Theology | Literature homework help

1. Close to the last view, but expressed in quite different terms, is the perspective of the eastern churches.[footnoteRef:4] There has been little substantial debate of these matters in the eastern Christian tradition, so that it is difficult to be precise. The main ideas of the three statements listed above are held, but related through death rather than sin. Adam fell from a state of ‘undeveloped simplicity’ rather than from a great height, and so ‘is not to be judged too harshly for his error’. The main consequence of this act was the entry of death and corruption into the world: our ‘inheritance is of death rather than of sinfulness or guilt’. [4: See John Chryssavgis, “Original Sin—An Orthodox Perspective,” in Ormerod, pp. 197–206, from whom both quotations in this paragraph come. Chryssavgis, an Orthodox deacon, teaches at St Andrew’s Seminary, Sydney, and is known for seeking to build bridges between the Orthodox and churches of an English background.]

The Reformation period saw vigorous debates in these areas, initially over the capacity of the will to turn to God.[footnoteRef:5] In terms of the work of Christ, justification came to be understood as ‘imputation’ rather than ‘impartation’; we are in the right with God because of an external change in our status before God, rather than by an internal renovation. As Luther put, Christ is ‘for us’ (pro nobis) before being ‘in us’ (in nobis). Just as the concepts of nature and person had been used in classical Christology and p 237 anthropology, so the concept of imputation now came to be applied in the area of sin. In order to defend the priority of grace over and against Rome, the first generation of Reformers tended towards the realist view, though it came increasingly to be seen as problematic. As the Reformation consolidated, fierce debates over the extent of election and the nature of sin broke out in the Protestant churches. Some continued to hold to one of the scholastic views noted above, especially the last; but in Reformed theology two major views emerged. [5: Berkouwer, in Sin, chapters 12–14, discusses these matters in some detail, and with pastoral sensitivity.]