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Dear Father Angelo, 

First of all I thank you for your precious service for the benefit of our souls. I believe it is a wonderful example of how to exercise intellectual charity. 

The other day I was reading the Catechism of St Pius X, specifically question 91. Here it is:

Did Jesus Christ have a free will? 

Yes, Jesus Christ had free will, but he could not do evil, because to be able to do evil is a flaw, not a perfection of freedom.

I am sure it reflects a theological wisdom that I clearly do not yet possess, but I do not quite understand. Jesus is one Person and has joined the human nature to Himself. A human nature without the fomites of concupiscence (a consequence of original sin), but still human, with a human will distinct from the will of his divine nature.

Doesn’t the fact that he had a human nature imply (at least potentially) that, as a man, he could have sinned if he had wanted to? Doesn’t his merit, as a man, lie precisely in the fact that he only ever did good (the Father’s will) even though he could (potentially and as a man) also do the opposite? Is it wrong to say that he had free will? What is the merit of having resisted all temptations if he ‘could not sin’? I really don’t understand the meaning of this statement in the Catechism.

Could you explain it to me in clear terms? Does it also apply to Mary? 

Kind regards

Priest’s answer

My dear friend,

1. first of all, it must be remembered that there is only one Person in Christ, the divine Person. He is the Word made flesh, the Wisdom of God manifested in human form.

Moreover, in Christ there are two natures: the divine nature, intimately linked to his Person, and the human nature adopted at incarnation.

2. Having assumed a human nature, he took a body and a rational soul.

And since the rational soul possesses two faculties (the intellect and the will), there were two wills in Christ: the divine and the human.

3. Christ’s human will enjoyed free will.

St Thomas states this categorically by referring to the passage from Isaiah: “He shall eat butter and honey, that He may know to refuse the evil and to choose the good,” which is an act of the free will. Therefore, Christ’s will was free. (Summa Theologica, III, 18.5).

4. Although he enjoyed free will, Jesus did not sin. Indeed, he could not sin.

He possessed the fullness of grace.

All the holiness that has been poured out on the Blessed Virgin and all the saints throughout the ages was present in Christ from the first moment of his conception.

He had, in other words, what theologians call the confirmation in grace that consists in the impossibility of sinning.

With this difference, however: that Christ enjoyed an intrinsic impossibility to sin, since his human was moved by a divine person.

Whereas all the other saints, starting with Our Lady, enjoyed an extrinsic impossibility to sin, due to a great degree of love for the Lord and also a special degree of divine grace.

5. You seem to object: but if Christ had free will there was also the possibility of sinning!

The answer is: no, because freedom was not given to us to sin, that is, to offend God and to harm ourselves.

Freedom was given to us to do good with merit and with personal determination to do good.

6. You say again: Jesus had the merit of having resisted sin.

Well, the merit is not related to the possibility of sinning and consequently

to not sinning.

Merit is essentially linked to love, to the degree of charity with which we do good.

If there is merit in resisting temptation, the merit is the love for God with which the temptation is overcome.

In Christ, the love for the Father was supreme. He came full of grace and truth.

7. St Thomas raises the question whether sin was present in Christ.

He answers no, because Christ himself testified to this and asked all men to see whether there was a sin present in him, saying: “Can any of you charge me with sin?”(Jn 8:46).

He also points out that Christ assumed our limitations, namely our human nature, for three reasons: “To atone for sin for us, to show that his human nature was real, and to become for us an example of virtue. For these three reasons, it is evident that he did not have to accept sin.

Firstly, because sin does not contribute to the atonement, on the contrary, it hinders its effectiveness since, according to the Scripture, ” The Most High approves not the gifts of the godless” (Sir 34:19).

Similarly, sin is not needed to show the reality of human nature, since sin is not essential to human nature that has God as its author, but was rather introduced against the nature “through the sowing of the devil”, as Damascene says (De fide Ortodoxa, 3,20).

Thirdly, by sinning, he could not have given us an example of virtue, sin being contrary to virtue.

Hence Christ did not adopt the degradation of sin—either original or actual—according to what is written (1 Pt. 2:22): “Who did not sin, neither was guile found in His mouth (Summa Theologica, III, 15:1).

With the wish that you too may be confirmed in grace as far as is possible, I bless you and remember you in prayer.

Father Angelo