2nd–7th centuries

Eastern Anthropology: Freedom against Fate, Corruption Rather than Guilt, Sin without Inherited Guilt

Pelikan shows that Christian anthropology before and after Nicaea leaned toward free will and responsibility, because the main opposition was determinism – pagan fate, astrology and the Gnostic division of people into classes. According to Berkhof, the Greek Fathers taught that creation in the image of God included not moral perfection but the capacity for it; fallen physical nature is passed on through procreation but does not in itself make one guilty, so there is no original sin in the strict sense in their teaching. Athanasius, Theodore and Cyril concentrated on death and corruption rather than on sin: the Logos who called humanity out of non-being saves it from non-being. Later, too, Maximus the Confessor spoke of "original sin" without the idea of the inheritance of sin through carnal conception.