Original Sin, Guilt, Traducianism, and Eastern Orthodoxy

The following is an expansion of a criticism of Eastern Orthodoxy I have only touched on elsewhere: original sin. It seems several Eastern Orthodox adherents prefer to call it "ancestral" sin. In some cases, there is a complete lack of understanding, such as can be seen in this video (the first video that shows up if you search for "original sin eastern orthodox" on Youtube), which is explained by a Ph.D. and priest:

...we have this development, this theological development which is based on this erroneous concept but we also have among the Reformers John Calvin who embraced a lot of the Augustinian concepts including predestination and he also embraced the understanding of Original Sin and the transmission of sin and guilt and the responsibility of Adam based on Augustine's understanding and that has been the case until this day for those who have followed the Calvinist understandings. Of course in the Orthodox Church this is not even a topic to be discussed because we do not see any such possibility of transmission of sin and guilt and responsibility in any possible way.

Perry Robinson similarly writes (link):

For the Orthodox, original sin pertains only to Adam’s transgression, and is not something that his descendants inherit from him. What we get from Adam is corruption and death, which lead us to sin, and separate us from God, in that we live in death.

This is not even remotely in the same league as intramural debates amongst Reformed theologians such as is found in George P. Hutchinson's fantastic work, The Problem of Original Sin in American Presbyterianism. Perhaps this would be less of a problem if the ignorance weren't so seemingly prevalent. 

Or take the following from the introduction to another priest's (Romanides') book, The Ancestral Sin:

Now we sin because we die, for the sting of death is sin. Sin reigns in death, in our corruptibility and mortality. Death is the root; sin is the thorn that springs from it.

This completely reverses cause and effect (Romans 6:23). I've also seen several Eastern Orthodox apologists appeal to John Chrysostom (Romanides and Eastern Orthodox apologists who disagree with Romanides - it seems there may be something of an intramural debate). Chrysostom says (link):

Seeing their children bearing punishment proves a more grievous form of chastisement for the fathers than being subject to it themselves.

Without fail, I find that Eastern Orthodox apologists deny original guilt. But then how is it that they think children may justly bear the punishment for another's sins? Whether Chrysostom himself believed this point is irrelevant. Hutchinson and the Reformed tradition deal with this question directly. Eastern Orthodox apologists seem barely aware of it. And those who are aware of it seem to ignore it! 

On this note, it's helpful to see engagement between theologians or apologists of different traditions. An example may be found in Original Sin and the Fall: Five Views. In it, Oliver Crisp responds to the Eastern Orthodox presentation (Andrew Louth, priest and Ph.D.) with the following on pg. 184:

In the context of expounding the doctrine of ancestral sin in terms of a web of human sinfulness going all the way back to our first parents, he raises the issue of whether this is sufficient as an account of sin. As he puts it, for defenders of original sin, like myself, the ancestral sin view “seems to leave open the possibility (even if totally exceptional) of someone living a blameless life.” And this, of course, is the fundamental worry Augustine had with Pelagius’s doctrine. The problem is, Louth never really addresses this objection to his position head on. He never explains how the Orthodox doctrine of ancestral sin can avoid the traditional Augustinian objection that it leaves conceptual room for the existence of someone that is, for all practical purposes, without sin. This, it seems to me, is a serious lacuna in his presentation.

Note that Louth himself brings up the possibility of all people who are subject to original sin as living blameless lives and then proceeds to cite Mary as a case in which such a possibility actually happens. Even setting aside the problems with Marian devotion and the possibility that all men subject to original sin might refrain from choosing to sin, the immediate point is that Eastern Orthodox apologists think those who are subject to original sin are guiltless subjects of punishment. In the case of Christ - who voluntarily laid down His life - a case can be made that experience of punishment can just. The same cannot be said if our subjection to original sin is involuntary.

Rather than squarely facing this problem, Louth merely notes it and moves on as if it were a mere curiosity. From the same book, the following criticisms of Louth by another contributor are even better than Crisp's (pg. 172):

On a final note, the corruption-only position of ancestral sin is a flawed doctrine; it discounts the truths of imputation (and realism) implied in passages like Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 as well as the broader doctrinal synthesis of the whole Bible on which imputed guilt rests (see my marks to Crisp). I ask Louth, Are there any human beings apart from Christ who were perfectly sinless? Answering yes would suggest he has a defective hamartiology and Christology. Scripture is clear that with the exception of Christ all humans are sinners (e.g., Rom 3:9-20; 1 Jn 1:8); if we presume there were any sinless people, as perfectionists have claimed, such naiveté detracts from the glory of the incarnation and belittles the gravity of sin. I suspect Louth agrees. In that case, it must be our inherited corruption that makes sinning inevitable. But then how is this scenario just? Since no human is responsible for innate corruption, in his view, and since that same corruption leads inevitably to sin, it is unclear how ancestral sin fares any better than original guilt. The concerns surrounding divine justice remain.

Now, Hutchinson's book shows the Reformed view has its own, intramural debates regarding just how it is Adam's ancestors can be considered guilty. I've defended a realist view most extensively here (see also here and here where I engage with different Reformed theologians who disagree with it).

What might be helpful, however, is to draw comparisons to theologians whom Eastern Orthodox apologists respect. Even though their views don't align with mine in every facet, such might anticipate the more typical apologetic concerns that Eastern Orthodox apologists seem to have about the Reformed view as well as facilitate conversation. Discussing the view of Maximus the Confessor, for example, Marcelo Souza writes:

In Christ, the natural will is rooted in his concrete human nature, not an abstract human nature (as some modern philosophers of religion, who reject dyothelitism, haver argued).

This is a helpful point of departure in that it tracks with the sort of theological and anthropological metaphysics I (link) as well as other Protestants agree (as Souza himself notes; e.g. link): Christ has His own, concretely distinctive soul and body. He was, of course, consubstantial with us, but theologians like John of Damascus acknowledge a distinction between the concrete humanity of Christ and that of everyone else. He writes:

And we cannot, if we wish to be accurate, speak of Christ as having judgment (γνώμη) and preference. For judgment is a disposition with reference to the decision arrived at after investigation and deliberation concerning something unknown, that is to say, after counsel and decision. And after judgment comes preference, which chooses out and selects the one rather than the other. But the Lord being not mere man but also God, and knowing all things, had no need of inquiry, and investigation, and counsel, and decision, and by nature made whatever is good His own and whatever is bad foreign to Him.

John of Damascus is referring to what Eastern Orthodox theologians describe as the "gnomic will," a term particularly associated with Maximus the Confessor. Joseph P. Farrell describes it as a "mode of employment of the will" (link). Ian McFarland writes (In Adam's Fall, pg. 112):

Maximus draws a parallel between the natural and gnomic wills on the one hand, and the capacity to speak and the act of speaking on the other... Some monothelites rejected the ascription of a human will to Christ on the grounds that it would imply ignorance (see OTP 19 [PG91:216B – C]). The terms of Maximus’ dyothelitism imply not so much a flat - out rejection of this charge as its deflection by conceding that ignorance is a feature of gnomic will but denying that Christ willed gnomically. To put it another way, from Maximus’ perspective the monothelite charge rests on a failure to recognize that gnome refers to a tropos rather than the logos of the will. 

The idea is that while Christ is consubstantial with the rest of humanity - having the same nature and natural will as we do - the rest of mankind has a mode or tropos or manner or way of will[ing] that Christ did not. As McFarland says (In Adam's Fall, pg. 105):

...a given logos may be instantiated according to a range of possible tropoi. The full humanity of the will is thus unaffected by whether the tropos by which it operates is gnomic deliberation or the immediate presence of God characteristic of deification.

Let us now consider a Reformed engagement with Eastern Orthodox apologists. Given what has been said, McFarland points out (In Adam's Fall, pg. 107):

...while Maximus’ understanding of postlapsarian human willing neither envisages nor requires Augustine’s vision of a fallen humanity unable to avoid sin, it certainly allows for it. If the integrity of the will remains intact when we become unable to sin in glory (as both he and Augustine affirm), there seems nothing inherently problematic about affirming that genuine agency is preserved in circumstances where sinning is unavoidable. 

Satan is an example of an agent who unavoidably sins. So what prevents a Reformed Christian making use of a concept of mode of will[ing] such that in concrete cases (viz. everyone except Christ), "sinning is unavoidable"? 

[As an aside, I don't think McFarland is suggesting that unavoidability implies determinism: we might imagine one's freely (in the libertarian sense) choosing from amongst various, sinful alternatives. On the other hand, it is possible for sin to be predestined (e.g. 1 Kings 22:20-23, Acts 4:27-28).]

Or take an Eastern Orthodox apologist like Jay Dyer, who says: "Christ has not possessed a corrupted, defective will - we do... He's not subject to the corruption that comes through the procreation of man through seminal means." (link). 

A Reformed Christian might say the same. Indeed, traducians like Samuel Baird have argued along these lines. Romanides suggests that the early church "writers regarding the fall and salvation incline strongly toward the theory of traducianismus." The concrete soul of a child is paternally traduced, and this functions to explain why our mode of will[ing] is unlike Christ's (and, for that matter, unlike prelapasarian Adam).

Of course, a point of disanalogy would be that the Reformed position thinks our "corrupted, defective will" entails more than the Eastern Orthodox position, and this might return us to the subject of punishment, original guilt, participation in Adam's sin, and divine justice. But the immediate point is that on both Eastern Orthodox and Reformed positions, it is possible for Christ to be consubstantial with us yet not subject to [certain effects of] original sin.

I believe the foregoing anwers one further counterargument. Joseph P. Farrell writes:

...nature and its properties as created by God, are good. The natural will thus chooses nothing but the good. Opposition to the divine will is thus always in the evil mode of the employment of the will, and is thus always personal. And this in turn means that free choice is not ultimately concerned with a dialectic of opposition between the divine and human natures in Christ, or between evil and good choices in man himself.

Similarly, McFarland writes:

As promising as Maximus’ doctrine of the will may appear for shoring up Augustine’s understanding of original sin, however, further reflection suggests serious obstacles to any proposed marriage of the two theologies. As Augustine himself was very aware, the doctrine of original sin is credible only if the categories of nature (as God’s good creation) and will (as the source of creatures’ deviation from God) are kept distinct. But surely one of the consequences of Maximus’ integration of will and nature is to render this sort of distinction untenable: if sin is a function of the will (viz., its deviation from God’s will for the creature), and the operation of the will is simply an expression of human nature, then the doctrine of original sin (viz., the assertion that the will is congenitally opposed to God) seemingly implies that human nature as such has become evil. It follows either that God is not the creator of human nature (the Manichean position), or, worse, that God –precisely as the creator of human nature – is also the creator of sin.

In the case of Farrell, my first response would be to point out that the natural will qua natural will does not choose anything. Persons enhypostatize natures. A natural will outlines a capacity one has in virtue of his nature. For Farrell to say "The natural will thus chooses nothing but the good" conflates nature with person, because only persons choose.

Ignoring this slip, there is the question of the natural will itself, discussion of which performs the double-duty of responding to Farrell and McFarland simultaneously. What capacity or capacities does the natural will entail (in the context of anthropology)? The simplest answer seems to be that the natural will affords man the capacity to will, act, or choose. This capacity is distinct from the voluntary exercise of will, act, or choice. This capacity is also distinct from that to which one might be disposed to choose. Sin is not a substance, but neither are volitional natures morally neutral in terms of disposition.

[Parenthetically, one might easily expand this discussion on human nature to encompass our rationality. Both the rational and volitional seem to be rooted in one's concrete humanity, viz. one's spirit or soul. What I've said regarding a distinction between a natural will vs. its employment/disposition would analogously apply to a distinction between a so-called natural rationality vs. its employment/disposition. 

Thus, these are two capacities of one nature. In no sense did the Fall destruct our capacity to capacity to think, will, act, or choose. On other other hand, our mode of disposition and action - in obedience or rebellion to God - was mutable.] 

This finally turns us to the fact that God created Adam and Eve good. Of course, God created everyone good. Does this entail that the orientation of one's natural will can only towards the good, as Farrell seems to want to suggest? If so, then why isn't it possible for Satan (for example) to employ his will towards the good?

On the other hand, how does the Reformed position avoid McFarland's point regarding anthropological Manicheanism? If the orientation of a concrete human nature might be to rebel against God, how could this be? As has been mentioned, traducianism seems to solve the dilemma. McFarland seems to assume that this is not a live option - as if the concrete humanities (souls and bodies) of Adam's progeny are created ex nihilo. While John of Damascus is taken to be a creationist, consideration of the following is still useful (link):

...generation means that the begetter produces out of his essence offspring similar in essence. But creation and making mean that the creator and maker produces from that which is external, and not out of his own essence, a creation of an absolutely dissimilar nature....Wherefore all the qualities the Father has are the Son's, save that the Father is unbegotten, and this exception involves no difference in essence nor dignity, but only a different mode of coming into existence. We have an analogy in Adam, who was not begotten (for God Himself moulded him), and Seth, who was begotten (for he is Adam's son), and Eve, who proceeded out of Adam's rib (for she was not begotten). These do not differ from each other in nature, for they are human beings: but they differ in the mode of coming into existence.

After contrasting begetting and creating, he says Adam begot Seth. This implies Adam produced out of his essence an offspring similar in essence. If we highlight that it was out of Adam's concrete humanity that Seth was begotten, we are closer to a biblical and reasonably motivated model on which: 

1. Christ was consubstantial with the rest of humanity yet, unlike them, not subject to [the effects of] original sin.

2. Adam's ancestors are justly punished for having guiltily participated in the original transgression.

3. The Fall did not destruct the image of God in man yet did put us in a terrible mode of need for conformity to Christ's image.

Contemporary Reformed Reading on Original Sin

In my last two posts, I've touched on original sin (link, link) and my desire to post more on the subject. One reason is that I think the Reformed tradition contains distinctive, right answers to questions this subject naturally raises. But another reason is that I think the contemporary Reformed understanding on the subject is a bit scattered. By that, I mean that there is still an intramural debate going on within the Reformed tradition. And while one of the views on original sin within the tradition appears sound, other views are not only unsound, I think that they are dangerous in that they give opponents to the Reformed tradition ammo in terms of what such views would imply about other theological subjects.

So the point of this post will be a sort of introduction on what direction I would recommend to those within the Reformed faith who are looking for where to begin in their reading on original sin.

George Hutchinson's book on "The Problem of Original Sin in American Presbyterian Theology" (link) is a great book that overviews different Presbyterian views of and discussions about original sin between roughly 1830 and 1960. This is where I learned of Samuel Baird and his works (link). His views are those with which I most closely align. At the same time, this book also covers other schools of thought so that the careful reader will have a fair grasp of and exposure to various lines of thought by the end of the book. It is an excellent introduction to the topic, although it is quite dense for 125 pages.

To expand on the above, Baird wrote "The Elohim Revealed," wherein he defended what Hutchinson calls a "realist" view of original sin. Baird's position, therefore, is similar to but distinct from that of W. G. T. Shedd. In my opinion, Baird has the more defensible view. Charles Hodge responded to this book by Baird with a review of it, and after Baird wrote a rejoinder to Hodge (see below), Hodge seemingly gave up further response.

Baird and other authors (like Robert Landis, link) pretty much level Hodge's position on original sin, which can be summarized by Hodge's statement that "Imputation does not imply a participation of the criminality of the sin imputed" (Hodge, Theology, Vol. II, p. 194). That is, Landis, Baird, etc. make a good case that the Reformed tradition held - until Hodge - that Adam's progeny participated in Adam's sin, on which account guilt is imputed to all who are fathered from Adam. Landis has a whole chapter in his book in which he quotes the Reformers on this point of participation.

However, that such is true is not intended to imply that everyone in the Reformed tradition falls into what Hutchinson calls the "Realist School" within Presbyterian views on original sin. That is, not everyone will explain what participation in Adam's sin involves in the same way a "realist" would. I can't be certain why this is, but there is a nominalist, voluntarist streak in some Reformed authors. See Calvin or Gordon Clark on ethics, for example. Or see the widespread rejection of traducianism (which, ironically, Clark ably defends).

At any rate, it is this nomalistic or voluntaristic way of thinking that I alluded to earlier as being dangerously tolerated within the Reformed tradition and which, I hope, is eventually rooted out. Instead, Baird's views on original sin (and, correspondingly, on our justification in Christ) provide a much more defensible and systematic expression of the biblical material. For example, in the rejoinder Baird wrote to Hodge's review of his book "The Elohim Revealed," Baird wrote:

According to our understanding of the Scriptures, it was provided in the eternal covenant that the elect should be actually ingrafted into Christ by his Spirit, and their acceptance and justification is by virtue of this their actual union to him… Thus, the sin of Adam, and the righteousness of Christ are severally imputed to their seed, by virtue of the union, constituted in the one case by the principle of natural generation, and in the other, by ‘the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,’ the Holy Spirit, the principle of regeneration…

If the imputation of Christ’s righteousness be founded in a real inbeing in him, wrought by the uniting power of his Spirit in regeneration,—if it is thus that we are brought within the provisions of the covenant of grace to our justification, it follows, (we will venture the word,) incontestably, that the imputation to us of Adam’s sin, is founded in a real inbeing in him, by natural generation, by virtue of which we come under the provisions of the covenant of works, to our condemnation. But this, according to our reviewer, is “simply a physiological theory,” involving “a mysterious identity,” which he cannot admit. Hence the necessity of ignoring the doctrine, in its relation to justification. (link)

According to Baird (and contrary to Charles Hodge), we are not viewed by God merely as if we are righteous - Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox would have an argument against the Reformed position if such a legal fiction were really the case. Rather, we are and are viewed by the Father as really righteous - not because of anything we have done or earned - but because the Spirit has really united us to Christ's person and work. As Paul says, "he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him" (1 Corinthians 6:17).

Just so, people are born in real unity with the first Adam just as believers are born again in real unity with the last Adam. Following Baird, I think a Reformed anthropology should be worked out along these lines. However, the ontology of our synthetic identity as being persons in Christ after regeneration and conversion is, within the Reformed tradition, either underdeveloped or a discussion of which I am ignorant. I expect that this is due, in part, to the failure of a pervasive acceptance of a realist view of original sin.

Now, with all this being said, another person Hutchinson mentions in his book is Henry Thornwell, a theologian Hutchinson also puts in the "Realist School" (which includes Shedd and Baird). Interestingly, Thornwell wrote a critique of Baird's realism and, perhaps, Thornwell's own former views (link). That is, Hutchinson essentially claims, in his book, that Thornwell started his life by critiquing Baird but "in the end was driven to the Realistic explanation... more in the direction of Baird than of Shedd" (pgs. 62-63 of Hutchinson's book). I, on the other hand, am suggesting the opposite is the case. I think Thornwell held views that had some alignment with the Realist School but then came to criticize Baird when he saw where some of the perceived implications led. I could be wrong about this - it has been a while since I read on the subject - but pages 531-534 here seem to make this case.

Regardless, why I mention this is that if I had to point to one resource that seems to face up to Baird and the implications of his realism as expressed in "The Elohim Revealed" or in his rejoinder to Hodge, it would probably be Thornwell's critique. A healthy dose of perspective is needed to conscientiously affirm a given position. I am not writing this post attempting to hide challenges. That said, I myself still lean towards Baird's view and believe modifications can be made to them to avoid some of Thornwell's criticisms (some of which seem just, others of which perhaps can be responded to on Baird's own grounds). What is needed is frank conversation.

Thus, I'm trying to make some headway towards this development, albeit in a slow and methodical way. To say a little more about this, in addition to the above material I've already mentioned, Oliver Crisp has written a book (link) in which he engages W. G. T. Shedd's thoughts (link). I've been directed to a book in which five views of original sin are debated (link). I'm also reading a book on original sin by Ian McFarland (link) which explains Augustinian views on original sin and in what way such differs, say, from Maximus the Confessor.

As I've been reading on Eastern Orthodoxy anyways (with their heavy reliance on Maximus), I realize how little engagement with them I've seen from a Reformed perspective, which is why I mentioned original sin in my most recent post (link). For all the attention Roman Catholic apologists have received from the Reformed tradition, I think Eastern Orthodox apologists will soon warrant more needed attention and corrective, which requires those in the Reformed faith (like myself) to be more prepared for this possibility. On this note, I highly recommend Steve Hays' stuff on Triablogue, particularly any of his posts responding to Eastern Orthodox apologists like Perry Robinson, Daniel Jones, Jay Dyer, etc.

Finally, one person I have corresponded with about many of these issues regarding original sin is Ken Hamrick, who has commented here and there on this blog and used to have a website. I mention him only because he is as knowledgeable on this subject - especially in terms of historical theology - as I've had the pleasure to talk to (e.g. link, link, link), and he has pointed me in the right direction on many of the points I mention above and elsewhere (see, for example, this discussion on puritanboard).