I agree with your overall monergistic theology Edward but I wanted to give a friendly word of caution with regards to your wording here.
The Biblical/reformed position is not that we don't make a choice to become a Christian, but rather, we freely and willingly choose to obey the gospel and follow Christ because God has monergistically regenerated us and changed our hearts.
In other words, because of our fallen natures, our natural response to the gospel is to disbelieve it and remain in rebellion.
But when the Spirit comes and quickens us, by grace, our natural response is to willingly obey and believe. Thus we truly make a very real choice to become a Christian.
Your wording made it sound like no choice, no human will, no human volition was involved at all in the process. That is not true at all. Our wills are quite involved.
Prior to regeneration, our wills reject Christ.
Post regeneration, our wills delight in Christ and willingly follow him.
The will is very much active, it just isn't autonomous. The will's job is to simply go where the heart desires to go. Does the heart desire to reject Christ? Then the will chooses to do so. Does the heart desire to obey Christ and accept the gospel? Then the will chooses to do so.
The reason any hearts at all desire Christ is because of grace, in the form of regeneration.
I'm in agreement with some of what you say but I don't agree with your assertion that "the Biblical position is not that we don't make a choice to become a Christian". I have to disagree. The Bible teaches that our wills don't cooperate in our conversion but that it happens as you say monergistically. If our wills weren't passive in regeneration then regeneration wouldn't be monergistic but synergistic. It's only after we've been regenerated by the Holy Spirit that we can give assent to the Gospel. So when you say that "we truly make a very real choice to become a Christian" I can't agree. We don't choose to become a Christian, rather we will to be and to remain a Christian only after we've been regenerated.
We don't have the ability to choose to believe the Gospel when being regenerated as we don't have free will. Our will is a slave to sin and hostile to God because of original sin and therefore it's unable to co-operate with the Holy Spirit in regeneration. Rather the Holy Spirit must overcome our resistance to God by regenerating us and only then do we willingly co-operate with God. I agree with Luther when he wrote that we are unable to choose God, and that the human will is like a beast between two riders - God and Satan:
"Thus the human will is, as it were, a beast between the two. If God sit thereon, it wills and goes where God will: as the Psalm saith, "I am become as it were a beast before thee, and I am continually with thee." (Ps. lxxiii. 22-23.) If Satan sit thereon, it wills and goes as Satan will. Nor is it in the power of its own will to choose, to which rider it will run, nor which it will seek; but the riders themselves contend, which shall have and hold it." (section 25, The Bondage of the Will, Cole)
So I agree with you when you say "Prior to regeneration, our wills reject Christ. Post regeneration, our wills delight in Christ and willingly follow him", but I don't agree with you when you say in effect that our wills aren't passive in regeneration and that they choose to be regenerated.
There’s a passage in Luther’s Table Talk which I find particularly illuminating with respect to this:
“Some few divines allege, that the Holy Ghost works not in those that resist him, but only in
such as are willing and give consent thereto, whence it would appear that free-will is only a cause
and helper of faith, and that consequently faith alone justifies not, and that the Holy Ghost does
not alone work through the Word, but that our will does something therein.
But I say it is not so; the will of mankind works nothing at all in his conversion and justification;
Non est efficiens causa justificationis sed marerialis tantum. It is the matter on which the Holy
Ghost works (as a potter makes a pot out of clay), equally in those that resist and are averse, as in
St Paul. But after the Holy Ghost has wrought in the wills of such resistants, then he also manages
that the will be consenting thereunto.
They say and allege further, That the example of St Paul’s conversion is a particular and special
work of God, and therefore cannot be brought in for a general rule. I answer: even like as St Paul
was converted, just so are all others converted; for we all resist God, but the Holy Ghost draws the
will of mankind, when he pleases, through preaching.
Even as no man may lawfully have children, except in a state of matrimony, though many
married people have no children, so the Holy Ghost works not always through the Word but when
it pleases him, so that free-will does nothing inwardly in our conversion and justification before
God, neither does it work with our strength—no, not in the least, unless we be prepared and made
fit by the Holy Ghost.
The sentences in Holy Scripture touching predestination, as, “No man can come to me except
the Father draweth him,” seem to terrify and affright us; yet they but show that we can do nothing
of our own strength and will that is good before God, and put the godly also in mind to pray. When
people do this, they may conclude they are predestinated.” CCLXIII.Hazlitt
