In three passages from the later
Caesarean period of his life (Homilies on Luke 14 [on Luke 2.22]; Homilies
on Leviticus 8.3; Commentary on Romans 5.9), he followed through an
explicit chain of reasoning which concluded that, since baptism was given for
the remission of sins and was administered according to the church’s practice
to parvuli as well as older persons, there must be something in infants
requiring the baptismal washing, for otherwise there would be no rationale for
their baptism. Since they have at no time committed sin, the answer is found in
the uncleanness of which Job 14.4 (LXX) speaks: ‘None is pure from uncleanness
(sorde), not even if his life on earth is but one day old.’ This text
(which was not unknown to Cyprian) (cf. Cyprian, Testimonies 3:54, where
with Ps 51.5 and 1 Jn 1.8 it proves that ‘No one is without uncleanness and
without sin’) was backed up by Psalm 51.5 (50.7, LXX): ‘In iniquities was I
conceived, and in sins did my mother give me birth.’ In fact, Origen’s
conception of original sin was hardly mainstream, although it remains
disputed whether it developed toward a more orthodox configuration (Cf. Kelly, Early
Christian Doctrines, pp. 180-82. A rather different account of Origin’s
thought is given by Williams, Fall and Original Sin, pp. 223-30). His
belief in the pre-cosmic fall of pre-existent souls required that the
sinfulness attested by Job and the Psalmist was the legacy, not of solidarity
with Adam’s sin, but of each soul’s previous transgression. In this
knowledge that all human beings were born into this world in impurity, the
apostles mandated the church to give baptism to infants also (Origen, Commentary
on Romans 5.9). (David F. Wright, “How Controversial Was the Development of
Infant Baptism in the Early Church?” Infant Baptism in Historical
Perspective: Collected Studies [Studies in Christian History and Thought;
Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2007], 31-32, emphasis in bold added)
Origen in Latin can be read, no
doubt unhistorically, as propounding an orthodox western doctrine of
original sin, citing as he does Job 14.4-5 (LXX) and Psalm 50(51.)7 (LXX), two
of Augustine’s favourite proof-texts. In fact, Origen is most probably
assuming the impurity of newborn pre-existing souls. (Wright, “George
Cassander and the Appeal to the Fathers in Sixteenth-Century Debates about
Infant Baptism,” in ibid., 189-90, emphasis in bold added)
