Returning to the subject of this post, Ad Orientem has an excellent presentation on the primary motive of the Incarnation by Archpriest G. Florovsky.
Click on the icon of the Incarnation to see it. It’s worth the read.
From my limited knowledge (hence the ping to Kolokotronis, if he's around) it seems that the Divine Liturgy and the Sacred Icons of Christ in the Orthodox Churches more focused on Christ’s glory and man’s elevation in Christ rather than on atonement from sin. (No Christian, I would assume, denies man's need after the fall to be redeemed from sin).
I was also under the impression that “theosis” or deification in Christ according to Saints like St. Gregory of Nazianzen and St. Gregory of Palamas was more central to the Orthodox spirituality rooted in the Incarnation which obviously lends itself to the so-called “absolute primacy of Christ”—absolute because God’s immutable decree was the Incarnation (sin or no sin) and our "theosis" in Him—as opposed to a “relative primacy of Christ”—relative to man’s need for redemption from sin--Aquinas' position that without sin there would never have been Christ the King of Glory: no sin, no Incarnation, therefore not an absolute primacy.
CHRISTE ELEISON!
Kolo is probably enjoying his summer vacation, possibly even in Greece, but hopefully we will hear from him sooner than later. :)
Orthodoxy is completely focused on the resurrection. This is the pinnacle of his becoming a man. He defeats death by dying for all of us. One just wonders why did God choose to become man so he can die, and in dying (in his human nature) defeat death (by his divine nature).
Couldn't God simply defeat death without all that? Of course he could, but there is a little element that exists in humanity and it's called freedom, which was given to man by his Creator, along with all the consequences that result from it.
To the western mind, God is the author of evil as well as good (Reformed theology), and God devised the whole thing, made sure Adam would fall so that he can send his only-begotten Son (who is one and the same God) to suffer and die to satisfy some sort of "divine justice." As professor Alexander Kalomiros observed, in the western mindset, being saved means being spared God's wrath, being saved from God!
The western theology of redemption, especially Reformed Protestant theology of redemption, is grounded in the concept of human justice attributed to God, and is rather grotesque from an Orthodox point of view.
In Orthodox theology, we are saved by being restored to the original created state (of communion with God) through a spiritual struggle (in Slavonic podvig), through a process known as theosis. In other words, we become reunited with God.
It's very simple and free of any legalistic mumbo-jumbo: separation from God is perdition; reunion with God is salvation.
God is the source of life and indeed Life itself. Being in communion with God is life, and separation from God is death. The only reward is life in God and the only "penalty" is death without God. There is no legalism whatsoever, and our destiny is based on our cooperation or rejction of God, who is our spiritual physician.
The Patristics didn't deal with Incarnation without the fall concept because it is was an alien thought to the early Church, and I really can't see Fr. Florovsky speaking on behalf of any broad Orthodox community by embracing such an idea, God intervenes in our lives, in the economy of our salvation, and Incarnation is the ultimate such divine intervention.
The idea of an Incarnation without the fall negates that God intervenes in real time, and all we are witnessing is a movie that has a beginning and the end and we are simply spectators who were dragged into the move theater against our will.
The movie will play itself out with or without our participation; we can sleep through it; talk to each other; or watch. The end will be the same, as determined by the movie-Maker. At the end of the show, some will be rewarded and some punished, as was determined before the movie was even made!
That is in essence western, particularly Reformed theology which tends to place St. Paul above the Gospels, and the NT on the same level as the OT. The various Protestant groups have an amalgam of semi-Catholic, semi-Patristic theologies mixed with elements of Reformation.
The Catholic theology, while decidedly more Patristic then the rest of Western Christianity, remains locked in legalistisms fully embraced with the emergence of Anselm's theology of justification late in the 11th century, and its scholastic backbone which is diametrically opposed to, and soundly rejected by, Palamite Orthodoxy.
It was precisely Anselm who addressed the whole issue of Incarnation in his famous Cur Deus Homo, introducing the concept of satisfaction demanded by God (a profoundly OT concept), which in and of itself is an oxymoron given that God cannot be dissatisfied or lacking in anything.
Legalistic theologies tend to anthropomorphize God, a very pagan approach at its core. That's why Calvinists, for example, find the rought-and-tough God of the Old Testament so much more appealing and why they do their best to try to stuff Christ into the OT God model rather than the other around.
We can recognize the Reformed in Anselm's vocabulary, since they borrowed it directly from him and, by extension, from the Catholic Church. His theology is directly responsible for such "pillars" of Catholic theology as the "treasury of merit," for example, and Calvinist substitutionary theology ("penal substitution"), which is an oxymoron because it asserts that God is penalized by his voluntary death!
I was also under the impression that “theosis” or deification in Christ according to Saints like St. Gregory of Nazianzen and St. Gregory of Palamas was more central to the Orthodox spirituality rooted in the Incarnation which obviously lends itself to the so-called “absolute primacy of Christ”—absolute because God’s immutable decree was the Incarnation (sin or no sin) and our "theosis" in Him—as opposed to a “relative primacy of Christ” I have never heard this before. The whole basis of Palamite theology is rejection of scholasticism. Instead, monasticism forms the backbone of Orthodoxy, a life of prayer and abstinence, struggling and climbing the ladder of divine ascent.
Incarnation is extreme humility in which God humbled himself in order to offer himself as ransom for our freedom from death. Such ransom could not be made without Incarnation, and without the fall Incarnation would not be required.
If we accept that God gave Adam wide freedom (he could go anywhere and eat anything in the Garden but one fruit), then we do not have a micromanager God. It was God's decision to give us reason and with reason the freedom, and the responsibility. When we abuse the freedom, we lose it.
The get-out-of-jail card is repentance, and finding freedom in God rather than on our own. God, by his divine intervention in the economy of our salvation, affects our destinies according to what we do; our deeds will be judged. The Bible is clear on that ((cf Mat 25).
And it is equally clear that God changes our destines depending on which way we choose:
Thus says the LORD, the God of your father David, "I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life." [Isa 38:5]
The entire OT and Christ's own teachings revolve around two issues: God intervenes to save his beloved people over and over, and God forgives if we repent. Incarnation was God's intervention to save us from certain death. There was not a trace of any other selfish reason for such sacrifice. It's really that simple.