From this point on he reveals the
mystery of the Incarnation, and brings out the reason for becoming man. Hence,
just as through one human being sin entered the world, and through sin death,
and thus death spread to all human beings for the reason that all sinned
(v. 12). On creating Adam and dignifying him with the gift of reason, the Lord
God gave the single commandment of exercising his reason; it was impossible
that, sharing in reason and enjoying the discernment of good and its opposite,
he should live his life apart from any law. He was deceived and broke the law;
and from the beginning the lawgiver linked the threat of punishment to the
commandment. Becoming subject to the rule of death, then, Adam begot Cain, Seth
and the others. All of them, therefore, on the grounds of their lineage from
his man, had a nature subject to death; such a nature is in need of many things—food
and drink, clothing and habitation, and diverse skills. Use of these things, however,
often stimulates the passions to intemperance, and intemperance generates sin.
Consequently, the divine apostle means that, since Adam had sinned and death
had occurred through sin, both spread to the race: death spread to all human
beings for the reason that all sinned. In other words, it is not because of
the sin of the first parent but because of their own that each person is liable
to death. (Theodoret of Cyrus, Commentary on the Letters of St. Paul, 2
vols. [Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001], 1:72)
The translator Robert Charles Hill noted that:
Theodoret, like all the Greek Fathers
before John Damascene, reads εφ’
ω in this verse and renders
it “for the reason that”; he is well aware that Paul is referring to the
etiological story of the Fall in Gen 3 but does not see Adam as an antecedent
to the pronoun (as likewise in commenting on Ps 51.5). Adam’s sin is beyond
question for him, and—without explaining how—he sees both sin and death
spreading to the whole race; but he is insistent that each person’s sin and not
Adam’s is responsible for each one’s liability to death. As always, he avoids
the heavy moralizing tone of preachers like Chrysostom in commenting on the
Fall, as well as their tendency to transfer guilt to the woman. (Ibid., 1:146
n. 7)
