The Logic of God Incarnate

by Thomas V. Morris

Discusses the unity of God and Jesus Christ, God's attributes, sin, temptation, the Trinity, representational Christology, and traditional views of God's goodness

Genres: Philosophy, Theology

224 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1986

Reviews

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible primer in analytic theology. Not the first intro text to be sure (that would be McCall), but indispensable nonetheless.

Does the claim “Jesus is God the Son” introduce incoherence into the Incarnation? Morris says no, provided that we properly understand what is meant by key philosophical terms. His argument trades on a number of similar philosophical tools: what is a concept? What is a natural-kind? Does fully-human = merely-human? Modern theologians who reject the Incarnation rarely examine these issues.

According to Morris (Morris 21ff), we hold to the proposition

(C) Jesus is God the Son

not

(C’) Jesus is God

Modern critics of the Incarnation say that humanity and divinity are contraries, so one subject cannot exemplify both. The heart of Morris’s book is that these are not contraries and Jesus does, in fact, exemplify both the properties of humanity and the properties of divinity.

Some of the difficulty comes with the undefined useage of the term ‘nature.’ Critics of the Incarnation think that the properties in human nature and in divinity are logical complements, thus precluding any bearer to exemplify both. Morris argues this isn’t necessarily the case. We aren’t saying that Jesus held to two undefined natures, but rather two natural kinds, or kind-nature. Natural kind: a shareable set of properties (39ff). Jesus had all the kind-essential properties of both humanity and divinity (40). It’s not clear where the contradiction, if any, is.

So far Morris has cleared orthodoxy of the charge of incoherence. But are divinity and humanity compossible?

Divine and Human Existence

Is Death annihilation? If it is, then Jesus, as one bearing divine properties, cannot die.
But why should the theist accept this? Doesn’t the soul outlive the body? Morris doesn’t take this argument, though. He rather points out that Jesus bore essential, if not common, human properties. Either one works.

Jesus and the Attributes of Deity

Problem: how can Jesus bear the property, say, of omnipresence during the Incarnation?

Anselm: God is a maximally perfect being who exemplifies a maximally perfect set of compossible great-making properties.

Great-making property: a property it is intrinsically better to have than to lack.
Degreed: something you can have more of
Logical maxima: highest possible degrees
Non-logical maxima: capable of infinite increase

The Properties of the God-man

Alvin Plantinga: the divine persons can differ in the modal status of their properties (94-95). The Son can exemplify some of those properties contingently.

Morris explores a number of options to avoid the kenotic conclusion.

Two-Minds
Range of consciousness = collection of belief-states (102).
Two minds = two ranges of consciousness. Morris writes, “The divine mind of the Son of God contained, but was not contained by, his earthly mind” (103). There is an asymmetric relationship.

[Brian Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Christian belief that Jesus is the Son of God, one person who has a divine nature and a human nature, is often believed to be incoherent. How can one person have two very different natures? How can Jesus, believed to be fully God, have attributes in his human person that seem to be the very opposite of God's attributes? (For example, as a man, Jesus was spatially located in Galilee, Judea, and Samaria, yet God is omnipresent.) Morris answers these questions by ruling out certain strategies and by presenting his own view, which he claims is actually an ancient one, that the one person of Jesus has two minds, one divine and one human.

Morris's argument is a bit too complex for me to adequately summarize here, so I won't try. Suffice it to say, I think it's an argument that is cogent and coherent. One valuable service he performs is analyzing the concept of natures. We often think that human nature includes many things, including being a created person, not being divine, and sinning. Morris states that these are common, though not essential, properties of humans. It's important to distinguish between the properties of a mere human being and the properties of the God-man, Jesus.

Things get a little crazy in one chapter, when he responds to some questions about whether the Son of God could be incarnate on different plans. That doesn't seem to merit much attention. But sometimes strange claims must be addressed, and Morris does so admirably.

This is an important book for those studying Christology. For that reason, I give it five stars and highly recommend it.

[Zachary Lawson · Rating 5 out of 5]

2017: Having read this a second time, my opinion remains the same. It’s a great book that should be mandatory reading for any Christian interested in formulating their understanding of the Incarnation. Merry Christmas!

2016: This is a fantastic, thought provoking book that I will definitely read again. As promised in the synopsis, Morris does a great job parsing out the key metaphysical distinctions for retaining the coherency of the orthodox claim that God the Son is identical to Jesus of Nazareth. The key takeaways: (i) common properties are not necessarily essential properties and (ii) merely human and fully human are not the same thing.

For much of the book, I was skeptical of his proposed "two-minds" model. The terminology is terrible because it sounds exactly like he is promoting Nestorianism. Well, he isn't and while I'm a little hesitant to fully endorse it, it does seem like a coherent and plausible model. I was especially persuaded by his argument concerning the possibility of multiple incarnations.

It was difficult for me to get my head around some of the concepts because of my layman knowledge of metaphysics. Nevertheless, the salient points are well communicated and I definitely recommend this book if you are interested in sophisticated defenses of Chalcedonian Christology.

Rating: 4.6

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A PHILOSOPHICAL DEFENSE OF THE INCARNATION AGAINST “LOGICAL” CRITICISMS

Thomas V. Morris (born 1952) is a former Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame; he is also a business and motivational speaker as founder and chairman of the Morris Institute for Human Values.

He wrote in the Preface to this 1986 book, “I first began reflecting on the philosophical problems confronting the traditional doctrine of the Incarnation when I was a graduate student… One result was a doctoral dissertation with the same basic aim as this book… In the course of thinking about the Incarnation for some years now, I have come to see that a few simple metaphysical distinctions and a solid dose of logical care will suffice to explicate and defend the doctrine against all extant criticisms of a philosophical nature. That is what this book attempts to show.” (Pg. 9)

He continues, “In the pages that follow, I shall try to lay out an understanding of the doctrine which I think is fully in accord with the decrees of the church councils of past centuries and which I believe stands triumphant against all contemporary challenges of a philosophical nature… The book as a whole should be viewed as a defense of the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation, the two-natures view of Christ, against contemporary philosophical attacks. I do not purport here to show that the doctrine is true; I seek only to answer some contemporary arguments against accepting it as true.” (Pg. 14, 16)

He suggests, “it seems clear that a defender of the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation ought not to respond to the contemporary challenge based on the indiscernibility principle by either devaluing the status of human logic, rejecting the problematic principle outright, or revising it in such a way as to square with what seem to be essential divine-human property differences. The best response to the challenge will consist in meeting it head on, in acknowledging the governance of the traditional role indiscernibility principle over identity statements and arguing that, contrary to what has been alleged, the incarnational identity satisfies its requirements.” (Pg. 32)

He explains, “It is the claim of orthodoxy that Jesus had all the kind-essential properties of humanity, and all the kind-essential properties of divinity, and thus existed (and continues still to exist) in two natures… To hold that it is possible for one entity to have two natures is not to hold that it is possible for just any entity to have just any two natures…. The Christian claim is that because of the distinctiveness of divinity and humanity, it was possible for the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, to take on human nature while still retaining his deity. The two particular natures involved, despite appearances in the contrary, allowed this unusual identity.” (Pg. 40)

He later elaborates, “according to orthodox Christology, Jesus was fully human without being merely human. He had all the properties constitutive of human nature, but had higher properties which, from an Anselmian perspective, form the upper bound of our scale. A philosophical anthropology developed from a distinctively Christian point of view will categorize all human properties logically incompatible with a human incarnation as, at most, essential to being MERELY HUMAN… [the] claim is not that Jesus was merely human. It is rather that he was, and is, fully human in addition to being divine.” (Pg. 66)

He asks, “will it not follow that Jesus was omniscient, omnipotent, necessarily existent, and all the rest, as well as being an itinerant Jewish preacher? And is this not outlandish to the greatest possible degree? Did the bouncing baby boy of Mary and Joseph direct the workings of the cosmos from his crib? … Such implications of orthodoxy can sound just too bizarre for even a moment’s serious consideration… How could such a being possibly be said to have shared the human CONDITION? What I hope to show… is that a couple of independently plausible ancient claims, together with some modern analogies, are sufficient to rid Chalcedonian orthodoxy of any such appearances of absurdity.” (Pg. 70)

He acknowledges, “on the strategy I am deploying, it seems that these characteristic human properties will be categorized as common to humanity rather than essential to being human. Such properties as being restricted in knowledge, limited in power, localized in presence, and contingent in existence will be held to be at most essential for being merely human… And surely no amount of modal manipulation of human nature can render it possible that this man was also incorporeal, immutable and impassible. At this point, the initially promising strategy for blocking the incoherence charge can appear to break down.” (Pg. 72-73)

He suggests, “Temporarily failing to exemplify the property of omniscience thus seems at least so far to be a possibility. But what of omnipotence and omnipresence? Perhaps the best understanding of the attribute of omnipresence is that of its being the property of being present everywhere in virtue of knowledge of and power over any and every spatially located object.” (Pg. 91)

He argues, “The divine mind of God the Son contained, but was not contained by, his earthy mind, or range of consciousness… The divine mind had full and direct access to the earthly, human experience resulting from the Incarnation, but the earthly consciousness did not have such full and direct access to the content of the overarching omniscience proper to the Logos, but only such access, on occasion, as the divine mind allowed it to have. There thus was a metaphysical and personal depth to the man Jesus lacking in the case of every individual who is merely human. This account allows for the apparent intellectual and spiritual growth of Jesus in his humanity to be a real development… He is fully human, but not merely human. He is also fully divine.” (Pg. 103-104)

He states, “I understand the humanity of Jesus to encompass within itself a finite degree of power, a finite degree of knowledge, and so forth. But if his divinity encompasses ALL power and ALL knowledge, doesn’t this include all finite degrees of power and knowledge, and so doesn’t his deity in effect swallow up his humanity, resulting in the heretical alternative of … a one-nature view[?]… Fortunately, the defense I am constructing does allow the identification of kind-essential properties which are distinctively human, and not also kind-essential for divinity.” (Pg. 144-145)

He says, “It does not seem that the reasonableness of incarnational belief is provided by deductive arguments from premises it is independently reasonable to believe, nor does it seem to be provided by any single fort of nondeductive argument consciously entertained or used by believers. Could it then be a simple form of direct experience? Could it be the case that traditional Christians have just SEEN Jesus to be God incarnate, and that their belief in his deity, thus generated, is reasonable precisely in light of that experience?” (Pg. 199)

He concludes, “this understanding of the Trinity is not entailed, or in any other strict way required, by the understanding of the Incarnation which I have attempted to sketch our in these pages. I suspect that within the scope of philosophical theology there are, and will remain, various alternatives for spelling out in detail the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith, any consistent combination of which a believer could be rational in adopting. My main concern in this book has merely been to begin to display one way in which the logical and metaphysical outlines of the focus of Christian theology can be developed in such a manner as to show them to be free from obvious incoherence and to be intelligible, within our limits, to those who see God in Christ.” (Pg. 218)

This book will be of great interest to those seriously studying such philosophical/theological issues.

[Adam Omelianchuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful in addressing challenges to the coherence of the Incarnation. Requires some training in metaphysics and logic to fully appreciate, but a patient reader will benefit, nonetheless. I found Morris' defense of "perfect being theology" persuasive and respected the careful way he lays out "the two-minds view," a view of the person of Christ I had wrongly deemed implausible. I will be returning to this volume again and again to glean insights about the differences between being merely human and fully human, what is metaphysically possible and what is epistemically possible, and what is essential to an individual and what is essential to a natural kind. This should be required reading for anyone who wants to engage seriously in philosophical reflection on the person of Christ.

[Joseph Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a strong defense of the coherence of the doctrine of the Incarnation. Morris proposes a helpful method of understanding God the Son’s taking on of humanity while maintaining His divinity by distinguishing with what makes one full human vs. merely human. Rigorous, grounded, and wildly helpful in articulating one of the most important claims of the Christian faith.

[Michael Greer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This books makes many interesting points about those who object to the Trinitarian understanding of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. His effort is to defend the position that God is best thought of as three divine Persons but sharing one Nature.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent work in analytical philosophical theology. This book demonstrates how the tools of analytic philosophy can be fruitfully brought to bear to help think more clearly about (if not resolve, or at least mitigate) difficult theological concerns. This book will be challenging to those who do not have some prior exposure to analytical metaphysics or modal logic, but the philosophically minded general reader can still profitably follow much of this discussion due to Morris's ability to communicate difficult ideas in an accessible way (where this is possible).

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is perhaps one of the hardest books I've ever read. Morris attempts to dig deep into the incarnation and how a being can be both divine and human.

[Garrett Cash]

Recommended by Dr. Craig.