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To: mockingbyrd

"rejects the Western notion of Original Sin.

How do the Orthodox view it?"

That there is no such thing. Instead, we refer to the sin of Adam or ancestral sin which is not our sin at all nor is it "on" our souls at our conception but rather the corruption wrought by Adam;s sin is passed on to us sort of in our spiritual DNA. For this reason, when speaking of the baptism of infants, many of the Fathers comment that for them Baptism is not for the remission of their sins but rather for initiation into the Body of Christ by symbolically dying with Him and rising into new life with our potential for theosis, lost in the Fall, restored.

"Are we only dying with the Master and are we only sharing in His sadness? Most of all, let me say that sharing the Master's death is no sadness. Only wait a little and you shall see yourself sharing in His benefits. 'For if we have died with Him,' says St. Paul, `we believe that we shall also live together with Him.' For in baptism there are both burial and resurrection together at the same time. He who is baptized puts off the old man, takes the new and rises up, `just as Christ has arisen through the glory of the Father.' Do you see how, again, St. Paul calls baptism a resurrection?" +John Chrysostomos


14 posted on 02/16/2007 4:49:55 PM PST by Kolokotronis (Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!)
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To: Kolokotronis

So do the Orthodox view man's nature as fallen, or corrupt, since Adam, but that there's no sin, per se, to be washed away in baptism? At least with infants?


19 posted on 02/17/2007 8:22:15 AM PST by mockingbyrd (peace begins in the womb)
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