06_person_1302_monothelitism

After the Council of Chalcedon, there was political instability in the empire due to disagreements about the nature of Jesus. Some believed he had one nature, energy, and will, while others believed in two. A compromise was attempted, but it only led to more conflict. Pope Honorius I endorsed the position of one will, causing further division. Eventually, a council in Constantinople declared that Jesus has two wills and anathematized the monothelite position. This council concluded the Christological controversies. The issue was important because it had theological implications regarding salvation and the nature of God. Alright, so after Chalcedon there was actually major political instability in the empire because whereas the definition of Chalcedon says that there are two natures in the person of Jesus Christ, a lot of the empire still says that he only has one nature. Not only that, they started to see he has one energy and one will. Now these positions are going to be important for where we're going, and so they're named monoenergism and monothelitism, one energy and one will. Well, some of the people who believed in Chalcedon here that he has two natures, they said that they could actually agree with these new positions because they started to make a distinction between his essence and his energy. So they started to say that even though, yes, he has two essences, one divine and one human, nevertheless he can still have one energy because his energy is distinct from his essence. And so some of the two nature guys, the Chalcedonians, started to say, we can agree that he has one energy and that he has one will because there's a distinction between energy and essence. Specifically, this belief that he had one will started to gain traction, and when the emperor saw this he was like, wait, the one nature guys and the two nature guys agree about something? Can we put this in writing and get some unity around it? So they took a poem on the patriarchs, remember there's five patriarchs, and in the East he got two of them to agree to it, so he just needed one more, while the bishop of Rome is one of the five patriarchs, so he just needed to get a sign off from the bishop of Rome and he would have a majority. So the emperor sent a letter to Pope Honorius I asking him if he would endorse this position that Jesus only has one will. Pope Honorius I reasoned that, well, with most humans it wouldn't work, but because Jesus' human will is perfect, it will never contradict the divine will, so yes, he has only one will. And so he replied with his letter back to the emperor that he would endorse this position. Well, this was supposed to cause peace, but it only made things much, much worse, especially now for the pope, because now there's people in his own camp that started to be upset. One of them was named Maximus the Confessor. They just saw the pope's actions as compromise and accepting Christological heresy for the sake of political expediency. So these people were upset, and the emperor did not like the conflict, so he said that there would be no more arguing about this, and he actually made a rule that people were not allowed to argue about this anymore. Well, of course, guys like Maximus the Confessor, I mean, that's his name, Confessor, would not be quiet about the issue, so he, Maximus the Confessor, had his right hand cut off and his tongue cut out by the emperor. And people were obviously pretty upset about this, and it's because there are actually pretty major theological issues with it that we'll get to later on, but thankfully the next generation did not continue in this theological heresy. They rejected monothelitism, or monothelitism, thanks in part to the persecuted voices of the previous generation, guys like Maximus the Confessor. But also the Muslims kind of played a role, because some parts of the church that might have offered an opposition voice, that they would have had a good agreement with, but that post-Latitusan Syria had now been conquered by the Arabs during this whole controversy, so these voices were no longer heard. In any case, the church that was left convened a council in 681 in Constantinople, the name of the council was Constantinople III, and they officially decreed that Jesus has two wills and two energies, and they anathematized the monothelite position that he has only one will, as well as anathemizing Pope Honorius I by name, which, by the way, is a real problem for papal infallibility. In any case, this council, Constantinople III, is the last ecumenical council that dealt with Christology. Now let me ask you a question. Why do you think that a church, in a context of major political instability, was willing to raise this to the level of heresy and anathematize all opposition? Well, it's not, it's like we said earlier, there's major theological problems with it. It's not exactly apparent at first glance, but if you accept that Jesus has only one will, you either end up saying that he cannot be saved, or you end up saying that God has three wills, and here's why. If you believe that the will is aligned with the nature, then you're saying that he has only one will, a divine will, and that means you end up denying that he has a human will, and if he's not assumed a human will, then our human wills cannot be saved, and we cannot be saved. So, it's a pretty major issue, this is the Apollinarian problem going back to Pergamum Nazianzus, back in 381, with the first council of Constantinople. Now, if you say that the will is aligned with a person, which is kind of a modern notion anyways, but if you say it's aligned with a person, you know, Jesus is one person, so he has one will, then also, well, the Holy Spirit is one person, and the Father is one person, so now you have three wills of God, which goes against an even more historic teaching that there is only one will in God. You know, this idea that it would be associated with a person is kind of a modern notion anyways, so it's kind of anachronistic to read it back into it, but if you accept that the will is aligned with the nature, then the belief that Jesus has two wills is just a logical implication from the belief that Jesus has two natures. In other words, Constantinople III is just the Christological outworking of the definition of Chalcedon. And that is the last Christological controversy that we're going to cover today, and it concludes our outline that Jesus is the man who is God, fully God, fully man, one person, two natures, two wills.