Constantinople III and Monothelitism

The Sixth Ecumenical Council (680–681) defined that Christ has two natural wills and two natural energies — divine and human — the human will freely conformed to the divine, against the Monothelite doctrine of a single will. It vindicated the theology of St. Maximus the Confessor, who had died in exile for it, and it condemned as Monothelites a number of patriarchs and Pope Honorius of Rome — a condemnation confirmed by Rome itself, which Orthodox theology reads as decisive against the later claim of papal infallibility, and which Roman Catholic apologetics has labored to read otherwise.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Monothelite Compromise

In the seventh century the empire, threatened by Persia and then by the sudden Arab conquests, needed the loyalty of its Non-Chalcedonian provinces. Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople, with the emperor Heraclius, sought a Christological formula that Chalcedonians and Miaphysites could both accept. They proposed that while Christ has two natures, he acts by a single divine-human energy (mia energeia) — Monoenergism — and, when that met resistance, that he has a single will (hen thelēma) — Monothelitism (Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions, 1989, on the origins of monothelitism; Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, 1990). The idea had a surface plausibility: surely the incarnate Word acts as one, and to speak of “two wills” seems to threaten his unity or even to set a human will against God. Heraclius promulgated the doctrine in his Ekthesis (638); a later emperor, Constans II, tried to silence the whole dispute by decree in the Typos (648). For a time Monothelitism enjoyed imperial backing and the assent of several patriarchs — and, in one much-debated letter, of a pope.

Maximus and the Theology of the Two Wills

The decisive opponent of Monothelitism was St. Maximus the Confessor, monk and theologian, the greatest of seventh-century Byzantine thinkers (see St. Maximus the Confessor). Maximus argued from the principle the Cappadocians had used against Apollinarius and Eutyches: will and operation belong to nature, not to person. To be human is, among other things, to have a human will and a human activity; a nature without its natural will and energy is an abstraction, not a real nature. Therefore, if Christ truly assumed a complete human nature — as Chalcedon defined — he necessarily has a complete human will and a complete human energy, alongside his divine will and energy. To deny the human will is to deny the completeness of the humanity, and so to fall back into a subtle Monophysitism: “what is not assumed is not healed,” and if Christ did not assume a human will, the human will — the very seat of our fall — is not saved (Maximus, Opuscula theologica et polemica; Disputation with Pyrrhus; Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 1975, on Maximus’s doctrine of the will; Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ, 2004).

Maximus’s profound contribution was to show how two wills do not mean conflict. He distinguished the natural will (thelēma physikon) — the natural human faculty and inclination toward the good, which Christ has — from the gnomic will (gnōmē), the mode of deliberation and choice marked, in fallen humanity, by ignorance, hesitation, and the possibility of choosing against God. Christ’s human will is fully natural but not gnomic in the fallen sense: his human willing is perfectly and freely conformed to the divine will, without the wavering of sin, supremely shown in Gethsemane — “not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42), which Maximus reads not as two wills in conflict but as the human will of Christ freely embracing the divine (Maximus, Opuscula; Disputation with Pyrrhus; Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ, 2004). Maximus paid for this witness: with Pope Martin I, who condemned Monothelitism at the Lateran Synod of 649, he was arrested by Constans II, tried, and — refusing to be silent — exiled and mutilated, his tongue and right hand cut off; he died in exile in 662, vindicated only by the council that met eighteen years later (Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, 1990; see St. Maximus the Confessor).

The Council and the Definition

Under the emperor Constantine IV, with the Monothelite policy now a political liability and the estranged provinces already lost to the Arabs, a council met at Constantinople from November 680 to September 681 — held in the domed hall (troullos) of the palace, about 170 bishops attending (Price, Booth, and Cubitt, The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 680–681, 2014; Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, 1990). The council examined the patristic and conciliar evidence and defined:

“We proclaim equally two natural wills or volitions in him and two natural principles of action (energies) which undergo no division, no change, no partition, no confusion… and his human will follows, not as resisting or reluctant, but rather as subject to his divine and all-powerful will… For just as his flesh is called and is the flesh of God the Word, so too the natural will of his flesh is called and is the very own will of God the Word.”
(Council of Constantinople III, Exposition of Faith, 681; trans. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils; cf. Percival, NPNF, Second Series, vol. 14)

The definition is the perfect completion of Chalcedon: as there are two natures without confusion or division, so there are two natural wills and two natural energies without confusion or division, the human freely and perfectly obedient to the divine. It is the vindication of Maximus, who is not named in the decree but whose theology it enshrines (Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ, 2004; see St. Maximus the Confessor).

The Condemnation of Honorius

The Sixth Council did not only define; it condemned by name a series of Monothelite teachers — the patriarchs Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul, and Peter of Constantinople, Cyrus of Alexandria, and Theodore of Pharan — and, among them, Pope Honorius I of Rome (625–638), who in two letters to Sergius had written approvingly of “one will” in Christ. The council’s decree pronounces the anathema on Honorius together with the others, “because we have found in his letter to Sergius that in all respects he followed his opinion and confirmed his impious doctrines” (Council of Constantinople III, Session 13 and the Exposition; trans. Percival, NPNF, Second Series, vol. 14). This condemnation of a pope by an ecumenical council — a council whose acts were confirmed by Honorius’s own successor, Pope Leo II — became a famous crux, especially after the definition of papal infallibility in 1870. The fact is settled and doubly attested: the council anathematized Honorius, and Rome confirmed the sentence. What has been contested since 1870 is the bearing of that fact on the papal claims — and here the collection does not stand outside the question: the Orthodox reading is stated below as the Church’s own, and the Roman Catholic apologetic reading is reported accurately in its own terms.

`[Disputed: what the condemnation of Pope Honorius means for papal authority.

(a) The Orthodox and historical reading. The fact is plain and undisputed on the documents: an ecumenical council received by the whole Church anathematized a bishop of Rome by name for heresy, and his successor Leo II confirmed the condemnation — Leo writing that Honorius “did not extinguish the flame of heretical teaching as befitted his apostolic authority, but fostered it by his negligence,” and even that he permitted the immaculate faith “to be subverted” (Leo II, letters confirming the council; Percival, NPNF, Second Series, vol. 14). For Orthodox writers this is decisive evidence against later papal claims: a pope both taught (or at least endorsed) error and was judged for it by the Church, so that no see, not even Rome, is beyond conciliar judgment, and the guarantee of orthodoxy lies with the whole Church in council, not with any single throne (Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions, 1989; Kelly, Oxford Dictionary of Popes, entry “Honorius I”).

(b) The Roman Catholic reading. Roman Catholic apologetics, especially after 1870, argue that Honorius’s condemnation does not touch papal infallibility as defined by Vatican I, because infallibility attaches only to solemn ex cathedra definitions of faith binding the whole Church, and Honorius’s letters to Sergius were private correspondence, not such a definition; on this reading Honorius was condemned not for teaching heresy ex cathedra but for negligence — for failing to use his authority to suppress the error, and for imprudent language — a personal and disciplinary fault, not an official doctrinal one. Some also note the ambiguity of Honorius’s own meaning (that by “one will” he may have meant only the absence of the fallen gnomic conflict, not a denial of the two natural wills), so that his fault was expressing himself carelessly at a delicate moment (Chapman, The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, 1907, the classic Catholic study; and standard Catholic treatments).

Both readings are reported in their strongest form. The historical datum is not in dispute: the Sixth Ecumenical Council anathematized Honorius, and Rome accepted the council. The Orthodox Church, which has never received the 1870 definition, reads the case as the conciliar acts themselves present it — a bishop of Rome endorsed error in the faith and was judged for it by the Church in council; the harmonizing distinctions of reading (b) are the apologetic answer of a confession defending a dogma the Church has not received, and they are reported here as such, in their own terms.]`

Whatever one concludes about the papal question, the Orthodox reception of the Sixth Council is unambiguous: Christ has two natural wills and two natural energies; the fullness of his human freedom, healed and deified in perfect obedience, is the ground of our salvation. Maximus, once condemned, is honored as a Father and Confessor, his feast kept on 21 January (and 13 August), his theology the permanent possession of the Church (see St. Maximus the Confessor).

References

Council of Constantinople III (680–681). Exposition of Faith; Session 13 (condemnation of Honorius). In Percival, ed., NPNF, Second Series, vol. 14; and Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils.
Price, Richard, with Phil Booth and Catherine Cubitt. The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 680–681. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014.
Maximus the Confessor. Opuscula theologica et polemica; Disputation with Pyrrhus (Disputatio cum Pyrrho).
Bathrellos, Demetrios. The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of Saint Maximus the Confessor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Meyendorff, John. Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1989; Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 1975.
Chapman, John. The Condemnation of Pope Honorius. London: Catholic Truth Society, 1907.
Davis, Leo Donald. The First Seven Ecumenical Councils. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990.
Kelly, J. N. D. The Oxford Dictionary of Popes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986 (entry “Honorius I”).