The Human Will and the Spiritual Life

The Human Will & the Spiritual Life:

Implications of St. Maximos the Confessor’s Response to the Monotheletes

by Priest Symeon Kees

St. Maximos vigorously defended the Orthodox doctrine of the two wills of Christ against the Monotheletes. He argued that by ascribing one will to Christ and associating that will with His person, not nature, the Monotheletes were separating Christ from the Father and the Holy Spirit, severely corrupting the Church’s understanding of Christology and Trinitarian theology. He wrote that

if free choice is a characteristic of the hypostasis of Christ, then by virtue of this will, they cut Him off from the Father and Holy Spirit, making Him different [from them] in will and thought. For that which is ascribed to the Son hypostatically, [that is], in a distinctive way, is certainly not shared by the Father and the Spirit. Those of the holy fathers, then, who spoke of the free choice proper to the humanity of Christ were referring to the appetitive power proper to nature by essence, in other words, our natural faculty of will or free choice, which exists in the Incarnate God by [His] appropriation [of human nature].[1]

In addition to the effect of Monotheletism on our understanding of the Trinity, the Monothelete doctrine that Christ only has one will (a divine Will, but not a human will), means that Christ does not possess human freedom and, therefore, has not acted freely to make our salvation possible. St. Maximos strongly affirmed that Christ is not merely compelled as a human by the divine Will but, having taken on the full human nature (including the human will), acts freely according to His human will for the good of our salvation.[2]

With his insistence on the two will of Christ, St. Maximos had to explain why Christ has no opposition between the human will and divine Will, yet remained sinless while on earth, but why other humans indeed do act contrary to the divine Will and commit sin. A Monothelete supporter might ask, “If Christ has a human will would he not have sinned or at least experienced an inner struggle from the conflict between sinful inclinations and the divine Will?” St. Maximos would respond, “no,” but to understand why we sin, but Christ did not sin, one must be familiar with St. Maximos’ explanation of our human will. The human will within each of us consists of two dimensions: (1) the natural will and (2) the personal/gnomic will. [3]

The natural will is part of human nature/essence and is always inclined toward good. It is the “rational faculty of self-determination inherent in man” and is associated with the “logoj of human nature.”[4] Since it is part of human nature, all humans share the same kind of will that directs us toward our Creator and His divine Will. St. Maximos asserted that the natural will was not corrupted by the Fall: “the fundamental nature of the human will…was not effected by this cosmic event.”[5] As Lars Thunberg noted,

Man is guilty of his own fall, which is due to his misuse of his capacity for self-determination. We have seen that according to Maximus self-determination as such is of the nature of man, a created good which is a sign of the divine image and is thus in itself indestructible. The principle of nature is not affected by the fall, and the “natural will,” consequently, never disappears, for it is positively related to this principle.[6]

Likewise, Fr. Andrew Louth explained,

The result of the Fall is not that natures are distorted in themselves, but rather that natures are misused: the Fall exists at the level not of logos, but of tropos. “We have become inclined to every evil because of the primordially wicked serpent, but in accordance with our constitution, we exist naturally as honoured creatures, moulded by God” (ibid. 80B). In a fallen world the logoi of everything natural remain inviolate, but natures may act in a way (or mode, tropos) that runs counter to their fundamental logoi. Behaviour is no longer transparent, the logoi are obscured by the tropoi that the natures assume…The fact that the Fall does not touch the level of nature does not entail that the effects of the Fall are superficial, simply that no creature has the power to overthrow the fundamental design of the Creator. But the Fall does mean that fallen creatures exist in a world they can no longer understand.[7]

In contrast to the natural will that is part of our shared human nature, the personal will (also called the gnomic will) is part of each individual hypostasis (person). While the natural will escaped corruption through the Fall, the personal way one uses the natural will has been corrupted and confused, becoming gnomic.[8] Unfortunately, because of the Fall, we don’t always know what good is and which actions are good and which are not good:

The mode of willing after the Fall, Maximos explains, is characterized by the hesitations and doubts in deliberating on choices between good and evil. Not only is one at times uncertain, due to sin’s having obscured the rational moral faculties, of what constitutes sin, but even when one is aware of what “virtue” is, one does not inevitably act on this knowledge. That aspect of the will which is currently characterized by these moral choices St. Maximos terms (in his later works) the gnomic will.[9]

Fr. Andrew Louth similarly explained that

with fallen creatures, their own nature has become opaque to them, they no longer know what they want, and experience coercion in trying to love what cannot give fulfillment. For, in their fallen state, rational creatures are no longer aware of their true good, which is God. Various apparent goods attract them: they are confused, they need to deliberate and consider, and their way of willing shares in all this. Maximus calls this will in accordance with an opinion, or intention, or inclination (the Greek word for all these is gnome). Such “gnomic” willing is our way or mode of willing, it is the only way in which we can express our natural will, but it is a frustrating and confusing business.[10]

According to St. Maximos, even though our natural will always inclines us toward good, we do not individually act according to the natural will, but each person must instead deliberate among possible actions and then choose to act in a way that is either good or evil. This deliberation and choice is caused by the gnomie within us.[11] St. Maximos described the gnomie as “a mode of the employment [of the will], and not a principle of nature, otherwise nature [itself] would change innumerable times.”[12] The gnomie is “essentially a personal and individual habit or disposition within the soul, existentially formed or acquired through the various moral choices which the individual person makes in the course of existence.”[13] Because we personally act (according to the gnomic will) without really knowing what is the best course of action, we often act in ways contrary to human nature, harmful to our bodies and souls, and against the Will of God.

Since Christ took on our full humanity, he possesses the natural human will that is part of human nature. Being God, however, He also possesses the divine Will. In Christ, there is never opposition between his divine Will and human will because His human will is always in harmony with the divine Will. As fallen people, we each have a gnomic will (a personal will affected by a corrupted gnomie, causing us to make bad decisions) but Christ, who is a divine Person, does not have a gnomic personal will. He personally always acts according to His natural human will, which is in harmony with the divine Will. He does not decide whether to do good or evil, but always does good because He is always inclined toward the good. (Since He has perfect knowledge, He always knows what the good path is.) No opposition between the human and divine Will is possible for the divine Person. (He assumed our full human nature, but He remained the same divine Person who eternally existed before becoming human.)[14] St. Maximos explained that

the humanity of Christ does not simply subsist [in a manner] similar to us, but divinely, for He Who appeared in the flesh for our sakes was God. It is not possible to say that Christ had a gnomic will. For the Same had being itself, subsisting divinely, and thus naturally hath an inclination toward the good, and a drawing away from evil, just as Basil, the great eye of the Church, said when explaining the interpretation of the forty-fourth Psalm: “By the same line of interpretation, Isaiah said the same thing: ‘Before the child knew or advanced in evil, he chose the good,’ because he also said ‘before the child knows good and to refuse evil, He chose the good,’ For the word ‘before’ indicates that He had by nature what is good, not inquiring and deliberating as we do, but because He subsisted divinely by virtue of his very being.”[15]

Fr. Gregory Telepneff wrote, “Christ at all times chooses the good according to His human will, but each of these ‘choices,’ considered individually, is a genuinely free movement or choice toward the good, and none of them actually requires a choice between good and evil in order to be a genuinely free act.”[16] Christ, embodying perfect humanity, possessed natural human freedom because he had a human will and no opposition of the wills (human and divine) existed in Him.[17] Fr. Andrew Louth affirmed that “the human nature assumed by the Word lacks nothing necessary for its full created integrity. For Maximos this means a human nature with a full human activity and a fully human will.”[18]

When a person naturally lives according to the Will of God (without deciding between options of good and evil based on confused rationality) could one say that the person’s freedom has been eliminated? No. Freedom means self-determination, the ability to act without coercion, but “freewill is not directionless.” A healthy will always wants what is good and natural. Why would a healthy person choose what is unnatural and evil, which actually keeps us from being healthy and free to live according to our good nature? Only when the personal will is in harmony with the natural will, allowing the person to live according to the divine Will of God, is the human being truly free.[19]

Since Christ freely, according to both His human will and divine Will, made our salvation possible, we each must personally choose to embrace this salvation. Salvation is only possible if the person freely knows the good and freely chooses to act according to it. Even though the virtues are something natural to human nature, we must personally acquire the virtues and eliminate the deception that comes to us through sensory perception, which lead us to act in ways contrary to the natural will. We can know what is good and, therefore, choose good when the personal/gnomic will is cured. Farrell pointed out that humans personally participate in the healing of the gnomic will “by an unceasing effort to bring their own created hypostatic modes of willing, their gnomies, back into conformity with the natural principles of human nature as revealed in Christ, the only sinless One.”[20] In other words, “one may say that the entire meaning of the spiritual life consists of reforming our gnomic (that is to say, our personal and freely-chosen) will.”[21]

As Christ has two wills, human and divine, that are not in opposition, neither should our will be opposed by unnatural deliberations that can cause us to choose to commit sinful actions.[22] The therapy required for healing the gnomie and restoring the human will to its natural state is asceticism: Like physical therapy, the healing of an aspect of the person requires the exercise of that which is in the process of becoming whole:

Though in the fallen condition we are primarily struck by the hesitations and doubts which characterize gnome, there is also however a positive use for it; for, indeed, human nature is not utterly corrupt as a result of the Fall, and although this requires struggle and great efforts, the human will can still develop and nurture virtuous habits and dispositions.[23]

As St. Maximos wrote,

Asceticism, and the toils that go with it, was devised simply in order to ward off deception, which established itself through sensory perception. It is not [as if] the virtues have been newly introduced from outside, for they inhere in us from creation, as hath already been said. Therefore, when deception is completely expelled, the soul immediately exhibits the splendour of its natural virtue.[24]

St. Maximos explained that the unnatural ways of thinking, feeling, and acting are eliminated through our experience of the Orthodox life. To use a medical analogy, good health is restored when its opposite, sickness, is eliminated. St. Maximos noted several natural positives that emerge when its negative opposite is removed: A person who is not foolish is intelligent. One who is not a coward is brave. A man who is not intemperate is temperate.[25] He who is not unrighteous is righteous. “Reason, in a natural state, is prudence; the faculty of judgment, in a natural state, is justice; anger, is courage; desire, temperance.” St. Maximos summarized his point by stating that “with the removal of things that are contrary to nature only the things proper to nature are manifest. Just as when rust is removed the natural clarity and glint of iron [is manifest].”[26]

If humans were guided by the natural will, we could freely choose among all the options in life that lead to good (and, therefore, to God Himself) without the possibility of sinning. We would not have to make moral choices between good and evil, since we would be inclined to do the good naturally.[27] We would only have to choose among the various good options in life without consideration of evil ones. Since each of us has a gnomic will, though, we have to personally choose to do good and reject the evil that harms the soul. Through the life of the Church, however, we can truly know the good and experience the healing of the personal will so that we act according to both the natural will and the divine Will in true human freedom. We should always keep this in mind: “The purpose of human self-determination is to lead to this transforming relationship with God,” and the fulfillment of the human will.[28]

The healing of the personal will, bringing the personal will into harmony with the natural will, does not eliminate personal freedom, but makes us truly free. True freedom is only realized when one freely lives in accordance with the divine Will. Such freedom is preserved even beyond this temporal life

since at the Parousia Christ will have transformed all things and the true nature of reality will have been revealed to all, even if not all will have conformed their moral disposition to this reality. For those who have so conformed, however, and who thus have to some extent approached God’s will, there is an implication that those psychological processes associated with uncertainty regarding moral choices have ceased, since the objects of free choices are not longer uncertain or clouded by sin. Further, since all has been transformed by God, there are no longer choices ‘whereby we prefer the better to the worse.” This is because there are not longer real versus apparent goods, but only a multiplicity of goods…more or less equal in moral value, to choose from.[29]

Christ will heal human nature, body and soul. This will ultimately be fully realized in the resurrection of the dead at the end of the age. Each person’s eternal state, however, depends on his or her personal choice (free will):

One has to distinguish most carefully between the healing of nature and the healing of the will…. All nature, the whole cosmos, will be restituted. But the dead souls will still be insensitive to the very revelation of Light.

The Light Divine will shine to all, but those who have deliberately spent their lives here on earth in fleshly desires, ‘against nature,’ will be unable to apprehend or enjoy this eternal bliss.[30]

Notes

[1] Joseph P. Farrell, Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1989), 118, quoting from St. Maximos in Opuscula Theologica et Polemica,29B-C.

[2] St. Maximos the Confessor, Opusculum 6: “On the Two Wills of Christ in the Agony of Gethsemane,” On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, trans. by Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken, Popular Patristics Series (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 176.

[3] Maximos the Confessor: On the Free Will of Christ, Monochos.net, 2.

[4] Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximos the Confessor (Chicago, IL: Open Court Publishing,1995), 211.

[5] Ibid., 3.

[6] Thunburg, 227.

[7] Fr. Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London: Routledge, 1996), 58.

[8] Maximos the Confessor: On the Free Will of Christ, 3.

[9] Fr. Gregory Telepneff, The Concept of the Person in the Christian Hellenism of the Greek Church Fathers: A Study of Origin, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. Maximos (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation Services, 1995), 375.

[10] Louth 61.

[11] “Much ink has been spilt over the meaning, role and significance of this Maximian conception of the gnomic will, but understandably so, for it is without doubt one of the most difficult and vexing of his conceptions, especially when considered from within the rather broad dogmatic conext in which it is employed,” found in Farrell, Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor, 120.

[12] Disputation with Pyrrhus, 31-32.

[13] Telepneff, 327.

[14] Louth, 59.

[15] Disputation with Pyrrhus, 32.

[16] Telepneff, 376.

[17] Maximos the Confessor: On the Free Will of Christ, Monochos.net, 4.

[18] Louth, 58.

[19] Louth 60-61.

[20] Disputation with Pyrrhus, xxxii-xxxiii.

[21] Telepneff, 327.

[22] Disputation with Pyrrhus, xxxiv.

[23] Telepneff, 327.

[24] Disputation with Pyrrhus, 33.

[25] Disputation with Pyrrhus, 33-34.

[26] Disputation with Pyrrhus, 34.

[27] Disputation with Pyrrhus, 221.

[28] Thunberg, 217.

[29] Telepneff, 380; See also 380-381.

[30] Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor, 151-152.

Bibliography

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Louth, Fr. Andrew. Maximus the Confessor. London: Routledge, 1996.

Maximos the Confessor. The Disputation with Pyrrhus of Our Father Among the Saints

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Greek Church Fathers: A Study of Origin, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. Maximos. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation Services, 1995.

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