Posted on 10/21/2005 5:37:01 AM PDT by sheltonmac
If God wanted all men saved, all men would be saved.
The only problem with that idea is that we don't know who is saved and who is not. From God's point of view, of course, you are correct. But from our point of view, the Scriptures tell us that all men are potentially saved, as man CAN, with the aid of God, turn to Him. God has opened the way for all men to be saved, Jew or Gentile, etc. From our point of view, we don't know which individuals will make up the elect. Thus, from OUR point of view, all men are objectively saved by Christ's Work on the Cross. To apply that to us requires our own wills moved by God.
God predestines but man is responsible.
I don't see how man is responsible if God does EVERYTHING! If God creates a man for the sole purpose of condemning that man to hell, no matter what that man does - it is ridiculous to assert that he has a free will. There is no free will if man cannot choose. Your free will is fictional.
Luther's problem was that he beleived that even SIN couldn't separate us from God (Romans 8:38-39). Paul never says that... He only states that TRIALS cannot separate us from God. It is clear that sin does, especially when Paul declares that NO ONE will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven if they are ...(see 1 Cor 6:9-10 for the list). From my understanding of "Bondage of the Will", Luther takes a radical view that depicts the human will as a beast that is ridden either by the devil or God - it is not in the beast's power to choose the rider. THIS IS FREE WILL??? I say it isn't.
Catholics believe that while everything is grace (both nature and supernatural), we nevertheless are called to cooperate with God's grace. What Luther missed was that to break free from the law of sin, we must embrace the Spirit of life in Christ. We must embrace the Christian moral life. Luther stated, against Paul, that we should sin and continue to sin, as grace will overcome!!! And his teachings are Biblical??? Consider Gal 5:6, where Paul tells us that the only thing that matters is "faith working through love". It is through our actions that we say yes or no to God and His free gift of salvation. He elaborates on this point further in Gal 5:13-18. In other words, when we live the Christian life, we are transformed by the indwelling of God - which builds upon our fallen nature. It is not possible to be good by our own will power. BUT grace builds on nature, and our nature is strengthened by practicing virtue. We are called to assent with committment to follow Jesus Christ and to obey His will in our lives. Thus, Luther's anthropology and soteriology were wrong and novel innovations - nowhere held by Christians before him, even Augustine.
That’s all well and good but you never used one piece of scripture to support your case (contraception)
I wasn't asked to provide Scriptural support, and you are completely missing the point. I was making a point that Protestantism, because it does not adhere to the teachings of Christendom of the past, is subject to the whims of culture, the world. This is clearly proven by their views on Contraception, as I have proven. The Bible is clearly not a complete systematic catechism. It requires interpretation, in some cases, looking at its implicit message. In this case, contraception, we must look more to 2000 years of Tradition. Scriptural passages are brief - Gen 38:9-10 and Deut 23:1. However, as I have given you, the Church has strongly condemned the idea. THAT'S the point! The Holy Spirit does NOT come to each individual to give theology lessons! That should be VERY obvious by looking to the vast differences in Protestantism in general and contraception specifically. Are you claiming that the Spirit, claimed by ALL of these groups, is wrong or lying? Or perhaps would it be safer to presume that these Protestant groups do NOT have the Spirit of Truth leading them doctrinally? The answer is obvious. There is only ONE Spirit of Truth, and He has been given to only ONE Church. (doctrinally) Of course, the Spirit blows where He will, leading Protestants to love God and their neighbor. But not doctrines.
Protestants would say you can’t make decisions in opposition to scripture.
So would Catholics. We don't make "decisions" that oppose Scripture. Tradition and Scripture come from the SAME SOURCE, GOD! How can they contradict. And contraception is clearly not against Scriptural dictates!
The short answer on this {why the numerous Protestant denominations} is many have the wrong soteriology. They don’t understand the scriptures.
I believe that the problem is not necessarily that. First, Protestants rely on a TRADITION, a basic notion of beliefs that have been passed down. Thus, if Luther and Calvin were wrong, this tradition, obviously, is based on error. At any rate, with this paradigm of faith and doctrine, they read the Scriptures. They then, each to himself, will modify the meaning of Scripture to fit their own personal notion of what God means by it. Those Scripture verses that seem to disagree with their preconceived notions are expunged or explained away, such as James 2. Thus, the problem is not necessarily incorrect Scripture reading, but READING INTO SCRIPTURE their own beliefs. I can make Scripture back up any particular belief that I want to - check again Protestantism. It is NOT merely 'minor' issues! What about Arminianism vs. Calvinism? Would you call that a minor skirmish? The problem of heresy is that man thinks they can outwit and know God better on their own, with their own rational and intellect. This is certainly not submitting to God, nor trusting in His ways, but man's ways.
It was the doctrine of the eastern church; never the western church. If you truly believe this then you will have to articulate what the difference was between the Semi-Pelagian and the Council of Orange that they fought against.
I posted a number of citations from Western Catholic theologians that felt otherwise than your implication. It is clear that Scripture and the Western Tradition was synergistic - with the understanding that man could NEVER come to God, at ANY POINT, by himself - vs. the Semi-Pelagians. Pelagianism is the idea that I can come to God at some point by myself without grace, either before or after my initial conversion. In both cases, the Church refuted that. But NOT by using the OPPOSITE argument that Calvinism uses - that even WITH God, we can do nothing. The Church has NEVER said that we cannot come to God without His grace. Your ideas are flatly refuted by reading the Council of Orange 2:
Canon 9 - As often as WE do good, God operates in us and WITH us, so that WE may operate
Canon 20 - Man does no good except that which God brings about that man performs.
Canon 5 If anybody says that the ... beginning of Faith and the Act of Faith itself...is in us naturally and not by a gift of grace that is by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he is opposed to the Apostolic teachings.
Trent reaffirms all of these teachings. And Scripture certainly does, as well. (Eph 2:8,9; John 6:66; Heb 12:2; etc)
Augustine himself adduces the testimonies of the Church Tradition as proof of the doctrine. He cites the prayer of the Church for the conversion of infidels: "If faith is simply a matter of free will and is not given by God, why then do we pray for those who do not wish to believe, that they might believe"?
I have given enough proof from the Council of Orange and the Tradition of the Church. The Scriptures also have many verses that show that a cooperation is necessary and that we can, in Christ, do God's will and be pleasing to Him. You refuse to see this because of your background, your personal paradigm and Protestant traditions. But the evidence is there. The Church never taught Calvinism or any form of it. If anything, the Church thoroughly refutes the pagan idea of fatalism and determinism rampant in certain Greek philosophies. As a result, many Fathers are clear that there is cooperation with God - so as to refute such pagan fatalistic notions. Orange and Trent say the same thing. We can do nothing without God, but our works in Christ our are own. How are we to be judged by our works otherwise, if we have no works?
Maybe this might help. The best way to understand this cooperation might be to look at the Incarnation. When Jesus did something, BOTH God and man did it, correct? In a similar manner, we consist of two "natures" when we are born of the Spirit - our fleshly nature and our Spirit nature. They are at war within us, as Paul states. But when we do good, because of the Spirit, WE are doing it, just as when Jesus did a miracle, his human nature was not excluded. In a similar manner, when I do a good deed, the Spirit moves me to do it, but my humanity is not excluded from the action. This is where Protestantism falters. Their incomplete understanding of the Incarnation and how our anthropology has changed as a result of the implications of Christ's action - an action that still continues to this very day (since Christ is STILL God-man). We are an amalgamation of Spirit and flesh, so when God moves us to do good, we are given the credit and called righteous. WE are transformed by God's actions. Thus, we are REQUIRED to fight the war against our flesh. This presumes a choice to fight, even if the weapons are given to us by God.
Regards
Perhaps it is HIS desire that man is given the choice. I desire that my daughter does X and not Y, but out of love, I give her the choice to follow my desire or not.
Regards
Monergism is just another name for determinism, for the denial of human cooperation which means, de facto, a denial of free will. Most of the ancient pagan philosophical systems were deterministic--the stars make us do things, fate makes us do things etc. Judaism came on the scene insisting on real human freedom and Christianity from the start retained that principle (without it a personal God could not justly condemn people to punishment). If you would read Origen you will see him insisting at all cost on human freedom, likewise every other theologian from the entire patristic period. With your monergism you at one stroke throw away the entire Greek patristic heritage. You claim Augustine for your monergism (incorrectly) because some of his writings, alone among the entire patristic heritage, seem to permit such a reading.
Within Augustine's life time, some were reading him this way and he rebuked them. Orange II rebuked your monergism because the entire patristic heritage opposed it. It disappeared from view, only to be resurrected in the late Middle Ages by a group of "Augustinians"--Thomas Bradwardine etc. Luther and Calvin followed in their footsteps. But they are the innovators--running against the grain of the entire Christian heritage.
The fallacy is in thinking that one has to deny human freedom to resist God in order to uphold God's sovereignty. One does not, all the great theologians of the early Church insisted one does not, and so too did Augustine.
But you are dedicated to your phantom monergism and I doubt that you can be dissuaded from it. It is not a Catholic-Protestant matter--there are Protestants on both sides and Catholics (Jansenius, Baius on the monergistic side) on both sides. But the mainstream of Christian theology has always insisted on human freedom to say no to God and has insisted that God does not force his will on anyone. That's what the evil "synergy" of the mainstream teaches. A bunch of modern Calvinists have employed this term, "synergism" as a sinister label to describe the highly complex interaction of two freedoms as it has been taught by the central tradition of the Church from St. Paul through all the Greeks fathers through Augustine onward. The word "synergism" as a label for a type of theology is not found in the tradition but was invented in order to try to turn a genuine respect for both God's freedom and human freedom into a sort of Pelagian/liberal Protestant evil.
It's easier to set up two diametrically opposed opposites, demonize the one in order to valorize the other, ignore the incredible spiritual and intellectual complexity with which really great minds like Augustine or Chrysostom or Gregory of Nazianzus, who faced real defenders of fatalism and determinism and who, instead of taking the easy way out as Pelagius did by destroying GOd's sovereignty, defended both God's absolute sovereignty and genuine human freedom. It's not an easy task--intellectually it's as difficult as the problem of how a good God permits natural disasters. But none of the Greek or Latin fathers resorted to the simplistic synergy/monergy solution because to uphold God's sovereignty at the cost of human freedom would have been to deny everything the Jewish and Christian faith had taught about sin and righteousness. To uphold human freedom at the cost of God's sovereignty would have been equally unthinkable. So they struggled to hold on to both. That's what Augustine explicitly tells us he was doing, that's what all the other ancient and medieval theologians did.
God's sovereignty began to be exalted at the expense of human freedom with the late medieval Occamists and Augustinians, then Calvin grabbed the bull by the horns and denied human freedom. That's where your monergy/synergy labels are derived from and that's the lens through which you are reading Augustine. Ever since the Reformation deterministic thinking has been making a comeback.
I know that the anti-synergists like to claim that all they are doing is making sure the priority of God's grace is assured, that they are avoiding human self-salvation, Pelagianism or it's modern heir, liberal Protestant good worksism. But the ancient fathers, Augustine, and the medieval theologians did show that one could uphold the absolute priority of GOd's grace without sacrificing human freedom. In response, anti-synergists tell them that, no, in fact you medievals and you Catholics don't believe in the absolute priority of God's grace. In effect you tell us that you know our theology better than we do, that you know what the Church Fathers really taught. You in effect tell us that only if we follow Calvin's monergism, only if you grant us the monergistic good housekeeping seal of approval do we avoid trampling on God's sovereignty.
Treatise after treatise in the Middle Ages, Church Father after Church Father took up the hard task of refusing to collapse the paradox of the two freedoms interacting: God is absolutely free, sovereign, prior to all human activity yet God created us free, holds us responsible for how we use our freedom, condemns us to hell if we refuse him, but leaves us free to refuse him and leaves us free to return to him by cooperating with his always already prior grace. That's the synergism taught by Augustine, by all the Fathers, by the medieval monks I've studied for 30 years, by II Orange, by Aquinas, by Trent. The prayers for preparation for Mass printed in Catholic missals for centuries all assert the absolute (and I do mean absolute) priority of God's grace while at the same time insisting on human freedom. I just read one of those prayers this morning. That's synergism, yes, but it does not in any way restrict God's utter freedom and sovereignty. Calvin's failure was to try to resolve paradox into diametric opposites and then to take sides. He thought he had to do it in order to preserve God's sovereignty. He was wrong--he sold out far too easily.
Audaciously, Calvin and his heirs tell all these theologians from 2000 years of Christian history that, though they claimed they had not injured God's sovereignty, in fact they had done so and hence their teaching about cooperation/free will/synergy was a form of heretical Pelagianism, self-salvation, laese majestatis with regard to God's sovereignty. I'm sorry, but Calvin and Francis Schaeffer and John MacArthur are just plain wrong in that claim.
But I've seen enough FR threads on monergism and synergism as to know that those who see Christian theology through those labels will never be convinced otherwise.
What I cannot really understand is how Calvin or Luther could set themselves against the entire Greek patristic heritage and the entire Latin heritage, employing a handful of Augustine's anti-Pelagian writings to insist that the others were all wrong and only they, Luther, Calvin, John Macarthur are right, especially when Letters 214 and 215 and the treatise On Grace and Free Will by Augustine, written at the end of all the other anti-Pelagian writings, written in response to some North African monks who were reading his anti-Pelagian writings in a "monergistic" way, when Augustine explicitly condemned your "monergistic" reading of his own writings when it was done by a handful of his own followers--how, in the light of Augustine's explicit condemnation of "Monergism" and his explicit affirmation of "synergism" in Letters 214 and 215 and the treatise--how in that light anyone could claim that only a "monergistic" reading of Augustine is valid.
I beg you to read Letters 214 and 215 and explain to me how Augustine is not setting for a synergistic understanding of the relation between God's grace and human freedom. I can then give you dozens of corroborating passages from his other writings. Against all that, a handful of prooftexts where he seems to be "monergistic" were advanced by those monks back then and are advanced by unreconstructed Calvinists. But AUgustine himself told us not to read those "monergistic" prooftexts as his final word. HE told us that his final word was the synergism of Letters 214 and 215 and related passages. The controversy existed in his day and he gave a crystal clear interpretation of how his apparently contradictory writings were to be interpreted. And then you and Francis Schaeffer and John Macarthur and crew have the audacity to tell Augustine that he didn't know as well as you do what he really believed about "monergism" and "synergism." And please note that he did not use these terms but I have used them because they are the labels you prefer, to describe his own statements.
Augustine himself tells us that he is a "synergist." It's crystal clear in the Enchiridion as well as Letters 214 and 215, it's clear in De libero arbitrio and so on and so forth.
But Calvin thought he knew better than Augustine what Augustine meant to say. Fine. For you Calvin trumps Augustine. For those who make that choice, no argument can be persuasive and even if you do read the texts I've pointed to, you'll read them through your synergy/monergy lens.
That’s true. God knows who is saved simply because He wrote the names down before the foundations of the world. We don’t. God gave us a command to preach the gospel to call His elect.
If God creates a man for the sole purpose of condemning that man to hell, no matter what that man does - it is ridiculous to assert that he has a free will. There is no free will if man cannot choose.
God DID created all of mankind knowing some would go to hell so your point is mute. And God created hell. It isn’t my place to say what God can and cannot do.
Man’s free will is bound to sin and corruption. Man can only choose unrighteousness. There is none who seeks for God. This is the message of Roman 3. God has to set it free. We must be born of the Spirit before we can begin to choose the things of God.
What Luther missed was that to break free from the law of sin, we must embrace the Spirit of life in Christ. We must embrace the Christian moral life.
And there we go again with this humanistic, “I can do it” attitude. No matter how long I argue about this with Protestants and Catholics it always comes down to “We must” or “I must”. This is salvation by works.
There is not a thing you can do. God did it all. You were rebellious and never sought after God (Rom 3). God gave you grace in your rebellious stage (Eph 2:8-9). God the Father gave you to Christ ( John 6:37). He gave you faith (Rom 10:17). There isn’t anything you did on your own. The only reason you “embrace the Christian moral life” is because that desire has been given to you by the Father.
I was making a point that Protestantism, because it does not adhere to the teachings of Christendom of the past, is subject to the whims of culture, the world. This is clearly proven by their views on Contraception, as I have proven.
Proven what??? That some men can formulate a policy document that few Catholics follow??? The Catholic Church is also against the death penalty but that doesn’t make it right.
The Holy Spirit does NOT come to each individual to give theology lessons!
I remember reading Irenaeus and he stated that if a new believer heard heresy preached from the pulpit, that believer would plug his ears and go running from that church. I agree. Once you believe you are free to make choices then God plays no significant role in your Christian life. After all, what does He do? It’s up to you? (Of course one wonders about Jonah who “freely” chose to head one way but God brought him back.)
I believe that the problem is not necessarily that. First, Protestants rely on a TRADITION, a basic notion of beliefs that have been passed down. Thus, if Luther and Calvin were wrong, this tradition, obviously, is based on error.
You’ll find me arguing more with Protestants than Catholics on this website over this very issue. They are on your side of the fence. There is no difference between many of these Protestants today and the RCC. They don’t believe in Luther and Calvin. It always comes down to the man’s free will verses God’s sovereignty. The rest is just window dressing.
It is clear that Scripture and the Western Tradition was synergistic - with the understanding that man could NEVER come to God, at ANY POINT, by himself…We can do nothing without God, but our works in Christ our are own. How are we to be judged by our works otherwise, if we have no works?
I would disagree. God gives us everything including our works. All good things come from the Father.
After reading through the scriptures and tracing history yes. I only use the two terms now because I understand the difference. I will say that one I understood the distinction it didn’t take me long to correct my theology. But it was based upon scripture-not human logic of Augustine, Calvin or MacArthur.
BTW-the monergistic belief was always the historical Jewish belief as well so it always strikes me as odd that Christians would be the one to raise the issue of “free will”.
The fallacy is in thinking that one has to deny human freedom to resist God in order to uphold God's sovereignty. One does not, all the great theologians of the early Church insisted one does not, and so too did Augustine.
The fallacy I find is that people don’t rightly understand that they are slaves to sin and what precisely that means.
As for the rest of your statements, as Augustine rightfully states, “What do you have [sic including your ability to make choices] that you have not been given by God?”
If Augustine had taught that we cannot resist God's grace in any way whatsoever, then the arbitrium (choice) would not have been free choice but captive choice, captive to God. But even in the deepest anti-Pelagian writings, Augustine insists that God's grace can never be so understood as to eliminate free choice. He simply asserts this, again and again. Your monergism fails to make the distinction Augustine makes between arbitrium and voluntas. It ignores the wrinkle of complexity in his theology, a complexity he made central to his theology because he wished to avoid naked determinism, avoid making us ever be puppets either of the devil or of God.
You have fastened on St. Paul's "captivity to sin" language (and probably the potter's vessel language and the hardening of Pharoah's heart language) and assumed that it can only be understood one way--as denying human free choice, as requiring us to view humans, after the initial choice of Adam and Eve (perhaps after the initial choice of each individual to turn from God) as puppets of the devil or (for the elect of God) puppets of God.
Some people think the distinction between arbitrium and voluntas doesn't work: if the voluntas is captive to sin, captive always only to wrong choices, then how can he assert that something called free choice remains, if the choice (before saving grace) is always only a choice to sin?
Augustine gives a detailed exposition of how the voluntas can be captive to sin while the arbitrium remains free. You can reject it in favor of your monergism if you wish, but you cannot claim Augustine in support of your monergism. He explicitly rejects monergism in Letters 214 and 215 as well as in the early treatise On Free Choice.
You read the Hebrew Scriptures and see monergism. I don't. I see that sin clearly becomes habitual, that we become captive to sin and always choose wrongly without God's grace. But I also see God never treating the people of Israel as puppets, always demanding of them that they choose him ("Choose ye this day whom ye will serve" in Deuteronomy, for instance.) God assumes that people can truly choose him (only with his aid, with his grace, of course) and he therefore condemns to hell those who refuse him.
If you want puppetry monergism you are welcome to it. But it is not found in the Scriptures nor in the Church Fathers Greek or Latin nor in Augustine; it was condemned by the Church when it arose among the radical followers of Augustine, who Augustine himself rebuked for falsely understanding captivity to sin in the way you understand it. It disappeared from view for 1000 years in both Greek and Latin Christianity only to emerge with Luther and Calvin.
Follow it if you wish, see it in Scripture as you read Scripture, if you wish. The one Church Father who had to address the issue most explicitly because of the Pelagian controversy (the Greek Fathers didn't think Pelagius was such a great problem and condemned him only somewhat halfheartedly, perhaps having been spun by his disciples who were masters of propaganda--they had other fish to fry), Augustine, explicitly rebuked his own followers who read his writings in the way you are reading them. I don't know how it could be any more clear to anyone who does not come at it already believing in puppetry monergism.
And, yes, you will insist that you don't believe your monergism makes us into puppets of God. Fine, then explain exactly how any human freedom remains under your understanding of captivity to sin. I have explained how Augustine thinks he has preserved free choice while preservin the absolute priority of God's grace without making us into puppets. Explain how you keep from making us into puppets. Perhaps you will end up where Augustine does. If so, your monergism will have been unmasked as a subtle form of synergism. If you truly wish to insist on monergism, then I think you end up with puppetry. If you truly don't view us as puppets, then we have some form of genuine freedom despite our captivity to sin and that's all the Catholic Church at Orange II and Augustine and all the other big old bad non-Pelagian and non-Semi-Pelagian synergists ever said: a tiny bit of freedom remains but it is real freedom and we are not puppets. That is the Catholic teaching today, it is the common teaching of the entire Greek tradition, it was affirmed against Pelagius's much larger (monstrously large) affirmation of human freedom and his denial of captivity to sin and it was affirmed against the semi-Pelagians' more restricted but still heretical enlargement of human freedom.
Augustine is not a monergist, he does believe some human freedom remains (free choice) even while he equally stringently affirms our captivity to sin before grace and the absolute priority of grace in freeing us from captivity to sin. In this, Augustine does not depart from the common tradition of the Fathers. He affirmed at the same time (1) our real, deep, horrendous captiviity to sin, (2) our utter dependence on God's grace for salvation from that captivity, and (3) the survival of free choice despite both (1) and (2). This is exactly what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, what Orange II affirmed etc.
Since the Reformation, Protestants have falsely accused Catholics (and logically they should equally accuse Eastern Orthodox of the same thing) of denying one or both if (1) and (2) as they assert (3). What Calvin and Luther and apparently you do not grasp is that we believe we can affirm 1, 2, and 3 simultaneously and that this is what Paul teaches and the New Testament teaches. In response, we are told that if we affirm (3) we have to deny (1) and or (2). Who are you to tell us that we cannot hold all three in tension just because to your mnind they are contradictory? They are not necessarily contradictory to my mind, to Augustine's mind, to the Catholic and Orthodox mind.
That's the fallacy of Calvin and Luther and the unreconstructed Calvinists you seem to favor (Sproul, MacArthur, Horton etc.) they believe that if you affirm (3) you have to deny 1 and/or 2. There is a drive in Calvin and in this "monergistic/synergist" zero-sum game to insist on a logical dichotomy that Catholics and Orthodox and Augustine and Orange II did not insist on. The drive to resolve paradox to one side or the other begins with positing a dichotomy between monergism and synergism. One could, perhaps, mean by "monergism" something that could coexist with synergism and in that sense, Augustine or Catholics or Orthodox might even be willing to use the term.
You resolve the paradox to one side: you think that affirming human free choice means denying God's sovereignty, priority of grace. And you are not about to deny God's sovereignty or the absolute priority of God's grace, so you deny human free choice. Liberal Protestants (and liberal pseudo-Catholics, in other words, Pelagians and semi-Pelagians) resolve the paradox to the other side. They agree with you that if one affirms human free choice one has to deny God's sovereignty and the absolute priority fo God's grace. But they'd rather deny God's sovereignty than deny human free choice, so they end up opposite of you, but on the same basis: refusal to hold in tension what the Bible, the entire patristic tradition, both East and West, holds in tension: human freedom and God's freedom and sovereignty.
I'll take my stand with Augustine upholding both God's absolute (and I do mean ABSOLUTE) priority in extending the grace without which no one can be saved from captivity to sin and upholding with equal fervor the survival of human free choice even under captivity to sin because I do not believe that anything in the Scriptures supports the reduction of God's human creatures to unfree-puppets of either the Devil or of God.
And so, we are in a terrible state having sinned and rejected God. Our free choice only chooses wrongly. Without God's grace we could not do anything but continue in false choices and go to hell. But God's grace reaches out and heals our will (voluntas) which sets our free choice free of its captivity so that it truly does then choose God and rejets the Devil but only because God set it free from captivity. It's a slight difference--saying that the free choice remains free while being captive, but it's the difference between saying that,on the one hand, that a man held captive by an addiction becomes a mere puppet of the addiction and, on the other hand, saying that, while captive to the addiction, he retains the ability to choose and each time he gets drunk he chooses to get drunk and because he is captive to alcohol always only chooses to drink and cannot free himself of it by himself yet still it is he who is choosing each time he chooses to drink.
Notice what is at stake here. Ever since the discovery that alcoholism is a "disease" some have gone the monergistic puppet route: an alcoholic can't help it hence he is not to blame. Most of us conservative, traditionalists have felt uncomfortable with that. We recognize how captivating, how imprisoning addiction si but we refuse to view the alcoholic as merely a puppet and totally blameless. We recognize that he makes a choice each time, under the captivity of his addiction, he chooses to drink. We recognize that the AA program is correct in saying that he needs external help to break out of his addiction. He can no longer by himself choose not to drink. If he admits his captivity/addiction, he can be helped from the outside and slowly regain the ability to choose not to drink where once he chose always and only to drink. We do not say that he lost his choice while addicted but we do see that he used his choice only wrongly and needed external help to change this situation but that he himself was involved and made choices both while under and while not under his addiction. Indeed, as a recovering alcoholic (recovering sinner), one always will need external help (AA/God's grace) to choose rightly rather than wrongly, for the rest of one's life. But both under captivity to sin/addiction and when freed from that captivity, the person does choose. That's what the "synergy" of Catholicism teaches, that's what Orange II taught, that's what Augustine taught against those who insisted either that we are not at all captive (Pelagisns, semi-pelagians) or that we are not only captive but have lost even choice.
Now, you might say, I'll affirm that choice remains under addition/captivity to sin but it's no longer free choice. Augustine insisted that it was free choice but it was always freely exercised toward sin while under captivity. Why didn't Augustine conclude that captivity means there could be no free choice, only "choice." Because he never wanted to reduce the human being to a puppet of God or the devil because it would be a denial of human dignity. So he said, now look here: when you make a choice under great external pressure (fear for your life, for instance), you yourself do make the choice and in that sense it is a free choice. While under captivity to sin, we always only freely choose wrongly. The key here is that Augustine thought there could be a pattern of "always only" choices without those choices being "necessarily" so. It is a fact that we are captive to sin and that being captive to sin we always do choose wrongly and do not choose otherwise. He would even go so far as to say that we "cannot" choose otherwise than wrongly but the "can not" does not mean ontologicallly necessarily but that we "do not" do so because our "ableness" to choose otherwise has been addicted, imprisoned by sin.
These are fine distinctions. It's much easier to think of captivity to sin as "necessarily" can not choose rightly rather than "actually, factually do not and can not" choose rightly. The former is necessitarian determinism and was characteristic of all the ancient philosophic systems and Augustine knew it and opposed them with every fiber of his being because Christians had always fought against this temptation to give in to determinism.
You might say the distinction is so fine as to be meaningless. I think it makes all the difference in the world and so has the Church throughout the centuries. These distinctions are very hard to maintain. It's not accidental that determinism has come back to dominate our world in the form of Skinnerian behaviorism, Pavlovian conditioning, "poverty made him do it, it's not his fault," "his genes made him do it, it's not his fault" etc. Determinism over the course of known human history has always been the forerunner. Christianity and Judaism fought against it because there can be no place truly for love in a fatalistic, deterministic system. But fighting determinism can seem like a hopeless battle. In their zeal to avoid liberal Pelagian self-salvation, sadly, Luther and Calvin opted for the easy way out and threw in the towel in the struggle against determinism. That's the history of the monergism you find so readily in the Bible.
Dionysius, simply *excellent* and tremendously informative discussion. Remind me not to get on the bad side of your voluminous knowledge! :)
For Harley's and everyone else's benefit here are links to Augustine's letters to Valentinus 214 and 215. To wit:
That book of mine, therefore, or epistle, which the above-mentioned brethren have brought with them to you, I wish you to understand in accordance with this faith, so that you may neither deny God's grace, nor uphold free will in such wise as to separate the latter from the grace of God, as if without this we could by any means either think or do anything according to God,--which is quite beyond our power.
Bookmarked.
He was the Vatican's "Apostolic Commissary for all Germany and Inquisitor of Heretical Pravity" during the popedom of Leo X (1513-1521). His indulgence-brokering activities, which soon aroused Luther's righteous indignation, were part of a corrupt and ambitious ecclesiastical scheme by Leo to provide funds for the reconstruction of St. Peter's in Rome, the most lavishly expensive mass house of Romanism.
It cost £12 million, a colossal sum in 16th-century terms and more than all the money expended on it by successive Popes, and took 111 years to build. Leo was advised by Cardinal Pucci to publish a sale of indulgences throughout Europe for the purpose of replenishing the pontifical exchequer and finishing the work on St. Peter's begun by Julius II (1503-1513).
Little did they realise that the project, paid for by their dupes both rich and poor, would cripple the permanent resources of the Papacy and lead to the decline, if not the downfall, of Romanism.
http://www.ianpaisley.org/article.asp?ArtKey=indulgences
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
By saying that man can make some type of intellectual or spiritual choice these verses are simply ignored. Man isn’t just “unenlightened”. He is bound to his fate by the character of his nature. These are all part of man’s nature. Until God does something to reverse this, this is the way man is.
God must change the heart so that man is capable of submitting, seeks after God, doesn’t look at the thing of God as foolishness and loves the light rather than the darkness. Man can’t come to any of this based upon a choice he makes simply because his nature must be changed prior to this.
Calvinists don’t deny the will of man. Arminians (and I use that in a generic sense with a synergistic meaning) think Calvinists believe that man’s will is somehow coerced by God as in the alcoholic or “puppet on a string” example. This doesn’t make sense with the concept of “free” will and is determinism and fatalism. God doesn’t coerce anyone. Calvinists believe the will is bound verses the Arminians self-determined view. In the Old Testament sometimes God would discipline Israel by telling them their crops would fail even though they labored to sow seed. This is proof that all that we do in this world such as planting crops requires the prior blessing of God if it is to be fruitful. Similarly Paul uses an agricultural metaphor when speaking of casting the seed of the gospel. He says, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. Our faith is bound to God’s determined actions, not by our self-determination.
God must set us free.
There is a big difference between creating hell and allowing man to cast themselves into it (knowing who specifically would do it) and positively condemning someone to hell, no matter what that person did in their life. The difference is that God ALLOWS evil, not causes it. Your view has God causing evil. Is this the message of the New Testament?
There is none who seeks for God. This is the message of Roman 3. God has to set it free. We must be born of the Spirit before we can begin to choose the things of God.
Well, that's not the message of Romans 3, but I will agree that we must be born of the Spirit to CHOOSE the things of God. I had thought that I had made that clear numerous times. We cannot come to God on our own, before or after Baptism (born of the Spirit). Even after Baptism, we require the grace of God to improve our faith and to move our will to do good deeds - the basis of how we will be judged (how we cooperate with God's graces to have faith and works)
And there we go again with this humanistic, “I can do it” attitude. No matter how long I argue about this with Protestants and Catholics it always comes down to “We must” or “I must”. This is salvation by works.
Humanism is not bad, IF we recognize that God is moving us to do anything that we do positively pleasing for Him. Is there another creation made in the image and likeness of God? Doesn't man have a particular dignity? Wasn't man, in the very first chapter of the Bible, given the authorization by God to be fruitful and multiply (COOPERATION IN CREATION - unless you believe with Origen that our spirits existed before our bodies) and to subdue the earth, meaning we have a charge over God's creation! With this in mind, it seems clear that God desires for us to cooperate with His ongoing work - to bring all things to Himself. Again, please remember I have over and over again emphasized that we can do nothing ALONE! But with God, I can do anything. I am a new creation, Christ being the Second Adam. It was fitting the Second Person of the Trinity became man - as through Him, the first creation was made. Thus, in Him, I CAN cooperate with grace and this is credited to me as righteousness. I am found pleasing to God by my faith (enabled by Christ).
"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Gal 1:20
"According to my earnest expectation and [my] hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but [that] with all boldness, as always, [so] now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether [it be] by life, or by death." Phil 1:20
"For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." Col 3:3
Proven what??? That some men can formulate a policy document that few Catholics follow??? The Catholic Church is also against the death penalty but that doesn’t make it right.
???So now the Church is supposed to FORCE people to follow Christ and His Law? Seems one can never please Protestants. Either we are burning millions of people left and right at the stake or we don't enforce our laws on the ENTIRE WORLD! Give me a break. Man can freely choose to obey God's Law or the Laws of the Church. We realize that God will judge us after we die - based on whether we cooperate with His graces or not. All the Church can do is present Christ's teachings for people of today. If they choose not to follow, apparently, these people are not cooperating with grace, and are in dire straights upon their deaths.
...if a new believer heard heresy preached from the pulpit, that believer would plug his ears and go running from that church. I agree.
How does a new believer know what is heresy? Few are theological experts knowledgeable about the nuances of homoousia vs. homoeousia.
Once you believe you are free to make choices then God plays no significant role in your Christian life. After all, what does He do? It’s up to you? (Of course one wonders about Jonah who “freely” chose to head one way but God brought him back.)
That's idiotic. How many times do I have to say that I can do nothing alone? What part of ALONE don't you get? NOTHING IS UP TO ME ALONE!!!! Brother, try to concentrate on what I am writing, and not what your theology teaches you for a second...GOD PLAYS AN ABSOLUTLEY ESSENTIAL ROLE IN OUR LIVES, EVEN AFTER BAPTISM! How can I accept grace without Him? How can I hope to persevere? Where do you come up with this stuff? Truly, I urge you to read what I have written to you over the past several weeks. I have never ONCE said that I can do anything without God. The Church teaches that without God, I can do nothing good. Why is it that when I say I am cooperating with God's graces, you automatically think that I am doing everything and God is doing nothing? RIDICULOUS!
They don’t believe in Luther and Calvin.
That's fortunate. They were wrong in their presumptions. What makes you think that 1500 years of Christianity was wrong until Luther came along? Was he infallible? Hardly. His voice is no better or wiser than any other individual who claims for themselves that they are moved by the Spirit - in opposition to others in the Church. Luther reserved his most vicious banter for other Protestants. And whom did Calvin burn at the stake? Other Protestants... Thus, why should I buy into this "believe Luther and Calvin"? Their system ultimately fails, basing itself on pagan fatalism. Men of 100 AD were very open to the voice of Christianity BECAUSE it did not preach fatalism, the pagan philosophy of the day. THIS is why Christianity was seen as freedom from the slavery of determinism. And now you want to bring that back?
God gives us everything including our works. All good things come from the Father
Of course. And He allows us to cooperate. Why does the Scriptures over and over tell us that we will be judged on our good works - good works that we do in cooperation with the Holy Spirit enabling us? We merely are giving back to the Father the gifts that He gave us, whether natural or supernatural grace. (paraphase of Augustine).
Regards
Since the Reformation, Protestants have falsely accused Catholics (and logically they should equally accuse Eastern Orthodox of the same thing) of denying one or both if (1) and (2) as they assert (3). What Calvin and Luther and apparently you do not grasp is that we believe we can affirm 1, 2, and 3 simultaneously and that this is what Paul teaches and the New Testament teaches. In response, we are told that if we affirm (3) we have to deny (1) and or (2). Who are you to tell us that we cannot hold all three in tension just because to your mnind they are contradictory? They are not necessarily contradictory to my mind, to Augustine's mind, to the Catholic and Orthodox mind.
Allow me to offer my lay Calvinist perspective: It seems apparent to me that everyone posting to this thread agrees that all men are tainted by sin and that without some action on God’s part, all men will go to hell. If I have mischaracterized this, please speak up.
The following may expose my limited knowledge, but I don’t believe Luther and Calvin denied your number 3 above ( the survival of free choice despite both (1) and (2)). I don’t believe either said man has no free will. What they said (or at least the way I understand it) is that the free will choice of man is not the cause of salvation, and more importantly, is not necessary for salvation. Whatever the scope of man’s free will, man’s choice is irrelevant in salvation because of original sin and all subsequent sin. Once a man is tainted by sin, there is nothing a man can do to atone for the sin (including original sin) and escape the punishment of hell. If, at some point in life, God’s grace works upon the man (whether the man’s will is co-operative or not) and the man never sins again the rest of his life, the matter of previous sin is unresolved. The post-grace good works of the man (free or not) can never atone for the previous sins and original sin. Only the blood of Christ, the Lamb without spot, never tainted by sin, is capable of atoning for the sins of man. Man can co-operate with the grace of God until the cows come home, but the penalty for previous and original sin is not paid by that cooperation and remains unpaid. Thus the need for imputed righteousness and the inability of man to exercise his will to salvation, whatever the scope of freedom of man’s will happens to be.
In their zeal to avoid liberal Pelagian self-salvation, sadly, Luther and Calvin opted for the easy way out and threw in the towel in the struggle against determinism. That's the history of the monergism you find so readily in the Bible.
I don’t believe monergists deny that man has free will. What they deny is that the exercise of that free will is necessary for salvation from hell.
If you truly believe what you write here then you have no quarrel with Catholics or synergists whatsoever and your "monergism"/"synergism" dichtomy is a fiction of your imagination. But I doubt you truly believe this, or rather, I would bet that you believe this and at the same time believe that grace is irresistible and that we can't really refuse God's grace.
I think what you "monergists" actually mean by the term "monergism" is that in the relationship between God and man God is overwhelmingly more active but that both God and man are active--man's activity is subordinate to and subsequent to God's activity. But that is actually a statement of synergy--two ergys are involved but they are not symmetrical, one is immensely greater than the other.
And it also happens to be exactly the Catholic teaching (and Orthodox teaching and Augustinian teaching).
In short, I think your problem lies in thinking that "syn" means "equally with" when lilnguistically it can mean equal (Pelagius) but equally well can mean "unequally with," "unsymmetrically with".
A true but asymmetrical synergy is exactly what the Catholic Church and Augustine and all the Fathers teach. Yet you accuse us of "synergy" as if we, by teaching that man and God are both active in salvation, we necessarily teach that they are equally active. But we do no such thing.
According to what you posted now, your "monergy" is really "synergy" because you clearly have two ergys (energeias), one divine (infinitely greater and always prior) and one human, going in the quote from Corinthians.
I did not really think you believed we are puppets in God's hand. But if you do not belief we are puppets, then "synergy" fits your view much better than the term "monergy." Whoever invented these terms applied the wrong term to one form of synergy. At issue is not monergy or synergy but rival explanations of synergy--Pelagians are synergists who think man's ergy is equal to or even prior to God's ergy. We Catholics, Augustine, the Greek Fathers are not that type of synergists. But you too are a synergist in that you deny puppetry and insist that, only when aided by God's grace, can man respond to God but that man does respond (there's the human ergy).
Unless, of course, you believe in deterministic irreistible grace. If so, then you do believe in puppetry and you might truly be a monergist. But if that's the case, then the way you formulated things here contradicts your own belief in deterministically (monergistic) irresisible grace.
As for me, I believe with Augustine in "irresistible" only in a non-monergistic, in a synergistic way: "I just had to buy that car, I just had to take that drink"--when in fact, I chose (there's my own ergy activated) to consent to the pressure, fear, attraction, hormones, grace of God that urged me to do what I did. The urges can be very strong, "irrestible" in a non-deterministic way. If so, I'm not a puppet. If that's what you believe, you, Sir, are a Synergist, an asymmetrical Synergist rather than a Pelagian Symmetrical Synergist and we two are brother-Synergists.
But if you believe that God's predestinating, electing irresistible grace forces me without my consent, against my will to do what God wants, then you, Sir, are indeed a monergist puppeteer and you and I have little in common.
You adduced several passage in the post to which this replies. They all talk about man's inability to turn to God. to accept God, to understand God before he has had help from God's grace. But they equally assert that, aided by God's grace, man does accept (there's a human ergy activated) and understand and seek etc.
Your mistake, dear Sir, is to assume that when we, being big bad Synergists, say that two ergys are involved, a human ergy and a divine ergy, we are saying that human ergy can accept God before or apart from God's ergy/Grace.
But we never said any such thing. Pelagius did and the Semi-Pelagians did. But we don't, the Catechism of the Catholic Church does not, Thomas Aquinas did not, Trent did not, Augustine did not.
What you have done in the passages you adduce here is to insinuate, claim, attribute Pelagianism to us--to attribute to us the claim that unaided by God's grace man can understand, seek, know God.
Now what frustrates me is that I and several others on this thread have repeatedly told you, cited chapter and verse in Augustine and Catholic teachings that state unequivocally that unaided by God's grace man cannot know, seek, accept God. We have denied the Pelagian claim, yet here you insinuate into our position the position of Pelagius.
You seem to think that any assertion that man does truly seek, accept, know God, even if the assertion stipulates that this seeking, accepting etc. takes place after being aided by grace nonetheless means doing so before or without God's grace (Pelagius). But we said the opposite.
The passages you give in order to deny that you believe in puppetry have modifying clauses: "The man without the Spirit does not accept. . . " "The sinful,/b> [pre-grace-assistance] mind is hostile to God. . . "
We agree on that. You deny that man unaided by grace can seek God but claim that this is "monergism" when in fact it clearly sets forth two energys not one. When accused of puppetry monergism you offer as a refutation passages that distinguish "unaided by God" from "aided by God." But that's exactly the distinction we make.
You reason in circles, prooftext without noticing the qualifying clauses. This kind of careless attention to what your own prooftexts say is what leads to you talking past us. I have no hope that anything I write here will lead to us communicating. From the start you have read into us, read into Augustine, what he and we do not say and no matter what evidence we offer, you continue to read into texts what you wish to read into them. You offer clearly synergistic texts but proclaim yourself a monergist.
So, which is it? Do you believe that God's grace saves the elect against or without their consent? If so, you are a puppetry monergist. If you believe, instead, that without God's aid we are dead in sins, captive, unable to save ourselves but when aided by God's grace we consent to it (accept it, as St. Paul puts it in the passage you cite), if that's what you truly believe, you are a Synergist after all.
Which is it? Or do you insist on having it both ways?
You conclude with "God must set us free." But of course. God and absolutely only God can set us free. But stating that by no means requires monergism. It is fully compatible with synergism.
Only God can set us free. That's not the issue. The issue is whether God does that against our will, without our wills, whether he does it with us as empty puppets. If so, "Monergism rules." But if you say that he does not do it against or without our wills, then you have posited two wills, two ergys, you have posited synergy, asymmetrical synergy. And if you believe that, then you and I believe the same thing.
Which is where I started on this thread and which is what HarleyD cannot seem to grasp.
But if, Calvin (as I think he did but perhaps you do not) believed that God saves man against or without cooperation of his will, then Calvin was a monergist. It turns on whether Calvin meant "irresistible grace" in a deterministic way or a synergistic way.
I agree with you that almost no so-called Calvinists truly believe in monergism or deterministic irresistible grace. It may be true that Calvin himself did not. But that's what galls me when lay Calvinists like HarleyD bring out this "monergism"/"synergism" zero-sum gam, which I assume they have gotten from Horton or MacaArthur or someone else.
I don't really think HarleyD is a monergist. But he thinks he is and he thinks we Catholics are Pelagians in our synergy. His synergy might end up being very close to my synergy with both of us being far removed from Pelagian synergy. But he uses "monergy" to distinguish himself from me, the Synergist, and he claims Augustine was a monergist. Now mono-ergy ought to mean "one-ergy." Augustine manifestly does not believe in a single ergy. He believes in two and he is a synergist, a frightfully asymmetrical synergist and an opponent of Pelagius's different kind of synergy.
But HarleyD has reduced everything to "good Monergists" and "bad Synergists" without realizing that he himself believes in two, not one, ergys (unless he does believe in irresistible puppetry grace--I await his response). He started this business by labeling himself and Augustine Monergists. I endeavored to show him that Augustine believes in two, asymmetrical ergys.
If HarleyD is in fact a true, asymmetrical synergist, I will rejoice. But he thinks he's a monergist. If Calvin is truly an asymmetrical synergist, I will rejoice and agree with him. But some people have interpreted Calvin in a puppetry way. Those who do would rightly be called monergists. If Horton and MacArthur and HarleyD and you interpret Calvin in an asymmetrical synergist way, fine. But then those who throw the label "monergist" around really ought to drop it because they themselves, when confronted with the two ergys in their own thinking (as you just asserted in Calvin's thinking) admit they are synergists. So why should they be permitted to use "monergy" and "synergy" to beat those of us who truly admit we are asymmetrical synergists over the head?
I first responded on this thread because these labels monergy and synergy are the source of no end of confusion on this matter but they seem to be the dearly beloved terminology of a certain sort of anti-Catholic--those who falsely present Catholicism as Pelagian then proceed to knock it down. I'd be very happy to admit that we are all synergists, if we are. Then we could argue about exactly how the asymmetrical synergy works and how we, being asymmetricals, differ from Liberal Protestant Pelagian synergists.
You see, the problem is that "synergy" is being made to do more work than it can handle. It's being used to describe anyone who is not a monergist and, as it turns out, almost no one (perhaps not even Calvin) is a Monergist. But if we are all synergists, then we need to find better words to describe the oceans of distance between Synergist Pelagius and Synergist Augustine, between Synergist Dionsyiusdecordealcis and Synergist Pelagius.
HarleyD started out by lumping us Catholics into the Pelagian symmetrical synergy camp and grabbing our own Augustine and claiming him for his monergist camp. That messes up one's understanding of Augustine, of us Catholics, and perhaps even of Calvin. Of course, HarleyD won't admit he's a Calvinist--he is convinced that Calvinism is written right there in Scripture. You at least recognize that you read Scripture through a lens provided by Calvin. And, if you are correct about Calvin, you and Calvin end up not far from the very asymmetrical synergism that Trent, the Catechism of the Catholic Church etc. teach. I'd be glad to welcome Calvin as a fellow synergist if you can explain that he did not mean "irresistible grace" in a deterministic way.
This discombolates me. Are you saying that mono-ergists believe that two ergys, God's ergy and man's free ergy are real and exist (you say Mono-ergists do not deny that man has free will but that Mono-ergists say that God saves man from hell without exercise of that free will)? If the will is not exercised, in what sense is it real? If God saves from hell without the exercise of man's will, then how is that not puppetry? The passage from Corinthians that HarleyD adduced would seem to insist on an exercise of man's will for salvation, but an exercise that comes only after God's grace has enlightened and healed, saved man.
Now, of course there's always the Geneva-Wittenberg two-step: God saves apart from man's will, God saves with no exercise whatsoever of man's will, even though man has free will--and all that applies to "salvation" meaning "justification." Then, alongside that (before, after, depending on whether it's the Geneva two-step or the Wittenberg two-step), comes regeneration in which man's will, having been aided by grace, comes alive and does righteous things befitting the elect of God?
This is, of course a very sweet little deal. In the first step, Justification, we can be monergists, and then in the second step, regeneration/sanctification, we can be synergists. Nice work, if you can get it. That way one can be both a monergist and a synergist, not at the same time (at least not in logical priority) but logically sequentially.
If this is what HarleyD and Calvin and you are claiming, fine. But then the original dichotomizing into Good Monergists and Bad Synergists (really meaning Pelagians) falls apart.
I'd even go so far as to accept the two aspects of salvation, I just won't split them into two phases, not even logically or notionally. I'll keep them integrated as a single process of salvation, put it all under the proud label of synergism (while rejecting Pelagian synergism), and then call what you label "monergism" simply the "absolute priority of God's grace" within a single, integrated process of salvation. But in so doing, I've subsumed any real "monergism" under synergism--we are all synergists, just not all Pelagian symmetrical synergists.
First, do you agree with the last statement of my post #73 concerning the definition of monergism: I don’t believe monergists deny that man has free will. What they deny is that the exercise of that free will is necessary for salvation from hell.
But if you are incorrect in your assessment of what monergists believe (if they do believe in Divine puppetry, which your statement does not believe in), then monergists are truly monergists, not synergists.
I would expect most Monergists, when confronted with the question of Divine puppetry, to reject it, as you do in your explanation of "most monergists." I'm perfectly happy to let Monergists define themselves since one thing I'm sure of is that I'm no monergist. But if they define monergism the way you say they do, then they are really synergists and thus very confused folks indeed. Which is why I raised questions from the start about the advisability of this "monergist/synergist zero-sum game."
But perhaps there are some Monergists out there who do bite the bullet and believe in Divine puppetry. I wanted to give the chance to confess their faith publicly. If they did, I would salute them because at least they would truly be worthy of the name, Monergist. Those "monergists" who actually believe in synergy, as you say they do, I cannot in conscience salute because I think they are badly confused. As I said earlier, what they really mean by "monergy"--if your description of them is accurate-- is "absolute priority of God's grace" within asymmetrical synergy.
I'll skip over all the synergy/monergy silliness; I want to comment on a point you made before you got caught up in all that...
I'm a lifelong reader of the Christian mystics. It drives me nuts when people who are semi-literate in the tradition use the term to mean something like "too subjective".
There is plenty of subjectivism in evangelicalism at present, and there are always plenty of people about who fancy they hear voices, urges and the like, but true mystics are as rare now, in evengelicalism, as they ever were in Catholocism. A subjective bent does not produce a mystic.
Also, somebody way up there said that in EO the Spirit proceeds from the Son who proceeds from the Father. A grevious error, betraying a superficial familiarity with Trinitarian dogma; the Spirit proceeds from the Father, whilst the Son is GENERATED by the Father. The West added the filoque clause, of course.
St Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Ephraim, John Chrysostom, Jerome, and many other Eastern Catholics believed in cooperation of man with God. But cooperation and free will were also a feature of the Western Church, as well. Below are some of the many Church Fathers BEFORE the Nicean Council of 325 AD. I certainly did not include every quote they make, (Irenaeus and Justin made a number, as did Hermas) but there is a diversity of figures to show that the West, as well as the East, believed the man had the freedom to choose or reject God.
If then," [he saith,] "man is lord of all the creatures of God and masters all things, cannot he also master these commandments Aye," saith he, "the man that hath the Lord in his heart can master [all things and] all these commandments. But they that have the Lord on their lips, while their heart is hardened, and are far from the Lord, to them these commandments are hard and inaccessible. Therefore do ye, who are empty and fickle in the faith, set your Lord in your heart, and ye shall perceive that nothing is easier than these commandments, nor sweeter, nor more gentle. THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS 1.44 (thought to have been written from Rome by the brother of Pope Pius)
In the beginning He made the human race with the power of thought and of choosing the truth and doing right, so that all men are without excuse before God; for they have been born rational and contemplative. And if any one disbelieves that God cares for these things, he will thereby either insinuate that God does not exist, or he will assert that though He exists He delights in vice, or exists like a stone, and that neither virtue nor vice are anything, but only in the opinion of men these things are reckoned good or evil. JUSTIN MARTYR: THE FIRST APOLOGY OF JUSTIN, Chapter 28
But lest some suppose, from what has been said by us, that we say that whatever happens, happens by a fatal necessity, because it is foretold as known beforehand, this too we explain. We have learned from the prophets, and we hold it to be true, that punishments, and chastisements, and good rewards, are rendered according to the merit of each man's actions. Since if it be not so, but all things happen by fate, neither is anything at all in our own power. For if it be fated that this man, e.g., be good, and this other evil, neither is the former meritorious nor the latter to be blamed. And again, unless the human race have the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice, they are not accountable for their actions, of whatever kind they be. But that it is by free choice they both walk uprightly and stumble, we thus demonstrate. We see the same man making a transition to opposite things. Now, if it had been fated that he were to be either good or bad, he could never have been capable of both the opposites, nor of so many transitions. But not even would some be good and others bad, since we thus make fate the cause of evil, and exhibit her as acting in opposition to herself; or that which has been already stated would seem to be true, that neither virtue nor vice is anything, but that things are only reckoned good or evil by opinion; which, as the true word shows, is the greatest impiety and wickedness. But this we assert is inevitable fate, that they who choose the good have worthy rewards, and they who choose the opposite have their merited awards. For not like other things, as trees and quadrupeds, which cannot act by choice, did God make man: for neither would he be worthy of reward or praise did he not of himself choose the good, but were created for this end; nor, if he were evil, would he be worthy of punishment, not being evil of himself, but being able to be nothing else than what he was made. JUSTIN MARTYR: THE FIRST APOLOGY OF JUSTIN --CHAP. 43
God has always preserved freedom, and the power of self-government in man,(12) while at the same time He issued His own exhortations, in order that those who do not obey Him should be righteously judged (condemned) because they have not obeyed Him; and that those who have obeyed and believed on Him should be honoured with immortality IRENAEUS AGAINST HERESIES, BOOK IV, Chapter 15
(Chapter Heading) MEN ARE POSSESSED OF FREE WILL, AND ENDOWED WITH THE FACULTY OF MAKING A CHOICE. IT IS NOT TRUE, THEREFORE, THAT SOME ARE BY NATURE GOOD, AND OTHERS BAD.
This expression [of our Lord], "How often would I have gathered thy children together, and thou wouldest not," set forth the ancient law of human liberty, because God made man a free [agent] from the beginning, possessing his own power, even as he does his own soul, to obey the behests of God voluntarily, and not by compulsion of God. For there is no coercion with God, but a good will [towards us] is present with Him continually. And therefore does He give good counsel to all. And in man, as well as in angels, He has placed the power of choice (for angels are rational beings), so that those who had yielded obedience might justly possess what is good, given indeed by God, but preserved by themselves. On the other hand, they who have not obeyed shall, with justice, be not found in possession of the good, and shall receive condign punishment: for God did kindly bestow on them what was good; but they themselves did not diligently keep it, nor deem it something precious, but poured contempt upon His super-eminent goodness. Rejecting therefore the good, and as it were spuing it out, they shall all deservedly incur the just judgment of God, which also the Apostle Paul testifies in his Epistle to the Romans, where he says, "But dost thou despise the riches of His goodness, and patience, and long-suffering, being ignorant that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? But according to thy hardness and impenitent heart, thou treasurest to thyself wrath against the day of wrath, and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God." IRENAEUS AGAINST HERESIES -- BOOK IV CHAP. 37
I find, then, that man was by God constituted free, master of his own will and power; indicating the presence of God's image and likeness in him by nothing so well as by this constitution of his nature. For it was not by his face, and by the lineaments of his body, though they were so varied in his human nature, that he expressed his likeness to the form of God; but he showed his stamp in that essence which he derived from God Himself (that is, the spiritual, which answered to the form of God), and in the freedom and power of his will. This his state was confirmed even by the very law which God then imposed upon him. For a law would not be imposed upon one who had it not in his power to render that obedience which is due to law; nor again, would the penalty of death be threatened against sin, if a contempt of the law were impossible to man in the liberty of his will. So in the Creator's subsequent laws also you will find, when He sets before man good and evil, life and death, that the entire course of discipline is arranged in precepts by God's calling men from sin, and threatening and exhorting them; and this on no other ground than that man is free, with a will either for obedience or resistance. TERTULLIAN, THE FIVE BOOKS AGAINST MARCION, BOOK II, Chapter 5
But although we shall be understood, from our argument, to be only so affirming man's unshackled power over his will, that what happens to him should be laid to his own charge, and not to God's, yet that you may not object, even now, that he ought not to have been so constituted, since his liberty and power of will might turn out to be injurious, I will first of all maintain that he was rightly so constituted, that I may with the greater confidence commend both his actual constitution, and the additional fact of its being worthy of the Divine Being; the cause which led to man's being created with such a constitution being shown to be the better one. Moreover, man thus constituted will be protected by both the goodness of God and by His purpose, both of which are always found in concert in our God. For His purpose is no purpose without goodness; nor is His goodness goodness without a purpose …What could be found so worthy as the image and likeness of God? This also was undoubtedly good and reasonable. Therefore it was proper that (he who is) the image and likeness of God should be formed with a free will and a mastery of himself;(1) so that this very thing--namely, freedom of will and self-command--might be reckoned as the image and likeness of God in him. TERTULLIAN: THE FIVE BOOKS AGAINST MARCION, BOOK II, Chapter 6
That rich man did go his way who had not "received" the precept of dividing his substance to the needy, and was abandoned by the Lord to his own opinion. Nor will "harshness" be on this account imputed to Christ, the Found of the vicious action of each individual free-will. "Behold," saith He, "I have set before thee good and evil." Choose that which is good: if you cannot, because you will not--for that you can if you will He has shown, because He has proposed each to your free-will--you ought to depart from Him whose will you do not. TERTULLIAN -- PART THIRD: ON REPENTANCE – Chapter 6. He repeats this paragraph verbatim in MONOGAMY – Chapter 14.
Since man has free will, a law has been defined for his guidance by the Deity, not without answering a good purpose. For if man did not possess the power to will and not to will, why should a law be established? For a law will not be laid down for an animal devoid of reason, but a bridle and a whip; whereas to man has been given a precept and penalty to perform, or for not carrying into execution what has been enjoined. For man thus constituted has a law been enacted by just men in primitive ages. Nearer our own day was there established a law, full of gravity and justice, by Moses, to whom allusion has been already made, a devout man, and one beloved of God. HIPPOLYTUS OF ROME, THE REFUTATION OF ALL HERESIES, BOOK X Chapter 29
For he who gives precepts for the life, ought to remove every method of excuse, that he may impose upon men the necessity of obedience, not by any constraint, but by a sense of shame, and yet may leave them liberty, that a reward may be appointed for those who obey, because it was in their power not to obey if they so wished; and a punishment for those who do not obey, because it was in their power to obey if they so wished. How then can excuse be removed, unless the teacher should practise what he teaches, and as it were go before and hold out his hand to one who is about to follow? But how can one practise what he teaches, unless he is like him whom he teaches? For if he be subject to no passion, a man may thus answer him who is the teacher: It is my wish not to sin, but I am overpowered; for I am clothed with frail and weak flesh: it is this which covets, which is angry, which fears pain and death. And thus I am led on against my will; and I sin, not because it is my wish, but because I am compelled. I myself perceive that I sin; but the necessity imposed by my frailty, which I am unable to resist, impels me. What will that teacher of righteousness say in reply to these things? How will he refute and convict a man who shall allege the frailty of the flesh as an excuse for his faults, unless he himself also shall be clothed with flesh, so that he may show that even the flesh is capable of virtue? LACTANTIS, THE DIVINE INSTITUTES, Book IV, Chapter 24
Hopefully, you will see from the above the even in the West, synergism was the order of the day, even before 325 AD. It would take me three or four full days to post Clement of Alexandria and Origen's thoughts on the free will of man.
Regards
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