Synergy (Cooperation)

“Human efforts alone achieve nothing in the Kingdom of God. Human efforts under the power of God the Holy Spirit yield everything God wills…salvation is synergistic, depending on cooperation between man and God…Human persons must rely on God’s grace for salvation and its benefits. “Synergy” is the human “cooperation” with that grace; It is our necessary response to divine benevolence.” (Orthodox Study Bible, Zechariah 4:6, Dynamis 12/7/2014, Fr. Basil)

“Human persons must rely on God’s grace for salvation and its benefits. “Synergy” is the human “cooperation” with that grace; It is our necessary response to divine benevolence. In its essence, sloth is a disease of unresponsiveness to the work of the Spirit. In this view, the vice of sloth has varying degrees of severity. The sluggard’s condition depends on the ability of the person to respond in synergy to God’s grace. In the end, those who slumber spiritually are almost totally unresponsive to the work of God. In that case, God must provide in large measure the responsiveness that the slothful lacks. In many cases, God does so through the support of the Church, its sacraments and teaching, and the fellowship, care, and support of its members.” (Fr. Basil)

“There is, however, a true “synergy,” in our life with God. In English, the word would be “co-operation.” However, in that co-operation, we are junior partners of the most extreme sort. What we contribute to reality, when done rightly, is always respectful to that which is already given to us. Life is only rightly lived when it is “traditioned.” Tradition means to “hand down.” A traditioned existence is one in which all things come first as gifts. That is the true nature of life – we do not create it – we receive it.” (Father Stephen Freeman)

“…we must cooperate with God for our salvation. God has done and continues to do His part: He created us, He saved us, He gives us grace in countless ways. But we must respond to His offer of salvation and continue to respond to that grace throughout our lives. God will never compel us to accept Him, to love Him, or to be in a relationship with Him. God does not force Himself on us…There is, I think, an abiding temptation towards Pelagianism (the belief that we can will our own salvation)…the teaching of “synergy” often runs in that direction. We indeed “cooperate” with God in our salvation (“cooperate” is the Latinized equivalent of “synergy”). But our cooperation is…the cry for help from the lips of the helpless. This is not nothing – it is synergistic. But it is not the imagined synergy that some profess. We are saved by our weakness, not by our excellence.” (Dr. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou,  Father Stephen Freeman) 

“A Christian should live according to the principle, which is perfectly formulated in the words of the Divine Liturgy: “Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee”—that is, to offer your talents to the Creator, ideally—to devote your whole life, which in this case is a creative process of synergy between man and God. The Lord gave man talents to cultivate and multiply, because, as the Gospel says, unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required (Lk. 12:48). In some cases, many talents become a spiritual temptation…sometimes these spiritual and material riches play a cruel joke on us, because we often relax and begin to think that everything given to us by God is something we can take for granted. We know from history that sometimes this leads to very sad consequences.” (Bishop Euthymius Moiseyev)

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