The Unity of Will in Christ

Since nature is “essence equipped to operate,” human nature is the human essence with its faculties(that is, powers for operating), and especially its noblestfaculties which are the intellect and the will. Christ had a perfect human nature, and hence he had a human will. Therefore,there are two wills in Christ, the human will and the divine will. Our Lord himself contrasts these two wills when he prays (Luke22:42): “Father, if thou wilt, remove this chalice from me;nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.” Now, as God, Christ has the divine will undividedly with the Father and the Holy Ghost. Hence, in the prayer quoted, he speaks of “my will” as his human will.

Human nature is not purely spiritual; it is animal too. The appetites of the flesh belong to human nature. These appetitesare meant to be under the complete control of reason which experiences their urging, and thus, while they belong to the sensitive order, they are called “rational by participation.” Since reason includes will, these appetites also belong to the will by participating its act,and they are called the sensitive will. Such a will was in Christ, because he had perfect human nature.

The rational human will of Christ is not itself a double, but a single faculty.

Christ’s human will had the full perfection of sucha will. Therefore it had the perfection called freedom of choice.

The human will has a twofold act. It tends to what is agreeable to human nature, and under the aspect of this tendency itis called “the will as nature.” By this will a man wills health, and anything else that is in itself beneficial to a human natural being. The will has another act, in exercising which it is called “the will as reason”; by this will a man chooses what he understands as a means to his desired endor goal, even if the thing chosen is not, in itself, desirable;such, for instance, as difficult fasting as a means to achieve grace, or bitter medicine or painful surgery as a means to health.In addition to these two acts of the rational will (that is, the will as nature, and the will as reason), there is the sensitive will or sensual will, which is the pull on the rational will exercised by the fleshly appetites. Now, our Lord by his human will as reason, always willed what God willed. By the rational will as nature, and by the sensitive will, he could tend away from things that God willed, such as his Passion and Death. And so, subduing the sensitive will to the rational will as reason, he said, “Not my will, but thine be done.”

There is no contrariety or contradiction in Christ, and hence there is no conflict in him between the human will and the divine will. The tendency of sensitive will, or of the rational will as nature, never prevails in Christ, or constitutes a block to the sure and absolute rule of his will as reason; by this will as reason his whole voluntary life is incomplete conformity with the divine will.