The Synergism Safe House

BornOfWaterAndSpirit said:

"And the sea gave up the dead who were in it; and death and hades delivered up the dead who were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works." Revelation 20:13

"Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to render to each man according as his work is." Revelation 22:12

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Calvinists frequently use the term "synergism" to describe the Arminian doctrine of salvation, although some Arminians would disagree with the characterisation. According to Calvinists, synergism is the view that God and man work together, each contributing their part to accomplish regeneration in and for the individual. John Hendryx, a Calvinist theologian, has stated it this way: synergism is "...the doctrine that there are two efficient agents in regeneration, namely the human will and the divine Spirit, which, in the strict sense of the term, cooperate. This theory accordingly holds that the soul has not lost in the fall all inclination toward holiness, nor all power to seek for it under the influence of ordinary motives." [1] Arminians of the classical and Wesleyan traditions would respond with the criticism that Hendryx has merely provided a description of the heresy of semi-Pelagianism, and they recognize that grace precedes any cooperation of the human soul with the saving power of God.

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• Humanity was created in the image of God, good and upright, but fell from its original sinless state through willful disobedience, leaving humanity sinful, separated from God, and under the sentence of divine condemnation.
• Total depravity does not mean that human beings are as bad as they could be, but that sin impacts every part of a person’s being and that people now have a sinful nature with a natural inclination toward sin, making every human being fundamentally corrupt at heart.
• Therefore, human beings are not able to think, will, nor do anything good in and of themselves, including merit favor from God, save ourselves from the judgment and condemnation of God that we deserve for our sin, or even believe the gospel.
• If anyone is to be saved, God must take the initiative.

• God loves the world and desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
• Therefore, God gave his only Son to die for the sins of the whole world so as to provide forgiveness and salvation for all people.
• While God has provided for the salvation of all people by Christ's sacrificial and substitutionary death for all, the benefits of Christ's death are received by grace through faith and are only effective for those who believe.

• Because of Total Depravity and Atonement for All (as described above), God calls all people everywhere to repent and believe the gospel, and graciously enables those who hear the gospel to respond to it positively in faith.
• God regenerates those who believe in Christ (faith logically precedes regeneration).
• God’s saving grace is resistible, which is to say that he dispenses his calling, drawing, and convicting grace (which would bring us to salvation if responded to with faith) in such a way that we may reject it. Those who hear the gospel may either accept it by grace or reject it to their own eternal destruction.
• Apart from the realm of pleasing the Lord and doing spiritual good, people often have free will, which means that, with respect to an action, they can at least either do the action or refrain from doing it. People often have genuine choices and are therefore correspondingly able to make choices.
• God has ultimate and absolute free will. His choice to supernaturally free the will of sinners by his grace to believe in Christ is a matter of the exercise of his own free will and sovereignty.

• God has sovereignly decided to choose only those who have faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, for salvation and his eternal blessing.
• God has foreknown from eternity which individuals would believe in Christ.
• Among Arminians, there are two different views of election conditioned on faith:
  1. Individual election: The classic view in which God individually chose each believer based upon His foreknowledge of each one’s faith and so predestined each to eternal life
  2. Corporate election: Election to salvation is primarily of the Church as a people and embraces individuals only in faith-union with Christ the Chosen One and as members of his people. Since the election of the individual derives from the election of Christ and the corporate people of God, individuals become elect when they believe and remain elect only as long as they believe.
     (For more on corporate election, see here.)

• Since salvation comes through faith in Christ, the security of our salvation continues by faith in Christ.
• Just as the Holy Spirit empowered us to believe in Christ, so he empowers us to continue believing in Christ.
• God protects our faith relationship with him from any outside force irresistibly snatching us away from Christ or our faith, and he preserves us in salvation as long as we trust in Christ.
• Arminians have differing views of whether Scripture teaches that believers can forsake faith in Christ and so perish, or whether God irresistibly keeps believers from forsaking their faith and therefore entering into eternal condemnation (as unbelievers).

• Same as the Arminian points
• Though we do not differ on how to describe human depravity, Calvinists do also believe that this state requires that God first regenerate a sinner before he can believe in Christ, making him alive and giving him a new, holy nature. But regeneration does not merely enable the sinner to believe; it irresistibly causes the sinner to believe.

• God chose some individuals unconditionally from eternity for eternal life according to his own good pleasure, completely apart from anything having to do with the person, including merit, good works, or foreseen faith.
• God withheld his mercy from the rest of humanity, ordaining them to dishonor and wrath for their sin.
• Thus, by the decree of God and for his glory, some people are unconditionally predestined to eternal life, and others are left (and so ordained) to eternal death because of their sin, making two specific and static groups of individuals that can never be changed. (Some Calvinists believe that God purposed to glorify his name by unconditionally choosing some individuals for eternal blessing and some individuals for eternal Hell, and that God ordained the Fall and decided to create the world to accomplish this goal.)

• Christ died only for those certain individuals whom God chose unconditionally from eternity for salvation, enduring the punishment for their sins in their place.
• Christ’s death for those who have been unconditionally elected irresistibly brings about their salvation and everything necessary for it, including repentance and faith in Christ.

• Those whom God has unconditionally elected, and for whom Jesus died, God will draw irresistibly to faith in Christ by his grace through regeneration (making faith inevitable).
• When God brings elect sinners to Christ, he irresistibly causes them to be willing to come to Christ and to come to him in faith freely. (While we are presenting the Calvinist view objectively and typically without comment, the self-contradiction here is just too obvious to let pass: "irresistibly causes them to come willingly and freely?")
• While God calls all without distinction to faith in Christ (the general call), he only calls those he has chosen unconditionally in a way that cannot be resisted (the effectual call).
• Those God has not chosen will reject the gospel call of their own will and cannot do otherwise.

• Those whom God has unconditionally elected and for whom Jesus has died and whom God has irresistibly drawn to faith in Christ will inevitably persevere in their faith and can neither totally nor finally fall away from Christ, because God will irresistibly cause them to persevere. Therefore, their blessed eternal destiny with God is secure.
• This perseverance is not based on the believer, who may waver and actually fall into serious sin for periods of time, but is rather based on the continued grace of God.
• Those who appear to be believers, but fall away from the faith and die without faith in Christ, demonstrate that they had not truly come to saving faith in the first place.

food4thought said:

Hello everyone. I guess I would be considered a synergist. I believe that the "god" who would create people who are fundamentally incapable of believing, refuse to offer them the grace necessary to believe, and then condemn them for their unbelief cannot be called just, loving, or good. I do not believe that this is the God of the Bible.

I believe that God offers all mankind the grace necessary for them to respond to the light God provides. Some accept, some reject.

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mark kennedy said:

Wow, synergist, always knew that's what I believe just never knew what it was called. Your obviously saved by grace but it's not as easy to understand that you minister by grace:

But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. (I Cor 15:10)​

The gifts of the Spirit are literally called 'grace', χάρισμα

Never really got past the 'free will' thing, you must engage grace to minister effectively but there is definite connection required.

I'll be browsing the forum for a while, see you on the boards.

Grace and peace,
Mark

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FaithInHisName said:

It is hard not to find teaching in God's word directed toward the lost and saved of the necessity to cooperated with God, synergism. Synergism then is clearly a biblical teaching that is fundamental to the plan of salvation and to the obedient life in Christ that follows. Jesus said "if you love me you will obey my commandments.".

One of the strongest and clearest synergistic doctrines expressed in God's word come from Jesus (Jesus is God the Son equal to God the Father and Holy Spirit, three in one), Jesus is God:

John 6:27-29 English Standard Version (ESV)
27 Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” 28 Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

Jesus is the one teaching synergism here, not a theologian. He tells the lost that they are to work for food that does not perish. What is this food "eternal life". Notice that the listeners ask, "What must we do, to be doing the works of God?" Jesus clearly told them the word of God for them to do was to believe in Him whom He has sent, talking about Himself of course.

Scripture like this one is above and beyond the call of clarity and complete understanding, synergism is gospel to God for Jesus is God and God has stated the case thus there is no room to see it any other way. All teaching must fall to the feet of God in light of God's clear requirement that man must cooperate with Him if He is to save a soul, this is the same cooperation that was of Abraham and all who are of the same "doing the work of God by believing" are truly the saved, the elect according to the foreknowledge, not because of, God did not have to look into the future after He created the world to see who would freely believe, no God knows all who would freely believe in His eternalness, he knew who would freely believe in obedience to Jesus words.

God Blessed Forever.

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Arsenios said:

The words of John the Baptist proclaim the actual arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven upon the earth:
“Be ye repenting, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

And Mat_11:12 explains:
And from the days of John the Baptist until now
the kingdom of heaven is suffering violence,
and the violent are seizing it by force.

When John the Baptist was beheaded in prison, Christ Himself began to preach the Good news as John had been preaching it:
Mat_4:17
From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say,
Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

And after Christ was crucified, then the Apostle Peter preached the same:
Act_2:38
Then Peter said unto them,
Be ye repenting, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins,
and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

I have literalized the Greek verbs for “repent” so that there can be no question regarding the Greek usage of the present tense in these two scriptures. The first carries the meaning: “Keep on repenting.” The second means “Are continually seizing”... “

“Until now” means until the present, even as you are reading these words in the 21st century, here and now. Even this long a time from John the Baptist, over 2000 years ago.

This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ in only 9 [albiet English] words
Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

Notice that that the very first word of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the COMMAND:
Be ye repenting!
And indeed this IS the Gospel.
Because the rest is but the reason WHY all of us are to BE repenting:
For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!

We are not commanded to be doing what is not in our power to be doing.
It IS within our power.

IF we desire the Kingdom of Heaven, it is here and now for us to seize –
The Greek word is literally “HARPOON” -
And the action of this seizing is ongoing repentance.

This seizing of the Kingdom of Heaven is not itself the Kingdom of Heaven, because as Peter explains above, THAT Gift is from the Holy Spirit. Paul himself explains: “Of God the Gift”, after explaining that Salvation is by Grace that is through the Faith [of Christ, which He discipled to His Apostles].

Hence Salvation is a Mystery that is:
1 – Seized by repentance
Which is thereby
2 – Given by God's Grace

This is the Ekonomia of God's Salvation for man on earth.
The Household of God on earth...
The Church...

It requires the human action of repenting for one to seize the Kingdom of Heaven, which then bestows Grace by God upon those who are living repentant lives...

This interplay of human repentance with the Grace of God we call synergy.
Man repents.
God gives Grace.

It has been going on for more than 2000 years now...
And counting...

Arsenios

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food4thought said:

Nice post, Arsenios. Repent and believe, that is the command.

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Brother Chris said:

There is the human responsibility on the part of the sinner to repent and believe the Gospel, but behind the scenes, it is God doing the work alone.

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