The heresy of monothelitism part 1
(This is an old paper I wrote in seminary on the little known heresies of monoenergism and monothelitism. In brief these are the belief that Christ had one energy and one will. I thought the entirety of the paper was lost but a friend had kept a copy of it. So I am republishing it now in two parts. The first part is essentially a paper I wrote for a church history class, the second part deals with the contemporary problem of neo-monothelitism and that part was specifically written for the Talbot Philosophical society. Sadly the footnotes are gone. One of them was a multi paragraph explanation of something, but the worst part is all my sources are not unknown.)
In this paper I want to take issue with a Christology that has recently garnered some attention attracting adherents within Evangelical academia. For lack of a better term I am going to call this Christology Neo-monoenergism. I consider this to be a broad label which if investigated fully could probably include a wide range of current theological positions from social Trinitarians, Egalitarian church polity, to even soteriological Calvinists. In other words I think this belief has been very influential and widespread within evangelicalism and at least needs to be identified and understood. Neo-monoenergism, as I am defining it, means that in the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God who became Jesus Christ, there is only one activity of willing. I call this Neo because monoenergism was explicitly condemned at the council of Constantinople III in a slightly different form from this current theology. The current resurgence of monoenergist theology seeks to be within the limits of broadly construed Nicene and Chalcedonian orthodoxy. I contend that this is not possible and that Neo-monoenergism will, for each of its adherents, lead to at least one of the heresies condemned at the first five councils unless monoenergism is fundamentally redefined. In the first part I defend the thesis that the sixth council was consistent with Chalcedon and protected Cyrillian Christology from heretical interpretation. In the second part I will articulate Neo-monoenergism and finally show how it is inconsistent with broadly Nicene theology and will probably lead to the rebuilding of the heretical “wheel” unless what is meant by monoenergism is redefined or possibly Chalcedonian and Nicene categories are given up.
Part I: The Dyothelitism of Constantinople III
Christology is a complicated topic. There were seven councils dealing directly with Christology which are recognized as ecumenical. The theology of the later three is infallible for Rome or Constantinople/Moscow, but amongst Protestants it has differing reputations. This section will be irenic and not polemical. I am dealing with the sixth of these great councils, also known as the Third Council of Constantinople (ad 680-681). I will describe what the council actually said about the nature of the incarnation. Then I will explain the heresy of monothelitism which was the occasion for holding the council. Then I will explicate dyothelitism, and to a lesser extent dyoenergism, which were the dogmas established by the council.
The Acts of Constantinople III
Any discussion of a church council should involve what was decided at the council in the very words of those present. There seem to be two things of primary importance stated directly in The Acts of the 6th Ecumenical Council (ad 680-681): the naming of heretical teachers and the true teaching of the church that Christ possesses two wills and two energies. The council clearly declares that monothelitism and monoenergism are heresy and undoubtedly affirms that dyothelitism and dyoenergism are orthodoxy. Then it goes on to posthumously anathematize several church teachers, the most important being Pope Honorius I (ad 625-638), who reputedly taught this doctrine. While every council is complicated, reading the acts of Constantinople III gives one the impression that the issue is very simple. Christ has two wills and that is that. Of course almost nothing in connection with Jesus Christ is that simple. There are many layers and complicated issues within the theology of this great council. One of the most vexing for the Roman Catholic tradition is the unchallenged and unqualified condemnation of a Petrine Bishop “who in everything agreed with them [heretics].” But first we need to understand the preceding theological developments and problems which led the church to this point.
Monothelitism
This ecumenical gathering of teachers, just as each before them, did more than affirm mere metaphysics. The fathers at Constantinople III had soteriological dogma in mind. The issue of Christ having one or two wills seems very esoteric given the theological challenges of 21st century Christendom. But to these bishops and teachers of the church it was like asking the question: are humans really and truly saved by Jesus Christ? The defenders of monothelitism were under the impression that to affirm dyothelitism was to affirm Nestorianism and therefore to separate God and man in Christ to the point of unraveling the salvific work of the Hypostatic Union. The historic concern of the monothelite tradition was to maintain the synthesis of Cyril Patriarch of Alexandria (ad 412-444) who affirmed the unity of the incarnation in the person of Christ. Cyril’s theology prevailed at the council of Ephesus over the teachings of Nestorius by preserving “the deep substantial nature of the conjunction of God and man in Christ.” But in spite of his success, Cyril’s terminology could be confusing or ambiguous, specifically his use of the phrase “one incarnate nature.” But this phrase was not alone. The monothelite heresy which followed claimed the central tenets of Cyrillian Orthodox Christology as its foundation.
The doctrinal edifice of Monoenergism was built upon three pillars: first, the recognition of the Cyrilline doctrine of ‘one incarnate nature of God the Word’; second an acceptance of the theopaschite formula, that is, the statement that ‘one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh’; and finally, the ps.-Dionysian affirmation of ‘a new (or ‘single’) theandric activity’ in Christ after the union. Both the statements of Cyril and ps.-Dionysius the Aeropagite seemed, on a superficial reading, to endorse the existence of a single activity in Christ.
This quotation shows how deeply interconnected Christology and soteriology seem to be. Each of the theological principles listed is primarily soteriological. “One incarnate nature” was Cyril’s way of emphasizing the deification of man through Christ. It was not a reference to one nature after the Hypostatic Union, an explicitly Eutychian idea, but the belief that “very God of very God” became incarnate. The divine nature was united to the human nature through Christ. And the same logic can be applied to both the theopaschite formula and talk of a theandric will. Because Christ is truly God and Christ has died therefore God has died. But that is not to say that God the Father or the divine essence were crucified. And a theandric will was simply a deified human will. So Christ would still be dyophysite and dyothelite but his human will is deified. Still it is not hard to see how the monophysite confusions were made consistently, or how indebted genuine Christian soteriology truly is to Cyril.
But the irony of Constantinople III is that both the dyophysite Nestorians and monophysite Eutychians were monothelites. In the case of both they were under the impression that to have one will and energy was to preserve the union of natures. For the Monophysites this followed from their insistence on one nature, for their reading of Cyril was such that the one incarnate nature actually meant a new combined divine-human nature. And for them the concept of a theandric will meant a God-human composite will, not a deified will.
The reasons for Nestorian monothelitism are far more ambiguous and complicated. I think their main motivation came from the Nestorian desire to affirm one prosopon. But the fullest definition of Nestorianism is something more akin to one prosopon and two hypostases which is why the Nestorian heresy is usually described as belief in two persons in the incarnation due to the historical ambiguities between those Greek words, and how prosopon and hypostasis became synonyms eventually. Nestorianism recognizes that there must be a unity to the incarnation of some kind but that there must be a genuine duality as well. But rather than the duality merely being emphasized the duality came to be understood as two complete or independent dualities united by a prosopon, but the prosopon in question is not God the Son or even Jesus Christ but the conjunction of God the Son with Jesus Christ in two complete hypostases. This is why Nestorius denied the term Theotokos as the virgin Mary’s liturgical title and opted for Christotokos instead and why he also denied the theopaschite formula. The human nature of Christ could not experience divinity and the divine nature of God the Son could not experience humanity so the prosoponic unity of these two independent natures must have been a unity of action or willing. And since willing seems intuitively to be personal as opposed to natural both the Eutychians and the Nestorians placed will in the person rather than nature. Here it is important to note Pope Leo’s (ad 391?-461) contribution to the discussion.
Since Leo’s Tome is an official part of the acts of the council of Chalcedon, all Christians who commit themselves to the actual teaching authority of Chalcedon are committed to Leo’s Tome as well. This is interesting because the Eastern Church will often remark that the Tome has problems, namely that it flirts with Nestorianism at worst and is ambiguous at best; even though they know it must be orthodox. In any case Pelikan shows that Leo’s phrasing of the natures doing things was essential for defeating monothelitism and paving the way for Constantinople III. As I’ve already admitted it seems appropriate to make “actions” or willing belong to person and not nature but the Christological problems with this intuition were at the center of the theology of the sixth council. According to Pelikan both heretical groups sought to reinterpret Leo’s language, in fact they completely altered it. They tried to read a single subject of action into the actions being performed.Leo’s theology was universally hated outside the churches that wanted to follow Chalcedon consistently.
The actual phrasing that caused this trouble for the heretics was Leo’s claim that each “form” does the acts which belong to it. Pelikan explains:
Without any change in the spelling of the Latin and with at most a very slight change in the spelling of the Greek, Leo’s formula could be read to say that the incarnate Logos “does, by means of each form, the acts that belong to it, in communion with the other,” with the word “form” now in the ablative or instrumental dative. This was the interpretation of Leo set forth by Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople, an advocate of “one action.” Yet if our transmitted texts are reliable, he elsewhere quoted the same passage correctly, ascribing the acting to each of the natures rather than to the single hypostasis of the Logos…
This issue is not an irrelevant vestige of Chalcedon because Constantinople III directly cites Leo’s Tome as its proof and basis for dyoenergism. The exact passage is quoted that the heretics tried to manipulate as evidence for their view. The significance of this point cannot be overstated for Constantinople III. A direct connection to Pope Leo I showing that Christ had two wills means that dyothelitism was self-consciously in step with Chalcedonian dogma. It is not difficult to see how a will could be proper to nature. Which would make it like a metaphysical appendage, just as legs or lungs are something a body has but do not themselves make up a physical body. A will is something that can be accessed and utilized but it is not the center of action. In other words a person uses a will, but persons perform determinative and deliberative actions and the will is where those decisions are actualized. That is why we tend to think of and call ourselves agents or centers of action. So if anything were to be located in Christ’s person it would seem to be action. But Leo’s language prevents this conclusion! He has located action as well as will in each nature, because the natures are actually doing something not merely being utilized by the Hypostasis. Like my legs deciding to walk rather than my use of my legs to walk. If this is an accurate description of Leo’s theology then it would appear to be wholly unorthodox because of the conciliar distinction between person and nature, and seemingly lead to Nestorianism. Yet the theology of Chalcedon and Constantinople III, two anti-Nestorian councils, rests on Leo’s theology. It is therefore probable that agency and action are in fact different for conciliar Christology. Also the council of Chalcedon and Leo’s theology has to be read and understood in light of Cyril’s theology. For as Fairbairn argues Chalcedon was not a compromise between Cyril and Nestorius but was in fact a defense of Cyril’s theology. All of this makes a Nestorian interpretation of Leo, and therefore dyothelitism, highly incredulous.
Dyothelitism
According to O’Collins, “at the level of Christ’s will and ‘natural’ activities, the Council upheld the Chalcedonian balance between a ‘Nestorian’ separation and a ‘Eutychian’ blending.” And clearly it was necessary for this clarification to take place because the heresy in question was not as gross or violent as Apollinarism or Arianism. It was a subtler falsehood. This is evidenced by its widespread speculation in the orthodox churches. After Chalcedon it was clear to most of the church that Christ must have two natures. But was “will” proper to “nature”? This is why Collins says that it is a soteriological question. If the unassumed is the unhealed and part of human nature is a human will then Christ must have one if we are to be saved.
The concept of operation/activity or energy is less clear in the theological texts I have surveyed. But as has been shown it was important to Constantinople III, and apparently Pope Leo I. According to Pelikan, dyoenergism was a clear derivation from dyothelitism, which is strange considering two things. First, it is clearly an Aristotelian concept rather than a Biblical one. Second, if “action” comes after “willing” then why was there so much controversy over it being located in the person of Christ? In any case dyoenergism was seen as following from dyothelitism.
Conciliar Christology was defined by many things, but probably the most important of these was the principle of the unassumed being unhealed. So the sixth council affirms that Christ had to have two wills: one will shared with the other members of the trinity, and one will shared with human nature. The reason for this is quite simply that only God can save and in order for God to save something he must connect it to himself. That is essentially the first three councils in a nutshell. The argument against Arius:
1. Only God could save us
2. Christ has saved us
3. Therefore he must be God.
And contra Apolinarius human nature can’t be healed unless all of it is healed, Christ has perfectly healed us therefore Apolinarius was wrong. So Christ must be fully God and fully man as explained at Chalcedon. The Sixth council was really about how God saves us by giving further clarification to the fourth ecumenical council. There are still questions which need to be answered and puzzles that need to be solved, but it seems clear that the council thought of itself as merely a continuation of the previous five ecumenical decisions, which includes the theologies of Cyril and Leo. Right or wrong Constantinople III thought it was representing the continual and unified soteriology and Christology of the Chalcedonian church. And so if the theologians of this council were correct then the current Neo-monoenergism is in serious trouble.