The Living Tradition An Orthodox Archive of the Church Fathers and Early Church

The seven ecumenical councils — lesson 7

Council 6: Constantinople, 680-681

Two natural wills in Christ, and a Confessor vindicated after his death.

  • Dogmatic definitionDefined by an ecumenical council or otherwise confessed by the Church as binding doctrine. Not every sentence a council wrote is a definition: its acts, letters and disciplinary canons are different things.
  • Historical consensusBroadly agreed among historians working from the surviving evidence. Consensus can shift when the evidence or the method changes.

Primary evidence verified Content last reviewed 2026-08-29

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  • Confirm the Orthodox catechetical presentation of this council against the OCA's The Orthodox Faith.

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What this lesson covers

  • State what the Sixth Council confessed.
  • Say what happened to Maximus and why it matters.

About 5 minutes to read.

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Monothelitism proposed that Christ has one will, as a formula on which the divided churches might reunite. The council rejected it and confessed two natural wills and two natural operations, indivisibly, inconvertibly, inseparably, inconfusedly — the same four adverbs Chalcedon had used of the natures.

The argument is a direct consequence of Chalcedon. Will belongs to nature, not to person; a nature without a will would not be a complete nature; and what is not assumed is not healed.

Maximus the Confessor defended this position, was tried, mutilated and exiled, and died in 662 — nineteen years before the council confessed what he had argued. Pope Martin I died in exile for the same cause.

The council also condemned by name a former bishop of Rome, Honorius, for a letter he had written. That it did so is not in dispute; what it implies has been argued about for centuries, and this site records the dispute rather than adjudicating it.

Key Scripture

  • Luke 22:42 — Not my will but yours be done.
  • Matthew 26:39 — The same prayer in Matthew's form.

On Scripture references. References are given so you can read the passage in the translation your parish uses. This site does not reproduce a modern copyrighted Bible text.

Council and canon connections

Why this matters in lived Orthodoxy

The confession that Christ has a human will is why Orthodox theology can say that human willing itself is healed in him — not merely forgiven.

Review

What did the Sixth Council confess?
Two natural wills and two natural operations in Christ, the human following the divine without opposition.
What happened to Maximus the Confessor?
He was tried, mutilated and exiled for defending two wills, and died in 662, nineteen years before the council vindicated his position.

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Going deeper

Sources for this page

  1. Tier C The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church Henry R. Percival (ed.); Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (series eds.) The Definition of Faith; The Sentence Against the Monothelites; Excursus on the Condemnation of Pope Honorius annotated edition of conciliar texts Source record

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