The Third Council of Constantinople

The Council of Chalcedon had taught that Christ is one person in two natures. In the seventh century a further question divided the churches of the empire: whether Christ had one will and one “operation”, or two. At the opening session the Roman legates said that for some forty-six years bishops of Constantinople, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter, with Cyrus of Alexandria, had taught one will and one operation; their opponents answered that they had this teaching from the councils and the fathers, from those same bishops, and from Honorius, a former pope of Rome (Council of Constantinople (680–681), session 1).

The teaching had been resisted before. Theophanes relates that the monk Maximus debated the deposed patriarch Pyrrhus in Africa and then went to Rome, where he urged Pope Martin to hold a synod; it affirmed two wills in Christ. The emperor Constans II had Martin and Maximus brought to Constantinople and exiled, and had Maximus’s tongue cut out and his hand cut off (Theophanes, Chronicle AM 6121 (pp. 331–332)) (Theophanes, Chronicle AM 6160 (pp. 351–352)).

Constans’s son Constantine IV changed course and asked Rome to send delegates (Theophanes, Chronicle AM 6160 (pp. 351–352)) (Theophanes, Chronicle AM 6171–6172 (pp. 359–360)) (Liber Pontificalis Agatho (ed. Duchesne, vol. 1, pp. 350–354)). Pope Agatho sent bishops, priests and monks with two letters, his own and one from a Roman synod of 125 bishops (Council of Constantinople (680–681), session 1) (Liber Pontificalis Agatho (ed. Duchesne, vol. 1, pp. 350–354)). His letter sets out the doctrine of “two natural wills, and two natural operations” and claims that the Roman church “has never erred from the path of the apostolic tradition” (Council of Constantinople (680–681), letter of Agatho). The legates reached the capital in November 680. The council sat in the hall of the palace called the Trullus, with the emperor presiding. Macarius, patriarch of Antioch, who would not give up the doctrine of one will, was deposed (Liber Pontificalis Agatho (ed. Duchesne, vol. 1, pp. 350–354)).

At its thirteenth session the council condemned Sergius, Cyrus, Pyrrhus, Paul, Peter and Theodore of Pharan, and with them Honorius, “because of what we found written by him to Sergius, that in all respects he followed his view” (Council of Constantinople (680–681), session 13). Its definition repeats the faith of Chalcedon and adds that there are in Christ

two natural wills and two natural operations indivisibly, inconvertibly, inseparably, inconfusedly.

The human will is not opposed to the divine but follows it, as in the saying “not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38) (Council of Constantinople (680–681), definition of faith). The bishops told the emperor that “Peter spoke through Agatho”, and addressed the pope as bishop of “the first see of the Universal Church” (Council of Constantinople (680–681), address to the emperor) (Council of Constantinople (680–681), letter to Agatho).

Theophanes counts 289 bishops and calls this the sixth ecumenical council (Theophanes, Chronicle AM 6171–6172 (pp. 359–360)). Both the Greek East and the Latin West received it as such: a council at Constantinople in 692 confirmed its faith (Council in Trullo canon 1), and the Catholic Church cites it under the same title (Catechism of the Catholic Church 475).