MAGDALENA BIENIAK, Stephen Langton on the Sensory Will in Christ

SUMMARY

Before the Passion, Christ prayed, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” This passage suggests that there may have been an interior struggle within the soul of Christ, namely a conflict of wills. Stephen Langton, like other theologians of his time, was reluctant to attribute any imperfection to Christ. Consequently, he argued that both Christ’s sensory desire and his rational will conformed to the will of God. The sense appetite (sensualitas) only concerns natural goods, and so it fails to grasp complex propositions (such as the conditional terms involved in Christ’s prayer). God wants the sensory will to desire the well-being of one’s body. Accordingly, the rational will of Christ wanted the sense appetite to keep to the natural desires. At the same time, Christ subordinated his natural desires to the rational will and readily accepted God’s plans by means of reason.