The Statement
of Faith of the Third Council of Constantinople
(681 AD)
This is a clarification of the issue of whether or not Jesus had two wills: one for each of His two natures.
We
also proclaim two natural willings or wills in him and two natural operations,
without separation, without change, without partition, without confusion,
according to the teaching of the holy Fathers -- and two natural wills not
contrary to each other, God forbid, as the impious heretics have said they would
be, but his human will following, and not resisting or opposing, but rather
subject to his divine and all-powerful will. For it was proper for the will of
the flesh to be moved naturally, yet to be subject to the divine will, according
to the all-wise Athanasius. For as his flesh is called and is the flesh of God
the Word, so also the natural will of his flesh is called and is God the Word's
own will, as he himself says: "I came down from heaven, not to do my own will,
but the will of the Father who sent me," calling the will of the flesh his own,
as also the flesh had become his own. For in the same manner that his all-holy
and spotless ensouled flesh, though divinised, was not destroyed, but remained
in its own law and principle also his human will, divinised, was not destroyed,
but rather preserved, as Gregory the divine says: "His will, as conceived of in
his character as the Savior, is not contrary to God, being wholly divinised." We
also glorify two natural operations in the same our Lord Jesus Christ, our true
God, without separation, without change, without partition, without confusion,
that is, a divine operation and a human operation, as the divine preacher Leo
most clearly says: "For each form does what is proper to it, in communion with
the other; the Word, that is, performing what belongs to the Word, and the flesh
carrying out what belongs to the flesh." We will not therefore grant the
existence of one natural operation of God and the creature, lest we should
either raise up into the divine nature what is created, or bring down the
preeminence of the divine nature into the place suitable for things that are
made. For we recognize the wonders and the sufferings as of one and the same
person], according to the difference of the natures of which he is and in which
he has his being, as the eloquent Cyril said.
Preserving therefore in every way the unconfused and undivided, we set
forth the whole confession in brief; believing our Lord Jesus Christ, our true
God, to be one of the holy Trinity even after the taking of flesh, we declare
that his two natures shine forth in his one hypostasis, in which he displayed
both the wonders and the sufferings through the whole course of his
dispensation, not in phantasm but truly, the difference of nature being
recognized in the same one hypostasis by the fact that each nature wills and
works what is proper to it, in communion with the other. On this principle we
glorify two natural wills and operations combining with each other for the
salvation of the human race.
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