The argument in its strongest form
The classical Christian defense of the Incarnation is not that Jesus is partly God and partly man, or that he alternates between divinity and humanity. Its strongest form is Chalcedonian: the one Person, or hypostasis, of the Son subsists in two complete natures, divine and human, "without confusion, without change, without division, without separation." Later, at the Third Council of Constantinople, this was developed against monothelitism: because Christ has a complete human nature, he has a human intellect and a human will; because he is the eternal Son, he also has the divine intellect and divine will.
On this account, the Incarnation is not a logical contradiction. A contradiction would require saying that the same subject is both omniscient and not omniscient, mortal and immortal, dependent and independent, in the same respect. But the orthodox claim is more qualified: Christ is omniscient, immortal, and independent according to his divine nature; he is limited in knowledge, mortal, and dependent according to his human nature. Thomas Aquinas, John of Damascus, Maximus the Confessor, and many contemporary analytic theologians have argued along these lines. The point is not to evade difficulty by wordplay, but to apply a standard logical distinction: opposite predicates may be true of the same subject if they are true in different respects.
The New Testament gives the material that led Christians to this formulation. On the one hand, some passages are genuinely strong evidence for a very high Christology. Thomas addresses the risen Jesus as "My Lord and my God" in John 20:28. Hebrews 1:8 applies the language "Your throne, O God" to the Son, while also saying in the next verse that the Son has a God who anoints him. Titus 2:13 is widely read by many scholars and translators as calling Jesus "our great God and Savior," though discussion of the Greek construction continues. John 1:1 says the Word was with God and was God, and John 1:14 says the Word became flesh.
On the other hand, the same New Testament portrays Jesus as genuinely human: born, growing, praying, suffering, obeying, learning, dying. Luke 2:52 says he "increased in wisdom." Hebrews 5:8 says he "learned obedience through what he suffered." Mark 13:32 has Jesus say of the day and hour, "no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." In Gethsemane he prays, "not my will, but yours, be done" (Luke 22:42). The classical doctrine tries to honor both sets of texts without flattening either.
Therefore, when Mark 13:32 says the Son does not know the hour, the Chalcedonian answer is that the Son does not know it through his human intellect. As God, he shares the Father's omniscience; as man, he possesses a finite human mind. Similarly, when John 1:48 depicts Jesus knowing Nathanael before meeting him, and John 2:24-25 says Jesus knew what was in man, these may be taken as moments where divine knowledge is manifested through the incarnate life. The same Person can operate through both natures.
What this defense does establish
This argument does establish something important: the Incarnation is not refuted by the bare observation that Scripture attributes both divine and human predicates to Jesus. If the doctrine is stated carefully, "Christ is omniscient" and "Christ does not know the hour" are not being asserted in the same respect. That is a real logical distinction, not an obvious trick.
It also explains why many traditional Christians resist readings that make either side merely apparent. If Jesus only appears limited, the humanity is endangered. If Jesus is merely a Spirit-filled man, the strongest Johannine and Pauline texts are not given their full force. The two-natures doctrine is an attempt to preserve the full range of biblical language: the Word becomes flesh; the Lord of glory is crucified; the Son prays to the Father; the risen Jesus is worshiped.
So the strongest internal critique should not say, "This is simply a contradiction." That is too quick. The better question is whether the distinction between person and nature, and between divine and human intellects, actually makes best sense of the biblical data, or whether it introduces a metaphysical solution that the texts themselves do not clearly teach.
The strongest reply
The strongest reply is that the Chalcedonian distinction removes a simple formal contradiction, but it does not remove all conceptual and exegetical tension. The issue is not whether one can attach different predicates to Christ "according to different natures." The issue is whether the New Testament itself presents the subject in that way, especially in passages where ignorance, dependence, and submission are attributed not to an abstract human nature but to "the Son" himself.
Mark 13:32 is the clearest example:
"But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."
The subject who does not know is not "the human nature of Christ" but "the Son." The traditional answer says that the Son does not know in his human intellect, while knowing in his divine intellect. That is possible within Chalcedonian categories. But it means that the sentence "the Son does not know" must be read with an unstated qualification. The text itself places the Son in a sequence beneath the Father with respect to knowledge: humans do not know, angels do not know, the Son does not know, only the Father knows. The force of the saying is comparative and relational, not merely anthropological.
This does not prove that the classical doctrine is false. It does mean that the doctrine must say more than Mark says. It must say that the Son knows and does not know the same hour, but in different intellects. The formal contradiction is avoided, yet the result remains difficult: one Person has access to the divine knowledge of the hour and also truly lacks that knowledge in his human consciousness. If the "I" speaking in Mark is the one Person of the Son, then the personal subject both possesses and lacks the knowledge, though not through the same faculty.
Two intellects and one Person
The doctrine of two intellects and two wills is meant to protect Christ's full humanity. A human nature without a human mind would not be complete humanity. Gregory of Nazianzus famously argued that what is not assumed is not healed; if Christ lacks a human mind or will, then human rational life is not fully assumed. That is a serious theological point.
Yet it raises another problem. In ordinary usage, a person is a center of consciousness, knowledge, agency, and will. If Christ has a complete divine intellect and a complete human intellect, and if he has a divine will and a human will, the question naturally arises: why is this not two personal centers? Classical theology answers that person and nature are not identical. The human nature of Christ is complete as nature, but it does not exist as an independent human person; it is enhypostatic, subsisting in the Person of the Word.
That answer is technically coherent within the system, but it is not obvious from the biblical narratives themselves. The Gospels present Jesus as a concrete personal agent: he prays, chooses, asks, learns, obeys, suffers, and entrusts himself to God. When Jesus says, "not my will, but yours," the dyothelite reading says this is his human will submitting to the Father's will, which is also the divine will shared by the Son. That reading has theological sophistication. Still, the text itself most naturally presents a distinction between Jesus and the Father, not an internal distinction between one of Jesus' wills and the divine will that he shares with the Father.
Again, this is not a knockdown disproof. It is an observation about explanatory cost. The doctrine can absorb the text, but it does so by adding a layer of metaphysical grammar: one Person, two natures, two intellects, two wills, one divine will shared with Father and Spirit, and one human will obedient to the Father. The question is whether that grammar is demanded by Scripture or constructed to reconcile divergent strands within it.
Knowledge, miracles, and omniscience
Appeals to Jesus' supernatural knowledge should also be weighed carefully. John 1:48, where Jesus says he saw Nathanael under the fig tree, and John 2:24-25, where Jesus knows what is in man, are significant. They show extraordinary knowledge and, in John's Gospel, contribute to the portrait of Jesus as more than a prophet.
But extraordinary knowledge is not the same thing as omniscience. Biblical prophets also receive hidden knowledge by divine revelation. A Christian reader may say that John's larger Christology makes Jesus' knowledge divine rather than merely prophetic, and that is a fair argument within John. Still, John 1:48 by itself does not prove omniscience. Conversely, Mark 13:32 by itself does not disprove all high Christology. The careful distinction is this: supernatural knowledge supports a high view of Jesus, but it does not automatically establish that his human consciousness possesses unlimited knowledge; explicit ignorance remains a real datum that must be accounted for.
Mortality, dependence, and predication
The same pattern appears with mortality. Classical Christians can say, without contradiction, that the divine nature is immortal and impassible, while Christ truly dies according to his humanity. Since death in traditional theology is not annihilation but the separation of body and soul, the death of Christ need not mean the destruction of the divine Son. This is one of the stronger parts of the Chalcedonian defense.
Yet the New Testament often predicates these experiences personally: Christ died; the Lord was crucified; the Son obeyed; Jesus prayed to God. The doctrine of communicatio idiomatum allows properties of either nature to be predicated of the one Person. That is why Christians can say "God suffered" or "God died" in a carefully qualified sense. But here too the qualification is doing substantial work. If one says "God died," one must immediately add, "not according to the divine nature." The statement is orthodox only when protected by the distinction.
Conclusion
The two-natures argument succeeds against a crude charge of logical contradiction. If the claim is precisely that Christ is omniscient according to his divine nature and limited according to his human nature, immortal according to his divine nature and mortal according to his human nature, then the opposing predicates are not applied in the same respect. That is a real answer.
What it does not establish is that the New Testament itself clearly teaches this metaphysical structure, or that passages such as Mark 13:32 lose their force. The text says that the Son does not know, while the Father does. The Chalcedonian reading can qualify that statement, but it cannot pretend the qualification is explicit. The doctrine is therefore not best criticized as simple nonsense. Its real vulnerability is different: it is a sophisticated theological synthesis that resolves tension by distinguishing person, nature, intellect, and will in ways that go beyond the ordinary language of the biblical texts.
For Christian theology, that synthesis may be judged necessary in order to hold together John 1:1, John 20:28, Hebrews 1:8, Mark 13:32, Luke 2:52, and Gethsemane. But as an internal biblical assessment, the conclusion should be modest: Chalcedonian Christology avoids formal contradiction, yet it does not by itself prove that Jesus' deity is the plain meaning of every text, nor that the Son's confessed ignorance is easily harmonized with omniscience. It shows coherence within a developed doctrinal framework; it does not remove the exegetical tension that made such a framework necessary.