Eamon Younis: Two Wills In Christ? Contemporary Objections Considered In The Light Of A Critical Examination Of Maximus The Confessor’s “Disputation With Pyrrhus”

By Thomas A. Watts

[Thomas A. Watts recently graduated from the Th.M. program at Oak Hill Theological College, London, and is Curate at Christ Church Wharton, Winsford, Cheshire, U.K.]

The twentieth century saw an increasing dissatisfaction among theologians with Chalcedonian Christology. It was seen as being too reliant on Aristotelian metaphysics, which had long been out of fashion, and it was argued that it failed to do justice to the very human portrayal of Jesus, especially in the Synoptic Gospels. Much attention has been paid to discussing and defending the “Chalcedonian solution” itself.[1] Comparatively little attention has been paid to the findings of the three ecumenical councils that followed Chalcedon, in the period 451-787. The aim of these councils was to clarify and expound the Chalcedonian Christology in the face of continuing misunderstanding and error.

The findings of one of these councils, the Third Council of Constantinople (the Sixth Ecumenical Council) in 680, have been described as the “reductio ad absurdum” of Chalcedonian Christology.[2] The reason for this is the council’s condemnation of the teaching that Jesus had only one will (“monothelitism”), and its affirmation of the teaching that he had two wills (“dyothelitism”), a human will and a divine will, because of his two natures.[3] This, it is argued, reveals the problem with a one-person, two-natures Christology: it leads to apparently arbitrary decisions about whether things must be predicated of Jesus’ person or of his natures.

The aim of this article is to examine and evaluate the particular charge against Chalcedonian Christology that it is absurd to speak of Jesus as having two wills. We shall begin by outlining some contemporary arguments against two wills. We shall then turn to Maximus the Confessor, the main proponent of dyothelitism in the period leading up to the Third Council of Constantinople. In particular we shall examine in detail one work of his, the Disputation with Pyrrhus. The aim of this approach is twofold: first, it happens that the Disputation recounts a sustained debate on the precise questions that concern people today, and is therefore suitable for detailed study in this context; secondly, while short summaries of the work are available,[4] a more detailed exposition and evaluation has not been undertaken. Finally, we shall evaluate Maximus’s arguments and discuss how well they meet the contemporary objections that we have highlighted, paying due attention to the differences in contexts.

I. Maximum Controversy: Contemporary Objections Against Two Wills

We now list seven contemporary objections given against Jesus having two wills. For ease of reference later in the article, we shall number them as objections O1,O2, ... , O7.

The first objection given (O1) is that the NT never speaks of Jesus as having two wills, and so there is no biblical reason to do so. Moreland and Craig argue that

passages in the Gospels usually used as proof texts of this doctrine—such as Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane, “Yet, not my will but yours be done” (Lk 22:42)—do not contemplate a struggle of Jesus’ human will with his divine will (he is not, after all, talking to himself!), but have reference to the interaction between Jesus’ will (“my will”) and the Father’s will (“yours”).[5]

Jesus speaks of his own will in the Gospels, apparently distinguishing it from his Father’s (see also John 5:30; 6:38), but he never refers to his “wills” in the plural. Without the biblical warrant, how may we speak of Jesus having two wills?

Secondly (O2), it is argued that there is no such thing as a “will”; rather, persons engage in acts of willing. The ascription of two wills to Jesus, says Macquarrie,

proceeded on the false assumption that there is a faculty or organ of the mind called the “will” which has the function of making decisions. This misleading idea may have arisen because many languages have a noun (will, voluntas, thelema, etc.) which might seem to indicate some distinct “thing-like” part of our mental or spiritual equipment. But a little reflection on the use of language shows that the “will” is nothing but the activity of willing, and this is an activity of the whole person. The will is simply the self in action.[6]

This argument is related to the common objection that Chalcedonian Christology relies too heavily on Greek philosophical categories of thought and does not consider how the Bible itself speaks about Jesus. If by the will we simply mean acts of willing by a person, then it is absurd to speak of exactly two wills in Jesus.

This gives rise to the third objection (O3): two wills in Jesus would make him two persons. This objection is made on both psychological and theological levels. Psychologically, Macquarrie suggests that “two wills in one person would be a pathological condition,” implying some kind of split-personality disorder.[7] Similarly, Forsyth argues that “there could not be two wills, or two consciousnesses, in the same personality, by any psychological possibility now credible.”[8] Theologically, Moreland and Craig argue that the condemnation of monothelitism at the Third Council of Constantinople “seemed in danger of dividing the person of Christ.”[9] The implication of this is that ascribing two wills to Christ makes him two persons, and so leads to Nestorianism, which is precisely what Chalcedon sought to avoid and to anathematize. Similarly, Schleiermacher contends, “If Christ has two wills, then the unity of the person is no more than apparent.”[10]

The fourth objection (O4), implied by Pannenberg and Schleiermacher, is that two wills in Jesus would either oppose one another, which is unacceptable, or conform to one another, which makes one of them superfluous. Jesus’ wills could not have opposed one another, both because of the implied split personality disorder described above, and because it would seem to make Jesus sinful whenever his human will did not conform to his divine will. Yet if Jesus’ human will always conformed to his divine will, why then do we still speak about two wills? “One or the other will is always simply a superfluous accompaniment of the other.”[11] Surely his divine will was his only real will in any meaningful sense.

Corollaries of the previous two objections lead to the fifth objection (O5), which is that two wills in Jesus would compromise either his full humanity or full divinity or both. Macquarrie suggests that a person who wills with two wills cannot really be described as human, because the rest of the human race only has one will.[12] Similarly, Pannenberg insists that two wills in Christ opens up the possibility of dissent from the divine will which is a problem because “the basis for affirming Jesus’ divinity lies precisely in his unity of will with the Father in the execution of his mission.”[13]

The sixth objection (O6) claims that the arguments for two wills do not rule out speaking about Jesus as having one will in another sense. It might be thought that while there are good reasons why we might want to speak about Jesus as having two wills, there are also good reasons to say that he had one will, perhaps as a way of emphasizing Jesus’ volitional unity as a person.

Finally, the seventh objection (O7) complains that the debate over whether Jesus had two wills is an example of the worst sort of theological debate, affecting little of substance to the Christian faith. Macquarrie suggests that

one has got to ask whether the tendency to concentrate on doctrinal formulas has not diminished the existential and soteriological understanding of faith in Jesus Christ, and indeed whether the whole discussion has not been in danger of slipping into artificial disputation over minutiae and fine distinctions.[14]

Is this just a matter of theological point scoring? Is anything of any real consequence to normal Christians to be gained by engaging in this kind of debate? Our contention in this article is that the question whether Jesus has two wills is not irrelevant but vital, not just for our understanding of who Jesus is, but for our understanding of God and for salvation itself. The reasons for this contention will become clear as we examine Maximus’s Disputation with Pyrrhus.

II. Maximian Confession: Outline Of Maximus’s Disputation With Pyrrhus

1. Introduction To The Disputation With Pyrrhus

Maximus’s Disputation with Pyrrhus is an account of a debate that took place in 645 in Carthage between the dyothelite monk Maximus and the monothelite former patriarch of Constantinople, Pyrrhus. The unity of the Byzantine Empire against external military threats had become of paramount importance. Monothelitism (and with it monoenergism) had been proposed as a way of uniting the empire’s Chalcedonian majority with the monophysite minority of Armenia, Syria, and Egypt.[15] Whatever the implications for the security of the empire, Maximus was adamant that this was not a viable theological solution, as he argues in the Disputation. Maximus’s arguments led eventually to the anathematization of monothelitism and its proponents at the Third Council of Constantinople, the Sixth Ecumenical Council in 680. Maximus himself, however, did not survive to see the vindication of his position; he died in exile in 662, apparently having had his tongue and right hand cut off by zealous monothelites in Constantinople.[16]

The Disputation introduces itself as an account of the “recent inquiry into the agitations concerning ecclesiastical dogmas” held between Pyrrhus and Maximus in the presence of the patriarch Gregory.[17] It is presented as a record of the disputation in direct speech, alternating between Pyrrhus’s objections and Maximus’s responses. At several points, Pyrrhus appears defeated by Maximus’s arguments and concedes the debate thus far. He then changes the topic with a new objection. The disputation ends with Pyrrhus asking to be granted an audience with the Pope in order that he may recant his monothelite (and monoenergist) position. The disputation thus functions as a showcase for dyothelite arguments, and no substantial problems with them are admitted.

As we turn to examine the arguments given, we must note that Pyrrhus’s objections do not represent one coherent monothelite position. Rather, they seem to be an exhibition of every possible objection to dyothelitism that could possibly be labeled monothelite. Wolfson suggests that it is helpful to distinguish between “real” and “verbal” monothelitism. Real monothelitism argues that Christ has one will alone. Verbal monothelitism is more subtle: it argues that it is possible to speak of one will alone in Christ, in some sense, even if it is also possible to speak in another sense of two wills.[18] Both of these types of monothelitism can be seen in the objections made by Pyrrhus.

Despite the incoherence of Pyrrhus’s objections, it is possible to discern a structure in the text, based on the major points at which Pyrrhus concedes the debate. We may therefore divide the text into five main sections. In the first, Maximus answers real monothelite objections against the dyothelite position; these objections try to show that it is absurd to speak of two wills in Christ, and that the only possible alternative is one will. The second section turns to verbal monothelite objections, which allow that Christ has two natural wills, but protest that it nevertheless ought to be possible to speak of one will in some sense, or that it is wrong to be so dogmatic on the number of wills. In the third section, Maximus examines two positive arguments for monothelitism, which contain a mixture of real and verbal elements. The fourth section considers what the Fathers and the Scriptures teach, and discusses briefly some of the history of the controversy to that date. In the final section, Maximus insists on examining Pyrrhus’s arguments concerning the energies of Christ that he cites in support of monoenergism. The arguments here are similar to the arguments concerning wills, and we shall not explore them in detail as they are not relevant to our purposes here.

2. Outline Of The First Section Of The Disputation: “Real” Monothelite Arguments Against Dyothelitism

Maximus begins by explaining his charge against Pyrrhus: he is guilty of “conceiving one will of the deity and humanity of Christ” and of “propagating it through [the] novel Ekthesis.” The main problem with monothelitism, says Maximus, is that it implies the “irreverent conception” that God could will to eat and drink as man with the same will with which he willed the creation of the universe. Christ’s activity as man was blameless but human, and therefore not attributable to the same divine will that created the universe.[19]

Exactly what Maximus means by this will become clear as the Disputation unfolds. Pyrrhus then responds with a series of objections, which correspond roughly to objections O3 and O4.[20]

Pyrrhus’s first objection is that if Christ is really one person, then he must will as one person, and so he must have one will, and not two. Maximus replies that while Christ is one person, he is of course both God and man, and he exists as these two by nature. Does he then “will as God and as man, or only as Christ?” Since he is “nothing else apart from the natures from which and in which He existeth,” it follows that when Christ wills, he wills according to each nature, within the capability of each. As the two natures, rightly understood, do not divide the one Christ but rather preserve the distinction between the natures in the union, so also the “essential attributes, wills, and operations attached to those two natures” may be distinguished while preserving their union in the one Christ.[21]

Thus Maximus and Pyrrhus differ in what they understand as the seat of the will in Christ. Pyrrhus insists that a will must be attached to a willer, that is a person. Maximus attaches a will to each of the natures. This difference is significant. Maximus argues that attaching the will to the one person will have implications for the doctrine of the Trinity. If a will implies a willer, he says, then conversely a willer implies a will. Then if we confess one will in the Godhead, we will also be moved to confess just one person or hypostasis, which is the Sabellian heresy. On the other hand, if we confess three persons then we will also confess three wills, and with these three natures, since, he says, a distinction of wills implies a distinction of natures. To confess a Godhead of three persons with three natures is to uphold the Arian heresy.[22]

Pyrrhus makes a further common monothelite objection, which is that two wills in one person would necessarily oppose one another. Maximus asks why this should be the case. An opposition between two wills in one person could be either natural or caused by sin. If it were natural, then that would make God the “Author of the conflict [of wills],” which would be unacceptable. If it were caused by sin, then it would not be relevant in Christ’s case since he was free from sin. He concludes that “the Incarnate God hath no opposition of any kind in those wills proper to His natures, since no effect can result from a cause which doth not exist.”[23]

The discussion moves to consideration of what is meant by “will.” Pyrrhus objects that if will is attached to nature, then when a person’s human will is one with God’s divine will, a person’s human nature will also be one with God’s divine nature. This is an important objection because it leads Maximus to make a vital distinction between different ways in which we use the word “will,” which is relevant to objection O2.[24] Maximus distinguishes between two different Greek words for “will,” θέλημα and θελητόν.[25] The term θέλημα refers to the “creative and essential will of God.” The term θελητόν refers to the “object of that will.” More generally, Bathrellos notes that Maximus uses the term θέλησις as a synonym for θέλημα, and the term θεληθέν as a synonym for θελητόν.[26] θέλημα /θέλησις and θελητόν/θεληθέν relate to each other as the eye relates to what is being observed by it. The eye itself is distinct from what is seen; similarly, the faculty of the will is distinct from what is willed.[27] Therefore when a person’s human will is one with God’s divine will, it is not the faculty of will itself that is referred to, but the object of that will.

Pyrrhus, however, persists. He objects that if will is attached to nature, then when someone changes their will, then they will also change their nature.[28] Maximus responds as he did to the last objection: a change of will refers to a change in the “mode of employment” of the will (πῶς θέλειν), not a change in the will itself (θέλειν).[29] Just as the eyes do not change when they perceive something different, so the will does not change when it wills to walk or to drink.[30]

At this point, Pyrrhus introduces a further common monothelite objection, which is that a natural will would be compelled and not voluntary, because what is natural is compelled or necessary.[31] Maximus replies that it is not true that “what is natural is compelled.” Maximus reveals here his axiom that a rational nature is self-determining.[32] The alternative to this would be that “God—Who is beyond beings—and all beings with a rational and intellectual nature and which possess the faculty of will have involuntary motion, and only that which is without a soul and without a will have voluntary motion!”[33] We might think that this implies that Maximus held to a freedom of indifference for the will, but we shall see later in the Disputation that this is not the case.

Here Pyrrhus yields the debate thus far: “One should gladly accept what has been proven by this inquiry. And the argument . . . hath shown, with great clarity, that there are two natural wills in Christ.” In this first section we have begun to see answers to objections O2,O3, and O4.[34] Maximus has appealed to the Trinitarian implications of ascribing one will to Christ. He has made some important distinctions concerning the meaning of the word “will,” and defended the freedom of the natural will.

According to the distinction we described earlier, Pyrrhus’s arguments now turn from real to verbal monothelite objections.

3. Outline Of The Second Section Of The Disputation: “Verbal” Monothelite Objections

The objections of this section of the Disputation fall mainly into the category of objections O5 and O6.[35] Pyrrhus first objects that it should still be possible to speak of one synthetic will out of the two wills. There are some who have spoken of one “synthetic nature” arising from the union of the two natures. Could we not do the same with the two natural wills, and speak of one synthetic will in the union? Those who confess two wills would do so because of the distinction of natures; those who confess one will would do so because of their union in the one person. The difference, he suggests, is “mere vocabulary.”[36]

In reply, Maximus calls Pyrrhus’s attention to the sense in which the term “synthetic nature” is intended by the Fathers who use it. It is “not said in reference to some other [‘third kind’ of ] nature.” Rather, it is a way of speaking about the one hypostasis.[37] Maximus points out that strictly speaking “it is not possible for something synthetic to be designated by the same name as its components.” Furthermore, since the will is a natural property, a synthetic will would suggest that there is a synthesis of all the other properties of Christ’s two natures, such as “the Uncreate and the created . . . the Infinite and the finite . . . the Undefined and the defined . . . the Immortal and the mortal . . . the incorruptible and the corruptible.” Apart from the “ridiculous notion” that this implies, it also shows that a composite will could only characterize a composite nature, which would mean that the incarnate Son was not of one nature with the Father. To preserve this, the two natures must remain distinguished within the union, with them sharing only their common hypostasis.[38]

Pyrrhus then objects that the “exchange of attributes” taught by the Fathers means that Jesus may be said to have one will. He argues that the exchange of attributes means that it is possible to speak of more in common between the natures than just the hypostasis. Could there not be talk of one will as a result of this teaching? Maximus says this is a misunderstanding of the doctrine. In the exchange, he says, “The natural attributes of the two parts of Christ are exchanged according to the ineffable union, without a change or mixture of the natural principles.” That is to say, the attributes of one nature may be ascribed to the other because of the union of the natures in the one hypostasis, but this is not to say that the natures themselves are changed or mixed. We may speak of the man Jesus having a divine will, or the divine Son having a human will.[39] The two natures do not thereby collapse into one; neither does one nature take on the properties of the other by means of a literal communication directly between the natures in the later Lutheran sense. Indeed, Maximus says, “If thou sayest that there is a common will by the mode of exchange, then thou art really saying that there is not one will but two wills.”[40]

Pyrrhus responds to Maximus by arguing that Christ’s flesh was “moved by the decision of the Word Who is united with it.” Note the similarity here with the second half of objection O4.[41] Maximus’s response is emphatic: “Thou dividest Christ by talking like this!” This is because persons move other persons; they do not move natures. Speaking of Christ’s humanity in this way turns his human nature into a person who can be moved by the Word. Then the man Jesus is no different from those such as Moses or David, who were merely human persons, and who at times were moved by God and at those times “laid aside human and fleshly properties.” Thus Maximus is effectively accusing Pyrrhus of Nestorianism. This is particularly shrewd on the part of Maximus, since this is exactly the crime of which the monothelites would argue he is guilty.[42]

We should not speak of Jesus’ humanity as a merely passive instrument moved by God, says Maximus; rather, we should acknowledge Jesus acting in his human nature in active obedience to God. Jesus exhibited his full humanness at all times in his life. In particular, Maximus says, he exhibited what Maximus regards as the essence of being a created human being, an “inclination to cling to existence” and “a drawing back” from death.[43] Christ exhibited a fully human will when he willed to eat and drink in order to sustain his human life, and when he willed not to die in the face of death. This fear of death is not a sinful fear; it is a fear which is “proper to nature” because of the self-preservation inherent in human nature. It is to be distinguished from other fears which are “contrary to nature.” Thus Christ had a fully human will. Maximus is careful here to distinguish again between “principle” (nature) and “mode of existence” (hypostasis). Christ shares the same human principle of nature as the whole of mankind. Yet he possesses that nature in a “super-natural mode of existence” as the eternal Son. We are to think of Christ thirsting and shrinking from death as we would, yet not in exactly the same way, since his hypostasis was not human but divine.[44]

Although he does not refer to it directly here, elsewhere in his writings Maximus frequently refers to Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane in, for example, Matt 26:39: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want (θέλω) but what you want.” Maximus’s understanding of this verse helps to shed light on how he understood Jesus’ human will to be in perfect obedience of his divine will, and yet not thereby superfluous. The fullest example of how he understood Jesus’ prayer is found in his Opusculum 6, which is devoted entirely to this subject. It is a short work, directed against Gregory of Nazianzus’s understanding of the prayer, and it will be helpful to give a brief summary of it at this point.

Maximus begins by describing how Gregory of Nazianzus interprets Jesus’ prayer. Gregory will not apply the petition “let this cup pass from me” to Jesus as (human) Savior, since his (human) will was always aligned with God’s will; it was “completely deified.” Therefore, when Jesus says something that appears to resist God’s will, Gregory insists that he must at that point be acting as a man “just like us,” in the sense that our human wills are so often opposed to God’s will. At this point Christ used his human will to act as man in a different way from how he acted the rest of the time.[45]

This, says Maximus, makes no sense. If the first petition refers to his opposition to God’s will, then this is cancelled out by his second petition, where he aligns his will with God’s will.[46] It is not possible to characterize Jesus’ will at this point as simply resisting God’s will “just like us.” His will also submits to God, at which point he is not acting “just like us.”

Maximus says that we are therefore left with two choices. Either Christ is speaking according to his divine nature, or he is speaking as human Savior. Some might argue that he is speaking as God the Son, and that the second petition is designed to demonstrate that the will of God the Son is inseparable from the will of God the Father. It is another way of saying that they have the same will, in the sense of faculty of will, not simply the same object of will.[47] The problem with this position, Maximus says, is that it would mean that we must also apply the first petition to Christ as God. Christ is then heard in the first petition to will against our salvation as God, which is nonsense, because God’s will is for our salvation.[48]

The only alternative is to understand Christ to be willing both petitions according to his human nature as Savior. This prayer is then a key proof-text of the existence of two wills in Christ, and the second petition demonstrates how Christ aligned his human will to his divine will.[49] The first petition can be attributed to his human will without implying a disobedience on the part of Christ as man. It is not that in the first petition Christ was disobeying God, and in the second he was obeying him. It is that he was first expressing a natural human fear of death, and then secondly allowing his human will to be aligned to the divine will even to the point of death.[50]

Maximus concludes: “This is why, considering both of the natures from which . . . in which, and of which his person was, he is acknowledged as able both to will and to effect our salvation.”[51] Christ willed as God and obeyed as man, and nowhere is this so clear as in the garden before his death. Note again how this answers Pyrrhus’s objection that his human will would be superfluous if it simply obeyed his divine will at all times. It is not superfluous, because it is the means by which Jesus expresses his perfect humanity in perfect submission to God.

Returning to the Disputation, Pyrrhus continues his verbal monothelite objections. He suggests instead that the debate is unnecessary and too concerned with “mystifying verbal subtleties.” Why is it not enough to “confess only that the same Person is both perfect God and perfect man, and avoid saying anything beyond this”? After all, “if one says ‘perfect’, one signifieth thereby all natural qualities involved in that perfection,” and the debate is over.[52] This resembles the argument of Sergius’s Ekthesis.[53] It also resembles objection O7 in its suggestion that there is little to be gained from this debate.[54]

Maximus replies that this is contrary to both the Councils and the Fathers, who all declare that in confessing Christ to be perfect God and perfect man, we must also confess the properties of the two natures as well.[55] Pyrrhus suggests that if this is the case then discussion should still stop short of “wills,” since the Councils and the Fathers do not discuss them explicitly.[56] Maximus points out that the Fifth Council had also decreed that the teachings of “Athanasius, Basil, Gregory, and other approved doctors” should be received, and “in these men the doctrine of two innate wills is clearly taught and handed down.” Furthermore, the language of two wills is required in order to outlaw the teachings of Arius and Apollinarius, who both employed the expression “one will” in order to justify their respective heresies.[57] Doctrinal precision and detailed arguments over words are necessary here because of the nature of the error being refuted.

The real question at stake, therefore, is not whether the terminology of “one will” may be used, but whether it is right to speak of a natural will, and what precisely is meant by this. If the will is natural, then we are bound to speak of two wills. In addition to his previous arguments, Maximus offers one further, in order to prove that the will is natural. He argues that the “three forms of life . . . the vegetable, the sentient, and the rational” may each be distinguished from one another by “a specific creative principle,” as follows: plants by “the property of a productive and growing motion, the sentient by motion caused by impulse, but the rational by self-determination (αὐτεξούσιον).” In each case these properties are natural properties of the forms of life. For Maximus and the Fathers, self-determination is another way of speaking about the will. Therefore, just as growth is distinctively proper to plants by nature, and motion by impulse proper to the sentient, so the will is proper to the rational nature. If God truly became man then he took on a rational nature, and hence took on a human will. “And if this be so,” says Maximus, “then should the natural will [ever] be mentioned it will be offensive to the ears, not of the devout, but of heretics!”[58]

Pyrrhus once again concedes the debate thus far. He admits that “the wills of Christ are natural,” because the one same person “willed in a manner appropriate to each of His natures.” He agrees that the human will cannot be “digested” into the divine will, because that would involve the synthesis of what is created with what is uncreated. Just as the two natures are separate but united in the one hypostasis, so are the two wills.[59]

4. Outline Of The Third Section Of The Disputation: The Case For An Appropriated Human Will Or A Gnomic Will In Christ

Having accepted that there are two wills in Christ according to his two natures, Pyrrhus introduces the argument of “some in Byzantium” who maintain that two natural wills would necessarily oppose one another, and therefore that Jesus “had a human will by appropriation [only].” Note that the general question of whether two wills would oppose one another has already been answered in the first section of the Disputation. This represents a particular development of the monothelite argument, and is related especially to objection O6.[60]

Pyrrhus is clear that by “appropriation” he means a relative, temporary appropriation of a human will, rather than the essential appropriation of a human will at the incarnation.[61] The main reason he would have wanted to argue this would have been to explain Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, and his apparent distinction there between his will and his Father’s will. If Jesus had only one will, then one way to explain his resistance to the cup would be to say that at that point he appropriated a human will to demonstrate the resistance of man against God in the petition “take this cup from me.”[62]

In response, Maximus argues that he need only show (again) that “man is by nature a being that wills” in order to prove that this kind of appropriation is “blasphemy” and “heresy.” He gives a further five brief reasons for understanding the will as natural. Firstly, he argues that man’s will is “not acquired through teaching,” and so man must have a will by nature. Secondly, man naturally possesses a rational nature, and the rational nature is also self-determining, which is another way of saying that the will is a property of a rational nature. Thirdly, what distinguishes rational from irrational beings is the movement of nature in rational beings by their free will, and so man is naturally “a being endowed with will.” Fourthly, man is made in the image of God who is self-determined in his divine nature, and so men are self-determined and have a will in their human nature. Fifthly, the will exists in all men, and what is true of all men is true of the nature of man.[63]

Given, then, that man has a will by nature, those who argue that Christ’s human will was relatively appropriated must also argue that all his other natural properties were only appropriated in the same way. “It follows that the whole mystery of the Economy must be assumed to be an illusion,” and Christ was not by nature man at all.[64] This, Maximus emphasizes, strikes at the heart of salvation itself, because Christ’s submission in his human nature to God is the model for all Christians and the grounds of their own deification.[65]

This emphasis on the union of Christ’s human and divine wills prompts Pyrrhus to say that “those [who confess only one will] do not do so from an evil disposition or cunning, but only mean thereby to express the highest union.”[66]

In response, Maximus points out that this argument could also be used by the monophysites to support their contention that Christ had only one nature. Since Pyrrhus would not want to deny that Christ had two natures, it is clear that this is not an argument he should use lightly. Maximus therefore inquires exactly how Pyrrhus wishes to speak of one will in the dyophysite Christ. Pyrrhus replies that it is by the use of the term “gnomic (γνωμικός) will.”[67] The concept of the gnome or gnomic will in Maximus’s work is much debated and often misunderstood. It will be worth examining what he says here in the Disputation in some detail.[68]

Maximus defines “gnome” as “a particularized will (ποιὰ θέλησις),”[69] which holds fast externally to “some real or assumed good.”[70] Thus the gnome refers to particular acts of willing, and is hypostatic. This, however, is not sufficient as a definition of gnome. Maximus began the Disputation by showing that the will must be attributed to the nature, not the hypostasis; if gnome were simply another way of speaking of a hypostatic will then Maximus would return to those initial arguments at this point, but he does not. An examination of what he says will help us to understand both what he understands by gnome, and why it cannot be attributed to Christ.

First,

those who say that there is a gnomie in Christ . . . are maintaining that he is a mere man, deliberating in a manner like unto us, having ignorance, doubt and opposition, since one only deliberates about something which is doubtful, not concerning what is free of doubt.[71]

Maximus understands gnome as speaking of deliberation caused by ignorance of what is the right course of action. Human beings are subject to this ignorance and deliberation, but Christ is not, because

the humanity of Christ does not simply subsist [in a manner] similar to us, but divinely, for He Who appeared in the flesh for our sakes was God. It is thus not possible to say that Christ had a gnomic will. For the Same [humanity of Christ] had being itself, subsisting divinely, and thus naturally hath an inclination to the good, and a drawing away from evil.[72]

Thus, Maximus understands gnome to be associated only with a human hypostasis, and not a divine one. Human beings deliberate because they are ignorant of what is good, but God does not need such deliberation, because as man his humanity subsists in the divine Son, and so as man he knows what is good in a way that he would not if his hypostasis were human. Maximus points to Isa 7:15-16 (LXX) as proof that Christ did not have to choose between good and evil in order to choose the good.[73]

Elsewhere, Maximus clarifies that he thinks this deliberation between good and evil and ignorance of what is good is itself evil and a consequence of the fall.

It was only this difference of gnomic wills that introduced into our lives sin and our separation from God. For evil consists in nothing else than this difference of our gnomic will from the divine will, which occurs by the introduction of an opposing quantity, thus making them numerically different, and shows the opposition of our gnomic will to God.[74]

Before the fall, there was no deliberation between good and evil, and Adam’s natural human will inclined naturally and inevitably towards God and what is good. The fall introduced the possibility of evil, the ignorance of what is good, and therefore the uncertain deliberation between choices.

For Maximus, therefore, gnome refers to sinful human hypostatic deliberation between good and evil, caused by human ignorance of what is good. Maximus will not apply this to Christ, but he wishes to continue to affirm a natural human will in Christ. This will naturally seeks what is good, without the deliberation involved in the willing of those who are merely human.

We noted earlier that Maximus insists that the natural will is free, not compelled. This section has shown what he means by that. He holds that true freedom is not the ability to choose anything at all, but the natural inclination towards what is good without ignorance or hesitation. McFarland has argued that at this point Maximus is similar to Augustine: “Both see the will’s freedom lying in the turning of a rational being towards the natural object of its desire.”[75]

Maximus’s explanation of the natural human will in this way seems to imply that all human beings should naturally seek what is good. This leads Pyrrhus to inquire whether Maximus believes that virtues (that which is good) exist naturally in human beings, and if they do, why all people do not display the same virtues in equal degree because of their identical natures. Maximus confirms that he does mean that virtues exist in human beings by nature, but that “we do not all practice what is natural to us to an equal degree”; we do not necessarily do what is natural to us. This is because our senses have been clouded by “deception” (ἀπάτη), which means that we cannot perceive the virtues that inhere in us naturally. The answer to this problem is “ascetism,” by which the “things that are contrary to nature” are removed, leaving “only the things proper to nature.... Just as when rust is removed the natural clarity and glint of iron [are manifest].”[76] It is not quite clear what Maximus means by “deception,” but it is clear that he thinks that sinful human nature is only superficially tainted by rust that can be removed through ascetism.

We will need to evaluate Maximus’s argument later, but it is enough to satisfy Pyrrhus, who capitulates and admits that “those . . . who say that there was a gnomic will (γνώμη) in Christ greatly blaspheme.”[77] Maximus has convinced him that there is a right distinction to be made between a natural will and a gnome. We may not ascribe a gnome to Christ, because gnome is hypostatic deliberation caused by human ignorance of what is good. Christ did however have a natural human will. The natural human will inclines towards what is good, because virtues inhere in human nature.

Maximus has insisted on a very specific sense for the term γνώμη, and he pauses at this point to comment that this should by no means be thought to be the only way in which the term γνώμη is used. He has found “twenty-eight meanings of the word [‘gnome’] in the Holy Scriptures and in the Holy Fathers,” including “advice and opinion,” “counsel,” “decree,” and “belief or faith, or viewpoint.” This leads Pyrrhus to ask, “Then how is it possible for an indefinite term with so many meanings to be indicative of some one thing?” Maximus gives no direct answer.[78] An appropriate response to Pyrrhus’s question would probably be that just because a word has many meanings, it does not mean it can have any meaning, and Maximus has clearly indicated what he means by gnome in this debate.

Arguments similar to those that have come before then follow. The theme is clear: a single will in Christ would compromise either his humanity or his divinity or both, because that will would be either human, divine, or neither. A hypostatic will would characterize that hypostasis only. Then the Son would have a different will from the Father, which is contrary to the Fathers’ teaching. If you agree, as the Fathers teach, that God wills as God and not as Father, then his will is natural and not hypostatic. If you wish to adhere to the teachings of the Fathers, Maximus says, then you must say that the will is natural and not hypostatic.[79]

Pyrrhus concedes that Maximus has shown that the monothelite arguments for an appropriated human will or gnome in Christ will not stand. Given Maximus’s emphasis on the Fathers at this point, it is not surprising that attention now moves to a consideration of specific teaching from the Fathers.

Note that the arguments of this section have been relevant to objection O2[80]. In Maximus’s terms, this is a distinction between a natural (faculty of ) will, and a hypostatic gnomic will. It is the latter, not the former, that refers to human acts of willing. Yet it is the former, not the latter, of which Christ is said to have had two.

5. Outline Of The Fourth Section Of The Disputation: The Fathers, The Scriptures, And The Recent History Of The Monothelite Controversy

Pyrrhus argues that it is possible to find teaching among the Fathers affirming one will in Christ. He gives four from Gregory of Nazianzus (the Theologian),[81] Gregory of Nyssa, Athanasius, and Clement of Alexandria. In each case Maximus demonstrates that the monothelites are twisting the Fathers’ words. Of note at this point is that Maximus appears to cite Clement as giving a definition of the will (θέλησις) as “a mind desiring something.”[82] This will be significant below when we consider whether Maximus is guilty of the uncritical importation of Greek philosophical categories of the will. The details of the rest of the debate at this point are not relevant to our purposes here, and so we skip to the discussion of relevant passages from Scripture, which will help to meet objection O1.[83]

Maximus produces a list of texts, almost all of which concern the application of the verb “I will” (θέλω) to Jesus. First, he considers texts where the object of his will clearly pertains to his human nature. For example, several of the texts refer to Jesus willing to move from one place to another, or to the spatial presence of his physical body ( John 1:43; 17:24; 7:1; Mark 9:30; 6:48). In Matt 27:34, Jesus thirsts, and then wills (θέλω) not to drink the vinegar. Mark 7:24 speaks of Jesus’ inability to escape detection by the crowds despite willing (θέλω) to be hidden. This, says Maximus, is a sign of the weakness of Jesus according to his human nature; he is not omnipotent according to his human will.[84]

Next, Maximus discusses texts which speak of Jesus’ obedience. Jesus wills to keep the Passover in Mark 14:12, in obedience to the law. This was clearly a human obedience, Maximus says, since Jesus was subject to the law only as man, not as God. Then Phil 2:8 speaks of Christ becoming obedient to death.[85] This obedience must have been “willing” obedience, since unwilling obedience is no obedience at all. Such willing obedience, Maximus says, could not be true of Christ as God. He quotes Gregory of Nazianzus again: “Neither obedience nor disobedience are proper to the deity, according to the Fathers. For these things are appropriate to those in an inferior position, and under subjection.”[86]

Concluding these texts which prove that Christ had a human will, Maximus appeals to a well-known maxim of Gregory of Nazianzus. He notes that Adam sinned first with his will, which led him to eat. Thus the root of sin is disobedience. If Jesus had no human will, he says, “then I shall never be set free from sin . . . since what is not assumed is not healed.”[87] If Christ did not assume the created human will, then Christ is either indifferent to the plight of his creation, or he shows himself as “being subject to passion because He is either unwilling, or unable, to save completely.”[88] Once again, Maximus will not let the soteriological implications of denying a human will be forgotten.

Having argued from Scripture for a human will in Christ, he now shows more briefly that the Scriptures also attribute to him a divine will, pointing to Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem in Matt 23:37 and Luke 13:34.[89] Jerusalem had been killing prophets for far longer than Jesus had been alive, and yet he speaks as the long-suffering God of Israel who desired (θέλω) to call his people back to him. Maximus’s second example is John 5:21, where Jesus says, “Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he wishes (θέλω).” The word “so” indicates that the Son gives life according to the same nature as the Father.[90]

Pyrrhus agrees again that “nothing could be clearer than this proof that the wills are natural.” There is further discussion of events that have taken place in the recent history leading up to the disputation, which again need not concern us here.[91]

Following these discussions, Pyrrhus concedes once again. “Our discussion of the two wills is now complete,” he says.[92] Maximus insists on continuing the debate in order to show how his arguments concerning wills also apply to the energies (or operations) of Christ, that he had two energies, and not one. At the end of the Disputation, Pyrrhus is apparently the picture of contrition and sorrow. He heads to Rome to venerate the apostolic graves and recant his monothelitism before the Pope. The accounts of what followed the disputation indicate that his contrition was short-lived, and it was not long before he had recanted his recantation and reverted to his monothelitism.

III. Maximus Considered: Evaluation Of Maximus’s Arguments

We move now to evaluate Maximus’s arguments and consider how well they meet the objections of section I.

1. Maximus’s Distinction Between Faculty Of Will And Object Of Will

Maximus’s distinction between faculty of will (θέλημα/θέλησις) and object of will (θελητόν/θεληθέν) is very helpful in clarifying exactly what he thinks is doubled in Jesus. In arguing that Jesus has two wills, he does not mean that Jesus always willed two different (and possibly contradictory) things at once; rather, he means that he had the ability to will as man and the ability to will as God, as is shown by his helpful illustration of the difference between the faculty of sight and what is seen.

At this point we must consider Macquarrie’s objection that this reflects “the false assumption that there is a faculty or organ of the mind called the ‘will’ which has the function of making decisions.”[93] Can Maximus’s distinction be sustained? Or is it ultimately meaningless to speak of such a “faculty” of the will?

In addressing these questions, we must first consider the charge that Maximus was unduly influenced by Greek philosophy in his volitional terminology. Madden has surveyed the extensive work that has been done to trace the usage of the word θέλησις in the background to Maximus’s theology.[94] His findings are striking. We noted above that Maximus cited Clement’s definition of θέλησις as “a mind desiring something.” Given that Clement lived over four hundred years before Maximus, this would seem to point to the existence of a philosophical use of the term, on which Maximus could draw in his work. Madden finds problems with this, however. Maximus cites the Stromateis of Clement, and while the work is extant, there is no record of this quotation within it. Furthermore, Madden has found that θέλησις is used only twelve times in extant Greek literature before Clement, and in each case the use is clearly non-philosophical; it does not mean a “faculty (dynamis) of the soul.” He concludes that before Clement the word “had no defined content and was used in a vague intuitive sense drawn from the general volitional meaning of its very common parent verb, thelô.”[95] Yet Clement is not regarded as an original thinker. Madden argues that it is thus extremely unlikely that at this one point of his work (uniquely lost within his otherwise extant corpus) he would have produced such an innovative philosophical definition of the term θέλησις. There are similar problems with other citations that Maximus makes. Madden suggests that Maximus fabricated them in order to make his innovative arguments concerning the will seem more acceptable in a culture which honored the Fathers extremely highly. “While this may reflect ill on the scholarly ethics of the seventh century,” he says, “it serves also to emphasize the originality of Maximus’s volitional psychology.”[96]

In support of the originality of Maximus’s terminology, we note that the lack of the usage of θέλησις or θέλημα prior to Maximus contrasts with the widespread philosophical usage of volitional terms such as βούλησις (“wish”), which began with Aristotle. If Maximus had intended to follow an Aristotelian volitional framework, he would not have made a term that was foreign to Aristotle central to his volitional vocabulary; rather, he would have followed Aristotle’s own extensive framework.[97]

This is not to say that θέλησις / θέλημα had never been used until Maximus, nor that he did not use terms such as βούλησις and προαίρεσις, which were widely used in a technical sense. But his central use of θέλησις/θέλημα must be explained in some other way than as the uncritical usage of Greek philosophical categories. In the light of this, the best explanation for Maximus’s use of θέλησις/θέλημα is that he was seeking to do justice to the Bible’s account of Jesus.[98] The centrality of the Gethsemane prayer in Maximus’s work points to this likelihood, with θέλημα occurring in Luke 22:42 and θέλω in Matt 26:39. We saw above a list of other texts that Maximus pointed to, many of which involved the verb θέλω. The noun θέλησις occurs once in the NT (Heb 2:4, one of the twelve extant usages of the term in Greek literature prior to Clement, which Madden cited).[99] The term θέλημα is, however, very frequent. It is used in reference to the “will of God” (e.g., Matt 6:10; 7:21; 12:50; 18:14). Jesus speaks of his own “will” (e.g., Luke 22:42; John 5:30; 6:38). In these cases it could be argued that θέλημα refers to the object of will rather than to a faculty or ability itself, since, for example, when speaking about “doing the will of God,” Jesus might mean simply doing what God wills. Yet there is at least one example, 1 Cor 7:37, where θέλημα could be understood in the sense of a faculty of will: “But if someone stands firm in his resolve, being under no necessity but having his own desire (θέλημα) under control, and has determined in his own mind to keep her as his fiancée, he will do well.” Whether this understanding is accepted or not, it is clear that Maximus’s use of θέλησις/θέλημα has more to do with the portrayal of Jesus in the Bible than with Greek philosophy.

What, then, does Maximus think this θέλησις/θέλημα is? It is helpful to remember how he introduces the discussion of the will at the beginning of the Disputation. First, he argues for the existence of two wills in Christ from Christ’s function as man and as God. In his very first reply to Pyrrhus’s objection that Christ must will as one person and therefore have one will, not two, Maximus says that Christ is “nothing else apart from the natures from which and in which he existeth,” and therefore that he must “will as God and as man.”[100] Thus he will not separate the question of who or what Christ is from what he does. He argues for the existence of two wills from the fact of Christ willing according to each nature. This is no arbitrary ontology; it is clearly based on function.

Secondly, he clearly understands the will to be parallel to the “essential attributes” of nature.[101] As much as attributes are “things,” so is the will for Maximus, but it is not clear that he wishes to make much of this. Maximus refers to the will on at least one occasion as a “faculty,” δύναμις,[102] but this word itself does not necessarily imply a thing in the sense of a physical organ; it usually means an “ability” or “power.”[103] It seems to me that Maximus’s intention in using the language of θέλησις/θέλημα is to find a way of speaking about the fact that if Jesus is to be fully man and fully God then he must have the ability to will as man and will as God. In other words, he must have the power to do so according to each nature. If we accept the person–nature ontology, as we have for the purposes of this article, then we should have no problem in understanding the will in this sense. This understanding of the will, it should be noted, is very similar to Jonathan Edwards’s definition of the faculty of the will: “that faculty or power or principle of mind by which it is capable of choosing.”[104] If Maximus meant to give more ontological weight to the will than this, it is not clear from his writings, and we need not assume any greater ontological significance in order to make use of his volitional framework. With human nature comes the power or ability to will.

2. Maximus’s Understanding Of The Freedom Of The Natural Will

We saw above that it is not true that Maximus held to a freedom of indifference for the natural will. He understood true freedom to mean the ability to conform to one’s nature, and human nature was created to serve and obey God. He therefore refused the dilemma that the will is either entirely free to choose anything, including its own desires, or entirely bound such that the willer has lost all responsibility. In this way, as we have seen, he emulated Augustine’s position against the Pelagians. For both Augustine and Maximus, the will cannot be seen as something separate from the nature in which it inheres. This is why Maximus argues so strongly against the idea of a hypostatic will, because that would imply that the will stood somehow over nature, rather than existing as a property and function of it.[105]

What, then, does Maximus mean when he calls the will “self-determining”? To understand this term, we must evaluate Maximus’s analysis of the prayer of Gethsemane. His emphasis on Jesus praying both the first and second petition as man was new in the history of interpretation, but a vital insight. Maximus’s interpretation of the prayer sums up his understanding of the relationship between Jesus’ two wills, as well as the nature of the salvation Jesus brought, and the difference between his and the monothelites’ interpretations strikes at the heart of the issues at stake in the whole controversy.[106]

Concerning the first petition, Maximus indicates that this does not teach that Jesus opposed God’s will. Rather, the first petition is an expression of Jesus’ natural and sinless fear of death, which illustrates not his opposition to God’s will but his genuine humanness. This seems to fit far better than the docetic alternative that Jesus appropriated a human will for that moment, or that he acted at that point as “a man like us” where he did not elsewhere.

Given this interpretation of the first petition, Jesus’ alignment of his human will to the divine will in the second petition does not make his human will redundant, but rather is the fullest expression of Jesus’ humanness, as he submits as man to the Father. The prayer shows that Jesus both wills our salvation as the one who shares the divine will and effects our salvation in willing obedience as man.

The sense in which the human will is “self-determining” then becomes clear. It is self-determining in the sense that there can be no direct action on a person’s will by another person. All action on a person’s will is mediated via the person. The will is actualized only in the person in which it subsists. This was the context in which Maximus first introduced the idea of the will being self-determined in the Disputation, and it fits his definition of self-determination as being the difference between rational and irrational creatures. Rational creatures act normally without external impulse, whereas irrational creatures act only with external impulse. Self-determination in this sense is consistent with the idea of a will that is bound to act according to the nature in which it inheres.[107]

Maximus’s overall point is that Jesus’ human will is no mere slave to the divine will; rather, Jesus actively and freely obeys with his human will. But the one who obeys, Jesus, is the person of the Logos, who wills and obeys with his human will.[108] Thus, Maximus is able to refuse the dilemma that Jesus’ human will would either be opposed to God (since entirely free) or superfluous (since compelled). It is neither: Jesus actively obeys as man, maintaining the self-determination of the human will, yet acting according to the natural inclination of the will towards God. The idea that Jesus’ human will is superfluous because Jesus’ flesh and will was moved by the Logos was rightly attacked by Maximus as Nestorian, as we saw above.

Chalcedonian theologians were not always as careful as Maximus on this. Pope Leo’s Tome, which was one of the documents of the Council of Chalcedon, says the following:

Each “form” [nature] does the acts which belong to it, in communion with the other; the Word, that is, performing what belongs to the Word, and the flesh carrying out what belongs to the flesh; the one of these shines out in miracles, the other succumbs to injuries.[109]

Without qualification, this could be heard as Nestorian, because the natures are presented as agents in themselves. There is evidence that some of those present at the Council of Chalcedon were unhappy with this form of words for this reason.[110] Yet, rightly understood, it makes no sense to speak of nature acting, and so any talk of nature acting must be understood as referring to the person in whom the nature subsists.[111] Thus, it would be wrong to dismiss Leo’s words as implying a Nestorianism on his part, but it is clear that they are open to misinterpretation. Maximus’s emphasis on the person of the Logos actively willing according to each nature guards against this problem.

3. Maximus’s Soteriological Arguments

Maximus’s understanding of the freedom of the will that we have outlined leads naturally to the soteriological implications that he sees if Jesus is denied both a divine and a human will. The paradigm that “the unassumed is unhealed” is central here. If Jesus did not have a human will, that is, if he did not have the power to choose as man, then he was not fully human. And if he did not have the power to choose as man and therefore to obey as man, he was not truly the second Adam who stood in Adam’s place and obeyed where Adam did not. Although this observation is brief both in Maximus’s exposition and in our evaluation here, it is the most immediately clear reason that we must maintain that Jesus has two wills and not one. It shows that those who object that this debate is an irrelevant quarrel over words have not even begun to understand what the debate is about.

This has particular application against the caricature of the doctrine of penal substitution as “cosmic child abuse,” where the vindictive Father looks for someone to punish and finds his innocent unwilling Son.[112] In order to guard against this misunderstanding of the atonement, it is vital to maintain the active willing obedience of Jesus in his death.[113]

4. Maximus’s Trinitarian Arguments

We note next the Trinitarian arguments that Maximus invokes to defend two wills in Christ. Whatever is said about Christ is said also about God, particularly when the language of person and nature is involved.[114] Thus, Maximus is quite correct to point out that if we confess one will in Christ because he is one person then we will have to do the same in the Godhead, and either affirm one will and consequently one person (Sabellianism) or three persons and consequently three wills (which, he claims, is Arianism).

It seems clear that we must avoid the Sabellian consequences of his dilemma, and that we must continue to affirm three persons in the Trinity. It is less immediately clear, however, how three wills in the Trinity would necessarily be a problem. It might be thought that we could run the kind of arguments that Maximus has used for two wills in Christ to defend three wills in the Trinity: the three persons would always act together and inseparably, and each would never will contrary to the other two. Is Maximus’s insistence that there are two wills in Christ and one will in the Trinity a purely arbitrary way of arguing things?

The sense of unease is compounded when we consider Maximus’s rejection of the idea of obedience for the eternal Logos in, for example, his interpretation of Phil 2:8, following Gregory of Nazianzus. Against Maximus and Gregory, there are good reasons why one might want to speak of the eternal Son submitting to and obeying his Father.[115] First, this seems to be the language of Jesus himself in, for example, John 6:38, where he says, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.” The implication is that there was a distinction in the roles played by the Father and the Son at the point of the incarnation: the Father sent, and the Son obeyed, not doing his own will but the will of his Father. The language of “coming down from heaven” as well as the language of the Father “sending” the Son seem to prohibit the interpretation of this text as applying only to the incarnate Son, and perhaps therefore only to his human nature. (Note that Maximus does not discuss this text in the Disputation, and I am not aware that he does so elsewhere.) Secondly, the incarnation clearly reveals the eternal loving relationship between the Father and the Son, which seems in the economy to involve submission of the Son to the Father (and, as Letham notes, we can and should argue this without any necessary hint of subordination in status for the Son).[116] If there is nothing about the Son’s submission to the Father in the economy that is true eternally, in what sense is God truly known in the economy?[117]

In the light of this, it seems that we should preserve some understanding of the Son’s eternal submission to the Father.[118] Yet Maximus has argued strongly that the doctrine of two wills in Christ, according to his two natures, implies one will in the Trinity, according to the one nature. Does one will in the Trinity allow for a distinction in role between the Father as sender and the Son as obeyer in eternity?

We note first that the “will of God” is usually treated in systematic theology in relation to the attributes of the Godhead and the works ad extra.[119] Alongside this, the distinction in roles among the persons is usually explained by the difference in relations between the three.[120] Thus, it may be enough to defend the Son as eternally submitting to the Father simply by appealing to the relations themselves; submission is a property of Sonship but not of Fatherhood. The lack of discussion concerning how the one will fits into this may indicate that the eternal submission of the Son to the Father does not relate to the will of the Godhead. Yet it seems that this need not be the case, precisely because of the distinction between person and nature, and between willer and will which Maximus has outlined. There need not be a one-to-one correspondence between will and willer, as Maximus showed with Christ: there is one willer, but two wills. In the same way, in the Trinity there is one will, but three willers. Just as Christ’s “ability to will as man” is actualized in his hypostasis as specific acts of willing, so in the Trinity the one “ability to will as God” is actualized in and by the three persons. Precisely because the one will does not refer to specific acts nor to specific agents of willing, we may distinguish between the willing of the Father and the Son, even though what they will is the same thing at all times because of the one will. Thus, when the Father wills to send the Son and the Son obeys, the action is one and the will is one, but the Father and the Son have different perspectives on the same action, since they are distinguished as agents. The lack of discussion of this among scholars prompts us to be careful at this point, but this seems to be a valid conclusion from what we have seen.

We see, therefore, that arguing for two wills in Christ and one will in the Trinity because of the natures, rather than one will in Christ and three wills in the Trinity because of the persons, is not arbitrary. Will must be attached to nature because it is a natural thing; it is an “ability to will,” not concrete acts of willing. To argue for hypostatic wills is to confuse that “ability to will” with those concrete acts of willing, and in the case of three wills in the Trinity this would indeed imply Arianism, as Maximus argues. Maximus is quite right to use the Trinitarian arguments in this way, in spite of our reservations on the specific point of obedience within the Trinity.

5. Maximus’s Arguments Against A Verbal Monothelitism

In the introduction to section II we distinguished between real and verbal monothelitism. We have seen that Maximus made a strong case for denying a real monothelitism and insisting that Jesus had two wills, not one, in the sense that he was able to will as both man and as God. Yet, as we saw from Pyrrhus, there was nevertheless the question whether there is a sense in which it would still be possible to speak of Jesus as having one will.

Maximus dealt well with the suggestion that the exchange of attributes could provide a way of speaking about one will. He also argued successfully against the idea of thinking of a synthetic will, composed of the two wills, yet construed as one. It is not possible to give the same label to the parts and the whole, as was clear in the debate over hypostasis and nature. The will is a property of nature, and the hypostasis alone gives the unity between the natures and their properties.

We note here that Bathrellos takes up this point at the end of his thorough study of person, nature, and will in Maximus. Having argued strongly and convincingly for the correctness of dyothelitism over against monothelitism, in the final chapter he asks whether we might preserve the unity of Jesus “on the volitional level” with some kind of “legitimate monothelite terminology.” His reasons for this are that despite the one-person, two-natures distinction, there were Chalcedonian theologians who were happy to speak of one nature (and one energy), carefully defined and understood, as we saw in the Disputation.[121]

If we understand will as a property of nature, however, and as the ability to will according to that nature, it is hard to see why it is necessary to find unitary terminology beyond the unity of the one hypostasis. Jesus is one willer who wills in two natures with the wills of those natures. Bathrellos argues that unity in the willer is not sufficient to safeguard Jesus’ volitional unity, because of the way that Leo is able to speak of the natures themselves acting and willing.[122] But we saw that in and of itself Leo’s formula is unhelpful, and must be understood as referring back to the person who wills. It is the hypostasis that provides the unity for the two wills, just as it does for the two natures. As Bathrellos acknowledges, his discussion amounts to no more than a “tentative exploration of the question.”[123] His failure to supply any viable suggestions for a legitimate monothelite terminology seems to be a further indicator that the attempt is fruitless.

6. Maximus’s Arguments Concerning Gnomic Will

Maximus’s denial of a gnomic will in Christ was important in his context because it defended the fact that Jesus was fully human with a fully human will, yet without sin, against the implications of the monothelite position. We recall that for Maximus, the gnomic will, or gnome, was sinful human hypostatic deliberation caused by ignorance of the right course of action to follow in a given situation. By contrast, the natural will inclines naturally towards the good. In sinful human beings, the natural will is suppressed because of the deception that has entered the soul through the senses, and thus humans are unable to choose the good, and resort to gnomic will and the process of ignorant decision making. Gnomic will, it must be stressed, is not some alternative faculty in human nature. It refers instead to the particular hypostatic acts of willing in a sinful human being. Maximus’s definition of it as ποιὰ θέλησις, “particularized will,” shows that he understands it as the perverted employment of the natural will in a particular hypostasis.

It might be thought that Maximus’s denial of a gnomic will in Christ means that Christ is less than fully human. Maximus would certainly deny this and would appeal to his identification of the gnomic will as sinful to refute this charge, in the same way that the denial of a sinful human nature to Christ does not mean he is sub-human. But we should ask if there are nevertheless aspects of genuine sinless humanness contained in Maximus’s category of gnomic will, which are then lost to his understanding of Christ’s human nature.

We might imagine that Maximus’s denial of ignorance in Christ according to his human nature is in this category, because ignorance is surely a part of sinless human experience. It also does not seem to account for the biblical data: for example, Christ was ignorant of the date of his own return (Mark 13:32). Yet this is probably a misunderstanding of Maximus, since the ignorance that he refuses to apply to Christ is a culpable ignorance of what is right rather than a blameless ignorance of the date of his return, which the Fathers in general were happy to ascribe to his human nature.[124] This would seem to be in the same category as Jesus’ inability to be physically present in two places at once because of the limitations of his human body.

If Maximus is correct to deny culpable ignorance to Christ, what about his denial of hesitation and struggle in the process of Christ’s human willing? Does this remove Christ too far from the real human experience of temptation and struggle with sin?[125] We know that Maximus affirmed some kind of sinless struggle in Jesus with his natural human fear of death, but I am not aware of what he thought about the more difficult case of Jesus’ temptation by the devil. John of Damascus held that in the wilderness “the Lord repulsed the assault and dispelled it like vapour,” which suggests that he had little time for the idea of any struggle in Christ at this point.[126] It is quite possible that he reflects Maximus’s thought on this. Yet in any case, we would only wish to affirm a sinless struggle with temptation in Jesus, which differed from our own because of the lack of a sinful nature in him and the presence of a sinful nature in us.[127] While Maximus may have denied such a struggle, it is not clear that it is fatal to his case to affirm it in this way.

Thus, within Maximus’s own framework his distinction between gnomic and natural will seems sound. Is the distinction one that we should adopt today? I would suggest not, for two reasons. First, the distinction between natural and gnomic will is not one found in Scripture. Maximus lists the twenty-eight different meanings that he found for γνώμη in Scripture and the Fathers, yet not one of them is his own! In contrast with Maximus’s use of θέλησις/θέλημα, which we have seen is consistent with Scripture, we should be cautious of adopting his use of γνώμη without good reason.[128]

Secondly, we should note that behind Maximus’s framework of natural and gnomic will stands his understanding of anthropology and sin, with which there are some problems. He understands “virtues” as inhering naturally in human beings, covered only by the rust of deception, which needs to be removed to reveal the “glint of iron,” the natural virtues, that lie beneath. He seems to imply that the human natural will is bound only by external forces, and that if only these forces can be removed by the practice of “ascetism,” then all will be well. This does not fit with the Reformed and biblical picture of sin as totally depraving, issuing from the heart. Human beings do not need the rust removed from their sinful natures; they need an entirely new nature.

It is arguable that this understanding of human nature is not integral to his distinction between gnomic and natural will; the distinction would stand without it and remain helpful in his context. Yet it seems to me that if we begin with a Reformed and biblical view of human nature then we can simplify the distinction between Christ’s human willing and sinful human willing for our context today, while retaining Maximus’s important insight that the action of the will is always according to nature. Human nature in sinful human beings is fallen and has a bound natural human will which, because of the nature in which it inheres, no longer seeks what is good but what is sinful and contrary to God’s will. Subsisting in a human hypostasis, this will can only be employed against God, until the human heart is renewed and the will is freed from its bondage so that it can obey God as it was created to do. In contrast to this, Christ took on an unfallen nature at the incarnation, with an unfallen will, which naturally seeks God as it was created to do. Maximus’s denial of gnomic will in Christ equates to a denial that he had a sinful nature. Maximus’s affirmation of a natural will in Christ equates to an affirmation that his human nature was sinless and always inclined towards God.

7. Maximus And Contemporary Psychology

What of the objection that the idea of two wills in Jesus is made to look ridiculous by the insights of modern psychology? The claim is that unless we want to imply that Jesus had some kind of “pathological condition,” then we must affirm one will alone.

In considering how Maximus’s arguments might or might not be relevant here, we must resist the temptation to assume that Maximus’s understanding of person and hypostasis equates to what modern psychologists understand by person and personality.[129] Williams has argued that what is understood today as “personality” is best equated with human nature in the Fathers’ scheme, rather than with the hypostasis.[130] Similarly, we must not forget that the hypostasis of Jesus was the divine hypostasis of the Logos, and it is to him, not to a human hypostasis, that two natures and wills are ascribed.[131] Modern psychologists’ concerns about split personality therefore do not seem to be relevant, based as they are on the psychology of human beings. Jesus’ human nature is complete and undivided. It is quite reasonable to assume that Jesus had a full human personality, including a human mind with human thoughts, but beyond that, it seems that it is both unwise and unnecessary to speculate concerning his personal psychology. As Mascall said, “It is indeed both ridiculous and irreverent to ask what it feels like to be God incarnate.”[132] For this reason, it seems to me that the attempts to defend a Chalcedonian Christology by appealing to “two minds” models of the incarnation, though valiant and well intentioned, are unhelpful.[133]

IV. Conclusion: Confessing Maximus

In conclusion, we shall consider each of the objections of section I, and give a response to each that summarizes our examination and evaluation of Maximus’s arguments.

1. Objection O1: The NT Never Speaks Of Jesus As Having Two Wills.

This objection has been met by considering the NT data. Maximus’s interpretation of the Gethsemane prayer of Matt 26:39 as referring to Jesus’ human will as distinct from his divine will, the will of the Father, was found to be correct. Jesus was also found to refer to his own human will in John 6:38. In addition to this, we considered Maximus’s use of texts which speak of Jesus willing human and divine activities, and concluded that these must refer to human and divine wills.

2. Objection O2: There Is No Such Thing As A “Will”; Rather, Persons Engage In Acts Of Willing.

This objection was met by Maximus’s distinction between faculty and object of will. The potential accusation that Maximus imported Greek philosophical categories into his understanding of the will was found to be groundless. When understood as “ability to will,” which conformed with Edwards’s definition, the faculty of will was seen not necessarily to mean “some distinct ‘thing-like’ part of our mental or spiritual equipment.” Jesus is ascribed a human faculty of will in order to defend his full humanity. If he did not assume a human will, then he did not heal the human will. Then Adam’s disobedience is not undone, and mankind is not fully saved. We also saw that to speak of will as only hypostatic or particular acts of willing implies that the will is free to act against nature, whereas it is in fact bound to act according to the nature in which it inheres.

3. Objection O3: Two Wills In Jesus Would Make Him Two Persons.

This objection was found to be groundless, on both the psychological and theological levels. Psychologically, it was seen that it is inappropriate to apply human psychological models to the person of the divine Logos, whether in defense of or against two wills. Jesus had two wills, but only one human will, and thus as a human being had an entirely undivided and normal personality.

Theologically it was seen that once the faculty of will is rightly understood, it is appropriate to ascribe it to nature, not person. The agent of the wills, however, is one, not two, and this protects against the accusation of Nestorianism. The accusation of Nestorianism was found to apply instead to the position that holds that Jesus’ humanity was a passive instrument of the divine will. The alternative, that Jesus had one will, was found to be problematic for the doctrine of the Trinity, while two wills in Jesus was found to be entirely consistent with it, with one modification to Maximus’s understanding of obedience within the Trinity.

4. Objection O4: Two Wills In Jesus Would Either Oppose One Another, Which Is Unacceptable, Or Conform To One Another, Which Makes One Of Them Superfluous.

The dilemma of a human will that either opposes the divine will or conforms superfluously was refused. Jesus’ human will was never at odds with the divine will, except in cases such as his blameless fear of death in the garden of Gethsemane. Yet Jesus’ human will was no passive instrument of the divine, because this would imply a Nestorian separation between the person of the Son and his own flesh. Jesus’ human will was active in obedience at all times as the Son obeyed the Father according to his humanity. It is meaningful and vital to speak of such obedience in the Son with a human will, because without it, Jesus could not have secured our salvation from the disobedience of sin.

5. Objection O5: Two Wills In Jesus Would Compromise Either His Full Humanity Or Full Divinity Or Both.

Two wills in Jesus were found to compromise neither his divinity nor his humanity, but rather two wills are necessary to affirm them both. Jesus’ two wills are not two human wills, and thus it is not true that he cannot really be described as human because of the two wills. The logical conclusion of this position would be that Jesus was not fully human because he was also by nature God. Similarly, the existence of Jesus’ human will does not endanger his unity of will with the Father and thus threaten his divinity. In his divine will, he is entirely united with the Father because they share the same faculty of will. In his human will, he obeys the Father perfectly, which only adds to the unity of will between the Father and the Son.

In addition to this, the idea of one will in Christ threatens his humanity if that will is divine, his divinity if that will is human, and both his divinity and humanity if that will is neither divine nor human or some composite of the two.

6. Objection O6: The Arguments For Two Wills Do Not Rule Out Speaking About Jesus As Having One Will In Another Sense.

The idea of speaking of one will by the exchange of attributes was successfully refuted by Maximus. We also used Maximus’s arguments to refute the idea of and necessity for a “legitimate monothelite terminology” as proposed by Bathrellos. Finally, we examined Maximus’s arguments against ascribing a single gnomic will to Christ. We found that though he made helpful distinctions which enabled him to affirm that Jesus took on a fully human yet sinless nature and will, his arguments concerning virtues inherent in human nature did not account fully for the biblical picture of total depravity due to sin. While Maximus may have been bound to speak in terms of the gnomic will because of the language of his opponents, we concluded that today we would do better to speak in terms of fallen and unfallen nature and will. His overall argument is sustained: there is no way of affirming one will in Christ without compromising either his divinity or humanity or both.

7. Objection O7: The Debate Over Whether Jesus Had Two Wills Is An Example Of The Worst Sort Of Theological Debate, Affecting Little Of Substance To The Christian Faith.

Our examination and evaluation of Maximus’s arguments has shown that this objection is profoundly mistaken. Affirming one will in Christ is a threat to his full humanity and divinity. It is in turn a threat to the doctrine of the Trinity. It is finally a threat to salvation itself.

By contrast, if we affirm two wills in Christ then we affirm one person who was fully God and fully man, exhibiting the full features of what it means to be divine and what it means to be human, sin excepted. We in turn affirm the active obedience of Christ as man, doing what Adam failed to do, becoming obedient even to death on the cross. The eternal Son took on human flesh to die willingly in our place. Therein lies our salvation.

Our examination of Maximus’s Disputation with Pyrrhus has shown that all of the contemporary objections to two wills in Christ are groundless. It is striking that all of the contemporary authors cited deny two wills in Christ with little sustained argumentation, and no serious engagement with the tradition. This study has therefore shown the importance for today of being acquainted with the details of the christological debates of the past, messy though they were at times. We took issue with some of the details of Maximus’s position, but overall his approach was found to be very fruitful in responding to contemporary objections. In contending for the faith today, we cannot afford to neglect critical, careful, and creative engagement with those who have gone before us.

This article is modified from a dissertation submitted as part of the requirements for the M.Th. degree at Oak Hill Theological College, London, in 2008. I am grateful to Dr Garry Williams for his assistance in supervising the project, and to Dr. Robert Letham for his advice on seeking to publish the article.

Notes

See, e.g., Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 1994), 529-67; John McIntyre, The Shape of Christology: Studies in the Doctrine of the Person of Christ (2d ed.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), esp. 307-36; Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Change? (Still River, Mass.: St Bede’s Publications, 1985), 32-66.
John Macquarrie, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought (London: SCM, 1990), 166.
The words “monothelitism” and “dyothelitism” and their associated adjectives are alternatively spelt “monotheletism” and “dyotheletism.” The latter reflect the Greek root, θέλημα, but the former are the more usual spellings. Cf. Ivor J. Davidson, “‘Not My Will but Yours be Done’:The Ontological Dynamics of Incarnational Intention,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7 (2005): 178 n. 2.
See, e.g., Harry A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers: Faith, Trinity, Incarnation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), 484-89; Demetrios Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of St Maximus the Confessor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 80-82.
J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2003), 611.
Macquarrie, Jesus Christ, 166-67.
Ibid., 166-67.
P. T. Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ (London: Independent Press, 1909), 319; cf. H. R. Mackintosh, The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1913), 470.
Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 602.
Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith (ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart; London: T&T Clark, 1999), 394.
Ibid.; cf. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man (trans. Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe; London: SCM, 1968), 294.
Macquarrie, Jesus Christ, 166.
Pannenberg, Jesus, 294.
Macquarrie, Jesus Christ, 166.
Monoenergism is the view that Christ had only one activity or energy. The arguments for and against it are similar to the arguments for and against monothelitism.
For a detailed history of the events surrounding the Disputation and leading up to the Sixth Ecumenical Council, see Leo Donald Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325-787): Their History and Theology (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1983), 258-89; cf. Hubert Jedin, ed., The Imperial Church from Constantine to the Middle Ages (vol. 2 of History of the Church; trans. Anselm Biggs; London: Burns & Oates, 1980), 421-514. See also The Sixth Ecumenical Council—The Third Council of Constantinople, A.D. 680-681 (NPNF2 14:343-46).
Joseph P. Farrell, The Disputation With Pyrrhus of Our Father Among the Saints Maximus the Confessor (South Canaan, Pa.: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1990), 2.
Wolfson, Philosophy, 484.
Farrell, Disputation, 2-3.
O3: Two wills in Jesus would make him two persons; O4: Two wills in Jesus would either oppose one another, which is unacceptable, or conform to one another, which makes one of them superfluous.
Farrell, Disputation, 4-5.
Ibid., 5-6.
Ibid., 7.
O2: There is no such thing as a “will”; rather, persons engage in acts of willing.
Maximus the Confessor, Disputatio Cum Pyrrho (PG 91:292c).
Bathrellos, Byzantine Christ, 119-20.
Farrell, Disputation, 8-9.
Ibid., 9.
Used in this way, the infinitive is a synonym for θέλημα; cf. Bathrellos, Byzantine Christ, 120.
Farrell, Disputation, 10.
Ibid., 11.
Ibid., 12.
Ibid., 13.
O2: There is no such thing as a “will”; rather, persons engage in acts of willing; O3: Two wills in Jesus would make him two persons; O4: Two wills in Jesus would either oppose one another, which is unacceptable, or conform to one another, which makes one of them superfluous.
O5: Two wills in Jesus would compromise either his full humanity or full divinity or both; O6: The arguments for two wills do not rule out speaking about Jesus as having one will in another sense.
Farrell, Disputation, 14.
Farrell points to an anathema from the Fifth Ecumenical Council which makes this precise point: “If anyone uses the expression ‘of two natures,’ confessing that a union was made of the Godhead and of the humanity, or the expression ‘the one nature made flesh of God the Word,’ and shall not so understand those expressions as the holy Fathers have taught, to wit: that of the divine and human nature there was made an hypostatic union, whereof is one Christ; but from these expressions shall try to introduce one nature or substance [made by a mixture] of the Godhead and manhood of Christ; let him be anathema” (The Fifth Ecumenical Council—The Third Council of Constantinople, A.D. 553 [NPNF2 14:313] as cited in Farrell, Disputation, 14-15 n. 22).
Farrell, Disputation, 14-15.
Cf. John of Damascus (commonly regarded as the systematizer of Maximus’s thought) on the same subject: “Christ, which name implies both natures, is spoken of as at once God and man, created and uncreated, subject to suffering and incapable of suffering: and when He is named Son of God and God, in reference to only one of His natures, He still keeps the properties of the co-existing nature, that is, the flesh, being spoken of as God who suffers, and as the Lord of Glory crucified, not in respect of His being God but in respect of His being at the same time man. Likewise also when He is called Man and Son of Man, He still keeps the properties and glories of the divine nature, a child before the ages, and man who knew no beginning; it is not, however as child or man but as God that He is before the ages, and became a child in the end. And this is the manner of the mutual communication, either nature giving in exchange to the other its own properties through the identity of the subsistence and the interpenetration of the parts with one another. Accordingly we can say of Christ: This our God was seen upon the earth and lived amongst men, and This man is uncreated and impassible and uncircumscribed “( John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 3.4 [NPNF2 9:313; italics original]).
Farrell, Disputation, 16.
Second half of O4: Two wills in Jesus would conform to one another, which makes one of them superfluous.
Cf. Bathrellos, Byzantine Christ, 133.
Farrell, Disputation, 16-17.
Ibid., 17-18.
Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ (trans. Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken; New York: St. Vladimir’s Press, 2003), 173.
“For if [the will] follows God, it is not resisting him, and if it is resisting him, it is not following him. These two assertions, being contrary, mutually nullify . . . and exclude each other” (ibid., 174).
This was the position of Moreland and Craig in objection O1 above. See Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 611.
Maximus the Confessor, Cosmic Mystery, 175.
Thus we begin to see a response to objection O1: The NT never speaks of Jesus as having two wills.
Maximus the Confessor, Cosmic Mystery, 174.
Ibid., 176.
Farrell, Disputation, 18.
Sergius’s Ekthesis was a monothelite document distributed throughout the empire, which carried the signature and approval of Pope Honorius. The fact that the document was later declared heretical by the Sixth Ecumenical Council is a well-known source of bother for those who hold to papal infallibility.
O7: The debate over whether Jesus had two wills is an example of the worst sort of theological debate, affecting little of substance to the Christian faith.
“The same one Person is not only Perfect God and perfect man, but also hath the properties concomitant with each perfection. That is to say, the same one Person is both visible and invisible, mortal and immortal, corruptible and incorruptible, touchable and untouchable, created and Uncreate” (Farrell, Disputation, 19). Cf. The Definition of Faith of the Council of Chalcedon: “This one and the same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son [of God] must be confessed to be in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably [united], and that without the distinction of natures being taken away by such union, but rather the peculiar property of each nature being preserved and being united in one Person and subsistence, not separated or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten, God the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ” (The Fourth Ecumenical Council—The Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451 [NPNF2 14:264-65]).
Farrell, Disputation, 19.
Ibid., 20-21.
Ibid., 21-23.
Ibid., 23.
O6: The arguments for two wills do not rule out speaking about Jesus as having one will in another sense.
Farrell, Disputation, 23-24.
Cf. Ian A. McFarland, “‘Naturally and by Grace’: Maximus the Confessor on the Operation of the Will,” SJT 58 (2005): 424.
Farrell, Disputation, 24-25.
Ibid., 25-26.
“The same person was wholly God with the humanity, and wholly man with the Godhead. The same Person, as man, subjected human nature in Himself, and through Himself, to God the Father, showing Himself as the flawless image and pattern for us to imitate in order that we may voluntarily draw nigh unto God, the Author and Finisher of our salvation, no longer willing anything apart from that which He willeth” (ibid., 27-28).
Ibid., 28.
Maximus, Disputatio Cum Pyrrho (PG 91:308b).
Note that Maximus’s discussion here begins with a puzzling distinction between “gnomic will (γνωμικὸν θέλημα)” and “gnome (γνώμη).” He criticizes Pyrrhus for speaking about a “gnomic will,” because “gnome” itself is an alternative word for “will,” and so a “gnomic will” would then be a “will-ish will.” Therefore, Maximus argues that calling it a “gnomic will” amounts to a category error. This, however, seems to be nothing but cheap point scoring against Pyrrhus, since Maximus and others are quite happy elsewhere to use “gnomic will” and “gnome” interchangeably (see, e.g., Maximus the Confessor, Opusc. 3 [PG 91:53c-56c]; translated in Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor [London: Routledge, 1996], 196-97). This reflects Maximus’s highly inconsistent use of the terms “gnome” and “gnomic will” throughout his writings. John of Damascus, by contrast, seems to use the terms more consistently, though slightly differently from Maximus. For him, γνωμικὸν θέλημα refers to object of will (Maximus’s θελητόν/θεληθέν), while γνώμη refers to “inclination” (see John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 2.22 [NPNF2 9:35-38]).
Maximus, Disputatio Cum Pyrrho (PG 91:308c).
Farrell, Disputation, 30.
Ibid., 31.
Ibid., 32.
“‘Before he knows or prefers evil, he will choose the good, because before the child knows good or evil he will refuse evil, to choose the good.’ For the word ‘before’ indicates that not according to us did he seek and desire, but divinely subsisting, existing by himself, he had what is good by nature” (Maximus, Disputatio Cum Pyrrho [PG 91:309a]). Farrell translates the second half of the last sentence as “He subsisted divinely by virtue of His very being.” His use of the word “virtue” is extremely unhelpful, as it implies a verbal connection to Pyrrhus’s response which follows immediately: “Virtues, then, are natural things?” (Farrell, Disputation, 32). This verbal connection is not present in the Greek.
Louth, Maximus, 197. The quotation is from Louth’s translation of Maximus’s Opusc. 3.
McFarland, “‘Naturally and by Grace,”‘ 431.
Farrell, Disputation, 32-34.
Farrell, Disputation, 34. Farrell’s translation of γνώμη as “gnomic will” is inaccurate given the distinction that Maximus has made between γνώμη and γνωμικὸν θέλημα in the preceding argument, although it reflects Maximus’s own willingness to interchange the terms. See Maximus, Disputatio Cum Pyrrho (PG 91:312a).
Farrell, Disputation, 34-35.
Ibid., 35-37.
O2: There is no such thing as a “will”; rather, persons engage in acts of willing.
Note that Farrell’s translation of the quotation from Gregory of Nazianzus contains an error: “The will of that Man no one regards as supposed [sic] to God, since it was wholly deified” (Farrell, Disputation, 38). He also cites the quotation incorrectly. For the correct context of Gregory’s quotation, see Gregory of Nazianzus, Fourth Theological Oration 12 (NPNF2 7:313).
Farrell, Disputation, 40.
O1: The NT never speaks of Jesus as having two wills.
Farrell, Disputation, 42-44.
Maximus incorrectly identifies the text of Phil 2:8 as coming from the Epistle to the Hebrews.
The quotation may be found in Gregory of Nazianzus, Fourth Theological Oration 6(NPNF2 7:311).
Farrell, Disputation, 46; Maximus, Disputatio Cum Pyrrho (PG 91:325a).
Farrell, Disputation, 47.
“‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”‘ (Matt 24:37).
Farrell, Disputation, 47-48.
It is interesting to note that the disputants discuss here a monothelite text known as the Libellus, which was supposed to have been written to Pope Vigilius by the monothelite Menas around the time of the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553 (and was supposed to be one of the council’s documents). The letter was used by Sergius to convince Pope Honorius of the orthodoxy of monothelitism. At the Sixth Ecumenical Council in 680 (i.e., well after this disputation), it was discovered that the Libellus was a forgery, and was not one of the council’s documents after all.
Farrell, Disputation, 52.
Macquarrie, Jesus Christ, 166-67.
John D. Madden, “The Authenticity of Early Definitions of Will (thele̅sis),” in Maximus Confessor: Actes du Symposium sur Maxime le Confesseur, Fribourg, 2-5 Septembre 1980 (ed. Felix Heinzer and Christoph Schönborn; Fribourg: Editions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse, 1982), 61-79.
Ibid., 64-65.
Ibid., 65-79.
Hence we must disagree with Wolfson, Philosophy, 463-67, who argues precisely the opposite, that Maximus and John of Damascus were drawing on Aristotle in their volitional vocabulary. He acknowledges that Maximus makes θέλησις his central term, and that this does not occur in Aristotle, but fails to see the significance of this discrepancy.
Cf. Bathrellos, Byzantine Christ, 118-19.
Madden, “Authenticity,” 64.
Farrell, Disputation, 4.
Ibid., 4-5.
Maximus, Disputatio Cum Pyrrho (PG 91:293b).
LSJM 452; PGL 389-91.
Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will (ed. Paul Ramsey; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957), 1.1 (137).
McFarland, “‘Naturally and by Grace,”‘ 431.
Franc¸ois-Marie Le´thel, “La Prie`re de Je´sus a` Gethse´mani dans la Controverse Monothe´-lite,” in Maximus Confessor: Actes du Symposium sur Maxime le Confesseur, 207-14.
Thus Maximus differs from Edwards only in terminology at this point. Against the Arminian position, Edwards argues that the will is not self-determining in order to make the point that it is not itself free to choose; rather, it is the vehicle by which the mind chooses that to which the soul is inclined (see, e.g., Edwards, Freedom 2.2 [175-79]). Maximus makes the same point by arguing that the will is itself natural, and does not stand over nature; it is free to follow the inclinations of the nature in which it inheres. Yet he then uses the idea of self-determination in a different sense, as we have seen, to make the point that the will is only actualized in the person in which it naturally subsists.
Bathrellos, Byzantine Christ, 168.
The Tome of St Leo (NPNF2 14:256).
Bathrellos, Byzantine Christ, 176.
Cf. Bathrellos: “Human nature subsists not by itself but in particular persons. Thus, even when nature ‘wills’ or ‘acts’, it is the person who is the ultimate bearer and so, indirectly, the subject of willing and acting. As Maximus aptly argued, nature is referred back to him who subsists” (Bathrellos, Byzantine Christ, 188; cf. Davidson, “‘Not My Will,”‘ 198).
See, e.g., Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker, “For God So Loved the World?,” in Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse: A Feminist Critique (ed. Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn; New York: Pilgrim, 1989), 2.
Cf. Garry J. Williams, “Penal Substitution: A Response to Recent Criticisms,” JETS 50 (2007): 85.
Daley has surveyed the history of the development of Trinitarian theology and Christology, and notes that even “long before adequate terminology was available to give the connection words . . . the development of the classical scheme in theological language inevitably promoted, conditioned and even determined the development of the other” (Brian E. Daley, “The Persons in God and the Person of Christ in Patristic Theology: An Argument for Parallel Development,” in The Mystery of the Holy Trinity in the Fathers of the Church: The Proceedings of the Fourth Patristic Conference, Maynooth, 1999 [ed. D. Vincent Twomey and Lewis Ayres; Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007], 12).
These arguments also speak against contemporary denials of the eternal obedience of the Son, e.g., Gilbert Bilezikian, “Hermeneutical Bungee-Jumping: Subordination in the Trinity,” JETS 40 (1997): 57-68; Kevin Giles, The Trinity and Subordinationism: The Doctrine of God and the Contemporary Gender Debate (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2002), 21-31.
Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2004), 399-401.
Letham also argues that to say that it is entirely unfitting for the Son to obey as God eternally, while entirely fitting for him to obey as man in the economy, would imply a “Nestorian separation” between the Son as God and the Son as man (ibid., 394-95). We need to be careful here, however. There are some things which are unfitting for the Son as God while fitting for the Son as man, such as death. God cannot die, yet he dies on the cross as man. My point is that given that so much of Jesus’ ministry (in, e.g., John’s Gospel) is given to establishing Jesus’ submission as Son to the Father, it would be odd if this told us nothing about their eternal relationship. This is not to deny that in certain things it is appropriate to maintain a distinction between what is possible for Jesus as man while impossible for Jesus as God, and vice versa.
While denied by Gregory of Nazianzus and Maximus, this would certainly have been affirmed by other Church Fathers. For example, commenting on 1 Cor 15:28, “When all things are subjected to him [the Father], then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all,” Cyril of Jerusalem says, “He shall be subjected, not because He shall then begin to do the Father’s will (for from eternity He doth always those things that please Him), but because, then as before, He obeys the Father, yielding, not a forced obedience, but a self-chosen accordance; for He is not a servant, that He should be subjected by force, but a Son, that He should comply of His free choice and natural love” (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 15.30 [NPNF 2 7:113; italics original]). Cf. Paul A. Rainbow, “Orthodox Trinitarianism and Evangelical Feminism,” n.p.; Online: http://www.cbmw.org/Resources/Articles/ Orthodox-Trinitarianism-and-Evangelical-Feminism (accessed 20 May 2008).
See, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (ed. Thomas Gilby; 60 vols.; London: Black-friars, 1967), 1a.19 (5:3-53); Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology (ed. James T. Dennison; trans. George Musgrave Giger; 3 vols.; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1992), 3.14-18 (1:218-34).
See, e.g., Thomas, Summa 1a.40.2 (7:145-49); John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; 2 vols.; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1.13.18 (1:142-43); Turretin, Inst. 3.27 (1:278-82); cf. Steve Jeffery et al., Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution (Leicester: InterVarsity, 2007), 129-32.
Bathrellos, Byzantine Christ, 193-207.
Ibid., 194-95.
Ibid., 207.
See, e.g., Athanasius, Against the Arians 3.43; Cyril of Alexandria, Answers to Tiberias 4; Gregory of Nazianzen, The Fourth Theological Oration 15; all cited in Donald Macleod, The Person of Christ (Leicester: InterVarsity, 1998), 167-68.
Cf. McFarland, “‘Naturally and by Grace,’” 432-33; Joseph P. Farrell, Free Choice in St Maximus the Confessor (South Canaan, Pa.: St Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1989), 161 n. 15.
John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 3.20 (NPNF2 9:68).
Cf. Macleod, Person of Christ, 226-28.
Bathrellos, commenting on Pyrrhus’s question concerning how Maximus can insist on one particular meaning for a word which has so many meanings, suggests that Maximus at this point has “unwittingly and unnecessarily” shot himself in the foot: “If we were to attempt to recast Pyrrhus’s question in order to clarify its core content, we would probably ask why, since as Maximus himself admits, gno̅me̅ is such an indefinite term in Scripture as well as in the Fathers, he is entitled to define it in such a specific way as to oblige every orthodox Christian to avoid applying it to Christ? Maximus side-stepped Pyrrhus’s question, but the question itself points to the answer” (Bathrellos, Byzantine Christ, 152).
For what follows cf. Davidson, “‘Not My Will,”‘197-200.
Rowan Williams, “‘Person’ and ‘Personality’ in Christology,” DRev 94 (1976): 256-57.
Cf. Brian Hebblethwaite, The Incarnation: Collected Essays in Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 68.
E. L. Mascall, Christ, the Christian and the Church (London: Longmans, Green, 1946), 37, cited in Davidson,”‘Not My Will,”‘200.
See, e.g., Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate (Eugene, Org.: Wipf & Stock, 2001), 153-62; cf. A. T. Hanson, “Two Consciousnesses: The Modern Version of Chalcedon,” SJT 37 (1984): 471-83; T. W. Bartel, “Why the Philosophical Problems of Chalcedonian Christology Have Not Gone Away,” HeyJ 36 (1995): 153-72.

Eamon Younis

Thursday 21 October 2021

Two Wills In Christ? Contemporary Objections Considered In The Light Of A Critical Examination Of Maximus The Confessor’s “Disputation With Pyrrhus”

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