502 FOUKTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
patriarch of Constantinople. In answer to his first letter (634), he says: "Therefore we confess one will (d-styjua, voluntas) of our Lord Jesus Christ." * He viewed the will as an attribute of person, not of nature, and reasoned: One wilier, therefore only one will. In a second letter to Sergius, he rejects both the orthodox phrase : " two energies" and the heterodox phrase : <(one energy" (evspfsea, operatio), and affirms that the Bible clearly teaches two natures, but that it is quite vain to ascribe to the Mediator between God and man one or two energies; for Christ by virtue of his one theandric will showed many modes of operation and activity.2 The first letter was decidedly here tical, the second was certainly not orthodox, and both occasioned and favored the imperial Ekthesis (638) and Type (648), in their vain attempt to reconcile the Monophysites by suppressing the Dyotheletic doctrine.3
K.al ev 'QiXrjp.a 6/uoAoyoi>//ev TOV "Kvpiov 'I?y0. Xp. — unde el unam voluntatatem fatemur Domini nostri lesu Christi. Mansi, XI. 538 sqq. ; Hefele, III. 146 sq.
a Mansi, p. 579 ; Hefele, p. 166 sq.
3 The same view is taken by Neander, the fairest among Protestant, and by DSllinger, the most learned of modern Catholic, historians. Neander (III. 179, E. ed.; III. 360, Germ, ed.) says: "Honorius, in two letters, declared his entire concurrence (erkldrte sick ganz ubereinstimmend) with the views of Sergius, and wrote also in the same terms to Cyrus and Sophronius. fie too was afraid of logical determinations on such matters. It seemed to him alto gether necessary to suppose but one will in Christ, as it was impossible to con ceive, in him, any strife between the human and divine will such as by reason of sin exists in men." [" It seemed to him, as well as to Sergius, that a du plicity of will in one and the same subject could not subsist without opposition." From the foot-note.] "He approved, indeed, of the accommodation (o'utovo/uia), whereby the patriarch Cyrus had brought about the re-union of the Monophy sites with the Catholic Church. But as hitherto no public decision of the church had spoken of 'one mode of working/ or of 'two modes of working' of Christ, it seemed to him the safest course, that in future such expressions should be avoided, as the one might lead to Eutychianisrn, the other to Nestoriamsm. He reckoned this whole question among the unprofitable subtilties which endanger the interests of piety. Men should be content to hold fast to this, in accordance with the hitherto established doctrine of the church, that the self-same Christ works that which is divine and human in both his na tures. Those other questions should be left to the grammarians in the schools. If the Holy Spirit operates in the faithful, as St. Paul says, in manifold ways,
\ 113. THE HERESY OF HONORIUS. 503
The only thing which may and must bo said in his excuse is that the question was then new and not yet properly understood. He was, so to say, an innocent heretic before the church had pronounced a decision. As soon as it appeared that the ortho dox dogma of two natures required the doctrine of two wills, and that Christ could not be a full man without a human will, the popes changed the position, and Honorius would probably have done the same had he lived a few years longer.
Various attempts have been made by papal historians and controversialists to save the orthodoxy of Honorius in order to save the dogma of papal infallibility. Some pronounce his letters to be a later Greek forgery.1 Others admit their genu ineness, but distort them into an orthodox sense by a nonnatural exegesis.2 Still others maintain, at the expense of his knowledge and logic, that Honorius was orthodox at heart, but heretical, or at least very unguarded in his expressions.3 But we have no means to judge of his real sentiment except his own language, which is unmistakably Monotheletic. And this is
how much more must this hold good of the Head himself!" Xeander adds in a note: "Although the theory of two modes of working" [which is the ortho dox doctrine] "lies at the foundation of the very thing he here asserts, yet he carefully avoided expressing this." In the same sense, Dr. Dollinger, when still in communion with Rome, stated the doctrine of Honorius, and said (Fables of the Popes, p. 22G, Am. ed.) : '' This doctrine of Honorius, so welcome to Sergius and the other favorers and supporters of Monotheletism, led to the two imperial edicts, the Ekthcsis and the Typus.^
1 Bellarmin, and Bishop Bartholus (Bartoli) of Feltre, who questioned also the integrity of the letters of Sergius to Honorius (in his Apol. pro Honor io I., 1750, as quoted by Dollinger, p. 253, and Hefele, III. 142). Dolliuger de clares this to be '' a lamentable expedient."
2 80 Perrone, Pennachi, Manning. These divines presume to know better than the infallible Pope Leo II., who ex cathedra denounced Honorius as a heretic.
3 So Pope John IV. (040-642), who apologized for his predecessor that lie merely meant to reject the notion of two mutually opposing wills, as if Christ had a will tainted with sin (Mansi, X. 683). But nobody dreamed of ascribing a sinful will to Christ. Bishop Hefele and Cardinal Hergenrother resort substantially to the same apology ; see notes at the end of this section.