The Sin of Adam and Eve and the Restoration of the Image of God through Baptism according to Diadochus of Photike

Association Francophone de Coptologie (AFC), Association Internationale d’Études Patristiques, Association J.-P. Migne, Association THAT - Textes pour l'Histoire de l'Antiquité Tardive, Association Textes pour l’Histoire de l’Antiquité Tardive « THAT », Association des Professeurs de Langues Anciennes de l’Enseignement Supérieur, Association des Professeurs de Langues Anciennes de l’Enseignement Supérieur (APLAES), Association des Études grecques, Association pour l’Étude de la Littérature Apocryphe Chrétienne « AELAC », Gesellschaft zum Studium des Christlichen Ostens, Groupe Suisse d’Etudes Patristiques, Institut Catholique de Paris, Orient & Méditerranée, Société d’études syriaques, Sorbonne Université, Séminaire Orthodoxe de Samara, Université de Fribourg, Université de Strasbourg

Pro Oriente 44, Wiener Patristische Tagungen 10

This study identifies four strategies to reframe theologically the story of the sin of Adam
and Eve in Diadochus of Photike. The first links the drama of the Fall with a universal
phenomenology of temptation, reenacted in every human sin, and offers a spiritual
remedy. The second tells the fall from unity into duality suffered by all human faculties
and pleads for a return to unity. The third looks at the consequences of Adam’s transgression
through the lens of the distinction between image and likeness, and rereads the
story of the proto-parents through the theology of Incarnation and grace. The fourth
strategy uses plastic imagery such as painting and sealing to account for the restoration
of the human being affected by the consequences of the sin of Adam and Eve. Studying
the vocabulary and the arguments of Diadochus in this framework, the essay shows
that Diadochus integrates the notion of ancestral sin in an anthropology with strong
incarnational, pneumatological and sacramental (especially baptismal) emphasis.