In previous work,² I introduced a new model of the Incarnation, which I term The “Dispositional Incarnation Model” (hereafter, DIM).³ The DIM provides a sophisticated metaphysical framework that can revitalise Swinburne’s first solution - that Christ’s sinlessness was contingent rather than necessary. This approach would preserve genuine libertarian freedom for Christ while addressing Swinburne’s concerns about putting salvation at risk. The DIM is built upon two foundational philosophical theses: Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism (hereafter, NCSD) and the Four-Category Ontology. According to NCSD,⁴ a person is a simple, psychological substance - a conscious subject of experience distinct from yet intimately related to a physical body. Unlike Cartesian dualism, NCSD holds that persons can possess physical characteristics through their relation to their bodies while remaining distinct substances with different persistence conditions. We can illustrate the central elements of this schematic framework in Figure 1. as such (where Person stands for the human person, Body stands for their organised physical body, M stands for mental properties and P stands for physical properties): Figure 1

Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism

In essence, NCSD posits two unique substances: a person (with both physical and psychological properties) and a body (with solely physical properties). They’re distinct due to differing persistence conditions, with the embodiment relation connecting them. The person, as a non-composite entity, grounds the unity of consciousness and isn’t necessarily detachable from the body. However, a further important aspect of the person is that of their possession of a “robust first-person perspective”.⁵ The philosophical concept of a robust first-person perspective refers to a person’s capacity for self-reference and self-awareness - the ability to conceive of oneself as oneself and view the world from a first-person viewpoint. Thus, a self-concept, such as “I’m glad that I am a father”, manifests an individual’s robust first-person perspective-it attributes to oneself a first-person reference. A person, within the framework of NCSD, can thus be taken to be one that bears a robust first-person perspective - it has the ability to conceive of oneself as oneself, in the first-person - which is necessary and sufficient for the substance that bears it to be classed as a person. Turning our attention to the Four-Category Ontology.⁶ The Four-Category Ontology posits four fundamental ontological categories:

Swinburne rejects the first solution - that Christ’s sinlessness was contingent rather than necessary - primarily because it would make salvation dependent on Christ’s resistance to temptation, seemingly placing our redemption at risk. However, DIM offers a more nuanced approach through its distinction between dispositional and occurrent exemplification.

How does this work? As the God-man, Christ instantiates both the kind Deity and the kind Humanity, which creates a unique metaphysical structure. Within the Four-Category Ontology, this instantiation of kinds determines who and what Christ essentially is - his fundamental identity, existence conditions, and metaphysical category. Through instantiating the kind Deity, Christ dispositionally exemplifies perfect goodness, which deeply shapes his character and fundamental desires. At the occurrent level of his human experience, Christ possesses genuine libertarian freedom with authentic alternative possibilities, including the theoretical possibility to sin. His human will functions as a spontaneous power capable of choosing either way when facing temptation. The crucial insight is that Christ’s dispositional exemplification of divine attributes doesn’t deterministically cause his choices but rather constitutes his essential nature and character. The kinds an entity instantiates establish its essential properties - what it truly is at the most fundamental level. This dispositionally exemplified divine nature provides Christ with a profound orientation toward goodness that influences - without necessitating - his free choices. Consider how St. Francis of Assisi, after his profound conversion, developed such a deep commitment to poverty and compassion that certain actions became virtually unthinkable to him - not because they were metaphysically impossible, but because they so fundamentally contradicted who he had become. We can be reasonably certain St. Francis would not have embezzled money from the poor, even while recognizing he remained free to do so in the libertarian sense. Similarly, Christ’s dispositional exemplification of divine goodness means that while he genuinely could choose to sin at the occurrent level of his human experience, his character was so fundamentally oriented toward goodness that he would freely choose not to sin in every situation. This is not a limitation of freedom but its perfect expression - choices flowing from one’s deepest nature rather than from external determination. When Christ faces temptation in the wilderness or struggles in Gethsemane, he experiences these as genuine moral conflicts with undetermined outcomes. His sinlessness is therefore contingent in a metaphysically robust sense - depending on genuinely free choices - while being secure because of who Christ essentially is. Unlike Swinburne’s fourth solution, which claims Christ necessarily could not sin, the DIM maintains that Christ could sin at the occurrent level but would not sin because his essential nature disposed him to desire alignment with the good, without eliminating the genuine freedom of his choices. Importantly, this is not predetermination because Christ’s actions are not causally determined by prior states or events beyond his control. In predetermination, the outcome is fixed regardless of the agent’s choices. Under the DIM, Christ’s divine nature dispositionally exemplified does not causally necessitate his choices but rather constitutes the character from which he freely chooses. The distinction lies in that Christ’s sinlessness emerges from his own free choices that align with his fundamental nature, not from external causal determination. His actions remain undetermined in the libertarian sense - there are genuine alternative possibilities available to his will at the moment of choice. Christ could truly choose otherwise, but freely chooses the good due to his profound orientation toward it. This maintains Kane’s conditions for Self-Forming Actions, where the agent shapes their own character through undetermined choices, while providing a metaphysical basis for why Christ would consistently choose good over evil without being determined to do so.

As just noted above, the advantage of this approach is that it preserves genuine libertarian freedom for Christ, including the capacity for SFAs. When Christ faces temptation, he experiences genuine conflicts between competing motivations - between his human desires and what he knows to be right. These conflicts are not predetermined in their outcome at the occurrent level of his human experience. Christ genuinely could choose either option, making these genuine SFAs in Kane’s sense. The DIM thus satisfies Kane’s Condition of Alternative Possibilities (AP). At some moments in his life, Christ has more than one open option compatible with the same past and laws. At the occurrent level of his human experience, Christ faces genuine undetermined choices, including the possibility to sin. This is not merely an epistemic possibility (believing he could sin when he metaphysically could not), but a genuine metaphysical possibility at the occurrent level. The DIM also satisfies Kane’s Condition of Ultimate Responsibility (UR). Through his human will occurrently exemplified, Christ actively participates in forming his human character through undetermined choices. He is partly responsible for the reasons and motives that guide his actions. This is not a character imposed from outside or predetermined by his divine nature, but one that he actively shapes through his human choices. This gives Christ genuine ultimate responsibility for his sinlessness in a way that Swinburne’s fourth solution cannot provide. Unlike Swinburne’s fourth solution, which limits Christ’s freedom to a predetermined range of options, the DIM allows Christ to face genuine moral dilemmas with undetermined outcomes. When Christ chooses not to sin, this is a genuine achievement of will - not a predetermined outcome but a free choice made in the face of genuine alternatives. This model maintains a crucial balance: Christ’s divine nature dispositionally exemplified provides the ontological foundation for who he essentially is without causally determining what he chooses. His choices remain free in the libertarian sense - genuinely undetermined until the moment of choice - while being informed by his fundamental character. This preserves both the contingency required for authentic freedom and the reliability sought in salvation. Where Swinburne’s model sacrifices libertarian freedom to secure sinlessness, the DIM shows how Christ’s sinlessness can be a genuine moral achievement through libertarian free choices aligned with, but not determined by, his dispositionally exemplified divine nature.

As has been alluded to already, but now can be more clearly stated, the most significant objection to the contingent sinlessness view, according to Swinburne, is that it puts our salvation at risk. If Christ could genuinely sin, then he might have sinned, and our salvation would be lost. The DIM framework addresses this concern through the hierarchical relationship between dispositional and occurrent exemplification. At the dispositional level, Christ exemplifies divine attributes, including perfect goodness, wisdom, and power, through his instantiation of the kind Deity, which fundamentally determines who and what he essentially is. These dispositionally exemplified attributes provide Christ with a profound orientation toward goodness that influences - without necessitating - his free choices at the occurrent level. This is not a causal determination imposed from outside, but an internal relationship between Christ’s dispositionally exemplified divine nature and his occurrently exemplified human nature. The distinction between dispositional and occurrent exemplification allows us to affirm both:

This approach also provides a more satisfying account of Christ’s experience of temptation than Swinburne’s solution. On Swinburne’s view, Christ experiences temptation despite necessarily being unable to sin, which requires either attributing false beliefs to Christ or limiting his self-knowledge. The DIM framework, by contrast, allows for Christ to experience temptation as a genuine moral struggle with undetermined outcomes at the occurrent level. When Christ faces temptation in the wilderness or struggles in Gethsemane, he experiences these conflicts through his occurrently exemplified human will, which involves genuine volitional struggle. Christ’s prayer in Gethsemane - ”not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42) - reflects this genuine moral struggle. His human will, occurrently exemplified, genuinely desires to avoid suffering. This is not merely an illusion or a performance but a genuine human response to the prospect of suffering. Yet through the resources provided by his dispositionally exemplified divine nature, Christ freely chooses to align his human will with the divine purpose. This experience of temptation and moral struggle is essential to what the author of Hebrews means when he writes that Christ “has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet he did not sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Christ’s sinlessness is not the absence of temptation or the impossibility of sin, but the genuine achievement of resisting temptation through free choices made in the face of genuine alternatives.

Moreover, this approach aligns more closely with the Chalcedonian definition of Christ as “perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity” and “like us in all respects except for sin”. Christ is “perfect in divinity” through his instantiation of the kind Deity and his dispositional exemplification of all divine attributes. He is “perfect in humanity” through his instantiation of the kind Humanity and his occurrent exemplification of human attributes, including a genuine human will with libertarian freedom. Most crucially, he is “like us in all respects except for sin” because his human will functions according to the same principles as ours - it involves genuine libertarian freedom, including the capacity for moral SFAs. The difference is not that Christ lacks the capacity to sin that we possess, but that he successfully exercises his freedom in ways that we often fail to do. This approach preserves both the unity of Christ’s person (there is only one subject who instantiates both kinds) and the distinctness of his natures (the divine and human attributes remain distinct and are exemplified in different ways). It thus offers a more satisfying solution to the problem of reconciling Christ’s sinlessness with his possession of a human nature that includes genuine freedom.

A further significant advantage of the DIM framework is its capacity to enable genuinely literal readings of scriptural passages describing Christ’s human characteristics, particularly those that have traditionally posed interpretive challenges for Christology. This stands in marked contrast to Swinburne’s model, which necessitates more complex, non-literal interpretations of key biblical texts. Now, perhaps the most challenging passage for traditional Christology is Mark 13:32, where Jesus states: “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”. This text presents a straightforward claim that the Son lacks knowledge possessed by the Father, creating an apparent contradiction with the doctrine that Christ, as the Second Person of the Trinity, is omniscient. Swinburne’s solution, with its reliance on a divided consciousness model, struggles to accommodate a literal reading of this passage. If Christ possesses both a divine stream of consciousness (which would necessarily know the day and hour) and a human stream of consciousness (which would lack this knowledge), then it cannot be literally true that “the Son” does not know the day or hour. Rather, only one aspect or consciousness of the Son lacks this knowledge, while another aspect possesses it. This necessitates a non-literal interpretation of Jesus’s statement, requiring us to understand “nor the Son” as meaning “nor the Son in his human consciousness” or “nor the Son’s human awareness” - qualifications that are conspicuously absent from the biblical text itself. This interpretive strategy ultimately requires a form of semantic reinterpretation, similar to what we see in other approaches that suggest the Greek term οἶδεν (traditionally translated as “know”) should be rendered as “aware” in this context. Such reinterpretations appear motivated more by theological convenience than sound exegetical principles, especially considering that οἶδεν appears over 318 times in the New Testament and is consistently translated as “know” in interlinear translations.

In contrast, the DIM provides the metaphysical framework necessary for a straightforwardly literal reading of Mark 13:32-36. According to the DIM, when the Son becomes incarnate, he continues to instantiate the kind Deity (thus retaining omniscience dispositionally) while ceasing to exemplify omniscience occurrently in his human experience. This means that Christ, during his incarnate life, genuinely did not know the day or hour of his return, as he had ceased to occurrently exemplify omniscience. This is not a matter of one “part” of Christ knowing while another does not, as in divided consciousness models. Rather, the DIM posits a single subject - Christ (i.e., the incarnate Son) - who genuinely experiences human cognitive limitations due to the transformation that occurs in the Incarnation.¹² The Son transforms from a divine person to a human person, continuing to possess the divine nature dispositionally while experiencing the world through genuinely human cognitive and experiential capacities. This allows us to take Jesus’s statement in Mark 13:32 at face value without compromising his divine nature. When Jesus says that the Son does not know the day or hour, this is literally true of the incarnate Christ. Unlike Swinburne’s model, which must interpret this as referring only to one aspect of Christ’s divided consciousness, the DIM allows the statement to apply to Christ as a unified subject. The DIM thus preserves both the literal meaning of the text and the theological truth that Christ remains divine through his dispositional exemplification of divine attributes.

This capacity for a literal interpretation carries substantial theological and practical importance. First, it maintains hermeneutical integrity by applying consistent interpretive principles across Scripture rather than employing special pleading when encountering texts that create theological tension. When Jesus states that he does not know something, accepting this statement at face value honours the intent of the biblical authors to communicate Christ’s authentic humanity. Second, a literal reading preserves the soteriological significance of Christ’s full identification with humanity. The letter to the Hebrews emphasises that Christ’s ability to sympathise with our weaknesses depends on his genuine experience of human limitations and temptations (Hebrews 4:15). If these experiences are reinterpreted as merely apparent limitations or as divine attributes operating behind a human facade, the profound pastoral comfort of Christ’s solidarity with human suffering is diminished. Third, literal readings maintain theological accessibility, allowing ordinary believers to grasp central truths about Christ without requiring specialised philosophical distinctions. When Scripture says Christ did not know something, a reading that allows this statement to mean what it appears to mean makes the biblical witness more accessible than readings requiring sophisticated semantic or psychological reinterpretations. Finally, a literal reading honours the historical emphasis of pro-Nicene and Chalcedonian theology on the completeness of Christ’s humanity. The early church fathers insisted against docetic tendencies that Christ assumed all aspects of human nature, including its genuine limitations. As Gregory of Nazianzus famously wrote, “What is not assumed is not healed” - a principle that requires Christ’s full participation in human cognitive and experiential limitations.

Now, a significant challenge that potentially could be raised with the above strategy, and the DIM on the whole, is that Christ’s human limitations entail that he cannot be divine. An informal presentation of this argument typically could take the form: If omniscience is essential to divinity, and Christ lacks omniscience (e.g., he does not know the hour of his return), then Christ cannot be divine. However, the DIM actually breaks this entailment through its distinction between dispositional and occurrent exemplification of attributes. According to the DIM, Christ can genuinely lack knowledge of certain facts in his single (human) consciousness (thus not occurrently exemplifying omniscience) while still retaining omniscience dispositionally through his instantiation of the kind Deity. This means Christ can be authentically limited in his human experience while remaining fully divine in nature. This solution differs substantially from Swinburne’s divided consciousness approach, which maintains that Christ simultaneously exemplifies both omniscience (in his divine consciousness) and limited knowledge (in his human consciousness). The DIM avoids the problematic implication that Christ is simultaneously both knowing and not knowing the same thing by affirming a single consciousness and distinguishing between dispositional possession and occurrent exemplification of attributes, rather than dividing Christ’s consciousness into separate streams.

Thus, the DIM’s metaphysical framework - particularly its distinction between dispositional and occurrent exemplification - provides the conceptual resources to interpret passages like Mark 13:32-36 literally without compromising Christ’s divine nature. This represents a significant advantage over Swinburne’s model, which requires a more strained, non-literal reading of the text due to its assumption of a divided consciousness. By allowing for a unified subject who genuinely experiences human limitations while remaining divine in nature, the DIM offers, on top of the other advantages detailed above, a more exegetically sound and theologically cogent approach to scriptural interpretation.

A significant theological objection that could be raised against the DIM concerns its potentially problematic relationship to Monophysitism. This ancient Christological position, condemned at the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE), maintained that Christ possessed only one nature (physis) that was a fusion or mixture of divinity and humanity, rather than two distinct natures. The objection might be formulated as follows: By describing the Son as “transforming into a human person” and emphasising the unity of Christ’s consciousness, the DIM appears to collapse or fuse Christ’s two natures, thus inadvertently endorsing a form of Monophysitism that contradicts orthodox Chalcedonian Christology.

This objection warrants serious consideration, as terminology evoking “transformation” might suggest the conversion of one nature into another or the fusion of two natures into a hybrid. However, the DIM does not commit one to Monophysitism for several reasons. First, the DIM explicitly maintains the ontological distinctness of Christ’s divine and human natures. Within the Four-Category Ontology framework, “Deity” and “Humanity” remain distinct substantial universals (kinds) that Christ instantiates simultaneously. There is no fusion or mixture of these kinds at the ontological level - they remain metaphysically distinct categories. Christ instantiates both kinds fully, not a hybrid kind resulting from their mixture. Second, the dispositional/occurrent distinction provides the crucial conceptual architecture for maintaining the integrity of both natures while accounting for their unified expression in Christ’s person. The divine attributes are not transformed into human attributes, nor are human attributes elevated into divine attributes. Rather, each set of attributes maintains its distinct character while being exemplified differently - divine attributes dispositionally and human attributes occurrently. This distinction preserves precisely what Chalcedon sought to protect: the completeness and distinctness of both natures “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation”. Third, unlike Monophysitism, which tended to emphasize Christ’s divinity at the expense of his humanity (leading to Christ’s humanity being absorbed into or overshadowed by his divinity), the DIM fully accounts for Christ’s complete humanity. In fact, the DIM grants a robust role to Christ’s human consciousness and experiences, recognizing them as genuine rather than merely apparent, which aligns with Chalcedon’s emphasis on Christ being “truly man”. Fourth, the model’s language of “transformation” refers not to a transformation of natures (as in Monophysitism, where divine and human natures would transform into a tertium quid - a third, hybrid nature), but rather to a transformation in how the eternal Son exemplifies his attributes. The Son’s divine nature remains intact (dispositionally exemplified) while he takes on a fully human nature (both dispositionally and occurrently exemplified). This is transformation in the mode of being, not in the content of the natures themselves. Finally, the DIM actually strengthens the conceptual resources for defending dyophysite Christology (the two-nature view affirmed at Chalcedon) by providing a coherent metaphysical framework for understanding how one subject can possess two distinct natures without those natures being confused or mingled. By distinguishing kinds (which are natures) from their exemplification (whether dispositional or occurrent), the DIM maintains the ontological foundation for affirming with Chalcedon that Christ is “acknowledged in two natures… the property of each nature being preserved”.

Thus, rather than committing one to Monophysitism, the DIM offers a sophisticated metaphysical framework that preserves the very distinctions that Chalcedonian orthodoxy sought to maintain while addressing the philosophical challenges that have historically plagued two-nature Christology. The model’s nuanced account of Christ’s ontological structure allows us to affirm both the complete integrity of his divine and human natures and the unity of his person without falling into the Monophysite error of confusing or fusing those natures.

Another significant theological objection that could be raised against the DIM concerns its relationship to Monothelitism. This 7th-century Christological position - condemned at the Third Council of Constantinople (680-681 CE) - maintained that while Christ possessed two natures, he had only one will. As with our previous Monophysitism objection, this objection might be formulated as follows: By emphasizing the unity of Christ’s consciousness and the hierarchical relationship between his dispositionally exemplified divine nature and his occurrently exemplified human nature, the DIM appears to subordinate Christ’s human will to his divine will in a way that effectively collapses them into a single operative will, thus inadvertently endorsing a form of Monothelitism contrary to orthodox dyothelite Christology. This concern requires careful consideration, as any Christological model must maintain the integrity of Christ’s two wills to remain orthodox. However, the DIM not only avoids Monothelitism but can be extended through Lowe’s power-based conception of the will to provide a robust philosophical foundation for dyothelite Christology. The DIM can be strengthened by incorporating Lowe’s (2008; 2013) sophisticated account of the will as a “spontaneous power”. According to Lowe, the will is properly understood as an “active, non-causal power whose manifestations are volitions or acts of will”. This conception provides crucial metaphysical clarity for understanding how Christ can possess two distinct wills without contradiction or competition between them. Within this framework, powers are attributes exemplified by particular objects, and they can be distinguished as either “token powers” or “power types”. A token power is a particular power of a particular object that belongs essentially to that substance and cannot be transferred to any other particular object. Christ’s divine will and human will are thus distinct token powers, each individuated by three factors: their manifestation types (the range of actions they can will), their bearer (Christ himself), and their time of existence. Most significantly, Lowe’s account identifies the will as a “spontaneous power” - an active, non-causal power whose exercise is never caused by external factors and which does not necessarily cause anything to happen. The will is a “two-way power” to choose to act or refrain from acting, and it is a “rational power” exercised in light of reasons. This understanding of will as a spontaneous power aligns perfectly with the theological understanding that Christ’s human choices were genuine expressions of freedom rather than predetermined outcomes. Applied to the DIM, this framework establishes that Christ possesses two ontologically distinct wills - a divine will and a human will - as separate token powers. These are not merely different modes or aspects of the same power, but genuinely distinct powers with different manifestation types. The divine will, as part of the divine attributes, is dispositionally exemplified by Christ through his instantiation of the kind Deity. The human will, as part of the human attributes, is occurrently exemplified by Christ through modes that directly characterize him.

This distinction addresses the core concern of dyothelite Christology: that Christ’s human will must be intact and operative for his humanity to be complete. Under the DIM, Christ’s human will functions as a genuine spontaneous power - capable of rational deliberation and choice - without being overridden by his divine will. When Christ prays in Gethsemane, “not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42), we see the authentic operation of his human will as a spontaneous power that freely aligns with the divine purpose, not through compulsion but through the perfect virtue of his human nature. The DIM further aligns with Maximus the Confessor’s crucial distinction between the natural human faculty of willing (thelēma physikon) and the gnomic will (thelēma gnomikon) characterized by deliberation and hesitation. Christ possesses a complete natural human will - a spontaneous power capable of genuine choice - but this will functions with perfect virtue rather than with the internal conflict characteristic of fallen human willing. Thus, the absence of volitional struggle in Christ does not indicate the absence of a human will, but rather the perfect functioning of that will uncorrupted by sin. This power-based conception also explains how Christ’s two wills can operate harmoniously without compromising their distinctness. Each will functions according to its nature - the human will willing human actions and the divine will willing divine actions - with each operation proper to its nature.

The operations remain distinct even as they function in perfect concert, just as Constantinople III affirmed that Christ’s human will “follows and does not resist or oppose but rather is subject to his divine and omnipotent will”. Furthermore, the hierarchical ordering of dispositional and occurrent exemplification in the DIM provides a metaphysical basis for understanding how Christ’s human will can maintain its integrity while being perfectly aligned with the divine purpose. His human will, as an occurrently exemplified spontaneous power, operates according to the proper functioning of human willing - responsive to reasons and capable of genuine choice - while receiving direction from the divine wisdom that he dispositionally exemplifies. This is not a case of one will absorbing or displacing the other, but of two distinct wills operating harmoniously according to their natures. Far from endorsing Monothelitism, the DIM extended with Lowe’s power-based conception of the will provides a robust philosophical foundation for the dyothelite position affirmed at Constantinople III. It maintains both the metaphysical distinctness of Christ’s divine and human wills as separate token powers and the perfect harmony of their operations under the direction of his one divine person. This approach avoids both the Monothelite error (which would compromise Christ’s full humanity by denying him a functional human will) and the Nestorian error (which would divide Christ into two separate agents). In sum, rather than collapsing Christ’s two wills into one, the DIM’s integration of Lowe’s power-based conception of the will provides the conceptual resources to maintain their distinctness while explaining their harmonious operation. This offers a sophisticated metaphysical grounding for the orthodox dyothelite position, expressed at Constantinople III, that Christ possessed “two natural wills or willings… not contrary to one another… but his human will following, not resisting or opposing, but rather subject to his divine and omnipotent will”. The DIM is indeed an orthodox (dyophysite and dyothelite) Christology.