Book
5, Chapter 8:
8, Do you not know that all of us
who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, so that,
just as Christ rose from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too
might walk in newness of life.
(2) Observe carefully the order of
words and the line of thought. For he compares the death which is through Adam
with the life which is through Christ; and he says, “The gift is not like the trespass.”
And likewise after this he says that the law entered so sin might abound, but
while sin was abounding grace superabounded. By these words he solves the
apparent contradiction and says, “For how shall we who have died to sin go on
living in it? Now then, because he wants to show in these matters that it means
to be dead to sin, he says, [M1038] “Do you not know that all of us who have
been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death For we have been
buried with him through baptism into death,” teaching through these things that
if someone has first died to sin, he has necessarily been buried with Christ in
baptism. But if the person does not die to sin before hand, he cannot be
buried with Christ. For no one who is still alive is ever buried. But if one is
not buried with Christ, he is not validly baptized. (Origen, Commentary
on the Epistle to the Romans Books 1-5 [trans. Thomas P. Scheck; The
Fathers of the Church 103; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2001], 353-54)
Commenting
on the section in bold, Scheck wrote:
The un-sacramental stress of Origen’s
theology comes through clearly here. Without denying the efficacy of the
sacramental act, Origen emphasized that moral conversion had to take place before
baptism for any benefit to be derived from the rite. See 5.7.3, Hom in Lv
6.2; Hom in Lk 21; Hom in Ezek 6-10; and esp. Comm in Jn 6.17
(= FOT 80:215): “He is teaching that the benefit of baptism depends on the
choice of the one who is baptized. It is a benefit for the one who repents, but
it will result in more grievous judgment for the one who does to approach
baptism in this way. (Ibid., 354 n. 411)
Elsewhere,
in another footnote, we read that:
For [Origen] “dying to sin is
understood as an act of faith. No mention if made of the sacrament [of baptism].”
Whereas for Origen death to sin must take place before baptism, for the other
Fathers (Ephrem, Cyril of Jerusalem, Theodoret, Pelagius, Ambrosiaster,
Chrysostom), the death takes place at the same moment of baptism. (Ibid., 350
n. 376)
5.7.3,
referenced above reads:
(3) To make these matters clearer, let
us examine what it means to live to sin and to die to sin. Just as a person is
said to live to God who lives in accordance with the will of God, so also one
is said to live to sin who lives in accordance with the will of sin. This is
what the same Apostle makes known when he says, “Therefore do not let sin reign
in your mortal bodies obey its desires.” By this he is showing that to live to
sin means to obey sin’s desires. Now if to live to sin means to do the desires
of sin, then to die to sin must refer to not carrying out sin’s desires and not
obeying its will. The Apostle says, however, that sin has, so to speak, establishes
a throne and a seat of its dominion in our body. For that part of the [man’s]
substance is more familiar to it and [forms] a kind of friendly association with
the pleasure of the flesh. From this bond of friendship, while employing the opportunities
given to it by nature’s inducement, by means of a small detour it turns the
order of nature over the precipice of death. (Ibid., 349-50)
5.8.3
provides further evidence that Origen believed that water baptism was
regenerative:
(3) But concerning the meaning of baptism,
we have spoken to the best of our ability whatever was able to come or, rather,
whatever the Lord freely granted, when we were explaining the Gospel according
to John when it came to the passage where he says of Jesus, “He himself will
baptize you in the Holy Spirit”; and again where the Savior himself says, “Unless
someone should be born anew of water and Spirit, he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God.” In that passage we tried to reveal the force of that expression
more profoundly, in which it is said, “unless someone should be reborn anew.” For
what we Latin speakers use as “anew,” the Greeks says ανωθεν, which means both “anew” and “from above.” In
this passage, that whoever is baptized by Jesus is baptized in the Holy Spirit,
it is suitable to be understood not so much as “anew,” as “from above”; for we
say “anew” when the same things which have already happened are repeated. Here,
however, the same birth is not repeated or done a second time, but this earthly
one is laid aside and a new birth from above is received. For that reason we
would more accurately read the text in the Gospel as, “Unless someone has been
reborn from above, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” For this refers to
being baptized in the Holy Spirit. For this reason, that baptism is conformed
to be “from above,” not unfittingly are even the waters, which are above the
heavens and which praise the name of the Lord, linked to the Holy Sprit. And although
all of us may be baptized in those visible waters and in a visible anointing,
in accordance with the form handed down to the churches, nevertheless, the one
who has died to sin and is truly baptized into the death of Christ and is
buried with him through baptism into death, he is the one who is truly baptized
in the Holy Spirit and with the water from above. (Ibid., 354-55)
