#Ancestral sin

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.

— Epistle to the Romans, Romans, 5:12

…he who is born from his mother’s womb and lived only one day on earth does not come to judgment. So how can a person arrive at judgment automatically merely because he has breathed this air and lived?

— St Severus of Antioch, Patriarch of Antioch, Against the Additions of Julian

There is nothing unreasonable in the fact that one person committed sin and became mortal, and that those descended from him became mortal in the same condition. But how can it follow that through the disobedience of this man (Adam) another person becomes a sinner?

— St John, Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistle to the Romans, Rom. 5:19

The purpose of Christ’s Incarnation was to destroy death and sin, and to defeat the devil… This purpose is achieved through the Mysteries of the Church, which do not free man from what is called the psychological feeling of guilt, nor do they appease God for Adam’s sin, but rather they defeat death.

— Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos, Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and St. Vlasios, Life After Death

The pride of all virgins: is Mary the Theotokos: through her also was annulled: the first curse. That came upon our race: because of the transgression: into which the woman fell: when she ate of the fruit of the tree. Because of Eve: the gate of Paradise was shut: and through Mary the Virgin: it was opened for us again.

— The Theotokia (Coptic Psalmody), Theotokia of Thursday, Second Piece

O great and eternal God, who fashioned man for incorruption. And the death that entered into the world through the envy of the devil, You have destroyed, by the life-giving manifestation of Your Only-Begotten Son, our Lord, our God and our Savior Jesus Christ.

— Coptic Liturgy of St Basil, Liturgy of St. Basil the Great, Prayer of Reconciliation, “O God, great and eternal”

The term “original sin” is a Latin term that was born in the West. It is the prevailing term in Blessed Augustine, and it means that we all participated in Adam’s guilt. This term is unknown among the Fathers who wrote in Greek throughout the first thousand years of the Church’s history.

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The heresy of Pelagius… whose content is: that Adam’s sin was limited to him and did not pass from him to his offspring. He then concluded from this that every human being, when born, is like Adam before the sin. And thus, by his natural strength and absolute freedom, he can attain the highest degree of holiness.

— Anba Dioscorus, Bishop of Menoufia, A Brief History of Christianity to Our Time, p. 244