Third Council of Constantinople: Who Is Jesus Christ?
Short answer: The Third Council of Constantinople, meeting from 680 to 681, addressed whether Jesus Christ has one will or two. It confessed that Christ possesses two natural wills and two natural energies, divine and human, without confusion or conflict, because he is one person in two complete natures. This mattered because a Savior who only appeared to be human cannot represent humans. The council stood on texts such as Colossians 1:15-20, where Paul presents Christ as the image of the invisible God and the one in whom all things hold together, fully divine and fully human. The council did not invent a new Christ; it clarified what the church already confessed against a teaching that quietly removed his human will.
What was the Third Council of Constantinople?
The Third Council of Constantinople was the sixth of the seven ecumenical councils recognized by the early church. It convened in the imperial capital in 680 under Emperor Constantine IV, with papal legates present, and concluded in 681. Its task was narrow but weighty: to settle a controversy over whether Christ had one will or two. The council examined earlier councils, the writings of the fathers, and relevant Scripture, then issued a definition that Christ has two natural wills and two natural operations, neither opposed nor merged. It also condemned the leaders of the one-will teaching by name. The church received this as a faithful summary of what the apostles taught about Jesus.
Earlier councils had already done essential work. Nicaea in 325 confessed the Son as truly God, of one substance with the Father, against Arius. Constantinople in 381 clarified the Holy Spirit's deity. Ephesus in 431 defended the unity of Christ's person against those who divided him into two sons, and Chalcedon in 451 confessed one person in two natures, divine and human. Each council built on the last. The Third Council of Constantinople completed the series by pressing the question of Christ's human willing. If Chalcedon said he is fully human, the next question is whether his humanity includes a real human will. The council answered yes.
Three earlier councils carried the name Constantinople, so the numbering can confuse readers. The first, in 381, dealt with the Spirit's deity. The second, in 553, addressed certain writings tied to Nestorian debates. The third, in 680 to 681, focused on the wills of Christ. This third gathering is sometimes called Constantinople III. Historians note that the emperor called it, as emperors often called councils, and that political pressures were real. Yet the church judged its teaching by Scripture and the earlier creeds, not by imperial preference. That is why its definition still carries weight in many traditions today.
The council's definition uses careful language, distinguishing nature from person. A nature is what something is; a person is who someone is. In Christ there is one person, the eternal Son, and two natures, divine and human. Will belongs to nature, the council argued, not to person. So if Christ has a complete human nature, he has a human will; if he is truly God, he has a divine will. The two are not two persons, and they are not mixed into one. This language is technical, but its purpose is pastoral: it protects the reality of our salvation by protecting the reality of Christ's humanity.
Why the question of Christ's will mattered so much
At stake was whether Jesus genuinely obeyed as a human being. If Christ had no human will, then his choices, prayers, and suffering were not truly human choices, prayers, and suffering. The New Testament presents him as one who learned obedience and who prayed in Gethsemane that the Father's will be done. A human will is not a flaw; it is part of being human as God made us. To deny Christ a human will sounds reverent, as though it protects his deity from weakness. In fact it undermines his ability to represent us. The one who saves us must be one of us, not merely one like us in appearance.
Consider the agony in the garden. Jesus does not merely appear to struggle; he truly shrinks from the cup and truly submits to the Father. In the supplied text of Philippians 2:5-11, Paul calls the church to have the mind of Christ, the one who humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death. Obedience is an act of the will. If Christ has no human will, his obedience is a divine performance wearing a human costume. If he has a human will, then his obedience is real human obedience, offered on our behalf, and we can follow him as a real example, not an impossible abstraction.
The one-will teaching, known as monothelitism, arose partly from a desire for unity and partly from a wish to avoid seeming to divide Christ. Its proponents argued that two wills imply two persons or inner conflict. The council answered that two wills belong to two natures in one person, and that a person can will one thing with two natures without being two people. The fear of division was legitimate, but the remedy removed too much. You do not preserve unity by denying what Christ is. You preserve it by confessing the unity of his person and the completeness of both natures, and by letting Scripture set the terms.
Pastorally, this touches how we read the Gospels. When Jesus weeps at Lazarus's tomb, when he is hungry, when he is tempted, when he chooses the Father's will over his own preference, we are not watching a divine being pretending. We are watching the eternal Son living a real human life. The letter to the Hebrews says he was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin, and that he is able to sympathize with our weaknesses. That sympathy depends on a real human experience, which includes a real human will. The council's definition protects the comfort of every believer who has ever cried out to a Savior who understands.
Colossians 1:15-20 and the person of Christ
The primary passage for this study is Colossians 1:15-20. It begins, "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation." The phrase image does not mean a copy inferior to the original; it means the exact visible expression of the unseen God. The word firstborn in this context speaks of rank and inheritance, not of being the first creature, as the next lines make clear. Everything that follows exalts Christ as the one through whom and for whom all things exist. Paul is not writing abstract theology; he is writing to a church tempted to add other mediators and powers to Christ. His answer is that Christ is not one among many; he is the head over all.
Colossians 1:15-20 goes on to say that all things were created through him and for him, that he is before all things, and that in him all things hold together. It then declares that he is the head of the body, the church, the beginning and firstborn from the dead, so that in everything he might have preeminence. Finally it says that in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and that through him God reconciled all things, making peace by the blood of his cross. Notice how the passage holds together creation and reconciliation, deity and bodily suffering. The one who made all things is the one who bled. That is the Christ the councils labored to confess.
This passage anchors the two-natures confession because it insists on both the fullness of deity and the reality of bodily existence. The fullness of God dwells in him, and reconciliation comes through the blood of his cross. Blood is human. A cross is a human death. If Christ only seemed human, the cross only seems to save. The council's insistence on a complete human nature, including a human will, is a direct application of this text. Paul does not divide Christ into a divine part that saves and a human part that is merely a vessel. He presents one person in whom deity and humanity meet, and through whom peace is made.
Paul also calls Christ the head of the body, the church. This matters for how we read the councils. They were not attempts to add to Scripture but attempts to say clearly what Scripture says when error forces the issue. When someone denies that Christ has a human will, the church must answer with the whole witness of the New Testament: the Word became flesh, was tempted, prayed, obeyed, suffered, and died. The council's definition is a fence around that witness. It is not a substitute for Colossians 1:15-20; it is a guardian of it, so that the Christ preached in the church remains the Christ of the apostles.
Two wills in one person: what the council actually defined
The council defined that in Christ there are two natural wills and two natural operations, not contrary to one another, but the human will following and submitting to the divine will. This is a precise claim. It does not say Christ had two personalities. It does not say he sometimes acted as God and sometimes as a man with a different identity. It says that the one person possesses a complete divine will and a complete human will, and that the human will freely aligns with the divine. The obedience of Christ is therefore genuine human obedience, and his deity is not diminished. Both are held together in one Lord.
Some worry that two wills must produce conflict, as though Christ were two agents negotiating. The council denies that. In fallen human beings, our wills conflict with God's because of sin. In Christ there is no sin, so there is no rebellion in his human will. He can shrink from suffering in his human nature, as he does in the garden, while perfectly willing the Father's will in both natures. What looks like tension in the Gospel accounts is not sin fighting God; it is the real cost of obedience expressed in a real human soul. The council's language gives us categories to read those scenes without trimming either nature down to fit our comfort.
The definition also speaks of two operations or energies. This was aimed at those who said Christ acted with only one kind of activity. If his humanity is complete, then his human mind learned, reasoned, grew, and chose. Luke notes that he grew in wisdom and stature, which is a human process. To deny that is to deny the incarnation as the New Testament describes it. John 1:14 says, "The Word became flesh, and lived among us." The Word did not merely visit flesh or appear in flesh; he became flesh. Becoming implies a real human life with real human development, under the real conditions of a real body and a real will.
The council's phrase without confusion or change comes from Chalcedon, and it guards against mixing the natures into a third thing. Its phrase without division or separation guards against splitting the person. Constantinople III adds the will language to the same structure. The result is a Christ who can be trusted: truly God, so he can save; truly human, so he can represent and sympathize. The church did not resolve the mystery; it stated the boundaries within which the mystery must be honored. That is what councils at their best do. They do not explain everything; they say clearly what must not be denied.
How Constantinople III applies the apostolic witness
The council did not work from philosophy alone. It gathered biblical testimony. The prologue of John was central: John 1:1-3 declares that the Word was in the beginning, was with God, and was God, and that all things were made through him. If the Word is God and the Word became flesh, then the one person is both divine and human. The council also leaned on the Gethsemane accounts, on Hebrews, and on the epistles. Its method was to show that the one-will teaching could not be reconciled with the church's Scriptures. The definition is not an addition to the gospel; it is a summary of what the gospel requires us to say about Jesus.
Hebrews 1:1-4 opens by saying that God has spoken in these last days by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the worlds. It calls the Son the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his nature, upholding all things by the word of his power. This is the same exalted language Paul uses in Colossians 1:15-20. Hebrews also insists that the Son became like his brothers in every way, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest. The council's two-wills definition protects both halves: the Son's divine radiance and the Son's genuine brotherhood with us.
First John adds a practical test. In 1 John 4:2-3 we read, "By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God." Confessing that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not a formality. It is a test of whether a teacher is from God. A denial that Christ has a real human will is a subtle way of denying that he has come in the flesh, because the will is part of the flesh-and-blood human life. The council's definition is, in this sense, an application of John's test. It asks whether we confess the real, complete humanity of the Lord, not just a costume of humanity.
Philippians 2:5-11 supplies the moral shape of all this. Paul calls believers to have the mind of Christ, who humbled himself and became obedient to death on a cross. That obedience is the pattern for Christian life. If Christ's obedience is not truly human, the pattern is unattainable and finally unreal. If it is truly human, then we are called to the same kind of trust and submission, enabled by the same Spirit. The council's work, then, is not a museum piece. It services discipleship. It tells us that the one we follow is one of us, and that his obedience is a real human obedience we are invited to share by grace.
Why councils are not a replacement for Scripture
It is important to say plainly that the councils are not equal to Scripture. They are summaries and guardians. They arose because disputes forced the church to say clearly what the Bible teaches. They are useful, and many traditions regard them as authoritative summaries, but they are not inspired in the way the prophets and apostles are. This distinction matters. If we treat a council as a second Scripture, we may be tempted to read the Bible through the council rather than the reverse. The healthy pattern is to read the council as a servant of the text, asking whether its language faithfully protects what Colossians 1:15-20 and John 1 actually say.
At the same time, dismissing the councils entirely is unwise. They preserve hard-won clarity. If someone today says Christ had only one will, that person is not offering a fresh insight; they are repeating a position the church examined and rejected centuries ago. If someone says Christ only appeared to be human, the church answered that in the first centuries. We do not have to reinvent the answers. We can learn from those who came before us, testing everything by Scripture, and hold fast to what is good. The councils are part of the church's memory, and memory is a gift when it keeps us from repeating old errors.
This is also a lesson in humility. The debates were long, technical, and sometimes bitter. The participants did not always act like saints. Yet the church, across generations and regions, came to a settled confession that honors both the deity and the humanity of Christ. That settlement did not depend on any single brilliant figure. It was the slow, messy work of a community reading Scripture together, arguing, praying, and correcting. We can be grateful for that work without pretending the process was clean. The Lord preserved his church, and the resulting clarity serves us still, but the glory belongs to him, not to the delegates.
For ordinary readers, the practical takeaway is simple. When you read your Bible, you can trust that the Christ you meet there is the eternal Son who became a real man. He did not stop being God to become human, and he did not stop being human to act as God. He is one person with two complete natures, and in him the fullness of God dwells bodily. That is not an abstract formula. It is the reason his death counts for us, his sympathy reaches us, and his obedience can be followed. The council said it in careful words; the gospel says it in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Biblical fidelity check
What Colossians 1:15-20 establishes is that Christ is the image of the invisible God, that all things were created through him and for him, that he is before all things, that all things hold together in him, that he is the head of the church, that the fullness of God dwells in him, and that through him God reconciles all things by the blood of his cross. It establishes both his supreme deity and the reality of his bodily, reconciling death. It does not use the later vocabulary of nature, person, will, or energy, and it does not answer every question the councils later debated. The council's language is a later summary, not a quotation of Paul.
A common misreading is to take firstborn in verse 15 to mean Christ is the first created being, which would make him part of creation rather than its maker. The verse itself rules this out: the next lines say all things were created through him and for him and that he is before all things. The same passage calls him the one in whom all the fullness of God dwells. So firstborn here speaks of preeminence and inheritance rights, not of being made. Read this way, the passage supports the two-natures confession rather than contradicting it. The council did not add to Paul; it refused to let his words be softened into something less than what they say.
Other passages that speak to Colossians 1:15-20
Several studies trace the same Christ-centered themes. 3 John Bible Study: Seeing Jesus in 3 John shows how even a short letter keeps Christ central. What Does 1 John 1:1 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application examines the apostolic claim to have seen and touched the Word of life. What Does 1 John 1:8 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application handles the reality of sin in believers, which presupposes a real human Savior. 1 John 1:9 Meaning: Confession, Forgiveness, and Cleansing connects confession to the faithful forgiveness won by the Christ of Colossians 1.
Frequently asked questions
What did the Third Council of Constantinople decide?
It defined that Jesus Christ has two natural wills and two natural operations, one divine and one human, in one person. The human will is not opposed to the divine will but freely submits to it. The council condemned the teaching that Christ had only one will. It grounded this in Scripture, especially the accounts of Christ's obedience, prayer, and suffering, and in the earlier councils' confession of one person in two complete natures. The decision was received by many churches as a faithful summary of the apostolic gospel.
Why does it matter whether Jesus had a human will?
If Christ had no human will, his obedience, prayer, and suffering were not genuinely human, and he cannot represent humans before God. His ability to sympathize with our weakness depends on a real human experience. A complete human nature includes a human will, which is not sinful in itself. Denying it sounds reverent but empties the incarnation of its saving value. Affirming it means the Savior truly is one of us, and his obedience counts for us and shows us how to trust the Father.
Do all Christians accept this council today?
Many traditions, including Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and many Protestant churches, accept the first seven ecumenical councils as faithful summaries, though they differ on how much authority such councils carry. Some Protestant groups treat the councils with respect but hold that only Scripture is the final authority. Others, such as the Oriental Orthodox, did not receive the Council of Chalcedon and therefore relate to the later councils differently. Faithful Christians differ on these matters, and the differences should be discussed honestly and charitably, with Scripture as the shared standard.
