On Contra-Causal Freedom to Accept of Reject Grace

I received a very thought-provoking response which asked me to rethink my "Fundamental Seven" (http://www.wordalone.org/docs/wa-fundamentals.shtml) saying that "The Holy Spirit works monergistically, not synergistically, upon sinners effecting saving grace." The response said that I had perhaps been not as precisely confessional as I should have been because my description of this tends to deemphasize the role of human acceptance and denial of grace, something that Lutherans have traditionally understood as important. I am quoting my reply to this response below because I think it gets at a very important issue:

"The material question you ask is a very important one. Know that I readily affirm that human beings cooperate with grace. This is done, of course, out of their own phenomenological freedom. The question is, of course, whether human beings have any contra-causal agency with respect to the divine. That is to say, do human beings qua human beings have an intrinsic causal power to accept grace were it not for the agency of the divine already at work in that acceptance? The test for ascertaining contra-causal agency is this: X is contra-causally efficacious in producing Y if and only if in an exactly similar causal situation where X had not occurred, then Y would not have occurred either. Thus, human free-will is causally efficacious in the reception of grace if and only if, in an exactly similar causal situation, were human free-will not to have been present in receiving grace, grace would not have been received. When I speak of ‘an exactly similar causal situation’ I mean that the descriptions of the two situations are exactly the same (including the same state of divine grace, and the same state of all causal features external to the putative human free-will). [I shall leave open for now the question whether or not the human act of free-will is realized by underlying neurophysiological causal forces sufficient for producing the allegedly free act.] I think we agree on these matters, so, as you say, it is a question of a possible misunderstanding of the fundamental to mean that salvation is wholly external and finally magical. Luther always rejected ex opere operatum accounts of grace, and would surely reject Fundamental Seven if he thought it would me misunderstood as compatible with such an account."

In my opinion, Lutherans have not been as courageously clear as they should be about the causal situation with respect to salvation. While Luther follows Augustine on operant grace, does he follow him on cooperant grace? Is there some power in human beings to either accept or reject the grace available to human beings in Christ?

A close reading of Luther and the Confessions convinces me that there is no efficacious causal power in the human such that divine grace can be accepted. While we might say that the human will is causally relevant in accepting grace, we must deny that it is causally efficacious in accepting grace. One could say that human free-will would not accept grace unless the human being is regenerated by the Holy Spirit. This would be to say, 'If the Holy Spirit had not been regenerated by the Holy Spirit, the human free-will would not accept grace'. This is also to say, 'If the free-will accepts grace, the human being has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit'. Accordingly, one might claim that because the free-will accepting grace is sufficient for the human being being regenerate by the Holy Spirit, the free-will accepting grace is causally relevant for the mediation of such grace. But while 'causal relevance' is grounded in conceptual linkages, 'causal efficacy' depends upon the actual causal situation. While much more work needs to be done to clarify above the notion of 'causal situation', I think we are on the right track to use that concept in understanding divine causal efficacy.