[Hermann the Cherusker]

I would say the larger barriers are western "Augustinian" issues which we Orthodox reject.

What is amusing is that you impute this to Catholicism also, even though the Catholic Church does not follow St. Augustine on some of the very points you adamantly think we do, such as original sin and free will and the necessity of faith to perform good works.

Even more amusing, is that the Church's failure to follow St. Augustine on these issues is one of the major causes of the Reformation, in that men like Luther and Calvin returned to St. Augustine to purify the Church of what they viewed as the detritus of the Scholastics, especially St. Thomas Aquinas.

[drstevej]

yep.

[Destro]

The Catholic Church's failure to follow St. Augustine???? There goes the infallibility dogma....

[MarMema]

What is amusing is that you impute this to Catholicism also, even though the Catholic Church does not follow St. Augustine on some of the very points you adamantly think we do, such as original sin

Catechism of your church

"403 Following St. Paul, the Church has always taught that the overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination towards evil and death cannot be understood apart from their connection with Adam's sin and the fact that he has transmitted to us a sin with which we are all born afflicted, a sin which is the "death of the soul".[291] Because of this certainty of faith,the Church baptizes for the remission of sins even tiny infants who have not committed personal sin.[292]

404 How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in Adam "as one body of one man".[293] By this "unity of the human race" all men are implicated in Adam's sin, as all are implicated in Christ's justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state.[294] It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called "sin" only in an analogical sense: it is a sin "contracted" and not "committed" - a state and not an act."

Hermann, it sounds to me like you do have a doctrine of original sin, in spite of your words above.