An article by Orthodox writer Vladimir Moss, unfortunately no longer online, argues strongly that the tendency in Orthodoxy to deny the transmission of sin down the generations is a recent change initiated primarily by publications of Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky (1926) and Fr. What, then, has the Eastern Church rejected about original sin? Here my reading, as an outsider to Eastern Orthodoxy, suggests that all is not as it is often portrayed. This doesn’t resonate with our modern mindset – but neither does it affect the nature of original sin itself. He suggested that sin was transmitted to the new life as it was conceived through the concupiscence (lust) now inherent in fallen sexual relations. But his most contentious offering, though frequently forgotten now, is merely a suggestion for the mechanism of transgression of original sin. Augustine’s contribution was, firstly, to argue carefully from Scripture for the additional element of corporate human guilt for that first sin. How is this different from Augustine’s view? In the matter of the inheritence of bondage to sin not at all. He does not spell out whether that bondage consists of the tendency to sin, or guilt for Adam’s first sin, but the first seems more in line with his words and is usually the main point at issue in terms of discussing Adam’s progeniture. I think it’s clear that the whole force of Irenaeus’ argument is that Adam entailed bondage to sin and death on his physical descendants. For God is neither devoid of power nor of justice, who has afforded help to man and restored him to His own liberty. If a hostile force has overcome certain, had bound them, and led them away captive, so that they begat children among them and somebody, compassionating those who had been made slaves, should overcome this same hostile force he cerainly would not act equitably, were he to liberate the children of those who had been led captive, from the sway of those who had enslaved their fathers, but should leave these latter … the children succeeding to liberty through the avenging of their father’s cause, but not so that their fathers, who suffered the act of capture itself, should be left. But he clarifies this by an illustration: In other words, the captivity is both: death is the consequence of sin for Adam’s children as for Adam. But is that captivity to sin, or just to mortality? In the previous paragraph he has said that Adam became “a vessel in Satan’s possession”, in his power, because Satan wickedly bought sin upon him, and pretending to offer immortality instead made him liable to death. See that Irenaeus says that Adam’s children are begotten in captivity. So in #2 of chapter XXIII he says:įor it is too absurd to maintain that he who was so deeply injured by the enemy, and was the first to suffer captivity, was not rescued by Him who conquered the enemy, but that his children were – those whom he had begotten in the same captivity. In other words, his theme is tangential to our interest here, and it is likely that any teaching involving original sin merely reflects the prevailing belief of orthodox Christians then. Irenaeus wants to prove how fitting it was that God should save him, and how the Scriptures support that assertion. His main teaching on this matter, in Against Heresies Book III, is actually primarily against the heretic Tatian’s teaching that Adam was not redeemed from his first sin. Irenaeus wrote over two centuries before Augustine, and is regarded as an authority in both the Eastern and Western traditions.
But the Patristic writers do at least give us an idea of what “the Church has always taught”, and if modern writers are misrepresenting their positions truth is not served. Neither do I regard the Church Fathers as the fount of infallible gospel truth. Now I am open to alternative views of Adam’s role as the author of human sin, since the relevant Scriptural passages are be difficult to interpret dogmatically. Even John H Walton, much of whose excellent work I have been reading of late, mentions this as a plain fact in order to defend the concept that Adam need not be regarded as the physical ancestor of the entire human race. The Eastern Church, they say, never taught the idea of hereditary sin. It reminded me that I haven’t yet recorded in this blog what Irenaeus actually teaches, which is an oversight as many modern writers in the evolution/theology field, and outside it, question the traditional teaching on original sin, most often by attributing it to Augustine in the west.
I had reason to dig around in some of the Patristic literature recently, and came across Irenaeus’ (late 2nd century) teaching on Adam and sin whilst looking for something else.