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OK, lets set aside the original sin concepts, which, by the way, I think have been distorted by Protestantism in the West.

Agreed.

"The grace of deification thus transcends nature, virtue and knowledge, and `all these things are inferior to it.[+Maximos]'

Precisely! :) As we'd say in Latin, "super natura". For us to live in heaven we must be transformed, as if we were fish being reconfigured to live out of water. "No one can see the face of God and live".

Some in Orthodoxy would say that he is condemned. Others, and I think they are a majority, maintain that we do not know what would happen and to firmly declare otherwise is to assert some limitation on the power of the Holy Spirit.

Interesting. Now by condemned, what sense do we mean? Condemned to an existence without theosis, or condemned to the torments of hell? Based on what I know of the Greek Fathers, I would guess the former alone.

"Interesting. Now by condemned, what sense do we mean? Condemned to an existence without theosis, or condemned to the torments of hell? Based on what I know of the Greek Fathers, I would guess the former alone."

It is interesting, isn't it. In the Great Euchologion of the Church we chant:

"O God, the great and most high, Thou Who alone hast immortality"

[7th prayer of Vespers]

"Thou Who alone art life-giving by nature... O only immortal one"

[Ode 5, Funeral Canon for Laymen]

"Thou art the only immortal one"

"The only One Who is immortal because of His godly nature"

[Ode 1, Funeral Canon for Laymen]

These chants are in accord with the comments of +Irenaeus:

"The teaching that the human soul is naturally immortal is from the devil"

+Justin Martyr condemns this concept in his Dialogue with Trypho, warning against these people:

"There are some others who, having supposed that the soul is immortal and immaterial, believe though they have committed evil they will not suffer punishment (for that which is immaterial is also insensible), and that the soul, in consequence of its immorality needs nothing from God"

Life exists only in union with God. Without theosis, there is nothing but death. Since we were created, along with the rest of creation, ex nihilo, it may be that the condemned simply cease to exist, or otherwise "exist" only as the dead existed until Christ destroyed the bonds of death and even that "existence" ceases after the Final Judgment. I think these are the sorts of speculations which have the potential to drive men mad since they come very close to speculation on the Divine Essence. :)