st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

1
The
THE GREEK CHURCH IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY. 39
what more akin to their own central doctrine of the
unity of the Godhead and thus an additional
;
party,
and a most important one, was brought into the
strife.
The monothelete 1
controversy, or that which turned
upon a single will in Christ, was an afterswell of this
storm. It arose from the endeavours to carry out
the monophysite principles to their logical conclusion.
If in man, it was argued, who has a single human
nature, though consisting of soul and body, there is
but one will, which we may call the human will, and
one energy, or active exercise of that will, so in Christ,
who had a single nature, though both God and man,
there must needs be in like manner but one will and
one energy or operation. The unrivalled flexibility
of the Greek language, and the ready way in which
it lends itself to the formation of compound words,
while it undoubtedly renders discussion easier, may
have to answer for some of the confusion of thought
in which the combatants were often involved. When
it was found that Dionysius the Areopagite had used
the term theandric, to express the working of Christ,
so convenient a word was gladly borrowed ;
and it
was doubtless felt to be an easier task to maintain
the unity of Christ s will, or operation, when a term
which looked single, though really double, had been
met with to denote it.
The subject began to be actively debated about
term monothelete is said to be first met with in the
writings of St. John of Damascus. Of course the subject,
conveniently summed up in that word, had been debated
earlier.