The Divine Symphony
It is a bitter irony that the people who invented the term “monergism” cluelessly aimed it at God.
They invented the term to push their foolishness, that “regeneration” is something that happens apart from and prior to salvation. The point of monergism’s prefix is meant to emphasize the Holy Spirit acted alone in regenerating us. We had nothing to do with it.
Such people assert the gospel cannot be effective until an ethereal work is first performed upon a person, enabling them to hear it. The preaching of the gospel, according to them, is anticlimactic. The heavy lifting was done earlier and in secret. Further, we had no say in the matter.
I will fully refute that sophistry in another article, because my main concern today is with that word, monergism. But I do concede this point:
The same preparatory work that was performed on dead Lazarus prior to Jesus Christ calling him out of death and the grave must be worked on each lost person before they can be called out of spiritual death and be born again. And here is the comprehensive list of what was done to dead Lazarus to enable him to hear Christ:
1. Nothing.
Nothing was done to dead Lazarus before Jesus called him out of death and the grave. Jesus meant it when He had earlier declared “the hour has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live” (Jn 5:25). He demonstrated it with Lazarus.
Now, back to the term ‘monergism’. Notice its prefix, “mon”, as in mono; one. God alone is acting in salvation, they say. But this is ridiculous on several levels. In honor of that prefix, let’s consider one of those levels.
God is “triune” – Three in One. We Christians believe in the Trinity because we see it clearly presented in God’s revelation about Himself found in scripture. Our God has never done anything alone.
Synergism, not monergism, is the first self-revelation God presents to us, declared in the first verse of the bible. God refers to Himself as “Elohim”. That “im” ending is like our ‘s’, it makes a word plural. But the Hebrew “im” is a little more precise than our ‘s’, because it means “more than two”. You see, Hebrew has another suffix, “aim” (rhymes with “mime”) that means two.
Yet this plural noun, Elohim, declared at the opening of scripture, is accompanied there by singular verbs. The Many act as One.
John elaborates on the opening of the bible at the opening of his epistle. He declares the Word is with God and is God. He tells us all that is done in creation is done “through” Him. In fact, nothing was created apart from Him.
So, Genesis One is a Creation Concert. That concert was performed sublimely by three Instruments in perfect harmony. Our reality was created synergistically, not monergistically. The perfect Synergism of the Triune God is the throbbing heart of reality. Synergism is the lifeblood of creation, coursing through its veins.
And that opening concert was played for the express purpose that there would one day be a greater symphony, one in which creation plays flawlessly along with the three original, primary Instruments.
Except we soon discover in scripture that there is a discordant note crassly blaring out against the unified sound desired by God. Satan, that covering cherub who held musical instruments at his creation (Ezek 28:13), was the first “noisy gong and clanging symbol” (1 Cor 13:1). At his fall, he set out to drown out the symphony of God and violate its essential cohesion, by sowing rebellion among its players.
It turns out, Satan was the first Monergist. And he is an evangelist of it. Misery loves company, as they say. So, we are introduced to him in Genesis Three where he highly recommends monergism to Adam and Eve. That is the point of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: Eat of it and you will become an independent agent, no longer dependent on God. You can have your own storehouse of wisdom and employ it for your own selfish interests.
Adam and Eve abandoned loving synergy with God for the self-love of monergism. We have all been born into monergism ever since. But God is calling us back to synergism with Him, through His Son. During his time on earth, Jesus Christ perfectly modeled loving, synergistic union with the Father. And His dying prayer to the Father was that we would be one with them (Jn 17:21-23), flowing with Him in concert with the Father.
God through His prophet Jeremiah summarizes the fall of creatures, angel and man, as an abandonment of the Divine Symphony:
“For My people have done two evils: They have forsaken Me, the Fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns - broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer 2:13).
Even if those cisterns could hold water, they would have been an affront to God. Desiring independence from the One Stream is the fatal mistake. It is a rejection of the very purpose for our existence. That way leaves us dead while we live and leads us to utter death at the end.
But the good news is Jesus is the Way back to synergism with God. We yield to Him in His salvation call (salvation is NOT monergistic! It is not foisted on us, apart from our will) and then we spend a lifetime learning to yield to Him in everything. He presents us with multiple opportunities to practice this loving, deferential yielding to Him until it becomes muscle memory.
Be sure of this, the Triune God will most certainly have His heart’s desire, the Divine Symphony. In that day, each of the invited, trained, and transformed instruments will flow in concert, not only with each other, but with the Three In One who paid such a great price to put on the Divine Symphony. Together, as a cohesive whole, we will play the glorious music He has in mind.
No monergistic musicians will be present in that day. No selfish solos will be played.
But that day has not arrived yet. For now, we must, by faith, choose that unseen future reality. God’s vision and goal must become our vision and goal. To paraphrase Hebrews 11, we must aspire to a better musical, that is, a heavenly one.
Today and every day, we must reject selfish monergism and embrace godly synergism. We must deny the son of perdition and embrace the Son of His Love. Thankfully, that Son is in us by His Spirit. Immanuel has promised to never leave us or forsake us, precisely so we won’t be alone.
Instead, we are yoked with Him Who knows the way we must go, because He is the Way by which we must go.