Updated Commentary on Gordon H. Clark's View of the Incarnation

 

The following update was added to an April 16, 2010 post on Gordon H. Clark's view of the incarnation:

Clark Denies Nestorianism

The following remarks are in reference to Gordon H. Clark's view of the passing of sin through natural generation and traducianism versus the view that each new soul is created sinful as espoused by J. Oliver Buswell and other creationists.  Of course, R. C. Sproul and John Gerstner seem to disagree with the creationist view by rejecting the idea of "fresh evil" being imparted by God in providence.

[Update:  November 8th, 2026.  Clark's view avoids both the liberal view that the Logos emptied Himself of deity in order to become a fully human person, i.e. the kenosis view.  Some Evangelicals like Millard Erickson and Henry C. Thiessen advocated for a sub-kenotic view where they allege that the eternal Logos laid aside the free exercise of the incommunicable divine attributes temporarily while incarnate in the human person of Jesus Christ.  But this amounts to the same thing as the liberal view of kenosis.  It would make Jesus less than fully God.  I was taught this as a Pentecostal at Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God, Lakeland, Florida in the late 1980s.  Southeastern University is the name of the school today.  Clark settled on the view that Christ is both the divine Person of the Logos and the rational and human soul or person of the human incarnation of Jesus Christ.  One can argue whether or not this resolves the apparent contradictions or not.  Regardless, a human being or nature cannot logically receive the incommunicable attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence.  Jesus was both fully God and fully man without mixing the two natures or confusing them.  To replace the rational human soul of Jesus would be Apollinarianism.  To separate the two natures would be Nestorianism.  To confuse the two natures would end up in Eutychianism or the monophysite error where Jesus would be a hybrid of the two natures instead of being a hypostatic union of the two natures.  The two natures are united in the human person of Jesus without violating either of the two distinct natures.  Yet, the eternal Logos never sets aside His incommunicable or communicable divine attributes in the incarnation.  Jesus is truly God and truly man.  The divine Person is not annihilated in the incarnation.  For more on this see Clark's book, The Incarnation.  Disagree with Clark, but his critique of the Definition of Chalcedon of 451 A.D. is appropriate.  Appealing to mystery is only an avoidance of the apparent contradictions in the creed.  Also, Clark avoids Nestorianism by defining a person as the propositions that he thinks.  Proverbs 23:7.  One problem with Clark's two person view is that it appears to put too much stress on the true humanity of Jesus Christ without properly emphasizing His deity as well.]

See also:  Traducianism.