Original sin and atoning sacrifice. Original sin, its causes and consequences

Adam and eve- the first, created by God, people on earth.

The name Adam means man, the son of the Earth. The name Adam is often identified with the word man. The expression "sons of Adam" means "sons of men." The name Eve is life-giving. Adam and Eve are the progenitors of the human race.

A description of the life of Adam and Eve can be read in the first book of the Bible - - in chapters 2 - 4 (audio recordings are also available on the pages).

Creation of Adam and Eve.

Alexander Sulimov. Adam and eve

Adam and Eve were created by God in His likeness on the sixth day of creation. Adam was created "from the dust of the earth." God endowed him with a soul. According to the Hebrew calendar, Adam was created in 3760 BC. e.

God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden and allowed him to eat fruits from any tree except the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam was to cultivate and preserve the Garden of Eden, as well as give names to all animals and birds created by God. Eve was created as Adam's helper.

The creation of Eve from the rib of Adam emphasizes the idea of ​​the dual unity of man. The text of Genesis emphasizes that "it is not good for a man to be alone." The creation of a wife is one of the main plans of God - to ensure a person's life in love, for "God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him."

The first man is the crown of the world created by God. He possesses royal dignity and is the ruler of the newly created world.

Where was the Garden of Eden?

We are already accustomed to the appearance of sensational reports that the place where the Garden of Eden was located has been found. Of course, the location of each “discovery” is different from the previous one. The Bible describes the area around the garden, and even uses recognizable place names such as Ethiopia and the names of four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates. This has led many, including Bible scholars, to conclude that the Garden of Eden was located somewhere in the Middle East region today known as the Tigris-Euphrates Valley.

Today, there are several versions of the location of the Garden of Eden, none of which has strong evidence.

Temptation.

It is not known how long Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden (according to the Book of Jubilees, Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden for 7 years) and were in a state of purity and innocence.

The serpent, who "was more cunning than all the beasts of the field, which the Lord God created," tricks and cunning persuaded Eve to taste the fruit of the forbidden Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve refuses, referring to God, who forbade them to eat from this tree and promised death to everyone who tastes this fruit. The serpent tempts Eve, promising that after eating the fruit, people will not die, but will become Gods who know Good and Evil. It is known that Eve could not stand the temptation and committed the first sin.

Why does the serpent act as a symbol of evil?

The serpent is an important image in ancient pagan religions. Due to the fact that snakes shed their skin, they were often personified with rebirth, including with the natural cycles of life and death. Therefore, the image of a snake was used in fertility rituals, especially those associated with seasonal cycles.

For the Jewish people, the snake was a symbol of polytheism and paganism, the natural enemy of Yahweh and monotheism.

Why did Sinless Eve allow herself to be deceived by the serpent?

Comparison, albeit indirectly, between man and God, led to the emergence of theomachy moods and curiosity in the soul of Eve. It is these sentiments that push Eve to deliberately transgress the commandment of God.

The reason for the fall of Adam and Eve was their free will. The violation of the commandment of God was only offered to Adam and Eve, but not imposed. Both husband and wife participated in their downfall of their own free will, for outside free will there is no sin and no evil. The devil only incites to sin, and does not compel one to sin.

History of the Fall.

Lucas Cranach the Elder. Adam and eve

Adam and Eve, unable to withstand the temptation to which they were subjected by the devil (the Serpent), committed the first sin. Adam, carried away by his wife, broke the commandment of God and ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Thus, Adam and Eve incurred the wrath of the Creator. The first sign of sin was constant shame and futile attempts to hide from God. Called by the Creator, they laid the blame: Adam - on the wife, and the wife - on the snake.

The fall of Adam and Eve is fateful for all mankind. The fall violated the Divine-human order of life and accepted the devil-human order, people wished to become Gods, bypassing God. Through the Fall, Adam and Eve brought themselves into sin and sin into themselves and all their descendants.

Original sin- rejection by a person of the goal of life determined by God - to become like God. Original sin contains in embryo all the future sins of humanity. Original sin contains the essence of all sin - its origin and nature.

The consequences of Adam and Eve's sin affected all of humanity, who inherited from them human nature, corrupted by sin.

Expulsion from paradise.

God drove Adam and Eve out of paradise so that they could cultivate the land from which Adam was created, and feed on the fruits of their labors. Before the expulsion, God made people clothes to cover their shame. God placed in the east, near the garden of Eden, a Cherubim with a flaming sword to guard the path to the tree of life. It is sometimes accepted that the Archangel Michael, the guard at the gates to paradise, was the cherub armed with the sword. According to the second version, it was the archangel Uriel.

Two punishments awaited Eve and all her daughters after the Fall. First, God multiplied Eve's pain in childbirth. Second, God said that the relationship between a man and a woman will always be characterized by conflict (Genesis 3:15 - 3:16). These punishments have come true over and over in every woman's life throughout history. Regardless of all our medical advances, childbirth is always a painful and stressful experience for a woman. And no matter how advanced and progressive our society is, in the relationship between a man and a woman, there is a struggle for power and a struggle of the sexes, full of strife.

Children of Adam and Eve.

It is known for certain that Adam and Eve had 3 sons and an unknown number of daughters. The names of the daughters of the forefathers are not recorded in the Bible, since, according to the ancient tradition, the lineage was carried on in the male line.

The fact that Adam and Eve had daughters is evidenced by the text of the Bible:

The days of Adam after he begat Seth were eight hundred years old, and he begat sons and daughters.

The first sons of Adam and Eve were. Cain, out of envy, kills Abel, for which he was expelled and settled with his wife separately. From the Bible it is known about six generations of the Cain tribe, further information is not traced, it is believed that the descendants of Cain died during the Great Flood.

The third son of Adam and Eve was. Seth's descendant was Noah.

According to the Bible, Adam lived for 930 years. According to Jewish legend, Adam rests in Judea, next to the patriarchs, according to Christian legend - on Calvary.

The fate of Eve is unknown, but in the apocryphal "Life of Adam and Eve" it is said that Eve dies 6 days after the death of Adam, having bequeathed to her children to carve the history of the life of the first people in stone.

In fact, original sin means rejection by a person of the God-defined purpose of life - to become like God on the basis of a God-like human soul - and replace it with similarity. For by sin, people transferred the center of their life from a godlike nature and reality to an out-of-God reality, from being to nothingness, from life to death, they abandoned God and got lost in the dark and dissolute distance of fictitious values ​​and realities, since sin threw them away from God. Created by God for immortality and godlike perfection, people, according to St. Athanasius the Great, turned away from this path, stopped at evil and united themselves with death, for the transgression of the commandment turned them away from being to non-being, from life to death. " “Through the soul, it turned away from itself, from its divinity and became outside itself,” and, closing the eye with which it could look at God, it invented evil for itself and turned its activity to it, imagining that it was doing something, while in reality she walks in darkness and decay. " "Through sin, human nature was turned away from God and found itself outside of intimacy with God."

Sin in its essence is unnatural and unnatural, since there was no evil in the God-given nature, but it appeared in the free will of some creatures and represents a deviation from the God-given nature and rebellion against it. “Evil is nothing else,” says St. John Damascene - as a turn from the natural to the unnatural, for there is nothing evil by nature. For "And see all, make the tree ... good, great"(); and everything that remains in the state in which it was created is “good is great”; but that which willfully deviates from the natural and turns into the unnatural is in evil. Evil is not a certain God-given essence or property of an essence, but a willful disgust from the natural to the unnatural, which, in reality, is sin. Sin is an invention of the devil's free will. Hence, there is evil. In the form in which he was created, he was not evil, but kind, for the Creator created him as a bright, shining, reasonable and free angel, but he willfully departed from natural virtue and found himself in the darkness of evil, moving away from God. Who is One Good, Life-giving and Light-Giver; for every goodness becomes good to Him; as far as it moves away from Him by will, and not by place, so much it becomes evil. "

The Consequences of Original Sin for the First Parents

The sin of our first parents Adam and Eve is called original because it appeared in the first kind of people and because it was the first sin in the human world. Although it as a process lasted for a short time, it caused grave and disastrous consequences for the spiritual and material nature, as well as for all visible nature in general. By their sin, the ancestors introduced the devil into their lives and gave him a place in the God-created and God-like nature. Thus, sin became a creative principle in their nature, unnatural and God-fighting, evil-loving and devil-centered. After a person transgressed the commandment of God, he, according to St. John of Damascus, was deprived of grace, lost confidence in God, covered himself with the severity of a painful life (for this means fig leaves), clothed himself in mortality, that is, in mortality and rudeness of the body (for this means putting on skin), according to the righteous judgment of God was expelled from paradise, condemned to death and became subject to corruption. " "Having transgressed the commandment of God, with his mind he turned away from God and turned to the creature, from being passionless he became passionate and turned his love from God to creation and corruption." In other words, the consequence of the fall of our first parents was the sinful corruption of their nature and, through this and in this, the mortality of nature.

By a willful and self-loving fall into a person, he deprived himself of that direct grace-filled communion with God, which strengthened his soul on the path of godlike perfection. By this, man himself condemned himself to a twofold death - bodily and spiritual: bodily, which occurs when the body is deprived of the soul that revives it, and spiritual, which occurs when the soul is deprived of the grace of God, which revives it with a higher spiritual life. "Just as the body then dies when its soul leaves without its strength, so the soul then dies when the Holy Spirit leaves it without its strength." The death of the body differs from the death of the soul, for the body after death disintegrates, and when the soul dies of sin, it does not disintegrate, but is deprived of spiritual light, God-aspiration, joy and bliss and remains in a state of darkness, sorrow and suffering, constantly living by itself and from itself , which many times means - by sin and from sin. There is no doubt that sin is the ruin of the soul, a kind of disintegration of the soul, corruption of the soul, for it upsets the soul, perverts, disfigures its God-given life structure and makes it impossible to achieve the goal set by God and, thus, makes both her and her body mortal ... Therefore, St. Gregory the Theologian rightfully says: “There is one death — sin; for sin is the destruction of the soul. " Sin, once entering the soul, infected it, united it with), as a result of which spiritual mortality is called sinful depravity. As soon as sin, the "sting of death" (), pierced the human soul, it immediately penetrated it and poured the poison of death over it. And as far as the poison of death spread in human nature, so far a person was removed from God, Who is life and the Source of all life, and was mired in death. “As Adam sinned because of bad will, so he died because of sin: "Samples for sin, death"(); as far as he has withdrawn from life, he is so close to death, for God is life, and deprivation of life is death. Therefore, Adam prepared for himself death by distance from God, according to the word of Holy Scripture: "Yako se, who remove themselves from you, will perish"() ". Our ancestors had spiritual death immediately after the fall, and bodily death later." But although Adam and Eve lived for many years after eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, - says St. John Chrysostom, - this is not means that the words of God were not fulfilled: “In onzhe (). For from the moment when they heard: "Thou art the earth, and go to the earth"(), - they received a death sentence, became mortal and, one might say, died. " “In reality,” argues St. Gregory of Nyssa. - the soul of our ancestors died before the body, for disobedience is not a sin of the body, but of the will, and the will is characteristic of the soul, from which all the devastation of our nature began. Sin is nothing more than a distance from God, who is true and who alone is Life. The first man lived for many years after his disobedience, sin, which does not mean that God lied when he said: If you take a day away from him, you will die by death "... For by the very removal of man from the true life, the death sentence against him was confirmed on the same day. " The pernicious and devastating change that came after sin in the entire spiritual life of the ancestors encompassed all the forces of the soul and reflected on them in its theomachic disgustingness. The sinful damage of the spiritual human nature manifested itself primarily in the darkening of the mind - the eye of the soul. Reason through the fall has lost its former wisdom, insight, foresight, scope and divine striving; in him the very consciousness of the omnipresence of God was darkened, which is evident from the attempt of the fallen ancestors to hide from the All-Seeing and Omniscient God () and falsely represent their participation in sin (). “There is nothing worse than sin,” says St. John Chrysostom, “when he comes, he not only fills with shame, but also makes those who were reasonable and who were distinguished by great wisdom insane. Look, to what madness has reached now the one who until now was distinguished by such wisdom ... "Feeling the voice of the Lord God, going to heaven at noon," he and his wife hid from the face of the Lord God "in the midst of the tree of heaven." What madness it is to wish to hide from God the Omnipresent, from the Creator, who created everything out of nothing, who knows the innermost, who created human hearts, who knows all their deeds, who tests hearts and wombs and who knows the very movements of their hearts. " Through sin, the minds of our first parents turned away from the Creator and turned to the creature. From being God-centered, he became egocentric, surrendered to sinful thoughts, and selfishness (pride) and pride took possession of him. “Having transgressed the commandment of God, man fell into sinful thoughts, not because God created these thoughts that enslaved him, but because the devil sowed them with cunning into rational human nature, which became criminal and rejected from God, so that the devil established the law in human nature sin, and reigns through the work of sin. " This means that it acts on the mind, and the latter gives rise to and generates thoughts of sinful, evil, malicious, perishable, mortal, and contains human thought in the circle of mortal, transitory, temporary, preventing it from plunging into divine immortality, eternity, immutability.

The will of our ancestors has been damaged, weakened, and corrupted by sin: it has lost its primitive light, love of God and orientation to God, it has become evil and sin-loving and therefore more prone to evil rather than good. Immediately after the fall, our ancestors develop and reveal a tendency to lie: Eve blames the serpent, Adam blames Eve and even God who gave it to him (). Through the transgression of the commandment of God, sin spread to the human soul, and established the law of sin and death for her, and thus, with her desires, she mostly turns to the circle of the sinful and mortal. “God is Good and Good,” says St. John Damascene - such is His will, for what He desires is good: the commandment that teaches this is the law, so that people, observing it, may be in the light: and breaking the commandment is sin; sin comes from the motivation, instigation, incitement of the devil and the unforced and voluntary acceptance of this diabolical suggestion by a person. And sin is also called law. "

Our forefathers polluted and defiled their hearts with their sin: it lost its primitive purity and purity, the feeling of love for God was supplanted by the feeling of fear of God (), and the heart surrendered to unreasonable aspirations and passionate desires. So, our forefathers blinded the eye with which they looked at God, for sin, like a film, fell on the heart, which sees God only when it is pure and holy ().

Violation, obscuration, distortion, relaxation, which the original sin caused in the spiritual nature of a person, can be briefly called a violation, damage, obscuration, disfigurement of the image of God in a person. For sin darkened, disfigured, disfigured the beautiful image of God in the soul of primordial man. “Man was created in the image of God and in the likeness,” says Saint Basil the Great, “but sin has disfigured the beauty of the image, drawing the soul into passionate desires.” According to the teachings of St. John Chrysostom, until Adam had yet sinned, but his image, created in the image of God, kept clean, the animals obeyed him as servants, and when their image was polluted by sin, the animals did not recognize him as their master, and from servants turned into his enemies, and began to fight against him as against a foreigner. “When sin entered human life as a skill,” writes St. Gregory of Nyssa, “and from a small beginning an immense evil arose in man, and the godlike beauty of the soul, created in the likeness of the Primitive, was covered, like some iron, with the rust of sin, then it could no longer the beauty of the natural image of the soul will be more fully preserved, but it has changed into the hideous image of sin. So man, a great and precious creation, deprived himself of his dignity, falling into the mud) of sin, lost the image of the incorruptible God and through he put on the image of corruption and dust, like those who inadvertently fell into the mud and smeared their face, so that theirs and acquaintances cannot recognize. " The same father of the Church, under the lost evangelical drachma () means the human soul, that image of the Heavenly King, which was not completely lost, but fell into the mud, and under the mud one must understand the fleshly impurity.

"From sin, as from a source, sickness, sorrow, suffering poured out on man," says St. Theophilus. Through the Fall, the body lost its primitive health, innocence and immortality and became sickly, vicious and mortal. Before sin, it was in perfect harmony with the soul; this harmony after the sin was broken, and a war of the body with the soul began. As an inevitable consequence of original sin, weakness and corruption appeared, because he removed the ancestors from the tree of life, with the fruits of which they could maintain the immortality of their body (), which means immortality with all diseases, sorrows and sufferings. The philanthropic Lord expelled our ancestors from paradise so that they, while eating the fruits of the tree of life, would not remain immortal in sins and sorrows. This does not mean that God was the cause of the death of our first parents - they themselves were their own sin, since by disobedience they fell away from the Living and Life-giving God and gave themselves up to sin, which exudes the poison of death and infects everything he touches. By sin, mortality is “transferred to nature, created for immortality; it covers his outside, not the inside, covers the material part of a person, but does not touch the very image of God. "

By sin, our ancestors violated their God-given attitude to visible nature: they were expelled from their blessed abode - paradise (): they largely lost their power over nature, over animals, and the earth became cursed for man: "Thorns and thistles will grow for you"(). Created for man, headed by man as his mysterious body, blessed for man's sake, the earth with all creatures became cursed because of man and subject to corruption and destruction, as a result of which "The whole thing ... groans and suffers" ().

The inheritance of original sin

1 ... Since all people are descended from Adam, the original sin was inherited and transferred to all people. Therefore, original sin is also hereditary sin. Accepting humanity from Adam, we all accept with him sinful depravity, for which reason people are born "children of anger by nature" (), for the righteous anger of God rests on the sin-infected nature of Adam. But original sin is not completely identical in and in its descendants. Adam deliberately, personally, directly and willfully transgressed the commandment of God, i.e. created sin, which produced in him a sinful state in which the beginning of sinfulness reigns. In other words, in the original sin of Adam, two points must be distinguished: first - the act itself, the very act of violating the commandment of God, the crime itself (/ Greek / “paravasis” (), the very sin (/ Greek / “paraptoma” ()); disobedience itself (/ Greek / “parakoi” (); and the second is the sinful state created by this, o-sinfulness (“amartia” ()). The descendants of Adam, in the strict sense of the word, did not participate personally, directly, consciously and willfully in in the very act of Adam, in the crime itself (in the “paraptom”, in the “parakoi”, in the “paravasis”), but, being born from the fallen Adam, from his sin-infected nature, they at birth accept as an inevitable inheritance the sinful state of nature, in which sin dwells (/ Greek / "amartia"), which, as a kind of living principle, acts and leads to the creation of personal sins, similar to the sin of Adam, therefore they are subjected to punishment, like Adam. The inevitable consequence of sin, the soul of sin - death - reigns from Adam, as the holy apostle Paul says, "And over those who have not sinned in the likeness of Adam's crime"(), i.e., according to the teachings of Blessed Theodoret, and over those who did not sin directly, like Adam, and did not eat from the forbidden fruit, but sinned like Adam's crime and became participants in his fall as a forefather. "Since in a state of innocence all people were in Adam," says the Orthodox confession, "as soon as they sinned, they all sinned with him and entered a sinful state, being subjected not only to sin, but also to the punishment for sin." In fact, every personal sin of each descendant will draw its essential, sinful, power from the sin of the ancestor, and the inheritance of original sin is nothing more than a continuation of the fallen state of the ancestors in the descendants of Adam.

2 ... The heredity of original sin is universal, for none of people are removed from this, except for the God-man Lord Jesus Christ, born in a higher natural way from the Holy Virgin and the Holy Spirit. The general inheritance of original sin is confirmed in many and different ways by the Holy Revelation of the Old and New Testaments. Thus, it teaches that the fallen one, infected with sin, gave birth to children "In his own image"(), i.e. according to his disfigured, damaged, corrupted image. Righteous Job points to the ancestor as the source of universal human sinfulness, when he says: “Who will be clean from filth? Nobody, if only one day is his life on earth "(; cf .:;:;;). The prophet David, although born of godly parents, complains: "Behold in lawlessness(in the Hebrew original - "in lawlessness") I am conceived, and in sin(in Hebrew - "in sin") give birth to me, my mother "(), which indicates the infection of human nature by sin in general and its transmission through conception and birth. All people, as descendants of the fallen one, are subject to sin, therefore Holy Revelation says: "There is a man who does not sin" (; ); "Man is righteous on earth, who will do good and will not sin" (); “Who will boast of a pure heart? or who dares to be clean from sins to himself? "(; compare:). No matter how much they look for a sinless person - a person who would not be infected with sinfulness and subject to sin - the Old Testament Revelation states that there is no such person: “You have evaded everything, together you have been obscene; do not do good, do not be united "(: cf .::;); "Every man is a lie"() - in the sense that in every descendant of Adam, through infection with sin, the father of sin and lies acts - lying on God and on the God-given creation.

New Testament Revelation is based on the truth: all people are sinners - everyone except the Lord Jesus Christ. Proceeding by birth from those corrupted by sin as a single ancestor (), all people are under sin, “all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God” (; cf .:), all, according to their sin-infected nature, are “children of wrath” (). Therefore, whoever has, knows and feels the New Testament truth about the sinfulness of all people without exception, he cannot say that any of the people is without sin: "If we speak, as if the imam is not a sin, we deceive ourselves, and carry the truth in us"(; compare:). Only the Lord is without sin as a God-man, for He was born not by natural, seed, sinful conception, but by seedless conception from the Holy Virgin and the Holy Spirit. Living in a world that "lies in wickedness" () the Lord Jesus "Do not commit sin, nor find flattery in His mouth"(; compare:), because "There is no sin in Him"(; compare:). Being the only sinless among all people of all times, the Savior could, bold and had the right of His devilishly cunning enemies, who constantly watched Him in order to accuse Him of sin, fearlessly and openly ask: "Who from you denounces Me about sin?" ().

In His conversation with Nicodemus, the sinless Savior declares that in order to enter the Kingdom of God, every person must be reborn by water and the Holy Spirit, since every person is born with original sin, for "That which is born of the flesh is flesh"(). Here the word “flesh” (/ Greek / “sarx”) denotes that sinfulness of the nature of Adam, with which every person is born into the world, which penetrates the entire human being and is especially manifested in his carnal moods (dispositions), aspirations and actions ((cf. .: ; ; etc.)). Because of this sinfulness, acting in personal sins and through the personal sins of each person, each person is a “slave of sin” (; compare:;). Since Adam is the father of all people, he is also the creator of the universal sinfulness of all people, and through this - the universal infection). Slaves to sin are at the same time slaves to death: inheriting sinfulness from Adam, they thereby inherit mortality. The God-bearing Apostle writes: “Therefore, as one man (ie, Adam () sin entered the world, (in him) all sinned.”) This means: Adam is the founder of mankind and as such he is the founder of universal human sinfulness; from him and through him entered into all his descendants "amartia" - the sinfulness of nature, an inclination to sin, which, like a sinful principle, lives in every person (), acts, produces mortality and manifests itself through all personal sins of a person. being born from sinful ancestors was the only reason for our sinfulness and mortality, it would be inconsistent with the justice of God, which cannot allow all people to be sinful and mortal only because their forefather sinned and became mortal without their personal participation in this and But we manifest ourselves as descendants of Adam because the Omniscient God foresaw: the will of each of us will be like the will of Adam, and each of us will sin, like Adam. This is confirmed by the words of Christ-bearing Apostle: since all have sinned, therefore, according to the blessed Theodoret, each of us is subject to death not because of the sin of the forefather, but because of our own sin. And Saint Justin says: "The human race fell from the power of death and deception of the serpent, for the reason that every man did evil." In accordance with this, the inheritance of death, resulting from the sin of Adam, extends to all descendants also because of their personal sins, which God foresaw from eternity in His omniscience.

The holy Apostle points out the genetic and causal dependence of the universal sinfulness of Adam's descendants on the sin of Adam when he draws a parallel between Adam and the Lord Jesus Christ. As the Lord is the Source of righteousness, justification, life and resurrection, so Adam is the source of sin, condemnation and death: "As one sin in all men, there is condemnation(/ Greek / "katakrima") , so is the justification of life, which is the same and the same justification in all men. As if by disobeying the one man sinful were many, and by obedience to the one righteous there will be many " (). “Before a man is death, and a man is resurrection dead. As if they all die, so also about Christ will all come to life " ().

The sinfulness of human nature, originating from Adam, manifests itself in all people without exception as a kind of living sinful principle, as a kind of living sinful force, as a kind of category of sin, as the law of sin that lives in a person and acts in him and through him (). But man participates in this with his free will, and this sinfulness of nature ramifies and grows through his personal sins. The law of sin, hidden in human nature, fights against the law of reason and makes man his slave, and man does not do the good that he wants, but does the evil that he does not want, doing so because of the sin living in him. “The stench and the feeling of sin abides in human nature,” says St. John of Damascus, “that is, lust and sensual pleasure, which are called the law of sin; and conscience is the law of human reason. " The law of sin is at war against the law of reason, but it is not able to completely destroy all good in a person and make him incapable of living in goodness and for the sake of good. With the godlike essence of his soul, although disfigured by sin, man tries to serve the law of his mind, i.e. conscience, and according to the inner, God-aspiring man, he feels joy in the law of God (). And when, by the grace-filled deed of doing faith, he makes the Lord Jesus Christ the life of his life, then he easily and joyfully serves the law of God (). But pagans living outside of Holy Revelation, in addition to all subjection to sin, always have in themselves the desire for good as an inalienable and inviolable property of their nature and can, with their God-like soul, cognize the Living and True God and do what is in accordance with the law of God, written in the hearts their ().

3 ... The divinely revealed teaching of Holy Scripture about the reality and general inheritance of original sin has been developed, explained and attested by the Church in Holy Tradition. Ever since apostolic times, there has been a sacred custom of the Church to baptize children for the remission of sins, as evidenced by the decisions of the Councils and the holy fathers. On this occasion, the wise Origen wrote: “If children are baptized for the remission of sins, the question is - what sins are these? When did they sin? For what else do they need the baptismal font, if not for the sake of the fact that no one can be clean of dirt, even if he lived for one day on earth? Children, therefore, are baptized, for by the sacrament of baptism they are cleansed from the impurity of birth. " Regarding the baptism of children for the remission of sins, the fathers of the Carthaginian Council (418) in Canon 124 say: “Whoever denies the need to baptize small children and newborns from the mother's womb of children, or says that although they are baptized for the remission of sins, but from the ancestral Adam they do not borrow anything that should be washed with the bathhouse of the Holy Bible (from which it would follow that the image of baptism for the forgiveness of sins is used over them not in a true, but in a false sense), so let them be anathema. For spoken by the Apostle: "With one man, sin is in the world into the world, and death through sin: and so it is in all men in, in him all have sinned."(), - it befits to understand not differently, except, as always, understood by the Catholic Church, everywhere diffused and widespread. For according to this rule of faith, even babies, who by themselves cannot commit any sins, are truly baptized for the remission of sins, so that through pacification, what they have taken from the old birth will be cleansed in them. " In the struggle against Pelagius, who denied the reality and heredity of original sin, the Church at more than twenty councils condemned this teaching of Pelagius and thus showed that the truth of Holy Revelation about the universal heredity of original sin is deeply rooted in her holy, catholic, universal feeling and consciousness.

In all the fathers and teachers of the Church who dealt with the question of the universal sinfulness of people, we find a clear and definite teaching about hereditary sinfulness, which they make dependent on the original sin of Adam. “We all sinned in the first man,” writes St. Ambrose, “and through the inheritance of nature, the inheritance spread from one to all in sin ... Adam, therefore, in each of us: in him human nature sinned, for through one he passed on to all ". “It is impossible,” says St. Gregory of Nyssa, “to embrace in number the multitude of those in whom evil has spread through inheritance; the pernicious wealth of vice, being shared by each of them, increased by each, and thus, the fertile evil passed on (passed on) in an uninterrupted chain of generations, spreading over many people to infinity, until, reaching the final border, it took possession of all human nature, as if this clearly said the prophet about everyone in general: "All deviated, together with non-keys were (), and there was nothing in existence that would not be an instrument of evil." Since all people are heirs of the Adamic nature corrupted by sin, then all are conceived and born in sin, for, according to the natural law, what is born is identical with the one giving birth; from the injured by the passions the passionate is born, from the sinner the sinner. Infected by the ancestral sinfulness, the human soul more and more surrendered itself to evil, multiplied sins, invented vices, created false gods for itself, and people, not knowing saturation in evil deeds, more and more drowned in depravity and spread the stench of their sins, showing those that they became insatiable in transgression. “Through the delusion of Adam alone, the whole human race has gone astray; Adam transferred to all people his condemnation to the miserable state of his nature: everyone is under the law of sin, everyone is spiritual slaves; sin is the father of our body, unbelief is the mother of our soul. " "From the moment of violation of the commandment of God, Satan and his angels have sat down in the heart and in the human body, as on their own throne." "Having violated the commandment of God in Paradise, Adam created the firstborn and transferred his sin to all." “Through crime, sin has fallen into all people; and people, dwelling on evil, became mortal, and corruption and corruption took possession of them. " All descendants acquire original sin hereditarily through being born from Adam in the body. " “There is a kind of hidden impurity and a kind of overwhelming darkness of passion, which through crime has penetrated into all of humanity; and it darkens and defiles both body and soul. " Because humans inherited Adam's sinfulness, a "turbid stream of sin" flows from their hearts. "From the crime, darkness fell on all creation and on all human nature, and therefore people covered by this darkness spend their lives in the night, in terrible places." “Adam by his fall took a terrible malice into his soul and was filled with blackness and darkness. Than Adam suffered, so suffered all of us, descended from the seed of Adam: we are all the sons of this darkened ancestor, we are all fellows of this very malice ”. “As Adam, having transgressed the commandment of God, took into himself the leaven of evil passions, so the whole human race, being born of Adam, through participation became a communal leaven of this leaven; and by the gradual growth in people sinful passions have multiplied so much that all mankind has turned into evil. " The general inheritance of original sin, manifested in the general sinfulness of people, was not invented by man; on the contrary, it constitutes the Divinely revealed dogmatic truth of the Christian faith. "It was not I who invented the original sin," wrote Blessed Augustine against the Pelagians, "in which the Ecumenical Church has believed from time immemorial, but you, rejecting this dogma, are undoubtedly a new heretic." The baptism of children, in which the recipient on behalf of the children is denied by Satan, testifies that children are under original sin, for they are born with a corrupted nature, in which Satan operates. "And the very sufferings of children do not happen because of their personal sins, but are a manifestation of the punishment that the Righteous One uttered over human nature that fell in Adam." "Humanity is corrupted by sin, subjected to death and righteously condemned, therefore all people are born of Adam in the same state." Sinful depravity from passes into all of his descendants through conception and birth, therefore all are subject to this primordial sinfulness, but it does not destroy in people their freedom to desire and do good and the ability to a grace-filled rebirth ”. "All people were in not only when he was in paradise, but were with him and in him when he was expelled from paradise for sin, therefore they bear all the consequences of Adam's sin."

The very method of transferring original sin from ancestors to descendants is, in essence, enclosed in an impenetrable mystery. "There is nothing more famous than the Church's teaching about original sin," says Blessed Augustine, "but nothing is more mysterious for understanding." According to church teaching, one thing is certain: hereditary sinfulness is transmitted to all people through conception and birth. On this issue, the decision of the Council of Carthage (252) is very important, in which 66 bishops took part under the chairmanship of Saint Cyprian. Having considered the issue that the baptism of children does not need to be postponed until the eighth day (following the example of circumcision in the Old Testament Church on the eighth day), but baptize them even before that. The Council substantiated its decision in the following way: “Since even the greatest sinners, who have sinned much against God, are granted forgiveness of sins when they believe, and no one is denied forgiveness and grace, insofar as this child, who has just been born, should not be forbidden, than it did not sin, but itself, having occurred in the body from Adam, received the infection of the ancient death through birth itself and which can so much more easily begin to accept the forgiveness of sins, since it is not his own but other people's sins that are forgiven for him. "

4 ... With the transfer of the ancestral sinfulness to all descendants by birth, all the consequences that befell our ancestors after the fall are transferred to all of them at the same time; the disfigurement of the image of God, the darkening of the mind, the corruption of the will, the defilement of the heart, illness, suffering and death.

All people, being descendants of Adam, inherit from Adam the God-like soul, but God-like, darkened and disfigured by sinfulness. The entire human soul is generally saturated with ancestral sinfulness. “The crafty prince of darkness,” says Saint Macarius the Great. - even at the beginning he enslaved a person and clothed his whole soul with sin, defiled her whole being and all of her, enslaved her all, did not leave in her free of his power not a single part of her, not her thoughts, her mind, her body. The whole soul suffered from the passion of vice and sin, for the wicked one clothed his whole soul in his evil, that is, in sin. Feeling the feeble floundering of each person individually and of all people together in the abyss of sinfulness, the Orthodox with sobbing prays: "Rolling around in the abyss of sinfulness, invoking the abyss of Thy mercy: from aphids, God, erect me." But although the image of God, which is the integrity of the soul, is mutilated and darkened in people, it is still not destroyed in them, for with its destruction that which makes a person a person would be destroyed, which means that a person as such would be destroyed. The image of God continues to be the main jewel in people () and partially manifests its main features (), the Lord came into the world not to re-create the image of God in a fallen man, but in order to renew it - “may He renew His pack an image decayed by passions ”; let it renew "our nature corrupted from sins." And in sins a person nevertheless shows the image of God (): "The image is the ineffable of Thy glory, Even though I also bear the sores of sins." The New Testament economy of salvation provides the fallen man with all the means so that he can transform himself with the help of grace-filled deeds, renew the image of God in himself () and become Christ-like (;).

With the disfigurement and darkening of the human soul as a whole, the human mind in all the descendants of Adam is disfigured and darkened. This clouding of the mind manifests itself in its slowness, blindness and inability to accept, assimilate and comprehend spiritual things, so that "We can hardly comprehend what is on earth, and we can hardly understand what is under our hands, and what is in heaven - who has investigated?"(). O-sinful, bodily person does not accept what is from the Spirit of God, for it seems to him like madness, and he cannot understand that (). Hence - ignorance of the True God and spiritual values, hence - delusions, prejudices, unbelief, superstition, paganism), polytheism, atheism. But this darkening of the mind, this madness of it by sin, this its delusion in sin cannot be represented as a complete destruction of the mental ability of a person to comprehend spiritual things; The Apostle teaches that the human mind, although it dwells in the darkness and darkness of original sin, still has the ability to partially cognize God and receive His revelations ().

As a consequence of original sin, depravity, weakness of the will and its greater tendency towards evil rather than good appear in descendants. Sin-centered pride became the main lever of their activity. It bound their godlike freedom and made them slaves to sin (;;;;). But no matter how sin-centered the will of the descendants of Adam may be, it still does not completely destroy the inclination to good: a person realizes good, desires it, and the will, corrupted by sin, attracts to evil and does evil: "The good that I want, I do not do, but the evil that I do not want, I do."(); "The unrestrained striving for evil attracts me, by the action of the enemy, and by the crafty custom." This sinful striving for evil through skill has become in the historical process a kind of law of human activity: "I gain the law, I want to do good, as evil is with me"(). But besides all this, the God-like soul of descendants infected with sin breaks out by the God-aspiring element of his will for God's good, “it delights in the law of God” (), wants good, strives for it from sinful slavery, because the desire for good and a certain ability to do good remained with people, relaxed by the inheritance of original sin and their personal sinfulness, so that, according to the Apostle, the pagans "They create lawful by nature"(). People are by no means a blind instrument of sin, evil, the devil, free will always lives in them, which, despite all the contamination of sin, still acts freely, can both wish for good and do it.

Uncleanness, curse. defilement of the heart is the common lot of all the descendants of Adam. It manifests itself as a lack of feeling for spiritual things and as immersion in unreasonable aspirations and passionate desires. The human heart, lulled with love for sin, is heavily awakening to the eternal reality of the holy truths of God: "Sinful sleep weighs on the heart." A heart infected with primordial sinfulness is a workshop for evil thoughts, evil desires, evil feelings, and evil deeds. The Savior teaches: "From the heart of God emanate evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, thief, perjury, blasphemy"(Wed:;;). But "Deepest heart more than anyone else"(), so that even in a sinful state, it retained the power to “delight in the law of God” (). In a sinful state, the heart resembles a mirror smeared with black mud, which shines with Divine purity and beauty, as soon as the sinful dirt is cleaned off from it: then it can be reflected and be visible in it ((cf .:)).

Death is the lot of all descendants of Adam, for they are born from Adam, infected with sin and therefore mortal. As an infected stream naturally flows from an infected source, offspring infected with sin and death naturally flow from the ancestor infected with sin ((cf .::)). Both the death of Adam and the death of his descendants are twofold: bodily and spiritual. Physical death is when the body is deprived of the soul that revives it, and spiritual death is when the soul is deprived of the grace of God, which revives it with a higher, spiritual, God-driven life, and according to the words of the holy prophet, "The soul that sins, it will die"(: Wed:).

Death has its forerunners - sickness and suffering. The body, relaxed by hereditary and personal sinfulness, has become perishable, and "death by perishability reigns over all people." The sin-loving body has given over to sinfulness, which manifests itself in the unnatural predominance of the body over the soul, as a result of which the body often represents a semblance of a great burden for the soul and an obstacle to its God-directed activity. "A corruptible body suppresses a multi-caring mind" (). As a consequence of Adam's sinfulness, a pernicious split and discord, struggle and enmity between soul and body appeared in his descendants: "The flesh lusts for the spirit, the spirit lusts for the flesh: they oppose each other, but do not want to, do this." ().

False Teachings on Original Sin

Even in the first centuries of Christianity, the Ebionites, Gnostics and Manicheans denied the dogma of original sin and its consequences. According to their teachings, man never fell morally and did not violate the commandments of God, since the fall took place long before man appeared in the world. Due to the influence of the evil principle that reigns in the world against the will and without the will of man, a person is only subjected to sin that already existed, and this influence is irresistible.

The Ophites (from the Greek “ofit” - a snake) taught that a person, strengthened by the advice of wisdom, which appeared in the form of a serpent (“Ophiomorphos”), transgressed the commandment and thus attained the knowledge of the true God.

The Encratites and Manicheans taught that by His commandment God forbade Adam and Eve from conjugal relations; the sin of the forefathers was that they violated this commandment of God. The groundlessness and falsity of this teaching is obvious, for the Bible clearly says that God, as soon as he created the first people, blessed them and said to them: "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth"() and immediately gave them the law of marriage (). All this, therefore, happened before the serpent tempted the first people and led them into sin.

Clement of Alexandria mistakenly taught and believed that the first people were in violation of the commandment, which forbade them untimely marriage.

Origen, according to his theory of the pre-existence of souls, understood both the fall and the sin of the first people as the fall of their souls in the spiritual world before the appearance of the visible world, as a result of which God drove them from heaven to earth and put them into bodies, which is supposedly indicated by the very image of exile from paradise and its vestments in leather garments.

In the 5th century, the British monk Pelagius and his adherents - the Pelagians - put forward their theory of the origin and heredity of sin, in everything contrary to the revealed teachings. In short, it is as follows: sin is not something substantial and does not belong to human nature; sin is a completely random instantaneous phenomenon that arises only in the field of free will, and then insofar as freedom has developed in it, which alone can produce it. What is sin in general? Is it something that can be avoided or something that cannot be avoided? What cannot be avoided is not sin; sin is something that can be avoided, and, according to this, a person can be without sin, since sin depends solely on human will. Sin is not some permanent and unchanging condition or sinful disposition; it is only an accidental or momentary unlawful act of will, leaving its mark only in the memory and on the conscience of the sinner. Hence, the first sin of Adam could not even in the very spiritual or bodily nature of Adam produce any significant damage; even less could he do it in his descendants, who could not inherit from their forefather what he did not have in his nature. To acknowledge the existence of hereditary sin would be to acknowledge sin by nature, i.e. admit the existence of an evil, vicious nature, and this would lead to Manichaeism. Adam's sin could not be passed on to his descendants also because it would be contrary to truth (justice) to transfer responsibility for the sin of one person to people who did not participate in the creation of sin. Moreover, if Adam could transfer his sin to his descendants, why then does the righteous man not transfer his righteousness to his descendants, or why not other sins were transferred in the same way? There is, therefore, no hereditary sin, ex traduce sin. For if there were original sin, inherited sin, it would have to have its cause; meanwhile, this reason could not be in the will of the child, since it is still undeveloped, but in the will of God, and thus this sin, in reality, would be the sin of God, and not the sin of the child. To admit original sin means to admit sin by nature, that is, to admit the existence of a bad, evil nature, and this is the Manichean teaching. In fact, all people are born exactly the same innocent and sinless as the ancestors were before the fall. They remain in this state of innocence and integrity until such time as conscience and freedom develop in them; sin is possible only with the existence of a developed conscience and freedom, for it is in reality an act of free will. People sin for their own, conscious freedom, and in part - looking at the example of Adam. a person is so strong that a person could, if he only firmly and sincerely made up his mind, remain forever sinless and not commit a single sin. " "Before and after Christ, there were philosophers and biblical righteous people who never sinned." Death is not a consequence of Adam's sin, but a necessary portion of created nature. created by mortals; whether he sinned or not, he had to die.

Blessed Augustine especially fought against the Pelagian heresy, powerfully defending the ancient teaching of the Church on original sin, but at the same time he himself fell into the opposite extreme. He argued that original sin destroyed the primitive nature of man to such an extent that a person corrupted by sin cannot not only do good, but also desire it, desire it. He is a slave to sin, in which there is no desire and creation of good.

Review and Critique of the Roman Catholic and Protestant Doctrine of Original Sin

1 ... Roman Catholics teach that original sin took away from the original righteousness, grace-filled perfection, but did not damage its very nature. And the original righteousness, according to their teaching, was not an organic component of the spiritual and moral nature of man, but an external gift of grace, a special complement to the natural forces of man. Hence, the sin of the first man, consisting in the rejection of this purely external, supernatural grace, the aversion of man from God, is nothing more than depriving man of this grace, depriving man of primitive righteousness and returning man to a purely natural state, a state of gracelessness. Human nature itself remained after the fall as it was before the fall. Before sin, Adam was like a royal courtier, from whom, due to the crime, external glory was taken away, and he returned to the original state in which he had been before.

The decrees of the Council of Trent on original sin say that the ancestors consisted in the loss of the holiness and righteousness they had been given, but it is not determined exactly what kind of holiness and righteousness were. It states that in the reborn person there is absolutely no trace of sin or anything that would be unpleasant to God. All that remains is lust, which, due to its motivation of man to fight, is more useful than harmful to people. In any case, it is not sin, although it itself is from sin and leads to sin. The fifth decree says: “The Holy Council confesses and knows that lust remains with the baptized; but it, as left to fight, cannot do harm to those who disagree with it, and to those who courageously fight by the grace of Jesus Christ, but, on the contrary, the one who will fight gloriously is crowned. The Holy Council declares that this lust, which the Apostle sometimes calls sin, was never called sin by the Ecumenical in the sense that it is true and proper sin among the regenerated, but that it is from sin and leads to sin. "

This Roman Catholic teaching is groundless, since it presents the original righteousness and perfection of Adam as an external gift, as an advantage added to nature from without and separable from nature. Meanwhile, it is clear from the ancient apostolic-ecclesiastical teaching that this primitive righteousness of Adam was not an external gift and advantage, but an integral part of his God-created nature. Holy Scripture claims that sin has so deeply shaken and upset human nature that a person is weak for good and when he wants, he cannot do good (), and he cannot do it just because sin has a strong influence on human nature. In addition, if sin did not damage human nature so much, there would be no need for the Only Begotten Son of God to incarnate, come into the world as the Savior and demand from us complete bodily and spiritual rebirth (). In addition, Roman Catholics cannot give a correct answer to the question: how can an intact nature carry lust within itself? In what relation does this lust for a healthy nature stand?

Likewise, the Roman Catholic assertion that nothing remains in the reborn person that is sinful and displeasing to God, and that all this gives way to that which is blameless, holy and pleasing to God, is inaccurate. For from Holy Revelation and the teachings of the ancient Church, we know that grace taught to a fallen person through Jesus Christ does not act mechanically, does not give sanctification and salvation immediately, in the blink of an eye, but gradually penetrates all the psychophysical forces of a person, in proportion to his personal deed in a new life, and thus, at the same time, he heals from all sinful ailments, and sanctifies in all thoughts, feelings, desires and deeds. It is an unreasonable exaggeration to think and assert that the regenerated have absolutely no remnants of sinful ailments, when the seer, beloved by Christ, clearly teaches: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us"(); and the great Apostle of the nations writes: “I don’t do the good that I want, but the evil that I don’t want I do. But if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do that, but the sin that dwells in me "(: Wed:).

2 ... The counterbalance to the Roman Catholic doctrine of original sin is the Protestant doctrine. In accordance with it, he completely destroyed freedom, the image of God and all spiritual forces in man, and human nature itself became a sin, and man is absolutely incapable of any good; all that he desires and does is sin: and his very virtues are sins; a person is a spiritual dead, a statue without eyes, reason and feeling; sin destroyed in him the nature created by God and instead of the image of God put in him the image of the devil. Hereditary sin has so much entered the human nature, pervaded it so much that no power in this world can separate it from a person, moreover, baptism itself does not abolish this sin, but only blots out the guilt; only in the resurrection of the dead will this sin be completely taken away from man. But although a person, due to complete slavery to original sin, does not have the strength in himself to do good, which would be manifested in deeds of righteousness, spiritual righteousness or in divine deeds related to the salvation of the soul, he still has spiritual power acting in the area civil righteousness, i.e. a fallen person can, for example, talk about God, express a certain obedience to God with outward actions, can obey the authorities and parents when choosing these outward actions: to keep his hand from murder, adultery, theft, etc.

If this Protestant teaching is considered in the light of the above-stated God-revealed teaching of the Church about original sin and its consequences, its groundlessness becomes obvious. This groundlessness is especially manifested in the fact that the Protestant teaching fully identifies the primitive righteousness of Adam with his very nature and does not draw any distinction between them. Therefore, when a man sinned, not only primitive righteousness was taken from him, but all of nature; the loss of primitive righteousness is identical with the loss, destruction of nature (nature). Sacred Scripture in no sense recognizes either the complete destruction of nature by the sin of Adam, or the fact that in the place of the former nature created by God, a new nature could appear in the image of Satan. If this latter were true, then in a person there would be no desire for good, no inclination for good, no power to do good. ; ). The Savior just appealed to the human goodness that remained in the sin-infected nature. These very remnants of good could not exist if Adam, after committing a sin, acquired the image of Satan instead of the image of God.

The Protestant sects of the Arminians and Socinians represent in this respect a renewal of the Pelagian teaching, since they reject any reason and genetic connection between the original sin of our ancestors and the sins of his descendants. Adam's sin not only could not have any destructive power for the descendants of Adam, but did not harm Adam himself. They recognize death as the only consequence of Adam's sin, but it is not a punishment, but a physical evil, endured by birth.

In this respect, the Orthodox Church today, as always, persistently confesses the Divinely revealed teaching of Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition. The Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs says: “We believe that the first man, created by God, fell in paradise when he broke the commandment of God, listening to the advice of the serpent, and that from there the ancestral sin spreads to all posterity through inheritance, so that there is no one born in the flesh who would be free from this burden and would not feel the consequences of the fall in this life. The burden and the consequences of the fall, we call not sin itself (such as: atheism, blasphemy, murder, hatred and everything else that comes from the evil human heart), but a strong inclination to sin ... darkened and lost perfection and dispassion, but did not lose that nature and strength that he received from the Most Good God. For otherwise he would have become unreasonable and therefore not human; but he retained the nature with which he was created, and natural strength - free, living and active, so that by nature he can choose and do good, avoid evil and turn away from it. And the fact that a person can by nature do good, the Lord pointed out to this when he said that the Gentiles love them, and the Apostle Paul teaches very clearly in the Epistle to the Romans () and in another place where he says that "Tongues, not property of the law, by nature they create lawful"(). Therefore, it is obvious that the good that a person does cannot be sin, for good cannot be evil. Being natural, it makes a person only bodily, and not spiritual ... And among those who are gracefully regenerated, it, promoted by grace, becomes perfect and makes a person worthy of salvation. " And the Orthodox confession says: “Since all people were in Adam in a state of innocence, then as soon as he sinned, everyone sinned with him and entered a sinful state, being subjected not only to sin, but also to the punishment for sin ... Therefore, with this through sin we are conceived in the womb of the mother, and we are born, as the Psalmist says about this: "Behold, in the wicked I am conceived, and in sins bore me my mother"(). Hence, in everyone, due to sin, reason and will are damaged. However, although human will is damaged by original sin, nevertheless (according to the thought of St. Basil the Great) it is still the work of everyone's will to be good and a child of God, or evil and a son of the devil. "

(28 votes: 4.5 out of 5)

• Met. Kirill (Gundyaev)
• Deacon Andrew
• Rev.
• P.V. Dobroselsky
• Met.
• protopres. Mikhail (Pomazansky)
• prot.
• archim. Alipy (Kastalsky-Borozdin), archim. Isaiah (Belov)
• archim.

First-born sin- 1) the same as the ancestral sin: violation by the first people, and, the commandments of loyalty to Him (), which entailed their descent from the state of godlikeness, immortality and communion with God into sensuality, corruption and slavery; 2) sinful corruption that struck human nature as a result of the Fall, expressed in the fact that all their descendants (with the exception of the Lord) are born damaged in soul and body, with a tendency to evil; transmitted successively, hereditary.

In relation to the descendants of Adam and Eve, i.e. to all mankind, the original (ancestral) sin can be more accurately named. Thus, the original sin is understood as the very offense of the ancestors, and its consequences.

Liberation from the power of original sin (an unbaptized person, by virtue of original sin, in essence cannot but sin, and a baptized person, although he can sin, but has the power not to sin) occurs in Baptism - spiritual birth.

The fall of the first people led to the loss of man's primordial blissful state of being with God, falling away from God and falling into an inferior sinful state.

The word fall means the loss of a certain height, the loss of a sublime state. For man, such an exalted state is life in God. Man possessed such an exalted state before the Fall c. He was in a state of blissful well-being due to participation in the highest Good - the all-blissful God. The bliss of man was associated with the presence in him from the very creation of the Holy Spirit. From the very creation, grace was present in him so that he did not know the experience of a graceless state. “Just as the Spirit acted in the prophets and taught them, and was within them, and appeared to them from outside: so in Adam the Spirit, when he wanted, stayed with him, taught and inspired ...” (St.). “Adam, the father of the universe, knew the sweetness of God's love in paradise,” says St. ... - The Holy Spirit is love and sweetness of soul, mind and body. And whoever has come to know God by the Holy Spirit, they are hungry day and night for the living God. "

To preserve and develop this blissful, grace-filled state, the first man in paradise was given the only commandment not to eat the fruits of the forbidden tree. The fulfillment of this commandment was the exercise through which a person could learn obedience to God, that is, the coordination of his will and the will of his Creator. Through the preservation of this commandment, a person could increase the gifts of grace and achieve the highest gift of grace - deification. But, being endowed with free will, he could fall away from being with God, lose Divine grace.

The fall of man took place in the field of will or will. Adam might not have sinned. The ancestor of mankind had autocracy. It was expressed in the fact that he could “have his mind always exalted and adhered to the one Lord God” (St. Simeon the Theologian). Like the All-Holy God, he could become completely uncompromising towards evil. Having embarked on the path of disobeying the commandment, Adam changed his destiny - he fell away from the blessed union with God, lost the Divine grace dwelling in him.

It became a consequence of falling away from God. As far as man has withdrawn from God, he is so close to death. The progenitors of mankind themselves prepared death for themselves and for the entire human race, for God is the true Source of all life and those who move away from Him will perish (). Abiding in God, Adam, according to the word of St. , had Life in him, supernaturally giving life to his mortal nature. When he departed from union with Life, that is, with God, he passed from supernatural incorruptibility to decay and corruption. Physical death was preceded by spiritual death, for real death occurs when the human soul is separated from Divine grace (St.). Having withdrawn from God, Adam tasted, first of all, spiritual death, for “as the body dies when the soul is separated from it, so when the Holy Spirit is separated from the soul, the soul dies” (St.

Original sin in Orthodoxy is one of those provisions that is unclear to a person who is just beginning to get acquainted with Christian doctrine. What it is, what are its consequences for all of us, as well as what interpretations of original sin exist in different branches of Orthodoxy, you can learn from this article.

What is original sin?

At first glance, this looks absurd: in the Christian tradition, it is believed that a child is born with already damaged human nature. How can this happen if he has not yet had time to commit sins, if only because he has not yet entered a conscious age? In fact, the problem is different: the essence of original sin lies in the fact that every person is born initially damaged (primarily in a spiritual sense, but not only) due to the deed of the ancestor Adam. It is through him, as you know, that a spiritual illness entered the world, which all his descendants inherit.

Many make the mistake of trying to explain what original sin is. Do not assume that in this case we are responsible for the fact that Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge. Everything is not so literal, and if you read the holy fathers, it will become clear. The sin of Adam is no longer our sin, the fact is that for us it lies in the mortality of man. As follows from the Bible, the Lord God told Adam that he would die if he eats the forbidden fruit, and the serpent - that he and Eve would become equal to God. The tempting serpent did not deceive the first people, but together with the knowledge of the world they became mortal - this is the main consequence of the original sin. Thus, this sin was not passed on to the rest of the people, but had disastrous results for them.

The Consequences of the Sin of Adam and Eve

Theologians believe that the results were so difficult and painful precisely because God's original commandment was not difficult to fulfill. If Adam and Eve really wanted to fulfill it, they could calmly refuse the tempter's offer and remain in paradise forever - pure, holy, sinless and, of course, immortal. What is original sin? Like any sin, it is disobedience to the Creator. In fact, Adam created death with his own hands, moving away from God and subsequently sinking into it.

His act not only brought death into his life, but also clouded the initially crystal-clear human nature. She became distorted, more prone to other sins, love for the Creator was replaced by fear of him and his punishment. John Chrysostom pointed out that before the animals bowed down to Adam and saw him as a lord, but after the expulsion from paradise they ceased to recognize him.

Thus, a person from the highest creation of God, pure and beautiful, turned himself into dust and dust, which his body will become after inevitable death. But, as follows from the Bible, after the first ancestors ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge, they hid from the Lord not only because they began to fear his anger, but also because they felt guilty before him.

Before original sin

Before the Fall, Adam and Eve had a very close relationship with the Lord. In a sense, they made a single whole with him, so deeply their souls were united with God. Even saints do not have such a connection, especially other Christians who are not so sinless. Therefore, it is extremely difficult for us to understand it. However, this does not mean that this union should not be sought.

Man was a reflection of God's image, and his heart was blameless. The original sin of the ancestors is called before him, they did not know other sins and were absolutely pure.

How to escape the consequences

Baptism does not deliver from original sin, as is commonly believed. It only gives a person the opportunity to become another, true Christian. After baptism, a person remains mortal, imprisoned in a mortal bodily shell, and at the same time has an immortal soul. It is important not to destroy it, because, according to the Orthodox tradition, the Last Judgment will come at the end of time, at which it will become clear what fate is in store for every soul.

Thus, baptism helps to restore the lost connection with God, albeit not fully. In any case, original sin made a person's essence more prone to evil than to good, as it was originally, and therefore it is extremely difficult to reunite with the Creator in this world. However, judging by the examples of the saints, it seems possible.

In essence, this is precisely why baptism is mandatory for those who consider themselves Christians - only in this way, and in no other way, they can be with God and be saved from the death of their souls.

Original sin in Protestantism

It is worth understanding what original sin is in the understanding of the Protestants, namely the Calvinists. They, unlike the Orthodox, believe that the consequences of Adam's sin are not only the death of all his descendants, but also their inevitable bearing of guilt for the sin of their ancestor. For this, each person, in their opinion, deserves punishment. Human nature in Calvinism is thoroughly corrupted and saturated with sinfulness.

This view most closely matches the Bible, although it is puzzling.

Original sin in Catholicism

Catholics believe that the sin of the original people lies in disobedience and weak trust in the Creator. This event entailed a large number of different consequences: Adam and Eve lost the favor of God, as a result, the relationship between the two was broken. Previously pure and sinless, they became lustful and tense. This affected the rest of the people with moral and physical damage. However, Catholics believe in the possibility of his correction and redemption.

Original sin

What is original sin? This is the ancestral sin that the first people committed. The sin of Adam and Eve had a special meaning for humanity and could not be compared with our personal sins. At the time of the creation of the world, people were in a primitive, absolutely pure state, and here for the first time in history there was a break in the union between God and man.

Saint John Chrysostom

“Whoever says:“ I am sinful ”, but does not imagine his sins separately and does not remember:“ In this and in this I have sinned, ”he will never stop sinning. He will often confess, but he will never think about his correction. "

As a result of the destruction of this connection, there arose what theologians later called original sin. Damage to human nature and the distortion of its properties contributed to the transformation of anger against evil into anger against humans. A good feeling, a striving for the ideal was distorted, turning into evil that arises in relation to what is best in the neighbor. It was this distortion of the good properties of human nature that contributed to the further splitting of human nature into opposing body, mind and heart. And all this taken together led to the present state of the world.

The history of all mankind, as well as the life of each of us, testifies to the fact that we really constantly sin both against our minds and against our lives. Thus, in the original sin, which is not someone's personal sin, but only the sin of our first parents Adam and Eve, we are all partly guilty, which is generally not very comforting. In the same way, how uncomfortable is the fact that it is not our fault that we were born blind or hunchbacked. After all, it is much more pleasant to be sighted and healthy.

Because of original sin, we are in a state where our mind tells us that we need to act according to the law, the heart attracts to the opposite, and the body does not want to reckon with either the heart or the mind, so that the whole person is, as it were, fragmented. From this we do not experience any joy, and from here begins chaos in our life, both in personal and in public, family or state. This is what original sin means to us, that is, damage to human nature itself. Athanasius the Great wrote that “by personal sin, man caused the perversion of nature,” that is, damage to his natural nature. This is what original sin is.

We fell ill with death, which the Holy Fathers call corruption, therefore today there are no immortals, and every person is born mortal. Now it becomes clear how exactly Christian salvation differs from non-Christian salvation. Christianity calls people to eternal values ​​that cannot be taken away from a person. All other values ​​are transient: a person holds, for example, a piece of gold or a diamond, and that's enough. Together with death, all this will disappear like a soap bubble. However, while we are alive, we carefully inflate this soap bubble in order to acquire one, then another, and the third, without thinking that at the hour of death all this will instantly "burst". Here it is, the damage to the mind. After all, after we see that the same thing is happening before our eyes, how can we then object to the words about the frailty of all that exists?

The Christian Church is trying to tear its members away from the mirage called earthly good, trying with all its might to show that with the right attitude towards it, everything earthly can become for a person a stepping stone to eternal benefits. And here is the conclusion made by theologians, our contemporaries: "It is clear that the sin of Adam is not identified by the church with original sin, but is considered only the cause of the latter." That is, the original sin was the result of the personal sin of our forefather Adam.

And now we come close to an extremely important issue, without solving which we will not be able to understand the meaning of the Savior's sacrifice. The fact is that the sacrifice could be realized only thanks to the incarnation of God into human nature. The nature of the Deity is dispassionate, therefore the Lord perceived human nature so that thanks to it it would be possible to accomplish what would be the source of healing - the salvation of all mankind. The sacrifice could be made exclusively in human nature.

Another very important question is what nature the Lord perceived: damaged by sin or not damaged, primordial. If God perceived the primordial nature, then the question arises, what was the sacrifice of Christ, if His nature is pure, immaculate and holy. Catholic theology followed this path, which, by the way, was condemned by the church during the times of theosophical controversies.

For example, Pope Ganorius, condemned by both the Western and Eastern churches, wrote in the 7th century: “We confess in the Lord Jesus Christ one will, for it is clear that our nature is not accepted by the Deity as sinful, not the one that is damaged after the fall, but nature, created before the fall ”(Acts of the Ecumenical Councils). And here are the words of the heretic Arkh Aftartodaket, who writes that "during the incarnation, Christ took the soul and body in the form in which Adam had them before the Fall." However, this begs the conclusion: if the Lord took on an immaculate nature, then He could not die, because before the Fall, people were immortal. Moreover, He could not suffer and did not experience any hunger or thirst.

According to the heretic Julian, if Christ was hungry, tired, or wept, he did it because He wanted it. But remember the episode with the fig tree. Did the Savior just want to and curse the barren tree? Julian was not at all embarrassed by such a formulation of the question, but the seriousness of this circumstance eluded the heretic. After all, if the Savior perceived human nature intact, then what did He then do for humanity?

St. Athanasius the Great

"If Christ has not been resurrected, then he is dead: then, what about the false gods, who, according to the unbelievers, are alive, and the demons they honor are cast out, persecuted and deposed?"

The answer was found very quickly: the sin of our forefathers caused the wrath of God, which spread to all generations of Adam's descendants. Of course, you can start to argue and say that this is unfair, but it is. The blame lies with everyone, and from this it follows that the Lord accepted the vicious nature at His will in order to suffer for us and accept death. Having suffered, He brought satisfaction to God's justice, and this is already perfection, inaccessible to a mere mortal.

Having become incarnate, the Lord took over our damaged nature and took upon himself human sins, which means that He also accepted the original sin. For example, as if one of us, being healthy, took on someone else's illness. And here a completely different meaning of Christ's sacrifice is revealed: through suffering on the cross and death, He resurrected our primordial nature and healed it. This is the essence of Christ's sacrifice. The Savior took our "damage" with all its ailments and infirmities, He really got tired and cried not because He wanted it so much, but because He really felt tired or grief. Jesus by His nature is consubstantial with man, which is the fundamental thought of Orthodoxy and an immutable Christian truth.

Church understanding of this issue is reflected not only in the sayings of the Church Fathers, but also in the tradition of liturgical creativity. What is only one excerpt from the prayer for the ambo of the liturgy of the presanctified gifts: "To the Tsar of Ages Christ, our God, our poor perceived nature, does not partake of passion for the Divine of nature, even if you did not put on our passionate and mortal nature freely."

What else can you say after that? The unanimous teaching of the Fathers of the Orthodox Church does everything to make it clear to us what Jesus Christ did and for whom. It turns out that it is very important what kind of nature the Lord perceived: if it is blameless, then, in fact, there is nothing to heal; if it is sinful and damaged, then only then can we talk about the salvation of the world.

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