“In that case the OT righteous really could not have been righteous, could they?”
That doesn’t follow at all, FK. To be “Old Testament Righteous’, so far as I know, didn’t require a Christian understanding of theosis.
“It would mean that the prophets did not understand what they were writing as they wrote. Does that sound likely? Not to me.”
Really? Read On the Incarnation again. As for what that theology is, well I think its even what the Reformers believed about the reasons for the Incarnation, but it may be that I am wrong. All this talk of the vengeful, really quite malevolent monster god of the OT that you seem to speak of is no one the Fathers would have recognized save as a bogeyman to frighten the “simple people”.
That doesn’t follow at all, FK. To be “Old Testament Righteous’, so far as I know, didn’t require a Christian understanding of theosis.
It may not have required the full understanding that WE have of Christ, but the fundamentals were the same. Grace through faith in God for salvation. Many of the OT righteous interacted directly with Christ and then looked forward to His Incarnation. We simply look back. I don't see how the rules changed. The God of the OT is still the same God in the NT.
FK: “It would mean that the prophets did not understand what they were writing as they wrote. Does that sound likely? Not to me.”
Really? Read On the Incarnation again.
I didn't realize that +Athanasius thought the prophets were babblers. :) Now we have OT authors writing without even understanding what they are writing. Does the same apply to NT writers? It seems to me that the meaning of the term "inspired" is losing all value quickly. I say that because I assume that the Church blames the writers for their errors because they did not understand what they were writing.
All this talk of the vengeful, really quite malevolent monster god of the OT that you seem to speak of is no one the Fathers would have recognized save as a bogeyman to frighten the “simple people”.
Human standards. People want their God to always be "nice" and only do sweet things that make sense to them. The OT and NT both portray such a God, but the OT also portrays a God with other qualities. For example:
Nah 1:2 : 2 The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath. The Lord takes vengeance on his foes and maintains his wrath against his enemies.
Of course the point here is not to say that this is ALL that God is. That would clearly be false because we are told so. The point is do we just throw all these verses into the trash bin because they make us feel uncomfortable, or do we deal with them as a revelation of God to us?