I’ll have to go over Bill’s comments (and Joseph’s letter to him) some other time.
Trinitarians don’t always appreciate that the kenosis (pouring out, self-sacrifice) of the 2nd Person must be fundamental to the distinction of that Person in the deity of God: even at the level of God’s own eternal self-existence, the Son receives all things from the Father and does nothing except (analogically speaking) what He sees the Father doing. The act of creating not-God entities (if my metaphysical logic is correct) involves a concurrent but different self-sacrificial action of the Son (different from the self-sacrificial action of God’s coherent self-existence I mean), and that goes so far that any Incarnation personally as a baby of two natures would be less of a kenosis by comparison!
The pouring out of the 2nd Person in Incarnation, consequently, can go very far without losing the personal identity of the Son, even if in regard to the particular action of the Incarnation there are various mental and physical limitations.
In regard to any natural miracle at all, God is “doing” something in Nature in a limited way while “also” actively self-existing eternally as God transcendent to all natural space-times, and while “also” self-sacrificially keeping any not-God realities in existence. The Incarnation isn’t an exception to that capability, assuming we have already inferred (or are at least prepared to grant for sake of argument) that God acts particularly in any natural system at all. The Incarnation would rather be the example par excellance (or however the French spell it ) of that capability.
I’m leading out with this because my quick scan of Bill’s reply (and thanks for bolding his portions, Dave!) gives me a (perhaps mistaken) impression that he’s critiquing a point that Lewis used to stumble over, namely how can the Incarnation and also orthodox trinitarianism both be true if Jesus is so fully human (as the Gospels certainly testify) that He has human limitations? – wouldn’t that mean the Son inherently has only human limitations and characteristics, or that the Son stops existing as divine and starts existing as human and then goes back to existing as divine (so cannot be never-endingly divine, a necessary characteristic for the one and only God Most High)?
But I may have quickly misunderstood what Bill was after. I’m running a bit late already this afternoon and need to move along. Hopefully later!