Not My Will, But Yours Be Done

Similarly, at the sixth ecumenical council, Constantinople III in 681, the Church confessed that Christ possesses two wills and two natural operations, divine and human. They are not opposed to each other, but cooperate in such a way that the Word made flesh willed humanly in obedience to his Father all that he had decided divinely with the Father and the Holy Spirit for our salvation. Christ's human will "does not resist or oppose but rather submits to his divine and almighty will." (CCC 475)

Jesus was fully God and fully man. My friends and I have often discussed whether Jesus, the man, new that he was the Son of God, and if so, did he know from his birth or was it slowly revealed to his human nature over time?

I tend to believe that while he knew of his divinity from the beginning, his humanity still had the free will to choose his path in life, and had to consciously choose to follow the divine will of the trinitarian God which is why he can be a role model to us for his obedience.

Remember that when Adam was created, he was in full communion with God just as Jesus was in his humanity. Jesus IS the new Adam because he shared the same humanity of Adam. Where Adam gave into temptation, Jesus resisted and remained obedient to God. His obedience is a model to us, and while our tendency to sin can be overwhelming at times, we can see that it is possible to submit fully to the will of the Father.

(I've written this blog at least three times, and have yet to put my thoughts accurately into words. I suppose smarter theologians than I have tried, and surely they were as frustrated as I, but I suppose that's why its faith, and not science, to understand the mystery of Jesus' dual nature!)