From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Mon Oct 06 2003 - 12:59:59 EDT
Dr. Blake Nelson wrote:
>
> An inherited Original Sin, in the way the Western
> church understands it, is the result of Augustine's
> influence and writings (indeed, although Origen talks
> about it, he does so differently than does Augustine).
> John Damascenus (died A. D. 760) does not include
> Original Sin among the doctrines held by the Church.
>
> The Eastern Orthodox church has a very different view
> of things in this regard, which may be instructive of
> the fact that it is not the only interpretation of
> Genesis 3, which obviously does not contain the term.
> For what it's worth, nor does any of the Old Testament
> speak of Genesis 3 as the source of man's sin, but
> rather of man's sinful nature with no reference back
> to Genesis 3.
>
> Anyway, not to belabor the point, but the Fall can be
> understood entirely differently than Augustine
> understood it, even though there has been a
> significant accretion of theology in the western
> church around Augustine's approach. To understand the
> Fall differently from Augustine does not in anyway
> represent a modernization or attempt to avoid
> particular consequences of Biblical passages since
> Augustine's interpretation was the novel one and one
> has an unbroken (although diverse) tradition of
> understanding of the Fall in very different terms in
> the Eastern church.
Bob has already explained the poor Latin translation of Romans 5:12. I would
just add that there have been other attempts to deal with original sin which take the
concept seriously but also attempt to take both Orthodox views and the realities of
evolution into account. Two of the chapters in _Perspectives on an Evolving Creation_
which Keith Miller edited, that of Robin Collins and my own, deal with this issue.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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