What is dyotheletism?
Dyotheletism is the teaching that the Lord Jesus, being both God and man, has two wills — a divine will and a human will — while remaining one Person. It was hammered out in a long dispute in the church's early centuries, and it raises two hard questions: how can one Person have two wills without being split in two, and how far may we press the question at all?
The name and what it denies
The word stands opposite an old error. Writers on church history describe a seventh-century controversy that grew out of an earlier one about Christ's two natures:
Church HistoryUnder the general name of Monophysites are gathered the four main branches of separatists from the Eastern church... The Monophysites denied the distinction of the two natures in Christ; the Monothelites, on the other hand, denied the distinction of the will, divine and human, in the blessed Lord.
That denial was formally rejected at a gathering of church leaders. One account of the early councils lists the sixth of them simply:
For the YoungHeld at Constantinople in 680, against the Monothelites.
The text that settled it
The argument turned on the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed before His arrest. One writer notes both the use made of those words and the limit we should keep:
Numerical Bible NotesIt certainly gives us to see how true, while perfect, the humanity of the Lord Jesus was. In the seventh century, the words "not my will, but yours, be done" were used against the Monothelites to prove that the human will in Christ was distinct from the divine. But while we recognise that they serve that purpose, it is for us to rest in the Lord's own assurance that "no one knows the Son except the Father," and to refrain from trying to see beyond what is ours to know.
A real human will, not a missing one
The point is often misstated, as though Jesus simply had no will of His own. Commentators correct that directly:
C CrainHe was not one who had no will of His own, as people sometimes say. He had a will as a true man, but He subjected His will to the will of the Father. He never exercised His will in independence. He would not have been a perfect man if He had had no will.
Having a will, never using it for Himself
The presence of a human will is not a flaw to explain away; it is what makes His obedience real, and it separates Him from every other person:
An Outline of Sound WordsHe was the only Man who had a right to His own will, yet the only man who never exercised His own will. For every other man the expression of his own will is sin, but Jesus said, "not my will, but yours, be done." Nor was it irksome for the Son to be subject and obedient, for He found pleasure in carrying out the will of His God and Father.
Two wills, still one Person
The doctrine only holds if the two wills never become two persons. One writer ties the human soul of Jesus to His divine Person, and shows what the Gethsemane prayer displays:
William KellyHis soul was united to the Logos: otherwise the Person would have been doubled or severed, and He could not be true and complete man. He cried, "Let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will." There was His holy will; and it was right to lay it before His Father, but in complete submission to His will and glory — something only a divine Person was capable of... He was true man and true God in the same indivisible Person.
The objection that it is a contradiction
Critics have called the whole idea an invention. One reply grants the difficulty but refuses the conclusion:
The Bible TreasuryIt may be quite legitimate for some to scoff that "a god-man, possessing at one and the same time two wills and two separate kinds of knowledge, and using now this and now that as occasion arises, is at once a figment of theologians and a contradiction in terms." But for anyone who receives the account of the Gospels as inspired by God, the mysterious relation of divine and human... cannot be dismissed so bluntly merely because we lack an adequate explanation of how the two work together, or of what connects them.
Where the study should stop
Holding the truth is one thing; dissecting it is another. The commentators are of one mind here:
The Bible TreasuryThe divine and the human in our blessed Lord may be compared to a gold and a silver thread, whose strands are inseparably united. His Person is to be adored, not analysed.
Summary
- The error. Monothelites denied any distinction between the divine and human will in Christ; the church rejected this at Constantinople in 680.
- The proof. "Not my will, but yours, be done" was the text used to show the human will was distinct from the divine.
- The will. He was not a man without a will — He had a real human will, or He would not have been a perfect man.
- The use of it. He alone had a right to His own will, and He alone never used it independently; obedience was His pleasure.
- The limit. Two wills, yet one indivisible Person — a mystery to be adored, not analysed.