Belief in the Fall is something shared by all Christians. Original sin is a Western coinage; the nearest Orthodox equivalent is ‘ancestral sin’ (τὸ προπατερικὸν ἁμάρτημα). What is the difference? Original sin is thought of, since Augustine, as some kind of inherited taint; ancestral sin is rather recognition that the damaged state of the world and society cannot be simply put down to our personal sins — we live in a world already damaged by the accumulated sin of the past.