The Ancestral Sin: A Comparative Study of the Sin of Our Ancestors Adam and Eve According to the Paradigms and Doctrines of the First- and ... the Augustinian Formulation of Original Sin

Internationally esteemed as one of the most outstanding Greek Orthodox theologians and patristic scholars of our time, Fr. John Romanides was also a groundbreaking pioneer. Paradoxically, he did not break new but neglected and hallowed ancient ground. In an age of religious syncretism and rationalism, this classic work brings to light ancient truths long ago replaced by juridical schemes and forgotten in most Christian denomination.

Truths regarding the creation 'ex nihilo', the destiny of man, Adam's sin and fall, the origin of death, soteriology and God's relations with the world were exposited as the doctrines of the primitive Church by the Apostolic and post-Apostolic Fathers of the first and second centuries. Hindered by the paradigms of post-Augustinian thought, Western Christianity has rarely understood these doctrines that predate by several centuries the commonly held juridical ideas of original sin and atonement.

This book is the only in-depth comparative study of these doctrines and the underlying paradigms of the earliest Church Fathers on the one hand and the scholastic theologians on the other. IT demonstrates the integrity of the faith and apophatic theology of early Church in sharp contrast to the Augustinian and scholastic rationalism expressed by the aphorism credo intellegam, or 'I believe in order to comprehend.'

Dr. Romanides devoted his life to the authentic Tradition of the Church Fathers, differentiating it from the post-Augustinian thought worlds that had obscured it even in the Orthodox East.