SYNERGISM, Sylvester Hassell In the second and third centuries this Hellenistic spirit, in the Alexandrian and Antiochian schools, attempting to combine Pagan philosophy with Christianity, developed what is known as the Greek Anthropology based upon the trichotomy of Pythagoras, Plato, and, and after them, of the mass of Greek and Roman philosophers. They taught that man is
composed of three distinct elements: 1st, some, corpus, or body, the material part; 2d, psyche, anima, or soul, the animal part (including animal life and propensities); and 3rd, pneuma, mens, or spirit, the rational part (including the will and the moral affections), and that, of these three elements, only the first two, the body and the soul, were affected by the fall of Adam, the third element, the spirit or will, being as free and pure in all men, when born, as it was in Adam before his fall; and this universal free-will of the human race can and must take the first step in regeneration, and then the grace of God will meet and help it, and, if the will continues to co-operate with Divine grace, the soul will be finally saved. This synergistic, or co-operative, or Semi-Pelagian theory of regeneration and salvation, basing the decision of man’s eternal destiny upon his natural free-will, had, for its ablest advocate Origen (born A.D. 185, died 254), who also taught that men are fallen angels, and that all men, and all the wicked angels, even Satan himself, will be finally saved. Though in point-blank contradiction not only to the general tenor, but to the plain letter of the Scriptures (John 1:13; 3:3-8; Rom. 9:16; 1:6; Phil. 1:6; 2:13; Psa. 110:3; James 1:18), synergism has prevailed throughout the Greek Catholic Church for 1,700 years, and still thus prevails; and the result, or rather the concomitance, is that the Eastern or Greek Churches are declared by the latest and ablest historians to be “dead,” “decayed,” “petrified.” Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople, who believed the truth and attempted to teach it in the Greek communion, was five times deposed and finally strangled to death through the intrigues of the Jesuits, and his body thrown into the Bosphorus (A.D. 1638).” (Hassell)
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