Ok. Do we have an idea why death was inherited even though Adam’s descendants didn’t commit the sin? Do we have an idea why all sin? EO commentators speak of loss of energies, damage to the image of God in us, corruption, loss of communion with God resulting from Adam’s sin. How does that all come into play? Are we speaking of both spiritual and physical death?
Our sins affect others. We share human nature. Adam’s sin harmed our nature and caused physical and spiritual death to be inherit in human nature. Christ restored human nature by uniting the divine nature (which is life) to human nature and destroyed the power of death and hades/hell.
In the Byzantine East, grace is the uncreated Energies of God (there are no created graces in our theology).
The East teaches consequences of the Fall is the separation of soul and body with the soul being placed in hades. The West teaches that those in a state of Original Sin lack sanctifying grace.
Christ was fully man. He voluntarily submitted to having his soul separated from his body and his soul sent to hades since that is what happens to man and he was (and is) a man. Christ was made like us in all things except for sin.
Here is the Byzantine view presented by Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky in his book, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology:
According to the Roman teaching, the burden of the sin of our first ancestors consists in the removal from mankind of a supernatural gift of grace. But here there arose a theological question: if mankind had been deprived of the gifts of grace, then how is one to understand the words of the Archangel addressed to Mary: “Rejoice, thou that art full of grace, the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art thou among women . . . Thou hast found grace with God?” One could only conclude that the Most Holy Virgin Mary had been removed from the general law of the “deprivation of grace” and of the guilt of the sin of Adam. And since her life was holy from her birth, consequently she received, in the form of an exception, a supernatural gift, a grace of sanctity, even before her birth, that is, at her conception. Such a deduction was made by the Latin theologians. They called this removal a “privilege” of the Mother of God One must note that the acknowledgement of this dogma was preceded in the West by a long period of theological dispute, which lasted from the 12th century, when this teaching appeared, until the 17th century, when it was spread by Jesuits in the Roman Catholic world.
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On the one hand, we see that God did not deprive mankind, even after its fall, of His grace-giving gifts, as for example, the words of the 50th Psalm indicate: “Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me… With Thy governing Spirit establish me;” or the words of Psalm 70: “On Thee have I been made fast from the womb; from my mother’s womb Thou art my protector.”
On the other hand, in accordance with the teaching of Sacred Scripture, in Adam all mankind tasted the forbidden fruit. Only the God-man Christ begins with Himself the new mankind, freed by Him from the sin of Adam. Therefore, He is called the “Firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29), that is: the First in the new human race; He is the “new Adam.” The Most Holy Virgin was born as subject to the sin of Adam together with all mankind, and with him she shared the need for redemption (the Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs, Par. 6). The pure and immaculate life of the Virgin Mary up to the Annunciation by the Archangel, her freedom from personal sins, was the fruit of the union of her spiritual labor upon herself and the abundance of grace that was poured out upon her. “Thou hast found grace with God,” the Archangel said to her in his greeting: “thou hast found,” that is, attained, acquired, earned. The Most Holy Virgin Mary was prepared by the best part of mankind as a worthy vessel for the descent of God theWord to earth The coming down of the Holy Spirit (“the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee”) totally sanctified the womb of the Virgin Mary for the reception of God the Word.
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St Cyril speaking on the consequences of the Fall and of Christ’s Incarnation:
Therefore we say that, since from the transgression of Adam human nature suffered corruption and since our intellect within us is tyrannized by the pleasures of the flesh or by the inborn motions of the flesh, it became necessary for the salvation of us who are upon the earth that the Word of God be made man in order that he might make his own the flesh of man although it was subject to corruption and sick with the love of pleasure. Since he is life and life-giver, he would destroy the corruption in the flesh and rebuke its inborn motions, plainly those which tend toward love of pleasure. For thus it was possible that the sin in our flesh be killed.
We recalled also that the blessed Paul called this inborn motion in us the “law of sin.” Wherefore since human flesh became the Word’s own, the subjection to corruption has come to an end, and since as God, he who made it his own and proclaimed it as his own “did not know sin,” as I said, he also put an end to the sickness of loving pleasure. And the only begotten Word of God has not corrected this for himself, for he is what he always is, but obviously for us. For even if we have been subject to evil from the transgression of Adam, by all means there will come upon us also the good things of Christ, which are immortality and the death of sin.
- St Cyril of Alexandria, Letter 45:9
