Original Sin and
Baptism
To Didymus the fall of the first
parents in the sin of old (παλαια
αμαρτια), from which Jesus cleansed us in His baptism
in the Jordan (De Trin. 2,12). All the children of Adam have inherited
it by transmission (κατα διαδοχην) through the intercourse of their parents.
This is why Jesus, born of a Virgin, has not been stained with it (Contra
Man. 8).
Speaking of the effects of baptism, he
mentions both the negative and the positive aspect, the cleansing from original
sin and all its consequences as asl from personal guilt and the adoption as
children of God:
The Holy Spirit as God renovates us in
baptism, and in union with the Father and the Son, brings us back from a state
of deformity to our pristine beauty and so fills us with His grace that we can
no longer make room for anything that is unworthy of our love; He frees us from
sin and death and from the things of the earth; makes us spiritual men, sharers
in the divine glory, sons and heirs of God and of the Father. He conforms us to
the image of the Son of God, makes us co-heirs and His brothers, we who are to
be glorified and to reign with Him; He gives us heaven in exchange for earth,
and bestows paradise with a bounteous hand, and makes us more honorable than
the angels; and in the divine waters of the baptismal pool extinguishes the
inextinguishable fire of hell (De Trin. 2, 12).
For when we are immersed in the
baptismal pool, we are by the goodness of God and the Father and through the
grace of His Holy Spirit stripped of our sins as we lay aside the old man, are
regenerated and sealed by His by his own kingly power. But when we come up out
of the pool, we put on Christ our Saviour as an incorruptible garment, worthy
of the same honor as the Holy Spirit who regenerated us and marked us with His
seal. For as many of you, says Holy Scripture, as have been baptized in Christ
have put on Christ (Gal. 3, 27). Through the divine insufflation we had
received the image and likeness of God, which the Scripture speaks of, and
through sin we had lost it, but now we are found once more such as we were when
we were first made: sinless and masters of ourselves (De Trin. 2, 12).
Baptism is absolutely necessary for
salvation. Not even the perfection of a faultless life can make up for it: 'No
one not regenerated by the Holy Spirit of God and marked with the seal of His
sanctification has attained heavenly gifts, even through the perfection of a
faultless life in all the rest' (De Trin. 2, 12). The only exception to
the indispensability of the baptism of water is the baptism of blood, which is
also the work of the Holy Spirit: 'Those who suffered martyrdom before baptism,
having been washed in their own blood, were vivified by the Holy Spirit of God'
(ibid.). he sums up the effects of baptism on the soul as follows:
'thus, renovated in baptism, we enjoy the familiarity of God, in so far as the
powers of our nature permit, as someone has said: In so far as mortal man can
be likened to God' (ibid.). (Johannes Quasten, Patrology, 4 vols.
[Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, Inc., 1992], 3:97-98)
