Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 64:2 (Jun 2021)
Article: Sinless Savior In Fallen Flesh? Toward Clarifying And Closing The Debate
Author: E. Jerome Van Kuiken

JETS 64:2 (June 2021) p. 327

Sinless Savior In Fallen Flesh? Toward Clarifying And Closing The Debate

Jerome Van Kuiken*

^* Jerome Van Kuiken is Dean of Ministry and Christian Thought at Oklahoma Wesleyan University, 2201 Silver Lake Road, Bartlesville, OK 74006. He may be contacted at [email protected].

Abstract: Did Christ assume a fallen human nature? This question has provoked much controversy in recent theological literature. This article aims to clarify and bring a measure of closure to the debate. First, the claims of the “fallenness” view(s) are clarified by addressing six objections. I conclude that both sides have misinterpreted one another. Secondly, in light of this conclusion, three proposals set out a path toward potentially ending the debate by excluding outliers, recognizing conceptual consensus while tolerating terminological diversity, and adjusting terminology. I end with an appeal for reconciliation grounded in the Incarnation.

Key words: Christology, Edward Irving, fallen vs. unfallen human nature, fallenness debate, Karl Barth, non-assumptus, Oliver Crisp, unassumed is unhealed, Stephen J. Wellum, Thomas F. Torrance

Measure a doctrine’s influence by its coverage in Christianity Today. The November 2019 issue of CT included an article on Christ’s humanity by analytic theologian Oliver Crisp. The article allows that Christ may have had “a fallen human nature” while remaining sinless.1 The very next month, CT published an online article in which Daniel Cameron, an adjunct professor at Moody Bible Institute, defended the same general position. Ironically, Cameron’s article quotes an older essay of Crisp’s in order to rebut it.2 Crisp’s older essay had opposed “the fallenness view” as compromising Christ’s sinlessness. Now further study of the issue has led him to concede that fallenness and sinlessness need not be contraries in Christ’s experience.3

These two CT articles represent the popular-level tip of an iceberg of recent scholarship and debate on the question, Did Christ become incarnate in a fallen or

JETS 64:2 (June 2021) p. 328

unfallen human nature?4 Yet this question has generated even more passion than scholarship. Kelly Kapic has explained why:

On the one hand, those who seek to affirm that the Son assumed a fallen human nature (or sinful flesh) are often interpreted as sacrificing the sinlessness of Jesus and thus leaving ...