Christmas is getting closer and so Christian minds are turning again to the great mystery of the Incarnation; that the eternal Word and Wisdom of God — very God — took on human flesh and was born in Bethlehem to the Virgin Mary. Earlier this week I watched an entertaining video on YouTube in which some little smart alec theological student asked a number of ordained ministers, including some Catholic priests, to explain the Holy Trinity. Over their faltering explanations the video producer added a klaxon sound effect every time the speaker stumbled into heresy. Predictably, the video was hilarious but it was also rather concerning. An orthodox understanding of the Trinity isn’t easy, and neither is the correct understanding of the hypostatic union in the Second Person of the Trinity.
Discussing this video with some students in class, one student asked me if Jesus had a human soul — and to my horror I had to stop and think about my answer. It has been a few years since I studied Christology and it has been almost as long since I gave these questions any serious thought. Saying that I did not know wasn’t really an option. Getting the answer wrong wasn’t really an option either. Clearly, I had to think — and think fast.
As Catholics, we profess that the Son of God is ‘God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made,’ and that ‘for us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.’ Jesus is not like God or a part of God; Jesus, the Son of God, shares the same being (ὁμοούσιος) as God. Jesus is God — fully God. He is also fully human. In the Incarnation God united the full humanity of Jesus to his full divinity in the hypostatic union. That is, the underlying reality of the Son of God is fully God and fully man (two natures), without confusion, without change, without separation, without division.
My intuitive answer to the question, then, was yes — Jesus does have a human soul. To be fully human is to be like us in every way (except, that is, for sin). We are more than our physicality. God made us with body, intellect, and soul. The full humanity of Jesus must include all of this. Jesus, as man, has a human body, a human mind, and a human soul. Our souls require redemption, and so remembering the words of St Gregory of Nazianzus that ‘that which is not assumed cannot be redeemed,’ I came to the conclusion that Jesus’ soul has to be human if he is to redeem our souls.
Apollinarius of Laodicaea asserted that in Christ the divine Word had replaced the soul or spirit. Against this error the Church confessed that the eternal Son also assumed a rational, human soul.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 471
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