I have been sharing in this article what the Eastern Fathers taught about the idea of the Original Fall, especially as it is connected with the Mystery of Baptism. They maintained that the fall resulted in human mortality and not the inheritance of sin. Thus, the Eastern Church baptizes children, not to remit their yet non-existent sins, but in order to give them a new and immortal life, which their mortal parents are unable to communicate to them. The opposition between the two Adams (i.e., Christ and the first man) is seen in terms not of guilt and forgiveness but death and life. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven; as was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Baptism is the paschal mystery, the passage. All its ancient forms, and especially the Byzantine, include a renunciation of Satan, a triple immersion as type of death and resurrection, and the positive gift of new life through anointing and Eucharistic communion.

Baptism clearly highlights the difference between Eastern and Western Christianity and the theology of each Church. Again, one is not right and the other wrong. They are just different and, according to our faith, God accepts these differences.
In this perspective, death and mortality are viewed, not so much as retribution for sin (although they are also a just retribution for personal sins), as a means through which the fundamentally unjust tyranny of the devil is exercised over mankind after Adam’s sin. From this baptism is a liberation, because it gives access to the new immortal life brought into the world by Christ’s Resurrection. The Resurrection delivers men from the fear of death, and, therefore, also from the necessity of struggling for existence. Only in light of the risen Lord does the Sermon on the Mount acquire its full realism: Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall ear or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

Communion in the risen body of Christ; participation in divine life; sanctification through the energy of God, which penetrates true humanity and restores it to its natural state, rather than justification, or remission of inherited guilt – these are at the center of Byzantine understanding of the Christian Gospel.

As I think about it, the Byzantine approach to the Gospel makes more sense for me. This is what is important. We should not get into thinking that one approach is objectively better than the other. If we wish to spiritually grow, we have to seek that which truly seems to be more in concert with our spirit, knowing and believing that both approaches to God are true but different!