Monergism and Synergism

Well, this is kind of a follow-up post to the last one. There's a need to explain some of what I was talking about, and give a defense for it, so here goes:

Monergism - the idea that man's salvation is 100% God's work.

Synergism - the idea that man works together with God for salvation.

Now, right off the bat, the question gets raised, "wait, that means synergism is a works salvation, right? That's like, completely against everything Christianity teaches!" And it's completely correct. Any belief that says we do something in our own salvation falls in this category.

Now, it gets a little stickier here: what about faith? When you believe, is it an action you chose to do? And if you are saved through faith, doesn't that mean that you cooperated in your own salvation by believing?

The answer, thankfully, is no. Biblically speaking, we don't possess the ability to choose God, that is, to have faith. God gives us faith. There was a monk at one point, named Pelagius, who taught that man could choose to have faith in God - he famously opposed Augustine on the subject (and, well, got burned for his heresy). That's why sometimes this gets called 'Pelagiansim.'

On the subject of faith again, if God gives us our faith, because we're too sinful to choose God on our own, where does that leave our free will? There's two answers to that question that are pretty at odds with one another, so we'll deal with that next.

One note here, the statement that we don't have the ability to choose God is a matter of salvation only. I'm not in any way saying that we don't have free will to, say, make a sandwich, but rather that we don't have the free will to overcome our own sin - that's why we need the truth that sets us free. So please don't hear me espousing determinism.

So in conclusion, if you're going to call yourself a Christian, you have to accept that God does all the work of salvation. This sounds basic now, but hold on to that thought as we go through the next few things that this doctrine has bearing on.