Mortal or sinful or both. . .

Although there is much in Orthodoxy which attracts me, I remain confounded by the refusal of Orthodoxy to speak of original sin except in terms in mortality.  Sometimes modern Orthodox tend to characterize the Western definition of original sin in almost comedic terms -- criminals living out their sentence here on earth before they suffer it eternally.  It does little to help with the understanding but it does make it clear to me that for the East original sin amounts to nothing more than the presence of death as a shadow over life.  It is that, of course, but is that all it is?  Our mortality is certainly one continuing consequence of the Fall but it is not the only one.  All the talk of sin in Scripture cannot be summarized as a problem of will on the part of the mortals or else Jesus is come merely to open the door to the grave and leave the stone of sin unturned.  I do not get it.

In Western theology, it is common to all theological traditions that human beings are born with “original sin,” which, in includes the curse of death and the inability to free ourselves from either death or the sin that caused it.  But that is not all.  This also means that we suffer from the continuing consequences of what our first parents did in Eden.  We share a communal guilt in addition to a personal one and this is not something we choose or suffer because of our sins we have thought, said, or done.  It is guilt inherited from Adam and Eve and the common malady of those born of woman.  Furthermore, we are born sinful and unclean, that is, we are born as sinners.  We are neither innocent nor are we good from the moment of our existence.  Every man born of woman needs to be redeemed and this is not simply the release from death.  The East does not speak in these terms.  I would suggest that it does not speak fully the language of Scripture which does speak in these terms as well as in others.  I would suggest that the original sin which speaks of our bondage to sin of which we cannot free ourselves includes death but is not merely that we are mortal and that this is not some novel invention of the West but the witness of the Scriptures and the testimony of the early Church as well.

Indeed, it seems to imply that Jesus came to liberate us from our bondage to death but our bondage to sin is something we can handle -- at least by the choice of virtue and asceticism.  That would place everyone of us back in Eden in the place of our first parents except for the shadow of mortality which is cast over us until Jesus lifts it from us and brings us into His own immortality.  How curious it is that we can handle the problem of sin but not death!  Indeed, modernity seems intent upon testing this notion.  We as people seem to be working very hard to be masters of death, making it also a choice.  Since we have already worked to eliminate sin as a category of our fallen lives, we moderns seem poised to neither to need saving nor to need a Savior at all.  While I would agree that we in the West can sound rather dismal in the way we speak of this mortal life lived in bondage to sin, the East seems too hopeful that a good choice can fix what sin has done to us.  I wish that were true but we all know it is not.   Original sin seems to be the one truth that requires no revelation.  Every newspaper account of our wrongs and every obituary speaks volumes of what sin is and what it has done to us.  

For Orthodoxy, original sin is ancestral sin, but while we suffer the consequences of Adam and Eve's sin, such as death and a tendency to sin, we do not inherit guilt for that sin.  It is no wonder that Augustine is no favorite of the East.  For the Orthodox “original sin” refers to the “first” sin of Adam and Eve.  While those born since bear the “consequences” of sin, the chief of which is death, there is also a weakness before sin.  In the West, humanity likewise bears the full “consequences” of the “original sin” of Adam and Eve, and this includes both the “guilt” of the sin of Adam and Eve and a condition which makes us more than merely weak to sin but captive to sin of which death is the universal sign of this.  In the East man is guilty only of his or her own sin but does suffer from the mantle of death which is passed to all humanity from Adam and Eve.  As Lutherans we insist that we are both mortal and sinful, wearing the guilt passed down to us from Adam and Eve and caught in sin so that we cannot free ourselves.  While this does something to the notion of man's nobility and dignity which some might find offensive, it also reflects a higher view of Christ and the accomplishment of His work on our behalf.