In regards to infant baptism, the purpose of baptism is to join a fallen creature to Christ (and we ARE fallen, which is why we sin-- think of it not as a legal sentence but as an infection. Adam brought the sickness of death and sin into the world and we are all contaminated by it-- this is also what St. Cyprian was referring to, the fallen, sinful nature we are born into, the "contagion of old death"), to "put on Christ" (Gal. 3:27.) The Bible does not speak of baptism merely as a washing away of sin, but of a death and resurrection in Christ (cf. Romans 5.) To be baptized is to be brought into a Christified world, a restored world, a new world of the Spirit here in the flesh. It is to literally be born again, to put on New Life. The question of "original guilt" is really irrelevant to it.
Also, you might want to check out this thread:
http://www.christianforums.com/t849428-original-sin.html
I quote some ECFs on the matter there, too:
"God ordained that, if man kept this, he would partake of the immortal existence. However, if he transgressed it, his lot would be just the opposite. Having been made in this manner, man soon went towards transgression. And so he naturally became subject to corruption. Therefore, corruption became inherent in nature. So it was necessary that He who wished to save us would be someone who destroyed the essential cause of corruption." - Justin Martyr
"For so also we lie under Adam's sin because of
similiarity of sin." - Clement of Alexandria [emphasis mine]
"Still, God indulgently tempered his punishment by cursing-- not so much [Adam] himself-- but his labors upon earth." - Novatian (a personal curse is not transferred through Adam, but instead all creation is "subjected to futility" cf. Romans 8)
"God did not actually curse Adam and Eve, because they were candidates for restoration. That is because they had been relieved by confession." - Tertullian
"'Through the wrong-doing of one man many became sinners'. There is nothing improbable about the proposition that when Adam sinned and became mortal, those who were descended from him should become mortal also. But how should it follow that from his disobedience anyone else should become a sinner? For unless a man becomes a sinner on his own responsibility, he will not be found to merit punishment. Then what does 'sinner' mean here? I think it means liable to punishment, that is, condemned to death." - St. John Chrysostom
"But since the first-created Adam lost this garment of sanctity, not from any other sin but from pride alone, and became corruptible and mortal, all people also who come from the seed of Adam are participants of the ancestral sin from their very conception and birth." - St. Symeon the New Theologian [this sums up the Orthodox position very well actually-- corruption, mortality, and the consequences of sin entered into the world; it is the "ancestral curse."]
"What has Adam's guilt to do with us? Why are we held responsible for his sin when we were not even born when he committed it? Did not God say: `The parents will not die for the children, nor the children for the parents, but the soul which has sinned, it shall die' (Deuteronomy 24.16). How then shall we defend this doctrine? The soul, I say, which has sinned, it shall die. We have become sinners because of Adam's disobedience in the following manner
After he fell into sin and surrendered to corruption, impure lusts invaded the nature of his flesh, and at the same time the evil law of our members was born. For our nature contracted the disease of sin because of the disobedience of one man, that is, Adam, and thus many became sinners. This was not because they sinned along with Adam, because they did not then exist, but because they had the same nature as Adam, which fell under the law of sin. Thus, just as human nature acquired the weaknessof corruption in Adam because of disobedience, and evil desires invaded it, so the same nature was later set free by Christ, Who was obedient to God the Father and did not commit sin." - St. Cyril of Alexandria
"There then arose sin, the first and worthy of reproach, that is, the falling away of the will from good to evil. Through the first there arose the second the change in nature from incorruption to corruption, which cannot elicit reproach. For two sins arise in [our] forefather as a consequence of the transgression of the Divine commandment: one worthy of reproach [his personal sin], and the second having as its cause the first and unable to elicit reproach [the falling away of his will from good to evil, that which infected all of creation.]" - St. Maximos the Confessor
"For the law of sin is really what the fall of its first father brought on mankind by that fault of his, against which there was uttered this sentence by the most just Judge: 'Cursed is the ground in thy works; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.' This, I say, is the law, implanted in the members of all mortals, which resists the law of our mind and keeps it back from the vision of God, and which, as the earth is cursed in our works after the knowledge of good and evil, begins to produce the thorns and thistles of thoughts, by the sharp pricks of which the natural seeds of virtues are choked, so that without the sweat of our brow we cannot eat our bread which 'cometh down from heaven' and which 'strengtheneth man's heart.'" - St. John Cassian
In IC XC,
Marjorie
It really and truly is a completely different mindset in the East, as to how we interpret things. I didn't see them as talking about inherited guilt. They clearly seemed to me to just be making allusions as to how we live in a fallen, sinful world. Others have given you more precise answers and have mentioned that there are translations that don't line up with the LXX. I used to believe in transmitted guilt, when I was a Baptist, and what a joy to find that this was not the consensus of the Historical Church!
of what I have gleaned from personal conversations with men much wiser than myself. If I have time I'll try to find the sources, If I am in error, may the Lord have mercy on my soul.
