Third Council of Constantinople — Definition of Faith — Chapter 3: The Definition Concerning the Two Wills and Two Energies

Chapter 3: The Definition Concerning the Two Wills and Two Energies

Section 5. And we proclaim equally two natural volitions or wills in him and two natural principles of action which undergo no division, no change, no partition, no confusion, in accordance with the teaching of the holy Fathers. And the two natural wills are not contrary the one to the other — God forbid — as the impious heretics assert, but his human will follows and that not as resisting and reluctant, but rather as subject to his divine and omnipotent will.

Section 6. For it was right that the flesh should be moved but subject to the divine will, according to the most 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 the proper will of God the Word, as he himself says: 'I came down from heaven, not that I might do mine own will but the will of the Father which sent me;' where he calls his own will the will of his flesh, inasmuch as his flesh also became his own.

Section 7. For as his most holy and immaculate animated flesh was not destroyed because it was deified but continued in its own state and nature, so also his human will, although deified, was not suppressed, but was rather preserved according to the saying of Gregory the Theologian: 'His will, the will of the one who is conceived as Saviour, is not contrary to God but altogether deified.'

Section 8. We glorify two natural operations indivisibly, immutably, inconfusedly, inseparably in the same our Lord Jesus Christ our true God, that is to say a divine operation and a human operation, according to the divine preacher Leo, who most distinctly asserts: 'For each form does in communion with the other what pertains properly to it; the Word, namely, performing what pertains to the Word, and the flesh carrying out what pertains to the flesh.'

Section 9. For we will not admit one natural operation in God and in the creature, as we will not exalt into the divine essence what is created, nor will we bring down the glory of the divine nature to the place suited to the creature.

Section 10. We recognize the miracles and the sufferings as of one and the same person, but of one or of the other nature of which he is and in which he has his being, as Cyril admirably says.