The Necessity of Dyothelitism for the Atonement
R. LUCAS STAMPS
INTRODUCTION1
By the time the church convened what would become its sixth ecumenical council in Constantinople in the fall of 680, Maximus the Confessor had been dead for over eighteen years. But it was the work of Maximus, as much as anyone else in the preceding decades of the monothelite controversy, that laid the Christological groundwork for the decision that the bishops would render at the Third Council of Constantinople (680 – 81).2 The question that the council addressed is well known: Does the incarnate Christ possess one will or two? In large measure, the parties of the debate were seeking to tease out the logic of the fourth ecumenical council, the Council of Chalcedon (451).
Both parties, the monothelites and the dyothelites, agreed with Chalcedon that Christ is a single person with two natures, but the pressing question was simply this: To which of these categories (person or nature) does the will — the faculty of choice and intention — properly belong?3 Do wills inhere in persons or in natures? If the former is the case, then by Chalcedonian logic, Christ can have only one will. But if the latter is the case, then by that same logic, Christ must have two wills. Maximus’s answers to these questions were clear and unambiguous. Wills belong to natures, not persons, and therefore the incarnate Christ possesses two wills: the one divine will that he shares eternally with the Father and the Spirit and the discrete human will that he assumed in the incarnation.
Part of what compelled Maximus to adopt this position was exactly what motivated Gregory of Nazianzus three centuries earlier in the Apollinarian controversy, namely, the soteriological task of Christ in his assumption of human nature. Indeed, Maximus echoed Gregory’s famous maxim, “The unassumed is unhealed,” and applied it not only to the soul of Christ generally but also to the distinctive, volitional faculty of the soul: the will.4 Maximus also linked Christ’s assumption of a human will to his redemptive work as the Last Adam; Christ reverses the curse of sin at the very place where it entered the human race: the human will.5 In short, Maximus defended dyothelitism on explicitly soteriological grounds: only if Christ possesses a human will can he serve as an adequate redeemer and healer of fallen human wills.
In the history of Christian thought, Maximus is hardly alone in drawing a close connection between the Son’s assumption of a human will and his atoning and reconciling work. John of Damascus closely follows Maximus’s logic on this point, as does Thomas Aquinas.6 Though the soteriological models of the Reformation differed in many respects from those of the Eastern Fathers, Reformation theologians such as John Calvin and Peter Martyr Vermigli also defended dyothelitism for reasons closely associated with Christ’s atoning work.7 Within the Reformed tradition, the same trend continued through the post-Reformation period and into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the works of such Reformed luminaries as John Owen, Charles Hodge, William G. T. Shedd, and Thomas F. Torrance.8
The classic proof text for the dyothelite position is, of course, Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane: “Nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). Christian interpreters have often appealed to this passage, not only to defend the dyothelite position, but also to explain its particular soteriological utility: Christ assumes a human will precisely in order to overturn the consequences of sin and to “bend the will of man back into oneness with God,” to cite Torrance’s memorable phrase.9
This essay explores this important link between dyothelitism and the atonement. Its purpose is twofold. The primary aim is to suggest from both Scripture and the Christian tradition that dyothelitism undergirds the trinitarian, vicarious, and holistic nature of the “whole course” of Christ’s obedience and every volitional act that comprises it.10 A secondary purpose of this essay is to speak into contemporary debates over monothelitism. In recent decades, several theologians and philosophers have critiqued the church’s dyothelite consensus and have sought to rehabilitate the monothelite position.11 Operating from an “abstractist” understanding of Christ’s human nature and often from a kenotic model of the incarnation, these contemporary monothelites believe that the dyothelite position is demanded neither from Scripture nor from the Chalcedonian definition.12 Indeed, according to these scholars, the dyothelite position risks Nestorianism by threatening the volitional unity of Christ’s hypostasis.
This essay is not the place for a complete adjudication of these issues, but the retrieval of this particular rationale for dyothelitism (what we might call “the atonement rationale”) may cast light on these contemporary debates over the volitional life of Christ. It may at least encourage proponents of monothelitism to consider how their own understanding of the incarnation can account for the full range of Christ’s atoning work as the God-Man.
The essay will proceed in three steps: (1) a brief examination of the interpretive challenges posed by the Gethsemane Narrative, (2) some soundings in the history of interpretation, and (3) an attempt to draw some constructive conclusions from this scriptural and traditional material. These three steps correspond roughly to the triangulation of factors described by Marilyn McCord Adams in her discussion of medieval understandings of Christ’s human nature: scriptural interpretation, systematic assumptions, and soteriological tasks.13
SCRIPTURAL INTERPRETATION: THE GETHSEMANE NARRATIVE
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS
As mentioned above, the locus classicus for the monothelite/dyothelite debate is the Gethsemane Narrative, which is recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels (Matt 26:36 – 46; Mark 14:32 – 42; Luke 22:39 – 46). More specifically, the debate hinges on Jesus’ prayer, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matt 26:39 ESV). The discussion below will focus attention on Matthew’s version of the Gethsemane Narrative, but before we get to this examination, a few preliminary observations are in order.
First, it is noteworthy that this single prayer brings together the two halves of this essay’s subject matter: the will of Christ (“not as I will”) and the atonement of Christ (the “cup” of Jesus’ impending death). Christian interpreters have good reason, then, to argue that the volitional experience of Christ described in this passage has profound implications for the doctrine of the atonement.
Second, it is obvious that Jesus’ will is contrasted here with the will of the Father, at least in some sense: “Not as I will, but as you will.” As will be suggested below, how one understands the precise nature of this contrast is decided, at least in part, by factors that lie outside of this text — especially by theological convictions that interpreters bring to this text concerning the Trinity and the unity of the divine will. But at the outset, it must be admitted that some kind of contrast or tension between the will of the Father and the will of Christ is implied by the words of Jesus’ prayer.
Third, and related, the Gethsemane Narrative cannot stand alone as a proof text for dyothelitism. The main theological/philosophical question under consideration in the monothelite debate is simply this: Do wills belong to persons or to natures? No single text can answer this complicated christological question. In Gethsemane, Jesus’ will is clearly contrasted with his Father’s. But the passage is still underdetermined when it comes to the number of Christ’s wills. One could argue that wills belong to persons, and since there are two divine persons involved in the Gethsemane prayer (the Father and the Son), one would naturally expect to see a distinction of their personal wills. J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig seem to suggest this kind of interpretation in their defense of monothelitism:
Passages in the Gospels usually used as proof texts of this doctrine [i.e. dyothelitism] — such as Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane, “Yet, not my will but yours be done” (Lk. 22:42) — do not contemplate a struggle of Jesus’ human will with his divine will (he is not, after all, talking to himself!), but have reference to the interaction between Jesus’ will (“my will”) and the Father’s will (“yours”). Possessing a typical human consciousness, Jesus had to struggle against fear, weakness and temptation in order to align his will with that of his heavenly Father. The will of the Logos had in virtue of the Incarnation become the will of the man Jesus of Nazareth.14
So, for Moreland and Craig, the Son possesses one will, which is distinct from the Father’s, and this one will has, by virtue of the incarnation, been contracted to the limitations of Jesus’ human consciousness. Moreland and Craig seem to be assuming that wills belong to persons, not natures. The Son is not talking to himself, after all. The will that is contrasted with Jesus’ will is the Father’s alone. The Son’s will, like his person, is distinct from the Father’s, and in his incarnate state it has taken on human properties, which make possible the kind of volitional tension we see in Gethsemane. On this account, one will in Christ would imply three wills in the Godhead and thus some version of social trinitarianism, an implication to which we will return in due course.15
A dyothelite reading, on the other hand, would argue that the “will” in view in the Gethsemane Narrative is the Son’s human will, which is distinguished from the divine will of the Father. To be sure, on the dyothelite reading, the Son in his divinity also possesses this very same divine will, but this broader trinitarian point is not the issue under consideration in this text.16 Instead, as Christian interpreters have always acknowledged, the Gethsemane Narrative is a deeply human account of Jesus’ experience.
While we cannot divide or separate the natures of Christ, we can distinguish the attributes that belong properly to each. The traditional view has argued that Jesus’ agonizing prayer in the garden reveals his human struggle at the prospect of his looming death.17 The text shows how the Son’s human will is perfectly conformed to the divine will. Though it is functionally one with the divine will, Christ’s human will is ontologically distinct and must undergo a trial of conformity to the divine will. In the words of Hebrews, “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (Heb 5:8 – 9).18
MATTHEW’S GETHSEMANE NARRATIVE
But the question remains: Are there any clues in the Gethsemane Narrative itself that point in the direction of the dyothelite interpretation? Once again, a final determination must take into account theological factors that lie outside of this single text, but we can at least discern in the Gethsemane Narrative a strong emphasis on the humanity of Christ and, especially relevant for the purposes of this essay, on the representative nature of Christ’s suffering. If we adopt the rule of Gregory of Nazianzus — that some texts speak of the Son of God as such and others of the Son in his incarnate and mediatorial role — then we would no doubt place the Gethsemane Narrative in the latter category.19
Focusing on Matthew’s version of the Gethsemane Narrative, two lines of evidence suggest that it is Jesus’ uniquely human experience that is in view in this passage. First, the literary connections between Matthew’s Gethsemane Narrative and Matthew’s account of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:7 – 15) suggest that Jesus’ representative (and thus fully human) role is in view in Gethsemane. As commentators have noted, there are several verbal parallels between the “Lord’s Prayer” in Matthew 6 and the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 26: “our/my Father” (Matt 6:9; 26:39, 42); “into temptation” (Matt 6:13; 26:41); and “your will be done” (Matt 6:10; 26:42).20 Thus, the Lord takes upon his own lips the prayer that he taught his disciples. He is the Son of the Father par excellence. Through agonizing prayer, Jesus’ human will was perfectly conformed to the Father’s will.
This exemplary and representative role seems to require a human will for its accomplishment. To cite Hebrews, “He had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Heb 2:17 ESV). Here, we have our thesis in short order: the Son’s reconciling work (“propitiation for the sins of the people”) seems to require the Son’s assumption of all that it means to be human, including a human will (“like his brothers in every respect”).
Second, the high drama of the Gethsemane Narrative itself also points in the direction of Jesus’ human representative role. Jesus is presented as more than an exemplary sufferer in this text. He is also presented as the representative, indeed the substitute, of God’s people. In the garden, the disciples sleep while Jesus is praying the prayer he taught them to pray (Matt 26:40, 44). He alone watches and prays. He alone is wholly committed to the petition, “Thy will be done.” He alone is the obedient Son of the Father. Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane is, in a sense, a dramatic enactment of his substitutionary work. Christ’s passion begins in the garden: he suffers while his followers sleep. A few chapters earlier, James and John had promised that they could share in his “cup” of suffering (Matt 20:22), but in the final hour Jesus alone must drink the cup of God’s wrath in their place (Matt 26:39, 42).21
Perhaps the garden setting further illustrates this representative work. Adam disobeyed in a garden of paradise; the Last Adam obeyed in a garden of agony.22 All of this substitutionary evidence only makes sense if Christ can truly stand in the place of Adam, Israel, and the disciples.23 We can state the matter as follows: Christ wills salvation through a human will in the place of human wills— in spite of the agony that this choice produces. Some kind of human volitional equipment seems necessary in order for him to serve as an adequate substitute in this manner. In short, volitional function implies volitional ontology. Christ can will and act as a human representative only because he has assumed human volitional equipage. What this means for Christ’s ongoing relation to the divine will remains to be seen, but it seems clear that Matthew wishes to portray Jesus as the human representative and substitute for his faltering disciples.
SYSTEMATIC ASSUMPTIONS: SOUNDINGS IN THE HISTORY OF INTERPRETATION
For theologians committed to showing deference to the Christian tradition, there is a sense in which the whole history of orthodoxy functions as a set of systematic assumptions for the task of contemporary theologizing. This is especially true with regard to the ecumenical councils of the church and the exegetical and theological consensus that they represent. When it comes to the Gethsemane Narrative, the history of interpretation bears out the vicarious reading sketched above, and when this interpretation is coupled with the traditional understanding of the unity of the divine will, it yields the conciliar two-wills position.
In other words, the dyothelite model of the incarnation is built in two steps, as it were. The first step involves interpreting the Gethsemane Narrative in the manner suggested above: in Gethsemane, it is the human nature, not the divine nature, that is underscored in Jesus’ volitional struggle. The second step involves certain trinitarian assumptions that are brought to the interpretation of this text. Specifically, they are assumptions concerning the unity of the divine will: because the divine will inheres in the divine nature, the three trinitarian persons each share in a numerically singular will. Both halves of this dyothelite equation can be seen in the historical survey that follows. Three representative figures are explored: Maximus the Confessor, John Calvin, and Thomas F. Torrance.
MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR
Though there were dyothelite precursors in the centuries prior to the monothelite controversy,24 we begin with Maximus, since he stands at the fountainhead of the medieval dyothelite tradition.25 Regarding the Gethsemane Narrative, Maximus writes,
Therefore, in his natural capacity, the Saviour is distinguished as a human being, willing in a fleshly way the shrinking in the face of death together with the rest of the passions, showing the economy to be pure of fantasy, and redeeming the nature from the passions to which it has been condemned as a result of sin.26
A couple of things are worthy of note here. First, Maximus believes that the Son’s assumption of a human will is necessary for the genuineness of his incarnation. In order for God’s redemptive economy to be “pure of fantasy,” the Son had to assume the capacity to will in a “fleshly way,” that is, the capacity to experience ordinary (and non-sinful, we should add) human passions.27 Second, Maximus believes that the Son’s assumption of a human will is necessary for the effectiveness of his redeeming work. Christ’s experience in Gethsemane not only shows the genuineness of his human volition, but it also highlights his redemption of fallen human volition.
Maximus goes on to say that Christ “shows his eager desire, putting death to death in the flesh, in order that he might show as a human being that what is natural is saved in himself, and that he might demonstrate, as God, the Father’s great and ineffable purpose, fulfilled in the body.” So Christ’s work of redemption must be understood in a twofold manner corresponding to his two natures and two wills. Through his human will, Christ saves fallen human volition from the inside out, as it were. And through his divine will, Christ demonstrates the united purpose of the Godhead to redeem humanity through the incarnation and passion of Christ.
For Maximus, there can be no distinction of wills between two divine persons. Wills belong to natures, not persons, after all; and since there is only one divine nature, there can be only one divine will. Indeed, in his disputation with Pyrrhus, Maximus makes precisely this trinitarian argument against monothelitism. If a “willer” — that is, a person or hypostasis — requires a distinct will, then one of two trinitarian heresies would follow. Either there is only one willer in the Godhead and we are left with Sabellian modalism, or else there are three wills in the Godhead and we risk Arianism (or tritheism).28
In another place, Maximus highlights the Adamic task of Christ that required his assumption of a human will. Maximus argues that since the will was the first human faculty to succumb to sinful passion, then the will must also be the locus of sin’s undoing. He then cites Gregory’s axiom and applies it to the human will: “So, if according to [the monothelites] the Word when He became incarnate did not have this [faculty of will] along with the nature, then I shall never be set free from sin. And if I cannot be freed from sin, then I have not been saved, since what is not assumed is not healed.”29 Thus, Maximus lays the biblical and theological groundwork for the subsequent dyothelite tradition, arguing for the two-wills position on both soteriological and trinitarian grounds.
JOHN CALVIN
Maximus’s dyothelite reading of the Gethsemane Narrative was echoed throughout the medieval period and into the Reformation era as well. John Calvin’s interpretation is representative in this regard. In his commentary on the Gethsemane Narrative, Calvin explicitly addresses the monothelite heresy. Especially relevant is his exposition of Jesus’ prayer, “Yet not my will, but thine be done” (Luke 22:42 par.):
This passage shows plainly enough the gross folly of those ancient heretics, who were called Monothelites, because they imagined that the will of Christ was but one and simple; for Christ, as he was God, willed nothing different from the Father; and therefore, it follows, that his human soul had affections distinct from the secret purpose of God.30
Calvin’s logic seems to be as follows:
Premise 1: Christ qua divine possesses the same will as the Father.
Premise 2: Christ’s prayer in Gethsemane indicates that he possesses a will distinct from the Father.
Conclusion: Therefore, Christ must have assumed a human will, in addition to his divine will, when he assumed a human soul; that is, Christ qua human possesses a will distinct from the Father.
According to Calvin, Christ “as he was God” cannot will anything different from the Father. This assumption is absolutely critical for Calvin; the persons of the Godhead share an identical will.31 The logic of the monothelites — that wills belong to persons, not natures — when pushed back into the Trinity would demand three distinct wills within the Godhead. This notion is unthinkable for Calvin.
But just as crucial for Calvin is the assumption that Christ possesses a will distinct from the Father. Otherwise, how could he pray this conflicted prayer in Gethsemane? If the Son’s will is in some sense distinct from the will of the Father, as is implied in the Gethsemane narrative, then it must be the Son’s human will that is in view. Hence, for Calvin, the Son possesses two distinct wills united in his one person.
Calvin also addresses Jesus’ Gethsemane experience in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, where he writes of the Gethsemane Narrative,
Now this refutes the error of Apollinaris, as well as that of the so-called Monothelites. Apollinaris claimed that Christ had an eternal spirit instead of a soul, so that he was only half a man. As if he could atone for our sins in any other way than by obeying the Father! But where is inclination or will to obey except in the soul? We know that it was for this reason that his soul was troubled: to drive away fear and bring peace and repose to our souls. Against the Monothelites, we see that he did not will as man what he willed according to his divine nature. I pass over the fact that, with a contrary emotion, he overcame the fear of which we have spoken. This plainly appears to be a great paradox: “Father, save me from this hour? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father glorify thy name” [John 12:27 – 28]. Yet in his perplexity there was no extravagant behavior such as is seen in us when we strive mightily to control ourselves.32
Note that Calvin draws a parallel between Apollinarianism and monothelitism. Calvin explicitly places “inclination” and “will” at the level of the human soul. For Calvin, wills belong to natures, not persons. More specifically, human wills belong to human souls, and Christ must have assumed both in order to carry out his redemptive mission. Atonement and reconciliation demand the Son’s assumption of a complete human nature: body and soul, inclination and will.
THOMAS F. TORRANCE
Finally, we turn our attention to the twentieth-century Scottish Reformed theologian Thomas F. Torrance. In many ways, Torrance is reliably Calvinistic in his Christology, but his defense of dyothelitism is refracted through his own idiosyncrasies, as it were, especially his understanding of Christ’s vicarious humanity and fallen flesh.
But again, unless we take seriously at this point the fact that Christ assumed our will, the will of estranged man in estranged adamic human nature, in order to suffer all its temptations and to resist them and condemn sin in our human nature, and then to bend the will of man back into oneness with the divine will, it is difficult to give the temptations of Christ their due place. It is difficult therefore to give the human obedience of Christ, in struggle against the onslaught of evil and sin, its full and proper place in atoning reconciliation. If Christ assumed neutral or perfect human nature, and assumed it into oneness with his own divine person who could not choose to sin any more than he could choose not to be God, then the humanity of Christ is merely instrumental in the hands of God. But if so, then salvation is only an act of God done upon us and for us, and not also a real human act done in our place and issuing out of our humanity.33
Following Edward Irving and Karl Barth, Torrance argues that Christ assumed a fallen human nature.34 To be sure, Christ is sinless, but he is not unfallen. He assumed the form of human nature possessed by those he came to save, namely, corrupted human nature. “If it were otherwise,” Barth asks, “how could Christ really be like us?”35
For those committed to a more Western understanding of original sin, the idea that Christ could assume a fallen human nature and yet remain free from culpability is untenable.36 But even theologians who would balk at Torrance’s “fallen flesh” proposal can still appreciate what we might call his Gregorian logic: Christ must assume all that it means to be a human precisely in order to redeem and restore fallen humanity. The unassumed is unredeemed, and this applies equally to the human will of Christ as to his human soul.
SOTERIOLOGICAL TASKS: CONSTRUCTING A DYOTHELITE MODEL OF THE ATONEMENT
Having briefly considered the interpretive issues surrounding the Gethsemane Narrative and some representative readings from the history of interpretation, we now seek to draw some conclusions at a more constructive level. Much remains to be said, especially in response to the challenges posed to the traditional view by contemporary monothelite proposals, but the following three propositions are offered in an attempt to sketch out the basic contours of a contemporary dyothelite model of the atonement.
TRINITARIAN INTENTION
Proposition 1: Dyothelitism is necessary for the atonement because it preserves the unity of trinitarian operations in the economy of redemption.
On a dyothelite model of the incarnation, there can be no tension between the will of the Father and the will of the Son when it comes to the divine plan of redemption. Indeed, there can be no distinction between the will of the Father and the will of the Son in this regard. The divine will, like the divine nature in which it inheres, is numerically singular. All three divine persons immutably will the same redemptive purpose. It is only by virtue of the incarnation, and the Son’s assumption of a finite but unfallen human will, that the incarnate Christ can experience a genuine volitional trial and painful choice of the cross.
As argued above, the Gethsemane Narrative taken alone is underdetermined when it comes to the monothelite controversy. We must bring other biblical and theological considerations to bear on our interpretation of this text in order to make a determination about the number of wills in the incarnate Christ. The most important of these considerations is trinitarian in nature. Is the Trinity trithelitic or monothelitic? Are there three wills in the Godhead or one? If one assumes, with the majority Christian tradition, the unity of the divine will, the Gethsemane Narrative serves rather straightforwardly as evidence for the Son’s assumption of a discrete human will.37 If, on the other hand, one assumes a three-willed Godhead, then the passage would be taken, again rather straightforwardly, as evidence for a distinction of personal wills between the first and second persons. As Jordan Wessling has argued, perhaps both of these interpretive options are responsible ways of dealing with the passage.38
But consider for a moment what the latter interpretation would entail for the volitional life of the Godhead. Can it be the case that there exists a real, existential conflict between two divine wills? How could such a view be reconciled with the unity of the Godhead? Even the strongest versions of social trinitarianism identify the unity of the Godhead as a unity of purpose, with some kind of perichoretic activity preserving the union.39 But on a monothelitic understanding of Gethsemane, one has to assume that for a moment in time (and perhaps others besides, during Christ’s state of humiliation), this unity of purpose was threatened or suspended in the experience of the incarnate Christ. So, while the monothelitic-Christ/trithelitic-Trinity view can provide a defensible interpretation of the Gethsemane Narrative, it does so at a high trinitarian cost.
In any event it seems that dyothelitism provides us with a ready-made metaphysical mechanism by which we can affirm both the divine act of redemption in Christ and the human obedience of Christ without diminishing either or collapsing one into the other. Dyothelitism preserves both sides of the Christological coin, so to speak. It preserves what we might call the unity of trinitarian intentions as well as the appropriation of human suffering to the incarnate Son alone.40 Dyothelitism enables us to affirm, on the one hand, the undivided intention of the Trinity to save a people through the death of the Son and, on the other, the reality of Christ’s genuine human struggle and vicarious obedience in the face of trial and temptation. Monothelitism, by contrast, seems to demand some kind of kenotic understanding of Christ’s Gethsemane experience, in which the Son’s numerically singular will has undergone a transformation that makes possible his temptation in the face of death.
Whatever the merits of kenotic Christology as a coherent Christological model, the Gethsemane Narrative at least points up a potential weakness. If the Son has but one will, which has been contracted to the limitations of human experience, then it seems that he has given up more than a few nonessential divine attributes, and he may have surrendered volitional oneness with the Father as well. This is not to suggest that monothelites posit a final, functional dissonance between the wills of the Father and the Son, but they do introduce a real distinction between the divine wills, which at least places strain upon the unity of the Godhead.41 Dyothelitism avoids these trinitarian problems by locating the distinction of wills in Gethsemane in the two natures of the incarnate Son.
ADAMIC ROLES
Proposition 2: Dyothelitism is necessary for the atonement because it underscores Christ’s Adamic work of recapitulation and representation.
Dyothelitism enables contemporary theologians to give a full-throated affirmation of the genuineness of Christ’s volitional struggle at the prospects of his impending death and of the saving significance of his obedience as the Last Adam, without the trinitarian problems introduced by monothelitism. Because he possesses two wills, one divine and one human, Christ can function as both Lord and Servant in the covenant of grace, to use the traditional Reformed categories.42 Christ is, at once, the Lord who commands and the human covenant partner who obeys. His assumption of a distinct human will underscores this Adamic work.
Irenaeus, of course, is the theologian most commonly identified with the theme of Adamic recapitulation, but this theme is also picked up by Gregory of Nazianzus and Maximus the Confessor, among others.43 Maximus explicitly connects Christ’s human volition to his Adamic work. If the human will of the first Adam was instrumental at sin’s inception, then the human will of the Last Adam must be engaged in sin’s defeat. Christ’s assumption of a human will, with all of its weaknesses and passions, makes his work of redemption and recapitulation possible.
Calvin and Torrance also highlight the representational implications of the Son’s assumption of a human will. Calvin was concerned to show that Christ assumed a complete human nature, including a human soul equipped with a human will, in order to atone for sin. Torrance’s burden was to demonstrate that Christ assumed humanity as it actually stands, with all of the horrors of fallen existence, in order to bend the will of fallen humanity back into oneness with God. For these Reformed theologians, Christ’s work as the federal representative of his people cannot be fulfilled if he is lacking human volition. These recapitulative and representational themes demand the Son’s assumption of a human will. In other words, these soteriological tasks require human volitional equipage for their execution.
But how might proponents of monothelitism answer these kinds of objections? Perhaps they could argue that since wills inhere in persons, not natures, nothing is lost if the Son does not assume a human will. After all, no one who affirms the doctrine of anhypostasis would argue that the Son’s failure to assume a distinct human person constitutes a deficiency in his incarnation.44 The Son brings his own person to the table, so to speak, when he assumes an anhypostatic human nature. According to the doctrine of enhypostasis, the human nature of Christ receives its personhood in the person of the Son. This fact in no way detracts from the Son’s full humanity. Similarly, monothelitism could argue that the Son’s failure to assume a distinct human will does not detract from his full humanity. In other words, they could argue for the antheletic nature of Christ’s human nature; it is “without a will” (thelēma), just as it is “without a person.” Likewise, they could argue for an entheletic human nature of Christ; his human nature receives its will in the will of the Son.
Aside from the trinitarian problems that this monothelitic redefinition of “nature” and “person” creates,45 it is also unclear how this position can account for the ways in which the Scriptures speak of the will of Christ visà-vis his redemptive work. The Gethsemane Narrative seems to highlight the humanity, not the divinity, of the incarnate Christ in his volitional struggle. The same truth is implied in the book of Hebrews. It was precisely as a human that Christ learned obedience through what he suffered (Heb 5:8). It was through a human nature fashioned by God that he “came to do” the will of God (Heb 10:7). These passages cannot prove the dyothelite position beyond doubt, but they do seem to connect Jesus’ volitional obedience to the humanity that he assumed rather than to his essential divinity.
Furthermore, if the incarnate Christ possesses only one will, then what kind of will is it? Is it a divine will? If so, how could he serve as an adequate representative for human wills? Wouldn’t this leave us with a kind of volitional Apollinarianism, in which the will of the Son replaces the human will of Christ? Or perhaps in the incarnation the will of the Son is transformed into a human will. The will of the Son does not so much replace the human will as it becomes a human will, by taking on a certain set of human properties. This seems to be the kind of move that Alvin Plantinga makes in his defense of an “abstractist” understanding of Christ’s human nature.46 On this understanding of the incarnation, the person of the Son simply acquired a new set of abstract properties that enabled him to will and act as a human without necessarily surrendering his ability to will and act as God.
But wouldn’t this position suggest a kind of hybrid divine-human will? In this case, wouldn’t we be left with a kind of volitional Eutychianism, in which the will of the incarnate Christ is neither human nor divine but a kind of tertium quid? These Christological problems can be avoided on a dyothelite model. In the dyothelite scheme, the Son retains his divine will, which he shares eternally with the Father and the Spirit, and in the incarnation he assumes a discrete human will, on account of which he is adequately suited to serve as a representative and substitute for fallen humanity.
HOLISTIC REDEMPTION
Proposition 3: Dyothelitism is necessary for the atonement because it undergirds the entirety of Christ’s obedience and not merely his atoning death, narrowly construed.
In their own distinctive ways, Maximus, Calvin, and Torrance all asserted the saving significance of what Calvin called the “whole course” of Christ’s obedience. The Son’s assumption of a distinct human will undergirds this holistic understanding of Christ’s obedience because it infuses every volitional act of the incarnate Christ with redemptive meaning. As such, a dyothelite model of the atonement holds promise for bringing together several realities that are often dichotomized.
First, dyothelitism brings the incarnation and the atonement into closer relation. As Torrance argued, Christ’s work of atonement began the moment he was conceived in the Virgin’s womb. The incarnation itself has saving significance. Christ’s assumption of human nature already begins the work of reconciliation. More to the point, Christ’s assumption of a human will already begins the work of redeeming and healing fallen human volition. Even for those wary of the universalistic tendencies of Torrance’s (and Barth’s) understanding of Christ’s vicarious humanity,47 the idea that the incarnation itself has saving significance can help to overcome a dichotomy between incarnation and atonement, even between participatory and forensic notions of redemption.48 The incarnation is not merely preparatory for Christ’s work of atonement; it is itself a constitutive part of that atoning work.
Second, dyothelitism also draws a closer connection between Christ’s active and passive obedience. These traditional Reformed categories seek to account for the biblical testimony that Christ’s life as well as his death has redemptive meaning. Christ came to fulfill all righteousness (Matt 3:15). He was born under the law in order to redeem those under the law (Gal 4:4 – 5). His obedience as the Last Adam reverses the cursed effects of the first Adam (Rom 5:19). In another context, N. T. Wright has accused the ancient creeds of undervaluing the life and vocation of Jesus in that they move directly from his virgin birth to his suffering and death.49 Whatever we might say in defense of the creeds on this point, it is clear that traditional Reformed Christology cannot be accused of eliding the life of Christ. Calvin himself sums up this Reformed emphasis well:
Now someone asks, How has Christ abolished sin, banished the separation between us and God, and acquired righteousness to render God favorable and kindly toward us? To this we can in general reply that he has achieved this for us by the whole course of his obedience. . . . In short, from the time when he took on the form of a servant, he began to pay the price of liberation in order to redeem us.50
Christ’s active and passive obedience, however, should never have been seen as separable parts in his work of redemption. Instead, they should be seen as aspects of an integrated whole. Dyothelitism can do some of the heavy lifting in this integration. Because Christ has assumed a human will, his every act of obedience is vicarious in nature, from his obedience to the will of the Father as a child to his Spirit-filled ministry all the way to his surrender in Gethsemane and his subsequent passion. Furthermore, dyothelitism also undergirds his redemptive work on the other side of death. The redemptive significance of Christ’s human volition applies equally to his state of exaltation as to his state of humiliation. So even in his resurrection, ascension, session, intercession, and parousia, Christ remains fallen humanity’s volitional representative.51
Finally, dyothelitism may also help to overcome dichotomies between various models of the atonement.52 When emphasis is placed upon Christ’s volitional representation on behalf of his people, there is no need to choose between the substitutionary and victorious aspects of his work of atonement. He dies in the place of his drowsy disciples, drinking the cup of God’s wrath as their representative and substitute. But he also does battle with their enemies, watching and praying as he faces the Tempter’s worst assaults. Thus, as both vicar and victor Christ rises from the garden ready to complete the task before him and to exercise his human volition in the furtherance of human redemption.
CONCLUSION
The unassumed is unhealed. Maximus the Confessor believed that Gregory’s axiom applied as much to the will as it did to the soul or mind of human nature. Maximus and the broader dyothelite tradition maintained that the Son’s assumption of a human will is necessary for his atoning work. Only if Christ is equipped with human volition can he overturn the disastrous effects of sin that were unleashed on the world through human volition. Because of the unity of the divine will, any volitional tension that the incarnate Son experienced in relation to the Father can only be explained in terms of his incarnation.
But even then, his human will is only ontologically distinct from, never finally or functionally in conflict with, the divine will. As humanity’s representative and substitute, Christ renders obedience to the divine will through a human will in order to redeem and heal those with cursed and corrupted human wills. Dyothelitism helps to preserve the unity of trinitarian intention in the death of the Son, the Adamic tasks that Christ came to fulfill, and the holistic nature of his redeeming work.
Perhaps monothelitism can explain these realities by recourse to an “abstractist” understanding of Christ’s human nature. In other words, monothelitism may wish to explain that the will of the Son becomes the will of Jesus of Nazareth by assuming the properties of human volition and that through these properties he accomplishes human redemption. But for those who are committed to the unity of the divine will and who are wary of transformational and kenotic approaches to the incarnation, this abstractist understanding of Christ’s Gethsemane experience comes at too high a trinitarian and Christological cost.
Dyothelitism seems better equipped to explain both the divine intention and the human obedience of the incarnate Son in his work of atonement.
1. Some of this material originally appeared in R. Lucas Stamps, “Thy Will Be Done”: A Dogmatic Defense of Dyothelitism in Light of Recent Monothelite Proposals, unpublished dissertation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2014.
2. On the history of the monothelite controversy, see Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine 2, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600 – 1700) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 62 – 75; Leo Donald Davis, S.J., The First Ecumenical Councils (325– 787): Their History Theology (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazer, 1987), 258 – 89; Paul Verghese, “The Monothelite Controversy — A Historical Survey,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 13 (1968): 196 – 208; Justo L. Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought, vol. 2, From Augustine to the Eve of the Reformation, rev. ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1987), 88 – 91, 98 – 100; Harold O. J. Brown, Heresies: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1988), 186 – 92.
3. Cyril Hovorun demonstrates that the monothelite controversy was largely an intra-Chalcedonian, even intra-Cyrillian, dispute. Cyril Hovorun, Will, Action and Freedom: Christological Controversies in the Seventh Century (Leiden: Brill, 2008).
4. “So, if according to them the Word when He became incarnate did not have this [faculty of will] along with the nature, then I shall never be set free from sin. And if I cannot be freed from sin, then I have not been saved, since what is not assumed is not healed.” Joseph P. Farrell, trans., The Disputation with Pyrrhus of Our Father among the Saints Maximus the Confessor (Waymart, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1990), 46. See also Gregory of Nazianzus, “To Cledonius Against Apollinaris (Epistle 101),” in Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. Edward R. Hardy (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1954), 218 – 19.
5. Maximus argues that Christ’s assumption of a complete human nature brought about the dissolution of “all the divisions introduced by the transgression of the old Adam, through which nature has been condemned to death.” Maximus, Opuscule 7, in Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London: Routledge, 1996), 185.
6. John of Damascus, The Orthodox Faith, in John of Damascus, Writings, trans. Frederic H. Chase, Jr., Fathers of the Church, vol. 37 (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1958), 3.14; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, ed. Daniel J. Sullivan (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), 3.18.1.
7. John Calvin, A Commentary on A Harmony of the Evangelists: Matthew, Mark, and Luke, trans. William Pringle, in Calvin’s Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 3:233; idem., Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1960), 2.16.12; Peter Martyr Vermigli, “Letter No. 267, To the Illustrous Polish Nobleman,” cited in Torrance Kirby, Emidio Campi, and Frank A. James III, eds., A Companion to Peter Martyr Vermigli (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 331.
8. John Owen, Christologia, vol. 1 in The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1850 – 53), 15; William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 3rd ed., ed. Alan W. Gomes (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2003), 656 – 57; Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, ed. Robert T. Walker (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2009), 212; idem., Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ, ed. Robert T. Walker (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009), 70.
9. Torrance, Incarnation, 212.
10. The language of the “whole course” of Christ’s obedience comes from Calvin and figures prominently in Torrance’s Christology as well. See Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.5; Torrance, Incarnation, 80 – 81.
11. For example, see Alvin Plantinga, ‘On Heresy, Mind, and Truth,’ Faith and Philosophy 16, no. 2 (April 1999): 183 – 84; J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003), 611 – 12; Garrett J. DeWeese, “One Person, Two Natures: Two Metaphysical Models of the Incarnation,” in Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective: An Introductory Christology, eds. Fred Sanders and Klaus Issler (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2007), 114 – 53; Gordon R. Lewis and Bruce A. Demarest, Integrative Theology, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990 – 1996), 2:317.
12. In contemporary philosophical discussions of the incarnation, a distinction is sometimes made between transformational/abstractist models on the one hand and relational/concretist models on the other. In the former approach, the Son becomes incarnate by acquiring the abstract properties common to human nature, viewed as a universal. In the latter approach, the Son becomes incarnate by acquiring a certain relation to a specific human nature, viewed as a concrete particular. Alvin Plantinga seems to be the first to suggest this abstractist/concretist terminology, but the actual positions go back much further, perhaps even to the Council of Chalcedon itself. See Alvin Plantinga, “On Heresy, Mind, and Truth,” Faith and Philosophy 16, no. 2 (April 1999): 182 – 93. See also Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill, eds., The Metaphysics of the Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 10 – 19. For a multi-disciplinary defense of kenoticism, see C. Stephen Evans, ed., Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
13. Marilyn McCord Adams, What Sort of Human Nature? The Metaphysics and Systematics of Christology: The Aquinas Lecture, 1999 (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1999). See also Adams, Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 55.
14. Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 611. Jordan Wessling also explores how this “trithelitic” understanding of the divine nature could yield a “straightforwardly monothelitic” interpretation of Jesus’ Gethsemane prayer. See Jordan Wessling, “Christology and Conciliar Authority: On the Viability of Monothelitism for Protestant Theology,” in Christology, Ancient and Modern: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics, ed. Oliver D. Crisp and Fred Sanders (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013), 154.
15. So, it is no accident that monothelite Christologies often go hand-in-glove with social accounts of the Trinity. See, for example, Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 575 – 88.
16. So, no, Christ is not talking to himself, as Moreland and Craig suggest the dyothelite interpretation implies. The person of the Son in and through his human nature is addressing the Father, who possesses the divine will. The fact that the Son also possesses the divine will is simply not addressed in this passage. It is an implication from other biblical and theological considerations regarding the unity of the divine nature.
17. Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Christ, trans. Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 173 – 76; Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 3.18.1; John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, trans. William Pringle, in Calvin’s Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 17:233.
18. This Hebrews text seems to have the Gethsemane Narrative in view. On the parallels, see Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave; A Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 227 – 34, cited in R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 1,002.
19. “What is lofty you are to apply to the Godhead, and to that nature in him which is superior to sufferings and incorporeal; but all that is lowly to the composite condition of him who for your sakes made himself of no reputation and was incarnate.” Gregory of Nazianzus, “Third Theological Oration,” in Hardy, Christology of the Later Fathers, 173.
20. W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., Matthew 19–28, ICC (London: T&T Clark, 1997), 497.
21. The Old Testament background to the “cup” (ποτήριον) language in v. 39 strongly suggests a penal substitutionary interpretation of this text. See especially Isaiah 51:17, “Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup (LXX, ποτήριον) of his wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering.” For an argument along these lines, see Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, Andrew Sach, Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution (Wheaton: Crossway, 2007), 68 – 70.
22. Such a reading could find inspiration in St. Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, 34, trans. J. Armitage Robinson (London: SPCK, 1920), 100 – 102.
23. This emphasis on Jesus’ representative role runs throughout Matthew’s gospel. For a brief but excellent treatment of Matthew’s Israel-Jesus typology, see R. T. France, Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1989), 207 – 10.
24. Dyothelitic tendencies predated the monothelite controversy by several centuries. At the risk of anachronism, we might describe several Fathers of the first four centuries (including Irenaeus, Origen, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Augustine) as proto-dyothelites. As Cyril Hovorun has shown, there were monothelite precursors in the centuries preceding the seventh-century controversies, so it should be no surprise to discover that there were dyothelite precursors as well. Hovorun, Will, Action, and Freedom, 5 – 51.
25. On the life and theology of Maximus, see Demtrios Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of Saint Maximus the Confessor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); and Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London: Routledge, 1996).
26. Maximus, Opuscule 3, in Louth, Maximus, 197.
27. For Maximus, while the Son possesses a discrete human will, he does not possess a “gnomic will,” that is, a will inclined against the divine will by virtue of sin and ignorance. Farrell, Disputation, 29 – 32.
28. Farrell, Disputation, 5 – 6.
29. Ibid., 46.
30. John Calvin, A Commentary on A Harmony of the Evangelists: Matthew, Mark, and Luke, trans. William Pringle, in Calvin’s Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 3:233.
31. Perhaps one could interpret Calvin minimalistically here. That is, perhaps Calvin is merely saying that the divine persons share a common functional will — a common purpose or plan. In this interpretation, social trinitarianism would be still a Reformed possibility; Calvin has left open the possibility that the divine persons possess distinct ontological wills as a part of their distinct personhood. But this Social Trinitarian interpretation does not seem to fit the evidence. Calvin moves seamlessly between talking about “the will of Christ” and the act of Christ’s willing. In other words, it seems that, for Calvin, a Triune volitional function demands a Triune volitional ontology. Christ’s will is not “one and simple” because he shares the numerically same will as the Father and has taken to himself a distinct human will. Furthermore, in a social trinitarian interpretation of Calvin, there would have to be four wills, rather than merely two, in the field of play: the three divine wills and the distinct human will of Christ. Ockham’s razor would seem to be helpful in this complicated scheme.
32. Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.12.
33. Torrance, Incarnation, 212.
34. Edward Irving, The Collected Writings of Edward Irving, 5 vols., ed. G. Carlyle (London: Alexander Strahan, 1865), 5:114 – 46; Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 vols. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956 – 1975) I/2: 153.
35. Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/2:153.
36. For a critique of the fallen flesh position, see Oliver Crisp, Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered (Cambridge: Cambride University Press, 2007), 90 – 117.
37. On the unity of the divine will in the pro-Nicene Fathers, see Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 41 – 78.
38. Wessling, “Christology and Conciliar Authority,” 155 – 56.
39. On the different versions of social trinitarianism, see Brian Leftow, “Anti-Social Trinitarianism,” in The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, ed. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 203 – 49. For a more recent discussion of classical versus social/relational models of the Trinity, see Jason Sexton, ed., Two Views on the Doctrine of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014).
40. The traditional doctrine of inseparable operations would seem to imply inseparable intentions. St. Augustine provides the classic expression of the unity of trinitarian operations: “[A]ccording to the Catholic faith, the Trinity is proposed to our belief and believed — and even understood by a few saints and holy persons — as so inseparable that whatever action is performed by it must be thought to be performed at the same time by the Father and by the Son and by the Holy Spirit.” See Augustine, Ep. 11.2, translation from Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 59 – 60.
41. If the Son’s will has taken on human properties by virtue of the incarnation, then it cannot be identical with the will of the Father, since the Father’s will does not possess those human properties. But again, if wills belong to persons, then this distinction would have predated the incarnation anyway. Eternal personal distinctions would imply eternal volitional distinctions.
42. Michael Horton, Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology (Louisville: WJK, 2005).
43. On the theme of recapitulation in Irenaeus, see Eric Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 97 – 140.
44. The anhypostasis/enhypostasis distinction, rooted in the thought of Leontius of Byzantium (d. 543), is especially prominent in Torrance’s Christology. See, for example, Torrance, Incarnation, 84, 105, 228 – 32. It was prominent in Barth’s thought as well. For more on Barth’s use of these terms, see Paul Dafydd Jones, The Humanity of Christ: Christology in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2008), 23 – 25.
45. To restate, defining the will out of the nature and into the person, so to speak, entails that there are three wills in the Godhead.
46. Plantinga, “On Heresy, Mind, and Truth,” 182 – 88. Oliver Crisp points out that one of the potential weaknesses of the abstractist view is that it entails monothelitism, against the findings of an ecumenical council. See Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, 34 – 71.
47. On the question of Barth’s alleged universalism, see Oliver Crisp, “On Barth’s Denial of Universalism,” Themelios 29, no. 1 (2003): 18 – 29.
48. Michael Horton puts forward the Reformed doctrine of union with Christ as a means of integrating forensic and participatory soteriological themes. Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Salvation: Union with Christ (Louisville: WJK, 2007).
49. N. T. Wright, How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels (New York: Harper One, 2012), 10 – 20.
50. Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.5.
51. For a helpful and comprehensive biblical treatment of each phase in Christ’s work, see Robert A. Peterson, Salvation Accomplished by the Son: The Work of Christ (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011).
52. For a window into the contemporary debate over atonement models, see James Beilby, ed., The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006); and David Tidball, David Hilborn, and Justin Thacker, eds., The Atonement Debate: Papers from the London Symposium on the Theology of the Atonement (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008).