This is a long chapter but immensly informative and accurate impartial explanation of the approach to the concept of Orginal Sin of the Eastern Church. It comes from this treatise called
"Original Sin and Ancestral Sin- Comparative Doctrines" by James J. DeFrancisco, Ph.D.. I highly recommend everyone read it, as it clearly points out the distinctions between the the major faiths in regards to this important topic, including what the Jews, Muslims, and various denomination understand as Original Sine. I have pasted the chapter pertaining to the Eastern Orthodox Church below:
The Ancestral Sin Approach of the Orthodox Fathers
As widespread as the term original sin is today, it was unknown in both the
Eastern and Western Church until Augustine (c. 354-430). The concept of original sin
may have arisen in the writings of Tertullian, but the expression seems to have first
appeared in Augustine’s writings. Prior to Augustine, theologians used different
terminology indicating a contrasting way of thinking about the fall, its effects, and
God’s response to it. The phrase the Greek Fathers used to describe the fall that took
place in the Garden was ancestral sin.
It is suggested by those in the Orthodox Church that the doctrine of ancestral
sin naturally leads to a focus on human death and Divine compassion as the
inheritance from Adam, while the doctrine of original sin shifts the center of attention
to human guilt and Divine wrath.xxii It is further posited by Hughes that the approach
of the ancient church points to a more therapeutic than juridical approach to pastoral
care and counseling.
According to Hughes, love is the heart and soul of the theology of the early
Church Fathers and of the Orthodox Church. He states that, “The Fathers of the
Church—East and West—in the early centuries shared the same perspective: humanity
longs for liberation from the tyranny of death, sin, corruption and the devil which is
only possible through the Life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
Ancestral sin (Greek: amartema) refers to an individual act of sin. The Eastern
Church Fathers assigned full responsibility for the sin in the Garden to Adam and Eve
alone. The word amartia is the more familiar term for sin which literally means
“missing the mark” and is used to refer to the condition common to all humanity.
The Eastern Church never speaks of guilt being passed from Adam and Eve to their
progeny, as did Augustine and the Western Church. Instead, the position of the
Eastern Church is that each person bears the guilt of his or her own sin.
Relative to the Eastern view, the question becomes, “What then is the
inheritance of humanity from Adam and Eve if it is not guilt?” The Orthodox Fathers
uniformly answer with the word: death. As Romanides writes, “Man is born with
the parasitic power of death within him.” Cyril of Alexandria teaches that our
human nature became “diseased…through the sin of one”. Therefore, for the
Orthodox fathers, it is not guilt that is passed on but, rather it is a condition, a disease
that results in death.
The freedom to obey or disobey belonged to our first parents, “For God made
man free and sovereign”. Adam and Eve failed to obey the commandment not to
eat from the forbidden tree – the tree of knowledge of good and evil - thus rejecting
God’s commands and their potential to manifest the fullness of human existence.
Because of this, in the Eastern view, death and corruption began to take over the
creation. “Sin reigned through death.” In this view death and corruption do not
originate with God and He didn’t create or intend for death and corruption to enter into
the world. In this view, God cannot be the Author of evil. Death is the natural result
of turning aside from God.
Adam and Eve were overcome with the same temptation that afflicts all
humanity: the desire to be independent and exercise self will, to realize the fullness of
human existence without God. According to the Orthodox fathers sin is not a
violation of an impersonal law or code of behavior; it is outright rejection of the life
offered by God. This higher level of life is the mark, the missing of which is
what the word amartia refers. Fallen human life is above all else the failure to realize
the God-given potential of human existence, which is, as Peter writes, to “become
partakers of the divine nature”.
In Orthodox thought God did not threaten Adam and Eve with punishment. He
was not angered or offended by their sin. Rather, He was moved to compassion.
The expulsion from the Garden and from the Tree of Life was an act of love and not
vengeance so that humanity would not “become immortal in sin”.
The Fall could not destroy the image of God in humanity. This great gift given
by God to humanity remained intact, but damaged. Origen described this as the
image buried as if in a well choked with debris. While the work of salvation
was accomplished by God through Jesus Christ the removal of this debris hiding the
image in humanity calls for free and voluntary cooperation. Paul uses the word
synergy, or “co-workers”, to describe the cooperation between Divine Grace
and human freedom. For the Orthodox Fathers this means asceticism (prayer, fasting,
charity and keeping vigil) developed from Paul’s image of the spiritual athlete.
This is also the working out of salvation “with fear and trembling” spoken of by Paul.
Paul and Jesus describe salvation as a process involving faith, freedom and
personal effort to fulfill the commandment of Christ to “love the Lord your God with
all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself”.
The Orthodox use the term "ancestral sin" in relation to the disobedience of
Adam and Eve. The Orthodox understanding on this matter is quite different from the
"west" in its doctrine of "original sin."
There are two major issues presented by these three texts related to ancestral sin
and salvation: Genesis 3:1-24, Roman 6:22-23 and 1 Corinthians 15:20-28, 51-58
when seen in conjunction:
(1) The relationship between sin and death. Here we can identify:
Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life
through Jesus Christ our Lord."
1Corinthians 15:56: The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.
(2) The Orthodox doctrine of salvation as it pertains to the cross and the
resurrection of Christ.
It begins with the Garden of Eden. Since in the Greek this is paradeisoz
(Paradise) we may rightly understand the Garden and indeed Heaven as a real place in
space-time but removed from the fallen domain of this world. In this dimension, our
first parents communed with the world, each other and God. The Fathers (Theophilus
of Antioch, Ephraim the Syrian, Hilary of Poitiers, Maximus the Confessor), insist that
our first parents were created neither mortal nor immortal. Until the point of his
disobedience Adam was sinless but not perfect and able to sin. He was not immortal
but capable of achieving immortality through obedience. This is most important for
what comes afterward and especially as we compare the doctrine of our original state
from the perspective of Holy Scripture with what later emerged in the post-Orthodox
West.
From this starting point Adam was like a child, fully capable of growing up in
obedience to his Heavenly Father and achieving immortality. He ate the fruit from the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil in disobedience to God’s Word and suffered
death as a result.
Irenaeus and the Fathers generally do not see death as a divine punishment for
the disobedience of our first parents. This distortion arose later in the West under the
influence of Augustine. The Fathers interpret the consequences of the Fall as
something we brought on ourselves when we distanced ourselves from God. In this
view, God still walks in the Garden. It is we who hide and shamefully cover our
nakedness. Likewise, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise and the angel
standing guard with the flaming sword is not an act of divine retribution but a
compassionate and merciful provision lest we eat of the second tree, the Tree of Life,
and die eternally. The fruit of this tree, if we had eaten it, would have condemned us
forever.
John Chrysostom says:
"Partaking of the tree, the man and woman became liable to death and subject to
the future needs of the body. Adam was no longer permitted to remain in the
Garden, and was bidden to leave, a move by which God showed His love for him
… he had become mortal, and lest he presume to eat further from the tree which
promised an endless life of continuous sinning, he was expelled from the Garden
as a mark of divine solicitude, not of necessity."
Paul taught in the context of the resurrection as the remedy for sin and death, ("O
death where is thy sting …?"), "the sting of death is sin." [1 Corinthians 15:55-56]
Cyril of Alexandria wrote:
"Adam had heard: ‘Earth thou art and to the earth shalt thou return,’ and from
being incorruptible he became corruptible and was made subject to the bonds of
death. But since he produced children after falling into this state, we his
descendents are corruptible coming from a corruptible source. Thus it is that we
are heirs of Adam’s curse."
and perhaps your indoctrination of western interpretations of the Holy Scriptures influence your interpretation of it?
