โIn general, the tragic state of the world after the Fall is not the result of any act of God, but exclusively the result of Adamโs deed. In no way, therefore, is this state of suffering and death to be deemed a punishment imposed by God upon Adam. God as love is always acting with love, and love creates no evil whatsoever. Adamโs slavery is the natural consequence of his being vanquished; his suffering is the physiological result of the trauma he himself sustained when he turned aside from his path, and death follows upon alienation from God. To regard God as the cause of suffering and death is an essential error, a real affront offered to Him. Soteriologically, it is also genuinely heretical, for it strips the cross of Christ of its real historical and anthropological content โ which is that of victory over Satan โ and makes it a simple instrument of suffering and of the placating of Godโs โwrath.โโ
- Saint Dumitru Staniloae the Confessor, The Experience of God, Volume 2, The World: Creation and Deification, p. 187