Grace and Free Will: Is Orthodox Salvation Works-Based?

Protestant Christians who visit an Orthodox church often come away uneasy. They hear about fasting, confession, ascetic struggle and "working out" salvation, and the word synergy, which sounds as if God does part of the work and we do the rest. To someone formed by the Reformation, that can sound like salvation by works, or like the old error the West called semi-Pelagianism.

The question is old. This article reads the main documents, states the Protestant and Catholic positions in their own words, and asks what the Orthodox Church teaches and where its own sources are less tidy than its defenders admit.

In brief

Orthodox Christianity teaches that salvation is God's gift from beginning to end and that human beings, healed and moved by grace, freely cooperate with it. Its word for this, synergy, comes from Paul's "fellow workers" (1 Corinthians 3:9). The Orthodox Church condemned Pelagianism at the Council of Ephesus in 431, and in 1672 a synod at Jerusalem rejected Calvinist predestination, teaching that grace goes before every saving act but is not irresistible. Protestants have long suspected semi-Pelagianism, and the suspicion has real roots: St John Cassian, venerated as a saint in the East, wrote that a good will sometimes comes first and grace follows, and St John Chrysostom wrote something similar. Catholics settled the question differently, at the regional Council of Orange in 529 and at Trent in 1547. Orthodoxy has a firm dogma (grace is necessary for every good, and freedom is real) and a looser body of patristic opinion about which comes "first", which modern Orthodox statements resolve in favor of grace.

Thesis: Orthodox salvation is not works-based, because Orthodoxy teaches that grace initiates, sustains and completes salvation, but the tradition does not mean by "grace alone" what the Reformers meant, and some of its own Fathers spoke loosely enough that the Protestant concern is understandable.

What "synergy" means

The word comes from the New Testament. Paul calls himself and Apollos God's "fellow workers," and he tells the Philippians to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:12-13).¹ The same Paul writes that "by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast," and in the next breath that we were "created in Christ Jesus for good works" (Ephesians 2:8-10). Orthodox theology reads these together.

Kallistos Ware puts it simply: "God wanted a son, not a slave." To describe how grace and freedom relate, "Orthodoxy uses the term cooperation or synergy." Ware is careful to add that "what God does is of immeasurably greater importance than what man does," and that "God's gifts are always free gifts, and man can never have any claims upon his Maker."² St Cyril of Jerusalem said the same to catechumens in the fourth century: "it is God's to grant grace, but yours to receive and guard it."³

Synergy, then, is not a fifty-fifty partnership: God acts first and most, and the person is not reduced to a stone. Orthodox writers describe salvation as healing and union with God (theosis); see What Is Theosis?

The primary historical evidence

The Pelagian crisis and the East

Pelagius and his follower Celestius were accused of teaching that human beings can obey God without inward grace. The West condemned them at Carthage in 418. The East joined in: the Council of Ephesus (431), the Third Ecumenical Council, ruled that any cleric who should "maintain the doctrines of Nestorius or Celestius" was to be deposed.⁴ {{very-strong: The Orthodox Church therefore rejects Pelagianism at the level of an ecumenical council.}} The later dispute was among people who all rejected Pelagius but disagreed about Augustine's later teaching.

John Cassian's Thirteenth Conference

St John Cassian (c. 360-435) learned monastic life in Palestine and Egypt, was ordained deacon by St John Chrysostom, and founded monasteries at Marseilles. The Orthodox Church in America's calendar of saints commemorates him on 29 February.⁵ In his Thirteenth Conference, put in the mouth of Abba Chaeremon, he insisted that "the exertions of the worker can do nothing without God's aid," and that "the Divine protection then is inseparably present with us."⁶

Yet Cassian refused to make grace the beginning in every case. He asked: if grace always comes first, "what about the faith of Zaccheus, or what are we to say of the goodness of the thief on the cross, who by their own desires brought violence to bear on the kingdom of heaven"? His next chapter is titled "That a good will should not always be attributed to grace, nor always to man himself." God, he wrote, strengthens "that which He Himself implanted or which He sees to have arisen from our own efforts."⁷ He ended with a confession of mystery: "how God works all things in us and yet everything can be ascribed to free will, cannot be fully grasped by the mind and reason of man." Yet "the main share in our salvation is to be ascribed not to the merit of our own works but to heavenly grace."⁸

Cassian was not alone. St John Chrysostom, commenting on John 1:38, said "that God does not prevent our wills by His gifts, but that when we begin, when we provide the being willing, then He gives us many opportunities of salvation." ("Prevent" here has its old sense of "go before.")⁹ Elsewhere, in a homily on Genesis, he says that "we can do no good thing at all, except we are aided by help from above."¹⁰ The nineteenth-century English editors who collected these passages concluded that he did not exclude divine help at the beginning of good actions.

Prosper's reply and the birth of a label

Prosper of Aquitaine, a lay disciple of Augustine, saw Cassian's view as a betrayal of grace. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, he attacked Cassian himself around 433 in his treatise On the Grace of God and Free Will, against the Collator.¹¹ The article's author, Joseph Pohle, treats Cassian as "the soul and head" of the movement he calls Semipelagianism, but he reports that the name "Semipelagianism" was "unknown both in Christian antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages," and that "the word was coined between 1590 and 1600 in connexion with Molina's doctrine of grace."¹²

Augustine Casiday's study Tradition and Theology in St John Cassian (Oxford, 2007) argues that Cassian was no Pelagian of any kind; a reviewer summarizes his case that Prosper "consistently misrepresents Cassian's position on the nature of grace and free will." Casiday reads Conference 13 as aimed less at Augustine than at popular predestinarian ideas circulating in Gaul, with Cassian "preoccupied with a different, ascetic task: cultivating a kind of humility inconsistent with Pelagian preaching."¹³ Still, Cassian's words about Zacchaeus and the thief remain on the page.

Maximus the Confessor and the gnomic will

The Byzantine contribution came by a different road. In the seventh-century debate over whether Christ had one will or two, St Maximus the Confessor distinguished our natural will, the God-given power to desire the good, from the gnomic or deliberative will. Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil summarize his view: "All human beings since the Fall have a 'gnomic' or deliberative will, because they are uncertain in their attempt to follow the will of God, since they cannot correctly identify the good, having been blinded by sin." Christ had a full human will but no hesitating, deliberative one; paraphrasing Maximus, they write that the Fathers "openly confessed two natural, but not gnomic, wills in Christ, lest they proclaim him double-minded."¹⁴

This changes what "freedom" means. On this reading, wavering between options is a symptom of our wounded condition, not the summit of human dignity; salvation heals the will so that, united with God, it moves toward the good as Christ's human will did. Grace does not compete with freedom; it restores it. The Sixth Ecumenical Council (680-681) made the two wills of Christ a dogma (see our article on St Maximus the Confessor).

The Synod of Jerusalem (1672) against Calvinism

In 1629 a Confession appeared in Latin under the name of Cyril Lucaris, Patriarch of Constantinople, teaching that God predestined the elect "without having in any wise regard to their works, and having, forsooth, no actuating cause for this election, except His good pleasure."¹⁵ Whether Lucaris wrote it has been disputed: the synods of Jassy and Jerusalem treated it as a Calvinist forgery, while the Protestant historian Philip Schaff accepted it as his.¹⁶ In March 1672 a synod at Jerusalem under Patriarch Dositheus answered it point by point.

Decree 3 of the Confession of Dositheus rejects predestination "without cause." God predestines and condemns, "but since He foreknew the one would make a right use of their free-will, and the other a wrong." It teaches a "preventing" (prevenient) grace given "to all," which "is of use only to the willing, not to the unwilling," and it insists that God "taketh not away the power to will—to will to obey, or not obey him."¹⁷ Decree 14 says that fallen human beings keep free will and can "by nature" choose "moral good," but that without grace a person "is not able of himself to do any work worthy of a Christian life, although he hath it in his own power to will, or not to will, to co-operate with grace."¹⁸ {{strong: The 1672 synod rejected unconditional election and irresistible grace in explicit terms.}}

The Catholic view: Orange and Trent

The West resolved the dispute at the Second Council of Orange, a synod of fourteen bishops under St Caesarius of Arles, held on 3 July 529 and later approved by Pope Boniface II (the Catholic Encyclopedia's two articles give 530 and 25 January 531).¹⁹ Its fifth canon condemns anyone who says that "not only the increase of faith but also its beginning and the very desire for faith" come from nature rather than grace. Its conclusion answers Cassian's examples: the faith "of the thief whom the Lord called to his home in paradise ... and of Zacchaeus ... was not a natural endowment but a gift of God's kindness." It states that "in every good work it is not we who take the initiative and are then assisted through the mercy of God," and it also anathematizes anyone who believes that people are "foreordained to evil by the power of God."²⁰

The Council of Trent's decree on justification (13 January 1547) kept both sides. The beginning of justification comes from "the prevenient grace of God," yet "neither is man himself utterly without doing anything while he receives that inspiration, forasmuch as he is also able to reject it." Canon 4 condemns saying that the will, "as something inanimate, ... does nothing whatever and is merely passive."²¹ (See what Trent actually taught and merit and grace in Catholicism.) On grace and freedom, Orthodox and Catholic teaching sit close together; they differ more on original guilt and merit.

The Orthodox position

Dogma. Pelagianism is condemned (Ephesus 431). Christ has a full human will, healed and united to God, which is the pattern of our salvation (Constantinople III, 680-681). Salvation is participation in God by grace. Beyond these, the Orthodox Church has never issued an ecumenical definition on the order of grace and free will.

Common teaching. Grace is necessary for every saving act, is offered to all, and can be refused. Human freedom survives the fall, though wounded (see Do Humans Still Have Free Will After the Fall?). God does not predestine anyone to damnation. Good works are the fruit of grace and the form living faith takes, not a price paid to God. In the agreed statement of the Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission at Sigtuna, Sweden (1998), both sides say: "Faith is God's gift from its inception, since it is the Holy Spirit who, by divine grace, enlightens the human mind and strengthens the human will to turn to God." Describing the Orthodox view, the statement says "it is God's grace which enables our human will to conform to the divine will," and "this is what the Orthodox mean by 'synergy.'" Both sides "understand good works as the fruits and manifestations of the believer's faith and not as a means of salvation."²²

Theological opinion. How exactly grace and freedom interact, whether a good impulse can ever arise before grace (Cassian, Chrysostom) or never does (Orange), and how far the seventeenth-century confessions bind the Church, are matters on which Orthodox writers have differed. Ware notes that Dositheus "also drew heavily upon Latin sources," while defending "not Roman, but Orthodox" faith, and that looking back on the seventeenth-century confessions "one is struck by the limitations of Greek theology in this period."²³ They are important witnesses, not ecumenical councils.

The strongest objections

"Synergy is semi-Pelagianism with a Greek name"

The Lutheran Formula of Concord (1577) rejects "the error of the Semi-Pelagians, who teach that man by his own powers can make a beginning of his conversion." It goes further, rejecting even the view that once the Spirit offers grace, "the will of man from its own natural powers can add something, though little and feebly, to this end, can help and cooperate." Only after conversion, it says, does "the regenerate will of man" cooperate "in all the works of the Holy Ghost."²⁴ The Westminster Confession of Faith (1640s) teaches that fallen man "hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation."²⁵ John Calvin judged that "the Greek Fathers, above others, and especially Chrysostom, have exceeded due bounds in extolling the powers of the human will."²⁶ On these terms, any cooperation of the will in coming to faith robs God of glory. In its sharpest form the charge runs: if the same grace is offered to all and only some accept it, the human decision is what finally separates the saved from the lost. Ware acknowledges that many brought up in the Augustinian tradition, "particularly Calvinists," "have viewed the Orthodox idea of 'synergy' with some suspicion."²⁷

Response. The Formula itself defines semi-Pelagianism as the claim that a person begins conversion "by his own powers." Mainstream Orthodox teaching, as stated at Sigtuna and in Dositheus's Decree 3, does not say that. It says preventing grace comes first and to all, and the will, already moved by it, can accept or refuse it. The real disagreements are narrower. Reformed theology holds that saving grace cannot finally be refused by the elect; Orthodoxy, with Trent, says it can. Lutherans agree that grace can be rejected (Sigtuna says so jointly) but hold that conversion is God's work alone. To the sharpest form of the charge Orthodoxy offers no mechanism: it calls the meeting of grace and freedom a mystery and denies that accepting a gift earns it. These are real differences, but they are not Pelagianism. Sigtuna found "central points of agreement" with "differences in emphasis and terminology."²⁸ See also our article on what the Reformers meant by faith alone.

"Your own saints say the will can start first"

This objection is stronger, because it rests on Orthodox sources. Cassian, a saint, says that Zacchaeus and the thief "by their own desires" reached for the kingdom before grace led them, and Chrysostom says God does not "prevent our wills by His gifts." Orange answered exactly those examples and said the opposite. Has Orthodoxy kept the very teaching Orange rejected?

Response. In part, yes. {{debated: Some Eastern Fathers did speak as if a good desire could sometimes precede grace.}} But first, neither Cassian nor Chrysostom taught that anyone is saved without grace; both say that every good act needs God's help, and Cassian says the "main share" of salvation belongs to grace. Second, they wrote as ascetic teachers warning against passivity, and Cassian calls the relation of grace and freedom something that "cannot be fully grasped." Third, the Church honors Fathers without canonizing every sentence, as Catholics honor Augustine without adopting all his views on predestination. The Orthodox Church in America's life of Cassian notes that he criticized St Augustine, whom the same calendar also commemorates (15 June).²⁹ The modern Orthodox consensus, as Sigtuna shows, affirms that faith is God's gift "from its inception." That is closer to Orange than to Cassian's Chapter 11.

"Dositheus teaches merit, just like Trent"

Decree 13 of the Confession of Dositheus says that a person is "not simply justified through faith alone, but through faith which worketh through love, that is to say, through faith and works," and calls good works "in themselves meriting, through the Divine promises."³⁰ A Protestant will see the doctrine the Reformation opposed.

Response. The text says what it says, and it sits uneasily beside Ware's statement that we "can never have any claims upon" God. Two observations soften the contrast without erasing it. The merit Dositheus describes is "through the Divine promises": God has freely promised to reward what His own grace produces, an idea with roots in Paul's "I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me" (1 Corinthians 15:10). And Dositheus wrote in Latin categories against a Latin-language Calvinist confession; as Ware says, he used "the weapons which lay nearest to hand." Ware says plainly that man "cannot 'merit' salvation," and the Sigtuna statement denies that works are "a means of salvation." Orthodox language on merit has varied, and the 1672 decree is its most Western-sounding form.

"Without Orange, Orthodoxy never settled the question"

A Catholic may press from the other side: Orange gave the West a clear rule, and Orthodoxy, lacking it, left room for Cassian's ambiguity.

Response. Orange was a regional Gallic synod (Catholics hold its canons authoritative through papal approval), and it is not among the councils the Orthodox Church receives as ecumenical (see our article on how the Church knows which councils are ecumenical). Much of what Orange affirms, including its rejection of predestination to evil, is compatible with Orthodox statements, and the East's answer to Calvinism in 1672 went the same way. Orthodoxy has preferred to leave the mechanics of grace and freedom a mystery rather than define them.

What we can say confidently

• The Orthodox Church condemned Pelagianism at the Council of Ephesus (431) and teaches that no one can do any saving good without grace.
• "Synergy" comes from Paul's "fellow workers" (1 Corinthians 3:9) and, in Orthodox use, describes grace enabling and moving a free human will, not a partnership of equals.
• Cassian's Thirteenth Conference does say that a good will sometimes precedes grace, and Orange (529) rejected that view with his own examples.
• The term "Semipelagianism" was coined around 1590-1600 and applied to Cassian long after his death.
• {{strong: The Synod of Jerusalem (1672) rejected Calvinist predestination, grounding election in God's foreknowledge and teaching a prevenient grace offered to all.}}
• At Sigtuna (1998), Lutheran and Orthodox theologians jointly affirmed that faith is God's gift from its inception and that works are not a means of salvation.

What remains disputed

• Whether Cassian's teaching was a genuine error, a pastoral overstatement, or (as Casiday argues) badly misread by Prosper.
• How much authority the seventeenth-century confessions carry in Orthodoxy, and how far their Latin vocabulary, including Dositheus's language of merit, represents Orthodox teaching.
• Whether a refusable grace and a consenting will fit the Reformation's "grace alone." Reformed and Lutheran theologians answer differently from each other and from Orthodox, Catholic and Arminian ones.
• How far Maximus's account of the will, written about Christology, applies to the Western debate.

Conclusion

Is Orthodox salvation works-based? No. The Orthodox Church confesses that salvation is the work of the Holy Trinity, that grace goes before, accompanies and completes every good thing in us, and that no one can earn God's love. What it will not say is that grace overrides the person. The grace of God, in Ware's words, "invites all but compels none."³¹

The history also shows that the Orthodox tradition is not as uniform on this point as apologetic summaries suggest. Some beloved Fathers spoke of the human will as if it could take the first step, and a seventeenth-century synod borrowed the Latin language of merit. The Church has nonetheless held the dogma steadily: grace is necessary, freedom is real, and Christ's healed human will is the shape of our salvation. Cassian's closing words are a good place to rest: how God works all things in us while our freedom remains our own "cannot be fully grasped by the mind and reason of man." That is not an evasion but the confession of people who found that the more they cooperated with grace, the more it proved to be grace all along.

Notes

1. Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982): 1 Corinthians 3:9; Philippians 2:12-13; Ephesians 2:8-10; 1 Corinthians 15:10. The Greek of 1 Corinthians 3:9 has synergoi, as Ware notes (n. 2). ↑
2. Timothy (Kallistos) Ware, The Orthodox Church (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), Part II, chapter "God and Man," section "Grace and Free Will." Read in the IntraText electronic edition (Part II, "God and Man," section "Man: His Creation, His Vocation, His Failure"), which does not state the printed edition or pages. ↑
3. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 1.4, trans. Edwin Hamilton Gifford, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series (NPNF2), vol. 7 (1894). ↑
4. Council of Ephesus (431), canons 1 and 4, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14 (1900). ↑
5. Orthodox Church in America, "Venerable John Cassian the Roman," lives of the saints for 29 February (oca.org). ↑
6. John Cassian, Conferences 13.3 and 13.8, trans. C. S. Gibson, NPNF2 vol. 11 (1894). ↑
7. Cassian, Conferences 13.11, 13.12 (chapter title) and 13.8, Gibson trans. ↑
8. Cassian, Conferences 13.18, Gibson trans. ↑
9. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of John 18 (on John 1:38), trans. Charles Marriott, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st series (NPNF1), vol. 14 (1889). ↑
10. Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 58, as quoted in the Preface to the Homilies on Romans, NPNF1 vol. 11 (1889), which also quotes the John passage and offers the interpretation summarized here. The Genesis homily itself was not opened. ↑
11. J. Pohle, "Semipelagianism," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 13 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1912). Pohle gives "About 433 (434)" for the De gratia et libero arbitrio contra Collatorem (PL 51:213ff.). ↑
12. Pohle, "Semipelagianism." ↑
13. Augustine Casiday, Tradition and Theology in St John Cassian, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), as summarized and quoted (p. 118) in M. A. Claussen's review, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2007.07.05. The book itself was not opened. ↑
14. Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil, eds., Maximus the Confessor and His Companions: Documents from Exile (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), introduction, section 4, read in the reproduction on myriobiblos.gr. The sentence on the Fathers is Allen and Neil's own wording (not marked as a quotation), with a note to Opusculum 3, PG 91:56B, in Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London: Routledge, 1996), 197; Louth's translation itself was not opened. ↑
15. "The Eastern Confession of the Christian Faith," ch. 3, in J. N. W. B. Robertson, trans., The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem (London: Thomas Baker, 1899), appendix, 187-88. ↑
16. Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 1 (New York: Harper, 1877), sections on Cyril Lucar and the Synod of Jerusalem; Robertson, introduction, v-vi. ↑
17. Confession of Dositheus, Decree 3, Robertson trans., 114-16. Schaff dates the document 16 March 1672. ↑
18. Confession of Dositheus, Decree 14, Robertson trans., 132-35. ↑
19. N. Weber, "Councils of Orange," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 11 (1911), gives fourteen bishops, 3 July 529, and approval by Boniface II on 25 January 531; Pohle, "Semipelagianism," gives 530. ↑
20. Council of Orange (529), canon 5 and conclusion, English text in the Internet Medieval Sourcebook (Fordham University), "The Council of Orange" (translator not named there). ↑
21. Council of Trent, Session 6 (13 January 1547), Decree on Justification ch. 5 and canon 4, trans. J. Waterworth, The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Oecumenical Council of Trent (London: Dolman, 1848), 32-33, 45. ↑
22. Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission, "Salvation: Grace, Justification and Synergy," 9th plenary, Sigtuna, Sweden, 31 July-8 August 1998, paras. 4-5 (Lutheran World Federation). ↑
23. Ware, The Orthodox Church, Part I, chapter "The Church under Islam," section "Reformation and Counter-Reformation: Their Double Impact." ↑
24. Formula of Concord (1577), Epitome, Article II, Negative Theses 3 and 4 and the explanation following Thesis 8, in Concordia Triglotta (St. Louis: Concordia, 1921), English text at bookofconcord.org. ↑
25. Westminster Confession of Faith (1640s), 9.3, text of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. ↑
26. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 2.2.4, trans. Henry Beveridge (1845), Christian Classics Ethereal Library. ↑
27. Ware, The Orthodox Church, "Grace and Free Will." ↑
28. Formula of Concord, Epitome II, Negative Thesis 3; Sigtuna statement, para. 5 (grace can be rejected) and closing paragraph. ↑
29. Orthodox Church in America, "Venerable John Cassian the Roman." ↑
30. Confession of Dositheus, Decree 13, Robertson trans., 132. ↑
31. Ware, The Orthodox Church, "Grace and Free Will." ↑

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
• John Cassian. Conferences. Translated by C. S. Gibson. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 11. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894. Revised edition at newadvent.org.
• John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of John. Translated by Charles Marriott. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st series, vol. 14. 1889. Revised edition at newadvent.org.
• Preface to John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistle to the Romans. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st series, vol. 11. 1889. Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
• Cyril of Jerusalem. Catechetical Lectures. Translated by Edwin Hamilton Gifford. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 7. 1894. Revised edition at newadvent.org.
• Council of Ephesus (431). Canons. Translated by Henry Percival. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 14. 1900.
• Council of Orange (529). Canons and conclusion. Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham University.
• Council of Trent. The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Oecumenical Council of Trent. Translated by J. Waterworth. London: Dolman, 1848. Session 6 at history.hanover.edu.
• Synod of Jerusalem (1672). The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem, Sometimes Called the Council of Bethlehem, with an appendix containing the Confession published with the name of Cyril Lucar. Translated by J. N. W. B. Robertson. London: Thomas Baker, 1899.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Ware, Timothy (Kallistos). The Orthodox Church. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963. Consulted in the IntraText electronic edition.
• Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission. "Salvation: Grace, Justification and Synergy." Sigtuna, Sweden, 1998. Lutheran World Federation.
• Orthodox Church in America. "Venerable John Cassian the Roman." Lives of the Saints, 29 February.
• Allen, Pauline, and Bronwen Neil, eds. Maximus the Confessor and His Companions: Documents from Exile. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Other scholarship (including scholars who disagree)

• Pohle, Joseph. "Semipelagianism." The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 13. New York: Robert Appleton, 1912.
• Weber, Nicholas. "Councils of Orange." The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton, 1911.
• Casiday, Augustine. Tradition and Theology in St John Cassian. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Consulted through M. A. Claussen's review, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2007.07.05.
• Schaff, Philip. The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 1. New York: Harper, 1877. Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Sources from the traditions discussed (Protestant)

• Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Henry Beveridge. Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845. Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
• Formula of Concord (1577), Epitome. In Concordia Triglotta. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921. bookofconcord.org.
• Westminster Confession of Faith (1640s). Orthodox Presbyterian Church edition, opc.org.