Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 68:1 (Mar 2025)
Article: Reframing The Problem Of The Incarnation: Toward A Conceptualist Christology
Author: J. Alexander Rutherford

JETS 68.1 (March 2025) p. 117

Reframing The Problem Of The Incarnation: Toward A Conceptualist Christology

J. Alexander Rutherford

J. Alexander Rutherford (PhD, Moore Theological College) ministers in Sydney, Australia, and is a freelance researcher. He may be contacted at [email protected].

Abstract: Traditional accounts of the incarnation, accounts which maintain the true divinity and true humanity of Christ, have faced numerous criticisms across the history of the church, criticisms that have never entirely been resolved. What if the problem is not the claim of dual “natures” but rather the philosophical paradigm within which “nature” has been interpreted? In this article, it is argued that significant issues caused by the traditional dual-nature paradigm can be resolved through a conceptualist account of “nature.” It is proposed that two things are said to share a nature, to be ontologically identical (the same sort of thing), when they share enough similarity that members of a sociolinguistic community will recognize them as the same sort of thing, that is, when the same mental act (signified by a universal term) will supposit for them both. After introducing the classic paradigm and the problems associated with it, conceptualism is proposed as a plausible solution to the problems of natural and personal identity and, as a result, a strong framework within which to tackle the classic problems associated with the incarnation. At the very least, the plausibility of conceptualism as an answer to pressing issues in the doctrine of the incarnation suggests that the problems are found not in the God-man claim but in a particular construal of the meaning of that claim.

Key words: ontology, conceptualism, essentialism, nature, Dyophysitism, incarnation, Christology, Trinity, Berkeley, Ockham.

It has been claimed throughout the history of the church that there are problems with the belief that Christ is both God and human, and Christians have responded with thorough and articulate treatments showing that this claim does not result in formal contradictions.1 Often, these treatments uphold the classic model for defining nature, whereby nature is the “what” of something and whatness or quiddity is the primary reality of that thing so that being a “what” (a horse, for example) is more important than the so-called “accidental” determinations of its being such a size, color, location, and so forth. Occasionally the boundaries of this model are pushed to account for the radical nature of the incarnation, such as in

JETS 68.1 (March 2025) p. 118

Bruce McCormack’s recent treatment of Chalcedonian Christology, The Humility ...