Constantinople III
Oversimplified
- The Sixth Ecumenical Council (680–681), which condemned Monothelitism and confessed that Christ has two wills and two energies — divine and human — in His one person.
- It vindicated St. Maximus the Confessor, tortured and exiled for this truth, who died before it triumphed.
Summary
The Third Council of Constantinople (AD 680–681) is the sixth of the Ecumenical Councils. It answered Monothelitism — the teaching that Christ, though in two natures, had only one (divine) will. The Council confessed instead two natural wills and two natural energies (operations), "not contrary to one another... but His human will following, and not resisting or opposing, but rather subject to His divine and almighty will."[^1] Cross-link The Incarnation, Chalcedon, St. Maximus the Confessor.
Why two wills are necessary
"Wouldn't two wills make Christ a split, conflicted person?" No — the fear misreads what a will is. A will belongs to a nature, not to a person; to be fully human is to have a human will. If Christ had no human will, His humanity would be incomplete — and "what is not assumed is not healed." The two wills are not two competing agents but the one Christ willing as God and as man, His human will freely and always aligned to the divine. Gethsemane shows it: "not my will, but yours, be done" (Luke 22.42) — a real human will, freely surrendering. Cross-link Free Will, St. Maximus the Confessor.
The cost: St. Maximus the Confessor
The theology the Council canonized was St. Maximus the Confessor's. He had defended it while emperors and patriarchs embraced Monothelitism for political peace; for refusing to keep silent, his tongue was cut out and his right hand cut off, and he died in exile in 662 — nearly twenty years before the Council vindicated him. His surname, "the Confessor," is the Church's verdict.[^2] Cross-link St. Maximus the Confessor, The Passions.
[^1]: The Definition of the Third Council of Constantinople (680–681). [^2]: St. Maximus the Confessor, Disputation with Pyrrhus.