12.

 Based on the brief and light discussion of the matter in the textbook, give your understanding of the difference between the Orthodox and the Western understanding of grace and free will.

            Orthodoxy believes that man has his own part to play if he is to achieve full fellowship with God. Although man can do nothing toward this end without his human will being anticipated and upheld by God's grace, and although the work that God does is of immeasurably greater importance than the work done by man, man nevertheless must make his own contribution to the common work. Man's work toward fellowship with God is the surrender of His will and the conformity to divine will, inasmuch as man's will (rather than his intellect or feeling) is the main human means of union with God. “Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldst not.... Lo, I come to do Thy will, 0 God” (Heb 10:5, 9). A person's union with God requires the cooperation of two unequal, but equally necessary forces: divine grace and human will.

            The textbook does not deal at great length on the Western controversies concerning grace and predestination. However, it does state that the West, since the time of Augustine and the Pelagian heresy, has seen the matter of grace and free will in different terms, and it states that those brought up in the Augustinian tradition (particularly Calvinists) have viewed the Orthodox idea of synergy with suspicion since they feel it ascribes too much to man's free will, and too little to God.