Single Question. Whether there were Two Wills in Christ

1. About the seventeenth distinction the question is whethera there were two wills in Christ.

a.a [Interpolation] About the seventeenth question (where the Master deals with the things Christ did through his human nature), because the principle of human doing is the will, without which no work is either meritorious or praiseworthy, therefore the first question to ask is about the will, and in the next distinction [d.18] about merit. The question asked about the present distinction then is whether^

2. The evidence that there are not two wills in Christ is:

First, because every will is lord of its act; but if in Christ there were two wills, one would not be will because it would not be lord of its acts. The proof is that that power is not lord of its act which follows the movement of another power, because to follow in this way is not to be lord of one’s act but to be subject to another with respect to one’s act; but if there be a created will in Christ, it follows in its act the movement of the uncreated will of the Word, for the Word performed the operation of human nature;     therefore etc     .

3. Second, if in Christ there be two wills then the argument is that there are not two only, for since there is a free will there, following the created intellect, and besides this a natural will, then, since free will and natural will have an opposite manner of bearing and tending to their objects, the result is that there will be two created wills in Christ; and there is an uncreated will in him;     therefore etc     .

4. On the contrary:

He had only two intellects, namely an uncreated and a created intellect; therefore similarly he had only two wills.

I. To the Question

5. Damascene 58 [3.14] solves this question by saying that just as one must firmly hold by faith that in Christ there are two natures and a single hypostasis, so one must concede (as a consequent from it) that there are in him the natural properties and powers of each nature; but the most perfect powers of rational nature are intellect and will; so there are in him a created intellect and a created will.

6. In d.13 nn.53-54, 87 above it is maintained that there was supreme created grace in Christ and supreme created enjoyment, and in d.14 nn.58, 67-70 it is maintained that in him was all knowledge and supreme vision, by reason of the assumed nature.

7. The Church maintains the same in its Sixth Synod, when it determines that in Christ there are two wills and two operations [Canon ch.9, Gratian Decretum p.1 d.16 ch.16].

8. Since, therefore, knowledge [n.6] presupposes intellect and will, one must posit both powers in Christ in their best disposition; and so there is a created will in him.

9. But is the created will in Christ one only?

I reply that the will can be taken in its proper idea, or in its general idea and name, namely as appetite. If it is taken generally then there were at least three appetites in Christ, namely uncreated intellectual appetite, created rational appetite, and created irrational appetite (that is, sense appetite); but will properly speaking adds something to appetite, because it is “free appetite with reason” [Rhetoric 1.101369a24]. And so, strictly speaking, there were only two appetites in Christ.

10. But commonly speaking, and taking will in the sense of appetite, I think that in this way there were in Christ, as in us, as many appetites as there are in us distinct apprehending powers; and thus, just as there is a different apprehending of taste and sight and another of taste and smell, so there is a different appetite proper to this one and to that, and a different proper appetite consequent to this apprehending and to that.

11. However we commonly speak of the sense appetite as single, and it is the appetite that follows the imagining power, because just as the imagining power imagines the objects of each of the senses (in the presence and in the absence of those senses), so its appetite delights in them if they are agreeable, or is pained by them if they are disagreeable. But just as, notwithstanding the fact that the imagining power can thus imagine the objects of each of the senses (both in their presence and in their absence), we nevertheless posit certain particular senses that apprehend distinct particular objects - so, notwithstanding the fact that the appetite consequent to the imagining power can desire and rejoice in the agreeableness of every sensible particular and not desire or be pained by their disagreeableness, so by parity of reasoning one must posit distinct particular appetites that are consequent to particular apprehendings or to distinct apprehending powers; and there is the same necessity to power distinct appetites as there is to posit distinct apprehending powers.

12. But what of natural will and free will - are they two powers?

I say that natural appetite in any thing is taken as a general name for the natural inclination of a thing to its proper perfection - as a stone is inclined naturally to the center; and if in a stone that inclination is some absolute thing other than gravity (weight), then I believe as a result that in a like way the natural inclination of a man, as he is a man, to his proper perfection is something other than free will. But I believe the first point to be false, namely that the inclination of a stone to the center is some absolute thing other than gravity and is a different power, which different power has some operation toward the center, as some imagine; for then the operation would be miraculous, for there would be no possibility of giving a term to it since it would be a transient action passing outside to something other. And as the center is agreeable to it, it does not perform an action corruptive of it or preservative of it, since one cannot posit what that operation would be or what is the term of it, save perhaps that of the preserving of its proper ‘where’; for perhaps its ‘where’ in the center is continually coming to be (like light in the medium); but then the action is not to the center, for the ‘where’ is in the thing placed not in the thing that places it, and the center is what places a body in it; therefore the inclination does not state thing over and above gravity (weight) but the relation of the inclination of it to the center as to its proper perfection. Then I say that so also is it about the will, that natural will is not a will, nor is a natural willing a willing, but the term ‘natural’ diminishes both and is nothing but a relation consequent to the power in respect of its proper perfection; hence the same power can be called ‘natural will’ with a necessary respect to perfection consequent to it, and it is called ‘free’ according to its proper and intrinsic idea, which is will in the specific sense.

14. In another way will can be called natural as it is distinguished from supernatural power or will; and will as thus existing in its pure natural state is distinguished from itself as it is informed with the freely given gifts [of the spirit].

15. There is yet a third way in which ‘natural will’ is taken, namely as it elicits an act in conformity with natural inclination, which inclination is always toward the advantageous; and in this way the will is free in eliciting a conformed act as it is free in eliciting an opposite act, for in its power is the eliciting or not eliciting of a conformed act (the supernatural will elicits only conformed acts).

II. To the Principal Arguments

16. As to the first principal argument [n.2], I concede the major, that ‘every will is lord of its act’. And when it is said in the minor that ‘the will that follows the movement of another power is subject in its act and not lord of its act’, I say - as elsewhere in d. 1 nn.17, 80-81 - that the Word has no causality over the act of the created will in Christ that the whole Trinity does not have; and so the created will in the Word is no more deprived of lordship with respect to its acts because of its union with the Word than if it was not united to the Word.

17. But then further to the argument [n.2], according to the double opinion touched on in Ord. 2 dd.34-37 nn.97-107, 113, 119-128, 142-154:

If the will is the immediate and total cause of its act, so that it does not follow the movement of the Trinity that, along with the will, causes the act of the will - but the Trinity only places the will in its first existence and if the will moves itself in its acts, such that the Trinity does not operate in the operation of the will save because the Trinity works for the existence of the will (according to one opinion) - then the minor is false that ‘the will follows in its operation the movement of another power’; for although it follows the movement of another power in its existence as regard first act, yet it does not do so as regard operation (immediately, I mean).

But if the view be held that the will would immediately cause its operation and nevertheless God too immediately causes it along with the will, just as he immediately causes the existence of the will, then because (as I said [n.16]) the Word has no special operation different from the whole Trinity, yet the Word and not the whole Trinity is denominated by the operation of the created will (because of the union that produces the sharing of characteristics) - then I say that the created will in Christ elicit its acts freely and is lord of its act just as my will does and is lord now, for God does not operate with his operation unless the created will freely acts and determines itself to operation, and then God operates along with it; but nevertheless the first freedom and lordship is not in the created will but in God’s will, which does not have another cause operating along with it for its act but yet is as much in the creature as it can be in it.

18. As to the second argument [n.3], when it is said that free will and natural will are two wills, I say that natural will - as such and as it is natural - is not will as a power but imports only the inclination of the power to receiving its perfection, not to acting as such; and therefore it is imperfect, unless it is under the perfection to which the tendency inclines the power. Hence the natural power does not tend but is the tendency whereby the absolute will tends - and that passively - to receiving [its perfection]. But there is another tendency in the same power, so that it tend freely and actively in eliciting its act, so that there is one power and a double tendency (an active and a passive tendency). Then to the form of the argument [n.3], I say that natural will, according to what it formally imports, is not power or will but the inclination of the will and the tendency whereby it tends to passively receiving its perfection.