Original Sin - Catholic and Orthodox

[SingleMomMonica]

If an infant is not born guilty then how does Baptism involve for them a justification?

Why are you worried about Justification?

Christ used various analogies to describe our salvation.

It’s the Roman Catholics who took one of those analogies, namely “justification” and turned it into an explanation as to how salvation is achieved - they took it way too far creating an entire system around it: Merits, Indulgences, Purgatory, etc. All of which is foreign in Orthodox Christianity.

 

[SingleMomMonica]

I didn’t say Jesus did not suffer the consequences of ancestral sin. I’m saying He did not inherit ancestral sin itself. The fact that my saying He did not inherit ancestral sin made you think I was saying He did not suffer pain and death is again making me wonder if you have a Pelagian understanding of ancestral sin.

What is ancestral sin to you?

It’s not inherited, we’re born into it.

 

[agiosotheos]

It’s not inherited, we’re born into it.

So you’re saying that there is nothing different about an individual’s inherited state of humanity at conception now than before the Fall?

 

[agiosotheos]

Why are you worried about Justification?

Christ used various analogies to describe our salvation.

It’s the Roman Catholics who took one of those analogies, namely “justification” and turned it into an explanation as to how salvation is achieved - they took it way too far creating an entire system around it: Merits, Indulgences, Purgatory, etc. All of which is foreign in Orthodox Christianity.

I was curious why he referred to infants being justified at Baptism when so many RC’s deny the idea that infants are born guilty. It seems an inconsistency.

 

[SingleMomMonica]

So you’re saying that there is nothing different about an individual’s inherited state of humanity at conception now than before the Fall?

Hello!?! Is anyone home?

There was NO ONE Conceived before Adam and Eve sinned!

 

[agiosotheos]

Hello!?! Is anyone home?

There was NO ONE Conceived before Adam and Eve sinned!

Let me clarify.

You said “it’s not inherited, we’re born into it”.

So, I was trying to ask if the state of being that a child possesses when it is conceived and in the womb is any different than that which Adam and Eve experienced before the Fall?

 

[SingleMomMonica]

Let me clarify.

You said “it’s not inherited, we’re born into it”.

So, I was trying to ask if the state of being that a child possesses when it is conceived and in the womb is any different than that which Adam and Eve experienced before the Fall?

Right, we are all born into a Universe that has been affected by the Ancestral Sin - everything and everyone is subject to sickness, physical death, etc.

A child, like Adam and Eve, is created in the Image (we immediately have in full) and Likeness of God (our goal and our potential should we accept and strive after love of Him). Like Adam and Eve, we are all called to become gods, but this is not something we can achieve on our own - which is what Adam and Eve tried to do via their first sin - since God, as a result of their disobedience in striving to become god without God, removed them from direct contact with Him, meaning He would no longer show them the Way directly, by removing them from the Garden. We needed Mary, the first (& I think last) of the human race to choose of her own free-will to never sin - to give her “Yes” to God to allow Him back into direct contact with the Human Race via Jesus. Jesus came, told us what our potential is and how to achieve it with Him and gave us His Church to guide the Way. Full participation in the Divine Energies of God via the process of Theosis. He has given us the Medicine of Immortality, namely His Body and Blood in addition to the other Mysteries His Church provides us in addition to the spiritual help we receive from the spiritual fathers who have achieved this state while here on earth.

This is basic Orthodox Theology - how is it that you seem to Not know this? I don’t understand. Did you parents not take you to Church when you were growing up? Were you never exposed to your own Faith? How can you be looking to change your Faith, when you have not yet learned your own? This simply makes no sense to me. God bless you. I wish you the best on your journey.

 

[agiosotheos]

Right, we are all born into a Universe that has been affected by the Ancestral Sin - everything and everyone is subject to sickness, physical death, etc.

A child, like Adam and Eve, is created in the Image (we immediately have in full) and Likeness of God (our goal and our potential should we accept and strive after love of Him). Like Adam and Eve, we are all called to become gods, but this is not something we can achieve on our own - which is what Adam and Eve tried to do via their first sin - since God, as a result of their disobedience in striving to become god without God, removed them from direct contact with Him, meaning He would no longer show them the Way directly, by removing them from the Garden. We needed Mary, the first (& I think last) of the human race to choose of her own free-will to never sin - to give her “Yes” to God to allow Him back into direct contact with the Human Race via Jesus. Jesus came, told us what our potential is and how to achieve it with Him and gave us His Church to guide the Way. Full participation in the Divine Energies of God via the process of Theosis. He has given us the Medicine of Immortality, namely His Body and Blood in addition to the other Mysteries His Church provides us in addition to the spiritual help we receive from the spiritual fathers who have achieved this state while here on earth.

This is basic Orthodox Theology - how is it that you seem to Not know this? I don’t understand. Did you parents not take you to Church when you were growing up? Were you never exposed to your own Faith? How can you be looking to change your Faith, when you have not yet learned your own? This simply makes no sense to me. God bless you. I wish you the best on your journey.

I’m not asking you because I do not know the doctrine of the EOC, I am asking you to see if I am understanding what you are saying correctly.

Why do you say that we are “just born into it”? Do you recognize that a fetus is likewise bound to the consequences of ancestral sin?

You are mentioning the physical consequences of ancestral sin a great deal. Do you recognize that the sanctity of each individual has been affected from their very conception? Or do you think that we are just all holy and in communion with God until we personally commit sin?

 

[firstmode]

At 3 years old she entered into the Temple never looking back at her parents to live until she was betrothed to St. Joseph as a gift from her parents back to God. She was the only female ever recorded to enter the Holy of Holies unharmed (even the high priests entered that space with rope tied around there ankle to get pulled back out if they died in the presence of God).

Which Apocrypha do you get this from that you believe it to be the truth and actual history?

 

[eOxy]

…

We do believe that each individual inherits ancestral sin.

…

No, we do not.

We do not inherit the sin.

However, we do believe that we inherit the consequences of the Ancestral Sin.

 

[eOxy]

If Im correct, catholics believe we are all born stained with original sin, and we live with the consequences of a fallen world.

Orthodox believe we live with the consequences of the original sin, but NOT that each individual is personally stained with original sin.

As Orthodox claim to not have changed or developed doctrines since the times of the apostles, what was the belief of the early church fathers regarding original sin, and what sources do catholics under the auspices of Rome and Orthodox christians cite to support their position.

Orthodox can point to “On the Logos Incarnate”, by St. Athanasios the Great. Our belief re.: Ancestral Sin is reasoned there. Excellent explanation of it can be found in “The Ancestral Sin”, by Fr. John Romanides, of blessed memory, the book that is odious to RCCs to comment.

We never accepted that we bear the guilt for the Original Sin (a RCC term), exposed by Blessed Augustine, something professed by RCC for centuries. The good thing is that RCC corrected the teaching lately (some decades ago) and abandoned the teaching about inheriting the guilt.

 

[josie_L]

Orthodox can point to “On the Logos Incarnate”, by St. Athanasios the Great. Our belief re.: Ancestral Sin is reasoned there. Excellent explanation of it can be found in “The Ancestral Sin”, by Fr. John Romanides, of blessed memory, the book that is odious to RCCs to comment.

We never accepted that we bear the guilt for the Original Sin (a RCC term), exposed by Blessed Augustine, something professed by RCC for centuries. The good thing is that RCC corrected the teaching lately (some decades ago) and abandoned the teaching about inheriting the guilt.

Can you tell me when the Catholic Church taught we bear the guilt (as in we were complicit in the original sin committed by our first parents)? I never heard of this before.

This is what the Catechism says:

404 How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in Adam “as one body of one man”.293 By this “unity of the human race” all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state.294 It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” - a state and not an act.

405 Although it is proper to each individual,295 original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence". Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.

406 The Church’s teaching on the transmission of original sin was articulated more precisely in the fifth century, especially under the impulse of St. Augustine’s reflections against Pelagianism, and in the sixteenth century, in opposition to the Protestant Reformation. Pelagius held that man could, by the natural power of free will and without the necessary help of God’s grace, lead a morally good life; he thus reduced the influence of Adam’s fault to bad example. The first Protestant reformers, on the contrary, taught that original sin has radically perverted man and destroyed his freedom; they identified the sin inherited by each man with the tendency to evil (concupiscentia), which would be insurmountable. The Church pronounced on the meaning of the data of Revelation on original sin especially at the second Council of Orange (529)296 and at the Council of Trent (1546).297

 

[eOxy]

Can you tell me when the Catholic Church taught we bear the guilt (as in we were complicit in the original sin committed by our first parents)? I never heard of this before.

history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct05.html

The Council of Trent
The Fifth Session
…
5. If any one denies, that, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is conferred in baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted; …

 

[SingleMomMonica]

Which Apocrypha do you get this from that you believe it to be the truth and actual history?

I don’t know anything about any Apocrypha.

It’s a basic part of Christian Tradition. That’s why I believe it.

 

[josie_L]

history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct05.html

Please read what was said right before that:

1. If any one denies, that infants, newly born from their mothers’ wombs, even though they be sprung from baptized parents, are to be baptized; or says that they are baptized indeed for the remission of sins, but that they derive nothing of original sin from Adam, which has need of being expiated by the laver of regeneration for the obtaining life everlasting,–whence it follows as a consequence, that in them the form of baptism, for the remission of sins, is understood to be not true, but false, --let him be anathema. For that which the apostle has said, By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men in whom all have sinned, is not to be understood otherwise than as the Catholic Church spread everywhere hath always understood it. For, **by reason of this rule of faith, from a tradition of the apostles, even infants, who could not as yet commit any sin of themselves, are for this cause truly baptized for the remission of sins, that in them that may be cleansed away by regeneration, ****which they have contracted by generation. **For, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

Did you notice how they used the word “contracted” (just like in the catechism of the Catholic Church) to suggest that we are not guilty of 'committing" the sin (in fact it specifies infants have committed no sin)? Therefore the guilt of original sin must mean the (guilty) consequences contracted from Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience.

 

[eOxy]

…
Did you notice how they used the word “contracted” (…) to suggest that we are not guilty of 'committing" the sin (…)? Therefore the guilt of original sin must mean the (guilty) consequences contracted from Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience.

That’s exactly the error we have always refused, that we bear the guilt for otherone’s sin.

Luckily, RCs silently abandon that error lately.

 

[josie_L]

That’s exactly the error we have always refused, that we bear the guilt for otherone’s sin.

Luckily, RCs silently abandon that error lately.

Firstly, you are confusing the word “contracted” with the word “committed”, in that you seem to think that the CC believed at one point in time that we were implicated, that is, guilty of the disobedience Adam and Eve committed. Wrong, we have contracted the consequences of that guilt. Secondly, the the Catholic Church (not the Roman Catholic Church) has not “abandoned any error”, in fact, I just quoted you the CCC in order for you to understand that our position has not changed on the matter (it’s your understanding of Catholic theology that is in error). Let me reiterate again this most crucial point about “original sin” from the CCC:

And that is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” - a state and not an act.

 

[josie_L]

That’s exactly the error we have always refused, that we bear the guilt for otherone’s sin.

Luckily, RCs silently abandon that error lately.

1. If any one asserts, that the prevarication of Adam injured himself alone, and not his posterity; and that the holiness and justice, received of God, which he lost, he lost for himself alone, and not for us also; or that he, being defiled by the sin of disobedience, has only transfused death, and pains of the body, into the whole human race, but not sin also, which is the death of the soul; let him be anathema:–whereas he contradicts the apostle who says; By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.

What do Orthodox make of this paragraph taken from Trent (especially the last part)?

 

[eOxy]

Wrong, we have contracted the consequences of that guilt.

We certainly didn’t.

I don’t know about you - lately RCs explicitly deny the inherited guilt. You first ask questions, then start to debate with my straightforward answers by pointing to my alleged misunderstanding of your questions.

You asked me to point when RCs believed in guilt. There you have it, in my link to the council of Trent above. I don’t see what else is there to debate, and I am certainly not interested in listening hogwashed theology.

 

[josie_L]

We certainly didn’t.

I don’t know about you - lately RCs explicitly deny the inherited guilt. You first ask questions, then start to debate with my straightforward answers by pointing to my alleged misunderstanding of your questions.

You asked me to point when RCs believed in guilt. There you have it, in my link to the council of Trent above. I don’t see what else is there to debate, and I am certainly not interested in listening hogwashed theology.

For the last time it is not inherited guilt as in we are implicated in the disobedience of our first parents, but we did contract the consequences of that guilt/sin. Here is what I have dug up from one of my old posts:

“The prevailing view also in Eastern Orthodoxy is that man bears no guilt for the sin of Adam. Orthodoxy prefers the term “ancestral sin”,[8] which indicates that “original sin is hereditary. It did not remain only Adam and Eve’s. As life passes from them to all of their descendants, so does original sin. We all of us participate in original sin because we are all descended from the same forefather, Adam.”[9] An important exposition of the belief of Eastern Christians identifies original sin as physical and spiritual death, the spiritual death being the loss of “the grace of God, which quickened (the soul) with the higher and spiritual life”.[10] Others see original sin also as the cause of actual sins: “a bad tree bears bad fruit” (Matthew 7:17, NIV), although, in this view, original and actual sin may be difficult to distinguish.[11]”

Why do the Orthodox baptize infants?