Hope this helps.
"Hope this helps."
These writings based on the teaching of Fr. Romanides certainly seem to reflect the p.o.v.'s which the Orthodox have expressed on this thread. However, the puzzlement for us Latins is what degree of authority do they actually hold?
How do we know that they reflect the Orthodox position rather than these following passages from the Russian Orthodox catechism (which teach exactly what the Catholic Church teaches)?:
"166. What is the death which came from the sin of Adam?
It is twofold: bodily, when the body loses the soul which quickened it; and spiritual, when the soul loses the grace of God, which quickened it with the higher and spiritual life.
167. Can the soul, then, die as well as the body?
It can die, but not so as the body. The body, when it dies, loses sense, and is dissolved; the soul, when it dies by sin, loses spiritual light, joy, and happiness, but is not dissolved nor annihilated, but remains in a state of darkness, anguish, and suffering.
168. Why did not the first man only die, and not all, as now?
Because all have come of Adam since his infection by sin, and all sin themselves. As from an infected source there naturally flows an infected stream, so from a father infected with sin, and consequently mortal, there naturally proceeds a posterity infected like him with sin, and like him mortal.
169. How is this spoken of in holy Scripture?
By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. Rom. v. 12."
Are there in fact different competing theologies within the Orthodox Church with respect to the teaching on original/ancestral sin?
The other Orthodox sources which gbcdoj cites (St. Peter Mohila's "Orthodox Confession of the Faith", the Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem against Calvinism), also seem to have the authority of various Orthodox synods. St. Peter Mohila's Orthodox Confession of the Faith even uses the words "original sin"!:
"This sin is called original for these reasons: first, because before this time man was stained by no sin, although the devil sinned, through whose initiative the sin known as original arose in man. Adam, the perpetrator of the sin, is subject to it as also are we, his posterity. Secondly, it is called original because no man is conceived without it."
At what point did this all become unacceptable doctrine in the Orthodox Church, or do some indeed still hold it?