Holy Week thoughts: Western and Eastern views of sin

The Romans were geniuses in uniting and administering their empire under Roman law, with its emphasis on justice. Consequently, many Western Christians tend to view sin in terms of guilt and the atonement as Jesus taking the punishment that we deserved for our sins. Thus, being "justified" and declared "innocent" is our default way of understanding salvation and Christian life.

When that is coupled with a nominalist view of human nature, the most we can say is that Jesus "covers" us, so that a wrathful God doesn't "see" our sinfulness. The image of "snow-covered dung" has been used to describe that situation. (see Luther, <https://soul-candy.info/2016/05/luthers-dunghill/> Christ's righteousness is "imputed"to us, but not "imparted" or "infused."

It's different for Christians in the East, who see sin as "missing the mark," and so missing God, who is Life.

<The Orthodox Church presents a view of sin distinct from views found in Roman Catholicism and in Protestantism, that sin is viewed primarily as a terminal spiritual sickness, rather than a state of guilt, a self-perpetuating illness which distorts the whole human being and energies, corrupts the Image of God inherent in those who bear the human nature, diminishes the divine likeness within them, disorients their understanding of the world as it truly is, and distracts a person from fulfilling his natural potential to become deified in communion with God. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_view_of_sin

and

<In simple terms, we can say that the Eastern Church tends towards a therapeutic model which sees sin as illness, while the Western Church tends towards a juridical model seeing sin as moral failure.> https://www.stmaryorthodoxchurch.org/orthodoxy/articles/ancestral_versus_original_sin

Bottom line: Western Christianity tends to see God as Judge, the world as a battlefield, the Church as a courtroom, and Christians as armored. Eastern Christianity sees God as Physician, the world as a pandemic site, the Church as hospital, and Christians as patients undergoing a "Blood transfusion"-- with the blood of the Lamb.