Chapter 21

Holy Saturday and the Triduum Mortis

Did the Incarnation End at the Cross?

Introduction: The Forgotten Day That Changes Everything

For most Christians, Holy Saturday is an afterthought. It is the quiet, uneventful day sandwiched between two monumental events: the agony and horror of Good Friday and the explosive triumph of Easter Sunday. We know what happened on Friday — Jesus was crucified, suffered, and died. We know what happened on Sunday — the tomb was empty and the risen Lord appeared to His disciples. But what happened in between? What was going on during those roughly thirty-six to forty hours when the body of Jesus lay in a borrowed tomb in Jerusalem?

Most people never think about it. But as I hope to show in this chapter, those hours between the cross and the empty tomb represent the single most devastating test of any Christological framework — and they are precisely where physicalism about human nature collapses into theological ruin.

The thesis of this chapter is straightforward: if physicalism is true — if human beings are entirely physical organisms with no immaterial soul — then the Incarnation effectively ended at the death of Christ. During the triduum mortis (the Latin phrase meaning "the three days of death," referring to the period from Good Friday evening through Easter Sunday morning), the Son of God was no longer united to a human nature. He was no longer "true God and true man." The Incarnation was interrupted. And this represents a catastrophic failure of physicalism as a Christological framework.

This is not a minor theological quibble. It strikes at the very heart of the Christian faith. If the Incarnation was temporary — if it was broken off at the cross and then somehow restarted at the resurrection — then the Chalcedonian Definition is violated, the permanence of the Incarnation is denied, the creedal affirmation "without separation" (achōristōs, ἀχωρίστως) is falsified, and the entire saving work of Christ during those critical hours is rendered incoherent. I believe this is the single most powerful argument against physicalist Christology, and in the pages that follow, I intend to develop it with the thoroughness it deserves.¹

What Is the Triduum Mortis?

The term triduum mortis refers to the three-day period encompassing Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. In the ancient Jewish reckoning of time, any part of a day counted as a full day, so "three days" does not require a full seventy-two hours. Jesus died on Friday afternoon (the day of Preparation before the Sabbath), His body was placed in the tomb before sunset on Friday, His body remained in the tomb throughout the Sabbath (Saturday), and He rose early on Sunday morning, "the first day of the week" (Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1). In actual elapsed time, this was approximately thirty-six to forty hours.²

What makes this period so theologically important? It is the span of time during which Christ was truly dead. His heart had stopped beating. His lungs had stopped breathing. His brain had ceased all activity. The body that had walked the roads of Galilee, healed the sick, calmed the sea, and hung on the cross was now lifeless, wrapped in linen cloths, and laid in the rock-hewn tomb of Joseph of Arimathea (Matt. 27:57–60; Mark 15:42–46; Luke 23:50–53; John 19:38–42). By any medical or biological standard, Jesus of Nazareth was dead.

The critical question is: What happened to the person of Christ during this time? Did the Incarnation continue? Was the Son of God still united to a human nature? Was Jesus still "true God and true man" while His body lay in the tomb? The answer to these questions depends entirely on one's view of human nature — and specifically, on whether human beings have immaterial souls that survive the death of the body.

The Dualist Account: The Incarnation Continues Through Death

On substance dualism — the view that I hold and that the historic Christian church has overwhelmingly affirmed — the answer is clear and coherent. Christ's human nature consists of two components: a material body and an immaterial rational soul. When Jesus died on the cross, His human soul separated from His body. This is what death is, on the dualist understanding: the separation of the soul from the body. It is not the annihilation of the person. It is a sundering of the body-soul composite that constitutes human nature.

But — and this is the crucial point — the Son of God remained united to both components of Christ's human nature, even though those components were now separated from each other. The divine Person of the Son was still hypostatically united to the human soul, which went to paradise (Luke 23:43) or descended to the realm of the dead (1 Peter 3:18–20; Acts 2:27, 31). And the divine Person of the Son was still hypostatically united to the human body, which lay in the tomb. Both the soul and the body remained the Son's. Neither was abandoned. Neither ceased to be part of the Incarnation.³

Think of it this way. During your earthly life, your soul and body are united — they function together as a single living human being. At death, they separate. On dualism, both continue to exist, but they exist in different locations and in different states. The soul is conscious and aware in the intermediate state; the body lies in the grave. Now, for an ordinary human being, no divine Person is united to either the soul or the body. But in the case of Christ, the eternal Son of God is united to both — because both together constitute the human nature that the Son assumed at the Incarnation.

This means the Incarnation was never interrupted. Not for a single moment. The Son did not "vacate" His human nature at the cross. He did not detach from His humanity when His body died. Rather, during the triduum mortis, the Son continued to be incarnate — united to a human soul that was active and conscious in the realm of the dead, and united to a human body that was at rest in the tomb. The human nature existed in a separated state (soul and body apart from each other), but both components remained the Son's, and the hypostatic union was maintained without interruption.⁴

This is what the Chalcedonian Definition means when it says that the two natures of Christ are united "without separation" (achōristōs). Not even death could separate the Son from His assumed human nature. Death separated the soul from the body — but neither the soul nor the body was separated from the divine Person who had assumed them.

Thomas Aquinas and the Medieval Consensus

This dualist understanding of the triduum mortis is not a modern invention. It represents the overwhelming consensus of the Christian theological tradition. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), perhaps the most influential theologian in the history of Western Christianity, articulated this position with characteristic precision. Aquinas argued that during the three days between Christ's death and resurrection, the Son remained united to both the separated soul and the body in the tomb. The soul descended to the limbus patrum (the "limbo of the fathers," the abode of the righteous dead who awaited the Messiah); the body remained in the tomb. Both the soul and the body were still united to the divine Person of the Son.⁵

Aquinas explicitly addressed whether the hypostatic union was dissolved at Christ's death. His answer was an emphatic no. In the Summa Theologica, Aquinas writes that "as Christ, in order to take our penalties upon Himself, willed His body to be laid in the tomb, so likewise He willed His soul to descend into hell. But the body lay in the tomb for a day and two nights, so as to demonstrate the truth of His death. Consequently, it is to be believed that His soul was in hell, in order that it might be brought back out of hell simultaneously with His body from the tomb."⁶ For Aquinas, the soul's descent to the realm of the dead was as much a part of Christ's saving work as the body's rest in the tomb. And both were possible only because the Son remained united to both.

Aquinas's reasoning is only coherent on a dualist anthropology. If there is no immaterial soul — if physicalism is true — then there is nothing for the Son to be united to between death and resurrection except a corpse. And a corpse, as we shall see, is not a human nature in any theologically meaningful sense. The entire Thomistic framework for understanding the triduum mortis depends on the existence of an immaterial soul that survives the death of the body. As we will discuss more fully in Chapter 32, Aquinas's treatment of this topic represents the mature medieval synthesis of patristic and biblical reflection on Christ's death, and it is inseparable from his commitment to a dualist anthropology.⁷

The Physicalist Account: The Incarnation Collapses

Now consider what happens if physicalism is true. On the physicalist view, there is no immaterial soul. A human being is an entirely physical organism — a living body with a functioning brain, a nervous system, and a biological life. There is no "ghost in the machine," no separate spiritual substance, no soul that can exist apart from the body. When the body dies, the person ceases to exist. There is nothing left over. Death is not the separation of the soul from the body; it is the cessation of the biological functions that constitute the person.

Apply this to Christ. On physicalism, Christ's human nature just is His physical body. His human nature is the living organism — the biological human animal that was born of Mary, grew up in Nazareth, preached in Galilee, and was crucified in Jerusalem. There is no immaterial human soul that is also part of His human nature. The human nature is entirely physical.

So what happens when Jesus dies on the cross? His body ceases to function. His heart stops. His brain activity ceases. The biological organism that constituted His human nature is now dead. On physicalism, there is no soul to survive. There is nothing immaterial that continues to exist. The body — and only the body — is what remains. And what remains is a corpse.

Now ask the critical question: during the triduum mortis, what is the Son of God united to?

On physicalism, the answer can only be: a corpse. A dead body. Biological matter that is beginning the process of decomposition. There is no soul in paradise. There is no immaterial human component that persists and can be the bearer of consciousness, will, or personhood. There is only dead tissue wrapped in linen cloths in a rock tomb.

And here is the devastating problem: a corpse is not a human nature.

A Corpse Is Not a Human Nature

This is a point that deserves careful emphasis, because it is the fulcrum on which the entire argument turns. A corpse — a dead body — is not a living human organism. It is not a functioning human being. It is not a human nature in any sense that the councils, the creeds, or the Scriptures recognize.

The Chalcedonian Definition declares that Christ is "truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin."⁸ Note the language: Christ's human nature consists of "a reasonable soul and body." It is a living, functioning, rational human nature — not a mass of dead tissue. A corpse does not have rationality. A corpse does not have consciousness. A corpse does not have a will. A corpse is not "consubstantial with us" in any meaningful sense, because we are living human beings and a corpse is not.

Even on physicalism's own terms, a dead body is not a human being. If a human being just is a living physical organism, then when that organism ceases to be alive, it ceases to be a human being. The biological processes that constitute the person — brain activity, metabolism, cellular respiration, neural function — have all stopped. What remains is the material substrate of what was once a person, but it is no longer a person. It is no longer a human nature. It is biological remains.⁹

Eric Olson, a prominent defender of the animalist version of physicalism, has made this point clearly. On Olson's construal of animalism, "an organism persists if and only if its life continues," and "an organism ceases to exist when the event that maintains its internal structure stops and cannot be restarted — that is, when the organism dies."¹⁰ If this is correct, then when Jesus died, the human organism that was Jesus ceased to exist. There was no longer a human nature for the Son to be united to. The human nature was gone.

This creates a theological catastrophe of the highest order. If the Son's human nature ceased to exist at death, then the Incarnation was interrupted. For approximately thirty-six to forty hours, the Second Person of the Trinity was not incarnate. He was not "true God and true man." He existed — of course He existed, for He is God, and God cannot cease to exist — but He was not united to a human nature, because the human nature no longer existed. The Word was no longer flesh.

The Consequences: Why This Matters

Let me spell out the consequences of this physicalist failure. Each one is independently devastating. Together, they constitute an overwhelming case against physicalist Christology.

1. The Incarnation Was Temporary, Not Permanent

If the human nature ceased to exist at death (or was reduced to a corpse that is not a human nature), then the Incarnation had a beginning and an end. It began at the conception of Jesus in Mary's womb and it ended on Good Friday afternoon. For approximately thirty-six to forty hours, there was no Incarnation. Then, on Easter Sunday, a new human nature was somehow brought into existence or the old one was reconstituted, and the Son became incarnate again.

But this means the Incarnation was not permanent. It was temporary. It had a gap. And this contradicts not only the Chalcedonian Definition but the overwhelming consensus of the Christian tradition that the Incarnation, once begun, is never undone. As we will argue more fully in Chapter 26, the Son remains God and man forever — through death, resurrection, ascension, and into eternity. If the Incarnation was interrupted at the cross, this permanence is denied.¹¹

2. Chalcedon's "Without Separation" Is Violated

The four negative adverbs of the Chalcedonian Definition — "without confusion" (asynchytōs, ἀσυγχύτως), "without change" (atreptōs, ἀτρέπτως), "without division" (adiairetōs, ἀδιαιρέτως), and "without separation" (achōristōs, ἀχωρίστως) — define the boundaries of orthodox Christology. The two natures of Christ cannot be confused, changed, divided, or separated. On physicalism, the separation of the divine nature from the human nature is exactly what happens at death. The human nature (the physical body, on the physicalist view) ceases to function, ceases to be a living human organism, and the divine nature is left with nothing human to be united to. The "without separation" clause is flatly violated.¹²

As Jason McMartin argues in his important chapter in Christian Physicalism?, the Chalcedonian consensus "affirms that Christ is one person in two natures, fully divine and fully human, without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation." If Christ's human nature ceases to exist at death, then "Christ is no longer incarnate on Holy Saturday and no longer human. This would appear to contradict the 'without separation' clause of Chalcedon and the enhypostasis of the second person as considered in the fifth council."¹³ The logic is clear: physicalism entails the dissolution of the hypostatic union at death, and this is a direct violation of Chalcedon.

3. The Second Person of the Trinity Was Not Incarnate for Thirty-Six Hours

Step back and consider the sheer strangeness of the physicalist position. On this view, for approximately thirty-six to forty hours, the Second Person of the Trinity simply... was not incarnate. The eternal Son of God existed (He is God, and God cannot cease to exist), but He was not united to a human nature. The Word was not flesh. Jesus, as a human being, did not exist. There was no God-man.

This is not a minor theological quibble. The Incarnation is the central miracle of the Christian faith — the eternal God becoming human, the Word becoming flesh, the Creator entering His creation. If this event was interrupted — if there was a period, however brief, during which the Incarnation was not in effect — then the Incarnation is not what the church has always confessed it to be. It was not an irreversible, permanent assumption of human nature by the Son. It was a temporary arrangement that was disrupted by death and then reestablished at the resurrection.

4. The Resurrection Becomes a Second Incarnation

If the Incarnation ended at the cross and then the Son became incarnate again at the resurrection, then what we call the "resurrection" is actually a second incarnation. McMartin presses this point: "Perhaps the resurrection would best be understood as a second incarnation, and the uniqueness and significance of Christmas would be called into question. Unlike the first incarnation, the logos would assume a human nature in the form of the dead body in the tomb."¹⁴

This is deeply problematic. The Christian faith confesses one Incarnation, not two. The birth of Jesus at Bethlehem was the unique, unrepeatable moment when the eternal Son assumed human nature. If the resurrection is a second incarnation, then the birth of Jesus loses its unique significance. Christmas is no longer the day the Word became flesh; it is merely the first of two incarnations, with Easter being the second. The entire shape of the Christian narrative — creation, fall, incarnation, atonement, resurrection, ascension, return — is distorted.¹⁵

5. Christ's Creedal Activities During the Triduum Become Impossible

The Apostles' Creed confesses that Christ "was crucified, died, and was buried; He descended to the dead" (or "descended into hell," in the traditional rendering). Scripture teaches that between His death and resurrection, Christ was active — He went to "paradise" (Luke 23:43), He "preached to the spirits in prison" (1 Peter 3:18–20), and His soul was "not abandoned to Hades" (Acts 2:27, 31, quoting Psalm 16:10). These activities presuppose that Christ continued to exist as a conscious, active agent between death and resurrection. They presuppose the survival of the soul.

On physicalism, none of this is possible. If Christ's human nature ceased to exist at death — if there was no immaterial soul to survive — then there was no Christ to descend anywhere, preach to anyone, or be present in paradise. The creedal affirmation "He descended to the dead" becomes meaningless, because there was no "He" to do the descending. This will be explored in much greater depth in Chapter 23, but the point must be registered here as well: the triduum mortis is not a passive period. Christ was doing something between death and resurrection. And that "something" requires a surviving soul.¹⁶

6. Christ Does Not Bear the Consequences of Sin as a Human

McMartin raises another consequence that is often overlooked. If physicalism is true and Christ ceases to be human on Holy Saturday, then "Jesus is not human (or not fully human) on Holy Saturday. Theologically, then, he does not bear the consequence of sin in death as a human, but simply avoids it. Rather than endure death or the intermediate state, he claims divine prerogative for avoiding them."¹⁷

This is a soteriological problem. Christ came to save us by sharing our condition — including our death. If His experience of death is fundamentally different from ours (because He, unlike us, ceases to be human at death rather than persisting as a disembodied soul), then the soteriological pattern is broken. Christ's death is no longer paradigmatic for our death. His resurrection is no longer the firstfruits of our resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20). The entire connection between Christ's death-and-resurrection and our own is severed.

Engaging the Scholarly Literature: McMartin, Mullins, and Taliaferro

The argument I have been developing is not merely my own. It has been pressed with considerable sophistication by multiple scholars in the important volume Christian Physicalism? Philosophical Theological Criticisms, edited by R. Keith Loftin and Joshua R. Farris. Three chapters in that volume are especially relevant to our discussion: Chapter 6 by Jason McMartin ("Holy Saturday and Christian Theological Anthropology"), Chapter 7 by R. T. Mullins ("Physicalism, the Incarnation, and Holy Saturday"), and Chapter 9 by Charles Taliaferro ("Physicalism and the Death of Christ"). Let me engage each of these in turn.

Jason McMartin: Theological Principles and the Failure of Physicalist Models

McMartin's chapter is perhaps the most directly relevant to our argument. He identifies a set of theological principles that any adequate account of Christ's intermediate state must satisfy, and then he tests three physicalist models against those principles. His conclusion is that "physicalist accounts of the intermediate state experienced by the incarnate Christ on Holy Saturday have difficulty aligning with various theological criteria arising from orthodox Christology and soteriology."¹⁸

McMartin identifies four key principles. First, Endless Existence (EE): God cannot cease to exist, so whatever happens at the death of Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity continues to exist. Second, Theandric Union (TU): in the Incarnation, Jesus Christ is one person uniting two natures, human and divine; this union must be maintained. Third, Soteriological Pattern (SP): Christ is the pattern for our death and resurrection; His experience of death must be relevantly similar to ours. Fourth, Anthropological Continuity (C): essential properties of human nature endure in postmortem existence.¹⁹

McMartin then examines three physicalist models for postmortem existence: (1) gappy existence, in which the person ceases to exist at death and is re-created at the resurrection; (2) alternate temporality, in which the deceased person enters a timeless state, bypassing the intermediate period; and (3) immediate resurrection, in which the person is immediately given a new body at death (including Zimmerman's "fissioning" model). He demonstrates that each of these models runs into serious difficulty when applied to Christ's intermediate state.²⁰

The gappy existence model, for instance, implies that Christ ceased to exist at death and was re-created at the resurrection. But this violates EE (the divine person cannot cease to exist — though on this model, only the human nature ceases, not the divine person) and more critically violates TU (the union of the two natures was broken for the duration of the gap). It also raises the devastating personal identity problem: is the risen Jesus the same Jesus who died, or is He a replica? We will treat this problem in depth in Chapter 24, but the worry is immediate and obvious: if the person ceased to exist and then a new person was created from the same materials, the continuity of personal identity is broken.

The alternate temporality model suggests that at death, the person enters a timeless or differently-temporal state, so that there is no experiential "gap." McMartin finds this model unhelpful for Christ's case because "Jesus's resurrection can't be a shift to the future general resurrection, since he experiences normal terrestrial time from Easter onwards." Moreover, he notes that "physicalism and C seek to preserve significant continuity with present human experience, and temporality is an inescapable feature of our experience." Making wholly material beings nontemporal appears to be ad hoc.²¹

The immediate resurrection model, particularly in its fissioning variant proposed by Dean Zimmerman, imagines that at death, God causes the particles of the body to "fission" — to split, so that one set of particles remains as the corpse while the other set immediately constitutes a resurrected body. This would allow Christ to be continuously embodied (and thus continuously incarnate) through Holy Saturday. But as McMartin points out, this model has deeply counterintuitive consequences. If Jesus fissioned at death, then the body that was taken down from the cross and buried in the tomb was not really Jesus — it was a leftover shell, a duplicate set of particles. The body in the tomb was never really Jesus's body after the moment of death. This means "contrary to the creed, Jesus was not buried." Furthermore, the resurrection as traditionally understood — the transformation of the dead body in the tomb into the glorified body of the risen Christ — did not happen. The tomb was empty not because the dead body was raised, but because the dead body was a leftover from the fissioning process.²²

McMartin's overall conclusion is telling. He writes that "the dialectic of this chapter suggests that physicalist models require increasingly complex mechanisms to explain the theological principles connected to Christ's intermediate state on Holy Saturday." The dualist, by contrast, "has a relatively straightforward way of explaining the continuity of these cases in the midst of differences related to mode and matter to be resurrected." Physicalist models "can provide an account that satisfies both continuous and discontinuous facets of postmortem existence," but "it proves more difficult to do so while also affirming the union of person and full humanity of the incarnate Christ on Holy Saturday."²³

R. T. Mullins: The Incarnation, Time, and Holy Saturday

Mullins's chapter in the same volume approaches the problem from a different angle, focusing on the intersection of time, persistence, and the Incarnation. Mullins examines how various theories of time and persistence affect our understanding of what happened to Christ during the triduum mortis.

One of Mullins's key contributions is his insistence that the Incarnation must be understood within the context of the doctrine of God. He argues that God is a temporal being who endures through time and undergoes genuine changes — the creation of the universe, the establishment of covenants, and supremely, the Incarnation itself. The Incarnation "marked a new moment in the life of God as He sought to establish an everlasting relationship with His creatures."²⁴ If this is correct, then the triduum mortis is also a moment in the life of God — a moment when the incarnate Son experienced death and its aftermath. It is not a moment that can be dismissed as theologically insignificant.

Mullins's analysis intersects with concerns about endurantism — the view that objects persist through time by existing wholly at each moment. If a person is an enduring substance that persists as a whole from one moment to the next, then the question of what happens to the person at death is urgent. On physicalism, if the person just is the physical organism, and the organism ceases to function at death, then the person ceases to exist at that moment. There is no enduring substance that carries the person through from one moment (death) to the next (resurrection). The continuity of the person is broken.²⁵

This analysis reinforces the argument we have been developing. On dualism, the soul is the enduring substance that persists through death. The person continues to exist because the soul continues to exist, even though the body has died. On physicalism, there is no such enduring substance. The person simply ceases to exist, and a gap opens up between death and resurrection that the physicalist must somehow bridge — but without the resources to do so.

Charles Taliaferro: Integrative Dualism and the Harrowing of Hell

Taliaferro's chapter in the same volume focuses specifically on the death of Christ and the traditional belief in the descensus Christi ad inferos — Christ's descent into the realm of the dead (sometimes called "the harrowing of hell"). Taliaferro argues that dualism is far better positioned than physicalism to account for this belief.²⁶

Taliaferro defends what he calls "integrative dualism" — a form of substance dualism in which, under normal conditions, "the person and body function as a singular reality." This is not the caricatured "ghost in the machine" dualism that critics like Peter van Inwagen have attacked. Integrative dualism holds that the person and the body are profoundly intertwined, but that they are not identical. The person (the soul) can exist apart from the body, though this separated state is abnormal and unnatural.²⁷

Applied to the Incarnation, Taliaferro argues that in "the incarnation, the second Person of the Trinity became embodied as a finite human being. Embodiment involves coming to be so causally sustained and shaped by a human body, that the person and body function as a single being." The incarnate Christ "breathes with his lungs, feels by means of his nervous system and brain, is nourished by food, sees with his eyes, hears with ears." The unity of person and body is real and profound — not the remote-control relationship that caricatures of dualism suggest.²⁸

But at death, this unity comes apart. The soul separates from the body. And on dualism, the soul of Christ — still united to the divine Person of the Son — descends to the realm of the dead, where He preaches to the spirits in prison (1 Peter 3:19–20), proclaims victory over death, and leads the righteous dead into freedom. Taliaferro writes that the descent into hell is "a belief in the awesome power of God to overcome the enthralling, tyrannical power of death. It essentially professes that after the death of Christ, Christ himself, prior to the Resurrection, shared with deceased human persons the good news of His victory."²⁹

On physicalism, this entire narrative collapses. If there is no soul to survive death, there is no Christ to descend anywhere. The descent to the dead is not merely implausible on physicalism — it is impossible. And Taliaferro rightly observes that physicalists face an additional difficulty: if the dead are merely corpses with no surviving souls, then there are no "spirits in prison" to preach to, no righteous dead to deliver, and no realm of the dead to enter. The entire edifice of the descensus — one of the most ancient and widely affirmed beliefs of the Christian church — is rendered incoherent.³⁰

Andrew Loke's Divine Preconscious Model and the Triduum

Andrew Ter Ern Loke's Divine Preconscious Model (DPM), which I have adopted as my preferred framework for understanding the Incarnation (see Chapter 17), also provides an illuminating perspective on the triduum mortis. On Loke's model, during His earthly life, the incarnate Christ had a single consciousness with both human and divine "preconscious" dimensions. His divine attributes (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence) were present at a preconscious level but were not normally part of His waking human awareness. The divine preconscious was part of Christ's divine nature; the human preconscious and the body were part of His human nature.³¹

What happens at death on this model? Loke addresses this directly. He argues 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."³² In other words, even after the separation of soul from body, Christ retained His human psychological properties — His human consciousness, His human preconscious, His human will. These persisted in the intermediate state because they are properties of the immaterial soul, not of the body. The body was in the tomb; the soul (with its human consciousness and the divine preconscious) was in the realm of the dead. But Christ was still fully human, because the human properties of His soul continued to exist.

Loke's model also addresses a worry that might arise about the triduum: if Christ's consciousness was normally dependent on His brain (during His earthly life), what happened when the brain died? Loke suggests that "if Jesus' brain were to cease from being able to sustain consciousness, his consciousness would 'float above' his body" — that is, the consciousness would continue to function without the brain, sustained by the divine nature. The dependence on the brain was a normal feature of the incarnate life, but it was not an absolute necessity. The soul, being immaterial, can function without the brain, even though during earthly life it normally functions in conjunction with the brain.³³

This is a significant advantage of the DPM over physicalist models. On the DPM, the triduum mortis presents no Christological crisis. Christ's human nature persists (in the form of the surviving soul with its human properties), Christ's divine nature continues to be united to both the soul and the body, and the Incarnation is never interrupted. On physicalism, none of this is possible.

Physicalist Responses and Why They Fail

Physicalist theologians and philosophers have not been unaware of the triduum problem. Several responses have been proposed. Each, I believe, fails. Let me consider them in turn.

Response 1: "God Preserved the Body Miraculously"

Some physicalists suggest that God supernaturally preserved the body of Jesus in the tomb, preventing decomposition and maintaining the body as a fit vessel for the Incarnation. On this view, the Son remained united to the body because God ensured that the body did not decompose during the thirty-six to forty hours between death and resurrection.

This response misses the point entirely. The problem is not decomposition. The problem is death itself. A miraculously preserved corpse is still a corpse. Even if God prevented the body's cells from breaking down, the body was still dead — no brain activity, no heartbeat, no respiration, no consciousness, no neural function. A preserved corpse is not a living human being. It is not a functioning human nature. Preventing decomposition does not turn a dead body into a living person any more than embalming a body makes it alive. The body could be perfectly preserved and still be utterly dead — and a dead body is not a human nature in any Christologically meaningful sense.³⁴

Response 2: "The Person Ceased to Exist but God Re-Created the Same Person"

Some physicalists, especially those who hold a "gappy existence" view, suggest that the person Jesus ceased to exist at death and was then re-created by God at the resurrection. On this view, there was indeed a gap in Christ's existence — but God bridged the gap by bringing back into existence the very same person.

This response faces the devastating "replica problem." If a person ceases to exist and then a new person is brought into existence — even if the new person is made from the same matter, has the same memories, and is in every physical respect identical — is the new person really the same person? Or is the new person a perfect copy, a replica, indistinguishable from the original but numerically distinct? This is a profound problem in the metaphysics of personal identity, and we will treat it fully in Chapter 24. For now, we can note that if the risen Jesus is not the same Jesus who died — if He is a replica, however perfect — then the entire saving significance of the resurrection is undermined. It was not Jesus who rose from the dead; it was a copy of Jesus. The one who died stayed dead; a new person who looked and acted just like Him came into existence.³⁵

There is an additional problem specific to Christology. If the person Jesus ceased to exist at death, what happened to the hypostatic union? The divine Person of the Son obviously did not cease to exist. But the human nature did. So for the duration of the gap, the Son was not incarnate. And when the human nature was re-created at the resurrection, it was a new assumption of human nature — a second incarnation, not a continuation of the first. As McMartin observes, "the uniqueness and significance of Christmas would be called into question."³⁶

Response 3: "The Son Remained United to the Body Even Though It Was Dead"

Some physicalists bite the bullet and argue that the Son did remain hypostatically united to the dead body in the tomb. On this view, the Incarnation continued through Holy Saturday, even though the body was dead, because the Son was still united to the physical matter that constituted His human nature.

But what, exactly, is the Son united to on this view? Dead biological matter. A corpse. Tissue that is no longer functioning as a human organism. This is not a human nature. The Chalcedonian Definition does not say that Christ assumed dead matter; it says He assumed a complete human nature — "of a reasonable soul and body." A dead body has no reason, no consciousness, no will, no agency. It is not a subject. It is not a person. It is not even an organism. To say that the Son was united to a corpse during the triduum is to say that the Son was united to something that is not a human nature — and that is to say that the Incarnation (the union of the Son with a human nature) was not, in fact, continuing.³⁷

Moreover, if the Son can be united to a dead body and this counts as "the Incarnation continuing," then what are the criteria? Can the Son be united to any collection of atoms and that counts as Incarnation? The moment we say that a dead body is sufficient for the Incarnation, we have gutted the concept of what a human nature is. We have reduced the Incarnation from the assumption of a complete, living, rational human nature to the mere association of the divine Person with a pile of biological matter. That is not the Incarnation as the church confesses it.

Response 4: "The Triduum Was So Brief It Doesn't Matter"

Some might respond that the triduum mortis was so short — only thirty-six to forty hours — that any interruption of the Incarnation was negligible and theologically insignificant. We should not make too much of what was, in the grand scheme of eternity, a momentary blip.

This response fails for a simple reason: duration is irrelevant. The Chalcedonian Definition does not say that the two natures are united "without separation, except for brief periods." It says "without separation" — full stop. If the Incarnation was interrupted for even a nanosecond, the "without separation" clause was violated. And thirty-six to forty hours is not a nanosecond. It is a day and a half. It encompasses an entire Sabbath day — one of the seven days of the week. To dismiss this as theologically insignificant is to trivialize both the Incarnation and the conciliar definition that defines it.³⁸

Furthermore, if duration is what matters, then we must ask: how long would be too long? If thirty-six hours is acceptable, what about thirty-six days? Thirty-six years? Thirty-six centuries? Where is the line? The moment we admit that any interruption is acceptable, we have conceded the principle — the Incarnation can be interrupted — and we are merely haggling over the length. But the principle itself is what Chalcedon denies. "Without separation" means without separation. Period.

Response 5: Immediate Resurrection and the Fissioning Model

The most sophisticated physicalist response to the triduum problem is Dean Zimmerman's "fissioning" model, which McMartin discusses at length. On this view, at the moment of death, God causes the particles composing Christ's body to fission — to split into two copies. One copy becomes the corpse that is taken down from the cross and buried; the other copy immediately becomes the resurrected body. Christ is thus continuously embodied throughout Holy Saturday — the body in the tomb is a leftover shell, not the real Christ, who is alive and embodied elsewhere.

This is ingenious, but it creates more problems than it solves. First, as McMartin notes, "contrary to the creed, Jesus was not buried." The body that was buried was not really Jesus — it was a leftover duplicate. The women who came to anoint the body on Sunday morning were visiting a shell, not the body of their Lord. Joseph of Arimathea did not bury Jesus; he buried a fissioned byproduct.³⁹

Second, the resurrection as traditionally understood — the raising of the dead body in the tomb — did not happen. The empty tomb was not empty because the dead body was raised; it was empty because the dead body was a leftover from the fissioning event and was either dissipated by God or fused back into the resurrected body. The theological significance of the empty tomb — the demonstration that the one who died is the one who rose — is severely compromised.

Third, this model raises troubling questions about divine deception. If the body in the tomb was not really Jesus, then the disciples who mourned over the body, the women who prepared spices to anoint the body, and Joseph and Nicodemus who wrapped the body in linen cloths were all interacting with something that was not really the body of their Lord. God, by causing the fission, created a situation designed to deceive — to make people believe they were caring for the body of Jesus when in fact they were caring for a duplicate. This echoes the long-standing objection raised against Peter van Inwagen's similar simulacrum theory, in which God replaces the corpse with a fake at the moment of death.⁴⁰

Fourth, the model fundamentally alters the Christian narrative. As McMartin observes, "the hope-conferring event of the Christian faith happens at Jesus's death and is only marked by the later discovery of the empty tomb and in the post-resurrection appearances." Easter becomes not the day of resurrection but merely the day of disclosure — the day when the already-accomplished resurrection was revealed. This "flattened narrative alters the Christian narrative of identification with Christ's soteriological pattern."⁴¹

The Consubstantiality Argument: Christ's Human Nature and Ours

There is a further argument that strengthens our case. The Chalcedonian Definition declares that Christ is "consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin." Christ's human nature is of the same substance (homoousios, ὁμοούσιος) as ours. His humanity is our humanity. He shares our nature.

This principle of consubstantiality has enormous implications for the triduum argument. As Oliver Crisp has argued, "if Christ is consubstantial with us with respect to his human nature, then Christ's human nature is no different from our human nature in its composition."⁴² Whatever is true of human nature in general must be true of Christ's human nature in particular (sin excepted). If human nature consists of a body and a soul, then Christ's human nature consists of a body and a soul. If the soul survives death, then Christ's soul survived death. If the soul does not survive death (as physicalism claims), then Christ's soul did not survive death — because Christ has no soul to survive.

But consider the reverse direction. Marc Cortez has argued that "the fundamental intuition of a christological anthropology is that beliefs about the human person (anthropology) must be warranted in some way by beliefs about Jesus (christological)."⁴³ Michael Wilkinson has taken this insight further in his groundbreaking proposal for a "Chalcedonian anthropology," arguing that "the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ gives us the man par excellence which must govern how we define the creation of man par ordinaire."⁴⁴ In other words, we should derive our anthropology from our Christology, not the other way around. Christ is the paradigm of what it means to be human. His human nature defines ours.

If Christ has an immaterial soul — as the councils insist — then we have immaterial souls. If Christ's soul survived death — as the triduum requires — then our souls survive death. The Incarnation does not merely prove that Christ has a soul; it proves that human nature as such includes a soul. And physicalism, by denying the soul, denies something that the Incarnation itself reveals about human nature.⁴⁵

The Patristic and Creedal Witness

The dualist understanding of the triduum mortis is not a later theological development. It is rooted in the earliest Christian reflection on the death and resurrection of Christ.

The Apostles' Creed, one of the most ancient summaries of Christian belief, affirms that Christ "was crucified, died, and was buried; He descended to the dead." The descent clause presupposes that Christ was active between death and resurrection — that His soul descended to the realm of the dead while His body lay in the tomb. This clause is unintelligible on physicalism, because there is nothing to descend. As we noted earlier, this will be treated more fully in Chapter 23, but the creedal language itself points unmistakably toward a dualist understanding of what happened during the triduum.

The Chalcedonian Definition's insistence that Christ has a human nature consisting of "a reasonable soul and body" (ψυχῆς λογικῆς καὶ σώματος) was not accidental language. The fathers at Chalcedon were explicitly rejecting Apollinarianism — the view that Christ lacked a human rational soul (as discussed at length in Chapter 12). By specifying "a reasonable soul and body," the council was insisting that Christ's human nature is complete: it includes both material and immaterial components. And this completeness is what makes the triduum coherent. At death, the soul separates from the body, but both remain part of the assumed human nature, and the Incarnation continues.⁴⁶

The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) reaffirmed this understanding by declaring that Christ "descended in soul, arose in flesh, and ascended equally in both" — explicitly distinguishing the soul's descent from the body's rest in the tomb and affirming that the resurrection involved the reunification of both. This language only makes sense on a dualist anthropology.⁴⁷

The patristic writers who contributed to this understanding were unanimous. As we survey in Chapter 30, from Irenaeus to Athanasius to Gregory of Nazianzus to John of Damascus, the fathers consistently affirmed that Christ's human soul survived death, descended to the realm of the dead, and was reunited with His body at the resurrection. Gregory of Nazianzus's famous axiom — "what is not assumed is not healed" (to gar aproslepton, atherapeuton, τὸ γὰρ ἀπρόσληπτον, ἀθεράπευτον) — was originally formulated in the context of the Apollinarian controversy, but it applies with equal force here.⁴⁸ If Christ did not have a human soul, then the human soul is not healed by the Incarnation. And if the human soul did not survive Christ's death, then Christ did not share our experience of death, and death itself is not redeemed from the inside.

The Emotional and Pastoral Weight of the Argument

I want to pause here and address something that goes beyond the technical theological and philosophical arguments. The triduum mortis is not merely an academic puzzle. It has profound pastoral and spiritual significance.

Every Christian who has lost a loved one has asked some version of the question: "Where are they now?" The belief that the soul survives death — that the person we loved continues to exist, conscious and aware, in the presence of God — is one of the most comforting and central beliefs of the Christian faith. Paul writes that to be "absent from the body" is to be "present with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8). Jesus told the thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). These promises presuppose that the soul survives death and enters immediately into a conscious relationship with Christ.

Now, what makes these promises credible? What grounds our confidence that the dead are "with the Lord"? The answer is: the experience of Christ Himself during the triduum mortis. Christ went through death. His soul survived. He was conscious and active between death and resurrection. He went to paradise. He descended to the dead. He preached to the spirits. His human soul was not abandoned to Hades (Acts 2:27). His experience of death is the paradigm, the prototype, the firstfruits of our own experience of death. Because He survived death in this way, we can be confident that we will too.

On physicalism, this pastoral comfort evaporates. If Christ did not have a soul that survived death, then we have no reason to believe that we will survive death either. If Christ ceased to exist when He died and was re-created at the resurrection, then we might also cease to exist when we die and — we hope — be re-created at the general resurrection. But there is no "being with the Lord" between death and resurrection. There is no paradise. There is no conscious intermediate state. There is only nonexistence, followed (perhaps) by re-creation. The comfort of "absent from the body, present with the Lord" is gone.

I find this deeply troubling. The Christian hope is not merely a hope for future resurrection; it is a hope for present communion with Christ even in death. The physicalist robs the dying believer of this hope, because on physicalism, there is nothing to be "present with the Lord" after death. There is only a corpse in a grave and — on the most optimistic physicalist scenario — a promise that God will someday re-create the person. But between death and that re-creation, there is nothing. Nothing at all.

Jesus promised the thief, "Today you will be with me in paradise." On physicalism, that promise is false. There was no "me" in paradise that day, because Jesus had no soul to go to paradise. And there was no "you" in paradise either, because the thief had no soul to survive his death. Both Jesus and the thief simply ceased to exist on Good Friday afternoon, and neither existed again until they were re-created at some later point. The promise of "today" — the immediacy, the comfort, the assurance that death does not separate us from Christ — is emptied of meaning.⁴⁹

The Loftin-Farris Volume: A Broader Assessment

The editors of Christian Physicalism?, R. Keith Loftin and Joshua R. Farris, frame the broader context of these arguments in their introduction to the volume. They note that "while the influence of Christian physicalism has increased in recent years, it does not at present dominate as the assumed ontology in biblical studies or theology." The "dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Nicene tradition reflects the collective agreement of theological authorities that affirm with one voice the doctrine of the soul (that is, as an immaterial substance, or something near it) that has the possibility of persisting disembodied during the interim state." This consensus is "buttressed by the belief that Christ persisted as a human on Holy Saturday," and "it is arguable that he models what will occur for humans who die somatically prior to the somatic resurrection."⁵⁰

This is an important point. The triduum argument is not merely a negative argument against physicalism; it is a positive argument for the soul. The fact that Christ survived death as a conscious agent — that He went to paradise, descended to the dead, and was active between Good Friday and Easter — provides direct evidence that human beings have immaterial souls that survive the death of the body. And because Christ's human nature is consubstantial with ours, His experience of death tells us something about what death is for all human beings: it is the separation of the soul from the body, not the annihilation of the person.

Loftin and Farris also observe that "there remain overwhelming philosophical reasons for rejecting physicalism on the basis that it cannot account for the unity of consciousness, the enduring self, or the epistemology of religious experience, among other theological considerations (such as the fact of Holy Saturday and Christ's persistence with human nature intact)."⁵¹ The Holy Saturday argument is thus one component of a broader cumulative case against physicalism — a case that includes philosophical, biblical, and theological arguments from multiple directions. But it is, I believe, the single most powerful component of that case, because it shows that physicalism does not merely create philosophical difficulties; it creates a Christological catastrophe.

Responding to the Objection: "Dualism Has Its Own Problems"

A fair-minded reader might object: "Doesn't dualism have its own problems with the triduum mortis? Isn't it strange to say that Christ existed as a disembodied soul for thirty-six hours? Doesn't that compromise His full humanity?"

This is a legitimate question, and I want to give it a honest answer. Yes, the separated state of the soul during the triduum is abnormal. The soul is naturally oriented toward the body. Human beings are meant to be embodied. Paul describes the disembodied state as "nakedness" (2 Cor. 5:3–4), suggesting that it is an unnatural and undesirable condition. The intermediate state — the state of the soul between death and resurrection — is not the ideal. The ideal is the resurrection: the reunification of soul and body in the glorified state.

But this is exactly what the Christian faith teaches. Death is an enemy (1 Cor. 15:26). It is the result of sin. It is a disruption of God's original intention for human life. The separation of soul from body at death is a genuine tragedy, a real loss, a sundering of what God designed to be united. And yet — and this is the key point — even in this sundered state, the person continues to exist. The soul survives. The person is conscious and aware. The person is "with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8; Phil. 1:23). The person endures through death, even though death is a real and painful disruption.

This is not a problem for dualism; it is a feature. Dualism acknowledges the reality and horror of death while maintaining the continuity of the person through death. Death is real — the body dies, the soul-body composite is broken, and the person enters an abnormal and diminished state. But death is not final — the person survives, and the resurrection will restore what death disrupted.⁵²

On the dualist account, Christ's experience of the triduum is a genuine sharing of our condition. He really died. His soul really separated from His body. He really experienced the abnormality and diminishment of the disembodied state. But He survived death, and His resurrection is the prototype and guarantee of ours. His experience validates the promise that death cannot separate us from the love of God (Rom. 8:38–39).

McMartin makes this point well. The dualist faces some challenges at the point of the resurrection (how is the glorified body related to the earthly body?), but "the dualist has a relatively straightforward way of explaining the continuity of these cases in the midst of differences related to mode and matter to be resurrected." The continuity of the person through death is preserved by the continuous existence of the soul. On physicalism, this continuity is broken, and no amount of philosophical ingenuity can fully restore it.⁵³

The Enhypostasia and the Fifth Council

There is a further dogmatic consideration that strengthens the argument. The Fifth Ecumenical Council — Constantinople II (553) — developed the important theological concept of enhypostasia (enypostaton, ἐνυπόστατον). This concept holds that Christ's human nature does not have its own independent personal subsistence; it subsists in and through the Person of the Son. The human nature exists only because it has been assumed by the divine Person. It is "enhypostasized" — given personal existence — by the Son.⁵⁴

The enhypostasia implies that once the Son has assumed human nature, that nature is permanently united to Him. The human nature exists in the Person of the Son, and it cannot exist apart from Him. Conversely, the Son, having assumed human nature, does not set it aside. The union is indissoluble. As McMartin notes, "the incarnation is inseparable. Once the human nature has been hypostatized, it continues to be impersoned by the logos."⁵⁵

On physicalism, this indissolubility is threatened by death. If the human nature ceases to exist at death (because the physical organism ceases to function), then the enhypostatic union is dissolved — not by the Son's choice, but by the natural process of biological death. The human nature, which was enhypostasized in the Son, simply ceases to be. The Son did not abandon His human nature; it was taken from Him by death. But the result is the same: the union is broken.

On dualism, the enhypostatic union is preserved through death because the human nature — though existing in a separated state (soul apart from body) — continues to exist. The soul, enhypostasized in the Son, survives the death of the body. The body, also enhypostasized in the Son, remains in the tomb. Both components of the human nature continue to exist, and both continue to subsist in the Person of the Son. The enhypostatic union is maintained. As treated more fully in Chapter 19, the anhypostasia/enhypostasia distinction is a critical element of conciliar Christology, and it is best served — perhaps only coherently served — by a dualist anthropology.⁵⁶

The Argument Summarized

Let me draw the threads of this chapter together. The argument can be stated in the form of a straightforward logical sequence:

1. The Chalcedonian Definition teaches that the two natures of Christ — divine and human — are united in the Person of the Son "without separation" (achōristōs).

2. The Incarnation, once begun, is permanent. The Son does not set aside His human nature.

3. Christ truly died on the cross. His death was real, not apparent.

4. If physicalism is true, then Christ's human nature is entirely constituted by His physical body. There is no immaterial soul.

5. At death, the physical body ceases to function. It is no longer a living human organism. On physicalism, the human nature ceases to exist (or is reduced to a corpse, which is not a human nature).

6. Therefore, on physicalism, during the triduum mortis, the Son of God was not united to a human nature. The Incarnation was interrupted. "Without separation" was violated.

7. On substance dualism, by contrast, the human soul survives the death of the body. The Son remains united to both the separated soul (which goes to the realm of the dead) and the body (which lies in the tomb). The Incarnation continues. "Without separation" is preserved.

8. Therefore, substance dualism is necessary for maintaining the integrity of the Incarnation through the triduum mortis, and physicalism is incompatible with orthodox Christology.

Conclusion: The Day That Proves the Soul

Holy Saturday is the day most Christians forget. It is the quiet, empty day between the drama of the cross and the glory of the resurrection. But theologically, it is the most important day of all. It is the day that tests every Christological framework. It is the day that separates adequate from inadequate accounts of the Incarnation. It is the day that proves the soul.

On physicalism, Holy Saturday is a theological disaster. The Incarnation ended at the cross. The Son was not incarnate. Christ was not "true God and true man." The hypostatic union was dissolved. The "without separation" of Chalcedon was violated. The descent to the dead was impossible. The continuity of personal identity through death was broken. The pastoral comfort of "being with the Lord" after death was emptied. The physicalist account of Holy Saturday leaves us with a Son of God united to a corpse — or worse, not united to anything human at all.

On dualism, Holy Saturday is coherent, beautiful, and theologically rich. The Incarnation continued without interruption. The Son remained united to both the human soul (active and conscious in the realm of the dead) and the human body (at rest in the tomb). The descent to the dead was real. Christ preached to the spirits in prison. He was in paradise with the repentant thief. His human soul was not abandoned to Hades. And on Easter morning, the soul was reunited with the body, now glorified, and the full integrity of Christ's human nature was restored.

I believe the Holy Saturday argument is the single most devastating objection to physicalist Christology. It shows that physicalism is not merely philosophically problematic or biblically unsupported (though it is both); it is Christologically catastrophic. It cannot account for the most basic Christian confession: that the Word became flesh, and the Word remained flesh — even through the darkest day, even through death itself, even when the body lay cold in a borrowed tomb and the soul descended to the deepest places of the dead. The Incarnation did not end at the cross. It continued through Holy Saturday. And that simple fact — that quiet, overlooked, theologically explosive fact — proves that we are more than our bodies. We have souls. And so did Christ.⁵⁷