Eastern Orthodox writer and apologist Robin Phillips has written an article in which he claims that Calvinism resurrects the old seventh-century heresies of Monoenergism and Monothelitism. This same claim has also been made by Jay Dyer (source).
Philips seems to make two errors here. The first is that he misunderstands the Dyothelite position (which, in this article, I will arguing for a clarifying through John of Damascus), and he also misunderstands and blunders when it comes to the historic view of Reformed Orthodoxy regarding the human will and its relationship to the divine decrees.
First, we have to ask: is Christ's human will subjected to the divine will? The answer is yes. Mr. Philips says that "Once you say that Christ’s human will was subordinated to, and irresistibly moved by, the divine will, then you have essentially embraced a version of Monothelitism". However, this was what was stated by the orthodox fathers in and shortly after the 7th century. A prime example of this may be found in the writings of John of Damascus, as well as in the acts of Constantinople III:
“But in the case of our Lord Jesus Christ, since He possesses different natures, His natural wills, that is, His volitional faculties belonging to Him as God and as Man are also different. But since the subsistence is one, and He Who exercises the will is one, the object of the will, that is, the gnomic will , is also one, His human will evidently following His divine will, and willing that which the divine will willed it to will.” (John Damascene, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book II, Ch. 22)
“Christ, then, energizes according to both His natures and either nature energizes in Him in communion with the other, the Word performing through the authority and power of its divinity all the actions proper to the Word, i.e. all acts of supremacy and sovereignty, and the body performing all the actions proper to the body, in obedience to the will of the Word that is united to it, and of whom it has become a distinct part. For He was not moved of Himself to the natural passions, nor again did He in that way recoil from the things of pain, and pray for release from them, or suffer what befell from without, but He was moved in conformity with His nature, the Word willing and allowing Him œconomically to suffer that, and to do the things proper to Him, that the truth might be confirmed by the works of nature.” (Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 3.15)
“He, therefore, assumed flesh animated with the spirit of reason and mind, a spirit that holds sway over the flesh but is itself under the dominion of the divinity of the Word. So, then, He had by nature, both as God and as man, the power of will. But His human will was obedient and subordinate to His divine will, not being guided by its own inclination, but willing those things which the divine will willed. For it was with the permission of the divine will that He suffered by nature what was proper to Him. For when He prayed that He might escape death, it was with His divine will naturally willing and permitting it that He did so pray and agonize and fear, and again when His divine will willed that His human will should choose death, the passion became voluntary to Him. For it was not as God only, but also as man, that He voluntarily surrendered Himself to death. And thus He bestowed on us also courage in the face of death.” (John Damascene, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 3.18)
"Defining all this we likewise declare that in him are two natural wills and two natural operations indivisibly, inconvertibly, inseparably, inconfusedly, according to the teaching of the holy Fathers. And these 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. For it was right that the flesh should be moved but subject to the divine will, according to the most wise Athanasius." (The Acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, Session XVIII, Definition of Faith)
Eastern Orthodox blogger Perry Robinson also used similar language of Christ's human will as being aligned towards the divine will of the Trinity and overcoming the human instinct/volition (Mr. Robinson specifically made this comment in reference to Christ's suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane). This was in a livestream (2:02:00) with Sam Shamoun and Qai from the Orthodox Shahada channel on YouTube. I wonder if Philips will accuse Perry of espousing Monothelitism as well? He would have to do so if he is consistent with the claims he has written in this article.
Returning to the issue, this view of Damascene and the orthodox Reformed concerning the human will of Christ as being in some sense subject the divine will is not to be confused with how the way in which the Monothelites construed it, namely that the human will was merely a passive instrument of the Logos in such a way as to deny that Christ has any human energeia or operation. We need to bear in mind the useful distinction made by Aquinas:
“Hence it is plain that in His will of sensuality and in His rational will considered as nature, Christ could will what God did not; but in His will as reason He always willed the same as God, which appears from what He says (Matthew 26:39): "Not as I will, but as Thou wilt." For He willed in His reason that the Divine will should be fulfilled although He said that He willed something else by another will....The conformity of the human will to the Divine regards the will of reason: according to which the wills even of friends agree, inasmuch as reason considers something willed in its relation to the will of a friend.” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Pt. 3, Q. 18, Art. 5, underlining mine)
This important clarification is not done so as to posit multiple human wills, because then Christ would have three wills. Rather it is a distinction that was rightly taught by Aquinas in order to understanding the relationship between Christ's divine will and His human will. The subject of willing is one, not two. It is one and the same Christ who works in both of His natures. This is why it is important to distinguish between operation and the mode of operation.
This is also why the language of Christ's human nature as an "instrument" (οργανον) of the Logos is not to be rejected altogether:
“For what happened of old was a shadow of this; and what the Savior did on His coming, this Aaron shadowed out according to the Law. As then Aaron was the same and did not change by putting on the high-priestly dress , but remaining the same was only robed, so that, had any one seen him offering, and had said, 'Lo, Aaron has this day become high-priest,' he had not implied that he then had been born man, for man he was even before he became high-priest, but that he had been made high-priest in his ministry, on putting on the garments made and prepared for the high-priesthood; in the same way it is possible in the Lord's instance also to understand aright, that He did not become other than Himself on taking the flesh, but, being the same as before, He was robed in it; and the expressions 'He became' and 'He was made,' must not be understood as if the Word, considered as the Word , were made, but that the Word, being Framer of all, afterwards was made High Priest, by putting on a body which was originate and made, and such as He can offer for us.” (Athanasius, Second Discourse Against the Arians, 8)
“And thus His divinity communicates its own glories to the body while it remains itself without part in the sufferings of the flesh. For His flesh did not suffer through His divinity in the same way that His divinity energized through the flesh. For the flesh acted as the instrument of His divinity.” (John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book III, Ch. 15)
Now, what is the alleged connection that the EOs make between Monothelitism and Reformed soteriology? Mr. Philips answers: "You may be wondering what any of this has to do with Calvinism. I confess it took us a long time to connect the dots because of how deeply Calvinist heresies were ingrained into our thinking. However, while we were still attending our Calvinist church, my wife and I started thinking about the soteriological implications of the Sixth Ecumenical Council. We began to realize that the Monergism of Calvinism seemed to be driven by many of the same concerns that animated the ancient Monoenergists, for both tended to treat the divine and the human as if they are two sides in a zero-sum transaction. Soteriological Monergism, no less than the heresy of Monoenergism, sees the divine and the human competing for the same space, and both want to give the divine all the pieces of the pie....What was lacking for both Theodore of Pharan and Calvinism is the assertion of synergy between the human and divine will which seems to have been the understanding behind the verdict of the Sixth Ecumenical Council...To be consistent Calvinism must deny that the human will possesses such self-determining powers. Thus, Christ’s obedience to the Father to the point of death becomes either a kind of fake dramatization or something attributed to His divine nature only."
Robin Philips claims that Reformed soteriology attempts to "give the divine all the pieces of the pie." This is a misunderstanding of the Reformed position. Strictly speaking, monergistic language is generally spoken of specifically in reference to the work of regeneration, and not of salvation as a whole. And even with respect to regeneration, this is spoken in such a way to mean simply that God is the sole efficient cause or agent of regeneration, and not that the human will plays no role at all in salvation. This is contrary to what Reformed historically teaches. Two examples will suffice for the time being:
"The second kind of spiritual actions or things, concern the kingdom of God; as repentance, faith, the conversion of a sinner, new obedience, and such like: in which we likewise in part join with the Church of Rome and say, that in the first conversion of a sinner, man's freewill concurs with God's grace, as a fellow or coworker in some sort. For in the conversion of a sinner three things are required: the word, God's spirit, and man's will: for man's will is not passive in all and every respect, but hath an action in the first conversion and change of the soul. When any man is converted, this work of God is not done by compulsion, but he is converted willingly: and at the very time when he is converted, by God's grace he wills his conversion. To this end said Augustine, He which made thee without thee, will not save thee without thee. Again, that is certain, that our will is required in this, that we may do any good thing well: but we have it not from our own power but God works to will in us." (William Perkins, A Reformed Catholic, in The Works of William Perkins, 7:14)
"When God regenerates men he so cleanses and renews them that they understand for themselves what they do and also why they desire and choose those things, after they have once received a heart of flesh for their heart of stone. So then, after they are once regenerated they becomes workers together with God, and of their own accord they bend themselves to holiness and purity of life." (Peter Martyr Vermigli, Predestination and Justification: Two Theological Loci, pgs. 28-29)
It would also be proper here to briefly comment on how the Reformed have historically understood the relationship between the divine decrees and the nature of the human will.
First of all, though the divine decrees do result in the certainty, infallibility, and futurition of the thing decreed, this does not take away the liberty and contingency of second causes. This is articulated very clearly in chapters 3 and 5 of the Westminster Confession, and was the unanimous teaching of virtually Reformed theologians up until Jonathan Edwards (who may fairly be called the architect of modern-day compatibilism), who broke with the prior Reformed tradition. God decrees not only the event, but also preserves the nature of secondary causes in such a way that they operate according to most proximate causes. Free things act freely, and contingent things act freely. Such is the case with the human will.
To illustrate this, we may defer to God's foreknowledge. God has knowledge of possible events that do not actually take place in time, but this does not remove them from the possibility or potency to exist. For example, during His betrayal, Christ said that it was possible for Him to summon legions of angels to save Him from death (Matthew 26:53). This never happened, nor was it decreed, however it was still possible for it to happen. Therefore, just as the possibility of an event is not excluded by divine foreknowledge, neither is the liberty and contingency or man's will done away with because of the divine decree.
On the subject of free choice and predestination, there is a lot more we could get into, which I will save for another time. For more reading on this issue, I highly recommend Dr. Richard Muller's outstanding work Divine Will and Human Choice: Freedom, Contingency, and Necessity in Early Modern Reformed Thought.
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