Is this thread still progressing?
Your question contains vagueness. “Salvation” is a general term that in simple terms is comprised of regeneration, sanctification, and glorification. Folk in your (and Ransoms) camp generally agree that humans don’t “work with” God in those aspects of salvation relating to regeneration and glorification, but there is varying degrees of hair-splitting on the mode of synergy in sanctification. Many monergistic theologians do fall into the synergistic form of sanctification camp however.Do we work with God in our salvation?
Which part of our salvation? That's the very issue at hand, isn't it?Do we work with God in our salvation?
Yes. Sanctification of course.Which part of our salvation? That's the very issue at hand, isn't it?
Yes. Sanctification of course.
Salvation is of the Lord. In which way do you work with God to save you?OK, so now answer my question. Do we agree that we are not passive in our sanctification, as we are passive in our regeneration?
Salvation is of the Lord. In which way do you work with God to save you?
You mean sanctify you. When you switch terminology back and forth like this, it makes you look dishonest.
And you keep dodging my question. Do we agree that we are not passive in our sanctification, as we are passive in our regeneration?
Note how I used specific words. Go and do thou likewise.
Not trying to sound too condescending, but Foghorn would do well to take your post deeply into consideration. The article I linked by reformed authors pretty much says the same thing, just with a bunch of 2-dollar words.
If I was all alone in my position, I would seriously evaluate my stand. I would also closely evaluate the company I was keeping.Wow, I guess I'm alone in believing Sanctification is monergistic.
I look at it from this perspective. Prior to our salvation, we are dead in trespasses and sins. Therefore to do anything else other than to "Stink," God must bring forth his work and grant us repentance and faith in order to believe. Faith cometh by hearing, hearing by the word of God, Etc. You are born again by incorruptible seed, the Word of God through the foolishness of preaching by the POWER OF GOD!Well, you would be doing them of your own free will, because you desire to. The more you are sanctified, mortify the flesh, and become more Christlike, the more your desire is to do good.
IMO, if you believe you must do good, working with God, for sanctification and conforming yourself to his image, then all of salvation is not of God, you play a small part.
I think he meant alone here. But he's not.If I was all alone in my position, I would seriously evaluate my stand. I would also closely evaluate the company I was keeping.
There's no question our conversion felt synergistic, but it wasn't in truth.Our salvation is therefore synergistic in this sense but monergistic in that God performs it and we can take no glory or credit of our selves.
The culmination of our sanctification will be the Judgment Seat of Christ but even then we will ultimately cast our crowns at Jesus feet understanding that without him, we could truly do nothing!
Have you thought this over?Sure.
But if the Bible issues a particular command for the people of God, and you refuse to do it, will the Holy Spirit do it for you?
I asked the question. Have you thought it over?Have you thought this over?
Haha.I asked the question. Have you thought it over?
I think I made a typo in this line you are responding to. What I meant to say is:There's no question our conversion felt synergistic, but it wasn't in truth.
I think Sproul agrees with Calvin that it is Monergistic. But I could be wrong.
The Institutes Book 3 Chapter 4 9-11.
(Those who are regenerated, justified by faith alone, 9-11)
9. Also, True believers do no good works of themselves
Now let's examine what righteousness is possessed by those whom we have placed in the fourth class. We confess that while through the intersession of Christ's righteousness, God reconciles us to Himself, and by free remission of sins accounts us righteous, his beneficence is at the same time joined with such a mercy that through his Holy Spirit he dwells in us and by his power the lusts of our flesh are each day more and more mortified; we are indeed sanctified, that is, consecrated to the Lord in true purity of life, with our hearts formed to obedience to the law. The end is that our special will may be to serve his will and by every means to advance his glory alone.
But even while by the leading of the Holy Spirit we walk in the ways of the Lord, to keep us from forgetting ourselves and becoming puffed up, traces of our imperfection remain to give us occasion for humility. Scripture says: There is no righteous man, no man who will do good and not sin [Eccl. 7:21, Vg.; cf 1 kings 8:46]. What sort of righteousness will they obtain, then, from their works? First, I say that the best work that can be brought forward from them is still always spotted and corrupted with some impurity of the flesh, and has, so to speak, some dregs mixed with it. Let a holy servant of God, I say, choose from the whole course of his life what of an especially noteworthy character he thinks he has done. Let him well turn over in his mind its several parts. Undoubtedly he will somewhere perceive that it savors of rottenness of the flesh since our eagerness for well-doing is never what it ought to be but our great weakness slows down our running in the race. Although we see that the stains that bespatter the works of the saints are plainly visible, though we admit that they are only the slightest spots, they will not offend God's
You are correct. R.C. Sproul is one of my favorite theologians. Our farm was only a few miles from RC's place in Ligonier, Paeyes, before which not even the stars are pure [Job 25:5]?
We have not a single work going forth from the saints that if it be judged in itself deserves not shame as its just reward.