ Loke explicitly assumes substance dualism and argues that his model requires it. Neither scholar's work is compatible with physicalism about human nature. The ecumenical councils and the best contemporary models of the Incarnation all agree: Christ has a human soul, and without it, the Incarnation cannot be coherently understood.

17.15 Objections and Responses

No model of the Incarnation is without its critics, and the kryptic model is no exception. Let me address several of the most important objections.

Objection 1: The model is too complex

C. Stephen Evans raised this objection in his review of Loke's book: DPM is much more complicated than either the two-minds view or kenoticism, and at times it seems as if DPM labors with ad hoc additions.⁶¹

Loke's response is persuasive. Simplicity is a virtue only when all other things are equal — and in this case, all other things are not equal. The two-minds view and kenoticism both have significant problems that DPM avoids. The additional complexity of DPM is not ad hoc; it is precisely what is needed to solve problems that simpler models cannot solve. Moreover, a great level of complexity in the metaphysics is only to be expected given the sheer difficulty of the idea that one Person could be both a human being and the Maker of the universe. As Loke puts it, the kinds of additions DPM makes seem warranted given the magnitude of the mystery being addressed.⁶²

I would add that the "complexity" of DPM is largely a matter of careful definition. Once you understand the basic terms — conscious, preconscious, Part A, Part B — the model is actually quite intuitive. The idea that you have knowledge you are not currently thinking about (the preconscious) is a simple, everyday experience. The claim that Christ's divine knowledge was held at this level, rather than at the level of constant conscious awareness, is a natural and understandable extension of this everyday experience.

Objection 2: Jesus was not genuinely human if He had a divine preconscious

This is the Docetism objection — the concern that the presence of a divine preconscious would make Jesus' human experience so different from ours that He could not be considered genuinely human.

Loke's response is threefold.⁶³ First, having a divine preconscious would only cause Jesus to have experiences that are very different from those who are merely human. But Christians claim that Jesus was not merely human — He was truly human but also truly divine. Second, the divine preconscious was not part of His human nature but part of His divine nature. The human nature (human consciousness, human preconscious, human body) was genuinely human in every respect; the divine preconscious was an addition to the human nature, not a replacement for any part of it. Third, the key question is whether Christ shared with us those properties that are essential to human nature (having a body, having a soul, being capable of thought and emotion and suffering) as opposed to those that are merely common to human nature (not having a divine preconscious). Having a divine preconscious is clearly not a common human property — but it is not contrary to the essential properties of human nature either.

Objection 3: If the preconscious could prevent false beliefs, Jesus was not genuinely free

Loke addresses the concern that the divine preconscious might have exerted such influence on Jesus' consciousness that He was not genuinely free in His human decisions. But the kryptic model affirms genuine human freedom. The human will (rooted in the human properties of the consciousness and the human preconscious) was a genuine faculty of self-determination. Jesus genuinely chose — He was not a puppet whose strings were pulled by the divine preconscious. The divine preconscious could influence the consciousness (for example, by preventing false beliefs from entering the belief system, or by providing knowledge needed for miracles and prophecy), but it did not override the human will. The human will freely submitted to the divine will, as we see most clearly in Gethsemane.⁶⁴

Objection 4: What happened when Jesus slept?

If omnipotence requires maintaining conscious awareness of the ability to access the divine preconscious, then what happened when Jesus slept? Did He cease to be omnipotent during sleep?

Loke addresses this by noting that sleep has different stages, and that in the first stage, a person maintains a certain degree of conscious awareness. It could be the case that when Jesus slept, a conscious awareness of the ability to access the divine preconscious was miraculously sustained in Him — perhaps at the lightest level of sleep — so that He remained omnipotent, while His awareness of other things (such as the storm going on around Him in Mark 4:38) was decreased. Furthermore, Loke notes that even if Jesus did not fully experience all stages of sleep, this would not make Him less than truly human — not experiencing all stages of sleep is at most a common rather than an essential property of being human.⁶⁵

17.16 Summary and Conclusion

We have covered a great deal of ground in this chapter, and the argument has been detailed. Let me summarize the key conclusions.

Andrew Ter Ern Loke's Divine Preconscious Model provides the most compelling and coherent model of the Incarnation available today. It proposes that the Son of God, at the Incarnation, retained all His divine attributes — omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence — but concealed them at a preconscious level. He experienced a single, genuinely human stream of consciousness, with His divine knowledge and power held "behind the scenes" in the divine preconscious (Part A), available when the Father willed their use but not constantly flooding His human awareness. At the same time, He had a genuinely human preconscious (Part B) that stored memories and knowledge accumulated through ordinary human experience, and a genuine human body subject to all the normal limitations of embodied life.

This model preserves Christ's full deity (no divine attribute is surrendered), His genuine humanity (His conscious human experience is authentically human), and the unity of His person (one consciousness, one experiencer, one "I"). It satisfies the Chalcedonian definition (two natures united without confusion, change, division, or separation), is consistent with dyothelitism (one willer with two will-faculties), and handles the communicatio idiomatum through a concrete-parts Christology that attributes contradictory properties to the same Person in different respects.

It is superior to kenoticism because it preserves the Son's full possession of all divine attributes, satisfies Chalcedon's "without change," preserves the unity of Trinitarian attributes, and avoids the logical impossibility of an essentially omniscient being becoming ignorant. It is superior to the two-minds view because it avoids the "two subjects" worry, provides a more natural account of Jesus' unified experience, and does not require two parallel streams of consciousness in one person.

And — most critically for the argument of this book — the kryptic model requires an immaterial human soul. The divine preconscious needs an immaterial metaphysical substrate; divine omniscience cannot be stored in a finite physical brain. The human preconscious needs a soul in which to reside. The consciousness needs a framework in which conscious and preconscious levels can be distinguished. On physicalism, all of this collapses. The brain cannot house the divine preconscious, the structure of the model is destroyed, and we are pushed back toward kenoticism — which, as we have already shown, fails.

In the next chapter, we will turn to Timothy Pawl's complementary defense of conciliar Christology. Pawl's rigorous philosophical analysis will reinforce what we have established here: that the ecumenical councils defined Christ as having a complete human nature — a rational soul and a body — and that this definition is logically coherent, philosophically defensible, and incompatible with physicalism.