Thank you again @ArmyMatt Now, for my 3rd, and hopefully final question, if the difference is the guilt, what difference does the guilt make?
I don't really understand this either. I have encountered Orthodox who say that Ancestral Sin and Original Sin are the same thing and others who say that Original Sin is different because it implies the idea that we are guilty because of Adam's sin. But I have never seen anyone point to the place where Augustine or the West affirms such an idea. I'm pretty sure I have read Augustine say the exact opposite, although I would have to do some digging to find it again.
There is also a third position that I have encountered in people like John Meyendorff. This position pivots on the Latin translation of Romans 5:12 which Augustine made use of. Simplifying, this view says that, contrary to the Latin translation, the adversary is death rather than sin. But I have seen other Orthodox exegete the Greek directly contrary to Meyendorff's claims (which makes me wonder if Meyendorff was relying more on the patristics than formal exegesis).
In my experience Orthodox distinctives are not clear-cut, but they do exist in a more subtle manner. For example, even if the West does not hold to 'original guilt', there is a sense in which the West emphasizes inherited concupiscence more than the East does. And even if the exegesis of Romans 5:12 remains fraught, there is a sense in which the West focuses more on sin and the East focuses more on death. Granted, you will find exceptions on both sides. These are differences of theological culture or style, which theologians apparently see as demanding a genealogical explanation. Regardless, it seems that for Orthodox the difference of style or
phronema really does take pride of place. This means that when a propositional-rationalistic West meets a mystical-
traditio East you end up with an especially unstable and neuralgic encounter. In my (
humble) opinion to understand this encounter from the perspective of the Eastern paradigm you must perceive that for the East the central premises relate to praxis, style, and
phronema, with the propositional approach being derivative, mediated by these central concerns.
...I was going to end my post there, but then I realized that I have run head-on into your question and yet failed to offer an answer. It is an excellent question, but I am wary to offer an answer... What I will venture to say is that there is something more optimistic in the East than there is in the West. There is a greater focus on the resurrection, there is more hope for deification in this life, there is more continuity between this life and the next, there is somewhat less emphasis on the expiation of sin and guilt (especially in a legal sense), etc. This is probably easier to see when contrasting Orthodoxy with (Magisterial) Protestantism, since Protestantism is the Western position which is a more extreme opposite to Orthodoxy.