492 FOURTH PEEIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
were chiefly concerned to guard the unity of Christ's person and work. They reasoned that, as Christ is but one person, he can only have one will ; that two wills would necessarily con flict, as in man the will of the flesh rebels against the Spirit ; and that the sinlessness of Christ is best secured by denying to him a purely human will, which is the root of sin. They made the pre-existing divine will of the Logos the efficient cause of the incarnation and redemption, and regarded the human nature of Christ merely as the instrument through which he works and suffers, as the rational soul works through the organ of the body. Some of them held also that in the perfect state the human will of the believer will be entirely absorbed in the divine will, which amounts almost to a pantheistic absorption of the human personality in the divine.
The advocates of Dyotheletism on the other hand contended that the incarnation must be complete in order to have a complete redemption ; that a complete incarnation implies the assumption of the human will into union with the pre-existing divine will of the Logos ; that the human will is the originating cause of sin and guilt, and must therefore be redeemed, purified, and sanctified; that Christ, without a human will, could not have been a full man, could not have been tempted, nor have chosen between good and evil, nor performed any moral and responsi ble act.
The Scripture passages quoted by Agatho and other advocates of the two-will doctrine, are Matt. 26 : 39 (" Not as I will, but as Thou wilt ") ; Luke 22 : 42 (" Not my will, but thine be done"); John 6 : 38 ("I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me "). For the human will were quoted Luke 2 : 51 ("he was subject" to his parents); Phil. 2 : 8 ("obedient unto death"), also John 1 : 43; 17 : 24 ; 19 : 28 ; Matt. 27 : 34; for the divine will, Luke 13: 34; John 5 : 21.
These Scripture passages, which must in the end decide the controversy, clearly teach the human will of Jesus, but the other
£ 110. THE DOCTRINE OF TWO WILLS IN CHRIST. 493
will from which it is distinguished, is the will of his heavenly Father, to which he was obedient unto death. The orthodox dogma implies the identity of the divine will of Christ with the will of God the Father, and assumes that there is but one will in the divine tripersonality. It teaches two natures and one person in Christ, but three persons and one nature in God. Here we meet the metaphysical and psychological difficulty of conceiving of a personality without a distinct will. But the term personality is applied to the Deity in a unique and not easily definable sense. The three Divine persons are not con ceived as three individuals.
The weight of argument and the logical consistency on the basis of the Chalcedonian Dyophysitism, which was ac knowledged by both parties, decided in favor of the two-will doctrine. The Catholic church East and West condemned Monotheletism as a heresy akin to Monophysitism. The sixth oecumenical Council in 680 gave the final decision by adopting the following addition to the Chalcedouian Christology : l
"And we likewise preach two natural wills in him [Jesus Christ], and two natural operations undivided, inconvertible, inseparable, unmixed, according to the doctrine of the holy fathers; and the two natural wills [are] not contrary (as the impious heretics assert), far from it! but his human will follows the divine will, and is not resisting or reluctant, but rather subject to his divine and omnipotent will.2 For it was proper that the will of the flesh should be moved, but be subjected to the divine will, according to the wise Athanasius. For as his flesh is called and is the flesh of the God Logos, so is also the natural will of his flesh the proper will of the Logos, as he says himself: ' I came from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the Father who sent me' (John 6: 38). .... Therefore we confess two natural wills and operations, harmoni ously united for the salvation of the human race."3
1 Actio XVIIL, in Mansi, XL 637 ; Gieseler, I. 540 note 15 ; Hefele, III. 284 sq.
2 rJi'o Qvaiitas dehfjcEis fjrnt de^uara h avrti, nai dvo QvciKac hepyeias aoiaipiruc, arptTTTur, apepioTuc, aovyx'i'Tws .... Kijpvrrofitv (duos natvrales voluntates et duas naturales operations indivise, inconvertibiliter, inseparabiliter, inconfuse . . . praedicam-iis) .
8 Comp. the following passage from the letter of Pope Agatho to the em peror who called the Council, which evidently suggested the framing of the