‘Not what I will, but what you will’. In the passage where Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane before the Crucifixion, apparently submitting his own will to that of the Father, Matthew 26.39 posed for early Christian theologians the question whether Christ had two wills, human and divine. This became a major patristic controversy. It goes to the heart of the debates with Arians and others, who sought to argue through innumerable refinements of concept and wording, that the Son was not of the same substance as the Father. Disputes went on in Chrysostom and Gregory Nazianzus, and among the Latin Fathers in Ambrose and Augustine, until the Monothelite controversy of the seventh century brought matters to a head. The introductory chapter provides a clear summary of the intricacies of all this and its immediate aftermath.
There was a pause. The topic largely dropped from view in the Latin West for some centuries, although, as the author notes, the twelfth century Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard and Hugh of St. Victor, Peter Lombard and the early thirteenth century William of Auxerre had relevant points to make about the will of Christ. But they lacked the knowledge of the Greek tradition to take the story on directly from where the seventh century had left it.
It came into its own again in the thirteenth century and the main chapters of this book concentrate on the contributions of Albertus Magnus and Bonaventure; then Aquinas, with concluding chapters on implications for the theology of redemption and some later medieval scholastic treatments. These include the work of Giles of Rome, Peter Olivi and Duns Scotus, and reflections on several themes as they arose for the scholars of these generations.
In the chapter on Aquinas the focus is on the ways in which the humanity of Christ may be seen as acting as a ‘cause’ of salvation. In framing the matter in this way Aquinas was indebted to the Aristotelianism of his age; but he also conducted research (or commissioned it) and was thus able to learn more of the conciliar texts of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. He explored every mode of union of God and man conceivable in his time. He continued with an analysis of the ‘nature’ assumed.
The exploration of the later examples in this useful book suggests that they had something new to say. Duns Scotus for example examined the notions of the sadness and sorrow of Christ, considered with respect to the ‘parts’ of the soul, sensitive or intellective, in which these could potentially reside or be felt.
As the author acknowledges, his treatment is both historical and systematic. The result is a successful marriage of chronologically sensitive discussion of the problems as they looked to each thinker in his time, and finely-tuned awareness of the interconnectedness of the questions as they were treated in the long threads of theological concerns about them down the centuries.
The reader cannot but be struck by the limitations scholasticism posed. For all their subtlety and sophistication, the late medieval scholastic devices used to resolve profound difficulties can sometimes seem mechanical. But the author writes clearly and attractively, keeps close to the source texts, and has provided an invaluable survey account of a problem which will return, like most of the perennial problems of Christian theology. The only pity is that is has not been possible to bring the theme round full circle to the preoccupations of the seventh century. But late scholasticism left those some way behind and could scarcely have stated them for its own times as they had formerly been framed.
