both pleased with it. Cyrus became Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria (c. 630-642), and did with this formula reconcile many Monophysites in Egypt. But it was at the cost of fidelity to Chalcedon. The heretics realized this and triumphed, saying, "We have not gone to Chalcedon; Chalcedon has come to us." However, there was great rejoicing at Constantinople at their apparent conversion. But Sophronius, a monk of Jerusalem, realized what had happened, and made a firm stand against this compromise. He became Patriarch of Jerusalem (634-638),[1] and was the great opponent of the new heresy.
The issue is simple. Our Lord's human will was certainly always in perfect accord with the eternal Divine will. In this sense we may say that he was of one will with his Father: "I do not seek my will, but the will of him who sent me" (Joh. v. 30) . So his Divine will and his human will were never opposed to each other; he had one will, in the sense that there was always perfect harmony in our Lord. Never could it happen that his human will desired anything opposed to his Divine will, for that would be sin. In this sense, then, one might say that Christ had but one will, not one faculty, but always the same object of desire as God and man, one volitum, one thing willed by both natures. On the other hand, if we mean by will the faculty of willing, our Lord had two wills, because he had two natures. He had the eternal unchanging Divine will;[2] he had also a perfect human nature, involving all human faculties, therefore involving a created, natural human will. He says so himself: "Not my will, but thine, be done " (Lc. xxii. 42). Exactly the same applies to the source of energy, the "ἐνέργεια," so much discussed in this controversy. Christ had two energies, Divine and human, though they were always in perfect accord. So the theory of "one will and one energy," Monotheletism,[3] again cuts away the difference of his two natures; it denies his real and
3 (
Greek characters), one will.
- ↑ It was this Sophronius who was Patriarch when the Arabs conquered Jerusalem in 637; Omar "entered the city without fear or precaution; and courteously discoursed with the Patriarch concerning its religious antiquities" (Gibbon, chap. li.; ed. Bury, vol. v. p. 436).
- ↑ Identified, of course, as are all Divine powers, with the one Divine nature.
- ↑ 3
