Friday, June 16, 2023

Origen teaching a form of the distinction between the material and formal reception of a Sacrament

  

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)