Was Jesus of two minds ... literally? (Part 1)

We continue our reflection on the paradoxical notion of God becoming incarnate in Jesus Christ (with special attention to the property of omniscience and finite human knowledge). Our last foray focused on the unsatisfying "reduplicative formula" which really does little more than label the paradox at issue. According to this "model" (if it can be called a model), Jesus was omniscient with respect to his divine nature but limited in knowledge with respect to his human nature. But what is this supposed to mean?

In recent years a model of incarnation has been proposed which offers a more substantial response to that question: the "two-minds" model of the incarnation memorably proposed by philosopher Thomas Morris in the 1980s. (Incidentally, this one-time Notre Dame philosopher has since enjoyed a second career as leadership guru "Tom Morris".)

Let's begin by going back to the 1970s when doctors were struggling with ways to treat patients suffering from debilitating epileptic seizures. At this time a radical treatment was proposed for these patients: perform a corpus callosotomy which consisted of severing the corpus callosum. (The corpus callosum is a band of neurons joining the two hemispheres of the brain and which enable the two hemispheres to communicate.) The thought was that if they were separated, communication would be inhibited and the intensity of the seizures thereby lessened.

The surgery seemed to work, for the intensity of the patients' seizures significantly decreased afterwards. But at the same time, the surgery also had a most unsettling consequence which is best explained with an example. Consider one of those patients, "Lucy":

Lucy is standing in front of her closet contemplating which dress to wear for dinner. Her right hand reaches out for the yellow dress, but suddenly the left hand bats the right hand away and then quickly grabs the blue dress. What is going on here?

Upon further study, it appeared that Lucy was of two minds ... literally. Amazingly, once the link between the corpus callosum had been severed, the two hemispheres of the brain could no longer communicate, resulting in two streams of consciousness.

In other words, the left hemisphere of the brain preferred the yellow dress, resulting in the right hand reaching for that dress. (The left hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of the body while the right hemisphere of the brain controls the left side of the body.) But the right hemisphere apparently preferred the blue dress and thus sent out the left hand in a mission to stop the right hand.

Bizarre? No kidding. But what does it mean? Few if any people reflecting seriously on the case thought that Lucy was now two (or, even more bizarrely, three) people. Rather, it seemed that the one person Lucy now consisted of two streams of consciousness which we can call Lucy 1 (the right hemisphere) and Lucy 2 (the left hemisphere).

Is it possible that the incarnation consists of something similar? On this account, Jesus is one person but consists of two streams of consciousness (at least during his earthly sojourn), an infinite omniscient mind (right hemisphere = divine mind) and a finite ignorant mind (left hemisphere = human mind).

Hmm, I find myself of two minds on this proposal. Perhaps it requires a closer look.