Ancestral Sin, Original Sin, Total Depravity - who gets it right?
Sinful nature of Man
Grayson Gonzalez
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Matthew Flores
Total Depravity seems like its only used by Calvinists, so I assume it's just heresy. It implies that we have no faculty with which to choose God over sin and death, which is heresy.
Ancestral or Original sin seems like whether you believe Traducianism or not (with ancestral sin being the traducian position) so both would seem to be legitimate positions. I'm not sure it's worth worrying too much about; it's really a question that involves the genealogy of the soul, something we haven't been informed about. I'm inclined to give Occam's razor credit to Traducianism for saying that the soul comes from our parents, but creationism of the soul seems more theologically consistent.
Overall, I'd probably say ancestral sin to "get around" the problem posed by God being unable to create anything with a sinful nature. (i.e. even with the soul being created by God, our sin-nature must be transmitted through material bodies, although I don't know if this is the right terminology).
Xavier Lewis
naw luther had it too, it's just not popular anymore.
Jordan Barnes
Original Sin obviously. Original sin makes total sense, it's logical. If your parents are alcoholics and smokers, and you are raised by them, you have much higher chance of turning out the same. Is it your fault for being born in those circumstances? No it's not, but the fact remains you have a higher proclivity to those vices now. That's the way the world is. You still have free will and if you decide to get drunk and stuff you're still at fault. Wait, why is this fair? Because where sin abounds, grace abounds more. God doesn't give people temptations more than they can handle. So yes actually those people have more grace than other people. It's always their fault if they sin. But this is the way the world is, no one can deny that some people are born in more challenging situations because of the actions of their parents. Well I can say that I was raised with issues because of my parents, and they had issues because of their upbringing of their parents, and so on, all the way back to Adam and Eve.
Now note, this is not actually how original sin is transmitted - it is supernatural and transmitted by birth, not by upbringing. But this is just a real world analogy of something that works very similar to original sin and no one can deny because it's obvious and true. Hence what happens materially visible also happens immaterially, through the soul, and this is original sin. You are not guilty of a sin, but you suffer separation from God and you have a higher proclivity towards sin. Hope this helps, God bless.
Jason Price
That feel when no totally depraved Calvinist gf
Robert Jones
Grayson Roberts
What's wrong with this? It's not any different from what the Lord says:
The idea that we can be saved without the grace of God is Pelagian, and the idea that accepting Christ is entirely up to us but the rest is up to the grace of God is Semipelagian.
Also, as far as I can tell, "Ancestral Sin" and "Original Sin" are one and the same thing. Because of Adam's sin, we are enslaved to the devil from the beginning of our existence. Our nature is fallen and we live in a fallen world. We have sin, as in, we are in a state of separation from God and we don't fulfill the will of God perfectly. It's not a personal responsibility but it's something we inherit from Adam - we inherit a corruption from him.
The distinction is very artificial and polemical, done by the Orthodox because Catholics call "guilt" the consequences of original sin, which to Orthodox ears might sound like personal responsibility. But anyone who bothers to look into what Catholics believe, beyond the words they use, can clearly see that they don't believe differently from the Orthodox on this subject.
Angel Adams
That's what's wrong with it. Calvinism teaches that we don't have free will and God arbitrarily chooses who is going to be saved.
Grayson Rogers
I know that they have an incorrect definition of "predestination" (they interpret it as "choosing in advance" when the Greek term bette means "foreknowing") but I don't see a problem with the definition itself of total depravity. It means nothing more than "we are saved by the grace of God alone". Of course, the issue is with the incorrect conclusion they make out of it, though (but it's based on a mistranslation, so it's not difficult to fix).
Tyler James
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Colton Bennett
Orthodox got it right. Or rather, it's the same thing Jews taught.. and still teach.
en.wikipedia.org
You can still call it original sin, but only in the sense that Adam's original sin brought death. It's Death and Mortality that lends to further sins (and conversely, it's Life through Christ which leads to righteousness.. this is where we depart from Judaism obviously. They're still trying to be free from death, without a rebirth. Makes no sense).
Ryder Adams
stmaryorthodoxchurch.org
It's the only interpretation that's actually consistent with Jesus's message of love and good news.
Dominic Hill
This doesn't seem right, especially as I asked the Jews I know and they all strongly denied that Judaism believes in anything like original/ancestral sin. Most are taught that Adam was born mortal to begin with, and that the consequence of Adam's sin is nothing more than what the text says - that men must work for food and childbirth is painful for women.
Not different from the Catholic teaching on original sin.
Not true. Or rather, there is no contradiction, and these are two complementary aspects of sin. Sin is both the refusal to fulfill our natural pupose, and the infraction of God's commandments.
Not different from the Catholic teaching.
Again, this isn't true - these are two complementary aspects of the same truth. God hates sin, and hated the sin Adam and Eve committed, therefore He cursed them. God's punishment is therapeutic and His wrath is for the sake of our repentance, but it does not mean God was not angered by Adam and Eve's lawlessness.
I mean, it is literally God Who declares that from now on Adam and Eve will suffer in the world and will die. He punishes the serpent, He punishes Eve, and He punishes Adam.
It was vengeance so that man may not continue to desegrate God's good world. To say that the intoduction of death is purely an act of love implies that God had no reason to save us from it through Christ.
Permit me to translate from my Orthodox catechism on these subjects.
Adrian Foster
...
Joshua Roberts
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Adam Lopez
And on the status of children toward God, since this is relevant:
Luis Cooper
I began to distrust different editions of catechisms, since basically everyone writes what they want, with some Russian ones being outright atrocious.
Which catechism do you use?
Chase Scott
its all different sides of the same coin. literally has NO importance, only the end state of salvation and surrender to Christ is important. theology is good, but the millisecond it gets in the way of true, simple faith in Christ it needs to be tossed aside. forget the pedantic arguments of those types and focus on Christ, and the wisdom will come later and naturally so.
Benjamin Brown
It's from a catechism written by Fr Roman Biliavskyi, of ROCOR. But that is beside the point. Nowhere does it say in holy scripture that one can be saved without being baptized, or at least sincerely seeking to be with Christ. Infants cannot do this, because they are not reasonable enough yet, so only baptism can save them.
If children can be saved without baptism, why shouldn't this be true of everyone? Everyone has original sin, including infants.
Jose Ortiz
What makes the God of Calvinism unjust is the combination of Limited Atonement and Total Depravity. God not only made them essentially evil, but He also has no intention of letting them accept the Gospel. How do Calvinists defend this?
Bentley Lee
When I make it to heaven and I see a bunch of filthy unbaptized babies I'm gonna be PISSED!
Jaxson Davis
This seems to imply that God created death as a "curse" for the sake of punishment, but that contradicts the scriptures:
oca.org
2 Corinthians 6 doesn't say anything about God's attitude becoming vengeful. We cannot conflate God's acts of judgement with his attitude towards man. The Gospels are held in higher regard than the Epistles in the Orthodox Church for a reason. Only God can adequately express his sentiments towards man, and he did so by preaching a message of love and forgiveness during his incarnation.
Ephesians 5 isn't referring to the fallen state of man in general, it's referring to already confirmed Christians falling away from the church.
Whatever catechism you got this stuff from seems questionable to say the least.
Well that explains it, I guess.
This stance is nothing more than legalism. You're trying to turn something that was left as a mystery, into a false sense of certainty. Not to mention It's also trivially false:
Jose Ward
I have question related to this. If our nature is sinful, then why is doing something "against nature" considered a sin?
Nathaniel Parker
Original and Ancestral sin is the same thing, it's a false dialectic put up by misinformed orthodox.
Jordan Howard
If they were actually the same, the RCC wouldn't have needed to create a doctrine of immaculate conception.
Dominic Ward
It's not our "nature" to sin per se. Rather since we are born tainted with original sin, it means we have this inclination towards sin. Just like after you use drugs a lot, you have a tendency towards drugs, but this is not your true nature. An example would be like if you grew up in a house where there were lots of drugs around, you are more likely to be drawn towards them. But the nature of a human being is not to do drugs really, but because of the fault of your parents raising you in a bad environment, now you're "pre disposed" towards it. Thats like original sin, our parents caused us to have this affliction of tendency towards sin, but it is not our true nature. Our true nature is to follow God, and that's the only thing that makes us happy or satisfies us.
Luke Mitchell
Read this article by a Western Rite Orthodox:
journal.orthodoxwestblogs.com
Henry Watson
Carter Williams
Figures. Is this Eric Lozano character ROCOR? Is he a priest? Never heard of him. It would be quite bold for a layman to just blatantly assert that nearly the entire church is currently wrong in its understanding of this matter. Not even Jay Dyer makes such bold proclamations like that. Seems risky (and borderline protestant) to stake any of your understandings purely on the opinionated research of a single layman like this.
Regardless, that essay still fails to adequately address the point about immaculate conception. It's basically saying that the doctrine of immaculate conception was redundant and only necessary to address a misconception that supposedly doesn't exist anymore, yet I highly doubt you'll find many catholics that agree with that characterization, much less any that think such a view of original sin is a "misconception". I know this because I was a former Catholic. So either Rome is right in its clarification saying Mary is a unique case, or the "ancestral sin" proponents are right in clarifying that it's a non-issue because "everyone is already immaculate". Whether or not "ancestral sin" is actually Orthodox, is a different discussion that could be had, but at the very least, this difference about the uniqueness of Mary's circumstances does exist:
catholic.com
At that point it's no longer a matter of patristics, but rather basic logic. Saying the Roman and Orthodox interpretations are the same, is subtly implying the East might be risking heresy for ignoring the the uniqueness of Mary's birth. Either we acknowledge the problematic consequences of the fall that Rome identified (and consequently, Mary's extraordinary birth), or we don't.
It also should've already been obvious to everybody that neither of the current forms of "ancestral" nor "original" sin are particularly ancient, because it wasn't until relatively recently that each church decided some clarification was required in order to ensure they weren't accidentally teaching heresy. As such, arguing that it was never discussed in the early church is hardly relevant either.
Every orthodox also already knows we only adopted the term "ancestral sin" recently to emphasize this clarification, and that it is still the same original sin that we're talking about just with a more refined understanding, so the author of this essay is completely making up this idea that somehow the phrase "original sin" is interpreted as having been "always western". The fact that he also cites the council of Jerusalem without even once giving the context that it was entirely about refuting calvinism, is also extremely fishy. Not to mention he's practically arguing for some form of purgatory at one point:
>It should be pointed out that the terms about infants who die without baptism being damned, not saved, and such as employed by the Council needs to be understood in the way they were understood by the Latin and Greek theologians of the time. For them infants who die without baptism, not attaining to the Kingdom did not mean damnation and hell as is understood in popular culture today. They did not mean that infants who die without baptism are in the same place or state as those who commit personal sins, but rather it denotes more of a state where the person could experience even the highest natural happiness but not in the direct presence of God, so to speak.
Like wtf man. If this is what the western rite is about (Catholic apologetics), then I'm not surprised many orthodox are skeptical of it.
Jonathan Russell
Would you prefer it to come from a orthodox priest (Fr Aidan Kimel)? afkimel.wordpress.com
neither church is wrong about anything on this matter, just mislead to what catholics actually believe, particularly due to Romanides who concocted this 'heresy' in the 20th century unknown to the Church, never brought up at the council of florence as a contention or 400yrs after Trent where Original Sin was defined.
its not risking heresy since, for you it is still a theologumen that has been part of the tradition, even in the west Aquinas argued against the Immaculate conception and and it was up to Duns Scotus to champion it, Pius IX simply put a end to speculation.
We already have the problems of the filioque, papal supremacy, etc. No need to add another thing to the list.
Jack Hughes
(cont)
You say this despite the fact that the issue of the uniqueness of Mary's birth (which is most certainly something catholics widely believe) wasn't even mentioned in the first essay at all. How is that not misleading? Even if it were really a non-issue as you suggest, it's still shady to pretend such a prominent catholic teaching doesn't exist and just shove it under the rug like that. If anyone is misunderstanding anything here, my money is on the guy who also (misleadingly) over-generalized and misapplied a council on calvinism, and then casually argued for an orthodox purgatory.
It's one thing to like and celebrate western traditions, but a whole other thing to let those traditions interfere with teachings. Quite frankly, this all sounds more like a misguided attempt at ecuminism that misses the forest for the trees, than a genuine attempt at clarifying any Orthodox understandings. The misrepresentation of Eastern beliefs to make points also doesn't help, as it just makes things more confused and less nuanced than they were before. And to top it off, this is all presented here with the hubris to suggest it's actually just everyone else that misunderstands Catholics – including Catholics themselves!
What do you mean it's not risking heresy "for you"? Are you not even Orthodox? Regardless, a heresy is a heresy, it doesn't matter who believes it, or why they believe it is/isn't heretical. And to claim something isn't heretical just because there's no official stance on it yet, is equally ridiculous (especially when the implications of a teaching are something as blatant as suggesting that it's ok that we've ignored the possibility that Mary and Jesus could've both been born sinful). Any cursory look at church history would quickly reveal that heresies have pretty much always come before any official statements from the church formally recognizing them as heretical. The Nicene Creed for example, was only developed in response to the Arian controversy, and even that happened after Arius was already excommunicated. If something is ever determined to be heretical, that means it has always been heretical, not that it just suddenly transformed into a heresy overnight once a statement was made about it.
Ok, so Aquinas favored some variant of "ancestral sin" maybe, great… and that changes the current circumstances between the churches how? Pius IX still asserted the uniqueness of Mary's birth (which the Orthodox have never taught):
>in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin.
newadvent.org
Oliver Long
(cont)
Do you really think Orthodox church officials view our differences with Rome as some kind of petty score sheet? It doesn't matter how many differences there are, what matters is outlining which differences we have, so that we can better clarify our own teachings in a world disproportionately populated by catholics and protestants. Saying that "we don't need this one extra difference" is utterly besides the point, because simply ignoring the differences with popular understandings of original sin among the laity doesn't help illuminate people about the Orthodox church's teachings at all, and is begging for misunderstandings to ensue, thus making this whole endeavor rather counter productive. Unless of course, your main goal in promoting this view is actually some misguided desire for ecumenism instead. Because only from that kind of vantage point could muddying the waters like this be seen as some kind of positive. But ecuminism is a very different beast from evangelism, because it often adds uncertainty and distortion to our message in order to be inclusive, instead helping people understand our message by clarifying it, which can only hurt us in the long run, as unity under confusion is no goal to strive for. Or as St. Theophan the Recluse said about the heterodox:
Which makes one ask: why is union between "ancestral sin" and "original sin" even an issue in the western rite then? The Orthodox message has never been about its similarities with other religions, but rather on helping people reach salvation through its own teachings alone.
Brandon Price
Bump.