"Hello, Houston, we have a problem...bleep."
No problem, Houston, Job said his righteousness was more than God's but when confronted with God Job repented,
Job 42:3 "Who [is] he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor [myself], and repent in dust and ashes."
Carry on Houston the interpretation was just an anomaly.
"But some among us are true saints and, within the context and constraints of humanity, some are capable of being righteous, even perfect, as the OT makes it plain."
What the Old Testament makes plainis that we have all sinned and none are righteous before God without the shedding of blood for sin.
Isa 64:6 "But we are all as an unclean [thing], and all our righteousnesses [are] as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. And [there is] none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities."
You use the phrase "within the context and constraints of humanity" however if man has true free will there should be no context and constraints. Every moral decision should stand on its own, but that, as you concede, is not the case. In fact every man makes morally incorrect (sin) decisions. If every one born, by necessity, came down with the same disease you would say it was inherited or congenital. Yet you deny the same concerning man's inclination to sin when faced with the overwhelming evidence. You say man is capable of being morally perfect and yet there has never been such a person, excepting our Lord, in all of history.
Job 1:1 states with certainty and unambiguosly that Job was a "perfect man, upright." It doesn't state that "Job said his righteousness was more than God's..."
Amen. Great analogy.
Amazing how the misreading of Genesis colors entire theologies.
You say man is capable of being morally perfect
Yep. Straight from Plato. An excellent essay is found here on the difference between the Greek view of mankind and the historic, Old Testament view...
When God created the world, he saw that it was good (Gen. 1:31). The world was created for God's glory (Ps. 19:1); the ultimate goal and destiny of creation is to glorify and praise its creator (Ps. 98:7-9). The Hebrews had no concept of nature; to them the world was the scene of God's constant activity. Thunder was the voice of God (Ps. 29:3, 5); pestilence is the heavy hand of the Lord (I Sam. 5:6); human life is the breath of God inbreathed in man's face (Gen. 2:7; Ps. 104:29). To be sure, the world is not all it ought to be. Something has gone wrong. But the evil is not found in materiality, but in human sin...""The Old Testament view of God, man, and the world is very different from Greek dualism. Fundamental to Hebrew thought is the belief that God is the creator, that the world is God's creation and is therefore in itself good. The Greek idea that the material world is the sphere of evil and a burden or a hindrance to the soul is alien to the Old Testament.
All as God ordained from before the foundation of the world, for His glory and the welfare of His saints.
The Orthodox and Catholics do not deny that. We hold that man is born spiritually ill and in need of healing. We never believed that we can heal ourselves, but always that we need a Healer, as the sick need a doctor. As such, we must be willing to be healed, to follow and obey the healer's commands. We do not do the healing, the Healer does, and we cooperate with him for our own good, but He does not compel us to submit; He only invites.
You, on the other hand, believe that man is not only ill, but dead and requires a miracle to come to life. As someone who is dead, you cannot ask to be brought back to life. God simply picks among spiritual corpses and resurrects those He chooses; others remain dead.
There is no cooperation, there is no obedience, there is no redemption, there is no repentance, there is no human will, there is no human life, there is no humanity; just dead souls God created for His own glory as you often say.
That is not what Jesus Christ taught. That is not how the Jews understood their own Scripture either. That is entirely a product of some of +Augustine's writing and Calvinist distortions of his writings.
You say man is capable of being morally perfect and yet there has never been such a person, excepting our Lord, in all of history
I am not saying is: the Old Testament is! Job 1:1 clearly states that Job was an upirght, perfect man. What the Church is saying is that some are better at it than others, and we do believe that Ever-Virgin Theotokos was without sin and was therefore a perfect (hu)man, first among saints, save for the mortal nature inherited from our acentral parents.