Chapter 31
A Detailed Historical and Theological Examination
There is a question that has haunted Christian theology for nearly two thousand years, and it is a question that most Christians today have never paused to consider. The question is this: What exactly did the eternal Son of God take on when He became a human being? Did He assume only a human body? Or did He assume a complete human nature — a body and an immaterial human soul?
For many readers, the answer might seem obvious. Of course Jesus had a soul! But the reason the answer seems obvious is because the early church fought bitterly over this very question, arrived at a definitive answer, and passed that answer down through the centuries. The story of how they arrived at that answer — and what it means for the current debate over physicalism — is what this chapter is about.
My thesis in this chapter is straightforward: the ecumenical councils' explicit and repeated rejection of Apollinarianism — the view that Christ lacked a human rational soul — demonstrates that the denial of Christ's human soul has been definitively excluded from Christian orthodoxy. And physicalism about Christ's human nature, whether its proponents realize it or not, falls under the very same condemnation. The councils did not merely express a preference for the soul's existence. They declared, with the full weight of ecumenical authority, that any view which eliminates Christ's human rational soul is incompatible with the Christian faith.
In this chapter, we will walk through the entire Apollinarian controversy step by step. We will look at who Apollinarius was and why he held the views he did. We will examine the theological arguments the church fathers raised against him. We will trace the conciliar condemnations from the earliest local synods through the great ecumenical councils. And we will draw the unmistakable parallel between Apollinarianism and modern physicalism — showing that while the two views arise from very different motivations, they produce the very same Christological result: a Christ who lacks an immaterial human soul.
This is not ancient history for its own sake. This is ancient history that speaks directly to a live debate in contemporary theology. If the councils got it right — and I believe they did — then physicalism about human nature stands on the wrong side of the church's most authoritative Christological declarations.
Before we can understand why the church rejected Apollinarianism, we need to understand why Apollinarius proposed it in the first place. Apollinarius of Laodicea (c. 310–390) was not a theological villain. He was a respected bishop, a brilliant thinker, and an ally of Athanasius in the fight against Arianism. He stood firmly on the side of Nicene orthodoxy in affirming the full deity of Christ. His concern was not to diminish Christ but to protect the unity of Christ's person.1
Here was Apollinarius's worry, and it was a genuine one. If Christ has a complete divine nature and a complete human nature — including a human rational mind with its own thoughts, decisions, and will — then how do we avoid the conclusion that there are two complete persons inside Jesus? Think of it this way: if you have a divine mind thinking divine thoughts and a human mind thinking human thoughts, does that not give you two thinkers, two decision-makers, two persons? Apollinarius saw this as a very real danger, especially in light of the Antiochene tendency (which would later be pushed to its extreme in Nestorianism) to emphasize the distinctness of the two natures at the expense of Christ's personal unity.
Apollinarius's solution was dramatic. He proposed that the eternal Logos — the divine Word, the Second Person of the Trinity — replaced the human rational soul (nous, νοῦς) in Christ. Christ had a human body. He may have had a lower or animal soul (psychē, ψυχή) responsible for basic life functions like sensation, emotion, and appetite. But the highest part of the human constitution — the rational mind, the seat of reason, will, and self-conscious personhood — was not human in Christ. It was the divine Logos Himself.2
To understand why Apollinarius made this move, we need to appreciate his anthropology. Apollinarius worked with a tripartite (three-part) understanding of human nature that he drew from Greek philosophical categories and from certain readings of passages like 1 Thessalonians 5:23, where Paul speaks of "spirit and soul and body." In this scheme, a human being consists of three elements: (1) the body (sōma, σῶμα) — the physical organism; (2) the lower soul (psychē, ψυχή) — the animating principle responsible for sensation, appetite, and the emotional life that humans share with animals; and (3) the rational soul or mind (nous, νοῦς) — the highest element, the seat of reason, moral agency, self-consciousness, and the capacity for relationship with God.3
Apollinarius's Christological proposal was to keep elements (1) and (2) but replace element (3) with the divine Logos. The result was a Christ who had a real human body, real human sensations and emotions, but whose rational mind was the mind of God the Son. This preserved unity brilliantly — there was only one mind, one will, one decision-maker in Christ, and it was the divine mind. There was no risk of two persons because there was only one rational center.
But it achieved this unity at an enormous cost — a cost that the church fathers recognized immediately. By replacing the human rational soul with the Logos, Apollinarius had denied Christ a complete human nature. Christ, on this view, was not fully human. He was a kind of hybrid — a divine mind inhabiting a human body. As the Cappadocian fathers would argue with devastating force, this was not the Incarnation at all. It was something far less.
Key Point: Apollinarius was not trying to undermine Christ. He was trying to protect the unity of Christ's person. But his solution — replacing the human rational soul with the divine Logos — created a Christ who was not fully human. The church recognized that preserving unity by eliminating a nature was no solution at all.
The most famous response to Apollinarianism came from Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329–390), one of the Cappadocian fathers and one of the greatest theologians in Christian history. Gregory's response is contained in his Epistle 101 (also called the Letter to Cledonius), and it contains what may be the single most important sentence in the entire history of Christological debate:
"For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved" (to gar aproslepton, atherapeuton; ho de hēnōtai tō Theō, touto kai sōzetai — τὸ γὰρ ἀπρόσληπτον, ἀθεράπευτον· ὃ δὲ ἥνωται τῷ Θεῷ, τοῦτο καὶ σώζεται).4
This sentence is so important that scholars often refer to it simply as "Gregory's axiom." It has become the locus classicus — the definitive reference point — for the entire anti-Apollinarian argument. Let me unpack its logic, because everything we say about physicalism later in this chapter will depend on understanding this principle.
Gregory's argument has a clear structure. It begins with a premise about what salvation requires. Salvation, for Gregory, is not merely a legal transaction in which God declares sinners forgiven from a distance. Salvation is a comprehensive healing of the whole human person. Sin has corrupted every dimension of human existence — body, soul, and mind. Therefore, redemption must reach every dimension of human existence. And the mechanism by which redemption reaches us is the Incarnation: the Son of God took on our nature, lived our life, died our death, and rose again. In doing so, He healed what He assumed.
But here is the critical point: the healing only applies to what the Son actually took on. If He assumed a human body, then the human body is redeemed. If He assumed a human soul, then the human soul is redeemed. But if He did not assume a human rational soul — if the divine Logos simply replaced it — then the human rational soul remains unhealed. It was never taken up into the divine life. It was never sanctified by the personal union with the Son of God.
And this, Gregory argued, is catastrophic. Why? Because the human rational soul is precisely the part of us that needs healing the most. It is the seat of sin. It is where rebellion against God originates. It is where pride, unbelief, and disobedience reside. It is where our relationship with God is either embraced or rejected. If there is one dimension of human nature that absolutely must be assumed by the Son in order for salvation to work, it is the rational soul — the very thing Apollinarius denied.
Gregory pressed this point with vivid force. If only the body needed saving, then perhaps an incarnation without a human soul would suffice. But who would argue that only the body needs saving? The whole Christian doctrine of sin centers on the corruption of the human heart and mind — what the Old Testament calls the "heart" (lev, לֵב) and what Paul calls the "mind of the flesh" (phronēma tēs sarkos, φρόνημα τῆς σαρκός, Romans 8:6–7). The locus of sin is not the flesh alone but the inner person — the soul, the mind, the will. If Christ did not assume a human rational soul, then the deepest and most important dimension of human existence remains unredeemed.5
As we discussed in Chapter 12, Gregory's axiom was not merely a clever theological principle. It was a profound insight into the nature of salvation itself. The Incarnation is not God wearing a human costume. It is God entering into the fullness of human existence — taking on everything we are — so that everything we are can be transformed by union with God. If even one dimension of human nature is left out, the saving work is incomplete.
Gregory's Axiom Stated Simply: Whatever the Son of God did not take on at the Incarnation, He did not save. If Christ did not have a human rational soul, then our rational souls — the very seat of sin, moral failure, and spiritual rebellion — remain unredeemed. Apollinarianism makes the Incarnation unable to accomplish what it was designed to do.
Gregory of Nazianzus was not alone in his opposition to Apollinarianism. His friend and fellow Cappadocian, Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–395), mounted an extensive philosophical critique in his work Antirrheticus adversus Apollinarem (Refutation Against Apollinaris). Where Gregory of Nazianzus focused primarily on the soteriological argument — what the Incarnation must accomplish — Gregory of Nyssa focused on the completeness argument: what a human nature actually is.
Gregory of Nyssa's central argument was disarmingly simple. A human being, he insisted, is a rational soul embodied. That is what makes us human rather than animal. Animals have bodies. Animals have sensation, appetite, and emotion. What distinguishes a human being from a beast is precisely the rational soul — the capacity for reason, abstract thought, moral judgment, language, self-consciousness, and communion with God. Remove the rational soul, and what remains is not a human being but an animal. A body animated by a lower soul, without a rational mind, is a beast — not a man.6
Applied to Christology, the implication was devastating. If the divine Logos replaced the human rational soul in Christ, then Christ was not truly human. He was a divine mind inhabiting a human-shaped animal. Gregory of Nyssa did not mince words: Apollinarianism makes Christ a kind of hybrid monster — part God, part beast, but not genuinely and fully a man. The Incarnation, on this view, was not God becoming what we are. It was God putting on a suit of flesh and driving it around like a vehicle, while the distinctively human dimension — the rational soul — was absent.
This argument has enormous power because it forces us to answer a basic question: What does it mean to be human? If being human means being a rational soul united to a body, then any view that eliminates the rational soul eliminates the humanity. It does not matter whether the rational soul is replaced by something greater (the divine Logos, in Apollinarius's case) or denied altogether (as in physicalism). The result is the same: an incomplete human nature.
Gregory of Nyssa also raised what we might call the "moral agency" objection. Human salvation requires a genuine human response to God — an act of obedience, faith, and self-offering. Christ's saving work is not merely passive (something done to a body) but active (something done by a human agent). The author of Hebrews makes this explicit: "Then I said, 'Behold, I have come to do your will, O God'" (Hebrews 10:7, ESV). This is an act of the human will — a faculty of the soul. If Christ has no human soul, He has no human will, and this act of self-offering becomes impossible. The entire theology of Christ as the obedient Second Adam, undoing the disobedience of the first Adam through a genuine human act of submission, collapses.7
Gregory of Nyssa's work was extensive and philosophically sophisticated. He engaged Apollinarius's arguments point by point, showing that each of them either rested on a false anthropological assumption (such as the idea that having a human mind necessarily entails having a second person) or produced unacceptable theological consequences (such as making Christ sub-human). His refutation remains one of the most thorough anti-Apollinarian documents in the patristic corpus.
What is striking about the Apollinarian controversy is how broadly and decisively the church rejected Apollinarius's position. This was not a close call. It was not a matter where reasonable theologians could disagree. The rejection of Apollinarianism was virtually unanimous across every major theological tradition, every geographical region, and every school of thought in the ancient church.
Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–373), the great champion of Nicene orthodoxy, was initially an ally of Apollinarius in the fight against Arianism. But when Apollinarius's Christological views became clear, Athanasius distanced himself. At the Synod of Alexandria in 362 — a synod that Athanasius presided over — a key statement was issued affirming that the Savior did not have "a body without a soul, or without sense, or without intelligence" (asōmaton, apsychon, anoun). The tomos (statement) from this synod is significant because it shows that the issue was already being addressed even before Apollinarianism became a fully developed system. The Synod of Alexandria thus represents one of the earliest conciliar responses to the kind of thinking that would crystallize in Apollinarius's teaching.8
Basil of Caesarea (c. 330–379), the eldest of the Cappadocian fathers and one of the most influential bishops in the Eastern church, also opposed Apollinarianism. Basil insisted that Christ assumed a complete human nature — body and rational soul — because the purpose of the Incarnation demanded it. Christ came to save the whole person, and therefore He had to be the whole person.9
The Antiochene theologians — Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and later Theodoret of Cyrrhus — were equally opposed to Apollinarianism, though for somewhat different reasons. The Antiochene school tended to emphasize the distinctness and completeness of Christ's human nature even more strongly than the Alexandrians. They insisted that Christ had a fully functioning human psychology — thoughts, decisions, development, emotions — all rooted in a genuine human soul. While the Antiochenes would later be accused (fairly or unfairly) of overemphasizing the distinction between the two natures, their insistence on the completeness of Christ's humanity was exactly right, and it contributed to the broad consensus against Apollinarianism.
What we see, then, is a remarkable convergence. Alexandrians and Antiochenes agreed on almost nothing in fourth-century Christology. They had very different theological instincts, different vocabularies, and different emphases. But on this point they were united: Christ must have a complete human nature, including a human rational soul. Apollinarianism was wrong. The breadth of this agreement across rival theological schools is powerful testimony that the affirmation of Christ's human soul was not a sectarian preference but a matter of fundamental Christian orthodoxy.10
The rejection of Apollinarianism was not merely the opinion of individual theologians, however brilliant. It was enshrined in the formal declarations of the ecumenical councils — the most authoritative bodies in the history of Christian doctrinal definition. Let us trace the conciliar response step by step, because the cumulative weight of these condemnations is enormous.
The earliest conciliar response came at the Synod of Alexandria in 362, convened by Athanasius shortly after his return from exile. This synod addressed several issues, including the proper terminology for the Trinity and the question of Christ's humanity. The synod's tomos (doctrinal statement) affirmed that the Savior's body was not "without a soul, or without sense, or without intelligence." While the synod did not name Apollinarius directly — his views were not yet fully public — its statement clearly excluded any view that denied Christ's complete human psychology. This was a preemptive strike against the kind of truncated Christology that Apollinarianism would soon represent.11
By the 370s, Apollinarianism had become a recognizable theological movement with its own congregations and bishops. Pope Damasus I of Rome responded with a formal condemnation at a Roman council in 377. Damasus issued a series of anathemas (formal condemnations) that specifically targeted Apollinarius's denial of Christ's human rational soul. The Damasan anathemas stated that anyone who says the Word of God replaced the human rational soul in Christ is to be anathema — that is, formally excluded from the fellowship of the church.12
Damasus also affirmed the completeness of Christ's humanity in positive terms: Christ assumed a "perfect man" — not a diminished or truncated human nature. This was significant because Damasus was the bishop of Rome, and his condemnation carried enormous weight in the Western church. The condemnation was communicated to the Eastern bishops as well, signaling that the rejection of Apollinarianism was a matter of concern for the entire church, East and West.
The most important formal condemnation of Apollinarianism came at the First Council of Constantinople in 381 — the Second Ecumenical Council. This council was convened primarily to deal with residual Arian controversies and to affirm the deity of the Holy Spirit (against the Pneumatomachians, or "Spirit-fighters"). But the council also addressed Apollinarianism directly.
Canon 1 of Constantinople I lists the heresies that the council condemns: "Every heresy shall be anathematized, particularly that of the Eunomians or Anomoeans, the Arians or Eudoxians, the Semi-Arians or Pneumatomachians, the Sabellians, the Marcellians, the Photinians, and the Apollinarians."13 The explicit naming of the Apollinarians in this list is significant. The council did not merely condemn Apollinarianism by implication; it condemned it by name, alongside the most notorious heresies of the ancient church.
Moreover, the council's revision and expansion of the Nicene Creed — what we now call the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, the creed recited in churches worldwide to this day — implicitly affirms the completeness of Christ's humanity. The creed states that the Son "came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man." The phrase "was made man" (enanthrōpēsanta, ἐνανθρωπήσαντα) affirms that the Son became a complete human being — not a partial one. The term is comprehensive: He was made man, not merely made flesh.
The significance of Constantinople I cannot be overstated. This is an ecumenical council — the highest level of doctrinal authority recognized by the entire undivided church. Its condemnation of Apollinarianism is not a local opinion or a regional preference. It is a definitive statement of Christian orthodoxy, binding on all Christians everywhere. The denial of Christ's human rational soul is not a permissible theological option. It is a heresy.
The Weight of Constantinople I: The First Council of Constantinople (381) condemned Apollinarianism by name in its first canon, alongside Arianism and other major heresies. This is not an incidental footnote. It is a formal ecumenical declaration that the denial of Christ's human rational soul is incompatible with Christian faith. Every subsequent council has reaffirmed this condemnation.
The Council of Ephesus (431) was convened primarily to address the Nestorian controversy — the debate over whether Christ was one person or two persons. But in the process of affirming the unity of Christ's person, the council also reinforced the completeness of His human nature.
Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376–444), the dominant theological figure at Ephesus, was adamant that Christ had a complete human nature. Cyril's second letter to Nestorius, which was formally approved by the council, speaks of the Word being "hypostatically united to flesh enlivened by a rational soul" (sarka empsychōmenēn psychē logikē, σάρκα ἐμψυχωμένην ψυχῇ λογικῇ). This language is precise and deliberate. Christ's flesh is not just flesh — it is flesh "enlivened by a rational soul." The human nature that the Word assumed is not merely physical matter. It is a body animated by a rational soul.14
Cyril also stated, in the Formula of Union that resolved the initial dispute between himself and John of Antioch, that "We confess our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, perfect God and perfect man of a rational soul and a body." Notice the phrase "perfect man of a rational soul and a body." A perfect man — a complete human being — consists of two things: a rational soul and a body. Not a body alone. The councils were not being careless with this language. They were being precise, deliberate, and emphatic.15
This is deeply relevant to our argument. Cyril of Alexandria is sometimes invoked by those who emphasize the unity of Christ's person over the distinctness of His two natures. But Cyril himself was absolutely clear: the unity of Christ's person does not diminish the completeness of His human nature. The Word assumed a complete human nature — rational soul and body — and united it to Himself in one person. Unity and completeness are not in tension. They go together.
The Council of Chalcedon (451) produced the most famous and most influential Christological definition in the history of the church — the Chalcedonian Definition. This definition explicitly affirms that Christ has a rational soul:
Following, then, the holy Fathers, we all unanimously teach that our Lord Jesus Christ is to us one and the same Son, the same perfect in Godhead, the same perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man; the same consisting of a rational soul and a body (ek psychēs logikēs kai sōmatos, ἐκ ψυχῆς λογικῆς καὶ σώματος); of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and the same of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all things, apart from sin.16
The phrase "of a rational soul and a body" is a deliberate anti-Apollinarian clause. The council fathers did not stumble into this language. They chose it with full awareness of the Apollinarian controversy that had been raging for nearly a century. To say that Christ is "truly man, of a rational soul and a body" is to define — with ecumenical authority — what a complete human nature consists of. It consists of two elements: a rational soul (psychē logikē) and a body (sōma). Remove either element, and you no longer have a complete human nature. You no longer have a "perfect man." You no longer have what the councils insisted Christ must be.
As Timothy Pawl has emphasized in his rigorous philosophical analysis of the conciliar definitions, the claim that Christ's human nature includes a rational soul is not a peripheral detail in the Chalcedonian Definition. It is a necessary condition for any Christology that claims to be consistent with the councils. Pawl writes that any view which holds there to be no soul in Christ, or which holds the soul to be the Second Person, is a view inconsistent with Conciliar Christology.17 Oliver Crisp reaches the same conclusion, arguing that the Chalcedonian Definition requires Christ's human nature to include a genuine human soul, and any view that eliminates it — whether Apollinarianism or any other form — falls afoul of the council's teaching.18
The four famous adverbs of the Chalcedonian Definition — "without confusion" (asynchytōs, ἀσυγχύτως), "without change" (atreptōs, ἀτρέπτως), "without division" (adiairetōs, ἀδιαιρέτως), and "without separation" (achōristōs, ἀχωρίστως) — further reinforce this point. The two natures are not confused into one (contra Eutychianism). They are not changed by the union (contra any view that would transform either nature). They are not divided into two persons (contra Nestorianism). And they are never separated — they are permanently united in the one Person of the Son. Each of these four guards presupposes that there are two complete natures to guard. If Christ's human nature is not a genuine, complete human nature — including a rational soul — then the whole Definition collapses into incoherence.
Chalcedon's Explicit Definition: The Chalcedonian Definition states that Christ is "truly man, of a rational soul and a body" (ek psychēs logikēs kai sōmatos). This defines what a complete human nature is: a rational soul and a body. This is not incidental language. It is the most authoritative Christological definition in Christian history, and it explicitly requires that Christ has an immaterial rational soul. Physicalism contradicts this definition at its most explicit point.
If any doubt remained about the church's position, the Second Council of Constantinople (553) removed it entirely. Constantinople II produced the most explicit conciliar statement on the matter — a statement that directly targets any view that eliminates Christ's human rational soul.
The fourth anathema of Constantinople II reads:
If anyone does not accept the teaching of the holy fathers that the union occurred of the Word of God with human flesh which is possessed by a rational and intellectual soul (psychēn logikēn kai noēran, ψυχὴν λογικὴν καὶ νοεράν), and that this union is by synthesis or by person, and that therefore there is only one person, namely the Lord Jesus Christ, one member of the Holy Trinity: let him be anathema.19
Let us dwell on this for a moment, because it is extraordinarily important. The council does not merely say that Christ has a rational soul. It says that anyone who does not accept this teaching is to be anathema — formally condemned and excluded from the communion of the faith. This is not a suggestion. It is not a theological preference. It is a dogmatic declaration with the full weight of an ecumenical council behind it.
Notice also the precise language: "human flesh which is possessed by a rational and intellectual soul." The council distinguishes between mere flesh (a body, physical matter) and human flesh (a body animated by a rational soul). The human nature that the Word assumed is not just flesh — it is flesh that is "possessed by" a rational soul. The soul is not an optional addition. It is constitutive of the human nature itself. Without the rational soul, the flesh is not human flesh — it is mere matter.
Pawl highlights this anathema as a critical piece of evidence for understanding what Conciliar Christology requires. He notes that this condemnation has been reaffirmed across confessional lines — by Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, and Reformed theologians alike — and that it represents a settled consensus of Christian orthodoxy.20 The fourth anathema of Constantinople II is, in Pawl's assessment, the most explicit conciliar statement of a necessary condition for any orthodox model of the Incarnation: Christ's human nature must include a rational and intellectual soul.
As we argued at length in Chapter 13, Constantinople II also contributed to the broader conciliar Christological framework by clarifying the relationship between the Chalcedonian and Cyrillian traditions, reinforcing the personal unity of Christ, and setting the stage for the dyothelite (two wills) doctrine that would be formally defined at Constantinople III in 681. At every stage, the conciliar tradition presupposes and requires a genuine human soul in Christ. The soul is not a dispensable element that can be stripped away without consequence. It is central to the entire conciliar edifice.
The Third Council of Constantinople (681) addressed the monothelite controversy — the question of whether Christ has one will or two wills. The council defined that Christ has two natural wills (dyothelitism, from the Greek dyo, δύο, "two," and thelēma, θέλημα, "will"): a divine will and a human will, operating in harmony without conflict, with the human will freely submitting to the divine will.
The relevance of Constantinople III to our argument is this: a will is a faculty of the soul. If Christ has a human will, He must have a human soul in which that will resides. The human will is not a function of the body alone — it is the rational soul's capacity for choosing, deciding, and directing action. Dyothelitism presupposes the existence of a rational human soul just as surely as language presupposes a speaker. You cannot have a human will without a human soul any more than you can have a song without a singer.21
The council's definition states:
We proclaim equally two natural volitions or wills in him and two natural principles of action which undergo no division, no change, no partition, no confusion, in accordance with the teaching of the holy fathers. And the two natural wills not in opposition, as the impious heretics said, far from it, but his human will following, and not resisting or struggling, rather in fact subject to his divine and all powerful will.22
This declaration makes no sense without a human soul. A body does not will. A brain, on the physicalist account, processes information and generates behavior, but the councils did not speak in these terms. They spoke of a "natural will" — a will that belongs to the human nature as such. And the human nature, as defined at Chalcedon, consists of a rational soul and a body. The will is a faculty of the rational soul.
The great seventh-century theologian Maximus the Confessor (c. 580–662), whose theology was effectively ratified by Constantinople III, developed this point extensively. Maximus argued that the human will is a "natural" will — it belongs to the human nature, not merely to the human body. The will is the soul's capacity for self-determination, for moral agency, for choosing the good and rejecting evil. Christ's human will was exercised in the Garden of Gethsemane: "Not my will, but yours be done" (Luke 22:42, ESV). This presupposes two wills — the divine will of the Father and the human will of the Son in His human nature. And the human will, as Maximus insisted, is rooted in the human rational soul.23
Michael Wilkinson observes that Constantinople III should be given a "Maximian interpretation" in which the person of the Son is the acting subject who wills and acts through His two natures. The natures are not independent agents — they are the means through which the one divine Person operates. But each nature has its own proper mode of operation, including its own proper will. The human will, rooted in the human soul, is genuinely human — not a disguised form of the divine will.24
The Seventh Ecumenical Council, the Second Council of Nicaea (787), dealt primarily with the question of icons and images. But in its affirmation of the veneration of icons of Christ, the council implicitly reinforced the Chalcedonian and Constantinopolitan consensus. Christ can be depicted in images because He has a genuine, complete human nature — He is truly man. And a truly human nature, as defined by the preceding councils, includes a rational soul. The entire theological basis for the icon debates rests on the reality of the Incarnation, which in turn rests on the completeness of Christ's assumed human nature.25
Having traced the historical record of the conciliar condemnations, let us now step back and examine the underlying theological logic. Why did the councils insist so strenuously that Christ must have a human rational soul? The answer, I believe, can be summarized in five interconnected arguments. We have already touched on some of these in passing, but they deserve full development here.
We have already discussed this argument at length above, but let me restate it clearly. What is not assumed is not healed. The purpose of the Incarnation is to save fallen humanity. Fallen humanity includes the rational soul — in fact, the rational soul is the primary locus of sin, because sin involves the will's rebellion against God. If Christ did not assume a human rational soul, then the rational soul is not healed, and the most important dimension of human existence remains unredeemed. This argument was developed in depth in Chapter 12, and it remains the single most powerful objection to any view that eliminates Christ's human soul.26
A human nature without a rational soul is not a human nature. It is an animal nature. A body animated by merely biological life functions — without reason, without self-consciousness, without moral agency — is a beast, not a man. The councils defined Christ as "truly man" — not partly man, not almost man, not man in appearance, but truly and completely man. And a complete man, as defined at Chalcedon, is "of a rational soul and a body." Anything less is something less than human. Christ's humanity must be complete, or it is not genuine humanity at all.27
Joshua Farris makes a parallel point in his treatment of theological anthropology. If we define human nature as the councils defined it — body and rational soul — then any view that eliminates the rational soul effectively denies that Christ has a genuine human nature. This is not a minor adjustment to Christology. It is a fundamental redefinition of what it means to be human, and it conflicts with the conciliar definitions at the most basic level.28
Salvation requires a genuine human act of obedience. The entire theology of the atonement rests on the idea that Christ, as a man, offered Himself freely to the Father for the sake of humanity. Hebrews 10:5–10 presents Christ as saying, "Behold, I have come to do your will, O God." This is an act of the human will — a deliberate, self-conscious choice to submit to the Father's plan. If Christ has no human soul, He has no human will. And if He has no human will, this act of self-offering is impossible. The obedience of Christ becomes meaningless because there is no human agent to obey.29
As we explored in Chapter 14, dyothelitism — the doctrine that Christ has two wills — requires a human soul. The human will is a faculty of the soul. If there is no soul, there is no human will. And if there is no human will, the entire Gethsemane scene becomes incoherent. "Not my will, but yours be done" presupposes two wills: the divine will of the Father and the human will of the Son. On Apollinarianism — and, as I will argue below, on physicalism — there is no human will that is distinct from the divine will. The prayer in Gethsemane, far from being the cry of a genuine human soul in anguish, becomes a piece of theater — God performing a monologue about wills He does not actually have.
Apollinarius's original motivation was to preserve the unity of Christ's person. His fear was that if Christ had both a divine mind and a human mind, He would be two persons rather than one. The orthodox response, developed over the course of the fourth and fifth centuries, was elegant and decisive: unity is not preserved by eliminating one of the natures. Unity is preserved by the Person of the Logos, who unifies two complete natures in Himself.
This is the genius of the Chalcedonian Definition. The two natures are united "in one person and one hypostasis" (eis hen prosōpon kai mian hypostasin, εἰς ἓν πρόσωπον καὶ μίαν ὑπόστασιν). The Person of the Son is the principle of unity. He is one divine Person who subsists in two natures — divine and human — without confusion and without separation. The unity comes from the Person, not from the elimination of one of the natures. Apollinarius's mistake was to think that unity required the subtraction of the human mind. The councils taught that unity requires the addition of a divine Person who unifies what would otherwise be separate.30
This is a point that Andrew Loke makes with great clarity in his Kryptic Model of the Incarnation. Loke argues that the unity of Christ's consciousness — the fact that Christ experiences a single stream of conscious awareness — is not achieved by denying the human soul but by the divine Person's unique mode of experiencing through His human nature. The divine attributes are present but concealed (krypsis) at the preconscious level, while Christ's waking experience is genuinely human. There is one experiential "I" — the Person of the Son — who thinks, feels, and acts through a genuine human psychology. Unity and completeness are not in conflict. They are both preserved in the hypostatic union.31
The Chalcedonian Definition states that Christ is "of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all things, apart from sin" (homoousios hēmin kata tēn anthrōpotēta, ὁμοούσιος ἡμῖν κατὰ τὴν ἀνθρωπότητα). Christ is consubstantial with us — He shares the same human essence that we have. He is like us "in all things, apart from sin."
But what is our human essence? If we are body-soul composites — which is what the councils assumed and what the Christian tradition has overwhelmingly affirmed — then consubstantiality with us requires that Christ also be a body-soul composite. If Christ lacks a human soul while we have one, then He is not consubstantial with us in His humanity. He is like us in some things but not in all things. The exception is no longer limited to sin — it now includes the rational soul itself. This directly contradicts the Chalcedonian requirement that Christ be "like us in all things, apart from sin."32
Summary of the Five Arguments: The councils rejected Apollinarianism for five interconnected reasons: (1) What is not assumed is not healed — the soteriological argument. (2) A human nature without a rational soul is not a human nature — the completeness argument. (3) Salvation requires a genuine human act of obedience — the agency argument. (4) Unity is achieved by the Person, not by eliminating a nature — the unity argument. (5) Christ must be consubstantial with us — the consubstantiality argument. Each of these arguments applies with equal force to physicalism.
Before we draw the parallel to physicalism, it is worth pausing to appreciate the sheer cumulative weight of the evidence we have surveyed. We are not dealing with a single isolated statement from a minor council. We are dealing with a consistent, repeated, emphatic, and escalating affirmation across six ecumenical councils, multiple local synods, papal decrees, and the unanimous testimony of the church fathers.
Let me lay out the evidence in summary form:
The Synod of Alexandria (362): Affirmed that the Savior had a body with a soul, sense, and intelligence.
The Council of Rome (377): Pope Damasus condemned the view that the Logos replaced the human rational soul in Christ.
Constantinople I (381): Formally condemned Apollinarianism by name in Canon 1.
Ephesus (431): Cyril's approved letters and the Formula of Union affirmed Christ as "perfect man of a rational soul and a body."
Chalcedon (451): The Definition states Christ is "truly man, of a rational soul and a body."
Constantinople II (553): The fourth anathema condemns anyone who does not accept that the Word united to "flesh possessed by a rational and intellectual soul."
Constantinople III (681): Affirmed dyothelitism — two wills — which presupposes a rational human soul as the seat of the human will.
Every single ecumenical council that addressed Christology directly either affirmed the existence of Christ's human rational soul explicitly or presupposed it in its definitions. Not one council denied it. Not one council left it as an open question. The verdict was unanimous, emphatic, and repeated across centuries. The denial of Christ's human rational soul is not a live option within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy as defined by the ecumenical councils.
Now we arrive at the heart of this chapter's argument. Everything we have surveyed so far — the Apollinarian controversy, the patristic responses, the conciliar condemnations, the five theological arguments — leads to a single, inescapable conclusion: modern physicalism about human nature, when applied to Christ, falls under the same condemnation as Apollinarianism.
Let me draw the parallel carefully and fairly, because I want to be honest about both the similarities and the differences between the two positions.
Apollinarianism denied that Christ has a human rational soul. The divine Logos replaced it.
Physicalism denies that any human being has an immaterial rational soul. The soul does not exist at all.
The Christological result is the same: Christ lacks an immaterial human soul.
On Apollinarianism, Christ does not have a human soul because the Logos took its place.
On physicalism, Christ does not have a human soul because no one has a soul — the soul is a fiction, a pre-scientific concept that has been replaced by neuroscience.
Either way, the Christ of these two views is a Christ without an immaterial human soul. And the ecumenical councils declared — not once, not twice, but repeatedly across multiple centuries — that a Christ without a human rational soul does not have a complete human nature.
The five theological arguments against Apollinarianism apply with equal force to physicalism:
Gregory's axiom: If physicalism is true and Christ has no immaterial soul, then the immaterial soul has not been assumed by the Son. What is not assumed is not healed. The rational soul — our inner life, our capacity for reason, moral agency, and communion with God — remains unredeemed.
The completeness argument: The councils defined "truly man" as "of a rational soul and a body." Physicalism defines "truly man" as "a body" (or a physical organism, or a complex arrangement of matter). The physicalist definition contradicts the conciliar definition. On the councils' terms, a "truly human" nature that lacks a rational soul is not truly human at all.
The agency argument: If physicalism is true, Christ's human will is not a faculty of a rational soul but a function of brain states. But the councils spoke of a "natural will" belonging to the human nature — a will that is a genuine capacity of the rational soul, not merely the output of neural processing.
The unity argument: Physicalists do not face the same "two persons" worry that motivated Apollinarius, because on physicalism there is no immaterial human mind to create a second center of consciousness. But this is precisely the problem. Physicalism achieves "unity" by the same mechanism as Apollinarianism — by eliminating the human rational soul. The councils said this is the wrong way to achieve unity.
The consubstantiality argument: If physicalism is true, Christ is consubstantial with us in His physicality. But if dualism is true — as the councils presupposed — and human beings are body-soul composites, then a Christ who lacks a soul is not consubstantial with us in the way the councils required.
The Unavoidable Parallel: Apollinarianism says Christ has no human rational soul because the Logos replaced it. Physicalism says Christ has no immaterial human soul because no one has one. The reasons are different, but the Christological result is identical: Christ lacks an immaterial human soul. The councils condemned the first view. The same logic condemns the second.
I want to be scrupulously fair here, because intellectual honesty demands it. There are genuine differences between Apollinarianism and physicalism, and we should acknowledge them before pressing the parallel.
First, the motivation is different. Apollinarius was motivated by Christological concerns — he wanted to protect the unity of Christ's person. Physicalists are motivated by philosophical and scientific concerns — they believe that neuroscience has shown that the mind is identical to or entirely dependent on the brain, and that the concept of an immaterial soul is philosophically untenable. Apollinarius was trying to solve a Christological problem. Physicalists are trying to solve an anthropological one.
Second, the scope is different. Apollinarius denied the human soul specifically in Christ. He may or may not have denied it in ordinary human beings. (His views on human anthropology more broadly are less clear.) Physicalists deny the soul in all human beings — Christ included. The denial is universal, not restricted to Christ.
Third, the intention is different. Apollinarius did not intend to diminish Christ's humanity. He thought he was protecting Christ's unity. Physicalists do not intend to be Apollinarian. They believe they are affirming Christ's complete humanity by affirming His complete physical body. They would say that Christ is fully human precisely because He has a fully functioning human body and brain. They would reject the charge of Apollinarianism by arguing that the councils' language about "rational soul" can be reinterpreted in physicalist terms — that the "rational soul" is simply a description of the capacities that emerge from the brain.33
These are real differences, and I do not want to minimize them. Physicalists are not villains. Many of them are sincere Christians who love Jesus and take their faith seriously. I have no desire to impugn their motives or their character.
But here is the problem: the councils did not condemn Apollinarianism because of Apollinarius's motives. They condemned it because of its content. The content of Apollinarianism — the denial of Christ's human rational soul — was what made it heretical. The motive behind the denial was irrelevant. Whether you deny Christ's soul because the Logos replaced it, or because you think souls do not exist, or because you misread a neuroscience textbook — the result is the same. Christ lacks an immaterial human soul. And the councils said that result is unacceptable.
The physicalist attempt to reinterpret "rational soul" in physicalist terms also fails. When the councils spoke of a "rational soul" (psychē logikē), they were not using a term that could mean "brain" or "complex neural network." They were using a term with a well-established meaning in the philosophical and theological vocabulary of their time — a meaning that included immateriality, separability from the body, and survival of death. The patristic writers who forged this terminology — the Cappadocians, Augustine, Cyril, John of Damascus — all understood the soul as an immaterial substance distinct from the body. To reinterpret their language in physicalist terms is not faithful exegesis of the conciliar texts. It is anachronistic revision.34
Consider what the councils actually said. Chalcedon said Christ is "of a rational soul and a body" — distinguishing the two. Constantinople II spoke of "flesh possessed by a rational and intellectual soul" — distinguishing the flesh from the soul that possesses it. These formulations presuppose a real distinction between the soul and the body. They are not saying, "Christ has a body that functions rationally." They are saying, "Christ has a rational soul and a body — two distinct components that together constitute His complete human nature."
Oliver Crisp makes this point with precision. He observes that the Chalcedonian Definition requires Christ's human nature to include a genuine, distinct human soul — not merely a body that functions in soul-like ways. The soul is a component of the human nature, not a metaphor for bodily function. Any Christology that eliminates the soul — whether by replacing it with the Logos (Apollinarianism) or by denying its existence altogether (physicalism) — is inconsistent with Chalcedon.35
Michael Wilkinson develops this argument even further. Wilkinson argues that Chalcedonian Christology provides not merely a doctrine about Christ but a template for understanding human nature more broadly. If Christ's human nature — the paradigm case of human nature — consists of a body and a rational soul, then human nature as such consists of a body and a rational soul. A "Chalcedonian anthropology," as Wilkinson calls it, uses Christology as the norming standard for understanding what it means to be human. If this is correct, then physicalism does not merely create a Christological problem — it creates an anthropological one as well. To deny the soul in any human being is to deny what the councils defined as constitutive of human nature.36
How might a physicalist respond to the argument we have developed? Let me present several possible responses and show why each of them is inadequate.
Some physicalists might argue that the council fathers assumed the existence of the soul because they lacked modern neuroscience. They did not know that mental states are brain states. If they had known what we know now, they would not have insisted on the soul.
This response fails for several reasons. First, it assumes what it needs to prove. The question of whether mental states are identical to brain states is precisely the philosophical question at issue. Neuroscience shows that mental states correlate with brain states, but correlation is not identity, as we argued extensively in Chapter 4. The fact that brain damage affects consciousness does not prove that consciousness is nothing more than brain activity. A radio analogy is helpful here: damaging a radio affects the music you hear, but that does not prove that the music originates in the radio. The brain may be a receiver or instrument through which the soul operates, not the source of consciousness itself.
Second, and more importantly, the councils' insistence on the soul was not based on science. It was based on theology. The argument was not: "We have observed that humans have souls through empirical investigation." The argument was: "Salvation requires that Christ assumed everything we are, and what we are includes a rational soul." This is a theological argument, not a scientific one, and it is not refuted by pointing to neuroscience. The question is not what science tells us about the brain. The question is what salvation requires of the Incarnation.
Third, to claim that the councils were simply wrong about the soul is to undermine the authority of the councils altogether. If the councils were so fundamentally mistaken about what a human nature is — if they built their entire Christological framework on a false anthropology — then why should we trust anything else they said? If "rational soul" was a mistake, perhaps "two natures" was a mistake. Perhaps "one person" was a mistake. Once we start treating the conciliar definitions as products of outdated science, there is no principled stopping point. The entire Chalcedonian framework becomes negotiable.
Another physicalist response might be that the councils condemned Apollinarianism specifically — the view that the Logos replaced the human soul. They did not condemn physicalism, because physicalism did not exist in the fourth century. It is anachronistic to apply the conciliar condemnations to a position the councils never encountered.
This response has some initial plausibility, but it ultimately fails. The councils did not condemn only the specific mechanism by which Apollinarius eliminated the soul. They condemned the result — the absence of a human rational soul in Christ. The fourth anathema of Constantinople II does not say, "If anyone teaches that the Logos replaced the human soul, let him be anathema." It says, "If anyone does not accept that the union occurred with flesh possessed by a rational and intellectual soul, let him be anathema." The anathema targets the denial of the soul's presence, not the particular reason for the denial. Whether the soul is absent because the Logos replaced it (Apollinarianism) or because it does not exist (physicalism), the result is the same: Christ's flesh lacks a rational soul. And that result is what the council condemned.37
Perhaps the most common physicalist response is to argue that "rational soul" can be reinterpreted. The councils meant that Christ has the capacities associated with rational thought — reason, moral agency, self-consciousness, will. They did not necessarily mean that these capacities reside in an immaterial substance. On a physicalist reading, the "rational soul" is simply the set of capacities that emerge from a properly functioning human brain.
This is a clever move, but it does not work. As we noted above, the conciliar language consistently distinguishes the rational soul from the body. "Of a rational soul and a body" (Chalcedon). "Flesh possessed by a rational and intellectual soul" (Constantinople II). The conjunction "and" and the preposition "by" mark a real distinction between two things — the soul and the body. If "rational soul" just meant "the rational capacities of the body," there would be no need for the conjunction. You would not say Christ is "of a rational body and a body." The language itself presupposes that the soul and the body are distinct realities.38
Moreover, the patristic context removes all doubt about what "rational soul" meant. The very theologians who forged this language — Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, John of Damascus — all understood the soul as an immaterial substance. They did not mean "brain capacities." They meant an immaterial, rational soul that is distinct from the body, that animates the body, and that can (and does) survive the body's death. To read their language in physicalist terms is not interpretation. It is eisegesis — reading a modern meaning into an ancient text that clearly means something different.
John of Damascus, whose Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith represents the mature patristic synthesis, explicitly defines the soul as "a living substance, simple and incorporeal, invisible to bodily eyes, rational and intelligent." This is not compatible with physicalism. The soul, for John of Damascus, is incorporeal — not physical, not material, not reducible to brain states.39
A final line of defense might be to challenge the authority of the councils themselves. Perhaps the councils got it wrong. Perhaps they were influenced by Greek philosophy and imported non-biblical categories into their theology. Perhaps we should go back to Scripture alone and start fresh.
This response is available in principle, but it comes at an extraordinarily high cost. The ecumenical councils are the most authoritative doctrinal statements in the history of Christianity. They are accepted by Catholics, Orthodox, and the overwhelming majority of Protestants. To reject the councils' teaching on Christ's human soul is not a minor adjustment. It is a rejection of the fundamental framework within which all subsequent Christology has been done. It is to say that the church got the most important question in Christology wrong for seventeen centuries — and that it took modern neuroscience to correct the mistake. This is an extraordinary claim, and I believe it is an indefensible one.
As we argued in Chapters 3 and 4, the biblical evidence for the soul does not depend on Greek philosophy. The Old Testament speaks of the nephesh (נֶפֶשׁ) departing the body at death (Genesis 35:18), returning to the body at resuscitation (1 Kings 17:21–22), and existing in Sheol apart from the body (1 Samuel 28). The New Testament speaks of being "away from the body and at home with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:8), of souls under the altar crying out to God (Revelation 6:9–11), and of Christ committing His spirit to the Father at death (Luke 23:46). The councils did not invent the soul from Greek philosophy. They defined it from Scripture.
What does all of this mean for the current debate over physicalism and Christian theology?
I believe it means this: physicalism about human nature is not merely a philosophical position that has some theological implications. It is a position that contradicts the ecumenical councils at their most explicit and emphatic point. The councils did not merely hint that Christ has a soul. They did not merely suggest it as one option among several. They defined it as a non-negotiable element of Christian orthodoxy. They condemned its denial with anathemas. And they did so not once but repeatedly, across six ecumenical councils spanning four centuries.
This does not mean that physicalists are bad Christians or insincere believers. It does not mean that their motivations are impure. It does not mean that they are consciously or deliberately reviving Apollinarianism. I want to be very clear about that. The physicalists I have encountered in the literature — scholars like Nancey Murphy, Joel Green, and Kevin Corcoran — are serious thinkers who care deeply about their faith. They did not set out to deny what the councils affirm.
But good intentions do not change the logical implications of a position. The question is not what physicalists intend but what their position entails. And what it entails — a Christ without an immaterial human soul — is precisely what the ecumenical councils condemned. As Farris has argued, the structural parallel between physicalism and Apollinarianism is unmistakable, even if the motivations and historical contexts are very different. The result is the same: an incomplete human nature in Christ.40
This is why I believe the conciliar evidence provides one of the most powerful arguments in this entire book. We can debate philosophical arguments about consciousness and the mind. We can disagree about the interpretation of neuroscientific data. We can argue about whether the biblical evidence for the soul is convincing. But the conciliar evidence is not debatable in the same way. The councils spoke clearly. They spoke repeatedly. They spoke with the highest authority the church possesses. And they said: Christ has a human rational soul. Any view that denies this is anathema.
As we explored in Chapter 30, not a single church father held anything resembling modern physicalism about Christ's human nature. The entire patristic tradition — Alexandrian and Antiochene, Eastern and Western, Platonic and Aristotelian — affirmed that Christ has a human body and a human rational soul. Physicalism about Christ's nature is a modern invention with no patristic precedent and no conciliar support. It stands against the unanimous witness of the church's first seven hundred years.
The Conciliar Verdict: The ecumenical councils did not leave the question of Christ's human soul as an open question. They defined it, affirmed it, and condemned its denial — not once but repeatedly across six ecumenical councils. Physicalism, which denies the existence of the immaterial soul entirely, contradicts these definitions at their most fundamental level. The councils' rejection of Apollinarianism is, by direct logical extension, a rejection of any position that eliminates Christ's human rational soul — including physicalism.
Before we conclude, it is worth noting how the conciliar evidence supports the Christological model that I have argued for throughout this book — Andrew Loke's Kryptic Model, which was presented in detail in Chapter 17.
Loke's model is explicitly designed to be consistent with the conciliar definitions. On the Kryptic Model, Christ has a complete human nature consisting of a genuine human body and a genuine human rational soul. The divine attributes (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence) are not surrendered at the Incarnation (contra kenoticism) but concealed at a preconscious level. Christ has a single stream of conscious experience — a genuinely human one — while His divine attributes operate "behind the scenes," available when the Father wills it but not constantly flooding His human awareness.41
This model satisfies every requirement that the councils laid down. Christ has a rational soul — check. He has a human will (dyothelitism) — check. His human nature is complete, of a rational soul and a body — check. The two natures are united without confusion, change, division, or separation — check. The Son remains one Person — check. The Kryptic Model preserves everything the councils insisted upon, while also providing a coherent account of how the Incarnation actually works in Christ's experience.
Physicalism, by contrast, cannot satisfy these requirements. Without a rational soul, physicalism cannot affirm what Chalcedon affirmed. Without an immaterial soul, physicalism cannot explain how the hypostatic union survives death — a problem we explored in Chapters 21 and 22. Without a human soul as the seat of the human will, physicalism cannot affirm dyothelitism — a problem we explored in Chapters 13 and 14. The conciliar evidence converges with the biblical, philosophical, and experiential evidence (as outlined in Chapters 3, 4, and 5) to produce a cumulative case that is, I believe, overwhelming.
Let me draw this chapter to a close by summarizing what we have found.
Apollinarius of Laodicea proposed that the divine Logos replaced the human rational soul in Christ. His motivation was understandable — he wanted to protect the unity of Christ's person. But the cure was worse than the disease. By eliminating the human rational soul, Apollinarius produced a Christ who was not fully human, who could not redeem the human mind, who had no human will, and who was not truly consubstantial with us.
The church responded with overwhelming force. The Cappadocian fathers — Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa — demolished Apollinarius's arguments on theological and philosophical grounds. Basil of Caesarea, the Antiochene theologians, and eventually Cyril of Alexandria all joined the opposition. And the ecumenical councils — from Constantinople I (381) through Constantinople III (681) — condemned Apollinarianism repeatedly, explicitly, and with escalating severity. The fourth anathema of Constantinople II (553) is the most explicit statement: anyone who does not accept that the Word united to flesh "possessed by a rational and intellectual soul" is to be anathema.
Modern physicalism produces the same Christological result as Apollinarianism: a Christ without an immaterial human soul. The motivations are different. The philosophical context is different. But the outcome is identical. And the councils condemned the outcome, not the motivation.
I want to end with a word of pastoral concern. This chapter has been about councils, anathemas, and formal condemnations. These are heavy words. But the substance behind them is not merely institutional authority or ecclesiastical politics. The substance is the gospel itself. The councils insisted on Christ's human soul because they understood — rightly — that without it, the Incarnation does not work. Without a human soul, Christ did not fully become what we are. Without a human soul, the deepest dimension of our existence remains unredeemed. Without a human soul, the prayer of Gethsemane is empty, the descent to the dead is impossible, and the permanent Incarnation is undermined.
The councils fought for the human soul of Christ because they were fighting for the integrity of the gospel. When we affirm Christ's human soul today, we are not defending an outdated philosophical concept. We are defending the same gospel they defended — the good news that the eternal Son of God became everything we are, so that everything we are can be healed, transformed, and raised to glory.
The councils have spoken. And their verdict stands.
1 J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 5th ed. (London: A&C Black, 1977), 289–95. Kelly provides an accessible account of Apollinarius's motivations and the development of his Christological system. ↩
2 Andrew Ter Ern Loke, A Kryptic Model of the Incarnation, Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology, and Biblical Studies (London: Routledge, 2014), chap. 1, "The Chalcedonian Definition." Loke summarizes the Apollinarian position and the objections raised against it by the church fathers. ↩
3 Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 292–93. ↩
4 Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101 (To Cledonius Against Apollinaris). The Greek text and English translation are available in Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vol. 7 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 439–43. ↩
5 Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101. See also Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 296–97, for discussion of Gregory's soteriological argument. ↩
6 Gregory of Nyssa, Antirrheticus adversus Apollinarem. For discussion, see Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 297–98. ↩
7 Gregory of Nyssa, Antirrheticus adversus Apollinarem. See also Michael A. Wilkinson, Crowned with Glory and Honor: A Chalcedonian Anthropology, Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2024), 167–68, for the connection between Gregory's critique and the completeness of Christ's human nature. ↩
8 Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 294. The Synod of Alexandria (362) affirmed the completeness of Christ's humanity in response to emerging concerns about views that truncated it. ↩
9 Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 296. ↩
10 Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975), 329–40. Grillmeier provides the most comprehensive survey of the patristic opposition to Apollinarianism across the major theological schools. ↩
11 Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 294. ↩
12 Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 24–30. The Damasan anathemas are preserved in the acts of subsequent councils and in Theodoret's collection of conciliar documents. ↩
13 Canon 1 of the First Council of Constantinople (381), in Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 1:28. ↩
14 Timothy Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), chap. 1, "The Content of Conciliar Christology," under "Concerning the Human Nature of Christ." Pawl quotes and analyzes the relevant texts from Cyril's letters to Nestorius and the Formula of Union. ↩
15 Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1, "The Content of Conciliar Christology," under "Concerning the Human Nature of Christ." The Formula of Union text is quoted from Tanner, Decrees, 1:69. ↩
16 The Chalcedonian Definition, in Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 1:86. The Greek text is available in the same volume. ↩
17 Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1, "The Content of Conciliar Christology," under "Concerning the Human Nature of Christ." Pawl writes that any view which holds there to be no soul in Christ, or holds the soul to be the Second Person, is inconsistent with Conciliar Christology. ↩
18 Oliver D. Crisp, Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered, Current Issues in Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), chap. 2, "Two abstract-nature views: Apollinarianism and monothelitism." Crisp argues forcefully that any view eliminating the human soul is inconsistent with Chalcedonian Christology. ↩
19 The fourth anathema of the Second Council of Constantinople (553), in Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 1:115. Also quoted and discussed in Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1. ↩
20 Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1, "The Content of Conciliar Christology." Pawl cites Catholic (Ott, Pohle), Lutheran (Chemnitz), and Reformed (Bavinck, Berkhof) theologians who affirm these claims about Christ. ↩
21 Wilkinson, Crowned with Glory and Honor, 232–33. Wilkinson connects the affirmation of dyothelitism at Constantinople III with the necessary presupposition of a rational human soul as the seat of the human will. ↩
22 The Definition of the Third Council of Constantinople (681), in Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 1:128. Also quoted in Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1, "The Content of Conciliar Christology," under "Concerning the Human Will and Principle of Action." ↩
23 Wilkinson, Crowned with Glory and Honor, 225–30. Wilkinson provides a detailed analysis of Maximus the Confessor's theology of the two wills and its dependence on the existence of a rational human soul. ↩
24 Wilkinson, Crowned with Glory and Honor, 233. ↩
25 John of Damascus, On the Divine Images, trans. David Anderson (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1980), 1.16. John argues that the veneration of icons is based on the reality of the Incarnation — that the invisible God became visible in Christ through a complete human nature. ↩
26 See the extended treatment of Gregory's axiom in Chapter 12 of this volume. ↩
27 Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 297. See also Gregory of Nyssa, Antirrheticus adversus Apollinarem. ↩
28 Joshua R. Farris, An Introduction to Theological Anthropology: Humans, Both Creaturely and Divine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020), 197–200. Farris argues that the conciliar definitions of Christ's human nature have direct implications for theological anthropology more broadly. ↩
29 See the discussion of the agency argument in Chapter 14 of this volume, under the treatment of dyothelitism and Christ's human will. ↩
30 Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 3, "The Metaphysics of the Incarnation." Pawl explains how the one Person of the Son serves as the principle of unity in the Incarnation, without requiring the elimination of either nature. ↩
31 Loke, Kryptic Model, chap. 4, "A New Kryptic Christology: The Divine Preconscious Model." ↩
32 The Chalcedonian Definition, in Tanner, Decrees, 1:86. ↩
33 Nancey Murphy, Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1–23. Murphy argues for a nonreductive physicalist account of human nature that she believes is compatible with Christian theology. See also Joel Green, Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008). ↩
34 John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 25–32. Cooper discusses the patristic understanding of the soul and argues against physicalist reinterpretations of patristic language. ↩
35 Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, chap. 2, "Two abstract-nature views: Apollinarianism and monothelitism." ↩
36 Wilkinson, Crowned with Glory and Honor, 248–50. Wilkinson argues that if Christ's human nature — the paradigm case of human nature — is defined by the councils as consisting of a body and a rational soul, then human nature as such includes these two components. ↩
37 The fourth anathema of Constantinople II (553), in Tanner, Decrees, 1:115. The anathema targets the denial of the soul's presence, not the particular reason for the denial. ↩
38 Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology, chap. 1, "The Content of Conciliar Christology," under "Concerning the Human Nature of Christ." The conciliar language consistently distinguishes the rational soul from the body as two distinct components of Christ's human nature. ↩
39 John of Damascus, The Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, trans. S. D. F. Salmond, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vol. 9 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), II.12. John defines the soul as incorporeal, rational, and intelligent. ↩
40 Farris, Introduction to Theological Anthropology, 198–200. See also R. Keith Loftin and Joshua R. Farris, eds., Christian Physicalism? Philosophical Theological Criticisms (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018), chap. 7, "Physicalism, the Incarnation, and Holy Saturday," and chap. 8, "Physicalist Christology and the Two Sons Worry." ↩
41 Loke, Kryptic Model, chap. 4, "A New Kryptic Christology: The Divine Preconscious Model." ↩
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