The beautiful evidence of Jesus Christ’s divinity and oneness with God, the Father, is seen through Jesus’ actions as we read about them in the New Testament. Metropolitan Hilarion explains that the incarnation, or enfleshment, is the goal of the Holy Trinity for all mankind whether or not Adam and Eve sinned and were exiled from Paradise. God wants us to be in communion with Him, and that is part of his divine economy. That idea also has implications for how we participate in His glory and grace, since we are all images of God. In the patristic tradition, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, St. Isaac the Syrian, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Maximus the Confessor and St. Symeon the New Theologian all outline the importance of this teaching about God’s salvific plan from the beginning through the incarnation of God. Western theologians, like John Duns Scotus, wrote about salvation similarly to the east; but overall, they tended to theologize based on alternative universes, theories of free will, and philosophical speculation. Eastern theologians, however, were not so concerned about those issues in general. They spoke about God’s saving plan, his economy, based on revelation within the Christian tradition as a whole as the starting point. Jesus Christ become man so that He could deify and save every specific stage of growing up in our human experience, from infancy to adolescence to adulthood, and by extension with mankind, all creation will be saved too. The Eastern Fathers understood that human development was being deified and would continue to deify in the world or worlds to come.
The idea of free will plays a role in discussion of salvation. Sin is not a permanent obstacle to becoming one with God, but our desires can prevent us from loving God freely. Metropolitan Hilarion ends with the firm idea that God does not force us to love Him. His love is completely free. We are not able to earn it. God made ready the Kingdom of Heaven. It is far better than the earthly pleasures, even after mankind was expelled from Paradise. God is all-powerful in succeeding in His mission, victory and making us all kinsmen of his flesh; but our love must be free like His. There is no “coercion” because we cannot be brought to salvation by speculation or behavioristic principles based on animal experiments, which are all used by professionals to shape humanity into being good in hopes of achieving a Walden Two kind of world. History has shown us that forcing people to be good often creates a lot of evil. God only asks for our searching, our desire, our love, however strong those may be within us.