From Greek synergos (working together, fellow-worker); the doctrine that salvation — specifically the decisive turning-point of regeneration and conversion — is a cooperation between divine grace and the human will, God and man working together, with the human will contributing a necessary and decisive cooperation. Synergism is opposed to monergism (from monos, alone, + ergon, work; the doctrine that regeneration is the work of God alone). The synergist holds that in the decisive moment of salvation, divine grace and the human will cooperate: God offers His grace, and the human will, enabled (in the Arminian system) by prevenient grace, must cooperate with (not resist) that grace for salvation to result; the human will's cooperation is the decisive factor that distinguishes the saved from the lost (the saved being those who cooperated, the lost being those who resisted the same grace). Synergism is characteristic of Arminian soteriology (the human will, enabled by prevenient grace, cooperates with or resists saving grace) and semi-Pelagian soteriology (the human will initiates or contributes to the turning to God). The Reformed monergist position rejects synergism in the matter of regeneration: regeneration is the sovereign, monergistic work of God alone, in which the dead sinner is passive (he does not cooperate in his own new birth, any more than a corpse cooperates in its own resurrection or Lazarus cooperated in being raised); the Spirit sovereignly regenerates the elect, raising the dead sinner to life and infallibly producing faith and repentance. (The Reformed tradition affirms a kind of cooperation in sanctification — the regenerate believer actively cooperates with the Spirit's sanctifying work — but not in regeneration, the initial new birth, which is monergistic.) The patriarchal-Reformed reader holds the substantive monergist doctrine against synergism: regeneration is the work of God alone; the dead sinner does not cooperate in his own new birth; salvation is not a cooperation of divine grace and human will but the sovereign work of God who raises the dead, gives the new heart, and infallibly brings the elect to faith. The decisive factor in salvation is God's sovereign grace, not the human will's cooperation; salvation is monergistic, to the praise of the glory of God's grace.