ABSTRACT

Christians confess that Jesus Christ was like us in all things, except for sin. However, this biblical and dogmatic doctrine provokes a follow-up question, namely, could Jesus of Nazareth have sinned? In other words, was the man Jesus peccable or impeccable? The first part of this paper presents and discusses an argument in favour of the impeccability view. The second part sketches three ways of evading the conclusion. Thereafter, a new attempt of reconciling Christ’s impeccability and Jesus’ freedom is explored: the “backwards constitution model” of the incarnation and the hypostatic union.