{"id":3563,"date":"2014-07-10T08:36:32","date_gmt":"2014-07-10T12:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oldsandals.net\/?p=3563"},"modified":"2014-07-10T08:36:32","modified_gmt":"2014-07-10T12:36:32","slug":"tension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/?p=3563","title":{"rendered":"Tension"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hebrews 9:13-15<\/em>
\nFor if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.<\/em><\/p>\n

Steve<\/strong> (www.undeception.com):
\nMost Calvinists agree that Scripture talks of our choosing God, but they make sure we know the caveat that it is only because\u00a0God chose us to choose Him<\/em>. Yet I don’t know of any non-Calvinist who believes, or who thinks that any biblical author ever believed, that God is merely a reactor to our whim and will. “In Him we live and move and have our being.” Insofar as He reacts to our “whim and will”, it is because it is His prerogative to do so. This is a bit of a red herring, but all’s fair in love, war, and heresy hunting, it seems!<\/p>\n

Andy<\/strong> (www.oldsandals.net):
\nFirst timer. If you don’t mind, I would like to share with you my own blog post regarding what I call ‘Biblical synergism’. I am coming at this as a rather eclectic member of a Reformed denomination, I would appreciate your take…<\/p>\n

\u201cI sought the Lord, and afterward I knew\u2014He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me. It was not I that found, O Savior true; no, I was found of thee.\u201d\u00a0 The first verse of this 19th century hymn (author unknown), expresses a biblical synergism at work in our salvation.<\/p>\n

Synergism is a word that needs some unpacking.\u00a0 The World English Dictionary defines synergism as the working together of two or more agents to produce an effect that is greater than the sum of their individual effects.\u00a0 Thus, in a theological context, it has to do with the way in which, or the extent to which, one\u2019s eternal salvation is the result of both divine and human activity.<\/p>\n

From the beginning, the church catholic has held that man cannot save himself by simply doing good deeds.\u00a0 The kerygma has always been, \u201cRepent of your sins; believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.\u201d \u00a0 Furthermore, she (the church catholic) has always maintained that it is even beyond man\u2019s ability (in some autonomous way) to decide to place his faith in Christ for salvation.\u00a0 Rather, God must take the initiative.\u00a0 He must act first, or all is futile.<\/p>\n

The essence of the gospel is that God has acted first, in sending his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to be our Savior.\u00a0 And God has acted first, in sending his Holy Spirit, to stir the hearts of men to believe and embrace the gospel.<\/p>\n

God\u2019s actions call for a response, one that it is incumbent upon us to make.\u00a0\u00a0Choose you this day whom you will serve (Joshua 24:15).<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/i>Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded (James 4:8).\u00a0 Come unto me, all you who labor (Matthew <\/em>11:28<\/em>).\u00a0 Seek the Lord while He may be found<\/em>\u00a0 (Isaiah 55:6).\u00a0 When I choose, when I cleanse, when I come, when I seek, I am actually, self-consciously, doing something.\u00a0 I am not in a trance.<\/p>\n

God acts first.\u00a0 He takes the initiative.\u00a0\u00a0While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8)\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0Then I act.\u00a0 I respond in faith unto salvation.\u00a0 This is a synergy that is surely biblical, is it not?<\/p>\n

Yes, it is, but there\u2019s a bit more unpacking to do.\u00a0 God and I may be the two agents in this synergy, but it\u2019s not the kind of synergy where two agents bring their independent work together to achieve a greater result.\u00a0 We are never independent of God.\u00a0 How could we be?\u00a0\u201cFor in Him we live, and move and have our being (Acts <\/em>17:28<\/em>).<\/em>\u00a0 Or, to paraphrase, \u201cin Him we live, and move, and choose to follow Him, and cleanse our hands, and purify our hearts, and come unto Him sinful though we are, and seek Him as He commands.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is synergism of a kind, but not of a kind that detracts from God\u2019s sovereignty.\u00a0 The domain of our hearts is the very kingdom of God.\u00a0\u00a0The <\/em>kingdom<\/em> of <\/em>God<\/em> is within you (Luke <\/em>17:21<\/em>).\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/i>This is also monergism (God acting alone) of a kind.\u00a0 \u201cHe moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me.\u201d And yet it is not of a kind that detracts from man\u2019s responsibility.\u00a0Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish (Luke 13:3).<\/em><\/p>\n

The salvation of God, wrought through the atoning sacrifice of Christ and by the working of the Holy Spirit in hearts that are wide open, is ultimately a mystery\u2014a wonderful mystery which cannot be fully explained by any fine-grained theological system.<\/p>\n

Perhaps synergism and monergism thus understood are just two ways of expressing the same ineffable reality.<\/p>\n

Steve<\/strong>:
\nI certainly appreciate the attempt at reconciling these, Andy. I welcome it in theory. But the emphasis in Reformed circles is clearly and unequivocally on God’s role; treating man’s response as anything but the direct effect of God’s intervention to change the human will despite itself is typically decried as Pelagian synergism. For them, if a man does anything good, it is really God; if a man wants to do anything good, it is really God. Now, I don’t have problem with this in one sense, but not because of Paul’s quotation of Epimenides, which if applied here would also attribute all the bad I do to the divine will; rather, I am glad to credit God for any good that I do because anything good done by anyone is by definition God’s work, since He is the source of all goodness. That is not the Calvinistic understanding of monergism, however: God gets the glory from programming the things He wills into our operating systems, which He has to hack because of our corrupted software, so that any crediting of the robot’s performance to the robot ludicrously and blasphemously robs the designer of all deserved glory. In synergism, the relationship is parent\/child: the source of our being comes from God, and He is the one who instructs us to do as we ought, and takes all delight from our willfully sitting at His feet to learn what He wants to teach us to do and then doing that out of our own individual will.<\/p>\n

Put another way, receiving a free gift steals no glory from the giver, yet in mainstream Calvinist theology, the very reception of the gift is accomplished wholly by the Spirit’s work within the recipient: regeneration precedes repentance (n.b. in Calvin, not Luther). There may be dissenters amongst Calvinists, and I’ve seen attempts at trying to chalk the tension up to mystery, but this is central to Calvinist logic because of the Augustinian understanding of original sin as fully corrupting our will and even our reasoning. Am I missing anything?<\/p>\n

Andy<\/strong>:
\nThank you for responding so very quickly! (I wasn’t even sure I’d get a response.) I’m afraid monergism is a closed system. My pastor (reformed, PCA) didn’t like my post either. I was trying to articulate what I feel in my gut so to speak—that both things are happening. I’m choosing and God is choosing. But it is not as if it’s a zero-sum game. We are dealing with the interplay between the infinite (the infinite!) and the finite.<\/p>\n

The New Testament story that works for me is the one about the man with the crippled hand. The Lord passes by and says to him, “Stretch out your hand!” (God’s initiative.) Now the man could have said, “Na, I don’t think it’ll do any good.” (He could have resisted.) But instead, the poor man stuck out his hand, and it was healed! (A contrite spirit. A miraculous change. A conversion.) Now, no one in the crowd gave any kudos to the man. He just stuck out his hand. But he stuck it out! All the credit, amazement, etc. went to the Lord instead. This is how I think it works.<\/p>\n

Your comment about receiving the free gift from the giver. Same thing. Synergism is not Pelagian, or Semi-Pelagian. In fact, I personally believe that no true saint in church history, of whatever stripe, would want any of the glory for themselves. “‘Tis mercy all”, as the song goes. What are the twenty-four elders doing in Revelation anyway? They are given crowns, and they toss them back! The Psalmist said, “Not unto us O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory.” You get my drift.<\/p>\n

The best soteriological statement I’ve seen was written by an Eastern Orthodox bishop, Kallistos Ware (I’m drawn to Eastern Orthodoxy in many ways), who wrote: “What God does [in saving us] is incomparably more important than what we humans do; yet our voluntary participation in God’s saving action is altogether indispensable. Our cooperation with God is genuinely free, but there is nothing in our good actions that is exclusively our own. At every point our human cooperation is itself the work of the Holy Spirit. The inter-relationship between divine grace and human freedom remains always a mystery beyond our comprehension.”<\/p>\n

Steve<\/strong>:
\nHaha…thanks for noticing my mistake (wrong heresy!). \u00a0Yes, I too have a PCA pastor whose depictions of the Reformed view I was trying to represent in my comment. It is indeed rather tightly closed off. At least Lutherans say that repentance precedes regeneration, which helps a bit. BTW, if you were to look at some of my more recent posts, you’d see my own attraction to Orthodox theology. One thing they make a point to say is that the imago dei is not so marred by the Fall that we cannot will or choose the salvation offered to us.<\/p>\n

Because forms of both monergistic and synergistic thought are found in Scripture, those who will admit no tension between or lack of clarity within the minds of its authors are forced to iron it out one way or another. Seeking the truth on these issues is admirable and worthwhile, but their professed high regard for Scripture is contradicted by their willingness to contort bits of it to make it mean what they think it should.<\/p>\n

Andy<\/strong>:
\nYes. I wonder if this tension is why the Church fathers seem to be saying different things at different times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hebrews 9:13-15 For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Tension”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3564,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563\/revisions\/3564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}