What is the Coptic Church's view on original sin?
By CopticBot.ai (Coptic Space Inc.) · Last reviewed 2026-10-10
The Coptic Orthodox Church understands "original sin"—more accurately termed ancestral sin—not as an inherited legal guilt, but as an inherited corruption of human nature, subjection to death, and separation from God.
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1. What Humanity Inherited from Adam
When Adam transgressed the divine commandment in Paradise, the consequences affected the entire human race. However, a crucial distinction exists between guilt and consequence:
- No Inherited Personal Guilt: A person is only morally guilty of sins committed through their own personal free will. Scripture explicitly states: "The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself" (Ezekiel 18:20). An infant is not born guilty of Adam's personal act of eating from the tree.
- Inherited Fallen Nature and Mortality: What humanity inherited from Adam is a diseased, corrupted human nature, subject to physical and spiritual death, decay, and the tyranny of the devil. Adam was the root of the human tree; when the root became diseased with mortality and sin, every branch springing from it naturally inherited that same diseased condition.
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2. The Alexandrian Patristic Teaching
The Alexandrian Fathers clearly articulated this ontological understanding of the Fall:
- St. Athanasius the Great explains in On the Incarnation (De Incarnatione) that the primary tragedy of the Fall was that humanity turned away from the eternal God—the only source of life—and fell back into non-existence and corruption:
"For the transgression of the commandment was turning them back to their natural state, so that, just as they had had their being out of nothing, so also, as might be expected, they might look for corruption into nothing in the course of time."
Death became a tyrant reigning over humanity. Salvation, therefore, was not merely a matter of forgiving a legal debt but required the Creator Himself to take on human flesh to recreate human nature, destroy death, and restore incorruption.
- St. Cyril of Alexandria, commenting on Romans 5:19 ("as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners"), refutes the idea of inherited guilt:
"How could many become sinners because of Adam’s disobedience? What have his misdeeds to do with us? ... Human nature contracted the disease of sin because of the disobedience of one, that is, Adam; and thus many became sinners, not because they sinned along with Adam (for they were not yet in existence), but because they belong to his nature which had fallen under the law of sin... Human nature became diseased in Adam through corruption."
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3. Contrast with Western Theology and Heresies
Orthodox theology maintains the true balance, avoiding the distortions found in both Western Christianity and historical heresies:
- The Western View (Augustinian, Roman Catholic, and Protestant): Following Blessed Augustine, the Western tradition developed a heavily legalistic framework. It taught that all human beings inherit the actual guilt (reatus) of Adam's transgression. Protestant reformers pushed this distortion further into the error of "total depravity," claiming that the image of God in man was completely annihilated, rendering human nature inherently evil and devoid of free will. This led Protestants to reduce salvation to a cold, legal transaction (penal substitutionary atonement) rather than the therapeutic healing and restoration of human nature.
- The Pelagian Heresy: At the opposite extreme, the heretic Pelagius falsely taught that Adam's sin harmed only himself, that humans are born morally neutral like Adam before the Fall, and that man can achieve righteousness by his own natural will without divine grace. The Church condemned Pelagianism at the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (431 A.D.).
- The Orthodox Truth: Man retains free will and the image of God, though darkened and wounded. Humanity is in bondage to death and unable to conquer mortality or reconcile itself to God without divine grace and the Incarnation of God the Word.
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4. Why the Church Baptizes Infants
Since infants bear no personal guilt, heterodox groups—such as various Protestant sects (e.g., Baptists)—reject infant baptism because they view baptism merely as an outward public confession of intellectual faith.
The Orthodox Church baptizes infants because baptism is not a mere symbolic act, but a life-giving Sacrament:
- Regeneration and Liberation: It delivers the child from the ancestral curse of death and corruption, transplanting the infant out of the fallen Adam and grafting them into the risen body of Christ.
- Divine Adoption: It cleanses the child from inherited pollution, clothes them with Christ, bestows the gift of the Holy Spirit (through Holy Chrismation), and makes them an heir of the Kingdom of God.
- As the Church Fathers teach, infants are baptized not because they have personal sins requiring repentance, but so that they may receive sanctification, incorruption, divine adoption, and life in the Holy Spirit from the earliest days of their life.
Through the Incarnation, death, and Resurrection of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ, the power of ancestral sin has been shattered, granting humanity victory over death and the restoration of eternal communion with God.