Theopedia

Monothelitism

Definition

Monothelitism (from the Greek monos, “one,” and thelēma, “will”) is the teaching that Jesus Christ, though possessing two natures, has only one will and one operation: μία θεανδρίκη ἐνέργεια, “one theandric energy.”1 It is a heresy condemned by the Third Council of Constantinople, the sixth ecumenical council, in 680-681, which decided instead that Christ’s two natures entail two wills, human and divine, united in his one person.2

Historical Origin

Monothelitism arose as an imperial attempt to end the long conflict left unresolved by the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Chalcedon’s confession of two natures in one person had met fierce resistance in Palestine and Egypt, producing “great disorders and bloodshed” and even the deposition of an emperor in Constantinople.1 “After nearly two centuries of controversy,” the Emperor Heraclius tried to reconcile the Monophysite and orthodox parties by proposing that both sides affirm Chalcedon’s two natures while agreeing that the incarnate Christ has “only one will and operation.”1 A. A. Hodge’s catechetical summary confirms the same compromise and adds that the sixth council, in rejecting it, still held “the human will must always be conceived as subordinate to the divine.”3

Heraclius’s compromise briefly succeeded with part of the Monophysite party, “but the more determined of that party and the great body of the orthodox refused” it.1 The dispute then turned specifically on whether one will in Christ was even compatible with two natures: “If only one, then, as the orthodox asserted, there could be but one nature, for will is one of the essential elements or faculties of a rational nature. To deny Christ a human will, was to deny that He had a human nature, or was truly a man.”2 A one-willed Christ also “precluded the possibility of his having been tempted,” which the orthodox judged both unscriptural and destructive of Christ’s sympathy with those he came to save.2

“The effort of Heraclius therefore proved abortive, and the controversy continued with unabated acrimony,” until the sixth ecumenical council, meeting at Constantinople in 681, “authoritatively decided in favour of the doctrine that in the one person of Christ, as there are two distinct natures, human and divine, there are of necessity two intelligences and two wills, the one fallible and finite, the other immutable and infinite.”2 The council’s own formula declared that Christ’s person consists ἐκ δύο φύσεσι (“of two natures”) and confessed δύο φυσικὰς θελήσεις ἤτοι θελήματα (“two natural wills, or volitions”) and δύο φυσικὰς ἐνεργείας (“two natural energies”) existing “ἀδιαιρέτως, ἀτρέπτως, ἀμερίστως, ἀσυγχύτως”: undivided, unchanged, unseparated, unconfused.2 “The Monothelites being thus condemned were persecuted and driven eastward, where they have perpetuated themselves in the sect of the Maronites.”2

Core Tenets

Monothelites held that a single divine-human “energy” and a single will belonged to Christ’s one person, even while granting, in Chalcedonian terms, that he possessed two distinct natures.1 On this view, will was located in the person rather than in each nature, so that two natures did not require two centers of willing.

The orthodox response, reflected in the sixth council’s own definition, was that will belongs to nature rather than to person as such: a rational nature wills, and a person who has two complete natures therefore has two wills, exercised inseparably by the one person who possesses them.2 Maximus the Confessor was the theologian most associated with defending this position against the imperial compromise.4

Confessional and Biblical Response

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession does not name Monothelitism, but its statement of Christ’s person rules the teaching out directly: Christ’s “two whole, perfect, and distinct natures were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion.”5 A confession that requires the two natures to remain “whole” and “perfect” without “confusion” allows no room for one of them to lack its own will, since will is a property of a rational nature rather than an optional feature of it.

The Second Helvetic Confession, cited by Hodge alongside the Westminster Confession as representative of the Reformed tradition’s own rejection of the ancient Christological errors, names the error directly: “ita Eutychetis et Monothelitarum vel Monophysicorum vesaniam, expungentem naturae humanae proprietatem execramur penitus”: “so we utterly abominate the madness of the Eutychians and Monothelites or Monophysites, which does away with the property of the human nature.”6

Maximus read Christ’s prayer in Gethsemane, “not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36), as the Logos speaking as man: a genuinely human will, submitted to the Father, distinct from the divine will the Son shares with the Father and the Spirit.4 Genuine temptation requires the same thing: Hebrews says Christ “has been tempted in every way, just as we are” (Heb. 4:15), which presupposes a real human will capable of being drawn, the point Hodge has in mind when he says a one-willed Christ “precluded the possibility of his having been tempted.”2

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Charles Hodge, “Chapter III. Person of Christ,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 402. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  2. Hodge, 403. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  3. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 23, “Person of Christ,” 388-389. ↩

  4. Daniel David Scheiderer, “Christology and the Eternal Covenant,” in “Eternal Covenant: The Trinitarian Shape of an Historic Baptist Doctrine” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2022), 147. ↩ ↩2

  5. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 8, “Of Christ the Mediator,” para. 2. ↩

  6. Hodge, 404. ↩