Distinction between 'natural' and 'gnomic' wills

[Mina Mounir]

hello,
I've read in some posts that there's a distinction between " gnomic " and " natural " wills ... and that Christ is free from gnomic will .
but what is exactly " gnomic " will ? i read the wikipedia definition , and frankly it was not clear to me.
if we said that natural will is like " desire " ... then should the gnomic one belong to the person? i.e. the " decision " ?

in the study of panagiotis christou on st. Maximus' distinction between what belongs to nature and what belongs to person : http://www.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/christou_maxim.html
he also suggests that Christ is free from gnomic will ... does it mean that his divine person has a third type of wills that belong to person ?
thanks for the help !

[Mina Mounir]

sorry for the addition :
if christ has 2 natural wills and no gnomic will ... and that the natural wills are simply " natural " , where is the role of his divine person in anyway ?

[Christopher Dombrowski]

I'd personally like if we could get a definition for "will" as to what it means for those Fathers who defined that there are two natural wills. I don't know if such a thing calls for a whole 'nother thread; regardless I think such a thing should be made clear before we continue such a discussion.

[Mina Mounir]

well, I do agree

[Mina Mounir]

I'd personally like if we could get a definition for "will" as to what it means for those Fathers who defined that there are two natural wills. I don't know if such a thing calls for a whole 'nother thread; regardless I think such a thing should be made clear before we continue such a discussion.
i just want to add that the question is not the teaching of two wills of christ because this teaching is already approved and made clear. but the question - or my question that lead me to open this thread - was the distinction that st. Maximus the Confessor made between gnomic and natural ... it's another issue

[Vasiliki D.]

I am a little confused. Due to my lack of reading I cant distinguish however I have a feeling that this thread follows the line of Coptic thinking rather than Eastern Orthodox and I just wanted to ask if someone could confirm .. cause that is what my gutt is telling me. Its not a criticism just a clarification I need to be able to continue reading this material without the right thinking hat.

[Mina Mounir]

well , I didnt mean to discuss the " two wills " doctrine , no place for orthodox / monophysite debate . I was talking specifically about a totally different issue , which is the distinction between what is gnomic and what is natural according to st. Maximus the confessor.

[Christopher Dombrowski]

i just want to add that the question is not the teaching of two wills of christ because this teaching is already approved and made clear. but the question - or my question that lead me to open this thread - was the distinction that st. Maximus the Confessor made between gnomic and natural ... it's another issue

I didn't really express any desire to discuss the numeration of Christ's will(s) either. I was just trying to say that I would like a definition provided of what is meant by "will" with respect to the two wills found in Christ's two natures.

[David Hawthorne]

Is it correct to say that before the Fall, Adam had only a natural and not a gnomic will? That part of the Fall was a deliberate choice to live by a gnomic will and that Christ, as the second Adam, undid Adam's disobedience by living His whole human life according to the natural will in synergy with the Divine will?

[Owen Jones]

I am not going to vouch for this quote at all!!!! But I put it here for consideration, debate, etc....



The first I would like to mention are two forms of will which we as men experience: one is natural, and one is personal in relation, or can be seen as the personal mode of using the natural will. Our natural will, which is instilled into us by our creation, instills us to do what is good and gives us the ability to do it without the need for deliberation; it is also the kind of will which directs man to do things in relation to his being which are equated with being man: both physically as well as spiritually. Contrary to those who think that man innately wills evil, this will innately wills what is good; for what is by nature established has been established by God, and what God establishes is good in its establishment, the natural will in man is good. It directs him to nourish his body with food, and to nourish his soul with spiritual food; it directs him to fear, for preservation of life, but also directs him to the help and love of his fellow man, because of the oneness we share with each other. Since this form of will is natural, that is, within the very essence of man, Christ himself, being both God and man and sharing whatever is had according to nature, himself had a natural will. We can see that this must be so, because Christ willed to eat, to drink, to sleep, and performed other activities which are natural to mankind. And the two natural wills in Christ, however, will not contradict each other in Christ's personal action, since the natural human will, wills naturally to do what is good, and what is good is not contrary to God's will. However, there is also another kind of will, called in the texts of the Church Fathers, the gnomic will. This will is related to the personal life of a man; it is what normally directs the activities of a human person. It is gnomic because the will requires deliberation: and an imperfect deliberation on the part of a person, can lead to error and wrongdoing. Ideally, the gnomic will should be united with man's natural tendencies, and should bring the person to do what is good; however, because it puts itself over the natural will, redirects man's attention away from his higher (natural) tendencies, and focuses on his own private (personal) actions, it often used improperly. The process of deliberation, which is focused on a person's private life, thus needs to be re-oriented to his natural life: in the restoration and deification of man, this will indeed be one of the results, one of the ends of the Christian life-- but while we are focused here, growing in strength and grace, we are still often diverted from what is higher, and follow instead what is baser; the ascetic principle, which does not require one to be a monk to follow, provides the key to which a man can, through grace, develop his personal will so that it will become more and more integrated with his natural will, and should slowly decease, even as the natural will and inclinations should increase. The seat of the personal, gnomic will lies in a man's soul; the soul partakes of a man's intellect partially, and directs the man in relation to that partial knowledge. The soul thus, when deluded, gains passions or inclinations which are wrong, and often through much repetition, acts upon these inclinations as if they were natural. This is why there is often a confusion between what is natural to man and man's inclination, which are not always natural; it lies within the soul to create the impression of something which when observed appears natural.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear David, you wrote:


Is it correct to say that before the Fall, Adam had only a natural and not a gnomic will? That part of the Fall was a deliberate choice to live by a gnomic will and that Christ, as the second Adam, undid Adam's disobedience by living His whole human life according to the natural will in synergy with the Divine will?

This is a question with multiple answers, but I'll try to give you what is the most precise -- namely, that of the early St Maximus the Confessor.

For St Maximus, especially in his earlier writings, gnome properly refers not to a will, but to what gnome rightly is: namely, an inclination of will. So one cannot talk about man 'having' a 'gnomic will' in the same manner that one can talk about man having a natural will and God having a natural will. This 'thing' which is the will proper, and which is part of the human constitution, St Maximus calls the 'logos of the will', or the 'logos will' -- that is, the very principle or fundamental reality of the human will, as created, crafted and granted by the Logos who is the eternal Son. This will is immutable, unchangeable, ever true to its Creator. However, in human lives it is manifested differently: some live fully according to the true logos of their human will, others do not - and to varying degrees. So St Maximus identifies what he calls the 'tropos of the will', sometimes abbreviated as the 'tropos will'. Tropos in this context means form, manner, expression; and for St Maximus, this refers to the manner in which the logos of the will is or is not lived out by the human person. So while all have the same will 'in logos' (i.e. in design), each person lives out, or manifests, this will 'in tropos' in their own way. The perfect, unadulterated life would live the will 'in tropos' in exactly the same way as it exists 'in logos'.

Gnome, for St Maximus, refers to the inclination that arises in humanity through sin, which leads toward that sorrowful observation of the scriptures, that 'there is not one righteous man left, no not even one'. As sin becomes ever more part of the context of human existence, it becomes an habit, an inclination, that drives man ever towards the wrong, debased, transgressing living-out of its God-created will -- an inclination that drives the 'tropos' of the will ever in the wrong direction, rather than the right. This inclination, this gnome of the will, is part of the habitude of man in a sinful world.

How does this speak directly to your question about Adam and Eve and the fall? Firstly, we cannot really say that Adam 'didn't have' a 'Gnomic will' before sin, and after the transgression he 'had' it; since, as St Maximus makes clear, the gnome of the will isn't a thing, but a habit. The habituation surely begins after the first transgression; but gnome is always a context, not a thing in and of itself. What did happen after the transgression is that Adam's tropos of his will -- the way he manifested and lived out the will with which he had been created -- went from rightly 'imaging' the logos of his will, to imaging the result of his transgression.

This all becomes rather interesting when one comes to talk about Christ. Did he, or did he not, exist in a context of the gnome of will that marks out the human struggle with sin? Remember that this gnome is not a 'thing', not a natural reality, so the question is not the same as asking 'did Christ have a sinful will' (which clearly he did and does not). Rather, it is asking whether, in his own possession of a human natural will (i.e., the logos of the human will), which he, like all human persons, lives-out in his own tropos of this will, did Christ exist in or apart from the context of inclination toward sin that marks out the context of all human existence in this fallen world? There is a temptation to say 'no, he did not'; but St Maximus was aware that this dangerously absented the incarnate Christ from true human experience.

In his writings, St Maximus gives two answers. In his earlier texts (and the majority), he writes quite clearly that Christ did exist within this context of the gnome of the will, as do all others. What marks out Christ as unique is that, despite living wholly within this context of inclination, he never lets the 'tropos' of his will be affected, and always lives perfectly according to the natural will in man -- the will he himself has fashioned. However, in St Maximus' later writings, he changes this, and at least once emphatically says that Christ was not affected in any way by gnome - but in this passage he is dealing with a radical monthelete / dythelete argument, and denies the gnome of Christ in the face of a very deliberate misuse of it by his opponents; so it is hard to know how much this really relates to his own native position.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Owen,

Your latest post, above, appeared while I was typing mine; my apologies that I wasn't able to take it on board there.

I'm not certain of the source of that quotation, but there is much in it that is helpful. However, it does present one very specific interpretation of 'gnomic will' - and one that emerged out of the more extreme discussions of the monothelete controversy. In those discussions, the question of deliberation were much in the air of Christological debate: can Christ be said to 'deliberate' between good and evil? I.e., if Christ, as human, is presented with a choice between two options, one good and one evil, is there an act of deliberation in His person between them? The insistence that Christ would never 'deliberate' the possibility of Himself doing evil, was part of the debate of the day; and this whole question took up the language of gnome (tracing out another nuance of the term in Greek). As I mentioned in my post, above, this was taken on board by St Maximus in at least one of his very late writings; but he takes it on board in a rather rhetorical manner -- essentially, he confesses that 'if gnome is taken to refer to a disposition of will that actively deliberates the real potential of doing evil versus doing good, then of course Christ does not fit this bill', and as such he denies that kind of vision of a gnome of will in Christ. But as before, this doesn't really resonate with his more common and thorough discussions of will throughout his writings.

The quotation you've provided is very interesting; my main concern would be over its claiming that the 'gnomic will' is a thing, a reality - which I don't believe is, in any case, authentic to St Maximus.

Thanks for providing it for our consideration.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[David Hawthorne]

Thank you, Fr. Deacon Matthew and Owen for your thoughtful posts. I have never really studied this aspect of Christology and am amazed at the depth of thought surrounding the controversy in question.