i still dont understand how the differentiation between man and animal means that animals are not meant to be incorrupt ...
St. Symeon the New Theologian is one of the most exalted mystics of the Orthodox Church. He says:
[FONT="]Ethical Discourses 1.1[/FONT][FONT="][/FONT]
[FONT="]God did not, as some people think, just give Paradise to our ancestors at the beginning, nor did He make only Paradise incorruptible. No! Instead, He did much more. Before Paradise He made the whole earth, the one which we inhabit, and everything in it. Nor that alone, but He also in five days brought the heavens and all they contain into being. On the sixth day He made Adam and established him as lord and king of all the visible creation. Neither Eve nor Paradise were yet created, but the whole world had been brought into being by God as one thing, as a kind of paradise, at once incorruptible yet material and perceptible. It was this world, as we said, which was given to Adam and to his descendants for their enjoyment. Does this seem strange to you? It should not. Pay attention to our argument, and it will show you clearly how this is so from the holy Scripture. It is written there: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void.” Next, the remaining creative works of God are given in exact detail, and then, after “there was evening and morning the fifth day, “ Scripture adds: “Then God said, “Let us make man after our image, in our likeness . . . male and female He created them [1:26-27]. Male and female, it says, not as though Eve had already come into being, but instead as she was still in Adam’s side, co-existing with him.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]1.1[/FONT][FONT="][/FONT]
[FONT="]So, if even transgressing his commandment and being condemned to live and to die we men have grown to so great a multitude, imagine how many we might have been if there were no death: everyone who has been born from the creation of the world until now still alive, and what sort of life and way of living we might have had if we had been preserved incorruptible and immortal in an uncorrupted world, going through life without sin or sorrow, free of cares and troubles.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]Ethical Discourses[/FONT][FONT="] 1.2 [/FONT]
[FONT="]Adam was created with an incorruptible body, though one which was material and on the whole not yet spiritual, and was established by God the Creator as the immortal king of an incorrupt world, and I mean by the latter everything under heaven and not just Paradise … [/FONT]
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[FONT="]Ethical Discourses 1.5 [/FONT][FONT="][/FONT]
[FONT="]You see then that not unreasonably do we say that all the creation was also incorrupt from the beginning, and was furnished by God after the order of Paradise, but was cursed with corruption and led into bondage when it was subjected to the futility of men (cf. Rom. 8:20-21). St. Symeon the New Theologian, [/FONT]
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[FONT="]On the Mystical Life vol. 1, [/FONT][FONT="]pg. 35[/FONT]
[FONT="]It was not fitting that men’s bodies should be restored and made incorruptible before the renewal of all creation. Instead, just as the created world was first brought into existence as inccorupt, and then later, man, so again it is creation which must be first transformed from corruption into incorruption.[/FONT]
for Orthodoxy the fall of man has much broader effects than it does in western traditions - it is in fact the fall of the entire cosmos. everything we see around us today is the result of this cosmic fall from Paradise, not of an endless chain of progression.