Some Reflections on the Debate Between
Monergism & Synergism in Church History
by Cushing Biggs Hassell

The leading apostolic church in Greece, to which Paul preached a year and six months, and to which he wrote two of his longest epistles, was the church of Corinth. That church, as appears from those epistles, was troubled with a spirit of rationalistic, self-confident freedom, both in thought and conduct —a spirit seeking after worldly more than after heavenly wisdom. The inspired Apostle severely rebuked that spirit, but it broke out in several Greek churches with redoubled energy after his departure. In the second and third centuries this Hellenistic spirit, in the Alexandrian and Antiochian schools, attempting to combine Pagan philosophy with Christianity, developed what is known as the Greek Anthropology based upon the trichotomy of Pythagoras, Plato, and, after them, of the mass of Greek and Roman philosophers. They taught that man is composed of three distinct elements: 1st, soma, corpus, or bode, the material part; 2d, psuche, anima, or soul, the animal part (including animal life and propensities); and 3d, pneuma, mens, or spirit, the rational part (including the will and the moral affections); {1} and that, of these three elements, only the first two, the body and the soul, were affected by the fall of Adam, the third element, the spirit or will, being as free and pure in all men, when born, as it was in Adam before his fall; and this universal free-will of the human race; can and must take the first step in regeneration, and then the grace of God will meet and help it, arid, if the will continues to co-operate with Divine grace, the soul will be finally saved. This synergistic, or co-operative, or Semi-Pelagian theory of regeneration and salvation, basing the decision of man’s eternal destiny upon his natural free-will, had, for its ablest advocate, Origen (born A. D. 185, died 254), who also taught that men are fallen angels, and that all men, and all the wicked angels, even Satan himself, will be finally saved. Though in point-blank contradiction not only to the general tenor but to the plain letter of the Scriptures, #Joh 1:13,3:3-8 Ro 9:16,11:6 Php 1:6,2:13 Ps 110:3 Jas 1:18 synergism has prevailed throughout the Greek Catholic “Church” for 1,700 years, and still thus prevails; and the result, or rather the concomitance, is that the Eastern or Greek “Churches” are declared by the latest and ablest historians to be “dead,” “decayed,” “petrified.” Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople, who believed the truth and attempted to teach it in the Greek communion, was five times deposed and finally strangled to death through the intrigues of the Jesuits, and his body thrown into the Bosphorus (A. D. 1638).

The monergistic or scriptural theory of regeneration teaches that there is but one efficient agent or actor in the renovation of the soul, namely, the Holy Spirit; that the will of fallen man is, like all his other faculties, utterly depraved, and has not the least ability or inclination to act holily until it has been renewed by Divine grace. This view was plainly set forth by Christ and His Apostles, as shown in the texts last quoted. It was first in the Latin Catholic "Church" clearly and powerfully maintained by Augustine (born 353, died 430), the ablest and most spiritual-minded of the so-called "Latin Fathers," who at first was an advocate of synergism, but was led by his deep experience and profound mind and intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures to abandon synergism for monergism. He maintained that the entire human race sinned and fell in Adam, according to the Scriptures, and became utterly depraved, both in will and in all their other powers, the unrenewed will being able to work only external righteousness or morality, but not at all internal righteousness or a spiritual conformity to the Divine law; that the activity of the human will, up to the pint of regeneration, is hostile to God, and cannot co-operate with the Divine agency in the regenerating act, so that the Holy Spirit must take the initiative in the change from sin to holiness, and effect this change by His sovereign and almighty power, as well as preserve the spiritual life thus imparted, in accordance with God’s eternal decree of electing love, to its perfection in heavenly glory, to the praise of the Divine mercy -while others, sinning of their own free will, of which they so much boast, and not caused to sin by God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and who is the Sun of righteousness and not of unrighteousness, are justly left to go on and perish in their sins and pride, to the praise of the Divine Justice. Monergism, or Paulinism, or Augustinianism (as this view has been called), was first adopted by the Latin or Roman Catholic "Church," in the Councils of Orange and Valence, A. D. 529, but, except in a few clear and able minds, such as Bede, Anselm and Bernard, was soon practically abandoned, and superseded by a return to the Greek Anthropology and Semi-Pelagianism or Cassianism; and human free-will, in the Roman communion, sank into the Cimmerian darkness of the Middle Ages -a form of Paganism, embracing the authority of the Apocrypha and tradition, monasticism, unqualified baptismal regeneration, transubstantiation, Purgatory, priestly absolution, the meritoriousness of good works, works of supererogation, justification by works as well as by faith, the union of "Church" and State, churchly infallibility and supremacy, withholding the Bible from the masses, burying Divine service in a dead language, penances and pilgrimages, the worship of the Virgin Mary and other dead saints and their images and relics, the horrors of confessional, nunnery, inquisition and crusade, and the sale of indulgences to sin. The order of the Jesuits, founded by Ignatius Loyola, A. D. 1534, has always been thoroughly Semi-Pelagian or Pelagian; and Jesuitism is synonymous with mediaeval Catholicism, hypocrisy, unscrupulousness, mental reservation and amphibology. The Jansenists arose in the Roman Catholic communion about a hundred years afterward, and were Augustinian in doctrine, and earnestly opposed the Jesuits; since 1870 they have been identified with the "Old Catholics," and now number about 60,000. The Roman Catholic Council of Trent (A. D. 1542-1563), in its numerous Canons and Decrees, while jesuitically professing, in its general preliminary statements, to maintain the doctrine of the total depravity of human nature in consequence of the fall, and the necessity of salvation by grace alone, is uniformly Semi-Pelagian in its subsequent detailed explanations, and authoritatively affirms the deadly mediaeval errors enumerated a little while ago. Pope Plus IX., in 1854, officially affirmed the immaculate or sinless conception of the Virgin Mary, who is the peculiar object of Roman Catholic worship, as “the Mother of God” and “Queen of Heaven;” in the Vatican palace the picture of Mary is placed above the picture of the Trinity. The same Pope, in 1864, in the “Syllabus of Errors,” declares that “Church” and State ought to be united, and that the “Church” has the right to use force and temporal power. The Vatican Council of 1870 declares the Pope the successor of Peter, the vicar of Christ, the head and governor of the whole church, the father and teacher of all Christians, the supreme judge of the faithful, and that, when he speaks ex cathedra (or officially), he is infallible in all matters pertaining to faith and morals, and his definitions are irreformable; and those presuming to contradict this declaration are to be anathema (that is, excommunicated and accursed). Semi-Pelagianism, or Pseudo-Christian Pharisaism, or carnal free will, thus reaches its culmination, in the Roman Catholic communion, in substituting the Pope for God. #2Th 2:3,4

The Protestant Reformation was born, apparently, of an intense conviction of the utter sinfulness of man and his radical need of Divine regeneration. As the only antidote to the theoretical Semi-Pelagianism and the practical Pelagianism and the innumerable unspeakable pharisaical abominations of Catholicism, Luther and Calvin, in the sixteenth century, proclaimed anew, in trumpet tones, to the priest-ridden millions of Europe, the great Pauline and Augustinian doctrine of sin and grace —the entire natural equality and total depravity of all men in the eyes of an Infinitely Holy God, the absolute dependence of fallen man upon the sovereign mercy of the Most High, justification by faith alone (solifidianism) —nothing like this old Bible doctrine, when believed, to cut up human pride and merit and pharisaism by the roots, to humble man in the dust before God, to stir him up to heartfelt gratitude for the Divine salvation, to cause him to serve God in spirit from an inward principle of filial love, and to comfort him in trial and despondency. The severest denunciations of the Spirit of God had been uttered by the mouths of His prophets in the Old Testament, against a proud, heartless ceremonialism and legalism, and by Christ and His Apostles, in the New Testament, against a hypocritical pharisaical formalism. Something of the same burning and purifying Spirit doubtless animated the Protestant Reformers, and, under Divine Providence, and in connection with other events, made that great movement the transition from mediaeval to modern history, and the national dawn of universal civil and religious liberty (always advocated by the Baptists); so that today, after the lapse of four centuries, the direct influence of Rome upon the laws and governments of the civilized world is almost totally annihilated for a season. But, instead of a defective reformation, merely, the utter apostasy of Rome, carnalizing and defiling the pure spiritual religion of Christ, and repudiating Him when it set over itself another head, and made its kingdom a worldly one, needed a thorough-going renovation. Rome had become plainly-developed ANTI-CHRIST, and should not have been acknowledged in any sense as a church of Christ. Her subjection to tradition and human authority is a repudiation of Scripture and Divine authority. Choosing to obey man rather than God, she can in no respect be considered a church of Christ, and any derivation or succession from her is a prima facie evidence of the radical unscripturalness of any religious organization. The Protestant Reformers, though real heroes of some great doctrinal truths, were not endowed with sufficient grace or penetration or boldness to recognize this basal truth, and therefore conceded to Rome the attributes of a church of Christ, and retained many of her fatal, unscriptural doctrinal errors and practices —her traditionalism (an unauthorized departure from the written word of God, to which departure there can be no logical limit), her infant baptism, her national membership, her alliance with the State and consequent corruption and exercise of persecution for the purpose of enforcing religious uniformity, her hierarchism, her sacramentalism (the sealing and saving power of ordinances), her substitution of forms for personal piety, and of the authority of the “church” for the authority of the Bible. All these features are perfectly consistent and congenial with papal synergism, Semi-Pelagianism, pharisaism, but totally irreconcilable with the great monergistic, Pauline, Christian doctrine of Divine predestination and election, justification by faith alone, salvation by grace alone. The military followers of the Protestant princes wore embroidered on their right sleeves these letters, V. D. M. I. Ae (standing for Verbum Dei Manet Aeternum, The Word of the Lord endureth forever), to which pure and noble motto it is deeply to be regretted that they did not yield complete fealty.

Taken Form PrimitiveBaptist.org