Today the Church commemorates the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680-681). Convened by the emperor Constantine IV (or St. Constantine the New) in the year 680, the Sixth Ecumenical Council (the Third Council of Constantinople) condemned the heresy of Monothelitism. According to Monothelite teaching, Christ has only one will, for He is one person albeit with two natures. After its 18 sessions, the council succeeded to bring about a reconciliation between the church of Rome and the Eastern churches. The 171 holy fathers present at the council affirmed the dogma of two wills in Jesus Christ: the Divine and the human.
St. Maximos the Confessor and Pope St. Martin were the foremost opponents of Monothelitism, and they held the Lateran council in Rome (649), which condemned the doctrine. Although the Sixth Ecumenical Council vindicated Sts. Maximos and Martin as pillars of Orthodoxy, it also carefully avoided any mention of them, perhaps because of the belief that they suffered as political criminals and not for their faith. In addition to condemning Monothelitism, the council anathematized Pope Honorius I of Rome and Patriarch Sergius I of Constantinople as heretics for their propagation of heresy.
The acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council have unique features that distinguish it from preceding councils. Most of its acts are conciliar and patristic texts which were read aloud at its sessions. The discussion was conducted, but heretical arguments were answered not so much by the defenses of the Orthodox participants in the council, as by the evidence drawn from the works of the holy fathers.
For example, the Acts of the Fifth Ecumenical Council were read at the third session. At the head of the first book of the Acts was found the correspondence of Mennas, then Patriarch of Constantinople, to Pope Vigilius, in regard to the one will in Christ. The papal legates immediately protested against the reading of this document, remarking that it was a falsification. A more careful examination of the Acts showed, in fact, that there had been introduced, before the first book, three foreign and unnumbered sheets with handwriting quite different from that of the rest in the original. Also objecting to two pretended letters of Pope Vigilius addressed to Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora, with a mention of “one action” in Christ, the papal legates exclaimed: “Vigilius did not teach that, and this second book of the Acts has been falsified like the first; those are not letters of Vigilius.” Such forgeries were introduced in the Acts under Monothelite patriarchs.
During the fourth session, excerpts from the works of the holy fathers were presented by Patriarch Macarius of Antioch, teaching, “that the one single will of our Lord Jesus Christ, is also the will of the Father and the Holy Spirit.” At the sixth meeting, the sayings of the fathers collected by Patriarch Macarius, which, in his conviction, contained the doctrine of one will in Christ, continued. After listening to them, the Pope's messengers declared:
"Macarius of Antioch … [has] in no way, by the patristic passages … proved anything in regard to the one will or the one energy. On the contrary, they have mutilated these passages, and that which was said of the unity of the will in the Trinity they have referred to the incarnate Christ. We pray, therefore, to be allowed to bring … genuine copies of the Fathers in question, so that we may be able to prove the deception. Moreover, we have prepared a collection both of passages from the Fathers who speak of two wills."
The following day, at the seventh session, the papal legates themselves presented a collection of patristic testimonies of two wills and two actions in Christ. At the ninth session, the compilation of patristic quotations, made by Macarius and his assistants, continued to be verified with the original texts of the fathers, which revealed the presence of forgeries and malicious additions in it. At the fourteenth session, the synod now gave the sentence:
These additions, as the papal legates correctly remarked before, were not written at the time of the fifth Œcumenical Council, but were inserted by a later hand, and in the first book of the parchment [manuscript] three quaternions [parts of four sheets], in which was the letter of Mennas; and in the second book, between the fifteenth and sixteenth quaternions, four unpaged leaves, containing the two pretended letters of Vigilius. In the same manner, the second codex had been falsified in the heretical interest. These additions must be quashed in both [manuscripts], and marked with an obelus, and the falsifiers smitten with anathema….Anathema to the pretended letters of Mennas and Vigilius; anathema to the forger of Acts; anathema to all who teach one will and one energy in the Incarnation of Christ, who is One of the Trinity! Eternal honor to the four holy Councils; eternal honor to the holy fifth Council; many years to the Emperor Constantine!
This unique characteristic of the council’s reliance on the texts of pervious fathers and councils demonstrates that the scholarly discipline of textual criticism has been one the philological arts practiced by Christians long before the 21st century. By studying ancient manuscripts, the goal of text critics is the establishment of the best text of a passage, restoring it as nearly as possible to its original form. Identifying primary sources, such as original documents and records, in order to evaluate and interpret them, are important steps in the study of history.
Sources:
Charles J Hefele, D.D., A History of the Councils of the Church (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1876), Volume 5, Book 16.
Archpriest Vladislav Tsypin, “The Sixth Ecumenical Council,” Orthodox Christianity.
