Calvinism and Arminianism
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SOVEREIGNTY, FREEWILL AND SALVATION<br />
PROF. M. M. NINAN<br />
The humility required to submit to the gospel (which is beyond man's natural capacity) is,<br />
therefore, not prompted by man's will but by God's mercy (John 1:13; Rom 9:16) since no<br />
one can believe the gospel unless God grants it (John 6:63, 65).<br />
The Spirit must likewise give all His people spiritual life <strong>and</strong> underst<strong>and</strong>ing if their hearts are<br />
to be opened <strong>and</strong> thus respond to Christ in faith.<br />
Synergism, which also comes from a compound Greek word meaning “to work together,”<br />
is the view that God works together with man in effecting salvation. While monergism is<br />
closely associated with John Calvin, synergism is associated with Jacob Arminius,<br />
James R. Payton discusses the Eastern Orthodox view of the synergism vs monergism<br />
debate as follows:<br />
A distinctive element in the Orthodox underst<strong>and</strong>ing of how the Holy Spirit<br />
works deification within us is the doctrine of "synergy"--"working together."<br />
This working together is the collaboration of God's grace <strong>and</strong> a person's will.<br />
While Western Christianity has argued about the alternatives of "monergism"<br />
<strong>and</strong> "synergism"--that is, the question of whether salvation is accomplished<br />
only by God or by God <strong>and</strong> human beings cooperating--this issue did not<br />
become a tension within Orthodoxy. Eastern Christendom has not focused on<br />
the issues of guilt, debt, questions of merit <strong>and</strong> so on, that flowed from the<br />
juridical approach of the Christian West <strong>and</strong> made the monergism/synergism<br />
issue a matter of concern. Orthodoxy insists on synergy, but Orthodox teaching<br />
approaches the question of divine grace <strong>and</strong> human will working together from<br />
quite a different perspective.<br />
The Eastern Orthodox view of synergism holds that "humans beings always have the<br />
freedom to choose, in their personal (gnomic) wills, whether to walk with God or turn from<br />
Him", but "what God does is incomparably more important than what we humans do".<br />
"To describe the relation between the grace of God <strong>and</strong> human freedom, Orthodoxy uses<br />
the term cooperation or synergy (synergeia); in Paul's words, 'We are fellow-workers<br />
(synergoi) with God' (1 Corinthians iii, 9). If we are to achieve full fellowship with God, we<br />
cannot do so without God's help, yet we must also play our own part: we humans as well as<br />
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