“Then said I, ‘Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.'”
Ps. 40:7-8
“Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”
Lk. 22:42
“When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled.”
Jn. 11:33
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Subsection
Christ’s Mediatorial Operations, Divine & Human, unto the Same Work
Christ’s Self-Denial
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Order of Contents
Encyclopedia Articles 2
Historical Theology 4
Rutherford’s Assertions
Latin 6
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Intro
This controversy, whether Christ has one will (monothelitism) or two wills (dyothelitism) was concluded in the early Church at the 6th ecumenical council (AD 680-81), the 3rd Council of Constantinople.
It was rightly determined that ‘will’ is a property of ‘nature’, and not of ‘person’. If it were not so, the Trinity would have three wills. Nor is it possible for a rational nature not to have a will, power and its own distinct operations and ends. If Christ’s human nature did not have this, then his nature would not be the same as ours.
Hence, as Christ has two natures, so He has two wills, one human, creaturely and finite, and one divine, uncreated and infinite; both are willed by his one and the same Person.
It was not until the late 1600’s, through the influence of Cartesianism, that will came to be more popularly defined as a formal and essential part of personhood rather than that of a person’s nature. Such a paradigm is latent Tritheism.¹
¹ See ‘Tri-Theism’ at ‘The Trinity’.
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Articles
1200’s
Aquinas, Thomas
Summa Theologica, 3rd Part, Treatise on the Incarnation
Question. 18 – Of Christ’s Unity of Will (6 Articles)
(1) Whether there are Two Wills in Christ? [Yes]
(2) Whether in Christ’s human nature the will of sensuality is distinct from the will of reason? [Yes, though joined]
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(4) Whether there was free-will in Christ? [Yes]
(5) Whether Christ’s human will was always conformed to the Divine will in the thing willed? [Yes & No]
(6) Whether there was any contrariety of wills in Christ? [No]
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2000’s
Jones, Mark – ‘Eternal Subordination of Wills? Nein!’ (2016) at NewCityTimes
Butner, Glenn – ‘The Obedience of One Man: an Excerpt from The Son who Learned Obedience‘ in The Master’s Seminary Journal, vol. 33, no. 1 (Spring, 2022), pp. 127-46
Butner covers the post-Chalcedon Monothelite (One-Will) controversy in this article.
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Quotes
Order of
Hooker
Rijssen
Turretin
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1500’s
Richard Hooker
The Works of Mr. Richard Hooker… in Eight Books of Ecclesiastical Polity… (London: Newcomb, 1666), bk. 5, pp. 202-6
“Will, whether it be in God or Man, belongs to the essence or nature of both. The nature therefore of God being one, there are not in God diverse wills, although the Godhead be in diverse Persons, because the power of willing is a natural, not a personal propriety.
Contrariwise, the Person of our Savior Christ being but one, there are in Him two wills, because two natures, the nature of God and the nature of man, which both do imply this faculty and power. So that in Christ there is a divine and there is a human will, otherwise He were not both God and Man. Hereupon the Church has of old condemned Monothelites as hereticks for holding that Christ had but one will. The works and operations of our Savior’s human will were all subject to the will of God and framed according to his Law, ‘I desire to do thy will, O God, and thy Law is within mine heart.’ [Ps. 40]
Now as man’s will, so the will of Christ has two several kinds of operation: the one natural or necessary, whereby it desires simply whatsoever is good in itself and shuns as generally all things which hurt; the other deliberate, when we therefore embrace things as good because the eye of understanding judges them good to that end which we simply desire. Thus in itself we desire health, physic, only for health’s sake. And in this sort, special reason oftentimes causes the will by choice to prefer one good thing before another, to leave one for another’s sake, to forgo meaner for the attainment of higher desires, which our Savior likewise did. These different inclinations of the will considered, the reason is easy how in Christ there might grow desires seeming, but being not indeed opposite, either the one of them unto the other, or either of them to the will of God.
For let the manner of his speech be weighed:
‘My soul is now troubled, and what should I say? Father, save Me out of this hour? But yet for this very cause I am come into this hour.’
His purpose herein was most effectually to propose to the view of the whole world two contrary objects, the like whereunto in force and efficacy were never presented in that manner to any but only to the soul of Christ. There was presented before his eyes in that fearful hour on the one side God’s heavy indignation and wrath towards mankind as yet unappeased, death as yet in full strength, Hell as yet never mastered by any that came within the confines and bounds thereof, somewhat also peradventure more than is either possible or needful for the wit of man to find out; finally, Himself flesh and blood left alone to enter into conflict with all these.
On the other side: a world to be saved by One, a pacification of wrath through the dignity of that sacrifice which should be offered, a conquest over death through the power of that Deity which would not suffer the tabernacle thereof to see corruption, and an utter disappointment of all the forces of infernal powers through the purity of that soul which they should have in their hands and not be able to touch. Let no man marvel that in this case the soul of Christ was much troubled. For what could such apprehensions breed, but (as their nature is) inexplicable passions of mind, desires abhorring what they embrace and embracing what they abhor? In which agony, how should the tongue go about to express what the soul endured?
When the griefs of Job were exceeding great, his words accordingly to open them were many; howbeit, still unto his seeming they were undiscovered: ‘Though my talk’ (says Job) ‘be this day in bitterness, yet my plague is greater than my groaning.’ But here to what purpose should words serve, when nature has more to declare than groans and strong cries, more than streams of bloody sweats, more than his doubled and tripled prayers can express, who thrice putting forth his hand to receive that cup, besides which, there was no other cause of his coming into the world, He thrice pulls it back again and as often even with tears of blood craves, ‘If it be possible, O Father, or if not, even what thine own good pleasure is;’ for whose sake the passion that has in it a bitter and a bloody conflict, even with wrath and death, and Hell, is most welcome.
Whereas therefore we find in God a will resolved that Christ shall suffer; and in the human will of Christ two actual desires, the one avoiding and the other accepting death: Is that desire which first declares itself by prayer against that wherewith He concludes prayer, or either of them, against his mind to whom prayer in this case seeks?
We may judge of these diversities in the will by the like in the understanding. For as the intellectual part does not cross itself by conceiving man to be just and unjust, when it means not the same man, nor by imagining the same man learned and unlearned, if learned in one skill and in another kind of learning unskilful, because the parts of every true opposition do always both concern the same subject and have reference to the same thing, since otherwise they are but in show opposite and not in truth: So the will about one and the same thing may in contrary respects have contrary inclinations and that without contrariety.
The minister of justice may, for publike example to others, virtuously will the execution of that party whose pardon another for consanguinity’s sake as virtuously may desire. Consider death in itself and nature teaches Christ to shun it. Consider death as a mean to procure the salvation of the world and mercy works in Christ all willingness of mind towards it. Therefore in these two desires there can be no repugnant opposition.
Again, compare them with the will of God, and if any opposition be, it must be only between his appointment of Christ’s death and the former desire which wishes deliverance from death. But neither is this desire opposite to the will of God. The will of God was that Christ should suffer the pains of death. Not so his will, as if the torment of innocency did in itself please and delight God; but such was his will in regard of the end whereunto it was necessary that Christ should suffer. The death of Christ in itself therefore, God wills not, which to the end we might thereby obtain life, He both allows and appoints. In like manner, the Son of Man endures willingly to that purpose those grievous pains which simply not to have shunned had been against nature, and by consequent against God.
I take it therefore to be an error that Christ either knew not what Himself was to suffer, or else had forgotten the things He knew. The root of which error was an over-restrained consideration of prayer, as though it had no other lawful use but only to serve for a chosen mean whereby the will resolves to seek that which the understanding certainly knows it shall obtain: Whereas prayers, in truth, both unto are, and his were, as well sometime a presentation of mere desires as a mean of procuring desired effects at the hands of God. We are therefore taught by his example that the presence of dolorous and dreadful objects, even in minds most perfect, may as clouds overcast all sensible joy; that no assurance touching future victories can make present conflicts so sweet and easy, but nature will shun and shrink from them; nature will desire ease and deliverance from oppressive burdens that the contrary determination of God is oftentimes against the effect of this desire, yet not against the affection itself, because it is naturally in us; that in such case our prayers cannot serve us as means to obtain the thing we desire; that notwithstanding, they are unto God most acceptable sacrifices because they testify we desire nothing but at his hands, and our desires we submit with contentment to be overruled by his will; and in general they are not repugnant unto the natural will of God which wishes to the works of his own hands, in that they are his own handiwork, all happiness, although perhaps for some special cause in our own particular, a contrary determination have seemed more convenient.
Finally, that thus to propose our desires which cannot take such effects as we specify shall notwithstanding otherwise procure us his heavenly grace, even as this very prayer of Christ obtained angels to be sent Him as comforters in his agony. And according to this example, we are not afraid to present unto God our prayers for those things, which that He will perform unto us, we have no sure, nor certain knowledge…
Such prayers of the Church to be delivered from all adversity are no more repugnant to any reasonable disposition of men’s minds towards death, much less to that blessed patience and meek contentment which saints by heavenly inspiration have to endure (what cross or calamity soever it pleases God to lay upon them) than our Lord and Savior’s own prayer before his passion was repugnant unto his most gracious resolution to die for the sins of the whole world.
49. In praying for deliverance from all adversity we seek that which nature does wish to itself; but by entreating for mercy towards all we declare that affection wherewith Christian charity thirsts after the good of the whole world: we discharge that duty which the apostle himself does impose on the Church of Christ as a commendable office, a sacrifice acceptable in God’s sight, a service according to his heart whose desire is to have all men saved: a work most suitable with his purpose who gave Himself to be the price of redemption for all and a forcible mean to procure the conversion of all such as are not yet acquainted with the mysteries of that truth which must save their souls.
Against it there is but the bare show of this one impediment: that all men’s salvation and many men’s eternal condemnation or death are things the one repugnant to the other: that both cannot be brought to pass: that we know there are vessels of wrath to whom God will never extend mercy and therefore that wittingly we ask an impossible thing to be had. The truth is, that as life and death, mercy and wrath are matters of mere understanding or knowledge, all men’s salvation and some men’s endless perdition are things so opposite that whosoever does affirm the one must necessarily deny the other. God Himself cannot effect both or determine that both shall be.
There is in the knowledge both of God and man this certainty, that life and death have divided between them the whole body of mankind. What portion either of the two has, God Himself knows; for us He has left no sufficient means to comprehend, and for that cause neither given any leave to search in particular who are infallibly the heirs of the Kingdom of God, who cast-aways. Howbeit, concerning the state of all men with whom we live (for only of them our prayers are meant), we may till the world’s end, for the present, always presume that as far as in us there is power to discern what others are, and as far as any duty of ours depends upon the notice of their condition in respect of God, the safest axioms for charity to rest itself upon are these:
He which believes already is, and he which believes not as yet, may be the child of God. It becomes not us during life altogether to condemn any man, seeing that (for anything we know) there is hope of every man’s forgiveness, the possibility of whose repentance is not yet cut off by death. And therefore charity which hopes all things, prays also for all men. Wherefore to let go personal knowledge touching vessels of wrath and mercy, what they are inwardly in the sight of God, it skills not; for us there is cause sufficient in all men whereupon to ground our prayers unto God in their behalf. For whatsoever the mind of man apprehends as good, the will of charity and love is to have it enlarged in the very uttermost extent, that all may enjoy it to whom it can any way add perfection.
Because therefore the farther a good thing does reach, the nobler and worthier we reckon it, our prayers for all men’s good, no less than for our own, the apostle with very fit terms commends as being [Greek], a work commendable for the largeness of the affection from whence it springs, even as theirs which have requested at God’s hands the salvation of many, with the loss of their own souls drowning as it were and overwhelming themselves in the abundance of their love towards others, is proposed as being in regard of the rareness of such affections [Greek], more than excellent. But this extraordinary height of desire after other men’s salvation is no common mark. The other is a duty which belongs unto all and prevails with God daily. For as it is in itself good, so God accepts and takes it in very good part at the hands of faithful men. Our prayers for all men do include both them that shall find mercy and them also that shall find none. For them that shall, no man will doubt but our prayers are both accepted and granted.
Touching them for whom we crave that mercy which is not to be obtained, let us not think that our Savior did mis-instruct his disciples, willing them to pray for the peace even of such as should be incapable of so great a blessing, or that the prayers of the prophet Jeremiah offended God because the answer of God was a resolute denial of favor to them for whom supplication was made.
And if any man doubt how God should accept such prayers in case they be opposite to his will, or not grant them, if they be according unto that which Himself wills, our answer is that such suits God accepts in that they are conformable unto his general inclination, which is that all men might be saved; yet always He grants them not for as much as there is in God sometimes a more private occasioned will which determines the contrary. So that the other being the rule of our actions, and not this, our requests for things opposite to this will of God are not therefore the less gracious in his sight. There is no doubt but we ought in all things to frame our wills to the will of God and that otherwise in whatsoever we do, we sin. For of ourselves, being so apt to err, the only way which we have to straighten our paths is by following the rule of his will whose footsteps naturally are right.
If the eye, the hand or the foot do that which the will commands, though they serve as instruments to sin, yet is sin the commander’s fault and not theirs, because nature has absolutely and without exception made them subjects to the will of man, which is lord over them. As the body is subject to the will of man, so man’s will to the will of God; for so it behoves that the better should guide and command the worse. But because the subjection of the body to the will is by natural necessity, the subjection of the will unto God voluntary, we therefore stand in need of direction, after what sort our wills and desires may be rightly conformed to his. Which is not done by willing always the self-same thing that God intends. For it may chance that his purpose is sometime the speedy death of them whose long continuance in life, if we should not wish, we were unnatural.
When the object or matter therefore of our desires is (as in this case) a thing both good of it self and not forbidden of God, when the end for which we desire it is virtuous and apparently most holy, when the root from which our affection towards it proceeds is charity, piety, that which we do in declaring our desire by prayer, yea, over and besides all this, since we know that to pray for all men living is but to show the same affection which towards every of them our Lord Jesus Christ has borne, who knowing only as God who are his, did as man taste death for the good of all men: surely to that will of God which ought to be and is the known rule of all our actions, we do not herein oppose ourselves, although his secret determination haply be against us; which if we did understand, as we do not, yet to rest contented with that which God will have done is as much as He requires at the hands of men. And concerning ourselves, what we earnestly crave in this case, the same, as all things else that are of like condition, we meekly submit unto his most gracious will and pleasure.
Finally, as we have cause sufficient why to think the practice of our [Anglican] Church [in the Book of Common Prayer] allowable in this behalf, so neither is ours the first which has been of that mind. For to end with the words of Prosper [d. c. 455]: ‘This law of supplication for all men’ (says he):
‘the devout zeal of all priests and of all faithful men does hold with such full agreement that there is not any part of all the world where Christian people do not use to pray in the same manner. The Church everywhere makes prayers unto God, not only for saints, and such as already in Christ are regenerate, but for all infidels and enemies of the cross of Jesus Christ, for all idolaters, for all that persecute Christ in his followers, for Jews to whose blindness the light of the Gospel does not yet shine, for heretics and schismatics, who from the unity of Faith and charity are estranged.
And for such, what does the Church ask of God but this, that leaving their errors they may be converted unto Him, that faith and charity may be given them and that out of the darkness of ignorance they may come to the knowledge of his truth? Which because they cannot themselves do in their own behalf, as long as the sway of evil custom ever-bears them and the chains of Satan detain them bound, neither are they able to break through those errors wherein they are so determinately settled that they pay unto falsity, the whole sum of whatsoever love is owing unto God’s truth.
Our Lord merciful and just requires to have all men prayed for; that when we behold innumerable multitudes drawn up from the depth of so bottomless evils, we may not doubt but (in part) God has done the thing we requested, nor despair, but that being thankful for them, towards whom already He has showed mercy, the rest which are not as yet enlightened shall before they pass out of life be made partakers of the like grace. Or if the grace of Him which saves [for so we set is falls out] overpass some, so that the prayer of the Church for them be not received, this we may leave to the hidden judgments of God’s righteousness and acknowledge that in this secret there is a gulf, which, while we live we shall never sound.’ (Of the Calling of the Gentiles, bk. 1, ch. 4, amongst Ambrose’s Works)”
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1600’s
Leonard Riissen
A Complete Summary of Elenctic Theology & of as Much Didactic Theology as is Necessary trans. J. Wesley White MTh thesis (Bern, 1676; GPTS, 2009), ch. 11, ‘Christ’, pp. 114 & 117
“§VI. In this person, a divine and human nature, each with their own intellect and will, were united.”
“§XII. Consequently, Christ had a true soul (Mt. 26:38) and true body (Heb. 10:5) but without any blemish.”
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Francis Turretin
Institutes (P&R), vol. 2, 13th Topic, Q. 7, ‘Was the hypostatical union of the two natures of Christ such that neither the person is divided nor the natures confounded? We affirm against Nestorius & Eutyches.’, pp. 320-21
“XIII. A second rock to be avoided here is Eutychianism… who… confounded the two natures into one… one nature is neither changed nor converted by the hypostatical union into the other. Nor are the natures so confounded or mixed with each other that each of them does not retain its own properties and conditions.
XIV. The reasons are: (1) the opposition of the two natures in Christ is frequent in Scripture (Rom. 1:3; 1 Pet. 3:18; Heb. 9:14; Jn. 1:14; Phil. 2:6-7, 11); (2) two wills are ascribed to Him (‘not my will, but thine, be done,’ Lk. 22:42). Nor does it follow that there are two [persons] willing because the will belongs to the nature, while willing belongs to the person; nor is it evident that the will follows personally forthwith because in God there are three persons, but only one will. (3) Contraries are ascribed to Christ, which could not be if there were not two natures in Him (as that He would depart from the world and remain with us forever; that a child was born, who is the Father of eternity; that He suffered death and was made alive; in the form of God and in the form of a servant, etc.).
XV. Although the efficient cause of the operations of Christ is one alone, still the exciting cause is twofold–the divinity and humanity. The work upon which both exciting (egergema) causes exert their power is one, but the action (energeia) is twofold.”
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Encyclopedia Articles
McClintock & Strong Biblical Cyclopedia
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Historical Theology
On the Early & Medieval Church
Articles
1600’s
Baxter, Richard – ch. 8, ‘Councils held about the Monothelites, with others’ in Church-History of the Government of Bishops & their Councils abbreviated… & a True Account of the Most Troubling Controversies & Heresies till the Reformation... (London, 1680), pp. 193-202
Du Pin, Louis Ellies – A New History of Ecclesiastical Writers… (London, 1693), ‘Councils held in the Seventh Century’
‘Council of Lateran against the Monothelites under Martin I’, pp. 63-66
Du Pin (1657-1719)
‘Council III of Constantinople, 6th General’, pp. 66-74
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Books
Hovorun, Cyril
Theological Controversy in the Seventh Century Concerning Activities & Wills in Christ PhD diss. (Univ. of Durham, 2003)
Abstract: “The primary purpose of the thesis is to fill the existing gaps in our understanding of various theological and political aspects of the controversy that took place in both Eastern and Western parts of the Roman Empire in the seventh century, the main theological point of which was whether Christ had one or two energeiai [energies, or operations] and wills.
Before coming to any conclusions on this subject, I shall investigate the preliminary forms of Monenergism and Monothelitism i.e., belief in a single energeia and will of Christ, which were incorporated in the major Christological systems developed by Apollinarius of Laodicea, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Severus of Antioch (chapters 1-3). Against this background, it becomes obvious that the Chalcedonian Monenergism and later Monothelitism emerged from the movement of neo-Chalcedonianism. It was an attempt by the political and ecclesiastical authorities to achieve a theological compromise with various non-Chalcedonian groups, mainly Severian, but also ‘Nestorian’. Their ultimate goal was to reconcile these groups with the Catholic Church of the Empire (chapter 4).
However, this project of reconciliation on the basis of the single-energeia formula was contested by the representatives of the same neo-Chalcedonian tradition and consequently condemned at the Councils of Lateran (649) and Constantinople (680/681). Thus, the same neo-Chalcedonian tradition produced two self-sufficient and antagonistic doctrines. A major concern of the thesis is to expose and compare systematically their doctrinal content per se and in the wider context of the principles of neo-Chalcedonianism (chapter 5).
Will, Action & Freedom: Christological Controversies in the Seventh Century in The Medieval Mediterranean Pre Buy (Brill, 2008) This is the published form of the dissertation above.
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Samuel Rutherford’s Assertions
Christ Dying & Drawing Sinners to Himself (London: 1647), pp. 138-41
Here is the fifth article in this prayer: a sort of correction, in which Christ does resign his will, as man, to the will of God; as Mt. 26:39; Lk. 22:42. ‘Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.’
In this there is offered to us a question, Whether or no there be in this prayer any repugnancy in the human will of Christ to the will of God? For:
1. A correction of the human will seems to import a jarring and a discord; 2. Christ desired that, the contrary whereof He knew was from eternity decreed of God. 3. The Law of God is so spiritual, straight and holy that it requires not only a conformity to it, and our will, actions, words and purposes, but also in all our affections, desires, first-motions and inclinations of our heart, that no unperfect and half-formed lustings arise in us even before the complete consent of the will that may thwart or cross the known Law and command of God; and by this, ‘Thou shalt not lust,’ Rom. 7, and the duty of the highest love we owe to God, to love him with all the heart, soul, mind, and whole strength, Mt. 22:37; Mk. 12:33; Lk. 10:27.
Some Arians and Arminians, John Geysteranus at the Synod of Dort, have said blasphemously that there was concupiscence and a will repugnant to God’s will in the second Adam, as in the first. But this they spoke against the consubstantiality and deity of the Son of God. To which we say:
Assertion 1. Jesus Christ that holy thing, Lk. 1:35, was a fit high priest, holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners, Heb. 7:26. Which of you (says Christ to the Jews) convinces me of sin, Jn. 8:46. There could not be a spot in this Lamb sacrificed for the sins of the world, no prick in this Rose, no cloud in this fair Sun, no blemish in this beautiful Well-beloved.
Assertion 2. An absolute, resolved will or desire of heart to lust after that which God forbids in his Law must be a sinful jarring between the creature’s and the Creator’s will. Now, Christ‘s will was conditional and clearly submissive; it lay ever level with his Father’s holy will.
Assertion 3. I shall not with some affirm that which in the general is true, a will contrary to God’s revealed command and will, called voluntas signi, which is our moral rule to oblige us, is a sin [see Assertion 4 below]; but a will contrary to God’s decree, called voluntas beneplaciti, which is not our rule obliging, except the Lord be pleased to impose it on us as a moral Law, is not a sin.
Peter and the apostles, after they heard that prophecy of their denying of Christ and their being sinfully scandalized, and their forsaking of Christ when the Shepherd was smitten, were obliged to have a will contrary to that decree and to pray that they might not be led into temptation, but might have grace to confess their Savior before men and not flee, nor be scattered: Here is a resolute will of men lawfully contrary to the revealed decree of God, yet not sinful. But the Lord’s will that Christ should die for man, as it was a decree of the wise and most gracious Lord pitying lost man, so was it also a revealed commandment to Christ, that He should be willing to die and be obedient to the death, even the death of the cross, Phil. 2:8; yea, a rule of such humble obedience as we are obliged to follow, as is said, verse 5, ‘Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,’ etc. If the Lord’s will that Christ should die be nothing but his mere decree, it could not oblige us in the like case to be willing, as John says to lay down our life for the brethren. Yea, Jn. 10:18, Christ has a commandment of God and the revealed will of God to die for us:
‘No man takes it from Me, but I lay it down of myself: I have power to lay it down; I have power to take it again: this commandment have I received of my Father.’
Here is an express commandment given to Christ to die for sinners; and the Father loves Christ for obedience to this commandment.
Assertion 4. A conditional and a submissive desire, though not agreeable to a positive law and commandment of God, is no sin, nor does the Law require a conformity in all our inclinations and the first motions of our desires to every command of God, though most contrary to nature and our natural and sinless inclinations.
1. If God command Abraham to kill his only begotten son and offer him in a sacrifice to God, which was a mere positive commandment, for it’s not a command of the law of nature (nor any other than positive) for the father to kill the son, if yet Abraham retain a natural inclination and love commanded also in the law of nature to save his son’s life and to desire that he may live, this desire and inclination, though contradictory to a positive command of God, is no sin; because the Fifth Command, grounded on the law of nature, does command it. Nor did God’s precept (‘Abraham, kill now thy son, even Isaac thine only begotten son’) ever include this, ‘Abraham, root out of thine heart all desire and inclination natural in a father to preserve the life of the child.’ So the positive command of the Father that the Son of God should lay down his life for his sheep, did never root out of the sinless nature of the man-Christ a natural desire to preserve his own being and life, especially He desiring it with special reservation of the will of God commanding that He should die.
2. A martyr dying for the truth of Christ may have a natural and conditional desire and inclination to live, though his living be contrary to the Lord’s revealed will commanding him to seal the Gospel with his blood and to confess Christ before men.
3. If the brother, son, daughter, wife or friend that is as a man’s own soul, Dt. 13:6, blaspheme God, yea if father or mother do it, Dt. 33:8-9, yet is a father obliged to stone the son or daughter, the son being a magistrate or a Levite and priest, to judge according to law (the priests’ lips should preserve knowledge, Mal. 2:8) that his father or mother ought to be stoned to death; yet ought not father or son to lay aside that natural desire of being and life to son, father, brother which the law of nature in the Fifth Command does require, especially the desire being conditional, with submission to God’s will, as the desire of Christ is here; and the command to stone the blasphemer, that the father stone the son, the son the father, being positive, and though founded on the law of nature, that a man prefer his Lord Creator and God before son or father and mother, yet are they not precepts of the law of nature such as is the precept of nature that a man desire his own life and being, the father the life and being of the son.
Assertion 5. The apparent opposition (for it is not real) is rather between Christ‘s sensitive and his sinless mere natural desire and affection, and his reasonable will, than his [human] will and the will of God: Nor can any say there is a fight or jarring between the conditional desire of Christ subjected in the same act of praying, to the Lord’s decree and the resolute and immutable will of God. The Law of God, because holy and spiritual, does require a conformity between all the inclinations and motions of our soul and the law of nature; but an absolute conformity between all our inclinations and every positive command of God, such as was the Lord’s command that Christ should die for sinners, is not required in the Law of God. If Adam submit his natural hunger or desire to eat of the forbidden tree, to God’s Law, and eat not, there is no sinful jarring between his will and God’s positive Law, ‘Thou shalt not eat of the tree of Knowledge of good and evil.'”
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Latin Articles
600’s
13 Short Works of St. Maximus the Confessor Against Monothelites & Acephali trans. Francis Torres (Ingolstadt, 1605) 159 pp. ToC This work does not appear to be in Patrologia Graeca.
Maximus (c. 580–662). Turrianus (c.1509-1584) was a Romanist Jesuit. The Acephali (meaning ‘men without a head’) was a name for various heretical early Church sects who had no distinguishable leader. Two prominent groups of them were respectively Nestorians and Eutycheans who did not accept the Council of Chalcedon.
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1600’s
Goclenius, Rudolph – ‘First Disputation, contra the Error of the Monothelites’ in a Twofold Disputation… 1. Contra the Theological Error of the Monothelites, 2. Physical-Theological on the Bread & Wine (Marburg, 1610), pp. 2r-3v 25 theses
Goclenius was reformed.
Voet, Gisbert – On the Will of Christ in Syllabus of Theological Problems (Utrecht, 1643), pt. 1, section 2, tract 2 Abbr.
Strauch, Aegidius – A Historical-Theological Dissertation Describing the Heresies of the Monothelites (Wittenberg, 1665)
Strauch (1632-1682) was a Lutheran professor of philosophy and theology at Wittenberg.
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1700’s
Chladni, Martin – A Theological Dissertation on the Condemned Monothelitism of Pope Honorius at the 6th Ecumenical Council, against Binius & Cabassutius (Wittenberg, 1710) 40 pp.
Chladni (1669-1725) was a Lutheran. Pope Honorius I (d. 638) was post-humously anathematized by the 6th Ecumenical Council (680-81) for monothelitism, but later only for failing to end it. This became a central argument against Papal infallibility and for councils’ authority over Popes by the concilliarists.
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Latin Book
1600’s
Combefis, Francois – The History of the Heresy of the Monothelites, & in it, of the Holy Sixth Synod, Vindications of Diverse Ancient Authors in the Same, and in the Middle Age, even of Sacred History, as well as Dogmatic, with short Greek Works… (Paris, 1648) 1,322 cols. Index Scripture Index
Combefis (1605-1679) was a Romanist Dominican.
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“And immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto them, Why reason ye these things in your hearts?”
Mk. 2:8
“And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped Him, saying, ‘Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.’ And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched Him, saying, ‘I will; be thou clean.’ And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.”
Mt. 8:3
“For Christ… being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: by which also He went and preached [by Noah] unto the spirits [now] in prison, which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing…”
1 Pet. 3:18-20
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Related Pages
On the Person of Christ, his Human & Divine Natures & the Hypostatic Union
On Union with Christ & the Fruits of the Fellowship Ensuing Therefrom
On the Doctrine of Appropriations
On the Communication of the Properties of Christ’s Natures