Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of Christ, Part 5.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

We've been talking about church historical reflection on the doctrine of the incarnation, and we come at last

today to a proposed model of the incarnation. I believe that on the basis of the historical

precedents that we've briefly surveyed, we can craft a model of the incarnation, which is logically

coherent and biblically faithful. Now, before I present this model, let me emphasize

that this is presented simply as a possible model of the incarnation. No one can presume to penetrate the mystery of the incarnation

is to say exactly how God did this. But if we can give a coherent model of the incarnation,

a possible account, then this will defeat any objections brought

against the doctrine of the incarnation by those who say that it is simply logically

incoherent to say that Christ could be truly God and truly man.

Now, my proposed Christology has three planks or postulates to it.

Number one, I propose that we postulate with the Council of Chalcedon that there is one person who exemplifies two distinct and complete natures,

one human and one divine. When the framers of the Chalcedonian statement affirmed that in Christ there are two natures. They were not talking about individual

essences. That is to say that set of properties that makes you uniquely you and different

from anybody else, your individual essence. Rather, what they were talking about were kind essences or natures

that serve to demarcate natural kinds of things. For example, according to Aristotle,

every human being belongs to the natural kind, rational animal. That expresses

the nature that is common to every human being, that natural kind. So in affirming

that Christ had two natures, the church fathers were saying that Christ has

all of the properties that go to constitute humanity, and he also had all of the properties

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