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

Today, the Doctrine of Christ, part six.

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

Last time I began to describe a proposed model for understanding the Deid and Humanity of Christ.

I emphasize that this is just a possibility. I don't think anyone can pretend to know

how God managed to become incarnate in Christ. But if we can provide a coherent model, one that is

logically consistent and biblically faithful, then this will defeat the attacks or objections

of Muslims, secularists, and cultists that it's impossible for Jesus Christ to be truly God and truly man.

The first plank of the proposed model is that with the Council of Chalcedon,

we postulate that in Christ there are two natures, one human and one divine, each complete,

and united in one person. All right, the second plank then in my proposal model is that we

postulate with Apollinarius that the Logos, the second person

of the Trinity, was the rational soul of Jesus of Nazareth. We postulate with Apollinarius

that the Logos was the rational soul of Jesus of Nazareth.

What Apollinarius maintained was that if we're to avoid a duality of persons in Christ,

the man Jesus of Nazareth and the divine Lagos must share some common constituent that unites those two individual natures.

Now the Orthodox Christological view is that there is a single whoopostasis or property bearer or individual which exemplifies

or bears those two natures. And that hoopostasis is identified as the person that Christ

is. There is a person who exemplifies or has these two individual

natures, one divine and one human. The question is how can this be? How can there be two

complete individual natures that are possessed by one person? If there

exists a complete individual human nature in Christ and a complete individual divine nature,

...