Thank you for the quotes from the Greek Fathers and your reflection upon them. Reading these quotes I can only say that is how I have always sensed Christianity to be, but I have never heard things expressed with such clarity and power of language.
"Reading these quotes I can only say that is how I have always sensed Christianity to be,...."
Excellent observation, S. Many years ago, before I became familiar with many converts to Orthodoxy, other than those who came in by way of marriage, a convert, I can't remember if he was from Latin Rite Catholicism or some Protestant group, remarked to me that he had been a Christian as long as he could remember, that his former church had with complete sincerity made to him all the promises of Christianity relative to his life and "salvation", but that in Orthodoxy he found them all fulfilled. It really is a very different Christianity than that found in the West, my friend.