Monergism vs. Synergism

According to definition given in www.monergism.com (emphasis in bold is mine), Monergism is the belief that in our regeneration, the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ independent of any cooperation from our un-regenerated human nature. He quickens us through the outward call cast forth by the preaching of His Word, disarms our innate hostility, removes our blindness, illumines our mind, creates understanding, turns our heart of stone to a heart of flesh — giving rise to a delight in His Word — all that we might, with our renewed affections, willingly & gladly embrace Christ.  In Synergism, on the other hand, the grace of God that regenerates us requires our cooperation, through our freedom.  Because we have freedom, we can either choose to cooperate or not. 

Protestants and “Bible only” Christians who follow the teachings of Reformers Calvin and Luther are monergist, while the rest, together with Catholics (and Eastern Orthodox, to the best of my knowledge) are synergist.  A good comparison of these two views is when we have faith in Christ as Lord and Saviour.  A monergist will say that our ability to believe in Christ comes solely from God’s Grace – we can do it because we are first regenerated by God, there is no such thing as our cooperation because of our totally corrupt nature. A synergist will say His Grace will first moves us and then we, using our freedom, cooperate by receiving it (or rejecting it).  Such cooperation is possible because our nature, while wounded, is not totally corrupted.  Note that both in monergism and synergism the initiative for our salvation comes from God.

As one scriptural proof, www.monergism.com cites Ezekiel 11:19-20: And I [God] will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will take the stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.  At first glance this verse seems to give strong support of monergism.  Let’s look at the next verse, Ezekiel 11:21: But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will requite their deeds upon their own heads, says the Lord God. A monergist will say that God chose them (from eternity) not to be regenerated – the so-called double predestination, i.e. God chose from eternity whom He will regenerate and whom He will not. But how to reconcile it with 1 Corinthians 15:22 (emphasis in bold is mine): For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive and for the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men (Titus 2:11)?  Ezekiel 11:19-20 neither explicitly says that regeneration requires or does not require our cooperation and the same applies to other verses cited to support monergism (1 Thessalonians 1:4-5 and 1 Peter 1:23).  But does it (1 Thessalonians 1:4) says “he [God] has chosen you”?  Does it prove that God chose some men to be saved?  Yes, but synergists also believe in Election, i.e. God predestines some men (the Elect) for heaven by choosing them from eternity.  But they reject the idea that God predestines the rest to hell.  They end up in hell because they, in using their freedom, decide not to cooperate with God’s Grace and not because God desires them to be in hell (Monergist’ view).  Scripture says (1 Timothy 2:4) God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Luther and the book of Judith

Luther wrote his preface to deuterocanonical (or apocryphal, in Protestant’s terminology) books in 1534.  About the Book of Judith while he admitted its historical problems are irreconcilable he considered it to be religious fiction of which errors were deliberately (and painstakingly) inserted by the person who wrote it.  Interestingly he still considered Judith to be a fine, good, holy, useful book, well worth reading and inspired.  In his own words (emphasis in bold is added and non-italic words inside brackets are taken from footnotes)

If one could prove from established and reliable histories that the events in Judith really happened, it would be a noble and fine book, and should properly be in the Bible. Yet it hardly squares with the historical accounts of the Holy Scriptures, especially Jeremiah and Ezra. For these show how Jerusalem and the whole country were destroyed, and were thereafter laboriously rebuilt during the time of the monarchy of the Persians who occupied the land.

Against this the first chapter of Judith claims that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was the first one to set about conquering this territory; it creates the impression that these events took place before the captivity of the Jews, and before the rise of the Persian monarchy. Philo, on the contrary, says that they happened after the release and return of the Jews from Babylon under King Ahasuerus, at which time the Jews had rebuilt neither the temple nor Jerusalem, and had no government. Thus as to both time and name, error and doubt are still present, so that I cannot reconcile [the accounts] at all.

Some people think this is not an account of historical events [Geschichte] but rather a beautiful religious fiction [Gedicht] by a holy and ingenious man who wanted to sketch and depict therein the fortunes of the whole Jewish people and the victory God always miraculously granted them over all their enemies. This would be similar to the way Solomon in his Song poetizes and sings of a bride, vet means thereby not some specific person or event but the whole people of Israel. St. John, in his Apocalypse, and Daniel likewise sketch many pictures and beasts; yet these pertain not to specific persons but to the totality of Christian churches and [to the various] empires. And Christ our Lord himself likes to make use of parables and fictions like this in the gospel. He compares the kingdom of heaven to ten maidens [Matt. 25:1–13], or to a merchant and pearls [Matt. 13:45], a baker woman [Matt. 13:33], a grain of mustard seed [Matt. 13:31–32], or to fishermen and nets [Matt. 13:47–49], or to shepherds and sheep [Matt. 18:12–14], and the like.

Such an interpretation strikes my fancy, and I think that the poet deliberately and painstakingly inserted the errors of time and name in order to remind the reader that the book should be taken and understood as that kind of a sacred, religious, composition.

Now the names fit into this sort of an interpretation extraordinarily well. Judith means Judea [The Latin word Judaea used here can mean either a Jewish woman (Jewess) or the land of Judah. Luther uses it in the latter sense. The Hebrew Yehudith means simply “Jewess” and then by allegory the Jewish people. It should be noted, however, that it is the personal name of Esau’s wife who was not a Jew but a Hittite (Gen 26:34)], (that is) the Jewish people. She is a chaste and holy widow; that is, God’s people is always a forsaken widow who is nevertheless chaste and holy, remaining pure and holy in the Word of God and in the true faith, mortifying herself and praying. Holofernes means worldly leader or governor, a heathen, godless, or un-Christian lord or prince—as all enemies of the Jewish people are. Bethulia (a city nobody knows) means a virgin [Luther connects the name of the city with the Hebrew bethulah, meaning virgin], indicating that at that time the believing and devout Jews were the pure virgin, free from idolatry and unbelief, as described in Isaiah [37:22] and Jeremiah [14:17; 18:13; 31:4], which is also why they remained unconquerable, though they were in distress.

It may even be that in those days they dramatized literature like this, Just as among us the Passion and other sacred stories are performed. In a common presentation or play they conceivably wanted to teach their people and youth to trust God, to be righteous, and to hope in God for all help and comfort, in every need, against all enemies, etc.

Therefore this is a fine, good, holy, useful book, well worth reading by us Christians. For the words spoken by the persons in it should be understood as though they were uttered in the Holy Spirit by a spiritual, holy poet or prophet who, in presenting such persons in his play, preaches to us through them. Next after Judith, therefore [Luther’s ordering of the apocryphal books is his own. It does not follow the sequence in which they appeared either in the Vulgate or in the Septuagint where they were interspersed among the canonical books in positions which varied with the different manuscripts. In the older German Bibles, Judith had followed Tobit and preceded Esther; Wisdom had followed Song of Solomon and preceded Ecclesiasticus. Reu, Luther’s German Bible, p. 36.], like a song following a play, belongs the Wisdom of Philo [i.e. Wisdom of Solomon], a work which denounces tyrants and praises the help which God bestows on his people. The song [that follows] may well be called an illustration of this book [of Judith].

Luther’s Works Vol. 35, III-339

Luther on Purgatory

It is interesting to know that Luther did believe in purgatory, though he was not able to find any support from Scripture.  He therefore argued that purgatory should not be considered as Church’s dogma, i.e. those who do not believe in it are not heretics. Below is what he wrote on purgatory (emphasis in bold is mine):

The existence of a purgatory I have never denied. I still hold that it exists, as I have written and admitted [Unterricht auf etlich Artikel. WA 2, 70] many times, though I have found no way of proving it incontrovertibly from Scripture or reason. I find in Scripture that Christ, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Job, David, Hezekiah, and some others tasted hell in this life. This I think was purgatory, and it seems not beyond belief that some of the dead suffer in like manner. Tauler [c. 1300 to 1361, Dominican monk who, under the influence of his teacher Meister Eckhart, taught at Strassburg a deeply mystical piety] has much to say about it, and, in short, I myself have come to the conclusion that there is a purgatory, but I cannot force anybody else to come to the same result.

There is only one thing that I have criticized, namely, the way in which my opponents refer to purgatory passages in Scripture which are so inapplicable that it is shameful. For example, they apply Ps. 66[:12], “We went through fire and through water,” though the whole psalm sings of the sufferings of the saints, whom no one places in purgatory. And they quote St. Paul in I Cor. 3[:13-15] when he says of the fire of the last day that it will test the good works, and by it some will be saved because they keep the faith, though their work may suffer loss. They turn this fire also into a purgatory, according to their custom of twisting Scripture and making it mean whatever they want.

And similarly they have arbitrarily dragged in the passage in Matt. 12[:32] in which Christ says, “Whoever speaks blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this world or in the world to come.” Christ means here that he shall never be forgiven, as Mark 3[:29] explains, saying, “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” To be sure, even St. Gregory [Gregory the Great, Dialogorum Libri, IV, chap. 89. Migne 77, 396] interprets the passage in Matthew 12 to mean that some sins will be forgiven in the world to come, but St. Mark does not permit such an interpretation, and he counts for more than all the doctors.

I have discussed all this in order to show that no one is bound to believe more than what is based on Scripture, and those who do not believe in purgatory are not to be called heretics, if otherwise they accept Scripture in its entirety, as the Greek church does. The gospel compels me to believe that St. Peter and St. James are saints, but at the same time it is not necessary to believe that St. Peter is buried in Home [Rome] and St. James at Compostella [Santiago de Compostella, a famous place of pilgrimage in Spain] and that their bodies are still there, for Scripture does not report it. Again, there is no sin in holding that none of the saints whom the pope canonizes are saints, and no saint will be offended, for, as a matter of fact, there are many saints in heaven of whom we know nothing, and certainly not that they are saints, yet they are not offended, and do not consider us heretics because we do not know of them. The pope and his partisans play this game only in order to fabricate many wild articles of faith and thus make it possible to silence and suppress the true articles of the Scripture.

But their use of the passage in II Macc. 12[:43], which tells how Judas Maceabeus sent money to Jerusalem for prayers to be offered for those who fell in battle, proves nothing, for that book is not among the books of Holy Scripture, and, as St. Jerome says, it is not found in a Hebrew version, the language in which all the books of the Old Testament are written. [Jerome, Preface to the Books of Samuel and Malachi. Migne 28, 600ff] In other respects, too, this book deserves little authority, for it contradicts the first Book of Maccabees in its description of King Antiochus, and contains many other fables which destroy its credibility. But even were the book authoritative, it would still be necessary in the case of so important an article that at least one passage out of the chief books [of the Bible] should support it, in order that every word might be established through the mouth of two or three witnesses. It must give rise to suspicion that in order to substantiate this doctrine no more than one passage could be discovered in the entire Bible; moreover this passage is in the least important and most despised book. Especially since so much depends on this doctrine which is so important that, indeed, the papacy and the whole hierarchy are all but built upon it, and derive all their wealth and honor from it. Surely, the majority of the priests would starve to death if there were no purgatory. Well, they should not offer such vague and feeble grounds for our faith!

Career of the Reformer II, Luther’s Works, Vol. 32

Reformation Day

On 31 October 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses mainly condemning the Catholic Church’s practices on selling indulgences – the act that triggered Reformation.  Luther did write explanation of those 95 theses. Below is what he wrote on thesis number 42: Christians are to be taught that the pope does not intend that the buying of indulgences should in any way be compared with works of mercy.

As I have said I understand the pope as a public person, that is, as he speaks to us through the canons. And there are no canons which preach that the value of indulgences is to be compared to works of mercy.

The thesis, moreover, is clear. A command of God has infinitely more value than that which is permitted to exist by man’s word and is in no way commanded by God. The command of God has merit. What man decrees has none.

The objection is made here: “But indulgences are sold for a godly work, for example, for a contribution to a building or for the ransom of captives. Therefore they are meritorious.”

My answer is: I am not speaking about the work, but about the indulgences. Such a work as that could have been done without indulgences, for it is not necessarily bound up with indulgences. Moreover, indulgences which are bestowed without good works confer nothing; they only detract. The work, however, without indulgences does confer something. In the former case we receive benefits for ourselves, in the latter we give them. The former serves the flesh, the latter serves the spirit. Briefly the former satisfies our nature, the latter satisfies the grace of God. Therefore indulgences in themselves are not comparable to a work of mercy.

Likewise a work without indulgences is purer than one with indulgences. Indulgences are somewhat of an imperfection of the work, for the work receives its own reward, indeed much more than its own reward. Therefore people would act in a holier manner if they simply made a contribution for a good work and not for the sake of indulgences. It is not that indulgences in themselves are evil and harmful, but that the perverted abuse of indulgences is harmful, since people would not do such a work of mercy if no indulgences were granted for it. So in this type of work the indulgence becomes the end pursued-indeed a man who looks out for his own interests becomes that end. Man ought rather to do a work of mercy freely and for the sake of God. And he ought to accept only those indulgences which are given to him freely, and not as the result of a financial contribution that he has made. Thus a man should not buy indulgences and the church should not sell them. For both it must be a free gift or it will become a clear case of simony and a foul transaction. But who explains these things to the people when the indulgence sellers say, “Contribute freely, and I will give the indulgence freely?”

At the same time one must fear that by such a perversion of the order of indulgences and works a great idolatry may be perpetrated in the church. If the public is taught to contribute money in order to escape punishment (which I hope does not happen, even though many people probably understand it in this way), then it is evident that they are not contributing for God’s sake, and the fear of punishments, or the punishment itself, is their idol to which they sacrifice. But if such a thing should happen, then such an evil would arise in the church as at one time arose among the pagan Romans when they sacrificed to Febris and other little and harmful deities so that no harm could come to them. So we must be ever watchful for the sake of the people and scarcely entrust such doubtful and dangerous matters to the most learned scholars.

English translation from Luther’s Works, Vol. 31 (underlined emphasis is mine)