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Now it's defective, but with God's love and the Son's redepmtive sacrifice we can have been given that potential again. However, not without God help because we are already "wounded."

I can agree with that! Even here, we begin to achieve theosis, to share in the divine nature of God. We can even love our enemies!

Jo, the OT is where the sin is established as that of an individual and nto soemthing another man can atone for.

Normally, but the Suffering Servant passages talk about vicarious suffering, do they not?

I would say that St. Cyrprian very much believed in the western concpet of the "original sin" and that perhpas he had some influence on St. Augustine in his beliefs.

I would say that is true. I don't want to speculate on why the West had different views on "redemption" and the atonement, but I would say the cultures had something to do with it. When we approach Scriptures, we bring our baggage along with it, even our secular views on things. Perhaps there is good reason to point to the Old Roman way of looking at law and order? What is interesting is that Western society still seems to hold the English view of law (literal sense, with precedents established) rather than the European view of law (more subject to the judge's decision with precedent considered secondarily).

What is interesting, and most people don't realize, is that Western Canon Law is based on European Law, and is much more flexible than English Law.

But now I ramble...

Regards

Perhaps there is good reason to point to the Old Roman way of looking at law and order?

I think you are on the right track. This is what Prof. Kalomiros alluded to in his (in)famous "River of Fire," which the western Chirstians see as gross distoriton of their beliefs. But, then, the only way one can see the forest from the treets is to have an outside view.

In terms of human justice, the concept of original sin and payback make perfect sense, but not in the Greek mind. And the Greek term for God's justice falls short of the Hebrew term. Our biblical terms used to convey God's justice actually distroy the Hebrew term used, which means God's "means of accomplishing our salvation" — mercy, forgiveness, love.

So, clearly, when we read one and the same text, even if the translation is "true," we do not experience the words in the same way, because they mean something specific in each culture, and therefore cannot possibly understand the minds of the scribes who wrote the Bible.

That is pretty scarry, and that is the reason Christ left His Church to His priesthood and did not give everyone a copy of the Bible and said "just read it; even a child can understand it; everything you need to know is in it, indexted and alphabetized," and then just left it up to everyone to do as he or she can, as the Protestants would have us believe.

If the faith was going to be unifoversal, it had to be supracultural, supratraditional, supralinguistic. The Church was tasked with saving not just the documents but the interpretation of those documents in context and in the culture from which they came.