September 16, 681 | Constantinople’s Council Defines Two Wills in Christ

Explore the full date: Today in History – September 16.

On September 16, 681, bishops, imperial officials and papal representatives assembled for the eighteenth and final session of the council meeting in Constantinople’s imperial palace. The acts place them in the domed hall known as the Trullo. Emperor Constantine IV returned to preside. A Gospel book stood in the assembly as the council promulgated the doctrinal definition prepared during ten months of argument.

The question could sound abstract: did Christ possess one will or two? In the seventh-century Mediterranean, it was inseparable from imperial unity, church authority and older disputes over how Christians described Jesus as both divine and human.

A controversy born from attempted compromise

The Council of Chalcedon in 451 had taught that Christ existed in two natures, divine and human, united in one person. That formula did not end disagreement. Communities labeled Miaphysite or non-Chalcedonian rejected Chalcedon’s language or the politics attached to it. Emperors sought formulas that might restore religious unity across provinces threatened first by Persian war and then by Arab conquest.

One compromise emphasized a single “energy” or operation in Christ. When that language met resistance, discussion shifted toward a single will—Monothelitism. Its supporters argued that one will protected the unity of Christ’s person. Opponents feared it compromised full humanity: if Christ lacked a genuinely human will, how could human nature be complete?

Emperor Heraclius promoted the Ekthesis in 638, endorsing one will. Later, Constans II attempted to silence the dispute through the Typos, which prohibited discussion of one or two wills. Suppression failed. Maximus the Confessor became the most influential theological opponent of Monothelitism and suffered exile and mutilation after trial. Pope Martin I was arrested, taken to Constantinople and exiled. The controversy had acquired martyrs as well as formulas.

Constantine IV calls an imperial council

By the late 670s the political situation had changed. Constantine IV sought renewed communion with Rome. Pope Agatho organized consultation in the West, and a Roman synod endorsed the teaching that Christ possessed two natural wills and two natural operations, corresponding to his divine and human natures.

Papal legates carried Agatho’s letter to Constantinople. The emperor summoned bishops, and the first session opened on November 7, 680. The meeting came to be recognized as the Sixth Ecumenical Council, or Third Council of Constantinople. Attendance varied; the final acts bear the signatures of 174 fathers.

The proceedings were forensic as well as theological. Texts attributed to earlier church authorities were read and compared. Participants disputed whether citations had been altered or taken out of context. The council examined the records through eighteen sessions rather than deciding the matter in a single proclamation.

The Trullo and the final definition

Emperor Constantine IV presided over the first eleven sessions, then returned for the last. The sources describe the Trullo as a domed hall within the palace. Seating expressed the order of church and empire: eastern patriarchal representatives, papal legates, bishops and officials gathered around the proceedings, with the Gospel placed centrally.

In March 681 the council accepted the Roman teaching and moved against its principal opponent in the assembly, Macarius of Antioch. It also condemned a list of earlier supporters of Monothelitism. Most controversially for later readers, that list included Pope Honorius I, whose letters to Patriarch Sergius had supported language later judged negligent or heretical. Pope Leo II subsequently confirmed the council while characterizing Honorius’s fault in his own terms.

The seventeenth session settled the doctrinal text. On September 16, the eighteenth session promulgated it. The council affirmed two natural wills and two natural operations in Christ, not opposed to one another: the human will followed rather than resisted the divine. The claim was intended to protect both unity of person and completeness of the two natures.

What the council changed

Constantine IV issued the decrees throughout the empire. The acts were sent to Rome, where Leo II confirmed them after Agatho’s death. The council did not produce disciplinary canons; its work centered on doctrine and the condemnation of teachings and teachers it judged erroneous.

It did not erase dissent or reunite all Christians. The churches now called Oriental Orthodox did not accept Chalcedon or the later imperial councils built upon it. A short-lived revival of Monothelite policy occurred under Emperor Philippikos Bardanes in the early eighth century. Yet within the Chalcedonian churches, the council’s definition became authoritative.

Why a debate about will mattered

To modern readers the controversy can seem remote, but its participants believed salvation was at stake. A Christ without a full human capacity to will could appear less than fully human; a Christ divided into competing centers could appear less than one person. The final formula tried to hold those convictions together.

The council also reveals how doctrine was made in late antiquity: through manuscript evidence, imperial summons, episcopal debate, diplomatic exchange and political power. The date September 16 marks not the sudden discovery of a formula, but the public conclusion of a long institutional process—one that had already cost careers, freedom and lives.

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Why one theological formula had become an imperial problem

The controversy over Christ’s wills cannot be separated from seventh-century imperial politics. Earlier attempts to bridge divisions among Christian communities had produced formulas intended to reduce conflict, including Monothelitism—the teaching that Christ possessed two natures but one will. What was meant as a compromise instead created another dispute.

Rome rejected the formula. So did important eastern theologians, especially Maximus the Confessor. The controversy became entangled with imperial authority because emperors had long treated religious unity as a matter of public order as well as doctrine. By the time Constantine IV summoned the council in Constantinople in 680, the issue had divided churches for decades.

Months of argument, not one dramatic vote

The Third Council of Constantinople met across many sessions from November 680 to September 681. Bishops, papal representatives and imperial officials examined earlier statements, letters and theological authorities. The surviving acts make clear that the conclusion was built through a long documentary process rather than a single speech or sudden compromise.

The council eventually affirmed that Christ possessed two natural wills and two natural operations corresponding to his two natures, without division or opposition. That formula was intended to preserve the full humanity and full divinity of Christ while rejecting the idea that his human will had been absorbed or erased.

The final session on September 16

At the final session, the council’s doctrinal definition was formally presented and acclaimed. Constantine IV attended, giving imperial weight to the settlement. The council also condemned leading supporters of Monothelitism. The list included former patriarchs of Constantinople and, controversially, Pope Honorius I, whose earlier letter was judged to have supported the rejected teaching.

That condemnation later became especially important in debates about papal authority. Medieval and modern theologians repeatedly returned to the case of Honorius when discussing the limits of papal teaching and the historical meaning of doctrinal error.

What the council changed

The council did not end Christian division across the eastern Mediterranean. Churches already separated after the Council of Chalcedon did not suddenly reunite, and political conflict continued. But within the imperial church and Rome, the council established a doctrinal settlement that became authoritative in both Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic tradition.

Its importance therefore lies in both theology and institutional memory. The definition adopted in 681 became part of the inherited language through which later Christians described the relationship between Christ’s humanity and divinity.

How historians read the evidence

The council is unusually well documented for an event of its period because large portions of the official proceedings survive. Those records still require careful reading: they were formal ecclesiastical documents, not neutral transcripts of every private disagreement. Even so, they allow historians to follow arguments, documentary citations and the sequence of sessions in substantial detail.

The September 16 date matters because it marks the formal end of that process. What closed in the imperial palace that day was the culmination of nearly ten months of debate and decades of controversy.

Further reading: translated council material is available through the Fordham University Internet Medieval Sourcebook, alongside the council’s preserved doctrinal definition and historical introduction.