Eastern Orthodoxy rejected inherited guilt and taught only ancestral sin

Evidence

Augustine’s doctrine of original sin — the doctrine that the infant inherits Adam’s guilt — is, technically, a Western Christian doctrine. It is not a doctrine of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The Greek-speaking Christian East — the church of Constantinople, of Antioch, of Alexandria, of Cappadocia — never adopted the Augustinian formulation. The Eastern theologians — Athanasius, the Cappadocians, John Chrysostom, Maximus the Confessor — taught instead what is called ancestral sin — propatorikon hamartēma. The condition that humans inherit from Adam, in the Eastern view, is mortality — the susceptibility to death, the loss of the original divine likeness, the orientation away from God — but not personal guilt for Adam’s specific act. The Eastern infant, unbaptized, does not carry inherited guilt the way the Western infant does in Augustine’s framework. The infant is not innocent in the Pelagian sense — but the infant is not guilty either. The infant is vulnerable, mortal, in need of grace — not condemned on the basis of an inherited stain. — , The Rod and the Child, 717

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines propatorikon hamartēma and the Eastern Orthodox distinction between inherited mortality and inherited guilt.
• XREF: Connects to the contrast between Western and Eastern Christian pedagogy and the episode’s thesis about theological intensity of the cane. — connects to: Eastern Christianity teaches inherited mortality and vulnerability, not inherited guilt — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 1621; Augustine’s original-sin doctrine suppressed the Pauline no-provoke framework in Western practice — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 2772; Eastern Orthodox ancestral-sin doctrine does not theologically require corporal punishment — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 2834

Related

• Eastern Christianity teaches inherited mortality and vulnerability, not inherited guilt (similarity 0.93)
• Eastern Orthodox ancestral-sin doctrine does not theologically require corporal punishment (similarity 0.90)
• Augustine’s original-sin doctrine suppressed the Pauline no-provoke framework in Western practice (similarity 0.86)
• Eastern Orthodoxy sustained the no-provoke tradition that the West abandoned (similarity 0.84)
• Augustine interpreted his school beatings as inherited punishment for Adam’s sin (similarity 0.81)
• Original sin theology committed Christianity to the cane for salvation (similarity 0.80)
• Ambrose produced the earliest Christian argument linking original sin to corporal punishment (similarity 0.79)
• Eastern patristic pedagogy prescribed gentler, more specific correction than Western doctrine (similarity 0.78)