Does Jesus Have One or Two Wills?

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, this topic is good timing. You've been studying this again as you are writing your systematic philosophical theology. Give us an overview, please.

DR. CRAIG: I’m currently working on the doctrine of Christ, which is called Christology. The doctrine of Christ is traditionally composed of two parts: one is on the person of Christ, and the other is on the work of Christ. The person of Christ asks, “Who is Jesus Christ?” The work of Christ asks, “What did he do on our behalf to win our salvation?” I have been recently writing on the person of Christ, the central issue of which is the incarnation. How can one person, Jesus Christ, be both God and man?

KEVIN HARRIS: By the way, you have a longer lecture on this topic on the Reasonable Faith YouTube channel that people can check out. But let's look at some clips from W. Robert Godfrey's lecture on this topic. Here's clip number one.

Monothelitism was the sort of last issue in the question of how the human and divine natures related to one another in Jesus. The church had reached this consensus at Chalcedon (451) that Jesus was one person uniting in himself two full and complete natures – a complete divine nature and a complete human nature – so that he was fully human and fully divine. He wasn't half human and half divine. He's fully human and fully divine.

He said “fully God and fully man.” We often taught that he was 100% God and 100% man. Is that logically problematic?

DR. CRAIG: I think the problem is that that is misleading, and I think that Godfrey did a good job of explaining what he meant. When he says Christ is fully God and fully man, he doesn't mean he's 100% God and 100% man which would be a contradiction. Rather, he means he has a complete divine nature, and he has a complete human nature. In that sense he was fully God and fully man. But the creeds actually use a different expression. They say “vera deus vera homo” – truly God and truly man. I think that's a better and less misleading way of expressing the fact that Christ had two complete natures – human and divine – to say he was truly human and truly God.

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Godfrey explores further. Continuing here, here's clip number two.

And that did leave the church with tensions among some who thought to talk about two complete natures ran too much risk of leaving you with two persons in Jesus. Since that turmoil continued to trouble the church, a theologian (or several theologians) suggested that maybe a way forward would be to say Jesus has two natures, but he only has one will.

Two natures, and yet one will. So to think Jesus was two persons in the incarnation is a problem that we want to avoid?

DR. CRAIG: Yes. The position that there are two persons (one human and one divine) is called Nestorianism after a fourth century Bishop named Nestorius. Orthodoxy wants to say that there is one person with two natures. The watchword of orthodoxy is that we must neither divide the person nor confuse the natures. There's one person with two distinct natures. This is called dyophysitism – that there are two natures in Christ – as opposed to monophysitism which is that there's one nature in Christ. Now, the issue then that Godfrey raises is the will of the incarnate Christ. I think here the key question to be answered is: Is the will a function of a person or of a nature? Who or what wills things freely? If you say it is persons who will what they do then you will say there is one will in Christ though he has two natures. On the other hand, if you say there are two natures, and wills belong to natures, then you're going to have two wills in Christ. And if you say that then it really becomes difficult to avoid Nestorianism. How can there be two thinking, willing subjects in Christ and yet there not being two persons? So that's the real challenge for these dyophysitists: How do you maintain two wills in Christ without lapsing into Nestorianism?

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's the next clip from Robert Godfrey.

Monothelitism is the teaching that Jesus has only one will, and the other position of course was dyotheletism, that Jesus has two wills. This led to a fair amount of controversy that we don't have to rehearse in much detail, but the church came to the conclusion . . . I'd really like to poll you, which do you think is the orthodox point of view: monothelitism or dyotheletism? I do that at seminary. Seminarians almost always get it wrong, which is very distressing.

So which is it?

DR. CRAIG: Well, now notice the question. He doesn't poll his students as to which view is true. He says, “Which view is orthodox?” And they almost always get it wrong. And I think it's because the students answer the question correctly – the will is a function of the person, and so monothelitism is true. But the sixth ecumenical council voted in favor of dyotheletism. It declared that Christ, in fact, has two wills – one human and one divine. But this is a viewpoint from which I demur. I know it's promulgated by an ecumenical council, but as a Protestant who believes that Scripture alone is our ultimate and final authority, I think even the statements of ecumenical councils have to be brought before the bar of Scripture, and I see nothing in Scripture that would warrant saying that Christ has two wills. The biblical verses that are usually brought forward to prove this dyotheletism are, I think, patently weak. For example, one typically points to Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane where he says to the Father, “Let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will but thine be done.” And they say, “Ha! See? There's two wills here.” But what they fail to understand is that Jesus is praying to the Father – a different person of the Trinity. He's not talking to himself. So the contrast there is not between Jesus’ two wills. The contrast is between the will of the Father and Jesus’ will, and Jesus submits his will to the will of his heavenly Father. So I don't think there are any good scriptural warrants for thinking that dyotheletism is true.

KEVIN HARRIS: Let's go to one more clip from Dr. Godfrey.

But I try to correct them. Monothelitism was declared a heresy, and the reason it was declared a heresy is because the church concluded a will is an essential part of a nature. If Jesus didn't have a human will as well as a divine will, it would be very difficult to see him as truly and fully human. We know he has a divine will because he was the Logos from all eternity and the second person of the Trinity has a will. So we know he has a divine will. If he has only one will, it's just the divine will. And the church, I think, rightly concluded that that would mean he did not have a fully human nature because he wouldn't have a fully human will.

A couple of questions then. What do you think of his analysis so far, and how would these two wills work together?

DR. CRAIG: It's clear that Godfrey thinks that the will belongs to the nature and not to the person, and it seems to me that that is a philosophical question. And I would say that to will something is a function of a person. It's people who will things, not impersonal natures. Now, certainly it would be a part of human nature that anyone instantiating human nature, or exemplifying human nature, would have a will, but that will belongs to the person who instantiates that human nature. So that's a philosophical issue that he would need to justify. Why think that in order to be human there had to be these two willings in Christ? If the human nature of Christ were a thinking, willing subject then why would it not be a person? Why would it not be a human person? I think that's a very pressing question for Godfrey. Now, to put my cards on the table, the Christology I advocate is neo-Apollinarian. That is to say, I think that the Logos, the second person of the Trinity, was the soul of Jesus Christ. Like Christ himself, Jesus’ soul was both human and divine. And since the soul of the human nature of Christ was the Logos, the second person of the Trinity, clearly there is only one will in Christ. So I think everyone will agree that a neo-Apollinarian point of view does imply monothelitism. I think they will grant me that. If you adopt a neo-Apollinarianism Christology (according to which the Logos, the second person of the Trinity, is the soul of Jesus Christ) then you should be a monothelite. But they would reject neo-Apollinarianism. They would say that that's a heresy and that therefore my goose is doubly-cooked.^[1]