Living the faith, dying unto our passions, praying three times a day, charity, loving our enemies, practicing mercy, humility, confessions and communions, repentance, hungering for righteousness, thanking God for everything including bad days, leaving all your earthly cares...I wouldn't call it work. It's a life.
I was responding to your earlier comment: "... So, shed that cozy, don't-worry-be-happy macarena attitude dear protestant brothers, and get to work!" Does this mean that you really, truly believe that we do not do the types of things you list above? You weren't writing to radical Protestant factions, you were writing to the Protestants on this thread. If you mean that none of what we do in worship of God "counts" for anything because we are not Apostolic, that is one thing. But I would be really disappointed if you still think that our view is to simply declare salvation, and then go and do whatever we want in sin. In thousands of posts, you have never heard that from any of us.
FK: "My conception of theosis was an attainment of something, but here it sounds more like an awarding of something."
Yes, it's called likeness to Christ.
So theosis is the awarding of a likeness to Christ? May I assume that this award is based upon the performance of all the deeds you listed above to a certain degree?
You keep using that word. If you want to understand the Orthodox conception of salvation, you need to step out of the juridical mindset of the West with its notions like 'awarding' or 'merit' (whether used negatively, as in 'nothing we can do merits salvation' or positively as in the Latin notion of 'superabundance of merit' derived from the saints).
While there are aspects of the juridical model that somewhat illumine what happens in our salvation, by and large a medical model is better. Theosis is health, being as we were intended to be, Christ-like, in full communion with God, filled with the Holy Spirit, living not our own life, but the life of the Undivided Trinity. Sin is a deadly disease. God is the physician, without Him we cannot cure ourselves and attain health, nor--out of love and respect for the freedom He gave us, not out of lack of power--does He cure us without our cooperation. Theosis is not 'awarded', but attained, not though our efforts or merits, but through our cooperation with God's freely given grace.
FK, I was responding to your question "How do the Orthodox 'get to work'?" I was not commenting on how the Protestants 'get to work.'
I was responding to your earlier comment "So, shed that cozy, don't-worry-be-happy macarena attitude dear protestant brothers, and get to work!"
Being a Protestant seems cozy and 'don't-worry-be-happy' because a Protestant is free to believe whatever (s)he wants and to worship in whatever manner (s)he deems appropriate. Custom-made rleigion to one's own preference and style. Certainly, neither Judaism, nor Apostolic Christianity are that way.
FK: FK: "My conception of theosis was an attainment of something, but here it sounds more like an awarding of something."
Kosta: Yes, it's called likeness to Christ.
FK: So theosis is the awarding of a likeness to Christ? May I assume that this award is based upon the performance of all the deeds you listed above to a certain degree?
In #6222, I said: "There is no salvation before judgment. ... Only after judgment will we be either saved or condemned; only then will we have a ticket to heaven or hell. ... and while none of us deserve[s] salvation, some will receive it for no other reason that God's incredible mercy."
The "ticket" is not an award; it is a right of passage based on a mericiful and just decision on how we are in our hearts. It is not what we are but how we are in our hearts that counts, FK.
Job was not righteous in God's eyes because he was sinless, but because God knew that in his heart Job would never blame God even for his worst misfortune.
The poor old woman in the NT who gives her last two copper coins to the synagogue is making a huge sacrifice out of love for God, because she is giving to God or for God's cause everything she owned. We, on the other hand, don't.
It should be no effort to know who meets the criteria for God's mercy. In fact, Christ told the rich man to sell everything and follow Him, and the rich man couldn't. He loved the world too much. Most of do, even though we probably all think that we are decent and God-fearing people.
When I answered "Yes," it was to the first part of your statement (re: attaining), and not the latter, as you took it (re: awarding); salvation is awarded, as a crowing recognition of you as someone who has attained the likeness to Christ in God's eyes.