http://www.oncedeliveredfaith.com/2014/07/05/original-sin/When speaking about humanity from an Eastern Orthodox standpoint, one must consider the various doctrines of sin. In the doctrines of the Eastern Church, there is no concept of “original sin.” The East was largely unfazed by the Western innovation of original sin and the doctrines which followed, such as the Immaculate Conception, total depravity, the penal substitution atonement theory, etc. These doctrines all hold a base assumption that humans are born guilty, an assumption which Orthodoxy rejects. Here, I’ll write in very broad brushstrokes about the western perception of original sin and the origins thereof, along with how it affects the perception of humanity, then move to the Orthodox perception of sin and humanity and why I’ve come to agree with the Orthodox viewpoint. The opinions I express are my understanding of theological subjects, so I’ll do my best to accurately portray the views of the Orthodox Church and the other Churches whose doctrines I cover, but I do not speak on behalf of these Churches.
St. Augustine and Original Sin
Western doctrines of sin nature, from Roman Catholicism to Reformed theology to Arminian theology and the vast majority in between, state that all of humanity is collectively guilty for Adam’s sin in the Garden. Therefore, our nature when we are born is that of guilt – even the newborn child is guilty for a sin he did not commit. Humanity is guilty, broken and condemned. St. Augustine was the father of the doctrine of original sin. In his writings against Pelagianism, he reacted strongly against Pelagius’ theory that mankind was entirely good and capable of salvation on its own (a view also rejected by Orthodoxy.) In his reaction against Pelagius, St. Augustine wrote that humanity exists in a state of condemnation, as inheritors of Adam’s sin. According to St. Augustine, each and every human is guilty; The guilt of Adam is passed down generationally through human seed to each human being. For St. Augustine, unbaptized children were undoubtedly doomed to an eternity of suffering. While most modern Christians would find this to be a difficult teaching with which to reconcile, these are the views of the father of the doctrine of original sin nonetheless.
Augustinianism in the Roman Church
The Western Church accepted Augustinianism as its stance from an early period, which altered the course of its theology, even to this day. One of the doctrines of the Catholic Church that is most controversial to both Protestants and Orthodox alike is based on the assumption of original sin: the Immaculate Conception. The Immaculate Conception rests upon the presupposition that man is inherently guilty, and therefore finds the need for Christ’s mother to be sinless in order that she might not pass sin guiltiness on to her Son. This doctrine, dogmatized in 1854 A.D. by Pope Pius IX lacks the patristic, apostolic, and biblical support needed for doctrines of the Orthodox Church and relies too heavily on extra-biblical sources for doctrines of protestant groups who profess sola scriptura.
Original Sin in the Protestant Churches
The vast majority of Protestantism has inherited the Catholic Church’s preference toward original sin. This is likely due to Protestantism’s origin springing directly from the Catholic Church, and/or a misguided assumption that original sin is implicitly biblical. Regardless, in matters of original sin, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Luther asserted that humanity is constantly in a state of sin from the moment of conception. Calvin took Augustinianism a step further; declaring that man was not only guilty, but depraved. Arminius reaffirms mankind’s inherent guiltiness. Charles Wesley, while influenced by Eastern theologians, formed his doctrines around an assumption of original sin. In his melding of Orthodox doctrine with an assumption of original sin, he pioneered a doctrine called sanctification, which is close to the Orthodox doctrine of theosis, but ultimately different. Theosis is the restoration of one’s natural state into union with God, while sanctification is a divine act of creating a nature contradictory to the one with which we were born. I would view this as a misinterpretation of Psalm 50 (or Psalm 51, for the non-Septuagintals among us.) The Psalmist says “Create in me a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit within me.” An Eastern perspective would understand the renewal of a right spirit to be the restoration of the Psalmist’s nature and the clean heart being his desire and will for innocence and purity. A Weslyan perspective would likely be reversed. The views of the reformers, while possessing an admirable unanimity toward original sin seems to have gone largely unquestioned. Most Protestants would oppose the fact that their doctrines regarding original sin are mostly carryovers from their Roman Catholic roots; however, I would assert this to be the case: Protestantism has retained a significant amount of assumptions and worldviews from the Roman Catholic Church, because every Protestant group can and must at some point trace their lineage back to its genesis being a schism (sometimes of a schism of a schism, etc.) from the Latin Church.
Mankind’s Nature According to the Eastern Church
As we have traced original sin from St. Augustine, to its acceptance in the Roman Catholic Church, to its carryover into Protestantism, let us now examine how the Eastern Orthodox Church has progressed without this same doctrine. Orthodoxy affirms a different understanding of anthropology than that of Western Christendom. Where Augustinians view mankind as guilty and sinful by nature, Orthodoxy views mankind as pure and innocent by nature. The common reaction to this runs along the lines of “But I’m not pure or innocent.” Fair enough. Me either. Let’s delve into why the Eastern Orthodox Church holds this view.
Innocent by Nature
Adam was sinless when he was created, evidenced by the picture painted of he and God walking and talking in the garden. This was man’s original state, that of perfection. When Adam disobeyed God, he introduced sin into a perfect world, causing this perfect world to cease to exist and introducing death (Romans 6:23.) This is understood to be the fall: the introduction of sin into the world and the origin of the grip of death upon those who live therein. Therefore, the fall takes on a very different meaning in Eastern theology. It no longer represents the destruction of mankind’s purity, but instead the destruction of the purity of the world. After Adam’s sin, mankind is subjected to death: physical and spiritual. Our bodies die in a physical sense, and we suffer a chasm between ourselves and God whenever we sin, understood to be spiritual death. Orthodoxy says that purity is man’s natural state, not depravity; that we are sinful beings not by nature, but by circumstance. The presence of evil is sometimes apparent, and Orthodoxy acknowledges this. However, instead of stating that the wickedness of this life is reflective of man’s inner state, Orthodoxy would affirm that we are subject to a fallen world penetrated by death and evil. Therefore, it is our duty and calling to subjugate evil to the victory of Christ. And because Orthodoxy doesn’t affirm inherent wickedness in man, it is understood that whenever we sin, it is not because we have no choice in the matter, but rather because we have succumbed to the evil that lurks around us. While mankind is born pure and innocent, humans must exist in the fallen world, and are therefore subjected to a propensity toward sin. This is again, a result of the nature of the world around them, not their own. So in this view, mankind is not predestined to live separated from God; mankind chooses to separate themselves from God whenever they choose to sin. This understanding is not always preferable to all, mostly because it takes away the get-out-of-jail-free card: “I’m just a human,” or “A sinful soul is supposed to sin,” or “Sin is natural, why fight it?” To the Orthodox Christian, guilt is not laid upon the shoulders of his or her ancestors, but upon the heart of each person who chooses to betray their nature by sin.
The Place of Christ in an Orthodox Understanding
So where does Christ play into this? If He doesn’t take our place in guiltiness, what did He do? To the Orthodox, Christ’s death was not a free pass into Heaven, but the destruction of the bond of death upon humanity. By His own death, Christ trampled down the physical and spiritual death to which we were all subject. He destroyed the stranglehold of death on all of humanity by Himself being loosed from the bonds of death. The destruction of death is applicable to us in our salvation because it provides for us a way to attain unity with God. We reach out to God, in hopes of uniting ourselves with Him, a process called theosis. We aspire that our lives, our wills, our desires, our character, and everything that we are will be united into the essence of God’s being. This process of theosis is effected as humans come to be united once again with their Creator, through relationship with the Trinity, through the partaking of the sacraments, through the participation in a life of selflessness and self-giving, and through the process to which St. Paul exhorts us, that we may become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4.) Man is restored to the purity with which he was born and enters into union with God, through the grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ to the love of God the Father by the communion of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 13:14.) The Orthodox Christian believes that he works out his salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12) and that he walks out his baptism daily. This process of theosis is just that, a process, in which we are transformed into the likeness of God as St. Paul says in 2 Cor 3:18: “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” The Eastern Church views John 17:22-23 as a model of soteriology. “And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.” The Trinity invites humanity into unity with the Divine Essence, through Jesus Christ.
The Resurrection: Christ’s and Ours
The icon of the Resurrection provides a wonderful visual didactic tool. Featured both at the top of the article and to the right, it boldly portrays Christ being loosed from the bonds of death below Him, drawing Adam and Eve out of their tombs: tombs of physical and spiritual death. He stands on the gates of Hades, which he assures Peter will not prevail against the Church in Matt. 16:18, as they are formed in the shape of a cross, the instrument Christ used to defeat death. The icon of the Resurrection teaches us that Christ’s death on the Cross provides us with a way out of our death. In the icon, Christ pulls Adam and Eve by the wrist, showing that humanity is helpless to defeat death on its own; we could not defeat death on our own, Christ truly delivered us from its grip. If we allow ourselves to be pulled out of our spiritual tombs by the hand of Christ, we will walk in relational intimacy with our Creator and will defy our own death at our resurrection upon Christ’s return.
Was Jesus Sinful?
Perhaps the most compelling argument for the Eastern view of anthropology is one of the simplest. It can be asked as follows: Do humans possess original sin? If yes, then did Jesus Christ possess original sin? If He did not, then how does He truly relate to humanity? The majority of churches will affirm that Christ’s salvation relates to us because He was fully human and faced every struggle that we do. However, if he had no original sin, this is not the case. It’s dangerous to say that Christ possessed original sin, because He who takes upon His shoulders the sin of the world must be entirely sinless in order to effect salvation for all. This was the line of reasoning that led me to agree with Eastern view. If original sin rested on the soul of our Savior, his death was not sufficient. If he did not possess original sin, he cannot relate to me in my state of original sin. If, however, mankind is innocent and pure by nature, but chooses to sin as a result of human weakness, and Christ was born innocent and pure by nature, but lived a perfect and Godly life, then He is able to bear the sins of the world, while relating to humanity.
Topic: Findings of Critical Scholarship vis-a-vis the Traditional Islamic Understanding