The inheritance of death rather than Adam’s sin
That the Orthodox Church does not accept the doctrine of original sin as espoused in the West, in no way suggests we do not need to be born anew. Orthodoxy continues the teaching of the Early Church that we inherit only the results of Adam’s sin, not his guilt. This is known as Ancestral Sin because the sin of our first parents resulted in our inheriting a cosmos where sickness, and death reign.
Christ’s death on the cross has as its power, not as an atonement sacrifice, but in the conquering of the power of death itself. Death has been trampled down by death, and Christ’s resurrection opened the door to eternal life, and ended the finality of death. Christ’s resurrection has become our resurrection. The Ancient and Apostolic Church did not deny the atonement of Christ on the cross, but had a different understanding of just what this meant, as apposed to the view of the denominations.
Even though we Orthodox do not believe a child is born in sin, the life and death of Christ, which reverses the primordial, generational, and personal falleness of this world, is what the child enters through baptism.
Although we do not refer to ourselves as “saved”, as do Evangelical Christians, believing as we do that salvation is a process, we nevertheless know we are in need of salvation. Our understanding of the nature of sin as distinct from the concept of original sin and the hereditary guilt that requires a substitutionary, atonement-type, sacrifice, separates us doctrinally from Western Christianity.
Had there not been a fall, Christ the Logos (Word) would still have, in the mind of many Church Fathers, incarnated in the flesh and taken on our nature. For this condescension by our God to take on the flesh of His creatures, opened wide the door for our communion with Him, allowing us to enter into the very Heart of God, thus completing creation as it was meant to be.
Our journey into the heart culminates in theosis, whereby we are joined in everlasting communion with the very God Who created us, for as Saint Athanasius of Alexandria said, “The Son of God became man, that we might become god.” And in II Peter 1:4, we read that we have become “…partakers of divine nature.” Saint Athanasius went on to say that theosis is “becoming by grace what God is by nature.”
With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon
Photo: Left to right: Linda and Gary Cox, Abbot Tryphon, and Art and Sandy Sphar. Art is a retired police and fire chaplain, and a friend of many years.
Wednesday March 10, 2021 / February 25, 2021
Week of the Last Judgment. Tone six.
Maslenitsa. Meat is excluded
St. Tarasius, archbishop of Constantinople (806).
New Hieromartyr Alexander, priest, Virgin-Martyr Mstislava (1938).
New Hieromartyr Priest Leo Korobczuk of Laskov (Chelm and Podlasie, Poland) (1944).
New Hieromartyr Nicholas priest (1945).
Hieromartyr Reginus, bishop of the isle of Skopelos (355).
Venerable Polycarp.
Martyr Anthony.
Venerables Erasmus and Paphnutius of Kephala, monks, contemporaries of St. Anthony the Great (4th c.).
Martyrs Alexander at Marcionopolis (305) and Hypatius.
St. Ethelbert, king of Kent (616) (Celtic & British).
Venerable Walburga, abbess of Heidenheim (779) (Celtic & British).
St. Maecellus, bishop of Apamea in Syria (Greek).
St. Theodore, fool-for-Chist (Greek).
The Scripture Readings
Joel 2:12-26
A Call to Repentance
12 “Now, therefore,” says the Lord,
“Turn to Me with all your heart,
With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.”
13 So rend your heart, and not your garments;
Return to the Lord your God,
For He is gracious and merciful,
Slow to anger, and of great kindness;
And He relents from doing harm.
14 Who knows if He will turn and relent,
And leave a blessing behind Him—
A grain offering and a drink offering
For the Lord your God?
15 Blow the trumpet in Zion,
Consecrate a fast,
Call a sacred assembly;
16 Gather the people,
Sanctify the congregation,
Assemble the elders,
Gather the children and nursing babes;
Let the bridegroom go out from his chamber,
And the bride from her dressing room.
17 Let the priests, who minister to the Lord,
Weep between the porch and the altar;
Let them say, “Spare Your people, O Lord,
And do not give Your heritage to reproach,
That the nations should rule over them.
Why should they say among the peoples,
‘Where is their God?’ ”
The Land Refreshed
18 Then the Lord will be zealous for His land,
And pity His people.
19 The Lord will answer and say to His people,
“Behold, I will send you grain and new wine and oil,
And you will be satisfied by them;
I will no longer make you a reproach among the nations.
20 “But I will remove far from you the northern army,
And will drive him away into a barren and desolate land,
With his face toward the eastern sea
And his back toward the western sea;
His stench will come up,
And his foul odor will rise,
Because he has done monstrous things.”
21 Fear not, O land;
Be glad and rejoice,
For the Lord has done marvelous things!
22 Do not be afraid, you beasts of the field;
For the open pastures are springing up,
And the tree bears its fruit;
The fig tree and the vine yield their strength.
23 Be glad then, you children of Zion,
And rejoice in the Lord your God;
For He has given you the former rain faithfully,
And He will cause the rain to come down for you—
The former rain,
And the latter rain in the first month.
24 The threshing floors shall be full of wheat,
And the vats shall overflow with new wine and oil.
25 “So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten,
The crawling locust,
The consuming locust,
And the chewing locust,
My great army which I sent among you.
26 You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied,
And praise the name of the Lord your God,
Who has dealt wondrously with you;
And My people shall never be put to shame.
Joel 3:12-21
12 “Let the nations be awakened, and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat;
For there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations.
13 Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.
Come, go down;
For the winepress is full,
The vats overflow—
For their wickedness is great.”
14 Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision!
For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.
15 The sun and moon will grow dark,
And the stars will diminish their brightness.
16 The Lord also will roar from Zion,
And utter His voice from Jerusalem;
The heavens and earth will shake;
But the Lord will be a shelter for His people,
And the strength of the children of Israel.
17 “So you shall know that I am the Lord your God,
Dwelling in Zion My holy mountain.
Then Jerusalem shall be holy,
And no aliens shall ever pass through her again.”
God Blesses His People
18 And it will come to pass in that day
That the mountains shall drip with new wine,
The hills shall flow with milk,
And all the brooks of Judah shall be flooded with water;
A fountain shall flow from the house of the Lord
And water the Valley of Acacias.
19 “Egypt shall be a desolation,
And Edom a desolate wilderness,
Because of violence against the people of Judah,
For they have shed innocent blood in their land.
20 But Judah shall abide forever,
And Jerusalem from generation to generation.
21 For I will acquit them of the guilt of bloodshed, whom I had not acquitted;
For the Lord dwells in Zion.”
Very informative post…..I would feel very over-confident believing I was saved. I think we have to work & pray daily toward salvation and when we die, are completely saved – hopefully. We are saved however knowing we have a path to follow as taught to us by Jesus and His apostles.
“Inherit the results of Adam’s sin” – very good way of wording it – I have been in these difficult conversations, so thankyou!
God bless & take care…..
I like to talk about multiple salvations, which Westerners typically do not understand because of Original Sin and Guilt. We are saved in Baptism and Chrismation – so that – we can be saved for life in the Age to Come. We are made into Sacred Space, where worship of the Trinity takes place, are delivered from the domain of death, Satan, sins – and transferred into the Kingdom family of Christ. It is salvation, but it is the beginning of it, not the entirety. I’ve spent the last few years exploring how Original Sin and Guilt confuses soteriology and ultimately ruins it. Exposing this error is the only way in my mind for Orthodoxy to persuade Westerners intellectually (of course that is not the main goal but the intellect – if it cannot embrace a belief – the belief will not be lived) that Orthodoxy is true. Soteriology is at the heart of Orthodoxy, because in it, God’s self-revelation is manifest. The child with no personal sin, or Adam before he sinned – still needed salvation. The pre-fall soteriology of Orthodoxy and the post-fall soteriology are in many ways the same story.
In Christ,
Matthew
Thank you Father for you wonderfull post-wisdowm today. I too come from Western Civilization, from presbisterian prostestant family feel myself in the struggle with western theology. Your post come as light in the soul bringing alonge peace. If was not Orthodoxy, from where I am since 2016 i would not being capable of being christian anymore after thinking about this deep matter. One of the best reading of the result of the western way is Nietzsche – The AntiChrist, who is, if you can say biographically, is a result of this, and become mad. One of the way the west put things, like God being moralistic scandalized by our sins, becoming angry for this humanity being so filth, really have taken many people to psicananalys clinic to realese the complex of guilt. You always feel some debt and shame, and start to take it as a complex of perpetual humiliation. You know, Sacher-Masoch was very christian, and he is the Masochist person in persona, if you know what i mean. Afterwall the way the West put the thing, after you being saved by Christ, you say you are saved from the Law, to become guilty of the death of christ who have died for yours filthy sins. How can you so misereble human have not shame to have done this to the son of God? I am mad with this. You are saved from the guilty of Adam, but are ever condenend by the guilty of the sufferings of the son of God for you. Let me alone with my old adam sin, please.