The Soul of Christ

Did Christ have a human soul?  Athanasius asks in his two treatises against Apollinaris.  He answers Yes, of course, but the way he answers is intriguing.  One argument focuses on the death of Jesus: The body of Jesus died, as everyone acknowledges; but death is separation of the body from some life-principle.  Jesus must have had a human soul, or he could not have undergone the sundering of soul and body in death.

Ahh, says Apollinaris: But the body was separated from the Word in Jesus’ death.  That doesn’t work, Athanasius argues, because it means that the Word does not really go through death.  If death is the separation of soul and body, then the Word must pass through that as much as He passes through any other human experience.  Passing through the separation means that the Word must remain with both soul and body even in their separation.  The Word takes on the whole of human existence, and that means when the human nature He has made His own gets ripped in two, He can’t stand back and watch; He needs to pass through that rupture of His own humanity.  Only by suffering the whole of human death in His humanity can the Word overcome death.

The upshot is that, according to Athanasius, if the Word withdrew from the body in its death, He would not have been able to redeem humanity from death.  He must cling to His assumed humanity, cling to soul and body when they go their “separate ways,” cling to soul and body through death so that He can reunite them in an eternal life, so that this mortal can put on immortality.