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  • “Father, If It Be Possible, Let This Chalice Pass from Me”:Christ’s Prayer in Gethsemane According to St. Thomas
  • Kevin E. O’Reilly O.P.

The focus of this article is St. Thomas’s account of Christ’s prayer at question 21 of the tertia pars the Summa Theologiae (ST), where his prayer in Gethsemane enjoys a particular prominence. At the outset of this question Thomas reiterates what he has already said about prayer at question 83 of the secunda secundae in the course of a series of questions on the virtue of religion. In this regard, various texts indicate that prayer and subjection to God are intimately related. It should therefore be no surprise that Thomas places a question on Christ’s subjection to the Father before his treatment of Christ’s prayer. Christ’s obedience unto death on the Cross at once expresses both an attitude of perfect subjection to God and the ultimate realization of the virtue of religion. Since this attitude receives particular expression in his prayer in Gethsemane, Christ’s prayer can be said to possess a sacrificial character. The interpretation is further corroborated at question 22 of the tertia pars, which deals with Christ’s priesthood. Once again, Thomas’s treatment of the virtue of religion stands in the background, this time the question on sacrifice (ST II-II, q. 85). Of particular import is the idea that outward sacrifice points towards the “inward sacrifice” of “devotion, prayer, and other like interior acts.”1 [End Page 503]

The significance of Christ’s prayer in Gethsemane can be properly understood, however, only in the light of the doctrine of the hypostatic union, of which Christ’s prayer in general is a consequence. Of particular import in this regard is Thomas’s dyotheletism, his espousal of the doctrine that Christ possessed two wills—a divine will and a human will. For, if Christ possessed only a divine will, then it would not have been necessary for him to pray. We therefore turn in the first instance to this doctrine. According to Thomas’s analysis, Christ’s human will was moved by the divine will but in accord with the exigencies of his humanity as animated with a rational soul and thus as moved by its own will. Viewed in this light, his human will can attain what it wishes only by the divine power. Thomas’s rigorous adherence to the fact that Christ truly took on human flesh combines with his dyotheletism in helping to explain how Christ can recoil from the Father’s will in his humanity while at the same time and without logical contradiction positing the perfect attunement of Christ’s human will to the divine will. This perfect attunement of Christ’s human will to the divine will, which his prayer in Gethsemane expresses, in effect constitutes the perfect spiritual sacrifice.

Christ’s Possession of Two Wills and His Prayer

Thomas’s Chalcedonian Christology leads him to endorse classical dyotheletism, the doctrine that there are two wills in Christ, in the course of the series of questions devoted to the consequences of the union, questions 16–26 of the tertia pars of ST. In article 1 of question 18, after outlining various historical heresies in this regard, Thomas quotes from Constantinople III, which decreed as follows: “In accordance with what the Prophets of old taught us concerning Christ, and as He taught us Himself, and the Symbol of the Holy Fathers has handed down to us, we confess two natural wills in Him and two natural operations.”2 Thomas has already shown that the Son of God assumed a perfect human nature.3 It follows, therefore, that he must have assumed a human will, since “the will pertains to the perfection [End Page 504] of human nature, being one of its natural powers.”4 At the same time, the assumption of human nature by the Son of God entailed no diminution on the part of the divine nature, “to which it belongs to have a will.”5 Hence, concludes Thomas, “it must be said that there are two wills in Christ, i.e. one human, the other Divine.”6

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