Wednesday, April 27, 2022

David F. Wright on Origen's Theology of Personal Pre-existence Informing His Understanding of the nature of "Original Sin"

  

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)