*** The "God" of the West is an offended and angry God, ... What is salvation for Western theology? Is it not salvation from the wrath of God?...***
kosta50, though much of the material in your quoted text seems to evidence an misunderstanding of (at least) Protestant theology, do you not see in the Scriptures this concept of "salvation" being ultimately salvation from the wrath of God?
Romans 5:9
Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
Ephesians 5:6
Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience
Colossians 3:6
For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience:
and especially...
1 Thessalonians 1:10
And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.
The wrath of God is part of His justice, where mercy triumphs over judgment. Kalomiros says "His justice means His goodness and love, which are given in an unjust manner, that is, God always gives without taking anything in return, and He gives to persons like us who are not worthy of receiving...to the evil and impious."
And just as His thoughts and ways are not ours, neither is His justice anything like ours. From our rational point of view, His justice is "not at all just since it punishes and demands satisfaction from persons which were not at all responsible for the sin of their forefathers."
God is love and what can Love do but offer mercy and forgiveness, even to the wicked? To our very last breath, God's "punishments are loving means of correction, as long as anything can be corrected and healed in this life."
By necessity, the Scriptures describe God in anthropomorphic terms which often mislead us into a tendency to humanize God, which is a Greek pagan legacy. Ancient Greeks thought of gods as immortal and powerful humans, with human emotions and character shortcomings of jealousy, passion, etc.
We Orthodox do no such thing. It is our apophatic understanding that "God neither rejoices nor grows angry, for to rejoice and to be offended are passions; nor is He won over by the gifts of those who honor Him, for that would mean He is swayed by pleasure. It is not right that the Divinity feel pleasure or displeasure from human conditions."
Consequently, His justice -- His mercy -- is not based on passions, pleasure or satisfaction in human terms, as humans see justice. Western juridical theology incorporates this profoundly human aspect of justice as God's. Catholics and Protestants "rather consider God as being chained by a superior force, by a gloomy and implacable Necessity like the one which governed the pagan gods. This Necessity obliges Him to return evil for evil and does not permit Him to pardon and to forget the evil done against His will, unless an infinite satisfaction is offered to Him."
This stems from the fact that St. Augustine, for reasons that may have a lot to do with his own personal failings and guilt developed this idea that it was God Who deprived us of His Grace and punished us with death, rather than see that we rejected God and His Grace. Thus, to the Orthodox mindset, the whole of Western Christianity is turned upside down from the start and consequently the rest of the Western phronema follows in the same fashion.
Thus, the wrath of God is understood in the opposite way as well. We do not see God's wrath as something He does to punish humanity that He loves, as it is understood in the West. God's judgment is mercy -- but to those who hate Him, it is a wrath. His burning love for humanity that warms and animates the believers, scorches, annoys and destroys those who hate Him.
If any one of us ends up in hell, it will be our doing, not His.