Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

60 THE DOCTRINE OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST
The Fathers…openly confessed the difference between the two
natural, but not gnomic, wills in Christ. They did not however
say that there was any difference of gnomic wills in Christ, lest
they proclaim him double-minded and double-willed, and
fighting against himself, so to speak, in the discord of his
thoughts, and therefore double-personed. For they knew that it
was only this difference of gnomic wills that introduced into our
lives sin and our separation from God. For evil consists in
nothing else than this difference of our gnomic will from the
divine will, which occurs by the introduction of an opposing
quantity, thus making them numerically different, and shows
the opposition of our gnomic will to God.
(56BC)
The idea that Christ did not deliberate (which is what is meant by not
having a ‘gnomic will’) seems very strange, since deliberating between
different choices is what we are accustomed to think that freewill is
all about. In the course of her criticism of current trends of moral
philosophy in the The Sovereignty of Good, Iris Murdoch at one point
observes that ‘freedom is not strictly exercise of the will, but rather
the experience of accurate vision which, when this becomes
appropriate, occasions action’ (Murdoch 1970, 67). From this point of
view deliberation is what we fall back on when our vision is clouded or
confused: it is a measure of our lack of freedom, not the signal exercise
of freedom. That Murdoch may help us to understand Maximus’
picture of Christ is not perhaps surprising. Earlier on in The
Sovereignty of Good, she maintains that ‘one of the main problems of
moral philosophy might be formulated thus: are there any techniques
for the purification and reorientation of an energy which is naturally
selfish, in such a way that when moments of choice arrive we shall be
sure of acting rightly?’ (Murdoch 1970, 54). That is a good way of
formulating the approach of Byzantine ascetic theology, not least the
approach of Maximus. And Maximus’ ascetic theology is, as we have
seen, closely bound up with his dogmatic theology.