How Many Wills Does Jesus Have?
The faculty of will is a property of nature, not person. And since the one man, Christ Jesus, subsists in both divine and human natures, He has two wills: divine and human. It was by virtue of His human will that He made human choices—choices to resist temptation, to obey God’s law in the place of sinners, and to bear the curse of God’s law in the place of those same sinners.
The Chalcedonian Definition of 451 has been the touchstone of orthodox Christology for the past millennium and a half. In this definition was found the resolution to the complex Christological debates of the fourth and fifth centuries. Here, Scripture’s teaching of the hypostatic union was codified for the church: the incarnate Christ is one divine person who subsists in two distinct yet united natures, divine and human. He is not two persons, as the Nestorians taught, but rather “one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son.” Nor does He subsist in only one nature, a divine-human hybrid, as the Monophysites taught, but rather is to be “acknowledged in two natures inconfusedly [and] unchangeably… the difference of the natures being in no way removed because of the union, but rather the properties of each nature being preserved.” One person, two natures. This is the doctrine of the hypostatic union, a cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith.
But as brilliant as the Chalcedonian definition was, it did not answer every question that was to arise in the succeeding decades. In the late sixth and early seventh centuries, a debate arose over whether Christ had one will or two. Sure, He had two natures, one divine and one human. But did that mean He had two wills, one divine and one human? Or, since He was one divine person, did He have just one divine will?
The Monothelite Controversy
This debate has been dubbed “the Monothelite controversy.” Those who taught that Christ had only one divine will were called Monothelites (monos, “one,” thelēma, “will”), and those who taught that He had two wills—one divine and one human—were called Dyothelites (duo, “two,” thelēma, “will”).
The disagreement basically boiled down to whether the faculty of will is a property of a person or a nature. If the faculty of will were a property of a person and not a nature, we would expect Christ, who is one person, to have only one will. But if the faculty of will were a property of a nature and not a person, we would expect Christ, who has two natures, to have two wills. So which is it? Does will belong with person or nature? Does the incarnate Christ have one will or two?
The debate was hashed out in earnest in the events leading up to the Third Council of Constantinople in 680 and 681, when 164 bishops convened to decide the matter. The Monothelite cause was taken up by Macarius I of Antioch, but the majority of the bishops agreed with the writings of Maximus the Confessor of Constantinople (ca. 580–662), a learned monk who argued vociferously for a Dyothelite Christology. The Sixth Ecumenical Council concluded that Christ had to have both a divine will and a human will. Monothelitism was condemned as a heresy leading to Monophysitism, Macarius was deposed, and Dyothelitism was codified as orthodox Christology.
Only a Human Will?
But what was the case against Monothelitism? Well, in the first place, if the incarnate Christ had only one will, which will did He have, and which did He lack? On the one hand, you could argue that part of becoming truly human required the Son to have a human will, and if He could only have one will, then it must have been the divine will that He lacked.
But this raises a number of problems. If Christ, being one person, has only one will, then will must be a property of person rather than nature. This would mean that, from eternity, the Son, being a divine person, had a divine will—up until the incarnation, that is. For when the Word became flesh and took on a human will, He would have had to shed the divine will that He possessed from all eternity. This would be to predicate genuine change in the Second Person of the Trinity, undermining divine immutability. He would have transmuted from (a) a divine person with a divine will to (b) a human person with a human will.
But of course Christ did not become a human person (anhypostasis), as even the Monothelites stipulated. He was a divine person who assumed a human nature into personal union with His divine nature. For this reason, it has not been argued that Christ’s one will was human.
Only a Divine Will?
Well, if the incarnate Christ had only one will, and it wasn’t a human will, it must have been a divine will. This is what the Monothelites argued. The eternal Son was a divine person, and thus had a divine will from all eternity. When He assumed a human nature in the incarnation, He remained a single divine person and thus retained a single divine will. But because (they argued) will is a property of person and not nature, the incarnate Christ did not have a human will.
But does the Bible support that claim? There are at least four reasons to answer in the negative. Monothelite Christology is fatal to Chalcedonian orthodoxy, fatal to the doctrine of the Trinity, fatal to the humanity of Christ, and fatal to the Gospel itself.
Fatal to Chalcedonian Orthodoxy
The first problem with Monothelitism is that it is fatal to Chalcedonian orthodoxy, which is a biblically faithful synthesis of scriptural teaching concerning the person of Christ.
Recall that the crux of this debate is whether the faculty of will is a property of person or nature. If will belongs to person, and Christ is one person, then Christ can have only one will. If will belongs to nature, and Christ has two natures, then Christ must have two wills. Interestingly, Chalcedon weighs in on this question, and in so doing it commends Dyothelitism.
The Definition says that Christ assumed a human nature in order to be “perfect in manhood,” “truly man,” and “consubstantial [i.e., of the same nature] with us according to the manhood.” Then, it defines the human nature Christ assumed by saying He was “of a rational soul and body.” According to Chalcedon, a human nature is a rational soul and body.
But it is virtually universally acknowledged that the will is a faculty of the human soul, alongside the intellect. A rational soul is equipped with (a) a mind that interprets and understands the world and (b) a will that makes choices informed by that understanding. This means that Christ’s human soul is that by which He thinks, understands, and makes choices. The faculty of the will is located in the rational soul, which Chalcedon says was part of that human nature that the Son assumed to be consubstantial with us.
In other words, Chalcedon locates the will in the soul, and it locates the soul in the nature, not the person.[1] Since will is a property of nature, and Christ subsists in two natures, Chalcedon constrains us to a Dyothelite Christology. In Chalcedonian terms, Monothelitism is inherently monophysitic, because one will implies one nature.[2]
Fatal to the Trinity
Second, Monothelitism is fatal to the doctrine of the Trinity. In the first place, it runs afoul of an essential maxim that was universally accepted in early orthodox Trinitarianism: the doctrine of inseparable operations.
Versions of the phrase opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt (“the external works of the Trinity are undivided/indivisible”), along with its Greek counterpart, appear throughout the writings of such pro-Nicene fathers as Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine. It means that the acts of the Triune God cannot be divided up among the three persons, but that each divine person performs each divine act.[3] Just as God’s nature is indivisible, so also His acts are indivisible.
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What Are the “Keys of the Kingdom”? — Matthew 16:19
The preaching of the gospel proclaims Christ’s kingdom has come to us, opening the hearts and minds of those who hear it to the glory of Christ and the good news of his salvation. On the other hand, binding something is to close it. In the context of Christ’s kingdom, it is to close the kingdom to unbelievers.
In Matthew 16:19, Jesus makes the following statement to the apostle Peter:
“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
What was Christ Jesus referring to when he told Peter he would give him the “keys of the kingdom”? What is the meaning of this metaphor that our Lord is using in Matthew 16:19?
The Heidelberg Catechism, question and answer 83, states,What are the keys of the kingdom?
The preaching of the holy gospel and Christian discipline toward repentance. Both of them open the kingdom of heaven to believers and close it to unbelievers.Jesus Is Referring to the Kingdom of Heaven, His Kingdom That Is Not of This World
First, as the Heidelberg Catechism points out, it is important to note that in this verse Jesus is referring to the kingdom of heaven, his kingdom that is not of this world (John 18:36).
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Reign of Terror
Do you find it accidental or coincidental that immediately after Jesus, Paul, and Peter all instruct us to be the kinds of people who refuse to “fight fire with fire” or “punch back twice as hard” their very next words are about persecution and suffering? This is not an accident. Far from being “unsuited” for our times, the cultural world into which God gave all of these commands was far worse, far more hostile, and far more polarized than our own. There was no asterisk on these commands, no “do this unless you live in a hostile world.” The hostile world was already baked in. And you know what? This was not a recipe for being dominated by the world. It was a recipe for overcoming the world. Christianity conquered the Roman Empire with this ethic.
Almost a decade ago I spoke at a conference in Portland, Oregon. I recently came across my prepared remarks, which honestly I’d completely forgotten. I’m going to borrow from it liberally for this newsletter, since the conference is long-forgotten and my remarks were never published. Consider that I said the following in 2013:
We live in a very challenging cultural environment. Have things ever seemed as polarized as they are right now? Right vs. Left, Gay vs. Straight, Tolerance vs. Bigotry, and we could go on all night rehearsing the divisions! During the 90s I remember pundits and social observers confidently declaring that the so-called “culture wars” were over. It would be an age of peace and economic prosperity, with no more conflict over thorny moral questions like abortion, euthanasia, or homosexuality. If only! I trust I do not need to tell people living in Portland, Oregon, that these sorts of cultural conflicts are alive and well.
Heh. What did I know? Have things ever seemed as polarized? We hadn’t seen anything at all yet, had we? That was all pre-Woke Mobs, pre-Trump, and pre-Portland-being-a-graffiti-painted-post-apocalyptic wasteland. I went on to describe our shifting culture and predicted that the LGBTQ agenda—actually I don’t think there was a Q on it back then—would be a major catalyst for increasing hostility toward Christians.
I continued on with this illustration, which I think holds up very well:
Being on the West Coast, I understand that Oregon occasionally gets earthquakes. I’ve personally never experienced one. But what is the first instinct when the ground literally starts to move under your feet? I imagine you reach out and grab for something stable, usually frantically and in a panic. We need to be steadied and balanced. And cultural earthquakes are no different. When things shift and change, when definitions change, cultural mores radically shift, when the old things cannot be taken for granted anymore, we can feel extremely vulnerable. We can feel afraid, alone, helpless, and without resources. Usually the shift feels completely new, something we’ve never experienced before. And we then automatically think that nobody else has ever experienced it before.
And when we think nobody else has experienced it before, nobody else has had to face the hostility we now face, then next step seems clear enough: our forefathers and foremothers are of no help to us. Our “old’ way of engaging culture must be the culprit, not the solution, for the hostility we face. Hence, the current claims that old ways of doing things are “unsuited for the times.”
There is a humorous Sci-Fi cult classic book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by British writer Douglas Adams. In the story, the Hitchhiker’s Guide itself is, in fact, a galactic encyclopedia designed to give vital information to the lonely galactic traveler. And on the cover of that vast resource is a warm, smiley face accompanied by the words: “Don’t Panic!”
It seems to me that as we Christians make our way through an unpredictable, sometimes crazy, sometimes hostile world, we have the ultimate guide: God himself. God speaks. And you know what the number one message of the Bible is for people living in the midst of cultural hostility? Don’t panic. You live in precedented times and you are not alone.
It is the most frequent command in the Bible: “Do not be afraid.”
“Fear not.” Over and over again. God knows that we are prone to fear. And God exhorts us again and again to not fear. This isn’t because God is naïve. He knows that sometimes there is legitimate reason to fear.
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Joe Rogan and the Search for Transcendence
As the process of re-enchantment continues, I believe we will see more and more people dissatisfied with the hollow cave of materialistic atheism and seeking experiences of the transcendent. Will the church be ready to offer compelling answers to their questions? And will the worship and fellowship of the church be so imbued with the presence and power of God that visitors stop and say “God is really among you” (1 Cor. 14:25)? May God move in mighty ways to not only draw the lost to Himself but to revive our churches to be vibrant outposts of Kingdom life.
Living in Montreal, I am used to encountering deeply secular people. No heaven above, no hell below, no God at all. Can you even show me one solid piece of evidence for your God? Why would you believe in old debunked myths? These are the kinds of questions they ask. How does one share the hope of the gospel with such people?
Depending on the particular stripe of unbelief, it may be to poke holes in the materialist fortress, to point out self-evident echoes of eternity in their own beliefs, to show the moral implications of atheism, or any number of similar approaches. All of these are types of pre-evangelism: tilling up the hard ground of unbelief so that the seeds of faith in Jesus might have a chance to grow.
Over the last few years, however, I’ve been bumping into another kind of person who is asking very different kinds of questions: Are the spiritual beings around us benevolent or malevolent? How can we more deeply connect to the spiritual realm? Or, like one young man asked me: Can I ever be free from the spiritual forces I opened myself up to by engaging in occult practices?
In another case, a new convert at my church shared with me how, soon before coming to Christ, she had travelled to Brazil to experience a shaman-guided experience with the psychedelic Ayahuasca. Thankfully the ceremony was cancelled at the last minute. These are people with a very different set of beliefs than the typical secular young person, and they lead to very different conversations.
What is going on here? It seemed to me that I was encountering a new wave of the New Age.
Growing up, the people I knew of who were into New Age beliefs and practices were generally middle-aged women. In high school, the mother of one of my friends had a room in their house where she “spoke to angels.” For a few bucks, she could even tell you what they had to say. I avoided that room – there were lots of strange things hanging from the ceiling.
Then there was Oprah, who symbolized the smiling non-threatening face of New Age spirituality. All of this seemed to me far more like wishful thinking, scams, and mushy sentimentality than anything engaged with serious spiritual forces.
So my assumption was that the appeal of the New Age was mostly for that demographic. The young people I encountered were either deeply secular or, if their families had not had a decisive break from organized religion, mildly theistic.
The Rise of Long-Form Podcasting and Joe Rogan
While New Age beliefs never went away, they certainly fell off my radar for a few years. Around the time of Jordan Peterson’s rise to fame, I became aware, like many others, of an online world where serious conversations were taking place in long-form podcasts and YouTube interviews. The format seemed to foster nuanced, open, and surprisingly deep conversations at a time when the content of primetime news shows was devolving into 90-second shouting matches between talking heads.
One strange little corner of that online world was Joe Rogan’s podcast. With marathon 3-hour episodes of – shall we say – wildly varying quality, no one (least of all Joe) expected it to become so popular. Rogan is vulgar and blunt, but he has a winsome personality, a good dollop of common sense, and perhaps his most dynamic qualities: an insatiable curiosity and a capacity for wonder. Listen to him and his guests talk about grizzly bears or ancient Egypt and you’ll quickly find your own curiosity and wonder awakened.
Recent controversies have continued to polarize opinion about him and, ironically, broaden his reach. To some he is a dangerous purveyor of misinformation who platforms discredited and dangerous fringe thinkers (and to be fair, he certainly talks to some strange folks); to others he is a voice of sanity and one of the few remaining spaces where free speech is defended. But one thing is for sure: his audience is massive, easily eclipsing other podcasts and cable news shows. And the lion’s share of that audience seems to be young men – millions of them.
These are the men facing the meaning crisis – the existential inheritance of postmodernism. Or, more simply, the meaning crisis is what happens to a soul when you teach it that everything is a cosmic accident and therefore nothing has any real or ultimate meaning. They have no interest in organized religion, but they love the masculine competence and self-respect that the podcast exudes.
To these young people, Rogan offers not only entertainment through interesting interviews but also a taste of re-enchantment through his curiosity and wonder, the promises of technology, and his experiences and endorsements of psychedelic substances as gateways to wisdom and knowledge. This is where I see a connection between Joe Rogan’s massive popularity and influence and the unexpected reappearance of New Age spirituality in young people.
In this article, I want to focus on aspects of Rogan’s project that I think the church should take note of because they are illustrative of much broader societal trends which present Christians with both challenges and opportunities. But first, let’s see how this fits within the broader cultural narrative.
Streams of Re-enchantment
In his book ‘Return of the Strong Gods,’ R.R. Reno, editor of First Things magazine, shows how the disenchantment – a kind of spiritual malaise – that has spread across the West is not simply a byproduct of secularization but the result of a specific strategy adopted in the aftermath of the two World Wars.
Traumatized by the horrors of Auschwitz, Western intellectuals embraced what Reno calls ‘the post-war consensus,’ the idea that strong beliefs, convictions, and claims to truth are what give rise to the passions that caused such atrocities. In order to ensure that such things never happen again, these ‘strong gods’ were cast out and replaced with weak ones: pillars of objective truth gave way to plastic values, solid moral virtues dissolved into liquid cultural preferences.
If this is the case – and I found the argument of Reno’s book to be, on the whole, persuasive – then the intentional suppression of the human hunger for transcendence in the West since the end of the second World War dovetailed with the natural effects of secularization to create a situation where souls have been starved for a taste of eternity as never before.
This dual process of secularization and suppression brought low the ceiling of the world and drained the vibrant colors of life to a paltry grey, leaving young people with a gnawing hunger to come into contact with something beyond what they can see and touch, to be swept up into something bigger than themselves.
Like a mighty river held back by a hastily-built dam, this God-given hunger was artificially restrained. But now it seems to be breaking forth as that dam comes apart in pieces. The wave of re-enchantment washing across the West manifests itself in various ways. In what follows, I select just three streams that have struck me as particularly relevant to Christians, the third of which will bring us back to Joe Rogan.
First, the spiritual shape of political ideologies.
Many seek and find an echo of transcendence in the crusader-like pursuit of political and cultural goals.[1] Invariably these beliefs take the shape of grand narratives that mimic the Biblical story, including some pristine Edenic state, a fall into sin, a path of righteousness, and an eschatological hope. Radical environmentalism, the LGBTQ activist movement, and the progressive Left all fit this pattern and hold increasing cultural and institutional influence in our day.
Some movements on the far-Right such as white nationalism take the same general shape and likewise require a whole-life commitment.
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