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Articles: Philosophy | The Incarnation
- Mr. KALIDASU D
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E. Monothelitism
Three patriarchs of the Oriental Church gave rise to a new heresy. These three patriarchs were Sergius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Cyrus, the Patriarch of Alexandria, and Athanasius, the Patriarch of Antioch. They denied that Christ had two wills.Their error was condemned by the Sixth General Council (also known as the Third Council of Constantinople) in 680 A.D. This refutation defined that in Christ there were two natural wills and two natural activities, the Divine and the human, and that the human will was not at all contrary to the Divine, but rather perfectly subject thereto The error of Monothelism is clear from the Scripture as well as from tradition. Christ did acts of adoration (John 4: 22), humility (Matt.11: 29), reverence (Heb. 5: 7). These acts are clearly those of a human will. The Monothelites denied that there was a human will in Christ. Recall that Jesus prayed: 'Father, if Thou wilt, remove this chalice from me: but yet not my will, but thine be done,' (Luke 22: 42). Here there is question of two wills, the Father's and Christ's. The will of Christ was subject to the will of the Father.
(2) The Truth
(1) Catholicism
It is to be remembered that, when the Word took Flesh, there was no change in the Word; all the change was in the Flesh. At the moment of conception, in the womb of the Blessed Mother, through the forcefulness of God's activity, not only was the human soul of Christ created but the Word assumed the man that was conceived. For example, when God created the world, the world was changed, that is, it passed from the state of nonentity to the state of existence; and there was no change in the Logos or Creative Word of God the Father. Nor was there change in that Logos when it began to terminate the human nature. A new relation ensued; but this new relation implied in the Logos no new reality or change; all new reality, all real change, was in the human nature.
III. Effects of the Incarnation
(1) On Christ Himself
A. On the Body of Christ
Catholics hold that, before the Resurrection, the Body of Christ was subject to all the bodily weaknesses to which human nature unassumed is universally subject; such are hunger, thirst, pain, death. Christ hungered (Matt. 4: 2), thirsted (John 29: 28), was fatigued (John 4: 6), suffered pain and death. 'We have not a high priest, who cannot have compassion on our infirmities: but one tempted in all things like as we are, without sin' (Heb. 4: 15). 'For in that, wherein he himself hath suffered and been tempted, he is able to comfort them also that are tempted' (Heb. 2: 18). All these bodily weaknesses were not miraculously brought about by Jesus; they were the natural results of the human nature He assumed. The reasonableness of these bodily imperfections in Christ is clear from the fact that He assumed human nature so as to satisfy for that nature's sin. Now, to satisfy for the sin of another is to accept the penalty of that sin. Hence it was fitting that Christ should take upon himself all those penalties of the sin of Adam that are common to man and becoming. or at least not unbecoming to the Hypostatic Union. (See The Summa Theologica III:14 for other reasons.) Since the Word became flesh in assuming a true humanity, Christ's body was finite. Therefore the human face of Jesus can be portrayed; at the seventh ecumenical council in Nicaea in 787 A.D. the Church recognized its representation in holy images to be legitimate. And St. Thomas Aquinas said in his Summa Theologica 3:1: 'It would seem most fitting that by visible things the invisible things of God should be made known; for to this end was the whole world made, as is clear from the word of the Apostle in Romans 1:20): 'For the invisible things of God . . . are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made'.'
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