Dear Dionysiusdecordealcis,
"And on this point, there is no quarrel between Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholics. Augustine's concept of original sin is faulty and was abandoned by the Western Church in the 11thc and following."
I really appreciate many of your posts, and learn a lot from them.
If you have a little spare time, I'd be very appreciative if you could make a basic comparison and contrast between Augustine's view and that which is held by the Church.
If you don't have the time, that's okay.
Either way, thanks for all your contributions to this forum.
sitetest
Augustine was convinced by Rom. 5 (in the Old Latin, pre-Jerome translation which mistranslated slightly) that our solidarity in Adam (which is very true) required us to understand that the condition inherited from Adam was that of sin damning to hell. Anselm and then Innocent III began the process of distinguishing more clearly original "sin" from freely chosen actual sin after one knows the difference between right and wrong. Eventually this led to the position represented by Aquinas and others that, since only knowing, deliberate, free choice can condemn to hell and our original condition cannot involve knowing, deliberate choice, original "sin" does not condemn to punishment in hell but, if not remedied by baptism, does deprive of the beatific vision of God.
The original condition as described after Innocent, Aquinas, Anselm etc. is a lack of original righteousness. It seriously disorders us and even after this condition is removed by baptism, something of it still remains with us as the inclination to sin called concupiscence.
The Eastern Church Fathers always retained the term sin as referring solely to freely chosen actual wrongdoing and never applied "sin" to the original condition, though they agreed that the original condition is disordered--no longer capable, without first being redeemed, of being transformed into divine sonship (theosis/divinization), we come into the world subject to the disorder of mortality, subject to the trajectory leading to death--from which only Christ's work on the cross and resurrection saves us. This disordered original condition leads inexorably to actual sin as the child gains the use of reason and ability to distinguish right from wrong.