This thread asks a very practical question: can a person turn to God by their own power?
⭐ Before reading, know two things.
First: this thread is not one controversy but the same controversy replayed in three rounds — the Pelagian controversy of the 5th century (Augustine against Pelagius), the Reformation of the 16th century (Luther against Erasmus), and the Arminian controversy of the 17th and 18th centuries (Dort against the Remonstrants, Edwards against Wesley). In each round the people on both sides changed, and so did the denominations, but the question did not change by a single word. ⚠ And the camps were never divided along denominational lines — on the Catholic side Aquinas was a monergist and Erasmus a synergist; on the Protestant side Luther and Calvin were monergists, while Luther's right-hand man Melanchthon was a synergist.
Second: through sixteen hundred years of controversy, much of the time the two sides were using the same word for different things. When Augustine spoke of free will he meant doing what one wants to do (which is compatible with predestination); the Pelagian side meant the ability to choose otherwise (which is not compatible with predestination). Olson calls this a basic fork in the theological road — almost all Christians believe in free will, only not in the same sense.
⚠ Finally: this thread has no verdict. Thread 1 has Nicaea and thread 2 has Chalcedon; this one has nothing of the kind. Twice — at Orange in 529 and in the Formula of Concord of 1577 — the church came to the same position and stopped there, but neither ended the controversy; the verdict of Dort in 1619 produced division, not unity. Writing of the 18th century, Olson observes that this division still exists today among the evangelicals of British and American Protestantism. We do not give it a verdict either.
⭐ Both sides were fighting for salvation, in opposite directions — exactly the same structure as the Arian controversy on thread 1.
The side that held to monergism: Augustine said that if a person could be made righteous by nature and free will, then “Christ died in vain”; Luther said that only monergism can keep salvation a pure gift; Edwards said that a choice with no prior cause is not freedom at all, but chance.
The side that held to synergism: Pelagius said that if people are convinced they cannot control themselves unless God gives grace, then living as they please can hardly be blamed; Erasmus said that the root of the church's disorder was moral collapse; Wesley said that unconditional election and double predestination make it hard to tell God from the devil.
⭐ The first side was guarding the necessity of the cross and the glory of God; the second, human responsibility for one's own actions and the love of God. Thirteen hundred years later, Wesley and Whitefield — two friends who had led the Great Awakening together — parted ways over this; yet neither stopped preaching the gospel, and neither stopped loving the other. That may be the lesson this thread leaves for today.