Original Sin - The Difference Between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Views

The difference between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic doctrines of original sin developed from the Latin translation of Romans 5;12, The Augustinian teaching is based on the Latin “in quo omnia peccaverunt” or “in whom all have sinned” as opposed to the Greek original, “in that” or “because all have sinned.” The former implies a personal guilt of the entire human race. While Roman Catholics and Protestants may differ on how the guilt is transmitted, the end result is the same according to those who believe in the doctrine of original sin. According to this doctrine all people are personally guilty unto damnation. This single presupposition has set a particular context for most of Western theology. Belief determines action.For many this determines what Christian life is all about: it is why people go to church and why congregants receive the Holy Sacraments because, in the end for many, these acts are done to make up to God and be cleansed from the stain of original sin. From this mind set arose the doctrines of indulgences, acts of supererogation and merits, the Tridentine version of the teaching in which this guilt is passed on through sex, the Immaculate Conception, and the idea (confusion from the Orthodox view)among Roman Catholics about the Assumption of the Theotokos. Devotional prayers like Salve Regina and acts of reparation before the Blessed Sacrament reflect a aspirituality based on the presupposition of personal guilt for Adam’s transgression and consequential damnation – and the hope that if one is good enough – with proper behavior before God, proper contriteness and appreciation of His mercy, one might escape the eternal torment of Hell that everyone deserves just for having been born adescendant of Adam.

The Orthodox Church affirms that we have inherited not Adam’s guilt, but the full consequences of his sin. A suitable analogy is a baby born to a drug-addicted mother. The baby is not guilty of drug abuse but he or she bears in the body, as well a sin the environment, the consequences of the mother’s addiction. The baby will be physically impaired and will live in an environment that inclines toward following the path of addiction; so likewise, we bear in our bodies the consequence of illness and death and in our environments the myriad of temptations we face. We absolutely require the grace of God to overcome sin and its effects. We may affirm the Orthodox doctrine of synergy, but the doctrine of synergy does not deny the absolute need for God’s part in that synergy.

Virtue is personal and not natural, which is why for the Orthodox, there is no inherited guilt. Sin is personal and not natural. Consequently, there can’t be anyone created virtuous. Hence Paul states, “for all have sinned and fallen short of the GLORY of God.” cxii

The Orthodox do not agree on the Prelapsarian condition with Scholasticism,because they reject all the implications that accompany the donum superadditum and affirm that Mary, the mother of Jesus, inherited death just like all people have, and therefore she inherited Ancestral Sin. Orthodoxy affirms in her liturgy that Mary died.Mary inherited Ancestral Sin, because she died, since that is what Ancestral Sin is. Ancestral Sin is death rather than imputed guilt (as in the Reformed view) or inherited guilt (as in Augustinism) for what Adam did. The Holy Scriptures state that death came from one man, and that it reigns now in us. cxiii

God is generally considered the author of whatever good will humanity has,since we have received all we have and are ultimately from God alone. Nothing at all would exist unless it existed in whom it is found. However, it is problematic if in that way one could also say that we should also attribute to God our bad will, because it could not exist in a human being, unless the human being existed in whom it is found.God is the author of the existence of the human being. Thus, one would have to credit God with being the author of this bad will too, since it could not exist if it did not have a human being in which to exist. But this presents a serious problem relative to the image of God in most theological viewpoints.

Augustine’s teachings have fundamental importance in Western theology but the East never accepted his grace theology or anthropology which led to doctrines such as the Immaculate Conception, Limbo, merit, free will, and original sin resulting in even fundamental doctrines such as Soteriology being very differently understood. John Cassian and John Chrysostom both took exception to it and yet medieval Catholic theologians classified both Cassian and Benedict as drifting to “semi-Pelagianism”.

The centralization of authority in the hands of the papacy was not taught by the Roman Catholic Church or the papacy itself until the early Middle Ages. In the Eastern Roman Empire that shaped the Orthodox East, the factor that held the Church together was common faith, not any one patriarchate. The separation of Rome and the Orthodox East was a terrible thing, but it did not change the basic structure of the Church which has always been conciliar. To the Orthodox, it is quite possible to have an authentic ecclesiastical life without scholasticism, thomism, anselmian “atonement’theology, “reform theology, and the like. 

The possibility of sin itself comes from the lack of virtue since virtue is attained through habituation. It is the individual’s personal use of will in deliberating between real and apparent good that makes sin possible. This mode of willing which leads to sin is not essential to human nature and Jesus Christ doesn’t have it as a part of his character. Corruption is natural but sin is personal. Natures don’t sin but individual persons do.

Augustine articulated this as the absence of justice in the soul, and his position was that concupiscence is just the material element that is the evidence of its existence in every single person. Without justice one cannot have communion with God and stand righteous before him. The absence of justice in the soul indicates a personal turning away from God.

From an Orthodox perspective justice is a virtue and virtues are gained through habituation. Adam is created holy and good but the road to theosis cxiv is open before him. (All of nature is good even without justice for example.) Adam simply doesn’t have the virtues that result from habituated obedience yet for obvious reasons.

Augustine’s position is that concupiscence is an immoral lust or desire. But the East Church tends to see desire as not immoral or an unstable element in the“matter” of human nature. For the Eastern mindset, desire is part of nature and is thus good. It is the personal employment and vicious enslavement of the person to their desires out of a fear of death that makes those desires sinful in their employment. Of itself, desire is naturally and metaphysically good. In viewing concupiscence as in and of itself immoral, Augustine is mistaken according to the Eastern view. What he takes to be “lust,” the Eastern Church takes more generally to be natural desires and what is natural is not opposed to God. Augustine is aware of different uses of the term but he takes the Scriptural use to be negative.

With regard to inherited guilt, within the Augustinian position it is difficult conceptually to explain how inherited guilt in children can be personal. Natures are inherited and it is easy to explain how one can have an inherited corrupt or disordered nature, which in and of itself is still metaphysically good but this doesn’t explain how personal guilt is transmitted or inherited.

For Orthodoxy, what a person is as well as individual ability or inability to sin depends on the personal employment of the individual will and the presence or absence of virtue.

Original Sin and Ancestral Sin-Comparative Doctrines - James DeFrancisco

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The following is found in a note in the article The Theology of Original Sin Based on ΕΦ ‘Ω and Romans 5.12 in the Light of Historical and Grammatical Research by Jason G. Andersen

Weaver wrote a comprehensive study of the understanding of Romans 5.12 among the Greek fathers. In summary of his nearly 80 pages of research, the Greek fathers had differences with the Augustinian interpretation of Romans 5.12. Much has to do with how Adam, sin, death, and humanity are interrelated. He lists two main ideas present in the Greek fathers: First, humanity inherited a doctrine of passions, which is the immediate doctrine of sinful behavior, and second, there is an explicit rejection of an inheritance of guilt. This is in contraposition to the Augustinian, Latin interpretations, which have influenced the majority of western Christianity who have traditionally had some understanding of an inheritance of guilt from Adam. Along with these premises, Weaver notes that some of the Greek authors “write of death as if it were the cause of sin.” This also is in strict contraposition to Augustine’s view that we all sinned in or because of Adam and therefore fell into death. Weaver says of Athanasius, “There is an inheritance of corruption and death and moral debilitation stemming from Adam’s sin but no doctrine of original sin.” 

The following is found in a note in the book Reforming Theological Anthropology by F. LeRon Shults

In a three-part series of articles, David Weaver offers an exhaustive treatment of this issue in Eastern Orthodox theology. He concludes that it is inaccurate to apply the term originale peccatum to the Greek-speaking theologians, since it represents a Western concept. "The most critical point of departure is the absence among the Greeks of any notion of inherited culpability — i.e., inherited guilt, which was the central point of the Latin doctrine and which made humanity's inheritance from Adam truly sin, unequivocally a sin of nature, which rendered the individual hateful to God and condemned him to eternal damnation prior to any independent, willful act." For the East, we may have inherited mortality from Adam, but not guilt. Cf. Weaver, "From Paul to Augustine: Romans 5:12 in Early Christian Exegesis," SVTQ 27, no. 3 (1983): 187 (part l). For extensive quotes from Greek fathers repudiating the Latin theory, see Weaver, "The Exegesis of Romans 5:12 Among the Greek Fathers and Its Implications for the Doctrine of Original Sin: The 5th-12th Centuries." SVTQ no. 2 (1983): 133-59 (part II); 29, no. 3 (1985): 231-57 (part III).