According to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, we inherit the consequences of our ancestors’ sin but not the guilt associated with that sin. Some Eastern Orthodox theologians prefer the term “ancestral sin” to “Original Sin.” Each person and generation are responsible for their own guilt; however the consequences of their sin can affect future generations.
An example of such consequences can be seen with the sin of racism. I was born in the South. As a newborn, I was not corrupt and depraved; I was innocent. However, I was born into a racist culture with a wicked legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. As I was exposed to this culture, it began to influence me. According to the disease model of sin assumed by Eastern Christianity, I became infected by the racism which characterized past generations as well as my own. Once I gave credence to and participated in such evil, I became guilty of my own personal sin. I was not guilty of the sins of my forebears who owned slaves and those later generations which perpetuated racial practices, but I was guilty of participating in the perpetuation of that sin. But even worse was the suffering of people of color from the horrific consequences of evil compounded over many decades by racism.
Another example of suffering the consequences of sin committed by previous generations is the present climate crisis. This continent has been trashed since the coming of Europeans five centuries ago. (Until then, Indigenous Nations had been able to preserve this land for at least 15,000 years through harmonious and respectful approaches to the natural world.) Most of that devastation has happened since the end of World War II with our greedy obsession with exploitation, production, and consumption with no thought to the damage we do to the earth and our descendants. My grandsons are not guilty of past ecological destruction. However, they and their children will suffer more than those who are guilty of such sin.
We may not be guilty of the sin of our ancestors. However, we are responsible for our own time and decisions. Rabbi Abraham Heschel wisely observed that in our kind of world, “Few are guilty, but all are responsible.” We are responsible for three reasons:
- We have inherited the mess our ancestors created and must deal with the world as it is—as they have made it. We can blame them, but they have departed this world. It is now in our hands. We must mend their mistakes and heal the wounds they have left for us and future generations.
- We will incur our own guilt as we make our mistakes which will negatively impact future generations. There is very little evidence that we have chosen a wiser and less destructive way of living in this world (which is teetering on the brink of ecological collapse) than our parents did. Our imbecilic denials and intentional neglect of the present crisis are beyond rational explanation. And the rise of hate groups, racism, homophobia, censorship, and fascism demonstrates that we have learned nothing from the violent history of the 20th century with its two world wars, Holocaust, and nuclear madness.
- One day we will leave this world to our children, their children, and all future generations. As the parents of those generations, we have a duty to bestow upon them a world worthy of their humanity. We may be the first generation whose children will be worse off than their parents. What a disgraceful epitaph for those who could now influence and shape the health and destiny of our descendants’ world! “We left it worse than we found it!”
I suggest that we dispense with the repugnant and irrational concepts of Original Sin advanced by Augustine and Calvin and the penal substitutionary atonement which inevitably accompanies these theories. The model from Eastern Orthodox Christianity is both healthier and more biblical. We are not born guilty and depraved. But we are born innocent into a world where “ancestral sin” can affect and infect us. We become guilty of our own sin when we say “Yes” to that evil and when we choose to let it become a part of who we are. The only “medicine” for healing that “disease” is self-giving love. The juridical models of Augustine and Calvin with their emphasis on law, guilt, and punishment have never proved helpful. They are tools of a religion based on fear and not love. The “disease” model with purification, healing, and restoration as its goals is more in harmony with the character of Jesus, the Great Physician. With this model, as we are being healed, we are invited to join God in mending our world. We are “saved” not for mansions in the sky but for loving this creation into its salvation. We are healed to become apprentices of the Great Healer of the cosmos.