Reformed Christology & Trinitarian Theology
One Divine Will of God?
Two Wills in Christ?
Reformed theologians across five centuries have affirmed that will is a property of nature, not person—a principle that simultaneously grounds orthodox Christology and classical Trinitarianism.
Will Belongs to Nature, Not Person
Will is a property of nature, not person—a single insight that simultaneously grounds orthodox Christology (dyothelitism) and classical Trinitarianism while refuting both monothelitism and Social Trinitarianism.
This single insight explains why Christ possesses two wills (divine and human) corresponding to His two natures, while the Trinity possesses one will shared by three persons who subsist in one divine essence. The interconnection is not coincidental but necessary: getting either doctrine wrong inevitably distorts the other.
One divine nature → One divine will shared by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are three distinct persons subsisting in one essence.
Two natures → Two wills (divine and human) in one person, with the human will submitting to the single divine will.
The stakes are high. Social Trinitarianism's assertion of three divine wills logically entails monothelitism in Christology—the very heresy condemned by the Third Council of Constantinople (680–681). These are not separate doctrines that happen to share terminology but interdependent truths that stand or fall together.
The Council of Constantinople III Established the Dyothelite Consensus
The Third Council of Constantinople (680–681) formally condemned monothelitism—the view that Christ possesses only one will—declaring instead that "two natural wills" exist in Christ "without division, alteration, separation or confusion," with His human will "following, not resisting or opposing, but rather submitting to His divine and omnipotent will." Reformed theologians from the Reformation onward received this ecumenical settlement as faithful to Scripture and essential for soteriology.
The theological stakes were immense. Gregory of Nazianzus had articulated the patristic axiom: "What is not assumed cannot be healed." If Christ lacked a genuine human will, then the human faculty of willing remains unredeemed.
Turretin argued that will must belong to nature rather than person because "in God there are three persons, but only one will." Were will a property of person, the Trinity would possess three wills—a tritheistic implication the Reformed scholastics rejected categorically.
Two wills are ascribed to Him: "not my will, but thine, be done." Nor does it follow that there are two persons willing because the will belongs to the nature, while willing belongs to the person.
Francis Turretin — Institutes of Elenctic Theology · Luke 22:42Nature is the source and seat of will; person is the subject who wills. This distinction—nature as the source of will, person as the subject who wills—became axiomatic in Reformed Christology from Turretin onward.
Reformed Theologians Developed Robust Dyothelite Christology from Calvin Onward
Calvin defended Christ's genuine human struggle in Gethsemane against those who minimized His humanity: "If we are ashamed of His fear and sorrow, our redemption will trickle away and be lost… Those who pretend the Son of God was immune from human passions do not truly and seriously acknowledge Him as man." Calvin recognized that authentic human redemption required authentic human experience, including the operation of a truly human will that could tremble before death and yet choose submission.
The seventeenth century produced the most sophisticated Reformed treatments of dyothelitism:
Rutherford articulated five key assertions, distinguishing between Christ's conditional, submissive human will and sinful rebellion: "Christ's will was conditional and clearly submissive; it lay ever level with his Father's holy will." He carefully explained that the apparent opposition in Gethsemane was not between Christ's human will and God's will but between Christ's natural human desires (self-preservation) and His rational human choice (obedient submission).
Owen's Christologia represents what Mark Jones calls "the richest book on Christology in the English language." Owen affirmed that Christ, as the God-man, possesses two wills corresponding to His two natures, with all His mediatorial actions being "the actings of him who is God and man."
Goodwin emphasized that Christ assumed human nature precisely so that "God might thereby become loving and merciful unto men, as one man is to another."
Charnock stressed Christ's willing acceptance of redemptive suffering: "He was willing to be reproached, that we might be glorified."
Dutch Reformed theologians Petrus van Mastricht and Wilhelmus à Brakel continued this tradition. Van Mastricht's Theoretical-Practical Theology—praised by Jonathan Edwards as superior to Turretin—presented Chalcedonian and Constantinople III Christology as essential Reformed orthodoxy.
Herman Witsius, Gisbertus Voetius, and Leonard Riissen likewise affirmed that "in this person [Christ], a divine and human nature, each with their own intellect and will, were united."
The Princeton Theologians and Herman Bavinck Upheld Classical Dyothelitism
The nineteenth century saw Reformed Christology systematized in the major dogmatic works. Charles Hodge and W.G.T. Shedd at Princeton maintained classical orthodoxy while engaging German idealist challenges to Chalcedonian categories. Shedd—whom scholars recognize as "an heir to the long and rigorous tradition of Reformed scholasticism, and of Princeton's great philosopher-theologian Jonathan Edwards"—defended Christ's theanthropic person with sections on His divinity, humanity, unipersonality, and impeccability.
Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics represents the pinnacle of Dutch neo-Calvinist systematic theology. His characteristic emphasis that "grace restores and perfects nature" shaped his understanding of Christ's complete human nature. Bavinck argued that both Sabellianism and Arianism fail because neither upholds the genuine Trinity:
"The great challenge… is to see to it that the unity of the divine essence does not cancel out the Trinity of the persons or, conversely, that the Trinity of persons does not abolish the unity of the divine essence."
Herman Bavinck — Reformed DogmaticsBerkhof provided the clearest twentieth-century summary: "The Church has taken the position that [consciousness and will] belong to the nature rather than to the person." He explained the communicatio idiomatum in Reformed terms: "The properties of both, the human and the divine natures, are now the properties of the person, and are therefore ascribed to the person," while carefully rejecting the Lutheran view that divine attributes were literally transferred to the human nature.
Contemporary Reformed Scholars Have Defended Dyothelitism Against Modern Denials
William Lane Craig's advocacy for monothelitism (and even neo-Apollinarianism) has provoked vigorous Reformed responses, clarifying the technical distinctions at stake.
Moody clarified the technical distinctions at stake: when classical theologians affirm Christ has two wills, they do not mean "two competing centres of conscious willing" but rather "two sets of desires that correspond to his two natures. He wants what God wants and he wants the things that a human properly wants."
McKinley provided an extensive academic treatment: "Opposite to Monothelitism, the two-wills model (Dyothelitism) is more accurate to the biblical and theological evidence for the incarnation… the model elucidates a consistent meaning of the will for God and for human beings." McKinley connected dyothelitism to Hebrews 5:8, arguing that Christ's development shows "he learned obedience through his suffering, and thereby became perfect as our priest."
This work offers the most comprehensive contemporary treatment, with Volume 2 addressing Christ's person and mediatorial work. This retrieval of classical Reformed Christology responds directly to modern reductionist views that minimize Christ's full humanity.
Social Trinitarianism Departs from Classical Reformed Teaching on Divine Unity
Social Trinitarianism—associated with Jürgen Moltmann, Richard Swinburne, Cornelius Plantinga Jr., and William Lane Craig—defines the Trinity as a society of three distinct centers of consciousness and will. Matthew Barrett identifies eight marks of this position: it starts with the three persons rather than divine simplicity, redefines persons as "three centers of consciousness and will," and uses the social Trinity as a paradigm for social theory.
"In God there are three distinct centers of self-consciousness, each with its proper intellect and will."
William Lane Craig & J.P. MorelandSwinburne understands the Trinity as a "collective" of three "individuals" whose unity is their membership in a genus named "divine." These formulations represent a significant departure from classical Reformed categories.
The Reformed critique centers on divine simplicity—the doctrine that God is "without parts" (non-composite). Bavinck explains: "God is 'simple,' that is, sublimely free from all composition, and that therefore one cannot make any real distinction between his being and his attributes… Each attribute is identical with God's being: he is what he possesses."
Turretin defended simplicity against Socinian opponents who sought to "weaken more easily the mystery of the Trinity by establishing the composition of the divine essence." Without simplicity, the unity of God is replaced by a mere communal or moral unity among three divine beings.
Reformed Theologians Identify Tritheistic Tendencies in Social Models
Dolezal argues that "without a sufficiently strong doctrine of simplicity, it becomes unclear why the three persons are not three gods (or three parts of the essence that are themselves less than wholly divine) and why the divine unity is not merely a moral and communal unity."
Social Trinitarianism's appeal to perichoresis (mutual indwelling) as the basis for divine unity reverses the classical order: classically, the persons indwell each other because they share one simple essence; Social Trinitarianism claims the persons are unified by their mutual indwelling relationships.
Persons indwell each other because they share one simple essence. Unity is ontological and prior.
Persons are unified by their mutual indwelling relationships. Unity is relational and derived.
Holmes argued that Social Trinitarianism is "not practically and ethically useful," "deviates from both Eastern and Western Church Fathers," and is "without biblical warrant."
Muller's magisterial work demonstrates that the Reformed orthodox held "patristic assumptions that, far from contradicting the doctrine of the Trinity, the notion of divine simplicity offered a profound support to an orthodox doctrine of the triune God."
The doctrine of inseparable operations (opera trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa) reinforces the critique. Adonis Vidu in The Same God Works All Things explains that "the three divine persons share the divine agency of the one God"—not three harmonious but separate actions, but "the very same acts, because they are all, together and considered separately, the one God." Three divine wills would compromise this unified agency.
One Divine Will Versus Three: The Crucial Distinction
Owen stated the classical position clearly: "The Father, Son, and Spirit have not distinct wills. They are one God, and God's will is one, as being an essential property of nature."
"The Father, Son, and Spirit have not distinct wills. They are one God, and God's will is one, as being an essential property of nature."
"If we affirm a robust conception of a person as a center of self-consciousness, intentionality, and will… it follows that the three Trinitarian persons have three wills."
The Reformed insistence on one divine will is not arbitrary but follows necessarily from locating will in the divine essence rather than in the persons. As Turretin explained: "Simplicity and triplicity are so mutually opposed that they cannot subsist at the same time (but not simplicity and Trinity because they are said in different respects): simplicity in respect to essence, but Trinity in respect to persons."
The persons are really distinct from each other by eternal relations of origin (paternity, filiation, spiration) but not really distinct from the essence itself.
Van Mastricht argued that the persons "do not argue for composition, because persons do not differ from essence in God… Nor also do the persons differ between themselves except through their modes of subsisting, which, because they are not things or beings, but only modes of being, do not compose, but only distinguish."
Christology and Trinitarian Theology Are Doctrinally Interdependent
The principle that will belongs to nature creates a necessary connection between these doctrines. Luke Stamps articulates the dogmatic question precisely: "Are we to understand the divine will as singular or plural? Is the Godhead monothelitic or trithelitic? This is simply another way of posing the more fundamental philosophical question: do wills belong to persons or natures?"
Social Trinitarianism creates an insoluble Christological problem. If wills belong to persons rather than natures, then Christ possesses only one will—the Son's personal will. This is precisely the monothelitism condemned at Constantinople III.
Pope Agatho's letter to that council made the connection explicit: "If anybody should mean a personal will, when in the holy Trinity there are said to be three Persons, it would be necessary that there should be asserted three personal wills, and three personal operations (which is absurd and truly profane)."
This distinctly Reformed doctrine teaches that in the incarnation the divine Logos is fully united to, but never fully contained within, the human nature. Kevin DeYoung explains: "The divine nature, though inseparably joined to the human nature, is never completely contained by the human nature." Christ's divine will—which He shares with Father and Spirit—extends beyond His human nature and continues to uphold the universe even during His earthly ministry.
In the Trinity: one divine nature yields one divine will shared by three persons.
In Christ: two natures yield two wills (divine and human) in one person.
Christ's human will submits to the single divine will—not three divine wills.
Gethsemane Demonstrates Both Doctrines Simultaneously
Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
Luke 22:42Christ's prayer illustrates the theological structure. "Not My will" refers to Christ's human will expressing natural human desires to avoid suffering. "Your will" refers to the Father's will, which is simultaneously the Son's divine will, shared with the Spirit.
The Son's divine will and the Father's will are identical (one divine will), while Christ's human will is distinct but submissive.
"Christ is willing two distinct but equal goods. The salvation of the world via Christ's death and the preservation of his life are different goals. But they are not ultimately in conflict, so long as Christ eventually would consent to the cross (fulfilling the purpose of salvation) and then be resurrected (fulfilling the purpose of life)."
Andrew MoodyThe human will submits to one divine will, not three divine wills—which is why Christ addresses "Father, Your will" rather than three separate divine wills.
This submission was essential for salvation. Christ as the Second Adam must possess everything Adam possessed—including a human will—to succeed where Adam failed. His active obedience (fulfilling the law perfectly) requires a genuine human will.
For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
Hebrews 4:15Hebrews 4:15 teaches Christ was "tempted in every way as we are," which requires a true human will that could experience the pull toward self-preservation. Without a genuine human will, there would be no righteousness to impute to believers.
Conclusion: The Reformed Consensus and Its Continuing Relevance
One divine nature → One divine will · Two natures in Christ → Two wills · Christ's human will submits to the single divine will
Summary Statement
Reformed theology maintains a coherent connection between Christology and Trinitarian doctrine: one divine nature shared by Father, Son, and Spirit yields one divine will; Christ's two natures yield two wills; Christ's human will submits to the single divine will (not three divine wills). Social Trinitarianism's three-wills view is inconsistent with dyothelitism and therefore with Chalcedonian orthodoxy.
The current Reformed retrieval movement—represented by Dolezal, Barrett, Duby, Vidu, Muller, and others—represents a sustained effort to return evangelical theology to classical Nicene categories. As Barrett summarizes: without simplicity, "there are no safeguards for affirming the singularity and unity of God, where the Trinity is ultimately mutilated and divided into various pieces." Similarly, without dyothelitism, Christ's genuine humanity and His ability to represent fallen humanity in redemption are compromised.
From Calvin through the Reformed scholastics to contemporary scholars, the tradition has consistently affirmed both doctrines as essential to biblical Christianity. The principle that will belongs to nature—not person—remains the decisive insight that safeguards both the unity of God in Trinity and the integrity of Christ's person in incarnation. These are not separate doctrines that happen to share terminology but interdependent truths that stand or fall together.
The retrieval imperative. Without divine simplicity, there are no safeguards for affirming the singularity and unity of God. Without dyothelitism, Christ's genuine humanity and His ability to represent fallen humanity in redemption are compromised. Both doctrines require and reinforce each other.