To help understand some of my responses below, it is perhaps helpful to explain the Crux Theologorum. The Crux Theologorum, in a nutshell, is as follows:
If God desires that all be saved and it is God alone who saves apart from even our own will and choice--then why are some not saved?
The answer is that some don't want to be.
In essence, the Crux Theologorum means we don't have a clear way of resolving the universal atonement of Jesus, the monergistic saving work of God, and the unfortunate reality of human damnation. Only that there are those who will refuse God's grace and damn themselves. Not because God wants it, He doesn't--God wants everyone to be saved. Not because God withholds grace to anyone, because again, Christ died for everyone, the Gospel is for everyone, grace is for everyone. Not because it is up to us to choose or reject Christ. But because for reasons we do not currently know, and may never know.
We accept this as a mystery and a paradox.
So many of my following responses are going to be answered from within the paradigm of the Crux Theologorum:
Okay, you mentioned many things, so I'll choose one main point to respond to.
With regards to your statement that you believe salvation is monergistic, that man is passive in receiving salvation, why then, do you quote CS Lewis and St Isaac?
To emphasize that our damnation is an act, or choice, of human will; not something which God does.
For, how can you say, that God does not will or decree man's damnation while simultaneously purporting that man's will towards God cannot change without His grace?
The Gospel is for everyone, the Church is commissioned with the preaching of the Gospel and administering the Sacraments--the Means through which God acts. That doesn't mean God cannot act in some other way, but these are the revealed Means of Grace which Christ our Lord instituted and gave His Church.
Thus, what could be clearer, by your own words, that you are arguing that man cannot and will not choose God unless God chooses to give a man grace?
Sinful, unregenerate man does not choose God; which is why there is an external agency which acts upon us. Grace, which God has for all people, in Jesus, which is applied to us through the Means of Grace.
How is it reasonable in anyway to believe that while God wills all to be saved, He does not save all men because He does not give all men grace to choose Him and believe in Christ?
Because man, in his sin, resists grace.
And if the Lord does not give grace to all men to repent and believe, how is this theology different from Calvinism?
God's grace
is for all people. God deprives His grace from no one.
And the impression you give me by your theology is this: once man receives the grace of God, he will repent, believe, and be saved. But if a man does not receive the grace of God, he cannot repent because he does not will to repent. So, what I am understanding from you is that you also believe that God's grace is essentially irresistible, similar to what Calvinists believe. Thus, once God's grace comes upon a man, man cannot but repent and believe in the Son of God unto Salvation.
However, if you are saying that even when God's grace descends upon a man's heart, man can still choose to reject Christ, then we are in agreement. Nevertheless, if this is what you believe, how can you say salvation is monergistic?
Grace can be resisted, and Christians can shipwreck their faith and fall away.
It is monergistic because God alone acts to save us, and we are passive recipients. God acts through Word and Sacrament to appropriate Christ's universal work to us individually. We are passive in this. The person who hears the Gospel is passive, the person who is baptized is passive, the person who receives the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist is passive. We aren't the agents in these things, but the recipients of these things. God's Word comes to me, God's promises come to me, God's gifts come to me--not by my power, strength, or will; but from God alone.
It is as I said, man has no power to save his own soul by any sort of works whatsoever. He does not earn his own righteousness, and he does not glorify himself. We know this to be the truth. Yet, to say man is a passive recipient is the furthest thing from the truth. In what way is he passive if you yourself say that he wills, that he chooses God's salvation by God's grace? A choice, a will, and works that reflect this choice and will cannot be deemed passive at all.
Man does not choose God's salvation. Man, left to his own devices, always resists and rejects God. Like Lazarus we are dead in the tomb, wrapped up in grave clothes--it is the word of the Savior who makes the dead to live by His own power. Lazarus could not leave the tomb unless Christ brought him back to life. We too are dead in our trespasses, and it is only Christ who makes us live, when He comes to us in Word and Sacrament.
In a very simplistic way, we can observe that salvation is accomplished in this way. Firstly, God acts upon a man's heart. Man responds positively to God (or he can also choose to respond negatively unto damnation). Man's response is repentance, faith, good works, all of which are aided by the grace of God in a mystical way. Now, do we say that these things are possible without grace? No. And do we say that these things are unnecessary for salvation? By no means. Thus, if they are necessary, it follows that man must will them to be done. And it would be pious, I believe, to say that man's will to accomplish these things is something that is initially inspired by God's grace. Moreover, in order for man to repent, have faith, and yield good fruits, he must abide in Christ and receive grace from above. And it is possible that even in this seeking of God's grace, grace is also preceding man's actions, but not always.
We would respond that faith is a gift, given apart from ourselves (Ephesians 2:8-9), which we received by Christ's own word (Romans 10:17). That repentance is in two parts, the terror from the Law which condemns sin and which produces despair over sin and remorse, but also the gracious words of Absolution, namely the word of our forgiveness which is in Christ. It is not our remorse over sin which is salvific, but rather the forgiveness we have in Christ which is salvific. And finally the good deeds we do we do out of faith, in response to what we have received from God.
Faith is a gift. Repentance is both a holy terror of God's Law and the proclamation of forgiveness from the Gospel. And good works proceeds from faith.
So, in all that we have observed, it is impossible to conclude that man is passive and that he contributes nothing to his salvation. There is One Savior, Jesus Christ, not man; this is obvious. Ultimately, God saves man, man does not save himself. However, we must come to the Savior to be saved. We must believe on Him to be saved. We must cooperate with Him to be saved. Because, it is as you said, God wills all men to be saved and therefore man must also choose to be saved. And if man must choose and repent and have faith and do good works, it is most evident that he is not passive in his salvation, and we can assert this with all truth and piety while also maintaining that God alone is the one who saves man.
In some sense we are talking past one another, because we are using "salvation" in different senses. If by "salvation" you mean the totality of God's work upon us, and that we must cooperate with God as a people being saved to a live a life in imitation of Christ, to good works, as a living sacrifice because that is how we express our Christian life in this world--I agree. Where I'm using "salvation" I'm speaking in a more narrow sense:
How we are reconciled to God.
How we are made right before God.
How we are forgiven of our sins.
How we are rescued from death to life.
Which means I'm saying that we are reconciled to God, objectively, by Christ's death and resurrection. There Christ put to death enmity between God and man, by giving Himself fully for us--our sins are forgiven, because there is universal pardon in Christ. Since we have received full pardon in Christ, because of God's mercy, that means that we have been justified--declared just, made just--in God's sight, on Christ's account. Christ's righteousness, not ours, is what God reckons as righteousness in us. I am not righteous when I do good works, I am righteous because Christ is my righteousness--and this I have through faith, given to me as a gift from God by Word and Sacrament. I, therefore, can hope and trust, fully, that even as God raised up Jesus from the dead, then I too will be raised up from the dead, because if the Spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead is in me (and He is, on account of Holy Baptism, Acts 2:38) then He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to my mortal body (Romans 8:11).
So these things: peace with God, forgiveness of sins, righteousness, and eternal life are all given to me, apart from myself, as pure gift from God.
In light of this, I can therefore live out my life, in faith and humility before God, toward others. I can therefore cooperate with God, not in my salvation (how I am rescued by God, which is objectively already accomplished once and for all in and by Jesus Christ) but in living that salvation out into the world. I am, therefore a servant of God by good works, but a child of God by grace alone through faith.
-CryptoLutheran
