Let’s cut to the chase on this “elect nation” business. 1. It contradicts what we see empirically. 2. It cannot be deduced as a “good and necessary consequence” of Scripture. Therefore, above all, (3) even if true, it is not a doctrine that can be declared by the church.

Indeed, no known and recognized church does declare it. You claim Orthodoxy, but only under the cloak of anonymity.

Call my bluff. Take off your mask. Proclaim your real name, your date and place of ordination, and your ordaining bishop. Then we will take your claims seriously — after a bit of investigation!

Where is your consistent approch to Context? I have not had time to venture back here for some time- but the basic thrust of this discussion boils down to a) an unwillingness to submit to True Authority (in this case, Protestant eisogesis that assumes ‘every man his own pope’) – which is a nice rock to hide behind, because it’s a convenient way to avoid the things you don’t like, or don’t want to ‘conform yourselves’ to [Rome. 12:2] – say, like the Patristic Church?

The LXX is considered THE text of the OT, and why not- Where did the Church arise? in a Greek-dominated language/culture (Rome’s Latinate predominance only took over, sometime in the 150-200 AD) Secular historians such as Runciman, etc. corroborate that. the Seven Ecumenical Councils were all in Greek-speaking lands, indeed all took place in Byzantine lands! So, whats wrong with the LXX. The AV has Serious issues that (while I love it) must always be compared to something that the CHURCH has decided is ‘authentic.’
And that doesn’t mean Wescott and Hort, who were both liberals to begin with!

Also, the idea that: ‘But if ‘the Israel of God’ means only whites, what about the rest of the world’ is what is behind your desire for ‘inclusion’ rests on no biblical theological premise- now does it? This idea is, instead, nothing less than racial Wesleyanism, (i.e, semi-Arminianism) that ‘offers’ the gospel to the Negro, and makes one feel good- while at the same time giving nothing- not the Gospel, not the sacraments, nothing.

Moreover, such ‘incipient universalism’ is heretical, (especially if you call yourself a Calvinist!) and shows how little, EVEN INCONSISTENT CALVINISTS regard the idea of Election. If God can elect individuals, why not a RACE?

Why NOT see the Election of God’s People in racial/ national/ geographical terms, and then confine it to Europe? We allow it of the OT, but refuse it in the New, for what BIBLICAL reason? Simply because “Great Commissions Press” has the Gospel in Swahili, or Urdu, or that Steve Schlissel has a racially ‘diverse’ (read mamazerim’) mega-church in Babylon-on-the -Hudson? Come on!

The WORLD of Jesus’ day (as well as of the authors of the OT) was CONFINED to Europe, and a bit of North Africa, and the Levant. Oh, they ‘knew’ about China, but only as ‘pagans with which to trade.’ Not as ‘converts’ – did missionaries go there? Surely, but the lands where such missionary endeavors happened, soon fell into the major heresies, preciesly because they were not the ‘Christendom’ which YHWH God delineated in Christ’s ‘go ye ONLY to the ‘lost sheep of Israel’ statement. Those non-Caucasoid lands gave us, instead, Monophysitism, Arianism, Nestorianism, and all the other ‘isms’ that plagued the EUropean Church before Rome’s schism.

I can’t believe you don’t see this. The ‘World’ spoken of in the Scriptures you so wrongly quote as corroboration of your position, is/are coterminous with the ‘known world’ of the Prophets, Apostles, and Martyr’s own age! This is the CONTEXT in which such prophecies must be read. The fact that you don’t, shows how much you have wandered from the Biblical Weltanschauung. Or are being consciously duplicitous. WHich I would not have thought of you…..

Second, let’s look at the quote you apparently want us to go to:

For in the font of baptism a man can trip up and vanquish the devil, because there the Lord has crushed the head of the dragon and given him as food to the Ethiopian people. [See Ps. 73:15] For no others have been nourished and gladdened by this dragon except those who are darkened and black in soul and have no share in the divine light.

First the LXX mistranslates masoretic text “leviathan” as “dragon” and “desert people” as “Ethiopians.” Thus the better English AV at Ps. 74:14: Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.

Second, even if you want to say that the LXX translation is inspired, it is still a very great leap to conclude from this verse that all negroes are children of the devil.

Moreover, it is not clear that Theophylact intends his exegesis to refer to literal Ethiopians, since he refers to a universal spiritual condition, “those who are darkened and black in soul” which could apply metaphorically (of course) to persons of any tribe or nation.

I commend a couple of nearby psalms to your attention as well:

Ps 72:10-11 The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, all kings shall fall down before him: all nations shall serve him.

And above all, clinching our point:

Ps 68:31-32 Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God. Sing unto God, ye kingdoms of the earth; O sing praises unto the Lord.

Both which clearly indicate that millennial hope that all nations will come to God and worship him in spirit and truth.

Thesis #3. The fathers believed that Christ came to make us gods.

Answer: well, evidently not the fathers that approved the Chalcedonian Creed, which speaks of our Lord “to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably…” And if the divine Person of our Lord has taken on human nature that will never be either confused or changed into the divine, then a fortiori the same must be said of us.

Any “father” that would contradict this is actually heterodox at that point.

There may be a moderate use of “divinization” that would refer to ethical conformity to the divine nature, or the image of God, but I don’t think that’s what you mean.

St. Maximus the Confessor:
“The scriptural Word knows of two kinds of knowledge of divine things. On the one hand, there is relative knowledge, rooted only in reason and ideas, and lacking in the kind of experiential perception of what one knows through active engagement; such relative knowledge is what we use to order our affairs in our present life. On the other hand, there is that truly authentic knowledge, gained only by actual experience, apart from reason and ideas, which provides a total perception of the known object through a participation by grace. By this latter knowledge, we attain, in the future state, the supernatural deification that remains unceasingly in effect.” (Ad Thalassium 60)

TJH. this is PRECISELY what the fathers think.
And this is why Protestantism is in the mess it is. Being unwilling to believe that Christ came to redeem our humanity, to ‘make us gods’ as the Fathers teach, means that we are no different from the ‘nations round about us.’

And the Evolutionist is true, and the Sacraments are not efficacious, for they do not feed that humanity that is being divinized by the undcreated energies of the trinity, something that rationalist, Filioquist Westerners just don’t get….