- Mar 11, 2003
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I’ll defer to Father Matt (@ArmyMatt) on this, but I was taught that we didn’t have that father to child “inheritance”. Ancestral sin infected the entire world, and our nature is not ruined, but we now have an inclination to sin. We fell “ill” in Adam and fell under the law of sin - not as co-transgressors though.The children are bearing the fallen nature of Adam. They are not guilty but they are under this fall (distortion). We all have a distorted existential knowledge. This reality drift punishes us, not God. The children inherit this from their fathers.
St Cyril said:How did many become sinners because of Adam?… How could we, who were not yet born, all be condemned with him, even though God said, ‘Neither the fathers shall be put to death because of their children, nor the children because of their fathers, but the soul which sins shall be put to death’? (cf. Deut. 24:18) … we became sinners through Adam’s disobedience in such manner as this: he was created for incorruptibility and life, and the manner of existence he had in the garden of delight was proper to holiness. His whole mind was continually beholding God; his body was tranquil and calm with all base pleasures being still. For there was no tumult of alien disturbances in it. But because he fell under sin and slipped into corruptibility, pleasures and filthiness assaulted the nature of the flesh, and in our members was unveiled a savage law. Our nature, then, became diseased by sin through the disobedience of one, that is, of Adam. Thus, all were made sinners, not by being co-transgressors with Adam,… but by being of his nature and falling under the law of sin… Human nature fell ill in Adam and subject to corruptibility through disobedience, and, therefore, the passions entered in”.
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