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And, of course, to remind you, what IS Monothelism? It tries to understand how divine and human relate in the person of Jesus. It taught that Jesus had two natures but only one will. This is contrary to the more common Christology that Jesus Christ has two wills (human and divine) corresponding to his two natures. What was the historical background? In the 5 century AD there were debates on the nature of Jesus Christ. Although the Church had already dogmatically defined that Christ was the Son of God, just what his exact nature was was open to debate. The Church had declared the notion that Jesus was not fully divine heretical in the 4th century during the debates over Arianism and had declared that he was God the Son become human. However, as he was both God and man, there now emerged a dispute over exactly how the human and divine natures of Christ actually existed within the person of Christ. The Christological definition of Chalcedon, as accepted by the Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran churches, is that Christ remains in two distinct natures, yet these two natures come together within His one hypostasis. This position was opposed by the Monophysites who held that Christ possessed one nature only. The term Monophysitism covered two specific versions of this form of Christology. The first, Eutychianism, held that the human and divine natures of Christ were fused into one new single (mono) nature. As described by Eutyches, his human nature was "dissolved like a drop of honey in the sea", and therefore his nature was really divine.[2] The second is referred to as Miaphysitism, which contends that, after the union, Christ is in one theanthropic (human-divine) nature, which is generated from the union of two natures, the two being united without separation, without confusion, and without alteration. It is this version of Monophysitism to which the Oriental Orthodox churches currently adhere. This internal division was dangerous for the Byzantine Empire, which was under constant threat from external enemies, especially as many of the areas most likely to be lost to the empire were the regions that were in favour of Monophysitism, and who considered the religious hierarchy at Constantinople to be heretics only interested in crushing their faith. In these provinces, the Non-Chalcedonians were far more numerous than the Chalcedonians. In Egypt for instance, some 30,000 Greeks of Chalcedonian persuasion were ranged against some five million Coptic Non-Chalcedonians. Meanwhile, Syria and Mesopotamia were divided between Nestorianism and Jacobitism, while the religion of Armenia was wholly Cyrilline Non-Chalcedonian. Consequently the Monothelite teaching emerged as a compromise position. The Byzantine emperor Heraclius tried to unite all of the various factions within the Empire with this new formula that was more inclusive and more elastic.

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