The Ancestral Sin: A Comparative Study of the Sin of Our Ancestors Adam and Eve According to the Paradigms and Doctrines of the First- and ... the Augustinian Formulation of Original Sin

by John S. Romanides, George S. Gabriel (Translator)

Internationally esteemed as one of the most outstanding Greek Orthodox theologians and patristic scholars of our time, Fr. John Romanides was also a groundbreaking pioneer. Paradoxically, he did not break new but neglected and hallowed ancient ground. In an age of religious syncretism and rationalism, this classic work brings to light ancient truths long ago replaced by juridical schemes and forgotten in most Christian denomination.

Truths regarding the creation 'ex nihilo', the destiny of man, Adam's sin and fall, the origin of death, soteriology and God's relations with the world were exposited as the doctrines of the primitive Church by the Apostolic and post-Apostolic Fathers of the first and second centuries. Hindered by the paradigms of post-Augustinian thought, Western Christianity has rarely understood these doctrines that predate by several centuries the commonly held juridical ideas of original sin and atonement.

This book is the only in-depth comparative study of these doctrines and the underlying paradigms of the earliest Church Fathers on the one hand and the scholastic theologians on the other. IT demonstrates the integrity of the faith and apophatic theology of early Church in sharp contrast to the Augustinian and scholastic rationalism expressed by the aphorism credo intellegam, or 'I believe in order to comprehend.'

Dr. Romanides devoted his life to the authentic Tradition of the Church Fathers, differentiating it from the post-Augustinian thought worlds that had obscured it even in the Orthodox East.

Genres: Theology, Religion, Nonfiction

190 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[David Mosley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a primarily unhelpful polemic from start to finish. Romanides main point seems to be to show how the West is woefully wrong concerning sin and death (sinfully wrong, perhaps) and how the East contains only the right vision. Romanides argues that the West's understanding of created grace, evil as privation of the good, the analogia entis in Thomas, and God being love, good, etc. in his nature all lead to notions of original sin. The East, instead, sources evil and death in Satan, rather than in God (as he understands the West to do), and God is primarily free in his essence while attributes such as love are uncreated energies.

There are too many problems with this characterisation to go into here, but the one major problem I want to point out is this: Romanides desperately wants to make it clear that God did not create death as a punishment, that instead death is the dominion of the devil who is at war with God. The problem? Did not God create the devil? Is the devil capable of creating from nothing like God? Is this how God is not responsible for death? If so, then we fall into dualism, which Romanides would repudiate.

While in many ways I agree that we need to think of sin, death, and the Fall in ways other than original sin and man's fall from perfection, Romanides' attempt at this is inept and often glosses over areas where Eastern Fathers, whom he cites elsewhere often coincide with Western positions he repudiates. Chief among these would be how Athanasius writes about evil, what the Cappadocians write about the soul, and how Maximus understands the human desire for the supernatural.

I neither recommend this book nor don't. Read at your own risk.

[Kevin Godinho · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and taking a deep dive into the Orthodox perspective of Original, or "Ancestral," Sin. The Orthodox do believe in Original Sin, but not in the same way as the West. This is why you will sometimes hear them make the distinction with "Ancestral," so as not to be confused with the West. Namely, the way Augustine articulated it. They see Augustine's teachings of Original Sin, man's free will, predestination, etc. as anomalies according to the Church's general consensus of the Fathers up until that time. They hold Augustine to be a saint but say that he diverged from Catholic, or "universal," teaching on some of these points.

The Orthodox make a helpful distinction between the image of God that man was made in and the likeness of God that he is to grow in. The image of God is Christ, otherwise known as "Christ-within," which all humanity bears. This wasn't necessarily something fully revealed to humanity in creation but was later revealed in the Incarnation. The Incarnation is a doctrine that is incredibly central to Orthodoxy. Everything for them centers around the Incarnation. (That's important to understand, but a side point for this discussion.) What was "marred" in the Fall was not the image, but rather the introduction of distorted passions affecting the shaping of the pattern of our lives after the likeness of Christ, in whose Image we are all made. Obedience to God, by faith, results in being conformed to the likeness of Christ and bearing the image of God that humanity was made in. Choosing sin results in being conformed into the likeness of that which is opposed to Christ, namely, our flesh, the world, death, and the devil.

Adam "knew" Eve after the Fall. This is an expression of an intimate relationship and knowledge gained through experience. Similarly, Adam and Eve came to "know" evil by transgressing the law of God in the Garden. That is, they chose to break God's law, which is sin, and came to know intimately and experientially that law of sin and death, which was given birth to by the devil. They did not "know" sin in this way prior to the Fall. Prior to the act of choosing sin, they only knew experientially the presence of God and goodness. Because of this choice, humanity's experience has been a wrestling of flesh and Spirit ever since.

This teaches us that man does not inherit the guilt of Adam's sin the way Augustine taught, nor is he "totally depraved" the way Calvin taught, which is a further development of Augistinian anthropology: that man is incapable of intrinsically choosing between good and evil. Rather, this teaches us that due to the sin of Adam as mankind's representative, man inherits a fallen human nature: distorted passons, or a corrupted "eros," but has been given the ability to choose God or reject Him as ordained by God to be contained with human nature, fallen or not. To deny man's freedom to choose or positively respond to God's love is to deny the essence of Christianity: that humanity is made in the image of God for the purpose of being comformed into His likeness. This is the general consensus of the early Fathers and a point Augustine began to depart from.

Augustine also taught that the energies and grace of God are created and propounded the fundamental teachings of the Trinity that shaped the West's doctrine of the Trinity and led to the West adopting the filioque. (Another side point.)

After the Fall, it became distinctly more difficult for humanity to choose to honor God, but we still can nevertheless. To remove a man's freedom to morally choose is to remove the opportunity for love to exist. A loving relationship is one that happens between two willing parties. Not by coercion or force. God created man in His image, and Love has allowed man to choose. This opens up what we have been tasked with: to deny sinful passions, or distorted lusts, and gear those passions, or "eros," after heavenly things. We are to hunger and thirst for righteousness by crucifying those passions, and in so doing, be further conformed into the likeness of Christ and saved.

The Orthodox also tend to view God through the lens of love and mercy, not so much through the lens of anger, wrath, and punishment, meaning they have less of a "judicial" lens than the West, although they are not absent of it either, which is a common misconception. Therefore, when God told Adam that he would surely die on the day he ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, God told him what the outcome would be. God did not cause death but allowed it to enter into humanity's experience through the temptation of the serpent. God placed a "cap" on the human experience with a fallen nature. This is mercy, so that man will not continue indefinitely in decay and corruption. The Orthodox see this more as an act of mercy than an act of judgment. Humanity chose to sin against God; He told us what would happen, and now we bear the responsibility and reap what we sow. God's part in this is that of grace and mercy, desiring not for us to continue in a sinful state forever but intending for us, by His grace, to practice godly sorrow, which leads to repentance, and repentance, which leads to Life. He told us what not to do and then gave us a way out once we did. The choice is ours.

God's purpose for creating man is that he might be a partaker of the divine nature and go "further up and further in," if you will. Through theosis, we might become God-like, meaning one in likeness but not in essence. God remains God, and we remain creatures, but the purpose is union and communion in the deepest sense. We are spiritually sick from the Fall and are in desperate need of a Healer, and we have One if we are willing to respond with faith that works through love.

[Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

Romanides spends a fair amount of the book describing and explaining "Western" notions of original sin and then showing their inadequacies and failures as the foil to an Eastern idea of ancestral sin. In contrast to what he describes as Augustinian, scholastic and Protestant ideas, ancestral sin has some intellectual appeal. However if had just tried to explain the Orthodox idea of ancestral by itself without contrasting it to the Western ideas, I'm not so sure ancestral sin would look quite as strong as their are some holes in it as well. Nevertheless, the Eastern ideas of understanding humanity, sin, death and the Fall, have a stronger appeal to me. He points out a number of ideas that I've not seen presented before as the official Orthodox understanding - perhaps because Orthodox's tradition is more broad than he suggests and their is more diversity in the teachings of the Patristic writers than he admits to.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a strong ambivalence about this book. On the one hand it is a remarkably insightful look at how sin and death came into the world, and how that influences our thinking about Christ, salvation, and the spiritual life. On the other hand, the book is so steeped in criticism of an over-simplified, straw-manned, and at times unrecognizable "Western Church" that it is hard to know what the author means to say. On the whole, the criticisms are hit and miss,while the positive theology is remarkable.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Catholics and Protestants call it Original Sin but frequently mean Original Guilt, a guilt incurred by every human for Adam's transgression. This is not, however -- like much of Western Christian dogma -- what the first Christians believed.

[Jay D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chapter two completely dismantles Thomism. The rest is decent, except for the denial of judicial language and a weak view of Providence.

[Alexey · Rating 4 out of 5]

over my head in many respects