It depends on your spectrum.
I see a spectrum with only 2 parts: synergism and monergism.
Every Christian religion falls into one of those two categories. The two are lightyears apart.
Are they? Do they? Calvinism itself falls into both. I've participated in several threads (and many discussions in my own past) about precisely what in Calvinism is monergistic and what is synergistic. So more specifically you must mean monergism with regard to election and "regeneration." And if that's the case, then you are creating a spectrum that attempts to force 2000 years of Christian belief into a binary categories based on a definition of regeneration that really arose in the 16th Century, only in the West, and in reaction to Roman Catholicism.
Does this seem like a valid way to categorize things?
Saying the two are "lightyears" apart just seems like a bit of hyperbole to me. The difference between Arminians and Calvinists on this point is, to me, a philosophical quibble about how "the elect" come to participate in forensic justification based on the imputation of alien righteousness that was won through the payment of an infinite debt to satisfy the demands of legal justice, by Christ accruing infinite merit through perfect obedience, and receiving infinite punishment for our crime. 99% of that paragraph describes what Calvinism and Arminianism have in common.
Let's list out some other things they share as a common heritage of a rejection of Roman Catholicism:
- sola scriptura (though even here there is no single definition of exactly how this is understood)
- a relatively equivalent approach to hermeneutics
- a truncated canon of the Old Testament
- an understanding of the "Church" as being primarily "invisible"
- a rejection of a sacramental understanding of grace
- a rejection of the physical world as conveying grace (i.e. a rejection of the concepts of sacred time and sacred space)
Now let's look at what's held in common
with Roman Catholicism:
- an overall rationalistic and scholastic approach to understanding faith and theology
- an embrace of a generally legal framework for understanding God's relationships with humanity
- an embrace of an "Anselmian" understanding of the atonement being primarily a "legal" sort of transaction between the Son and the Father, on behalf of humanity--i.e. the Atonement is accomplished primarily in the death of Christ
- *** although with a much greater emphasis on punishment, i.e. Penal Substitution as a particular expression of satisfaction
- an understanding of the Incarnation also based on Anselm, where its primary goal is for Christ to die as God-man to satisfy the demands of justice
- the understanding that our acceptance before God is based on merit, and that merit can be transferred from one party to another
- a Trinitarian theology that includes a double procession of the Holy Spirit from both the Father and the Son
- a doctrine of God that identifies his essence with his energies, which leads to....
If Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism are synergistic, that means both of them are closer to Arminanism than Calvinism is to any of them.
Not at all. First of all, at least Arminianism shares your understanding of regeneration and justification. So at least they can differ from you on the same level. RCC does not share that understanding, however they share the underlying framework for understanding grace, merit, atonement and the like. Orthodoxy shares very little of any of this. The doctrine of God that is shared among Protestants and Catholics alike, which identifies God's energies with his essence, and holds that as humans we can only experience God through his
created energies in this world, by necessity changes the way synergism can even be understood. For the Orthodox, synergy is an actual co-operation between (and participation in) the created energies of man, and the uncreated energies of God.
Some argue (and I think there's merit to their argument) that in the Western "Augustinian" understanding of God (I place that in quotes because it's greatly disputed whether it's really based on Augustine's own theology) absolute predestination is the only consistent basis for salvation, because for God to exist, is the same as for God to predestine. In the Eastern doctrine of God, it is not the case. If we were to identify a truly binary spectrum of belief and try to force all systems to one end or the other, I think we'd be closer in saying the difference lies between identifying God's essence with his energies (in which case you can strongly argue that monergism is the only consistent outworking) and differentiating God's essence from his energies (in which synergism is not only possible but necessary).
So your binary view of the world may have some truth to it, but it's skewed. Because in this view as I've expressed it, you'd have all of Protestantism, together with Catholicism, at one end of the spectrum, and Orthodoxy (probably including also Coptic Orthodoxy) at the other. I do not wish to force everything into this binary view, because there a million shades of gray. But if we had to, it would be closer to this, than to how you've expressed it.
Whether or not it's palatable, your beliefs are still very much part of the Roman Catholic...perhaps "Latin" would be easier to admit to...understanding of God and salvation.
