The Chastisement Mexico City

[Apotheoun]

The Eastern Churches follow the teaching of St. Athanasios and the Cappadocians as it concerns the ancestral sin and its consequences. St. Augustine's views had no impact on Eastern theology.

[HisChildForever]

[quote name='Resurrexi' post='1854071' date='May 1 2009, 02:02 AM']Are you certain that the traditional understanding was that death for all creatures was brought about by Original Sin? If you think about it, according to the Genesis narrative, the animals were created for man to feed on. You can't really eat living animals.[/quote]

Man did not begin to eat animals until after the flood, actually. However, I would say that animals did die before the Fall simply because they have no soul, and we do. Human beings were created to be with God eternally, and not animals.

[HisChildForever]

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1854067' date='May 1 2009, 01:59 AM']it's interesting to get this from an Eastern view because there is certainly a crisis of the traditional simplistic understanding of death and original sin theology when one views a fossil record proving that death occurred prior to mankind's existence, [b]because the traditional formulation said that not just death in the human sense, but death for all creatures was originally brought about by human sin.[/b] that's the issue I was trying to deal with before when we were talking about whether natural disasters and plagues would've existed prior to humanity and humanity's first sin...[/quote]

Where can I read about this "traditional formulation"?

[HisChildForever]

Is it correct to state that the East believes God created man mortal but the West believes God created man immortal and mortality/death was a result of the Fall?

I would be interested, Apoth, to see other Scriptural references in support of your belief. What I found in Genesis points to death as a result of the Fall.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='HisChildForever' post='1854269' date='May 1 2009, 10:23 AM']Is it correct to state that the East believes God created man mortal but the West believes God created man immortal and mortality/death was a result of the Fall?[/quote]
The quotation I supplied a few posts ago was from St. Athanasios, and it summarizes the Eastern position.

"For transgression of the commandment [b]was turning them back to their natural state[/b], so that just as they have had their being out of nothing, [b]so also, as might be expected, they might look for corruption into nothing in the course of time[/b]. For if, out of a former normal state of non-existence, they were called into being by the Presence and loving-kindness of the Word, it followed naturally that when men were bereft of the knowledge of God and were turned back to what was not (for what is evil is not, but what is good is), they should, since they derive their being from God who is, [b]be everlastingly bereft even of being[/b]; in other words, [b]that they should be disintegrated and abide in death and corruption[/b]. [i][b]For man is by nature mortal, inasmuch as he is made out of what is not[/b][/i]; but by reason of his likeness to Him that is (and if he still preserved this likeness by keeping Him in his knowledge) he would stay his natural corruption, and remain incorrupt; as Wisdom Wisdom 6:18 says: 'The taking heed to His laws is the assurance of immortality;' but being incorrupt, he would live henceforth as God, to which I suppose the divine Scripture refers, when it says: 'I have said you are gods, and you are all sons of the most Highest; but you die like men, and fall as one of the princes.'" [St. Athanasios, [u]On the Incarnation of the Word[/u], no. 4]

Thus, the Eastern teaching is that man was created in the image and likeness of God, but being created ex nihilo his natural propensity (i.e., when divine grace is not sustaining him) is to return to nothingness. Man -- in the Garden of Eden -- was created with the potential for immorality, that is, if he likened himself to God by the acquisition of virtue, and this process of likening himself to God is what the Eastern Fathers call [i]theosis[/i].

[quote name='HisChildForever' post='1854269' date='May 1 2009, 10:23 AM']I would be interested, Apoth, to see other Scriptural references in support of your belief. What I found in Genesis points to death as a result of the Fall.[/quote]
The Eastern Fathers base the teaching on 1 Corinthians 15: "So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, 'The first man Adam became a living being'; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven." (1st Cor. 15:42-49)

By the disobedience of the first Adam all men were made merely natural, which means that they follow their natural tendency to corruption and death, but by the incarnation of the second Adam all men are given incorruption and ever-being.

Edited May 1, 2009 by Apotheoun

[Apotheoun]

[i]I wrote the following post some time ago, but it may be helpful here:[/i]


Eastern Orthodox theologians, and the Byzantine theological tradition in general, would simply deny that there is any "hereditary guilt" involved in the fall of Adam from grace in the Garden of Eden, but Byzantine theologians would not deny that man lost his participation in the uncreated divine life through the ancestral sin.

That being said, Byzantine theologians have a somewhat different understanding of the nature of man as he was created in innocence, holding that there is a distinction to be made between the image of God ([i]eikon Theô[/i]) and the likeness of God ([i]omoíosis Theô[/i]); the former was given to man in full act, while the latter was only in potency to act. As a consequence, what was deformed by the fall of Adam was the potentiality for assimilation ([i]omoíosis[/i]) to God, and not the divine image ([i]eikon[/i]) itself.

Thus, at the time of his creation in the garden, Adam was expected to assimilate himself to God by his own ascetic practice, but he failed in his mission and disfigured the likeness ([i]omoíosis[/i]) to God which he had received [in potency] from the first moment of his existence. In other words, by his act of disobedience Adam disfigured the likeness to God he had received in his initial creation, and no longer participated in God's deifying grace ([i]energy[/i]).

Now a man's assimilation to God (i.e., [i]divinization[/i]) can only be accomplished through the power of the divine energies ([i]grace[/i]) in cooperation with his own energies. But because of the ancestral sin, man is no longer able to properly cooperate with the divine energies, and so he is unable to achieve his true end, which is to be assimilated to God (i.e., [i]divinized[/i]). All of this explains the reason for the incarnation of the eternal Logos, for He comes, as a man among men, in order to restore the gift of the uncreated energies of God to mankind. To put it another way, the incarnate Logos energizes man, allowing him to become divine through a synergistic assimilation of his own energy to the uncreated divine energy, and the fruit of this process is a real participation by man in God's own uncreated life and glory.

Taken from the thread: [url="http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/index.php?s=&showtopic=34101&view=findpost&p=603694"][u]Christ's Human Nature[/u][/url]

Edited May 1, 2009 by Apotheoun