Freedom in God, as enjoyed by Adam, implied the possibility of falling away from God. This is the unfortunate choice made by man, which led Adam to a subhuman and unnatural existence. The most unnatural aspect of his new state was death. In this perspective, "original sin" is understood not so much as a state of guilt inherited from Adam but as an unnatural condition of human life that ends in death.
So every human in existence (since Adam) throughout time has spent his entire time on earth in an unnatural state? Given that you have said that God experiences all time simultaneously, how would you put the fall into the context of God's plan? (I know you know that God is omniscient.) Would you say that it was God's plan that mankind should spend 99.999999% of his collective existence on earth in an unnatural state? Would you say that God changed His plan based on Adam's choice? IOW, was it God's original plan that all people would be born immortal on earth, but man foiled this plan?
In the East, man is regarded as fully man when he participates in God; in the West, man's nature is believed to be autonomous, sin is viewed as a punishable crime, and grace is understood to grant forgiveness.
Hence, in the West, the aim of the Christian is justification, but in the East, it is rather communion with God and deification. In the West, the church is viewed in terms of mediation (for the bestowing of grace) and authority (for guaranteeing security in doctrine); in the East, the church is regarded as a communion in which God and man meet once again and a personal experience of divine life becomes possible."
This is especially instructive. How would you phrase God's view of sin? Is there a need for God to forgive sin?
Deification? I know you and Kolo have talked about theosis, becoming more "God-like". "Deification" implies an idea to me of becoming "as a God", or "equal to God". Does it go to this extent, or is it an unreachable goal?
Yes. Every human being since Adam was born with the consequece or Adam's sin, which is mortality. Every one of us was born separated from God.
Now, we are not necessarily conscious of our unnatural state as something unnatural, and I see that the thought probably never occurred to you until now that our "natural" state may not be natural.
But it is clear that the way we are is not the way God created man.
Orthodoxy regards sin simply as "separation from God." In fact, the Greek term is "missing the mark" (the "mark" being Christ); when God is not our mark, we sin. As long as our aim is to imitate Christ, as long as we are in communion with Him, we don't. That's where the idea of frequent confession and communion comes from.
Is there a need for God to forgive sin?
God neither has needs, nor is He driven by necessities. If we follow Christ, we will feel a need to confess our sins, not as a legalistic obligation, but as a realization that we have been ungrateful to Him.
Confession is not a true confession unless it is grounded in what the Greeks call metanoia (change of mind), a permanent and irrevocable rejection of that which we confessed as our ingratitude to God. We believe that God forgives us if our ingratitude is an honest failure and our confession an honest desire to change our mind. God will forgive if we honestly try, even if we honestly fail.
"Deification" implies an idea to me of becoming "as a God", or "equal to God"
Oh, no, never equal to God! That would be pagan. Theosis is becoming God-like, Christ-like. It is a process, a spiritual growth to holiness through faith in God, in due time. The "official" Saints reached that likeness to God more than your average bear. They have achieved that by denial of their passions and carnal qualities of our fallen nature, and incessant prayers. They became empty vessels, "poor in spirit," without egos, clean glasses, through which the light of God could shine for others to see and know Him.
People who achieve theosis don't know it. Their humility does not allow them to arrogate such quality. They consider themselves truly unworthy of any honor or title. In fact, they are truly disconcerned with such things as honors and titles, or anything of this world for that matter. :-)
Your question points up the difficulty for finite creatures like ourselves speaking about an infinite Being like God and the limitations our finite state has on the language we use to talk about God. The concept of plans or planning can have meaning only in a finite context where time has meaning. But for God, what meaning can time have save as an observable state? I suppose the quick answer is "No, we did not, do not and cannot foil His "plans"" but that's not satisfactory at all because the question presumes something, planning, which is not an attribute of God, at least as we understand the word.
"Deification? I know you and Kolo have talked about theosis, becoming more "God-like". "Deification" implies an idea to me of becoming "as a God", or "equal to God". Does it go to this extent, or is it an unreachable goal?"
The concept isn't that we become God, or the equal to God but rather "as gods" as +Athanasius the Great puts in "De Incarnatione". Personally I think +Gregory Palamas describes it better in The Triads:
"Three realities pertain to God: essence, energy, and the triad of divine hypostases. As we have seen, those privileged to be united to God so as to become one spirit with Him - as St. Paul said, 'He who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit with Him' (I Cor. 6:17) - are not united to God with respect to His essence, since all theologians testify that with respect to His essence God suffers no participation.
Moreover, the hypostatic union is fulfilled only in the case of the Logos, the God-man.
Thus those privileged to attain union with God are united to Him with respect to His energy; and the 'spirit', according to which they who cleave to God are one with Him, is and is called the uncreated energy of the Holy Spirit, but not the essence of God...."
And in this:
"We unite ourselves to Him [God], in so far as this is possible, by participating in the godlike virtues and by entering into communion with Him through prayer and praise. Because the virtues are similitudes of God, to participate in them puts us in a fit state to receive the Deity, yet it does not actually unite us to Him. But prayer through its sacral and hieratic power actualizes our ascent to and union with the Deity, for it is a bond between noetic creatures and their Creator."
FK, notice how +Palamas soundly denies that we can become united with the "essence" of God. If you look at most Greek icons showing Christ, you will see the words "W WN". This name doesn't translate into English in a satisfactory way, but at base it means "The Ultimate Being or Reality" It implies that this Being is beyond any existence we comprehend and is the source of everything out of nothing. Thus the Cappadocian Fathers, as I am fond of remembering, said "I believe in God; God does not "exist"." For this reason we as created beings cannot share in His essence but can only share in the divine likeness (have union with the divine energies or put another way, experience and exist within the divine, uncreated light) through theosis. To believe otherwise would be some sort of Hinduism or Buddhism.
Well, from God's perspective, if we can assume we can even talk about it, the Plan has been devised from all eternity and is done. God is there. We aren't. He sees Adam in Paradise and He sees saved humanity in Paradise at the End of Times. Our detour does not change His plan. God's plan was to create man in His image and likeness, who will be in communion with Him.
Now, I have seen many models of this. Mine is perhaps naive but it works for me: God stands with his feet apart and looks down. He sees both feet at the same time and that distance is eternity. We are little ants on the ground between his feet. God has cleared a small portion of the ground to show the path between His feet, but some ants wonder off because they are curious or because they see something to the side and wish to investigate. Some get too from from the trail and get lost. Those who stick to the trail reach the other foot eventually, even if their path is not exactly straight.
Now, God could have placed all the ants into a tube stretched from one foot to the next, in which case none of the ants would be lost, but they would also not be free.
was it God's original plan that all people would be born immortal on earth, but man foiled this plan?
Maybe you should ask yourself if God made Adam and Eve in Paradise so they can become corrupt and die? Did God destroy His own crown-jewels intentionally? If God wants man in Paradise in His image and likeness and Adam and Eve were what He wanted, and that's where He wants people to be, why would He then create the chaos that resulted?
I think it makes more sense that we are the culprits of the destruction of our own blessings rather than God, Who, after, all gave them to us.
The Catholics might view "deiication" or "theosis" a but arrogant as term, -- even though as I am sure Kosta or Kolokotronis explained it does not imply equality with God, -- but we all believe that we are called to sainthood and perfection. "Be perfect even as your father in heaven is perfect". A more Catholic-sounding term is sanctification, sainthood, or holiness, a state of sinless union with God. It is one of the sad things about Protestantism that it cheapened the notion by the concept of salvation by faith alone, which had the practical effect of discouraging the striving for holiness.