He resented the charge ofsynergism which came from his opponents, and renounced it as strongly as any Missourian could.
Synergism in the doctrine of conversion naturally leads to synergistic teaching on predestination.
Melanchthon had admitted a certain co-operation orsynergism of a remnant of freewill in conversion, and more exactly defined this in the edition of the Loci of A.
One of those invited to take part in the work, Victorin Strigel, professor at Jena, was made to suffer for the sympathy which he evinced for synergism by enduring close and severe imprisonment.
Augustine was the first to state with the utmost consistency the doctrine of the divine monergism; while Pelagius carried out the synergism of the earlier fathers until it became scarcely less than human monergism.
In Soteriology it remained faithful to its traditional synergism (comp.
In its doctrine of predestination as well as of free will, therefore, the Formula of Concord is not a compromise between synergism and monergism, but signifies a victory of Luther over the later Melanchthon.
The matter was mentioned at Worms, but Melanchthon is reported to have satisfied Brenz and others by declaring that in the passages of his Loci suspected of synergism he meant "the regenerated will.
For these additions contain the Erasmian definition of free will (that it is the faculty of applying oneself to grace), on account of which Melanchthon was charged with synergism by the Flacians.
Charging Strigel with ambiguity, Flacius replied: "You speak of one kind of synergism and we of another.
The Lutheran system, then, to be consistent, must rectify itself, and develop either from Article II in the direction of Augustinianism and Calvinism, or from Article XI in the direction of synergism and Arminianism.
Genuine Lutheranism would have been strangled if synergism had emerged victorious from this great controversy of grace versus free will.
Accordingly, his synergism also could not differ essentially from Melanchthon's.
Indeed, one of the most exclusive formulations against every possible kind of subtile synergism is found in Article XI when it teaches that the reason why some are converted and saved while others are lost, must not be sought in man, i.
Says Planck: "Whatever may have moved Pfeffinger to do so, he could not (even if Flacius himself had said it for him) have confessed synergism more clearly and more definitely than he did spontaneously and unasked in this treatise.
But always, there is this synergism of Willy's; a compulsion to do some crazy thing, or to build some silly gadget, even if he has to steal to do it.
I had observed and recorded that particular synergism and had every confidence in the results.
