The Synergism Safe House

[Fervent]

How much cooperation does one have to believe in order to be a synergist? It seems a catch-all term like that is not very informative in the same sense that monergism is. For example, someone who believes that God initiates and then the one being saved completes would be a synergist but then so would someone who believes that salvation is entirely of God except the genuine response of the believer, and so would be the one who believes God revives the believers will and only then is the response possible.

For myself I fall in the middle category, recognizing the marring of the will through sin but not accepting the term of total depravity so not requiring a prevenient grace. To me it seems this position is obvious in the pages of Scripture as well as morally and logically necessary, yet I so often find myself at loggerheads with orthodox theologies of all sorts.

 

[Knee V]

How much cooperation does one have to believe in order to be a synergist? It seems a catch-all term like that is not very informative in the same sense that monergism is. For example, someone who believes that God initiates and then the one being saved completes would be a synergist but then so would someone who believes that salvation is entirely of God except the genuine response of the believer, and so would be the one who believes God revives the believers will and only then is the response possible.

For myself I fall in the middle category, recognizing the marring of the will through sin but not accepting the term of total depravity so not requiring a prevenient grace. To me it seems this position is obvious in the pages of Scripture as well as morally and logically necessary, yet I so often find myself at loggerheads with orthodox theologies of all sorts.

I can only speak to the Orthodox perspective.

Synergism is just another way of saying that our salvation is rooted in and is the outworking of the Incarnation and the Person of Christ. Christ is our salvation, and our salvation is what Christ is. Our salvation is simultaneously 100% the work of God and 100% the work of man, because Christ is simultaneously 100% God and 100% man.

St Paul sums it up when he says "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do His good pleasure." Both are always simultaneously 100% true, without either adding to or taking away from the other. There is no "I do my percentage and God does His percentage, and together they add to 100%." That same erroneous thinking also says, "I do 0% and God does 100%, and together they add to 100%."

It is for this same reason that we Orthodox reject monergism. Since our salvation is rooted in the Person of Christ, the only way to have a salvation which is 100% God and 0% man is to have a Christ who is 100% God and 0% man. As such, monergism is wrong not merely because it is factually incorrect, but because it is fundamentally a Christological heresy at its core.

 

[Fervent]

I can only speak to the Orthodox perspective.

Synergism is just another way of saying that our salvation is rooted in and is the outworking of the Incarnation and the Person of Christ. Christ is our salvation, and our salvation is what Christ is. Our salvation is simultaneously 100% the work of God and 100% the work of man, because Christ is simultaneously 100% God and 100% man.

St Paul sums it up when he says "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do His good pleasure." Both are always simultaneously 100% true, without either adding to or taking away from the other. There is no "I do my percentage and God does His percentage, and together they add to 100%." That same erroneous thinking also says, "I do 0% and God does 100%, and together they add to 100%."

It is for this same reason that we Orthodox reject monergism. Since our salvation is rooted in the Person of Christ, the only way to have a salvation which is 100% God and 0% man is to have a Christ who is 100% God and 0% man. As such, monergism is wrong not merely because it is factually incorrect, but because it is fundamentally a Christological heresy at its core.

That's certainly a view that is agreeable to me, though I'd have to work out the practical implications of such a view. Recognizing the human existence of Christ hardly seems to inform the role of the self in salvation which seems to me to be the big question that monergism tries to deny any role to and creates difficulty in speaking of. Monergism has always been disagreeable to me because it seems to violate responsibility for ourselves as well as rendering God a wholly other being with no real access point to know and love.