We don’t inherit Adam’s guilt. We inherit his consequences.
That’s the short answer, and it’s a big difference from what most people in Southeast Texas learned in Sunday School. If you grew up Baptist or in a non-denominational church, you probably heard that we’re all guilty of Adam’s sin, that we’re born deserving hell because of what happened in the Garden. The Orthodox Church has never taught that.
What We Actually Inherit
When Adam and Eve sinned, something broke in human nature itself. They became mortal. They lost the intimate communion with God they’d had. And they passed that brokenness down to us, not the guilt of their choice, but the consequences of it.
We call this “ancestral sin” rather than “original sin,” though we use both terms. The Greek is propatoriki hamartia, which literally means the sin of our first parents. What we inherit is a nature that’s diseased, prone to death, inclined toward sin. We’re born into a world where death reigns. We’re born separated from the fullness of God’s life.
But we’re not born guilty of Adam’s choice. Guilt requires a personal act. An infant hasn’t sinned. God doesn’t hold us accountable for what Adam did.
Where the West Went Different
Augustine of Hippo, writing in Latin in the fourth and fifth centuries, developed a different understanding. He was fighting against Pelagius, who said we could save ourselves by willpower. Augustine went the other direction. He taught that we inherit not just the consequences but the guilt itself, that all humanity sinned “in Adam,” that we’re born deserving condemnation.
This happened partly because of a translation problem. Romans 5:12 in Greek says death spread to all people “because all sinned.” The Latin translation Augustine used said “in whom all sinned,” as if we’d all somehow participated in Adam’s act. The Eastern fathers, reading in Greek, never made that mistake.
The Catholic Church kept Augustine’s view. The Reformers doubled down on it, Calvin taught total depravity, the idea that every part of us is corrupted by inherited guilt. But the Orthodox Church, reading the fathers in Greek and Syriac, kept the older understanding. We got sick. We didn’t get guilty.
What This Means for Salvation
If you think of sin primarily as guilt, then salvation is primarily about forgiveness, a legal transaction where God declares you not guilty. That’s how a lot of Western Christianity frames it.
But if sin is primarily a disease, then salvation is primarily about healing. That’s the Orthodox view. Christ came to destroy death, to heal our nature, to restore us to communion with God. Yes, He forgives our personal sins. But more than that, He makes us alive again. He opens the way to theosis, to union with God.
St. Cyril of Alexandria said our nature became “diseased through the sin of one.” Christ is the physician. Baptism isn’t just about washing away guilt, it’s about being united to Christ’s death and resurrection, about receiving the medicine of immortality.
Why This Matters
This isn’t just theological hairsplitting. It changes how you understand yourself and God.
You’re not born an object of God’s wrath. You’re born sick, born into a world ruled by death, born needing healing. God isn’t angry at you for Adam’s sin. He’s reaching out to heal what’s broken.
Your two-year-old who hasn’t been baptized yet isn’t damned. She’s not guilty of anything. But she does need what the Church offers, union with Christ, participation in His victory over death, the life of the Holy Spirit.
And when you sin personally, when you miss the mark (that’s what hamartia means, the word we translate as “sin”), you’re not just breaking rules. You’re making yourself sicker. You’re moving away from the healing that God offers.
The Church is, as St. Ephrem the Syrian put it, “a group of repentant people.” We’re all in the hospital together. We’re all receiving the treatment. Some of us have been here longer than others, but none of us are cured yet. We won’t be until the resurrection.
If you want to read more about this, Fr. John Romanides writes about it in The Ancestral Sin. It’s dense, but it’s the best explanation I know. Or just come to a catechism class at St. Michael. We’ll talk through it together, and you can ask all the questions that are probably forming right now.
