In order to understand the many major theological problems which arose between East and West, both before and after the schism, the extraordinary impact upon Western thought of Augustine’s polemics against Pelagius and Julian of Eclanum must be fully taken into account. In the Byzantine world, where Augustinian thought truthly exercised practically no influence, the significance of the sin of Adam and of its consequences for mankind was understood along quite different lines.

In the Eastern Church man’s relationship with God is truly understood as a communion of the human person with that which is above nature. “Nature,” therefore, designates that which is, in virtue of creation, distinct from God. But nature can and must be transcended; this is the privilege and the function of the free mind, made “according to God’s image.”

In Greek patristic thought, only this free, personal mind can commit sin and incur the concomitant “guilt” – a point made particularly clear by Maximus in his distinction between “natural will” and “gnomic will.”

The term ‘gnomic’ derives from the Greek gnome, meaning ‘inclination’ or ‘intention’. Within Eastern theology, gnomic willing is contrasted with natural willing. Natural willing designates the free movement of a creature in accordance with the principle of its nature towards the fulfillment of its being. Gnomic willing, on the other hand, designates that form of willing in which a person engages in a process of deliberation culminating in a free choice.

The theology of Maximus was endorsed by the 6th Council when it condemned monothelitism. It stated that Jesus did not possess gnomic will.

Human nature, as God’s creature, always exercises its dynamic properties (which together constitute the “natural will” – a created dynamism) in accordance with the divine will which created it. But when the human person misuses its freedom by rebelling against both God and nature, it can distort the “natural will” and thus corrupt nature itself. It is able to do so because it possesses freedom, or “gnomic will,” which is capable of orienting man toward the good and of “imitating God”. It is also capable of sin, because “our salvation depends on our will”. But sin is always a personal act, never an act of nature.

From these basic ideas about the personal character of sin, it is evident that the rebellion of Adam and Eve against God could be conceived only as their personal sin; there would be no place, then, in such an anthropology for the concept of inherited guilt, or for a “sin of nature,” although it admits that human nature incurs the consequences of Adam’s sin.
This truly takes some reflection!