Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history on this episode.

We'll be talking about Maximus the Confessor.

His dates are 580 to 662.

He's considered one of the fathers of the Eastern Church.

He didn't start out as a theologian though.

He started out as an aid to the Byzantine Emperor.

That's a cool job, but he left that and entered the monastery and began

studying philosophy and studying theology and became a very gifted philosopher and theologian. He is known as Maximus the Confessor.

In the Greek Orthodox Church, a Confessor is one who was persecuted and suffered

for the faith but not a martyr. He is also known as

Maximus the theologian and it was his theology and his defense of theology

Orthodox theology that is, that led to his suffering.

In the 600s, ricocheting through the church was the monothelite controversy. Now there's a word you don't hear every day

monothelite. It means one will. It's two words, two Greek words mono meaning one

and thelos the will and it was a view a false view

that Jesus had one will not a separate divine will not a separate human separate and distinct human will but one will.

And in one way what the monothelite controversy was doing

was weakening the creed that came down to the church from Calcedon, that Jesus

was truly human and truly divine, he was those two true natures conjoined in one person.

The monothelites affirmed that,

that he was two natures in one person.

But they quickly said he had one will.

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