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Here's the problem, B and its such a problem that frankly when we Catholics and Orthodox say that we seem to worship a different God from you Protestants, its not just hyperbole.

Our basic beliefs about theosis are totally different, indeed our conception of the state of man both before and after the Fall, the reason for the Incarnation, the sacrifice on the Cross, the descent into the place of the dead and the Resurrection are all different. What we believe, The Church has always believed. I can't say that there weren't people in the early days of Christianity who believed what you do, but I have never read any such thing. The early Fathers, the liturgists who put together the Divine Liturgies of both the East and the West, whose successors later assembled the canon of the NT, read the same words you do and came to the understanding that +John Chrysostomos did. +John Chrysostomos is a one off example. What I posted expresses the consensus patrum as preserved in The Church.

When you speak of predestination, we don't understand you; when you speak of being "saved" and mean something different from Theosis or salvation as the Latin Church says, we don't understand you. When you say that God chose before all time, say, one of five human beings for eternity with Him and the rest he damns to hell, we don't understand you. You firmly believe that the passage in question establishes that once you accept Christ as your savior, you're in His hand and can't ever "fall or jump" out until the time you are sanctified and by then you're, I assume, dead and your soul is with God. Allow me to suggest that this theology is a necessary consequence of your concepts of election and predestination, the perfect nature of Adam & Eve prior to the Fall and the utter depravity of man after the Fall. In such a theological universe, salvation is a given for the elect, damnation for the rest and of course, since its a lock, there really is no need, it seems to me, to even speak of being secure in God's hand or the perseverence of the saints or how faith is manifest in works. Indeed, one wonders why there are scriptures at all. If the elect are the elect from before all time, what's the point of the scriptures? They have nothing useful to teach the elect and the damned are lost anyway.

The only theological construct in which the scriptures can have any meaning is one within which all men are created with the potential, not the certainty, of all to fulfill God's purposes in making their creation, that they be in the image and likeness of Himself. In such a system, everyone who would fulfill God's plan of creation must freely respond to the grace which God pours out on everyone and everything. The scriptures teach us how to respond and equally importantly, how not to respond, which is to say, to reject God's call.

The Church is keenly aware of sin and its consequences in the world. It never ceases to remind us that we are sinners and calls us to repentence. For true reformed Protestants, what point would there be in ever speaking of sin? Is it a tenet of that system that once saved one cannot/won't sin? Is it rather that one can sin but the sin is immediately forgiven and there are no consequences either to the individual or society or creation of that sin? After all, once we're in God's hand, we're there forever, right? Aside from creating false hope in the hearts of the damned, what is the point of the scriptures in the system you clearly hold to?

The Fathers taught us that God gave us a "second chance" when He died on the Cross and destroyed the power we gave death over us through sin, a second chance at seizing the same opportunity He graced Adam & Eve with at their creation and which they lost when they sinned. Its no answer to say that God predestined the Fall and the Incarnation to fix what He had set up in the first place. Its no answer to say that the elect/saints, secure in the hand of God, must persevere because they are predestined to persevere because they are the elect/saints.

Scripture teaches us about God and ourselves. Sin reminds us of how far God brought us from. It gives us the humbling knowledge of how WHOLLY UNWORTHY of God's grace we are. It destroys the pride which says that we can do it in any respect on our own.

As to the early church not teaching this that you have read, I would submit the apostolicity of the doctrines. The Orthodox and Catholics repeatedly push the idea of what the early church taught -- while subverting the views of the EARLIEST church as inspired by the Holy Spirit. Predestination is a Scriptural Teaching. John Crystostom's views do not TRUMP Scripture. And, in spite of the assertion that it wasn't taught, such an assertion can not be sustained when exposed under the light of Scripture. With that said, Augustine's views, while imperfect, were nevertheless Predestinarian and had more in common with Paul's teaching (and the Reformers) than not. He saw even the beginning of the faith which saves as a gift of God and believed that God would give His saints the gift of perseverance to the end. These views were most fully developed late in his life, and I would not make the claim that He was a Predestinarian in the Calvinist sense; nevertheless, He was heading that direction. That some were predestined and others were not and that such was completely at God's initiative was very apparent in his writings. Augustine didn't pull this out of the air. He pulled it from the teachings of Paul and Peter. He pulled it from the teachings of Christ. So, where Chrysostom aligns with Scripture, he is found to be quite instructional. Where he does not (which predestination is one area where I believe he and the Orthodox/Catholics go astray) he is to be rejected.