Chapter 25

The Virgin Birth and the Origin of Christ's Human Nature

Introduction: Why the Beginning of the Incarnation Matters

The virgin birth of Jesus Christ is one of the most cherished and foundational doctrines of the Christian faith. Every Sunday, millions of Christians confess in the Apostles' Creed that Jesus was "conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary." The Nicene Creed affirms that the Son of God "came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man." These are not incidental claims. They go to the very heart of who Jesus is and how the eternal Son of God entered our world as a genuine human being.

But the virgin birth is not just about how Jesus was born. It is about how the Incarnation began — how the eternal, divine Second Person of the Trinity came to possess a complete human nature. And the question of how the Incarnation began raises a crucial issue that we have been exploring throughout this book: What is a human nature made of? Is it purely physical — nothing more than a biological organism? Or does it include an immaterial soul, a rational mind that is more than just brain chemistry?

In this chapter, I want to show that the virgin birth creates serious and perhaps insurmountable problems for physicalism — the view that human beings are entirely physical, with no immaterial soul. The problems cluster around one central question: What exactly did the Son of God assume at the moment of conception in Mary's womb? On substance dualism — the view that a human being is composed of both a material body and an immaterial soul — the answer is clear and elegant. On physicalism, the answer is deeply confused. And on emergent dualism — the view that the soul gradually emerges from brain complexity — the problems are different but equally devastating.

The thesis of this chapter is straightforward: the virgin birth raises significant questions for physicalism about the origin and constitution of Christ's human nature. If Christ's human nature is entirely physical, then how was the divine nature united to a physical organism from the moment of conception, and what was the role of the miraculous conception in constituting Christ's human identity? I believe that substance dualism, combined with the traditional Christian view that God directly creates each human soul (a position known as creationism about the soul), provides the most coherent and theologically satisfying account of how the Incarnation began.¹

The Biblical Evidence for the Virgin Birth

Before we turn to the philosophical and theological analysis, we need to look carefully at what Scripture actually says about how Jesus came into the world. Two New Testament passages give us the fullest account: Matthew 1:18–25 and Luke 1:26–38. Let us examine each one in detail.

Matthew's Account (Matthew 1:18–25)

Matthew writes:

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel" (which means, God with us). When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus. (Matthew 1:18–25 ESV)

Several features of this passage deserve careful attention. First, Matthew is emphatic that Mary's pregnancy occurred "before they came together" — that is, before Mary and Joseph had sexual relations. The conception is explicitly attributed to the Holy Spirit: "that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit" (v. 20). The Greek phrase ek pneumatos hagiou (ἐκ πνεύματος ἁγίου) — "from the Holy Spirit" — indicates the origin or source of the conception. This was not a natural process of human reproduction. It was a divine act.²

Second, Matthew connects this event to the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, using the word parthenos (παρθένος), which means "virgin." Matthew sees Jesus' virginal conception as the fulfillment of God's ancient promise to provide a sign — a child born of a virgin who would be "God with us" (Immanuel). The very name "Immanuel" points to the reality of the Incarnation: in this child, God is truly present with His people.³

Third, Matthew emphasizes that Joseph "knew her not until she had given birth" (v. 25). The verb ginōskō (γινώσκω) here carries the Semitic sense of sexual intimacy. Joseph played no biological role in Jesus' conception. This child's existence was entirely the result of divine action.

Luke's Account (Luke 1:26–38)

Luke gives us the account from Mary's perspective:

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!" But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." And Mary said to the angel, "How will this be, since I am a virgin?" And the angel answered her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy — the Son of God." (Luke 1:26–35 ESV)

Luke's account adds crucial theological detail. The angel Gabriel's announcement makes clear that this is no ordinary birth. The child will be "the Son of the Most High" who will reign on David's throne forever (vv. 32–33). Mary's question — "How will this be, since I am a virgin?" — confirms that she had not had sexual relations. The Greek phrase epei andra ou ginōskō (ἐπεὶ ἄνδρα οὐ γινώσκω) literally means "since I do not know a man," using the same verb for sexual intimacy that Matthew employed.⁴

Gabriel's answer is the single most important verse in Scripture for understanding the mechanism of the virgin conception: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy — the Son of God" (v. 35). The verb episkiazō (ἐπισκιάζω), translated "overshadow," echoes the language of God's shekinah glory overshadowing the tabernacle in Exodus 40:35. Just as God's presence filled the tabernacle, so God's creative power fills Mary's womb. The conception is a creative act of God — an act comparable in its divine power to the original creation itself.⁵

There is an important word in Gabriel's announcement that we should not overlook: "therefore." The child will be called holy — the Son of God — therefore, because of the manner of His conception. The Holy Spirit's involvement in the conception is directly connected to the holiness and divine identity of the child. This is not a normal human conception that God merely "endorses." It is a conception that God Himself brings about, and the result is a child who is both fully divine (the Son of God) and fully human (born of a woman, developing in Mary's womb for nine months, entering the world as a helpless infant).⁶

The Theological Significance of the Virgin Birth for the Incarnation

The virgin birth is not just a historical fact. It carries enormous theological weight. Let me highlight several dimensions of its significance before we turn to the specific problems it poses for physicalism.

The Virgin Birth and the Unity of Divine and Human Action

The virgin birth shows us that the Incarnation is entirely God's initiative. The Son did not stumble into human existence. The Father did not "find" a suitable human being and decide to adopt him. Rather, the triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — acted together to bring about the union of divine and human natures in one person. The Father sent the Son. The Holy Spirit formed the human nature. The Son assumed it. From the very first moment of Christ's human existence, God was at work constituting a complete human nature for the eternal Son to inhabit.⁷

The Virgin Birth and the Completeness of Christ's Human Nature

The early church fathers were clear that the Incarnation produced a complete human nature in Christ — not a partial one, not an incomplete one, but a full human nature consisting of both a body and a rational soul. The Council of Chalcedon (451) defined that Christ is "truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body." Constantinople II (553) condemned Apollinarianism — the heresy that Christ lacked a human rational soul — in the strongest terms. As Gregory of Nazianzus famously argued: "What is not assumed is not healed."⁸ If Christ did not assume a complete human nature — body and soul — then He cannot save us completely.

Now, the crucial question for our purposes is this: When did the Son assume this complete human nature? At what point did the Incarnation begin? The church's consistent answer has been: at the moment of conception. The Incarnation did not happen gradually. It did not happen in stages. The Son did not first assume a body and then, weeks or months later, acquire a soul. The assumption of a complete human nature — body and soul together — was instantaneous and complete at the moment of conception in Mary's womb.⁹

This is where the trouble begins for physicalism.

The Dualist Account: How the Incarnation Began

On substance dualism — the view I hold and the view I believe Scripture and the councils teach — the account of how the Incarnation began is clear, coherent, and theologically satisfying. Let me walk through it step by step.

At the moment of conception, three things happened simultaneously by the creative power of the Holy Spirit:

First, a human body began to form in Mary's womb. The Holy Spirit brought about the miraculous fertilization of Mary's ovum without a human father. As Oliver Crisp notes, this could have involved the use of an ovum from Mary's womb and the creation of the genetic material necessary for a human male — all accomplished by the infinite power of God rather than by natural reproductive processes.¹⁰

Second, a human soul was directly created by God and united to the developing body. This is the position known as creationism about the soul — not to be confused with creationism about the origins of the universe, which is a different topic entirely. Soul creationism is the view that God directly and immediately creates each individual human soul. It is the dominant view throughout the history of Christian theology, finding overwhelming support in Roman Catholic teaching, Reformed theology, and much of the broader Christian tradition.¹¹ As Joshua Farris explains, creationism holds that "souls are the types of substances that require a higher-order transcendent cause and could not come into existence by a material process."¹²

Third, the eternal Son of God — the Second Person of the Trinity — assumed this complete human nature (body + soul) as His own. The Incarnation was complete from the very first instant. There was never a moment when the Son possessed an incomplete human nature. There was never a stage when the developing organism in Mary's womb existed as a soulless body. From the first moment of conception, the Son was united to a complete human nature: a genuine human body and a genuine human soul.

This account has several important theological advantages. It explains how the Incarnation could be complete from the very beginning, even before the developing body had a functioning brain or nervous system. The soul does not depend on the brain for its existence (even though, in normal human life, the soul interacts intimately with the body through the brain). On creationism, the soul is directly created by God — it does not emerge from physical processes. So the soul can exist and be united to the body from the very first moment, providing the immaterial dimension of the human nature that the councils insisted Christ must have.¹³

This is also the framework that best fits the concrete-nature view of the Incarnation. As Crisp explains, on the concrete-nature view, Christ's human nature is a concrete particular — a specific body-soul composite — not an abstract property or set of properties. "The only reason Christ's human nature exists is the virginal conception brought about by the Holy Spirit. Had the Holy Spirit not brought about the fertilization of the human egg in Mary's womb that became the human body of Christ, conjoined with the human soul that became Christ's human soul too, there would have been no human nature of Christ to speak of."¹⁴ The virgin birth, on this view, is the creative act by which God brought into existence the concrete particular that is Christ's humanity — and that particular includes both body and soul.

Timothy Pawl's rigorous defense of conciliar Christology reinforces this point. Pawl models the concrete human nature as a composite of body and soul, representing it visually as two halves of a single circle. The soul and the body together constitute the concrete nature; neither alone is sufficient. For the hypostatic union to obtain, the divine person of the Son must be united to this complete composite.¹⁵ Remove the soul, and you no longer have a complete human nature — you have an Apollinarian Christology, whether you intend it or not.

The Role of the Soul in the Incarnation's Beginning

Why does it matter so much that Christ had a human soul from the very first moment? Because the soul is what makes the developing organism a person with an inner life — a being with consciousness, rational capacities, and a will. On dualism, even before the brain develops sufficiently to support complex thought, the soul is present as the immaterial bearer of these capacities. The soul does not need a functioning brain in order to exist; it needs a functioning brain in order to express its capacities through the body in normal human experience. But the soul's existence is not contingent on brain development.

This means that the Son was united to something personal — a genuine human nature with an immaterial dimension — from the very beginning. He was not united to a mere lump of biological tissue. He was united to a body-soul composite, a concrete human nature that had, from the first instant, the ontological structure that the councils demanded.

Andrew Loke's Kryptic Model helps us understand how this works from the perspective of Christ's consciousness. Loke, drawing on Aquinas, notes that there is a question about whether the Logos was conscious during the prenatal period. Aquinas had suggested that Christ could consciously exercise His free will from the first instant of conception, because the Holy Spirit's infinite power could have formed the fetal body in such a way as to make this possible.¹⁶ Loke modifies this suggestion. He proposes that the Logos maintained at least a minimal conscious awareness throughout the Incarnation — specifically, an awareness of Himself as divine and of His ability to access the divine preconscious. This awareness was "miraculously sustained in his mind throughout the Incarnation," even during the prenatal stage. His awareness of other things would develop as the fetus developed the appropriate nervous system.¹⁷

The key point is this: on Loke's model (and on any dualist model that takes the soul seriously), the Incarnation was complete from the very first moment because the soul was present from the very first moment. The Son did not need to wait for a brain to develop before the Incarnation could "take hold." The soul provided the immaterial foundation for the hypostatic union from the instant of conception.

The Physicalist Account: A Cluster of Problems

Now let us consider what happens if we adopt physicalism — the view that human beings are entirely physical organisms, with no immaterial soul. On physicalism, the human person is identical with the biological organism. Mental life, consciousness, and personhood are all functions of the brain. There is no soul to survive the death of the body, no immaterial mind distinct from neural processes. The "person" is the body.

If this view is applied to the Incarnation, it creates a cluster of problems at the very beginning of Christ's human existence. Let me present each one carefully.

Problem 1: What Was the Son United to at Conception?

On physicalism, when the Holy Spirit brought about the miraculous conception in Mary's womb, what exactly came into existence? A physical embryo. A single cell — a fertilized ovum — that would begin dividing and developing according to the normal processes of human biology.

But here is the problem. A physical embryo in its earliest stages is a cluster of cells. It has no brain. It has no nervous system. It has no consciousness. It has none of the mental properties that physicalists typically identify with personhood. On most physicalist accounts, mental life — consciousness, thought, sensation, will — is a function of the brain. Where there is no brain, there is no mental life. And where there is no mental life, there is (on physicalism) no person.¹⁸

So what was the Son of God united to at the moment of conception? On physicalism, the answer can only be: a cluster of cells. A tiny physical organism with no mental properties whatsoever. No consciousness. No awareness. No thought. No will. Just cells dividing.

Is this really an Incarnation? Can we say that the eternal Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity — the Creator of the universe, the one through whom all things were made — was hypostatically united to a clump of dividing cells with no mental life? The very idea seems deeply problematic. The hypostatic union is the union of a divine person with a human nature. But on physicalism, the "human nature" at the moment of conception has no personal properties at all. It is biologically human (it has human DNA), but it is not yet a person in any meaningful sense that the physicalist would recognize.

Problem 2: When Did the Incarnation Begin?

This leads directly to the second problem: the timing question. On physicalism, when exactly did the Son become incarnate? There are only a few options, and each one has serious difficulties.

Option A: The Incarnation began at conception. This is the traditional Christian answer, and it is clearly the right one theologically. But on physicalism, it means that the Son was united to a single cell, then to a ball of cells, then to a developing embryo — none of which had a brain, nervous system, or any capacity for mental life. The Son was united to something that, by the physicalist's own criteria, was not yet a person. This is very difficult to reconcile with the idea that the Son assumed a complete human nature. What was "complete" about a human nature that had no capacity for consciousness, thought, or will?

Option B: The Incarnation began at some later point of brain development. Perhaps the Son did not become incarnate at conception but at some later point — when the fetal nervous system developed sufficiently to support consciousness, perhaps around the end of the first trimester or later. On this view, the developing organism existed for weeks or even months before the Son assumed it. But this creates an enormous theological problem. It means that during the early stages of pregnancy, there was a human organism developing in Mary's womb that was not yet the site of the Incarnation. The organism existed, but the Son had not yet assumed it. What was this organism? Who was it? Was it a separate human person who was later "taken over" by the Son? That sounds dangerously Nestorian — the heresy that there were two persons in Christ, a divine person and a human person, loosely joined together. Or was it a non-personal biological entity that later became personal when the Son assumed it? But that raises questions about what triggered the Son's assumption — why at this point in brain development and not another?¹⁹

Option C: The Incarnation was gradual. Perhaps the Son's union with the human nature was not an all-at-once event but a gradual process — the Son becoming more and more "incarnate" as the body developed. But this has no support in Christian tradition, Scripture, or the conciliar definitions. The councils speak of the Son assuming a complete human nature, not gradually developing one. And the idea of a "partial" Incarnation — the Son being "half incarnate" at eight weeks and "fully incarnate" at twenty weeks — is theologically absurd.²⁰

On substance dualism, none of these problems arise. The soul was created by God and united to the body at the moment of conception. The Incarnation was complete from the first instant because the soul provided the immaterial dimension of the human nature from the very beginning. The developing organism in Mary's womb was always a body-soul composite, always a complete human nature, always the site of the Incarnation.

Problem 3: What Was the Son United to Before the Brain Developed?

This problem is closely related to the first two, but it deserves its own treatment because it reveals a deep tension within physicalism itself.

On physicalism, personhood and mental life are functions of the brain. The brain is the seat of consciousness, thought, emotion, and will. Without a functioning brain, there is no person — just biological material. This is a core commitment of physicalism. It is precisely why physicalists reject the idea of an immaterial soul: they believe that everything we call "mind" is produced by the brain.

But the human brain does not begin to develop until several weeks into pregnancy. The neural tube — the precursor to the brain and spinal cord — forms around the fourth week of gestation. Basic neural connections begin to form around the sixth week. Something resembling organized brain activity does not appear until much later — perhaps the end of the first trimester or even later, depending on how one defines "organized brain activity." Full cortical development, which many neuroscientists associate with consciousness, does not occur until the third trimester or beyond.²¹

So on physicalism, for at least the first several weeks of Christ's prenatal life, there was no brain — and therefore no mental life, no consciousness, and no personhood. The Son was united to biological material that had none of the properties that physicalists consider essential to being a person.

We might put the problem this way: If physicalism is true, was the Son united to a person at conception, or to non-personal biological material? If to a person, then physicalism's own criteria for personhood (which require a functioning brain) are being violated. If to non-personal biological material, then the Incarnation at conception is not really an Incarnation at all — it is a union of a divine person with something that is not yet a human person.

This is a serious problem, and I do not think physicalists have an adequate answer to it. Some might respond by saying that the organism at conception is a potential person — it has the DNA and the biological trajectory that will eventually produce a brain and consciousness. But "potential person" is not the same as "actual person." The Incarnation requires the Son to assume an actual human nature, not a potential one. The Son did not assume a nature that would eventually become human; He assumed a nature that was human from the very first moment.²²

The Emergent Dualism Problem: The "Hasker Problem"

So far, we have been discussing the problems that physicalism — the view that there is no soul at all — creates for the beginning of the Incarnation. But there is another view that falls between strict physicalism and traditional substance dualism, and it has its own distinctive problems. This is emergent dualism, most notably associated with the philosopher William Hasker.

What Is Emergent Dualism?

Emergent dualism, as Hasker develops it in his important book The Emergent Self (1999), holds that the soul genuinely exists and is a distinct immaterial substance — but it does not come from God's direct creative act. Instead, the soul emerges from the complexity of the brain. When a biological organism develops a brain of sufficient complexity, the physical processes of the brain generate — or give rise to — an immaterial soul. Once the soul emerges, it becomes a genuine immaterial entity that can, in principle, survive the death of the body if God sustains it.²³

This is a middle position between physicalism and substance dualism. Like substance dualism, it affirms a real immaterial soul. But like physicalism, it grounds the origin of the soul in physical processes rather than in a direct creative act of God. As Farris explains, for Hasker, "the soul is the product of physical processes." He continues: "Divine agency plays no direct or immediate role in the production of souls, including the original pair of souls. Souls are directly and immediately produced by complex physical processes from biological evolution and the causal chain of procreation brought about by parents of those souls."²⁴

Emergent dualism has some strengths. It affirms a real soul. It provides a basis for personal identity that survives death (if God chooses to sustain the soul). It takes both the physical and the immaterial seriously. I appreciate Hasker's work, and I think emergent dualism is a far more defensible position than strict physicalism.

But emergent dualism creates a devastating problem for the Incarnation — a problem I call "the Hasker Problem."

The Hasker Problem Stated

If the human soul emerges from the complexity of the brain, then Christ's human soul did not exist at the moment of conception. It could not have existed at conception, because at conception there was no brain — just a single fertilized cell. The soul, on Hasker's view, would have emerged later, during fetal development, when the brain reached sufficient complexity to generate an immaterial soul.

But when exactly would this have happened? That is precisely the problem. Brain development is a gradual process. There is no clear, sharp moment when the brain suddenly "snaps" from insufficient complexity to sufficient complexity. Neural development proceeds continuously over weeks and months. If the soul's emergence depends on brain complexity, then the soul emerged at some indeterminate point during Christ's prenatal development.

This creates a period — weeks or months long — during which the Incarnation was incomplete. The Son was united to a human organism that had a body but no soul. Christ's human nature, during this period, lacked the immaterial component that the councils insisted it must have. Was the Son's human nature complete during this period? It could not have been — because there was no soul yet. Was the Incarnation partial? Was the Son only "partly incarnate" — united to a body but not yet to a soul?²⁵

The problems multiply when we think about this carefully. Consider the following questions:

Was the Son united to an incomplete human nature? If Christ had a body but no soul for weeks or months, then His human nature was incomplete during that period. But the councils insist that Christ's human nature is complete — consisting of both a body and a rational soul. An incomplete human nature is, in effect, a deficient human nature. And as Gregory of Nazianzus insisted, what is not assumed is not healed. If Christ's human nature was ever incomplete, then during that period, He was not fully assuming what needed to be healed.

When did the Incarnation become "complete"? At what point during fetal development did the brain become complex enough to generate a soul? At eight weeks? Twelve weeks? Twenty weeks? Emergent dualism provides no clear answer, because brain development is continuous, not discrete. There is no magic threshold of complexity. This means there is no definite moment when the Incarnation went from "incomplete" to "complete." The boundary is fuzzy and arbitrary.

Was the Son an Apollinarian Christ before the soul emerged? This is perhaps the sharpest way to put the problem. During the period before the soul emerged from the brain, Christ had a human body but no human soul. But this is precisely the heresy of Apollinarius — the view that Christ had a body but no rational human soul. Apollinarianism was condemned by the Council of Constantinople (381) and by every subsequent ecumenical council. If emergent dualism entails that there was a period when Christ had a body but no soul, then it entails that there was a period when Christ was, in effect, Apollinarian.²⁶

Does the soul's physical origin compromise the hypostatic union? On emergent dualism, the soul is a product of physical processes — it emerges from brain chemistry. But the divine nature is immaterial. If the human soul is generated by the brain, then the human soul is — in its origin, at least — a physical product. It comes from matter. It is the brain's creation, not God's. Does this compromised origin make the soul a less suitable bearer of the hypostatic union? On traditional creationism, the soul comes directly from God — and there is a natural metaphysical affinity between an immaterial soul that comes from God and the immaterial divine nature to which it is united. On emergent dualism, the soul comes from neurons — and the metaphysical bridge between the divine and the human is weakened.

Farris's Critique and the Creationist Alternative

Joshua Farris provides a penetrating analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of emergent dualism in his Introduction to Theological Anthropology. He acknowledges that Hasker's view has the merit of affirming a genuine soul and taking embodiment seriously. But Farris also notes a significant liability: on Hasker's view, because souls are products of biological evolution and are "directly and immediately produced by complex physical processes," it naturally follows that "souls will dissolve upon the death of the body. Minimally, souls will cease to function in any meaningful way without their bodies."²⁷

This creates problems not only for the Incarnation but also for the intermediate state (the period between death and resurrection when the soul exists apart from the body). If the soul is a product of the brain, what happens to it when the brain ceases to function? Hasker does leave room for God to sustain the soul apart from the body, but as Farris observes, this raises the question of how the soul can "function properly" without the brain that generated it. "Does God simply supply unique powers to the soul during the disembodied interim state?"²⁸

Farris proposes an alternative that he finds more satisfying: a blend of creationism with emergentist elements. On this view, the soul has some relationship to the body (it is deeply integrated with embodied existence), but its ultimate origin is in God's direct creative act, not in brain chemistry alone. Farris suggests that "there are jointly necessary and sufficient conditions for the soul's coming into existence: (1) God acts, sufficiently, by way of bringing about the particular soul; and (2) the body/brain, at some sufficient complexity, is a necessary condition for the soul's origination."²⁹

I appreciate Farris's creative attempt to blend the best of both positions. But I believe that for the specific question of Christ's Incarnation, traditional creationism — the view that God directly creates the soul without the soul emerging from brain complexity — remains the most theologically adequate position. The Incarnation requires a complete human nature from the very first moment of conception. Only creationism can provide that, because only creationism allows the soul to exist before the brain develops.

The Virgin Birth and the Concrete-Nature View

We have seen that the virgin birth creates serious problems for physicalism and emergent dualism. Now I want to show how the virgin birth fits beautifully within the concrete-nature view of the Incarnation — the view that Christ's human nature is not an abstract property but a concrete particular, a specific body-soul composite brought into existence by the Holy Spirit.

Crisp on the Concrete-Nature View and the Virgin Birth

Oliver Crisp provides one of the clearest treatments of this topic in his book Divinity and Humanity. He explains that on the concrete-nature view with a three-part Christology (Word + human body + human soul), Christ's human nature is a concrete particular that exists only because the Holy Spirit brought it into being. "The concrete particular that is the human nature of Christ does not exist independently of the person of Christ. It becomes a human person on its assumption by the Word."³⁰

Crisp highlights an important implication. Unlike other human beings, whose body-soul composites come into existence through natural reproduction, Christ's body-soul composite came into existence through a unique divine act — the virginal conception. The Holy Spirit formed the body and, we should add, God created the soul, and the Word assumed both simultaneously. There was no pre-existing human person who was then "taken over" by the Son. The human nature of Christ came into existence at the very moment the Son assumed it. Before the assumption, there was no human nature of Christ; after the assumption, there was a complete human nature, hypostatically united to the divine nature in one person.³¹

This is the doctrine of enhypostasia — the teaching that Christ's human nature has its personal existence (its hypostasis) in and through the divine person of the Son. Christ's human nature never existed as an independent person. It was always the human nature of the Son. And this was true from the very first moment of conception.³²

Crisp also raises an interesting thought experiment. He asks whether it is possible that the Holy Spirit could have performed the act of parthenogenesis (the miraculous creation of a human organism in Mary's womb) without the Son assuming the resulting nature. In other words, could there have been a world in which Mary gave birth to a child who was miraculously conceived but who was not the Incarnate Son? Crisp argues that this is metaphysically possible, even if it never actually happened. The point is that the assumption by the Word is a distinct act from the formation of the body — and both are necessary for the Incarnation.³³

On physicalism, this kind of careful analysis is not available. If there is no soul, then the "human nature" is just the physical body. The Son assumed a body, period. But as we have seen, the body at conception has no brain, no consciousness, and no personal properties. The physicalist cannot say that the Son assumed a complete human nature at conception, because on physicalist terms, the nature was not yet "complete" — it had none of the mental properties that make a human being a person.

Pawl on the Concrete Nature as Body-Soul Composite

Timothy Pawl's model reinforces this point from a different angle. In his In Defense of Conciliar Christology, Pawl represents the concrete human nature as a composite of body and soul. In his visual model, the top half of a circle represents the soul and the bottom half represents the body (or the matter that the soul organizes). Together, they constitute the concrete nature of a material substance. The divine person then assumes this complete composite in the hypostatic union.³⁴

Pawl's model is helpful because it makes explicit what the councils presupposed: a human nature is a body-soul composite. Remove the soul, and you do not have a human nature — you have a corpse (if the body is dead) or mere biological material (if the body has never had a soul). The hypostatic union requires the Son to be united to a complete body-soul composite. And at the moment of conception, on dualism, that is exactly what the Son was united to.

On physicalism, the top half of Pawl's circle — the soul — is empty. There is no soul to fill it. The "concrete nature" is reduced to bare matter. And the hypostatic union becomes the union of a divine person with a physical body that has no immaterial dimension. This is a fundamentally different kind of union from what the councils envisioned, and it is, as I have argued throughout this book, a form of Apollinarianism by another name.

Loke's Kryptic Model and the Prenatal Incarnation

Andrew Loke's Kryptic Model — the Divine Preconscious Model (DPM) — provides additional insight into how the Incarnation functioned from the very beginning of Christ's human existence. Loke addresses directly the question of what happened to the Logos's consciousness during the prenatal period, and his answer is illuminating.

On Loke's model, at the Incarnation, the Logos's mind came to include two "preconsciouses" — a divine preconscious (containing the divine attributes such as omniscience and omnipotence) and a human preconscious (containing ordinary human mental content). The Logos's consciousness — His waking, active awareness — acquired human properties and became, to a certain extent, dependent on the human body (specifically the brain). This is what made the body truly His body: His consciousness functioned through it.³⁵

But what about the prenatal period, before the brain developed? Loke acknowledges the challenge. If the Logos's consciousness was dependent on the brain, and the brain did not yet exist, was the Logos unconscious during the embryonic stage? Loke argues that this cannot be, because if the Logos was completely unconscious, He would be unable to choose freely, and He would cease to be omnipotent. "For him to remain omnipotent, the Logos would have to maintain a conscious awareness of his ability to freely choose to access his divine preconscious at all stages of his Incarnation."³⁶

Loke's solution is that the Logos maintained a minimal conscious awareness throughout the Incarnation — even during the prenatal period — specifically, an awareness of Himself as divine and of the divine plan regarding His preconscious. This awareness was "miraculously sustained" by the Holy Spirit, even before the nervous system developed sufficiently to support ordinary human consciousness. As the fetus developed and the brain matured, the Logos's human conscious experience would develop accordingly — but there was always a minimal divine awareness present.³⁷

This solution requires a soul. Without an immaterial soul, there is nothing to sustain this minimal divine awareness during the prenatal period. On physicalism, there is no consciousness until there is a functioning brain, and there is no functioning brain until weeks or months into fetal development. On dualism, the soul can serve as the bearer of this minimal awareness from the very first moment. The soul does not require the brain to exist — even though it will eventually work through the brain in the normal course of human experience.

Loke himself prefers a three-part concrete-nature Christology — the divine particular, a human body, and a human soul (or at least the human preconscious and consciousness with its distinctly human properties). He notes that the creation of the body "could involve the use of an ovum from the womb of the Virgin Mary and the creation of a Y Chromosome necessary for the production of a human male."³⁸ The body and the human preconscious were created at the Incarnation. The divine preconscious was the Logos's own. Together, they constituted a complete incarnate person from the first moment.

Wilkinson's Chalcedonian Anthropology and the Virgin Birth

Michael Wilkinson's groundbreaking work Crowned with Glory and Honor provides another lens through which to see the significance of the virgin birth for our topic. Wilkinson argues that our understanding of human nature (anthropology) should be governed by our understanding of Christ's human nature (Christology) — not the other way around. As he puts it, "the man par excellence must govern how we define the creation of man par ordinaire."³⁹

Wilkinson's methodological principle is enormously important. Many physicalists proceed in the opposite direction: they decide what a human being is (a purely physical organism) and then try to make Christ fit that definition. But Wilkinson insists that we should let Christ's human nature — as defined by the councils — tell us what human nature is. And what the councils tell us is that Christ's human nature consists of "a reasonable [rational] soul and body." If that is what Christ's human nature is, then that is what human nature is.⁴⁰

This has direct implications for the virgin birth. If Christ's human nature — as constituted by the Holy Spirit at the moment of the virginal conception — consists of both a body and a soul, then the Holy Spirit's creative act at conception produced both a body and a soul. The virgin birth is not just the miraculous creation of a body; it is the miraculous creation of a complete body-soul composite. And this tells us something important about human nature in general: when God creates a human being, He creates both a body and a soul. The soul is not an optional extra; it is an essential component of what it means to be human.

Wilkinson also develops a "person-nature ontology" that distinguishes between the person (the acting subject, the "I") and the nature (the body-soul composite through which the person acts). In Christ, the person is the divine Son; the nature is the body-soul composite He assumed. In ordinary human beings, the person is a created human person; the nature is the body-soul composite in which that person subsists. The key point is that at the virgin birth, God constituted both the nature (the body-soul composite) and the person-nature relationship (the Son's assumption of that nature) in a single creative act.⁴¹

On physicalism, this elegant person-nature ontology collapses. If there is no soul, then the "nature" is just the body. And the "person" (on physicalism) is identical with the body. The distinction between person and nature — which is central to Chalcedonian Christology — breaks down. In Christ, the distinction between person (the divine Son) and nature (the human body-soul composite) is essential to the very definition of the hypostatic union. Remove the soul, and the nature is impoverished; the distinction between person and nature becomes harder to maintain; and the Chalcedonian framework begins to crumble.

The Virgin Birth, Traducianism, and Creationism

Before we move to the concluding arguments, we need to address one more issue: the debate between traducianism and creationism about the origin of the soul, and how this debate intersects with the virgin birth.

Traducianism and Its Challenges

Traducianism is the view that souls are generated through the process of human reproduction. When parents conceive a child, they generate not only the child's body but also the child's soul. The soul of the child somehow derives from the souls of the parents. As Farris explains, traducian souls can come into being through "fission" (the parental soul splitting off a new soul) or through "parturition" (the parental soul giving off some of its parts, which then form a new soul).⁴²

Traducianism has had some notable defenders in Christian history, including Tertullian and various Lutheran theologians. Its main theological advantage is that it provides a natural mechanism for the transmission of original sin: since the child's soul derives from the parents' souls, the corruption of the parents' souls is transmitted to the child's soul through the generative process.⁴³

However, traducianism has significant difficulties, and these difficulties become acute when we consider the virgin birth.

If souls are generated by parental souls through the process of reproduction, then Christ's soul would have to derive from Mary's soul, since Mary is the only human parent involved. But this raises troubling questions. If Christ's soul derived from Mary's soul, did it inherit the corruption of original sin? Mary, as a descendant of Adam, would (on most Protestant understandings) have a soul affected by the Fall. If Christ's soul was a derivative of Mary's soul, how do we account for Christ's sinlessness? Some might say that the Holy Spirit purified the derived soul, but this seems ad hoc — and it raises the question of why God doesn't purify all souls if He can do so.

Moreover, the virgin birth involves no human father. If traducianism requires the participation of both parents' souls in generating the child's soul (since normal reproduction involves both parents), then the virgin birth — which involves no paternal contribution — breaks the traducian mechanism. Where does the "other half" of the soul come from? From the Holy Spirit? But the Holy Spirit is divine, not human. A soul that is partly derived from a divine source is not a purely human soul.⁴⁴

These difficulties, I think, strongly favor creationism — the view that God directly creates each soul — as the best account of the origin of Christ's human soul.

Creationism and the Virgin Birth

On creationism, the origin of Christ's human soul is straightforward. God directly created a human soul and united it to the body that the Holy Spirit formed in Mary's womb. There is no need for the soul to derive from Mary's soul or from any human source. The soul is a fresh, new creation — directly from God, without the taint of original sin, without dependence on any human generative process.

This fits perfectly with the biblical account. Gabriel tells Mary that "the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you." The conception is entirely a divine act. The body is formed miraculously — without a human father — and the soul is created directly by God. Both components of Christ's human nature are the product of divine creative power, not of natural human generation. This is why Gabriel can say, "therefore the child to be born will be called holy — the Son of God." The holiness of the child is connected to the divine origin of His entire human nature — body and soul alike.⁴⁵

Creationism also has the advantage of being the dominant view in the history of Christian theology. As Farris notes, "creationism is the most widely supported view throughout Christian history. It finds significant and overwhelming support in Roman Catholicism and in Reformed Christianity."⁴⁶ And it is the view that makes the most sense of the virgin birth, because it allows the soul to be a direct creation of God — utterly fresh, untainted by sin, perfectly suited to be the immaterial component of the Incarnate Son's human nature.

The Virgin Birth and the Apollinarian Charge Against Physicalism

Throughout this book, I have argued that physicalism about human nature produces a Christology that is structurally equivalent to Apollinarianism — the condemned heresy that Christ lacked a human rational soul. The virgin birth provides yet another angle on this charge.

Consider what the Apollinarian heresy actually claimed. Apollinarius of Laodicea (c. 310–390) taught that in Christ, the divine Logos took the place of the human rational soul (nous, νοῦς). Christ had a human body and perhaps a lower animal soul (psychē in the Platonic sense), but the rational, thinking dimension of His mind was not human — it was divine. The Logos served as Christ's mind.⁴⁷

The councils rejected this because it meant Christ did not have a complete human nature. If Christ lacked a human rational soul, then He did not share our full humanity. And if He did not share our full humanity, He cannot save us fully. Gregory of Nazianzus's axiom applies: what is not assumed is not healed.⁴⁸

Now, consider what physicalism says about the virgin birth. On physicalism, the Holy Spirit formed a human body in Mary's womb — and that was all. There was no creation of a soul, because there is no such thing as a soul. The "human nature" that the Son assumed was a physical body, full stop. The mental life, consciousness, and rational capacities of Jesus would emerge later, as the brain developed — and they would be entirely products of brain chemistry, not the operations of an immaterial soul.

But this means that at the moment of conception — and indeed throughout the entire prenatal period — Christ's "human nature" was just a body. A body without a soul. A body whose mental life (when it eventually appeared) would be nothing more than neural firings. In what meaningful sense is this different from Apollinarianism? Apollinarius said Christ had a body but no human rational soul. Physicalism says the same thing — not just about Christ, but about all humans. The only difference is that Apollinarius attributed Christ's mental life to the divine Logos, while physicalism attributes it to the brain. But in both cases, Christ lacks what the councils insisted He must have: a genuine human rational soul, an immaterial component of His human nature that is neither divine nor physical but distinctly, genuinely human.

As I have argued in earlier chapters (especially Chapters 12, 20, and 22), physicalism is a form of Apollinarianism by another name. The virgin birth makes this charge even more pointed, because it forces us to ask exactly what the Holy Spirit created at the moment of conception. On dualism, the Holy Spirit created both a body and a soul. On physicalism, the Holy Spirit created only a body. And a body without a soul is precisely what the councils condemned.

Responding to Possible Objections

Before we conclude, let me address several objections that physicalists or emergent dualists might raise against the arguments in this chapter.

Objection 1: "The soul is not necessary for the Incarnation to be complete at conception. The DNA is sufficient."

Some physicalists might argue that the Incarnation was complete at conception because the fertilized ovum had a complete human genome. It was genetically human, and therefore it was a complete human nature. The Son was united to a genetically complete human organism from the first moment.

But this response confuses biological identity with personal identity. Having human DNA makes something biologically human — it identifies it as a member of the species Homo sapiens. But the councils were not concerned with biology. They were concerned with metaphysics. When Chalcedon defined Christ as having a "reasonable soul and body," it was making a claim about the metaphysical composition of Christ's human nature — not just its genetic makeup. A cluster of cells with human DNA has no rational soul, no consciousness, no will, and no capacity for relationship with God. On physicalism, it has none of the properties that make it a person. Saying that the DNA makes the Incarnation "complete" reduces the Incarnation to a biological event — a genetic union rather than a personal union. That is far too thin an account of what the Incarnation is.⁴⁹

Objection 2: "Perhaps the Son was united to the organism's potential, not its actuality."

Another response might be that the Son was united to the developing organism's potential for consciousness and personhood — not to the actual presence of these properties. The embryo had the potential to develop a brain, become conscious, and exercise rational capacities. The Son was united to this potential from the first moment.

But "potential" is not "actual." The Incarnation, as the councils defined it, is the actual union of a divine person with a complete human nature. A potential human nature is not a complete human nature. Moreover, on physicalism, a developing embryo's "potential" for consciousness is entirely dependent on physical development proceeding normally. If the pregnancy had been terminated, the potential would have been destroyed. Was the Incarnation dependent on the normal course of fetal development? Was the hypostatic union contingent on the brain developing properly? On dualism, the soul provides the actuality of personhood from the first moment, regardless of what stage of physical development the body has reached. On physicalism, personhood is entirely dependent on biological development — and that makes the Incarnation frighteningly fragile.⁵⁰

Objection 3: "Hasker's emergent dualism can solve the timing problem by appealing to God's special action."

An emergent dualist might argue that, in the case of Christ, God could have caused the soul to emerge much earlier than it normally would — perhaps even at conception — by a special miracle. Just as the Holy Spirit miraculously formed the body, so the Holy Spirit could have miraculously caused the soul to emerge from the earliest stages of neural development (or even before neural development began).

This is an interesting suggestion, but it effectively abandons emergent dualism. If God directly causes the soul to emerge before the brain is complex enough to generate it, then God is directly creating the soul — which is creationism, not emergent dualism. The whole point of Hasker's view is that the soul emerges from brain complexity through natural processes. If God circumvents those processes and creates the soul directly, then Hasker's mechanism has been abandoned, and we are back to traditional creationism by another name. The emergent dualist who takes this route has, for all practical purposes, conceded the point.⁵¹

Objection 4: "The fathers did not know about fetal development, so their claims about the Incarnation beginning at conception should be reinterpreted."

This objection suggests that the early church fathers and councils, when they said the Incarnation was complete from the moment of conception, were speaking from a pre-scientific understanding of embryology. They did not know about neural development, brain formation, or the stages of fetal growth. Their claims should be understood in their historical context and reinterpreted in light of modern science.

I have two responses. First, the councils' claim that Christ has a complete human nature consisting of body and soul is not a scientific claim — it is a theological and metaphysical claim. It does not depend on any particular theory of embryology. The councils were not making a claim about when the brain develops; they were making a claim about the ontological composition of Christ's human nature. And that claim stands regardless of what science tells us about fetal development.

Second, if we take this objection seriously, it undermines the authority of the councils generally. If the councils' teachings can be "reinterpreted" whenever they conflict with modern science or philosophy, then the Chalcedonian definition itself is up for renegotiation. But for those of us who affirm the authority of the ecumenical councils — as I do — the councils' teaching that Christ has a rational soul and body is not negotiable. We should let the conciliar definition guide our metaphysics, not let our metaphysics dictate our reading of the councils.⁵²

Objection 5: "Substance dualism creates its own timing problem. When is the soul created?"

A fair critic might point out that substance dualism has its own version of the timing question. If God directly creates the soul, when does He create it? At fertilization? At implantation? At some other point? Is the timing arbitrary?

This is a legitimate question, and I will answer it directly. On the creationist view I hold, God creates the soul at the moment of conception — when the sperm and egg unite (or, in Christ's case, when the Holy Spirit miraculously forms the fertilized ovum). The soul is united to the body from the very first instant. There is no gap, no delay, no "soulless period." This is the traditional Christian position, and it is the position that best fits the biblical data about the Incarnation.

Is this timing "arbitrary"? No more arbitrary than the physical event of conception itself. God created the physical event of conception as the natural mechanism for the beginning of a new human life. On creationism, God coordinates the creation of the soul with this event. The soul and body come into existence together — as a unified whole, from the very first moment. This is not arbitrary; it is the natural expression of God's creative design for human nature as a body-soul composite.⁵³

The Theological Significance: What the Virgin Birth Tells Us

As we draw this chapter to a close, I want to step back and reflect on what the virgin birth reveals about the Incarnation, about human nature, and about the failure of physicalism.

The Virgin Birth Reveals God's Direct Involvement in Constituting Christ's Humanity

The virgin birth is not an incidental detail. It is a sign that God Himself is directly constituting the human nature that His Son will assume. The Holy Spirit's creative act produces both the body and the soul. This is fundamentally different from normal human reproduction, where the parents provide the biological material and (on creationism) God creates the soul to unite with it. In the virgin birth, God is involved in every dimension of the human nature's creation — the body is formed miraculously, and the soul is created directly. The entire human nature is the product of divine creative power.

This means that the Incarnation, from its very first moment, is a divine act through and through. There is no element of Christ's human nature that arose from purely natural processes. Even the body, though formed from Mary's biological material, was formed by the Holy Spirit's creative power rather than by normal human reproduction. And the soul, as always on creationism, was directly created by God.

On physicalism, the virgin birth is reduced to a biological miracle — the miraculous creation of a human body without a human father. That is significant, certainly. But it misses the deeper theological point. The virgin birth is not just about how the body was formed; it is about how a complete human nature — body and soul — was brought into existence for the Son of God to assume. Remove the soul, and you have reduced the virgin birth from a profound theological mystery to a mere biological curiosity.

The Virgin Birth Demonstrates the Completeness of the Incarnation from the Start

The traditional Christian position is clear: the Incarnation was complete from the moment of conception. The Son assumed a complete human nature — body and soul — from the very first instant of His human existence. There was never a time when the Son was "not yet fully incarnate." There was never a time when His human nature was incomplete or deficient.

This completeness is possible only on substance dualism with creationism. If the soul is directly created by God at the moment of conception, then the human nature is complete from the first instant. The soul does not need to wait for the brain to develop; it is present from the beginning, providing the immaterial dimension that makes the human nature complete.

On physicalism, the completeness of the Incarnation at conception is impossible to affirm, because on physicalism, a "complete human nature" requires a functioning brain — and there is no functioning brain at conception. The Incarnation, on physicalism, can only become "complete" when the brain develops — which means there is a long period during which the Incarnation is, at best, incomplete.

On emergent dualism, the same problem arises, though in a modified form. The soul eventually appears, but only when the brain becomes sufficiently complex. Until that happens, the Incarnation is incomplete — the Son is united to a body without a soul.

Only on substance dualism with creationism can we affirm what the church has always confessed: that the Incarnation was complete from the very beginning, that the Son assumed a full human nature at the moment of conception, and that there was never a time when Christ's humanity was anything less than what the councils defined it to be.

The Virgin Birth Points Us Back to the Central Argument

The argument of this chapter connects directly to the central thesis of this book: physicalism about human nature is incompatible with orthodox Christology. We have seen this in earlier chapters with respect to the death of Christ and the triduum mortis (Chapters 21–22), the descent to the dead (Chapter 23), the resurrection and personal identity (Chapter 24), and many other topics. The virgin birth adds another dimension to the case. If physicalism cannot account for the completeness of the Incarnation at conception — if it cannot explain what the Son was united to at the moment the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary — then physicalism fails at the very beginning of the Incarnation, not just at the end.

The problems multiply at every stage of Christ's life. At the beginning, physicalism cannot account for a complete Incarnation at conception. During Christ's earthly life, physicalism reduces His rich inner life — His prayers, His love for the Father, His grief in Gethsemane — to mere brain chemistry. At the cross, physicalism destroys the hypostatic union, because there is no soul to survive death and maintain the union. During the triduum mortis, physicalism leaves the Son without a human nature entirely. At the resurrection, physicalism creates a personal identity crisis — is the risen Jesus the same Jesus who died, or a replica? At the ascension, physicalism struggles to explain what it means for a purely physical body to be "at the right hand of the Father." And eternally, physicalism makes the permanent Incarnation — the Son remaining God and man forever — metaphysically puzzling in ways that dualism easily resolves.⁵⁴

The virgin birth is the beginning of this cascade of problems. If physicalism fails here — at the very origin of Christ's human nature — it fails everywhere.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have examined the virgin birth and the origin of Christ's human nature from three perspectives: substance dualism with creationism (the author's position), physicalism, and emergent dualism. We have seen that:

The biblical accounts in Matthew 1:18–25 and Luke 1:26–38 present the virgin birth as a divine creative act — the Holy Spirit forming Christ's human nature through a miraculous conception, without a human father. The language of Luke 1:35 ("the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you") points to a creative event comparable to God's original acts of creation.

On substance dualism with creationism, the account of the Incarnation's beginning is clear and coherent. The Holy Spirit formed a human body in Mary's womb. God directly created a human soul and united it to the body. The Son assumed this complete body-soul composite at the moment of conception. The Incarnation was complete from the first instant. There was never a time when the Son was united to an incomplete human nature.

On physicalism, serious problems arise. The Son was united to a cluster of cells with no brain, no consciousness, and no personal properties. The physicalist is forced either to accept that the Son was united to non-personal biological material (which reduces the Incarnation to a biological event) or to delay the Incarnation until the brain develops (which means the Incarnation was incomplete for weeks or months). Neither option is theologically acceptable.

On emergent dualism, the "Hasker Problem" arises. If the soul emerges from brain complexity, then Christ's soul did not exist at conception. The Incarnation was incomplete until the brain became complex enough to generate a soul. This creates a period during which Christ had a body but no soul — a temporary Apollinarianism that the councils would have condemned.

On the concrete-nature view favored by Crisp, Pawl, and Loke, the virgin birth is the creative act by which God constituted a complete body-soul composite for the Son to assume. This view requires substance dualism: without a soul, the "concrete nature" is reduced to bare matter, and the Incarnation loses its metaphysical depth.

Wilkinson's Chalcedonian anthropology provides the methodological framework: Christ's human nature — as defined by the councils — must govern our understanding of human nature in general. If Christ's human nature includes a body and a soul (as the councils teach), then human nature includes a body and a soul. The virgin birth is the supreme demonstration of this: when God creates a human nature from scratch, He creates both body and soul.

The virgin birth, then, is not just a miracle of biological generation. It is a miracle of ontological constitution — the creation of a complete human nature, body and soul, for the eternal Son of God to assume. And it is a miracle that physicalism cannot adequately explain.

The Word truly became flesh. But the flesh He became was not merely physical. It included a genuine human soul — created by God, united to a miraculous body, and assumed by the eternal Son from the very first instant of His human existence. That is the mystery of the Incarnation, and it is a mystery that demands the reality of the human soul.