Theological Term of the Week: Monotheletism

monotheletism

The heretical teaching that Jesus has only one will, his divine will. It was condemned at the Third Council of Constantinople.

• From the Definition of Faith from the Third Council of Constantinople:

[W]e likewise declare that in [Christ] are two natural wills and two natural operations indivisibly, inconvertibly, inseparably, inconfusedly, according to the teaching of the holy Fathers.  And these two natural wills are not contrary the one to the other (God forbid!) as the impious heretics assert, but his human will follows and that not as resisting and reluctant, but rather as subject to his divine and omnipotent will. 

• From 2000 Years of Christ’s Power, Book 1 by N. R. Needham, page 356:

The Monothelete position aroused mighty enemies among orthodox Chalcedonians. The Mightiest were pope Martin I (649-55) and the Greek monk Maximus the Confessor, who maintained that Christ had two wills, a human will alongside a divine one. Maximus thought this out most fully. The question itself was simple: did “will” belong to nature or person? The Monotheletes held that it belonged to person; a human being’s will (his capacity for desiring and choosing) was part of his individual personhood, not his human nature. Therefore, since Christ was not a human person, but a divine person incarnate in a human soul and body, He did not have a human will. He had only the divine will of the Logos. Maximus disagreed with this with every fibre of his being. He maintained that the will was distinct from person, and belonged to nature. Just as our ability to think (our mind) is part of our human nature, Maximus argued, so also our ability to desire and choose (our will) is part of our nature. Will is just as essential to human nature as mind is. For Maximus, the human person is the subject or ego — the “I” — who acts through the mind and will of his human nature.

Learn more:

1. Got Questions: What is monotheletism?
2. Stephen Nichols: Monotheletism
3. Monergism: Monotheletism
4. W. Robert Godfrey: Does Christ Have One or Two Wills?

Related terms:

• adoptionism
• Apollinarianism
• Arianism
• dyotheletism
• heresy

Filed under Defective Theology

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