But we really get back to, I think - and tell me if I am wrong - is that you have this literal hangup with the word "works" and can't be nuanced in your assessment of how important works are.
If we are judged in the Last Day, "according to our works" of course it stands to reason that we are saved by or in our actions, deeds, works, etc.
Here's the difference between you and me. If I perform a good work, I call it the grace of God granted to me. It is God working in the believer, causing him to will and to work according to His good pleasure. It is not me who was willing to do good, God changed me, contrary to my sinful will. Thus, I can truly say I am saved by the grace of God, and of His grace alone. I work because I'm saved, I'm not working in order to be saved.
Flip all of that around and you have a legal system. It is up to you to keep God's Law in order to be saved. Salvation is not a gift, it is a wage. Ultimately, whether or not you keep the Law depends on your will, your works.
In Grace, God is the one who makes the difference between the Elect and the Reprobate, He either gives saving grace or He withholds it. In Law, Man is the one who makes the difference, he either keeps the Law or he breaks it.
What the Orthodox don't try to parse out is mentioning anything solely, which is why we focus on both/and all the time. And why we have the proper theology.
Ultimately, there is no both/and between the sovereignty of God and human autonomy. In the Biblical model, you have both monergism and synergism, monergistic justification, synergistic sanctification. Orthodoxy leaves no room for monergism and flattens all of salvation out into a synergistic enterprise called Theosis. Not that Orthodoxy is unique in its synergism, plenty of religions are thoroughly synergistic. That's why you have Orthodox here rejecting the Biblical doctrine of reprobation, because it doesn't make sense according to the rest of their theology. It may seem proper in the mind of the Orthodox, but for me, the Bible defines what is proper theology.
How this fits into the "reprobates" is interesting. If light is in the world and man loves darkness, and of course that means choosing darkness, then He in a sense judges himself. After all, the judge on the last day is also our defense, since he is the Son of Man. You have to give him the chance to build a case for you, though, isn't that what life is about?
Of course, man chooses to sin. That's why he is guilty and held accountable. He needs God's grace to change him and save him, otherwise he remains reprobate, without hope.
