It is not difficult to understand if we consider the incarnation of Christ. His divine aspects were subconscious. He was truly a man without ceasing to be God in his identity. The kenotic idea suggests that Christ gave up certain divine attributes, but that is controversial and contradicts the unchangeable nature of God. Below is a quote from a ReasonableFaith podcast.
William James has referred to the subliminal self as that realm of
the subconscious in the human personality. What I am suggesting is
that the primary locus of these superhuman elements of Jesus’ life
were in the subconsciousness of the divine Logos. This sort of a
model, I think, provides a very satisfying account of Jesus as we see
him in the Gospels. In his conscious experience, Jesus grew in wisdom
and in knowledge, just as a human child does. On this model, we don’t
have the monstrosity of the baby Jesus lying in the manger having the
full conscious omniscience of the second person of the Trinity. In his
conscious experience, Jesus grows and increases in knowledge as he
grows older.
Moreover, this makes sense of the temptations of Jesus. In his
conscious human experience, Jesus can be genuinely tempted, even
though he is, in fact, incapable of sin. He can feel the allure of
sin. He can feel the allure of the temptations. These temptations were
really felt and couldn’t just be blown away like smoke. It required
him to depend upon God. It required spiritual disciple and moral
resoluteness on Jesus’ part, even though, in fact, he is incapable of
sin because he is the second person of the Trinity.
This model makes sense of Jesus’ ignorance of certain facts. In his
waking consciousness, Jesus was ignorant of various facts such as the
date of his second coming, even though he was kept from error by the
divine subliminal and occasionally would be informed by the divine
subliminal about certain supernatural facts. We could imagine that
certain aspects of the subconscious might sometimes come to
consciousness in the same way that we are able to retrieve deep
memories of events that perhaps have been forgotten long ago. So even
though the Logos possesses all knowledge of everything from auto
mechanics to quantum mechanics, there is no reason to think that Jesus
could have responded to questions about auto mechanics or quantum
mechanics if we had asked him. He had stooped so low in taking on the
human condition that that knowledge was reserved to the divine
subliminal and so not available in human consciousness.
Moreover, this makes sense of Jesus’ struggles and prayer life. In his
conscious life, Jesus knew the whole gamut of human anxieties and
worries. He felt physical hurt and pain and fatigue. The struggles in
the Garden of Gethsemane were real and not just showpieces. This model
preserves the integrity of Jesus’ prayer life and the sincerity of his
prayer life. It explains why, even though Jesus was God, nevertheless
he had to depend upon his heavenly Father by seeking him in prayer and
seeking the face of God. It explains how Jesus could be perfected
through suffering, even though he is the perfect second person of the
Trinity in his divine nature. In his human nature, he learned moral
virtue through what he suffered and so was capable of being perfected
through suffering. Like us, sharing our human condition, he needed to
be dependent moment by moment by moment upon his heavenly Father in
order to carry out successfully the mission that God had given him. So
the struggles, the anxieties, the wrestling with God in the Garden of
Gethsemane are all real; they are genuine struggles of the incarnate
Logos in his waking consciousness.
So I think all of the traditional objections against the Logos’ being
the soul of Jesus’ human nature fall away before this understanding of
the incarnation. For here we have a Christ who is not only divine but
who also truly shares the human condition by having this theologically
significant differentiation of consciousness and subconsciousness. I
hope it doesn’t need to be said that this isn’t two persons, just as
any ordinary person has a subconsciousness and a consciousness. So
what we do is exploit those levels of human personhood by
differentiating them in this theologically significant way.
Read more:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/defenders-2-podcast/transcript/s6-7
