Excerpted from Orthodox Dogmatic Theology by Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky:
The physical consequences of the fall are diseases, hard labor, and death. These were the natural result of the moral fall, the falling away from communion with God, man's departure from God. ...
However, the final and most important consequence of sin was not illness and physical death, but the loss of Paradise. This loss of Paradise is the same thing as the loss of the Kingdom of God. In Adam all mankind was deprived of the future blessedness which stood before it, the blessedness which Adam and Eve had partially tasted in Paradise. In place of the prospect of life eternal, mankind beheld death, and behind it hell, darkness, and rejection by God.
By original sin is meant the sin of Adam, which was transmitted to his descendants and weighs upon them. The doctrine of original sin has great significance in the Christian world-view, because upon it rests a whole series of other dogmas. The word of God teaches us that through Adam “all have sinned” ... The common faith of the ancient Christian Church in the existence of original sin may be seen in the Church's ancient custom of baptizing infants. The Local Council of Carthage in 252, composed of 66 bishops under the presidency of St. Cyprian, decreed the following against heretics: “Not to forbid (the baptism) of an infant who, scarcely born, has sinned in nothing apart from that which proceeds from the flesh of Adam. He has received the contagion of the ancient death [sic] through his very birth, and he comes, therefore, the more easily to the reception of the remission of sins in that it is not his own but the sins of another that are remitted.” (The same thing is stated in Canon 110 of the "African Code,” approved by 217 bishops at Carthage in 419 and ratified by the Council in Trullo (692) and the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787). Canon 110 ends: “On account of this rule of faith even infants, who could have committed as yet no sin themselves, therefore are truly baptized for the remission of sins, in order that what in them is the result of generation may be cleansed by regeneration” (The Seven Ecumenical Councils, Eerdmans ed., p. 497).) ...
In the history of the ancient Christian Church, Pelagius and his followers denied the inheritance of sin (the heresy of Pelagianism). ...Blessed Augustine stepped out against Pelagius with great power and proof. He cited (a) testimonies from Divine Revelation concerning original sin, (b) the teaching of the ancient shepherds of the Church, (c) the ancient custom of baptizing infants, and (d) the sufferings and misfortunes of men, including infants, which are a consequence of the universal and inherited sinfulness of men. ...
Among the shepherds of the Eastern Church there have been no doubts concerning either the teaching of the inherited ancestral sin in general, or the consequences of this sin for fallen human nature in particular. Orthodox theology does not accept the extreme points of Blessed Augustine's teaching; but equally foreign to it is the (later) Roman Catholic point of view, which has a very legalistic, formal character. ... The consequences of ancestral sin are accepted by Orthodox theology differently. After his first fall, man himself departed in soul from God and became unreceptive to the grace of God which was opened to him; he ceased to listen to the divine voice addressed to him, and this led to the further deepening of sin in him.
In the first place in the series of Mysteries of the Holy Church stands the Mystery of Baptism. It serves as the door leading into the Kingdom of grace, or the Church, and it grants access to participation in the other Mysteries. Even before the establishment of the Mystery of Baptism, the Lord Jesus Christ in His conversation with Nicodemus indicated the absolute necessity of it for salvation: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven.” ...
The mystical grace-given aspect of Baptism is indicated in the above-cited passages of Sacred Scripture; Baptism is a “new birth,” and it is performed for the salvation of men (Mark 16:16). Moreover, setting forth the grace-given significance of Baptism, the Apostles in their Epistles indicate that in it we are “sanctified,” “cleansed,” “justified”; that in Baptism we “die to sin” so as to walk in renewed life; we are “buried with Christ,” and we arise with Him. ...
Since in Baptism a man receives, in place of the old existence he had, a new existence and life, and becomes a child of God, a member of the Body of Christ or the Church, an inheritor of eternal life, it is therefore evident that Baptism is indispensable for all, including infants, so that growing in body and spirit they might grow in Christ. ...
As we see from the above-cited statements of the holy Apostles, and likewise from the whole teaching of the Church, Baptism is not only a symbol of cleansing and washing away the defilement of the soul, but in itself is the beginning and source of the Divine gifts which cleanse and annihilate all the sinful defilements and communicate a new life. All sins are forgiven, both original sin and personal sins; the way is opened for a new life; opened is the possibility to receive the gifts of God. Further spiritual growth depends upon the free will of man.
This looks a lot closer to our view than the view expressed by the Orthodox here. Although I wonder how the author can on the one hand argue against the "guilt" of original sin and on the other say that original sin is forgiven in Baptism!
"This looks a lot closer to our view than the view expressed by the Orthodox here."
Ah, but has his p.o.v. been "received" by the Church, and what if he is just another Orthodox theologian who has been Latinised???!!!
It seems that nailing jello to a wall is as apt a metaphor for dialogue with the Orthodox as it is for dialogue with the Anglicans. There is obviously more than one phronema at work within Orthodoxy, and who is to say which one is right? As always everything comes back to the question of authority.