Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

OPUSCULE 3
INTRODUCTION
This short work, also addressed to Marinus, now described as a priest,
is the last of three opuscula sent to him in 645 or 646. It is therefore
one of the last works of Maximus to have survived, for we have little
after his departure to Rome in 646. The three opuscula (1–3) belong
together, the first is mainly concerned with defining the terms used in
the Christological controversy, and the second and third are extracts
from a much longer treatise (which no longer survives). The third,
translated here, is about the distinction between natural and ‘gnomic’
wills: a distinction important for Orthodox Christology, which must
hold, according to Maximus, that there are two natural wills in
Christ, but not that there are two ‘gnomic’ wills, for that would lead to
a picture of Christ as schizophrenic. It is a difficult distinction, which
I have attempted to elucidate in chapter 4 of the Introduction. Much
of Maximus’ argument in this work proceeds by way of reducing the
position of Severus (the sixth-century Patriarch of Antioch who is
usually the nominal opponent in Maximus’ arguments) to absurdity,
but in the course of his arguments, the nature of the distinction
between a natural and a deliberative (or ‘gnomic’) will becomes clear,
and with it a credible picture of what is meant by affirming two
natural wills in Christ. Here, as always, an important premise is his
conviction of the integrity of natures: Redemption, which means
restoration, cannot entail distortion of any nature, certainly not the
human nature that the Word of God assumed in the Incarnation.
45B
TEXT
From the same work, chapter 51, that when the Fathers say
that there are two natural wills in Christ, they mean that
there are two natural laws, not two inclinations [gnômai]. 1