How much different are Orthodox, Catholics, Calvinists, and Arminians on the issue of monergism versus synergism? The thesis of this video is that historic Christianity, including traditional Calvinism, has affirmed that man works with God to will what is right and likewise man does evil by God’s permissive will. God gives grace to all, but His grace accomplishes different things for different people. Likewise, God hands the wicked over to punishment without compelling them to evil.
Orthodox Christian Theology 
7:51 The quote from Luther with the injured horse comes from “On the Bondage of the Will”, and shortly after Luther gives that example, he’s talking about what you just said “main has free will, but apart from the Grace of God he will do evil”, he is comparing that with saying that:
It’s like saying a rock has free will to raise and fall, but apart from human will, it can only fall.
That description is not the view of Calvinism. Lutheranism teaches man has absolutely no free will but is in total bondage to sin. Calvinism gets the same view from Lutheranism. Calvinist Gordon H. Clark teaches the traditional Calvinist view. Man has no free will, therefore God makes people sin. Every evil done by man is God’s predestined will, since everything is predestined by God. The responsibility for all sin lies with God alone, since God is Absolutely Sovereign, and nothing takes God by surprise, as God predestines everything that happens to happen. This is the teaching of John Calvin in Institutes of the Christian Religion and it is the teaching of Calvinist Gordon H. Clark in his works published by the Trinity Foundation of Unicoi, Tennessee.
You wuould have to quote them because it sounds like you are accusing them of saying things, but I don’t know if their words line up.
I am not accusing anyone of anything. I am stating what I have read in Calvin and Clark. They do hold that God makes everything happen. That logically necessitates their view that God makes evil and sin happen. They distinguish between nonsensical jargon like infralapsarian superlapsarian and sublapsarian and what not, I don’t know or care to parse out the distinctions it doesn’t matter. All Calvinism is based on predestination, and some Calvinists are just more logically consistent with the TULIP 5 points of Calvinism. Their words don’t line up with Scripture. The KJV has a Calv9inist view, “I create evil”, and Calvinism believes literally that. The MT Masoretic text is faultily mistranslated by the Puritan Calvinists of the KJV, and should follow the Septuagint “I make trouble:, “troublesome things”. I suggest a closer reading of Calvin’s Institutes and Clark’s works at the Trinity Foundation, Unicoi, TN, before you state with no basis that I am accusing people. The facts show that Calvinism is an error. I suggest Orthodox Christian Lawrence Renault’s excellent book “TULIP Reconsidered” and also Baptist Lawrence M. Vance’s “The Other Side of Calvinism”. There are also other anti-Calvinist books.
Craig is right, that may be the reformed view, but is not the Lutheran view. Craig’s example with the “horse” comes directly from “On the Bondage of the Will”, Luther states that God, being eternal and immutable good, cannot do evil. Man corrupted his very own nature trough original sin and now even know God continues to be good, man can only see him and his actions as evil, because of his nature, still God works trough evil man to accomplish his will, but his not responsible for it. Like a carpenter working with bad lumber.
I think the best Eastern Orthodox Christian reply to Calvinism and TULIP, the 5 points of Calvinism, is Alexander Renault’s book, “Rethinking TULIP” in which Mr. Renault looks at the Patristic Church Fathers evidence for free will against predestinarian Calvinism.
I think God does not choose to work through evil men. He only work through penitent sinner, not evil men who are impenitent. Sinners who repent are not considered evil men but righteous by faith and repentance.
Almost all human goods are predicated on overcoming evil. There is no courage without danger, no mercy without trespass, no healing without sickness. We feed the hungry, house the homeless, visit the prisoner, clothe the naked, and so on.
Of course God ordains evil. Is there really any question? We can think of it as ordaining good under the guise of evil. What Joseph’s brothers intended for evil, God intended for good.
If, as Craig mentioned, God controls all things, then, since evil things come to pass, God must in some sense bring them about, if only by permitting them.
John Piper in no way ascribes evil to God. That’s utter nonsense. God is never the direct agent, the initiator, so to speak, of evil. Evil doers, acting according to their wicked natures, do their dirty deeds (done dirt cheep). And they, and they alone, are responsible for their actions. For they alone intend them for evil.
I don’t know the ins and outs of EO synergism. I know that the Roman take on things strikes me as incoherent. Though they swear allegiance to synergism, they will tend to admit that both cooperative grace and our cooperation with that grace can be ascribed to the actions of God. As the Second Council of Orange puts it:
“[I]f anyone makes the assistance of grace depend on the humility or obedience of man and does not agree that it is a gift of grace itself that we are obedient and humble, he contradicts the Apostle who says, “What have you that you did not receive?” (1 Cor. 4:7), and, ‘But by the grace of God I am what I am’ (1 Cor. 15:10).”
But, of course, that’s admitting to monergism, isn’t it? There is but one primary actor. Everything that WE do is derivative, contingent, secondary.
Augustine and Aquinas are clearly monergistic in this way. The Council of Trent is, as well. It lists five causes of justification, and all five are ascribed to God. We don’t enter into the formula in any direct sense.
I think the incoherent view is actually the biblical one. Paul says “I am doing these things, but it is God doing them”, which is incoherent in itself.
Typically though, this is called Compatibilism.
Cale–
Any system which holds the two in tension–divine sovereignty and creaturely freedom–can be categorized as compatibilistic. Calvinism and Thomism, the two clearest examples. But compatibilism is not synergistic in my view.
Of course, it appears that the very terms, monergism and synergism, are murky at best. No two sides seem to mean the exact same things by them. Much needs clarification (e.g., the relationship between primary and secondary causality and the presence of fallible as opposed to infallible grace).