Summer vacation in Greece? It’s hotter than an oven over there right now. I’m sure Kolo will confirm that for us later :)
At any rate, you mention that the western mindset is like passively watching a movie. Perhaps the modern mindset sees it like that, but Aquinas and Duns Scotus both underscore man’s cooperation with God’s grace. “For many are called, but few are chosen” (Mt 22:14). God calls many into existance and extends his grace to all of them, but few are chosen (predestined) because they fail to correspond to that grace. Man is always free to choose Hell or correspond to grace in being, as you put it, restored and reunited to God. God, on the other hand, does already know the outcome because He is outside time and sees the whole thing from beginning to end.
Duns Scotus held that after sin entered the world Christ could have restored us in a variety of ways, but chose to redeem us on the Cross. Scotus rejects the whole Anselmian notion of sin necessitating the Incarnation to placate God’s wrath.
God is free, and He freely chose in his love to communicate his glory to a creature outside himself in the most perfect way possible, namely by taking a created nature (the humanity of Christ) and uniting it to himself in the person of the Word. In willing the Incarnate Word, God also willed man to be his adopted children in Christ. That is St. John (1:12) and St. Paul (Eph. 1:3ff, Gal. 4:4ff).
By the way, the focus of Scripture on man’s need for redemption from sin and separation from God is natural since the whole Bible is written after sin. That doesn’t mean, therefore, that the exclusive or primary motive of the Word becoming flesh is placating divine justice or defeating death. For Scotus Christ would always have come as the Mediator of grace and glory, the Mediator of communion with God—and this not because of sin.
Summer vacation in Greece? It’s hotter than an oven over there right now. I’m sure Kolo will confirm that for us later :)
I am not sure where he is, but he usually goes into "hiding" in the summer and is home on weekends unless he is in Greece visiting his ancestor's village.
Aquinas and Duns Scotus both underscore man’s cooperation with God’s grace
I would imagine both of them would have been zealots for Christ.
“For many are called, but few are chosen” (Mt 22:14). God calls many into existence and extends his grace to all of them, but few are chosen (predestined) because they fail to correspond to that grace
One of the favorite verses the Reformed Protestants like to quote (unfortunately always out of context)! The problem with it being quoted out of context is that the parable has nothing to do with "predestination."
God calls many into existence and extends his grace to all of them, but few are chosen (predestined) because they fail to correspond to that grace.
True, save for the predestined part. Orthodoxy understands "predestination" as God's foreknowledge (or better yet just his allknowledge), not his choices. The decisions must be ours; otherwise there is no free will. If God makes our choices than they are not ours, but His.
God, on the other hand, does already know the outcome because He is outside time and sees the whole thing from beginning to end
According to the Christian theology that is correct.
Duns Scotus held that after sin entered the world Christ could have restored us in a variety of ways, but chose to redeem us on the Cross
But that has the transcendental God reacting to something that happened in time (Adam's fall) as if he didn't know it was coming! In his all knowlege, God would have made that decision before sin entered the world and in fact would have been the screen director that mandated the fall.
Either God predestined Adam's fall and is directly the power behind the emergence of sin, or God permits our decisions and doesn't know what our decisions will be, but rather reacts to our decisions as we make them, as the Bible seems to suggest. In which case he is neither omniscient nor transcendental.
In willing the Incarnate Word, God also willed man to be his adopted children in Christ. That is St. John (1:12) and St. Paul (Eph. 1:3ff, Gal. 4:4ff).
But, if that's the case, then it is not our will, but his, and it is not our decision or cooperation but his will and our servitude. Orthodoxy teaches that love does not compel. So, either we have to ignore these verses because they proclaim Somehting other than man's freedom, or we have to interpret them in terms that are compatible with God's omniscience as well as with our free (i.e. independent) will. Good luck! You can't have it both ways.
His primary and, in fact, only purpose was to bring back "the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Mat 15:24) into his fold.
By the way, the focus of Scripture on man’s need for redemption from sin and separation from God is natural since the whole Bible is written after sin. That doesn’t mean, therefore, that the exclusive or primary motive of the Word becoming flesh is placating divine justice or defeating death.
Where is Incarnation mentioned or hinted in the Old Testament? The idea and a need for a savior (messiah) becomes part of Judaism during the Babylonian captivity (6th century BC), some 800 years after the Biblical dates of Exodus. One thing the all Jews soundly reject is the idea that there can be any hypostatic union of two natures. As my Reformed friends like to remind me, God says:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways my ways," [Isa 55:8]
The case of Incarnation without the fall is simply not supported by anything other than specifically in order for Christ to die (in his human nature) and restore our freedom to be saved. He came down specifically to pull out the fallen humanity from the bottomless pit of sin. Incarnation was an act of extreme mercy for his fallen humanity.