[Kolokotronis]

“According to the Orthodox understanding of the fillique of the Nicene Creed, there is God the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from God the Son, who proceeds from God the Father.”

Nope. The Creed as established by the Council Fathers says that the HS proceeds from the Father; most definitely NOT from the Son though perhaps one can say “through” the Son. In Orthodoxy there is no “filioque”. That is a later Roman innovation imposed on The Church there by the Franks.

“Immortality is a gift of God whether we want it or not-just like all God’s gifts.”

Then in Calvinist theology, the soul is indeed immortal...whether we or the soul wants it to be or not? Do you mean that God imposes immortality on the soul or that the soul is immortal by nature? That’s not at all what The Church taught, though various heretical sects based in Platonism did. Like I have said before, we believe very different things, more different than I would have suspected a few years ago.

[HarleyD]

Nope. The Creed as established by the Council Fathers says that the HS proceeds from the Father; most definitely NOT from the Son though perhaps one can say “through” the Son.

Good catch. Yes, I should have said through the Son.

Do you mean that God imposes immortality on the soul or that the soul is immortal by nature?

Well this is strange. Do you believe there are some people who have no soul? Do you believe that the soul can be destroyed? We may be talking past each other.

Here is an article by Boyce on DEATH AND THE SOUL'S IMMORTALITY. whereby half way down Boyce talks of the soul's immortality. If you believe this is heresy and never recognized by the Church, I would also refer you to St. Iraeneus' teachings on the immortality of the soul which is consistent with Dr. Boyce's article.

Chapter XXXIV.—Souls can be recognised in the separate state, and are immortal although they once had a beginning.

1. The Lord has taught with very great fulness, that souls not only continue to exist, not by passing from body to body, but that they preserve the same form [in their separate state] as the body had to which they were adapted, and that they remember the deeds which they did in this state of existence, and from which they have now ceased,—in that narrative which is recorded respecting the rich man and that Lazarus who found repose in the bosom of Abraham. In this account He states that Dives knew Lazarus after death, and Abraham in like manner, and that each one of these persons continued in his own proper position, and that [Dives] requested Lazarus to be sent to relieve him—[Lazarus], on whom he did not [formerly] bestow even the crumbs [which fell] from his table. [He tells us] also of the answer given by Abraham, who was acquainted not only with what respected himself, but Dives also, and who enjoined those who did not wish to come into that place of torment to believe Moses and the prophets, and to receive the preaching of Him who was to rise again from the dead. By these things, then, it is plainly declared that souls continue to exist that they do not pass from body to body, that they possess the form of a man, so that they may be recognised, and retain the memory of things in this world; moreover, that the gift of prophecy was possessed by Abraham, and that each class [of souls] receives a habitation such as it has deserved, even before the judgment.

2. But if any persons at this point maintain that those souls, which only began a little while ago to exist, cannot endure for any length of time; but that they must, on the one hand, either be unborn, in order that they may be immortal, or if they have had a beginning in the way of generation, that they should die with the body itself—let them learn that God alone, who is Lord of all, is without beginning and without end, being truly and for ever the same, and always remaining the same unchangeable Being. But all things which proceed from Him, whatsoever have been made, and are made, do indeed receive their own beginning of generation, and on this account are inferior to Him who formed them, inasmuch as they are not unbegotten. Nevertheless they endure, and extend their existence into a long series of ages in accordance with the will of God their Creator; so that He grants them that they should be thus formed at the beginning, and that they should so exist afterwards.

- Iraeneus, Against Heresy, Book 2