4 Mankind in Adam’s Loins

The second group includes the Fathers who – it would seem – have little in common. I think, however, that Augustine must have read Origen, either in Rufin’s translation or in the original, and from him borrowed the idea of the presence of mankind in Adam’s loins based on the fragment of Hebrews 7:9-10: And as I may so say, Levi also, who receives tithes, paid tithes in Abraham. For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedec met him. What is interesting, many Fathers knew and commented that verse though none of them but Origen and Augustine used the phrase “in the loins” to describe the relation of mankind to Adam. That is why, although for both of them this is only one of the ways to explain the first fall, I grouped those Fathers together.

Gnostics' claiming that the inequality had been given by God. As Origen explains in The Principles, in the beginning all intellectual natures were created equal and occupied themselves with contemplating God. That some of them became angels, others became demons, and still others -human beings is a consequence of their free choice.
We conclude, then, that the position of every created being is a result of his own work and his own motives, and that the powers above mentioned, which appear as holding sway or exercising authority or dominion over others, have gained this superiority and eminence over those whom they are said to govern or on whom they exercise their authority, not by some privilege of creation but as the reward of merit. 182 182 Some of the minds deserved to be thrown down and clad in heavy cold flesh.183 This is what people are. Therefore, the cause of the present order of the world is the fall of rational beings which took place because they had been from the beginning and still are gifted with free will.
This also is laid down in the Church's teaching, that every rational soul is possessed of free will and choice; and also, that it is engaged in a struggle against the devil and his angels and the opposing powers; for these strive to weigh the soul down with sins, whereas we, if we lead a wise and upright life, endeavour to free ourselves from such a burden. There follows from this the conviction that we are not subject to necessity, so as to be compelled by every means, even against our will, to do either good or evil. For if we are possessed of free will, some spiritual powers may very likely be able to urge us on to sin and others to assist us to salvation; we are not, however, compelled by necessity to act either rightly or wrongly, as is thought to be the case by those who say that human events are due to the course and motion of the stars, not only those events which fall outside the sphere of our freedom of will but even those that lie within our own power. 184 A question obviously arises: What role in the so conceived fall was played by the first man and whether at all his guilt was more important that the individual sin of each mind? An interesting interpretation of the unity of mankind in the idea of the fall in pre-existence was given by N.P. Williams. However, it is not the unity in Adam which is the primary object of my research, but as Williams correctly notes also the hypothesis of the fall of minds assumes a unity of the human race. In this concept the unity is not the cause of the participation of all in the fall but its effect: the unity is formed by those who share the same sinful fate. 185 Further on I shall indicate places where Origen spoke of a special role Adam played at times as a symbol of the humanity, and at other times as the ancestor from whom all people descend. Only afterwards I shall be able to deal with the problem of congruity or contradiction of those concepts with the idea of the fall in pre-existence.

Humanity as the Lost Sheep
Although in the hypothesis of the fall of minds in pre-existence each mind makes a choice and then takes a suitable position, though sometimes Origen attributes a communal dimension to the fall of the humanity. In his Homilies on Genesis Origen refers to the parable of the lost sheep in which he sees mankind understood as a unity. Three hundred is three one hundreds. Now the number one hundred is shown to be full and perfect in everything and to contain the mystery of the whole rational creation, as we read in the Gospels where it says that a certain man having a hundred sheep, when he lost one of them, left the ninety-nine in the mountains and descended to seek that one which he had lost and when it was found he carried it back on his shoulders and placed it with those ninety-nine which had not been lost (Lk 15:4-5; Mt 18:12-13). This hundred, therefore, is the number of the whole rational creation, since it does not subsist from itself but has descended from the Trinity and has received the length of its life, that is the grace of immortality, from the Father through the Son and the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is stated as tripled in as much as it is this which is increased to perfection by the grace of the Trinity and which, by knowledge of the Trinity, may restore to the three hundred the one fallen by ignorance from the one hundred. 186 As noted by A. Orbe, through this parable Origen presents his favourite idea: the primeval equality of rational beings before they were hierarchized as a result of the sin. In the beginning, perfect equality prevailed symbolized by the number 100. While angels remained in the heights (mountains), man fell into matter.187 The unity of mankind that Origen speaks about on this occasion has, however, a totally different dimension than the unity from the teachings of Irenaeus, Methodius and Gregory of Nyssa. This is a mystical unity οἱ γὰρ πάντες ἓν σῶμά ἐσμεν καὶ ἓν πρόβατον· ὁ μέν τίς ἐστι πούς, ὁ δὲ κεφαλή, ὁ δὲ ἄλλο τι, ὁ δὲ ποιμὴν ἐλθὼν συνήγαγεν ὀστέον πρὸς ὀστέον καὶ ἁρμονίαν πρὸς ἁρμονίαν καὶ ἑνώσας ἀνέλαβεν ἐπὶ τὴν χώραν αὐτοῦ. ἡ δὲ ἑνότης γίνεται δι' ἀγάπης καὶ ἀληθείας καὶ προαιρέσεως ἀγαθῆς. τῷ ἰδίῳ μὲν οὖν λόγῳ πάντας ἥνωσεν.
since we are all one body and one sheep. One man is a foot, another is the head, still another a different part of the body, and the Shepherd when he came gather bone to bone and ligament to ligament (Ezk 37:7-8), and having gathered all in one whole took it to His country. Unity grows out of love, truth and good intention, so He united all with His word. 188 188 Here mankind is not a real ontic unity but a spiritrual unity which we attain thanks to the communion with Christ.

Adam as a Symbol of Mankind
Origen's numerous hypotheses include also such statements in which when he talks about the first man or the first fall he assumes that Adam symbolizes or represents entire mankind. In the Commentary on the Gospel of John, pondering the problem whether God created man as a perfect creature he also talks about the loss of perfection and coming of the Saviour. Origen does not specify whether the need for the Saviour is due to universal sinfulness arising from individual sins or the fall of Adam in some way contaminated all of the humanity, but the Saviour certainly did not come for Adam only. Thus, it may be recognized that the first perfect creature symbolizes here all of the perfect humanity. ῾Ηγοῦμαι δὴ ἐν τοῖς τόποις βαθύτερόν τι ἐναποκεῖσθαι μυστήριον· τάχα γὰρ οὐ πάντη ἀτελὲς τὸ λογικὸν ἦν ἅμα τῷ τεθεῖσθαι ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ. Πῶς γὰρ ἂν τὸ πάντη ἀτελὲς ἐτίθετο ὁ θεὸς ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ ἐργάζεσθαι αὐτὸν καὶ φυλάσσειν; ὁ γὰρ δυνάμενος ἐργάζεσθαι "ξύλον ζωῆς" καὶ πάντα δὲ ἃ ἐφύτευσεν ὁ θεὸς καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα ἐξανέτειλεν, οὐκ ἂν εὐλόγως λέγοιτο ἀτελής. Μήποτε οὖν τέλειος ὤν πως ἀτελὴς διὰ τὴν παρακοὴν γέγονεν καὶ ἐδεήθη τοῦ τελειώσοντος αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τῆς ἀτελείας, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἐπέμφθη ὁ σωτήρ.
I think indeed some deeper mystery is stored up in these passages. For perhaps the rational creature was not altogether imperfect at the time he was placed in paradise. For how would God have placed what was altogether imperfect in paradise to work and guard it? For he who is capable of tending the tree of life and everything that God planted and caused to spring up afterwards, would not reasonably be called imperfect. Perhaps, then, although he was perfect, he became imperfect in some way because of his transgression, and was in need of one to perfect him from his imperfection. And perhaps the Savior was sent for the following reasons. 189
When he asserts that the narrative of Moses represents God most impiously, making Him into a weakling right from the beginnings and incapable of persuading even one man whom He had formed to this also we will reply that his remark is much the same as if one were to object to the existence of evil because God has been unable to prevent even one man from committing sin in order that just one individual might be found who has had no experience of evil from the beginning. Just as in this matter those who are concerned to defend the doctrine of providence state their case at great length and with arguments of considerable cogency, so also the story of Adam and his sin will be interpreted philosophically by those who know that Adam means anthropos (man) in the Greek language, and that in what appears to be concerned with Adam Moses is speaking of the nature of man. For, as the Bible says, in Adam all die (1Cor 15:22), and they were condemned in the likeness of Adam's transgression (Rom 5:14). Here the divine Word says this not so much about an individual as of the whole race. Moreover, in the sequence of sayings which seem to refer to one individual, the curse of Adam is shared by all men. There is also no woman to whom the curses pronounced against Eve do not apply. And the statement that the man who was cast out of the garden with the woman was clothed with coats of skins, which God made for those who had sinned on account of the transgression of mankind, has a certain secret and mysterious meaning superior to the Platonic doctrine of the descent of the soul which loses its wings and is carried hither until it finds some firm resting-place (Plato, Phaedrus 25, 246 BC). 191 191 Basing on the etymology Adam=man Origen relates what the Scripture says about our ancestor to the entire humankind. Adam symbolizes and represents the whole of mankind. However, Manlio Simonetti notes that Origen does not explain how does this happen -whether it is because all people descend from Adam or for any other reason.192 This concept does not tie in with the idea of the fall in pre-existence; however, I think, it may be accepted that in the above statements Origen recognizes Adam as a prototype193 or symbol of the humanity, although Simonetti believes that seeing Adam as a symbol of all fallen souls goes too far.194

We Were in Adam's Loins
There is a group of texts in which Origen does not treat Adam as a type or symbol of humanity but speaks about a much deeper unity. The most explicit statement Origen made on this subject is a fragment of the Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans where he claims that all people were in the loins of Adam.
He fails to see that Moses, who is far earlier even than the Greek alphabet, taught that God promised a pure earth, which was good and large, flowing with milk and honey, to those who lived in accordance with His law. And the good land was not, as some think, the earthly land of Judaea, which indeed lies in the earth which was cursed from the beginning by the works of Adam's transgression. For the saying, Cursed is the earth by thy works; in grief shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life (Gen 3:17), refers to the entire earth, of which every man who has died in Adam eats in grief, that is in troubles; and it is so that he eats all the days of his life. And because it is cursed, all the earth will bring forth thorns and thistles all the days of the life of the man who, in Adam, was cast out of paradise; and every man eats his bread by the sweat of his brow until he returns to the earth from which he was taken. 196

196
In the Homilies on Ezekiel Origen explicitly speaks about our sin and our transgression. We could, of course, think that he means the sins of concrete people, but the subsequent reference to mortality which is a consequence of Adam's sin, makes us see the phrases our sin and our transgression as alluding to the event in paradise. . This result is not the fault of the one who calls us to salvation: the one who summons us to divinity and to the adoption of heavenly nature is not himself the cause of death. Rather, the statement, But you will die like human beings, and like one of the rulers you will fall (Ps 81:7), rests on our wickedness and our sin. There were many rulers, and one of them fell, with reference to whom it is also written in Genesis, Behold! Adam has become -not like us, but -like one of us (Gen 3:22 The unity we formed in Adam was a harbinger of our unity in Christ. What is more, already our unity in Adam was possible only thanks to Christ: Καὶ ἐφαρμοστέον γε διὰ τὸ ἀκρογωνιαῖον εἶναι λίθον τὸν Χριστὸν τῷ ἡνωμένῳ παντὶ σώματι τῶν σῳζομένων τὸ παράδειγμα τὸ πάντα γὰρ καὶ ἐν πᾶσι Χριστὸς ὁ μονογενής, ὡς μὲν ἀρχὴ ἐν ᾧ ἀνείληφεν ἀνθρώπῳ, ὡς δὲ τέλος ἐν τῷ τελευταίῳ τῶν ἁγίων δηλονότι τυγχάνων καὶ ἐν τοῖς μεταξύ, ἢ ὡς μὲν ἀρχὴ ἐν ᾿Αδάμ, ὡς δὲ τέλος ἐν τῇ ἐπιδημίᾳ, κατὰ τὸ εἰρημένον· "῾Ο ἔσχατος ᾿Αδὰμ εἰς πνεῦμα ζωοποιοῦν". Πλὴν τοῦτο τὸ ῥητὸν ἐφαρμόσει καὶ τῇ ἀποδόσει τοῦ "πρῶτος καὶ ἔσχατος". And because the Christ is the chief cornerstone we must indeed adapt the illustration to the whole united body of the saved, for Christ the only begotten is also all in all, for example, he is the beginning in the man which he assumed, but the end in the last of the saintsbeing, of course, also in those in between-, or, he is the beginning in Adam, but the end in his sojourn among us, according to the saying, The last Adam became a life-giving spirit (1Cor 15:45). But this saying will apply also to the interpretation of first and last. 198

Stain of Birth
Notwithstanding the concept of the fall in pre-existence the effect of which is the heavy and cold body that we have in this life Origen speaks about the stain of sin -sordes peccati with which all come to this world. Tennant noted that he changed his views concerning original sin when he encountered the practice of the baptism of children in Caesarea.199 Even when we do not accept that concept of Origen's changing his views, we might concur that the encounter with the customs of the Church in Caesarea had an impact on the occurrence of new ideas in his writings. The subject of children's baptism is completely non-existent in The Principles, though in later works it occurs frequently, beside other hypotheses, of course, also those that we have seen earlier.
Origen writes the following on the pollution experienced by man by the very fact of being born: showing that every soul which is born in flesh is polluted by the filth of iniquity and sin; and for this reason we can say what we already have recalled above, No one is pure from uncleanness even it his life is only one day long (Jb 14:4-5). To these things can be added the reason why it is required, since the baptism of the Church is given for the forgiveness of sins, that, according to the observance of the Church, that baptism also be given to infants; since, certainly, if there were nothing in infants that ought to pertain to forgiveness and indulgence, then the grace of baptism would appear superfluous. 200 200 Sordes peccati are sometimes interpreted in the light of the theory of guilt in preexistence. In such perspective the very contact with matter injures the soul and its entering the body stains it. Therefore, baptism cleanses children of the stain which is formed by the combination of soul and body.201 Baptism of children is necessary because our body is the body of sin and everyone who is born comes to this world stained with sin by the very fact that the soul enters the body. Gross  The passage from the Scripture read today encourages me to treat it again. Little children are baptized for the remission of sins. Whose sins are they? When did they sin? Or how can this explanation of the baptismal washing be maintained in the case of small children, except according to the interpretation we spoke of a little earlier? No man is clean of stain, not even if his life upon the earth had lasted but a single day (Jb 14:4). Through the mistery of baptism, the stains of birth are put aside. For this reason, even small children are baptized. For, unless a man be born again of water and spirit, he will not be able to enter into the kingdom of heaven (Jn 3:5). 203 203 L. Scheffczyk claims that when Origen speaks about washing sordes peccati in the baptism of children he does not mean sin as such but the sinful weakness all people have because of carnality.204 Such an interpretation does not force-tie two seemingly separate hypotheses. It is also symptomatic that talking about washing the stain of birth Origen refers to the Old Testament cleansing. Everyone who enters this world is said to be made with a certain contamination. This is also why Scripture says, No one is clean from filth even if his life were only one day (Jb 14:4). Therefore, from the fact that he is placed in the womb of his mother and that he takes the material of the body from the origin of the paternal seed, he can himself be called contaminated in his father and mother (Lev 21:11). Or do you not know that when a male child is forty days old, he is offered at the altar that he may be purified there as if he were polluted in this conception either by the paternal seed or the uterus of the mother? Therefore, every man was polluted in his father and mother, but only Jesus my Lord came pure into the world in this birth and was not polluted in his mother. For he entered an uncontaminated body. 205 205 A similar reasoning is found in Contra Celsum: οἱ δὲ προφῆται, αἰνιττόμενοι ὅ τι περὶ τῶν γενέσεως πραγμάτων σοφόν, θυσίαν περὶ ἁμαρτίας λέγουσιν ἀναφέρεσθαι καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄρτι γεγενημένων ὡς οὐ καθαρῶν ἀπὸ ἁμαρτίας. Φασὶ δὲ καὶ τό· "᾿Εν ἀνομίαις συνελήφθην, καὶ ἐν ἁμαρτίαις ἐκίσσησέ με ἡ μήτηρ μου." ᾿Αλλὰ καὶ ἀποφαίνονται ὅτι "᾿Απηλλοτριώθησαν οἱ ἁμαρτωλοὶ ἀπὸ μήτρας", παραδόξως λέγοντες καὶ τό· "᾿Επλανήθησαν ἀπὸ γαστρός, ἐλάλησαν ψευδῆ." But the prophets, giving obscure expression to some wise doctrine on the subject of becoming, say that a sacrifice for sin is to be offered even for new-born babes because they are not pure from sin. They also say I was conceived in iniquity and in sins my mother bore me (Ps 50:7). Moreover, they declare that sinners have been estranged from the womb, and utter the startling saying, They were in error from the womb, they spoke lies (Ps 57:4 Therefore our body is the body of sin, for it is not written that Adam knew his wife Eve and became the father of Cain until after the sin. After all, even in the law it is commanded that sacrifice be offered for the child who was born: a pair of turtle doves or two young doves; one of which was offered for sin and the other as a burnt offering (Lev 12:8). For which sin is this one dove offered? Was a newly born child able to sin? And yet it has a sin for which sacrifices are commanded to be offered, and from which it is denied that anyone is pure, even if his life should be one day long. It has to be believed, therefore, that concerning this David also said what we recorded above, in sins my mother conceived me (Ps 50:7). For according to the historical narrative no sin of his mother is declared. It is on this account as well that the Church has received the tradition from the Apostles to give baptism even to little children. For they to whom the secrets of the divine mysteries were committed were aware that in everyone was sin's innate defilement, which needed to be washed away through water and the Spirit. Because of this defilement as well, the body itself is called the body of sin; it is not because of sins the soul committed when it was in another body, as they who introduce the doctrine of μετενσωμάτωσις imagine. But because the soul was fashioned into the body of sin, and the body of death and lowliness. 207

207
In conclusion, one may repeat after Tennant that Origen nowhere precisely defines what he means by sordes peccati with which man is born, but for sure distinguishes it from sin as such (peccatum).208

Are There People Without Sin?
Origen very explicitly states the universality of sin, although the reason for this universality may be heredity of sin or bad example. Origen himself gives both reasons without juxtaposing them and without excluding any of them. But the fact that [Paul] has made particular mention of certain ones in whom death exercised dominion when he says, Death exercised dominion in those who sinned in the likeness of Adam's transgression (Rom 5:14), does not seem to me to be said without reference to a certain mystery. Perhaps there were some, up to that time when men were living under law as under a pedagogue, who performed something similar to what Adam is said to have performed in Paradise, to touch the tree of knowledge of good and evil and to be ashamed of his own nakedness and to fall away from the dwelling in Paradise. Or perhaps it seems this ought to be interpreted in a simpler way and the likeness of Adam's transgression is to be received without any further discussion. This would mean that everyone who is born from Adam, the transgressor, seems to be indicated and retain in themselves the likeness of his transgression, taken not only by descent from him but also by instruction. For all who are born in this world are not only raised by their parents but instructed as well; and not only are they sins' children but also sins' pupils. But when a person matures and the freedom of doing what one likes comes around, a poison either goes the way of his lathers, as is written of several kings -or he advances along the road of his Lord God. 209

209
In the text that has been just quoted one sees a considerable tension between the conviction of universality of sin and the equally profound belief in the existence of intact free will in each human being. Defending free will Origen does not forget, however, about Adam's transgression which brought about for all a condemning sentence, all the more so that the participation of all in Adam's transgression is paralleled by the participation of all in the redemption by Christ.
When judgment comes from Adam's single act of transgressing the result is that condemnation came to all men. In contrast, however, justification was given to all through Christ from many transgressions, in which the whole human race was being held so that, just as death had exercised its dominion in transgressions through the one, so also through the obedience of the one, life would reign through righteousness. 210 210 For the above reason Origen does not stop at the statement that Adam's sin brought about death for all people but he emphasizes that the gift of Christ which embraces all was preceded by the condemnation of all for Adam's transgression.
Iliud tamen obseruandum est quod sicut dixit: In omnes homines in iustificationem uitae; non ita dixit et: In omnes homines in condemnationem mortis, sed tantummodo in condemnationem, quo scilicet in omnibus probet multo abundantius donum esse quam delictum. Quomodo sane uel quae condemnatio in omnes homines uenerit uidendum est. Et sufficere forsitan potest secundum simplicem expositionem ut dicamus condemnationem esse delicti communem hanc mortem, quae omnibus uenit et ueniet etiam si iusti uideantur. Quod si forte aliquis obiciat de Enoc et Helia qui translati sunt ne uiderent mortem, hoc modo excusabitur quod non continuo falsa uidebuntur ea quae de omnibus dicuntur si aliqua dispensatio Dei in uno uel duobus hominibus tacta est. Sed et illud quis competenter ut arbitror proferet in loco quia cum deliquisset Adam scriptum est quod eiecit eum Dominus Deus de paradiso et constituit eum in terra hac contra paradisum deliciarum, et haec fuit delicti eius condemnatio quae in omnes homines sine dubio peruenit. Omnes enim in loco hoc humiliationis et in conualle fletus effecti sunt; siue quod in lumbis Adae fuerunt omnes qui ex eo nascuntur et cum ipso pariter eiecti sunt, siue alio qualibet Nevertheless it should be noted that he has not said the condemnation of death came unto all men like he said the justification of life comes unto all men (Rom 5:18). On the contrary, he said merely condemnation in order, obviously, to demonstrate how much more abundant the gift to all is than the transgression. How, or rather which, condemnation would come to all men must of course be seen. Perhaps it can suffice us according to the simple interpretation to say that the condemnation of transgression is that common death which comes to all and will come to all, even if they seem righteous. But if perhaps anyone would object to this over the cases of Enoch and Elijah, who were translated so as to not see death this will be disposed of in the following manner: things that are said about all men shall not immediately be deemed false if any dispensation of God has been made in the case of one or two men. But someone could reasonably, as I judge, suggest in this place, that when Adam had transgressed it is written that the Lord God expelled him from paradise and established him in that land opposite to the paradise of delights. And this was the condemnation for his transgression which doubtless spread to all men. For everyone was fashioned in that place of humiliation and in the valley of tears; whether because all who are born from him were in Adam's loins and were equally expelled with him or, in some other inexplicable fashion known only to God, each person seems to be driven out of paradise and to have received condemnation. 211

211
In the latter text Origen betrays his favourite method of professing theology: he gives two seemingly contradictory explanations without resolving which of them he considers to be right. He says that the universality of sin may originate from the presence of all in the loins of Adam or may be an effect of the example given by Adam and which was voluntarily followed by everyone. The fact that he leaves the problem open in this way has -in my opinion -a very important goal. It is to focus our attention not on the question how, but on the statement of the universality of sin which Origen treats as an incontestable fact.

Man's Freedom and Universality of Sin
It seems obvious to us that the heredity of sinfulness or sin must be somehow contrary to the concept of free will. Since if man is to decide voluntarily about his fate he cannot be in any way determined by nature and all the more so by the deeds of his ancestor. However, for Origen those two assumptions are not contradictory. In the same text he speaks about "the soul which being free by means of sin leads itself to slavery", and several sentence further he mentions the things it "lost through Adam". Quod ergo ait: Vnius delicto mors regnauit per unum ostendit quia per delictum morti regnum datur nec potest regnare in aliquo nisi ius regni accipiat ex delicto. Per quod indicari uidetur quod cum libera a Deo creata sit anima ipsa se in seruitutem redigat per delictum et uelut chirografa immortalitatis suae quae a creatore suo acceperat morti tradat. Anima enim quae peccat ipsa morietur. Ipsa denique anima clamat per prophetam dicens: In puluerem mortis deduxisti me. Quod utique ei nisi ex delicto non potuisset accidere; unde euidenter apparet eam per delictum chirografa sui conscripsisse cum morte ut libertate immortalitatis amissa iugum peccati et Well then, what he says, By the transgression of the one, death exercised dominion through the one (Rom 5:17), shows that dominion is granted to death through transgression; it cannot exercise dominion in anyone unless it receives the right to rule from transgression. What seems to be made known in this is that since a soul created by God is itself free, it leads itself into slavery by means of transgression and hands over to death, so to speak, the IOU of its own immortality which it had received from its own Creator. For the soul that sins will die (Ezk 18:4 not have come to pass to the person except as a result of transgression. Therefore it seems plain that the soul had composed its own IOU with death by means of transgression, so that, having lost the freedom of immortality, it took up the yoke of sin and the dominion of death. Because the Apostle wanted to show how much more a soul has received through Christ than it had lost through Adam, he repeats these expressions to say, much more surely, the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness, and they shall reign through the one, Jesus Christ (Rom 5:17), all of which most certainly declare how much more abundant the gifts are than the losses. 212 212 It is true that Origen nowhere explains how free will and the universality of sin can exist simultaneously. He only stresses that this is how our present reality looks like as if the question of coexistence of those two facts was of lesser interest to him whatsoever, or perhaps he himself did not know how to reconcile those two contradictions. I have an impression that the divergent concepts in the writings of Origen have their source in his deep conviction, first, of the free will of rational beings and, secondly, the universal sinfulness of people. The idea of the fall of minds in pre-existence is to defend free will against suspicions of any determinism, while the concept of mankind in the loins of Adam is to explain the cause of the universality of sin.
Researchers of Origen's teaching tried different ways to reconcile or connect those two threads in his writings. H. Crouzel's theory of quest according to which Origen very frequently proposed several interpretation of the same fragment, oftentimes mutually exclusive, and left the freedom of choice to the reader, is the most popular one.213 Crouzel underlines that Origen did not want to speak about theology in a dogmatic way. Instead, he proposed something similar to exercises, so in order to extract any "system" from his teachings over one half of what Origen says should be thrown away. 214 Joseph P. Laporte explains that at present it is believed that the picture of the pre-existence of the souls and "cooling" of the nous into psyche is one of many that Origen used to describe the fall and regeneration of man.215 He underlines that Origen was not a taxonomist and had no problem with seeing the source of our sinfulness concurrently in human condition as such (i.e. the body) and in the fall of Adam.216 Although in the chapter on original sin in Origen Laporte speaks about the fall in preexistence, he does not try to inscribe it in any way into the history of mankind which begins with Adam. What is interesting is that, he sees in the teaching of Origen yet another explanation of the sources of sin, namely the natural development of man occurring in several stages from childhood to old age -in the concept the focus is on the example of others and education, also as a way of passing of sin.217 Giulia Sfameni Gasparo and Paola Pisi distinguish two falls: one in pre-existence and the other in Adam, and they claim that the fall of Adam is a metaphor for the fall of intelligent creatures in pre-existence. They believe that Adam has two meanings: he symbolizes creatures that fell in pre-existence and also a concrete person, the first parent with whom the long history of mankind begins.218 Mariusz Szram admits that this concept is hard to be accepted as an axiom because one might as well recognize that in his exegetic and homiletic works Origen withdrew from the hypothesis of the fall in pre-existence and leaned towards the traditional understanding of Adam's sin. In any case, there is no doubt that as described in the Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans the first sin was a transgression of the first man and not only of the preexisting rational creature.219 G. Teitchtweiter links the fall of pre-existing souls with Adam differently. He believes that Adam is only one of the fallen people or pre-existing minds, and whoever falls -like Adam -does it of his own free will.220 According to another theory by Gross which tries to combine the concept of free will with the universality of sin Origen was to speak about Adam's transgression which opened the entry into the world for sin and its consequences, but the original sin was to be only an example or the model cause for future sins, while death was to be the punishment for personal sins. 221 Scheffczyk puts the idea of free will to the forefront and explains that although in the Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans 5, 1 undoubtedly reiterates Irenaeus' image of including mankind in Adam and solidarity with him, one must not overlook the fact that Origen does not take the traditional position: he does not speak about passing of sin onto the entire human race but about passing of death. He reads this statements in the light of Origen's chief idea, i.e. that sin comes from man's free will. For Origen sin or punishment which are not personally culpable are impossible. is why Scheffczyk believes he so often underlines the fact that no man is free from personal sin even if he were to live only for one day. 222 Scheffczyk also puts forth a hypothesis that certain concepts were addressed to the ignorant and others to the initiated. He asks whether it is possible, however, that such a "taxonomist" approved of the side-by-side existence of two contradictory ideas, namely the hypothesis of pre-existence and the hypotheses of all being in the loins of Adam. Therefore, he suggests that Origen recognized pre-existence as a hypothesis, while the historical story of the original condition of man as a prevailing version. He claims that although Origen gave simple explanations or an alternative to common people, he himself believed in the spiritual explanation. 223 Szram also underlines the role of personal sins. Although he sees Origen's statements that all people partake in the consequences of Adam's sin, namely mortality and the stain of sin passed by way of fleshly propagation, he does not accept the declarations of the solidarity of all in sin with Adam and inheriting his guilt. He puts to the forefront those texts in which Origen speaks about voluntary personal sins of each man. 224 Joseph Turmel tries to explain the universality of sin basing on the idea of the fall of minds in pre-existence and claims that the original sin Origen believes in is an ensemble of falls that occurred to our souls in previous life. 225 Pier Franco Beatrice provides the following arguments in favour of the statement that the traditional teaching on sin is found in Origen's texts: first, Origen accepts baptism of children; second, he would not talk about it, at least not in homilies, where he was not to introduce any novel concepts. Nevertheless, it is true that in the dogmatic writings he departs from the schemes used in the homilies to defend human freedom against gnostic heresy in a more philosophical manner.226 Further on, Beatrice introduces a theory that the concept of free will was a result of the fact that Origen was saturated with the Greek culture but accepted the truth of the original sin when he was presbyter closely tied with the community of the faithful and daily experience of believers. 227 Gaudel claims that Origen had his elaborated teaching and hypotheses. Unlike Irenaeus, Origen nowhere claims that all people transgressed in Adam. He claims that everyone sinned separately. Also in order to explain death he writes about individual sins.228 According to him beside this axiom Origen presents also hypotheses: original sin occurred in the spiritual world; sin consisted in merging souls with bodies; we were all in Adam's loins. That latter hypotheses is an anticipations of Augustine's theory.229 Further on in his analysis Gaudel underlines that Origen's teaching contains elements that are characteristic of Paul's teaching and the universal conviction of the Church, that is the belief of the original stain (une souillure originelle) and the need of baptism to remove it. To explore the dogma Origen presents hypotheses which under the influence of Plato and Plotinus depart from the tradition and combine the conviction of the descent of souls into bodies with the Christian idea of the solidarity of all in Adam.230 Thus, Gaudel's thesis is similar to that of Beatrice's -they both emphasize the tension between personal conviction of Origen and his faith resulting from participation in the community of the Church.
Byard Bennet sees two ideas in Origen's concept that the hereditary stain affects material bodies begotten by souls which descended toward the earth. The first one links the history of the present world with the events in the previous one; the other -historical -tells about a series of events in the earthly reality in which we live. They differ as regards acknowledgment of Adam's identity and importance, whereas they are in agreement when it comes to the understanding of Adam's first sin as an event that took place at the time preceding the present life. The first idea considers Adam to be a symbol of all those who were separated from good and deserved to be born in matter; the other one treats Adam as the first man in the earthly reality. As a result of Adam's transgression his body was subject to decay and death, while the soul surrendered to irrational passions. Since Adam started to reproduce only after the sin, the bodies of his descendants are similar to his.231 Let us also remember the theories I have already mentioned which claim that the source of incongruities in Origen writings was his change of views.232 F.R. Tennant underlines that the theory of the fall in pre-existence excludes that sinfulness in any way derives from Adam. However, this is not all that Origen teaches on sin. Other theories, contradictory to this one, appear in his later works. With a view to the attempt to remove those contradictions Tennant calls for explaining rather then removing them.233 He himself believes that Origen changed his views and teaching on Adam when he encountered the practice of the baptism of children in Caesarea.234 N.P. Williams offers a similar interpretation of Origen's teaching. He believes that Origen's writings may be divided into two groups: those written in the Alexandrian period and those written in the Caesarean period, and that chronological division corresponds with the significant differences in the writings themselves.235 In the initial Alexandrian period Origen put forward a hypothesis of the fall in pre-existence; later on, after he encountered the practice of the baptism of children, he wrote about the stain of birth in connection with what happened in paradise and Adam's transgression, ultimately to combine both theories (in Contra Celsum) talking about Adam as man in the general sense.236 C.P. Bammel claims that a change of position between writing the Commentary on Genesis and The Principles and later works must not be excluded, although the return to the exegesis of the description of the creation of the world and the story of Adam from the Commentary on Genesis in Contra Celsum from 248-249 renders any significant change improbable.237 Bammel notes that there may be more than one underlying cause for the human condition. Human soul may enter life laden with its own sin and here encounter the condition which is an effect of Adam's sin. Nonetheless, it is important than in none of the preserved writings Origen does not invoke such a scheme. His aim was not to systematise or put a corset on the biblical message, but give justice to the diversity of biblical communications on Adam, human nature and the fall.238 One may also repeat after Scheffczyk that everyone is born with the propensity to sin, but sin as such is a decision of an individual man.239 It does not seem sufficiently precise, however. Origen states for sure that all people are sinful, all need to be baptised and redeemed by Christ. How this stain of sin occurred: does mankind constitute a unity or everyone commits sin oneself remains an open issue to him. He also states with all certainty that man was endowed with free will from the beginning and retained it even after sin. Those two facts -free will and universality of sin -are for him indisputable and he focuses on showing their co-existence. Explaining them seems of secondary importance to him.

Augustine of Hippo
Despite significant changes in Augustine's teaching on original sin as a result of the Pelagian controversy,240 a conviction of the unity of mankind in Adam is present in all of his writings from the very beginning, initially only as a hypothesis,241 but then as a significant and indisputable part of his teaching on original sin. When we go deeper into this issue it turns out that Augustine's teaching on passing of original sin is no so unequivocal and obvious as it would seem. And this is not only my intuition; it has been also articulated by the author of one of the largest monographs on the history of the teaching on original sin, Leo Scheffczyk.242 It seems to me that as in the case of Origen we deal here with different hypotheses rather that a definitive solution of the problem. However, all of those concepts I am going to present below are based on Augustine's deep conviction that all people were somehow united with Adam at the time of sin. This conviction is based on the belief in real redemption of all thanks to communion with Christ. The fundamental argument of Augustine consists in the confession of the universality of redemption. The entire New Testament teaches us that Christ came to save all people without exception. Therefore, it should be assumed that all people are in a fundamental situation of sin. Our communion with Christ is real, ontic, not only legal or moral. Is the solidarity in Adam the same? Adam was in us, and we were in him -in what sense? Henri Rondet believes that according to Augustine our bodies come from Adam by way of procreation. Corporal procreation is the anti-type of spiritual revival in baptism and communion with Christ. That the unity with the head (le chef) of the humankind assumes solidarity of souls, of people. The words: In Adam eramus omnes stipulate real solidarity of all people with the first man.243 The statement that the unity with Adam is based only on carnal descent from Adam is -as I will shortly demonstrate -an oversimplification of Augustine's teaching, nevertheless the universality of redemption is really the basis of his teaching on original sin.244 Having analysed different Augustine's texts we may draw one of the following conclusions: either Augustine put forward different hypotheses as Origen did, or his views were transformed in the course of a polemic, first of all with Pelagians. Having in mind recurrence of certain ideas at various moments of Augustine's life 240 However, not all agree with the statement that Augustine underwent such a change. B. Leeming puts this as follows: Augustine changed his views around 397, though not under the influence of the polemic with Pelagians but semi-Pelagian, and not on original sin or massa damnata, but on initium fidei, cf. Augustine, Ambrosiaster and massa perditionis, "Gregorianum" 11 (1930), 83. I would personally opt for the former. Several different concepts may be found in his works virtually side by side. Williams divides Augustine's teaching on passing of sin into two main currents: original sin understood as vitium is passed through biological procreation (the sexual act constitutes a nexus, through which the heritage of passion is passed from the parent to the child), while passing of sin understood as reatus from Adam onto his descendants is explained according to the theory of seminal identity.245 Gross enumerates the following views of the problem: sometimes Augustine sees Adam's sin as the common sin of entire mankind because we were all in Adam when he transgressed, other times as the sin of nature because all of human nature sinned in Adam, or the original transgression passed through propagation, that is original sin proper (eigentliche Erbsünde).246 In my opinion, this division should be expanded and made more precise. Augustine presents several difficult theories that are hard to be reconciled with one another, which are aimed at explaining how all of mankind participated in Adam's sin. The first one consists in the recognition of Adam as a representative of the humanity in the sense that he was somehow all of mankind. The second is the recognition of Adam's sin as the sin of nature -in line with that concept everyone who partakes in nature shares the sin. The third is the idea of massa paccati or massa damnata; I think this is either continuation of or intuition convergent with Irenaeus' vision of plasmatio Adae. The fourth theory of seminal participation is commonly mistaken for the concept of hereditary sin. Let us have a closer look at those theories one by one.

Adam Means the Human Race
Augustine refers to the solidarity of mankind with Adam in order to explain the universality of sin thanks to the idea of quasi cooperation of all in the first fall. However, it would be a grave mistake to consider this solidarity as a solely moral one.247 Already the first explanation of the participation of mankind in Adam's transgression shows a profound, virtually ontic sense of that solidarity. Augustine uses several types of statements here. Sometimes he claims that every man is Adam suggesting that Adam is a symbol or a representative of the entire mankind: Expertus ergo malum Adam: omnis autem homo Adam; sicut in his qui crediderunt omnis homo Christus, quia membra sunt Christi: expertus ergo malum quod non debuit experiri, si crederet dicenti, Noli tangere.
But Adam experienced what was bad for him, and every man is Adam, just as everyone who has believed is Christ, for all are members of Christ. Adam, however, chose to experiment with evil, which he had no business to do, and would not have done if he believed the one who had said, Do not touch (Gen 2:17) Everything the Apostle says about taking off the old man teaches the same lesson: be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun set on your wrath, and do not give the devil an opportunity. The old self did; the new must not. Let anyone who was a thief steal no more (Eph 4:26-28). The old self did steal, but the new must not. It is the same person; it is one person: one who was Adam, but must now be Christ. What was old must now be new. 249 249 He also uses the name Adam for infants who are from birth encumbered with original sin: Non videmus quid aliud possit intelligi, nisi unumquemque parvulum non esse nisi Adam et corpore et anima, et ideo illi Christi gratiam necessariam. Aetas quippe illa in seipsa nihil egit vel boni vel mali; proinde ibi anima innocentissima est, si ex Adam propagata non est: unde quomodo possit juste ire in condemnationem, si de corpore sine Baptismo exierit, quisquis istam sententiam de anima tenens potuerit demonstrare, mirandus est.
Each child is Adam in body and soul, and therefore the grace of Christ is necessary for him. At that age the infant in his own person has done no good or evil, and thus his soul is perfectly innocent if it has not descended from Adam. Consequently, it will be an extraordinary achievement if the person who holds that the soul has not descended from Adam's soul is able to show how the soul of an infant can be justly condemned if it goes forth from the body without baptism! 250 250 In other of his statements it is clearly seen that recognizing Adam for a symbol of mankind or sinners is far not enough. Augustine says that the entire human race was somehow comprised in the first parents: In illis enim duobus hominibus totum genus humanum: inde propago mortis, inde et in parvulis debita, delicta.
In these two original humans [Adam and Eve] our whole race was comprised. From them was death propagated and from them the debt of sin in babies. 251 251 And elsewhere even more clearly: Creatum est in primo homine genus humanum.
In the beginning the human race was created in the first man. 252 252 Talking about God's punishment for sin he addresses all of us as follows: As a consequence of God's anger we are mortal, and in consequence of his anger we eat our bread on this earth in poverty and the laborious of our faces. This is the sentence Adam heard when he sinned, and we are all Adam, for in Adam all die. What he heard concerns us equally. In our persons we did not yet exist, but we were present in Adam, and therefore whatever befell Adam was our fate too. We too therefore had to die, inasmuch as we were in him. 254 254 Augustine also believes that the suffering we experience in life is somehow a punishment for Adam's sin as he writes that when we suffer Adam is whipped -Adam that is the entire human race: Consider when our whipping began, my brothers. Adam has endured a whipping in all those who have been born since the dawn of the human race; Adam is whipped in all who are alive today; and his whipping will continue in all who come after us. Adam is the human race under the whip, and many have so hardened themselves that they do not even feel their lacerations. 255 255 Jacques E. Ménard deems such an idea of Adam to be Gnostic. He claims that for Gnostics Adam is the universal Soul which comprises all individual souls into which it passes. He sees in Augustine the idea of a superior Adam (un Adam supérieur), comprising the entire human race, whose limbs are currently scattered but will be gathered again together in Christ, a second Adam.256 It is true that Augustine nowhere expounds on this concept more extensively. However, to me it seems closer to the idea of the existence of mankind in the loins of Adam which I discuss below than the Gnostic concept of the universal Adam. Therefore, its sources are primarily biblical rather than Gnostic. Most deliberations on the voluntariness of original sin and sin of nature are found in Opus imperfectum contra secundam Juliani responsionem. Augustine starts out with a statement that original sin which is shared by all is someone else's fault but led to the damage of the whole of human nature.
The disobedience of the one human being is, of course, not absurdly said to be the sin of someone else, because when we were not yet born, we did no action of our own, whether good or bad, but we were all in that one who committed this sin when he committed it, and that sin was so great and so powerful that the whole of human nature was damaged by it. The quite obvious misery of the human race is sufficient proof of this. And this sin of someone else becomes ours through the succession of generations subject to it. 258

258
In the next book of the same work he returns to this matter and repeats his thesis: Et illud libera voluntate commissum est ejus, in quo natura humana damnata est, ex qua homines damnationi nascuntur obnoxii, nisi renascantur in eo, qui non est natus obnoxius.
That sin was committed by the free will of the one in whom human nature was condemned, and from that nature human beings are born subject to condemnation if they are not reborn in the one who was not born subject to it. 259

259
The problem of voluntariness of original sin was one of the major arguments of Pelagians against Augustine's teaching so the fact that he returns to it again is by no means surprising. He states again that voluntary sin of the first man caused damage to the whole of human nature.
Dicimus autem et nos, non posse esse sine libera voluntate peccatum; nec ideo tamen, ut dicis, nostrum dogma consumitur, cum asserimus esse originale peccatum: quia et ad hoc peccati genus ex libera voluntate perventum est, non ejus propria qui nascitur, sed ejus in quo omnes originaliter fuerunt, quando communem naturam mala voluntate vitiavit. Non habent ergo parvuli tempore conceptus vel ortus sui peccandi voluntatem: sed ille tempore praevaricationis suae We, however, also say that sin cannot exist without free will, and our teaching, nonetheless, is not destroyed on this account, as you say, when we say that there is original sin. For this kind of sin also came about as a result of free will, not as a result of the personal free will of the one who is born, but as a result of the will of Adam in whom we all originally existed when he damaged our common nature by his evil will. The little ones, then, do not have at the time of their conception or birth a will for sinning, but that man at the time of his transgression committed that great sin by his free will, from which human nature contracted the infection of original sin so that the holy psalmist might say with complete truth, I was conceived in iniquities (Ps 50:7). 260 260 Augustine also fights against the statement that people share Adam's sin through imitating it. He believes that at the time when Adam committed sin we were all one man. He also refers to the communion of the faithful with Christ to explain the participation of all in the first sin: Si enim peccatum intellexeris, quod per unum hominem intravit in mundum, in quo omnes peccaverunt: certe manifestum est alia esse propria cuique peccata, in quibus hi tantum peccant, quorum peccata sunt; aliud hoc unum, in quo omnes peccaverunt; quando omnes ille unus homo fuerunt. Si autem non peccatum, sed ille unus homo intelligitur, in quo uno homine omnes peccaverunt, quid etiam ista est manifestatione manifestius? Nempe legimus justificari in Christo qui credunt in eum, propter occultam communicationem et inspirationem gratiae spiritualis, qua quisquis haeret Domino unus spiritus est, quamvis eum et imitentur sancti ejus: legatur mihi tale aliquid de iis, qui sanctos ejus imitati sunt, utrum quisquam dictus sit justificatus in Paulo aut in Petro, aut in quolibet horum, quorum in populo Dei magna excellit auctoritas; nisi quod in Abraham dicimur benedici, sicut ei dictum est: Benedicentur in te omnes gentes: propter Christum qui semen ejus est secundum carnem. Quod manifestius dicitur, cum hoc idem ita dicitur: Benedicentur in semine tuo omnes gentes. Dictum autem quemquam divinis eloquiis, peccasse vel peccare in diabolo, cum eum iniqui et impii omnes imitentur, nescio utrum quisquam reperiat: quod tamen cum Apostolus de primo homine For if you have here understood the sin that entered the world through the one man in which sin all have sinned, it is certainly clear that personal sins of each person by which they alone sinned are distinct from this one in which all have sinned, when all were that one man. But if you have understood, not the sin, but that one man, in which one man all have sinned, what could be clearer than that clear statement? For we read that those who believe in him are justified in Christ on account of the hidden communication and inspiration of spiritual grace, which makes whoever clings to the Lord one spirit. Even though his saints also imitate him, I would like to find something of the sort said of those who have imitated his saints. Has anyone been said to have been justified in Paul or in Peter or in anyone else of those who have an eminent authority among the people of God? We are, of course, said to be blessed in Abraham in accord with God's words to him, All the nations will be blessed in you (Gen 12:3), on account of Christ who is called his offspring according to the flesh. This is stated more clearly, when the same idea is put as follows, All the nations will be blessed in your offspring (Gen 22:18). I doubt that anyone will find it stated in the words of God that someone has sinned or sins in the devil, though all sinful and evil persons imitate him. But with regard to the words of the Apostle concerning the first man, in whom all have sinned (Rom 5:12), they continue to resist the propagation of sin and raise in objection the idea of imitation to cloud over the issue. 261 261 In the fragment above Augustine strongly emphasises the phrase in Adam as parallel to the phrase in Christ. The participation in both Adam's sin and Christ's redemption takes place through sharing and unity rather than emulation. Adam's sin had consequences not only for him, but also for all people because somehow it touched upon the whole nature that we share: Deus enim creavit hominem rectum, naturarum auctor, non utique vitiorum: sed sponte depravatus justeque damnatus, depravatos damnatosque generavit. Omnes enim fuimus in illo uno, quando omnes fuimus ille unus, qui per feminam lapsus est in peccatum, quae de illo facta est ante peccatum. Nondum erat nobis singillatim creata et distributa forma, in qua singuli viveremus; sed jam natura erat seminalis, ex qua propagaremur: qua scilicet propter peccatum vitiata, et vinculo mortis obstricta, justeque damnata, non alterius conditionis homo ex homine nasceretur. Ac per hoc a liberi arbitrii malo usu series hujus calamitatis exorta est, quae humanum genus origine depravata, velut radice corrupta, usque ad secundae mortis exitium, quae non habet finem, solis eis exceptis qui per gratiam Dei liberantur, miseriarum connexione perducit.
For God, who is the author of nature, and certainly not of vices, created man righteous. Man, however, depraved by his own free will and justly condemned, produced depraved and condemned children. For we were all in that one man, since we all were that one man who fell into sin through the woman who was made from him before they sinned. The particular form in which we were to live as individuals had not yet been created and distributed to us; but the seminal nature from which we were to be propagated already existed. And, when this was vitiated by sin and bound by the chain of death and justly condemned, man could not be born of man in any other condition. Thus, from the evil use of free will there arose the whole series of calamities by which the human race is led by a succession of miseries from its depraved origin, as from a corrupt root, even to the ruin of the second death, which has no end, and from which only those who are redeemed by the grace of God are exempt. 262

262
In the texts that are quoted above Augustine talks about contamination of nature rather than the sin of nature. However, on occasions he explicitly says that it was human nature that sinned in Adam: Et ut manifestum sit, non sanctificato spiritui, sed carnali luto ista dici, vide quid sequitur: Aut non habet potestatem figulus luti ex eadem conspersione facere aliud quidem vas in honorem, aliud in contumeliam? Ex quo ergo in paradiso natura nostra peccavit, ab eadem divina providentia, non secundum coelum, sed secundum terram, id est, non secundum spiritum, sed secundum carnem mortali generatione formamur, et omnes una massa luti facti sumus, quod est massa peccati.
And, so that it may be clear that this is not being said to a sanctified spirit but to fleshly clay, look at what follows: Or does not the potter have the power to make one vessel for honor and another for shame out of the same lump? (Rom 9:21) Inasmuch as our nature sinned in paradise, then, we are formed by mortal generation by the same divine providence not along the lines of heaven but along those of earth (that is, not in accordance with the spirit but in accordance with the flesh), and we have all been made from one mass of clay, which is a mass of sin. 263 263 Scheffczyk claims that Augustine is close to the concept of the sin of nature, although he would consider it as Manichean. 264 Gross, on the other hand, acknowledges that Augustine speaks about the sin of nature which turns all of mankind into a sinful mass; all people sinned in Adam in the full sense of the word. Augustine unconditionally assimilates the idea of Adam's sin as the sin of nature.265 On the basis of the above texts I would rather agree with Gross since Augustine accepts real participation of all in Adam's transgression, not only in its consequences. He acknowledges that not only and solely an individual man sinned in paradise, but the entire massa, the whole nature.

Massa Peccati
In my opinion the concept of massa peccati has two sources. In the case of just quoted De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII 68, 3 it derives from Augustine's belief in the sin of nature and the resultant contamination of the entire human race, which from that time on forms a single large lump of sin. In this context Augustine uses the term massa to describe mankind's solidarity with Adam and participation in sin. 266 One might even say that Augustine sums up his concept of original sin in the idea of massa damnata. 267 Scheffczyk perceives this as a concept of the unity of human nature based on Platonic generic realism,268 although -as I have written earlier -it is extremely difficult to trace the philosophical sources of Fathers' thoughts. There is a group of texts, however, which cannot be interpreted in the Platonic spirit. Augustine talks therein about massa peccati in conjunction with Rom 9:21: Does the potter not indeed have the power to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for honor and another for reproach? In those texts Augustine stresses the carnal dimension of massa, which one irrefutably associates with Stoicism. Whatever the sources of this concept (undoubtedly to some extent biblical) it is important that Augustine recognizes human nature as one and -what is significant -carnal substance: massa peccati. Augustine presents this concept most extensively in On Diverse Questions to Simplicianus. He starts with a simple statement that all constitute a kind of single massa peccati: Sunt igitur omnes homines -quandoquidem, ut Apostolus ait, in Adam omnes moriuntur, a quo in universum genus humanum origo ducitur offensionis Dei -una quaedam massa peccati, supplicium debens divinae summaeque justitiae.
Therefore, all human beings -since, as the Apostle says, all die in Adam (1Cor 15:22), from whom the origin of the offense against God spread throughout the whole human race -are a kind of single mass of sin owing a debt of punishment to the divine and loftiest justice. 269 269 Further on, he directly refers to Rom 9:21. However, he does not focus on the aspect of choosing certain vessels and rejecting others, but on clay, which constitutes a material substrate, a single lump or mass comprising all people within.
Or does the potter not indeed have the power to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for honor and another for reproach? (Rom 9:21) With those very words he seems to show with sufficient clarity that he is speaking to fleshly man, because the mire itself alludes to that from which the first man was formed. And since, as I have already noted, according to the same Apostle, all die in Adam, he says that there is a single lump for all. 270 270 Without quoting Rom 11:16 (If the first handful of dough is holy, the whole batch of dough is holy), Augustine refers to that fragment of the Scripture. Although in the Latin text the word massa is used (Quod si primitiae sanctae sunt et massa), but in this case massa means dough and Augustine calls us also single conspersio -bread dough. Us whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the gentiles (Rom 9:24)-that is, the vessels of mercy which he has prepared for glory. For those [who are called] are not all Jews, but they are from the Jews; nor are they absolutely all the peoples of the gentiles, but they are from the gentiles. For from Adam has come a single mass of sinners and wicked persons; it is far from God's grace, and both Jews and gentiles belong to the one lump of it. For if from the same lump the potter makes one vessel for honor and another for reproach, and if it is obvious that from the Jews, as from the gentiles, some vessels are for honor and some are for reproach, it follows that they should all be understood to belong to one lump. 271 271 Later on Augustine combines three terms in his discussion: solum, -i/ ground; massa, -ae/ lump, mass and conspersio, -onis/ bread dough, substance. In this way he emphasises that creation had a carnal aspect and likewise our unity or solidarity in sin has its physical dimension. According to you, we ought not to say that Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, our Lord, was buried since Christ, the only Son of God, our Lord, is not the body alone, but the Word of God and the rational soul and the body, and when the confession of faith came to these words: He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, it ought to have added, And his body was buried. Nor should scripture have said of the first man who is under discussion, God formed man from the dust of the earth (Gen 2:7), because only the human body comes from the earth.
[...] Because, then, Adam existed, and all of us existed in him, as Catholic teachers before us learned and taught in the holy Church in accord with the holy scriptures, I said, All were that one, because even those two, the man and the woman, were then no longer two, but one flesh. And I said about all their offspring that, when the sin was committed, they all 273 utique filii a viris transfunduntur in feminas. Et qualibet ergo, et quantalibet parte, omnes qui ex illo nati sunt, ille unus fuerunt, sive secundum solum corpus, sive secundum utramque hominis partem.
were that one. None of them was, of course, as yet poured from him into the womb of the mother by the sowing of the seed, and children are surely poured by the men into the women. In whatever manner and to whatever extent, all who have been born after him were one, whether only in terms of the body or in terms of both parts of the human being. 274 274 Our entanglement in original sin is not a result from the fact that we are born as members of the human community (because Christ does not share sin) but because of the solidarity with Adam that we had from the very first day, the fact that we were to receive a body from him through a series of consecutive generations. Therefore, our solidarity with Adam is physical.275

The Unity in Adam and Inheriting Sin
Scheffczyk is mistaken when he claims that Augustine replies to Pelagius that Adam's sin cannot be transmitted solely by way of imitation but he does not give any other theological explanation. 276 On the contrary, Augustine spends a lot of time on explaining in what way all people share Adam's sin. What is more, Gross adds that this issue caused many problems for him, although the very fact of inheriting sin remains unquestionable for Augustine.277 Apart from the above explanations -that Adam stands for the whole of mankind, that Adam's sin was the sin of nature, that all people form a physical unity (massa) -there is also another one, perhaps most frequent, that we participate in Adam's sin through propagation. At this point it is the heredity of sin is mentioned, although -as we shall see in a moment -the concept of transmitting sin through propagation should not be called inheriting. Augustine claims that all people committed sin together with Adam as they were in him in the sense of semen (per rationem seminis) or in the sense of the force of propagation. 278 It would seem that Augustine very explicitly speaks about inheriting sin, for instance in Retractationes: Et illud quod in parvulis dicitur originale peccatum, cum adhuc non utantur arbitrio voluntatis, non absurde vocatur etiam voluntarium, quia ex prima hominis mala voluntate contractum, factum est quodammodo haereditarium.
And what is called original sin in infants, for they do not as yet use free choice of the will, is not improperly called voluntary also, because, inherited from man's first evil will, it has become, in a certain sense, hereditary. 279

279
In Against Julian Augustine speaks about our responsibility for Adam's sin because of our descent from sinful parents and about the transgression that we inherit: You list points which the Christian faith truly does not doubt; we too preach almost all of those which you mention, and we are convinced that there should be no doubt about them whatsoever. Hence, we admit as true even your statement that "without the act of free choice there can be no human sin." After all, that which is contracted from our origin would not be a sin without the act of free choice by which the first human being sinned, through whom sin entered the world, and was passed on to all human beings (Rom 5:12). But your statement that "one person is not held subject to the sins of another" is interesting since it can be correctly interpreted. I am not at present speaking about the fact that David sinned and so many thousands died because of his sin. Nor am I talking about the fact that, because against the prohibition one man took for himself something under the ban, vengeance came down upon those who did not do this and who did not even know that it had been done. The question about this kind of sins or punishments is a separate one, and it should not detain us now. But the sins of our parents are in one sense called sins of others, and in another sense they are found to be our sins as well. They are the sins of others because the action was theirs, but they are ours because their offspring have been infected. If this were false, the heavy yoke upon the children of Adam from the day they emerge from the womb of their mother would surely in no way be just. 280 According to Augustine sin is not "transmitted" by birth or procreation. On the contrary, the natural law of birth causes that all people who were ever to be born from him in a mysterious way were in Adam. Therefore, there is a strong relationship between participation in sin and physical reproduction, but sin is not inherited. We were all genuine participants in the transgression by the very fact that we have been born from Adam. This participation is as real as the participation of Levi in the tithe Abraham paid to Melchizedek described in the Epistle to the Hebrews 7:9-10. Levi paid the tithe because he had been in the loins of Abraham. Being gifted with fertile imagination Augustine wonders how is it possible that the semen from which all people were to be born throughout the history of the world fitted in the loins of one man. Of course, it did not. The phrase in the loins means the real presence of the progeny in the parents but it is the presence under the law of birth or propagation as the term lex propaginis should be perhaps translated. However, N.P. Williams is wrong when he writes that all people sinned in Adam in the sense that at the moment of the transgression they were infinitely small particles of Adam who sinned.281 Augustine himself says clearly that it was impossible: Haec propaginis naturalia jura fecerunt, ut idem populus decimaretur in Abraham, non ob aliud, nisi quia in lumbis ejus erat, quando decimatus est ipse propria voluntate, ille autem populus non propria voluntate, sed naturali propaginis jure. Quomodo autem idem populus fuerit in lumbis Abrahae, non solum ex illo usque ad tempus quod scriptum est in Epistola ad Hebraeos, verum etiam ex ipso usque ad hoc tempus, et ab hoc usque in finem saeculi, quosque filii Israel alii ex aliis generantur; quomodo ergo esse potuerit in lumbis unius hominis tam innumerabilis hominum multitudo, quis eloquendo explicet, quis saltem inveniat cogitando? Neque enim semina ipsa, quorum est quantitas corporalis, licet singula sint exigua, ex quibus singuli quique nascuntur, si congesta essent ex quibus tot homines nati sunt atque nascuntur, et in finem usque nascentur, potuissent lumbis unius hominis contineri. Vis ergo nescio quae invisibilis et incontrectabilis secretis naturalibus insita est, ubi jura propaginis naturalia delitescunt, propter quam vim These natural laws of propagation are the reason why the same people paid the tithe in the person of Abraham, precisely because that people was in his loins when he paid the tithe by his own will, but that people paid the tithe, not by their own will, but by the natural law of propagation. Who, however, will explain in words, who will at least discover in thought how the same people was in the loins of Abraham, not only from his time up to the time mentioned in the Letter to the Hebrews, but from his time up to the present time and from now to the end of the world, as long as children of Israel are born, generation after generation? How, then, could there be in the loins of one man so countless a multitude of human beings? For if the seeds themselves from which so many human beings have been and are being and will be born up to the end were massed together, since they have a corporeal size, though the individual seeds from which each individual is born are small, they could not have been held in the loins of one man. Some sort of invisible and intangible power, then, is located in the secrets of nature where the tamen non utique mendaciter in lumbis illius patris fuisse dicuntur, quotquot ex illo uno potuerunt generationum successibus et multiplicationibus propagari. Non solum autem ibi fuerunt, verum etiam illo sciente et volente decimato, et ipsi sunt decimati neque scientes neque volentes, quoniam nondum exstiterant qui scire ac velle potuissent.
natural laws of propagation are concealed, and on account of this power as many as were going to be able to be begotten from that one man by the succession and multiplication of generations are certainly not untruthfully said to have been in the loins of that father. They not only were there, but when he knowingly and willingly paid the tithe, they too paid the tithe, though not knowingly and not willingly, because they did not yet exist as persons who could have known and willed this. 282 282 Then Augustine transfers his thoughts about Levi and Abraham onto Adam and his transgression. He discerns an analogy between Levi's tithe and our participation in Adam's sin -both those realities exist on the basis of the same law of propagationlex propaginis. But when this happened, the human race was in his loins. Hence, in accord with those previously mentioned natural laws of propagation, which are quite hidden, but very powerful, it followed that those who were in his loins and were destined to enter this world through concupiscence of the flesh were condemned at the same time, just as it followed that those who were in the loins of Abraham by that law of propagation and by the nature of the seed paid the tithe at the same time. All the children, then, of Adam were in him infected by the contagion of sin and bound by the condition of death. And for this reason, although they are little ones and do nothing either good or evil by their will, they, nonetheless, contract from him the guilt of sin and the punishment of death, because they have been clothed by that one who sinned with the will. In the same way the little ones who are clothed with Christ receive from him a share in righteousness and the reward of everlasting life, though they have done nothing good by their will. But Ambrose had been able to understand this idea which you cannot, namely, that this was not said on account of the choice of each individual, but on account of the origin of the seed from which all were going to come. In accord with this origin all were in that one man, and all these who were still nothing in themselves were that one man. In accord with this origin of the seed, Levi is also said to have been in the loins of his forefather Abraham, when Abraham paid the tithe to Melchizedek, and because of that Levi himself is shown to have paid the tithe, not in himself, but in that one in whose loins he was. He neither willed nor refused to pay the tithe, because he had no will when in terms of his own substance he did not yet exist, and yet in accord with the nature of the seed Scripture said neither falsely nor foolishly that he was there and paid the tithe. For this reason the only exception from this paying of the tithe by the sons of Abraham who were in his loins when he paid the tithe to the priest Melchizedek was that priest to whom it was said: You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek (Ps 110:4). [...] Stop chattering foolishly, and understand that all those who, since they were not yet born, could do nothing either good or bad by their own wills could have sinned in that one man in whom they existed by means of seed, when by his own will he committed that great sin and damaged, changed, and subjugated in himself human nature, with the exception of that one man who, though his descendant was not procreated by means of seed. And if you cannot understand this, believe it. 284 284 Such explanation makes it possible for Augustine to distance himself from the discussion on the origin of the soul because for him it is genuinely immaterial whether souls are created directly by God or they come from parents. Actually, the body is a "carrier" of the law of propagation and it is also a habitat of sin. Although Augustine hesitated between creatianism and traducianism it was clear to him that all sinned in Adam.285 From such a viewpoint the origin of the soul is of secondary importance and that is why Augustine leaves it open: Et qualibet ergo, et quantalibet parte, omnes qui ex illo nati sunt, ille unus fuerunt, sive secundum solum corpus, sive secundum utramque hominis partem.
In whatever manner and to whatever extent, all who have been born after him [Adam] were that one, whether only in terms of the body or in terms of both parts of the human being. 286 286 For Augustine the opposite to the passing of sin through coming of all from Adam is the imitation of his sin. The invariably significant argument is for him the fact that Adam was not the first sinner who could be imitated by the subsequent generation, because Satan was the first to have sinned. Therefore, if people sin by imitation they imitate Satan rather than Adam. Therefore, it is pointless to talk about Adam as the first sinner and the origin of sin.
Per unum, inquit, hominem peccatum in hunc mundum intravit, et per peccatum mors; et ita in omnes homines pertransiit, in quo omnes peccaverunt. Quod isti si catholicis auribus mentibusque perciperent, adversus fidem gratiamque Christi rebelles animos non haberent, neque conarentur inaniter, ad suum proprium et haereticum sensum haec apostolica verba tam dilucida et tam manifesta convertere, asserentes hoc ideo dictum esse, quod Adam peccaverit primum, in quo de caetero quisquis peccare voluit, peccandi invenit exemplum; ut peccatum scilicet non generatione ab illo uno in omnes homines, sed illius unius imitatione transiret. Cum profecto, si Apostolus imitationem hic intelligi voluisset, non per unum hominem, sed per diabolum potius in hunc mundum peccatum intrasse, et per omnes homines pertransisse dixisset. De diabolo quippe scriptum est, Imitantur autem eum, qui sunt ex parte ipsius. Sed ideo per Through one man sin entered this world, and through sin death, and in that way it was passed on to all human beings, in whom all have sinned (Rom 5:12). If these people would hear this with Catholic ears and minds, they would not have minds in rebellion against the faith and grace of Christ, and they would not vainly try to twist these perfectly clear and evident words of the Apostle to their own heretical sense. They claim that he said this because Adam was the first to sin, and thereafter anyone who chose to sin found in him an example of sinning. In that way sin was passed on to all human beings, not by generation from that one man, but by imitation of that one man. And yet, if the Apostle had wanted us to understand imitation in this passage, he would not have said that sin entered the world through one man. Rather, he would have said that it entered the world through the devil and was passed on by all human beings. In fact, unum hominem dixit, a quo generatio utique, hominum coepit, ut per generationem doceret isse per omnes originale peccatum.
Scripture says of the devil, But those who are on his side imitate him (Wis 2:24-25). But said, through one man, from whom the generation of the human race began, so that he might teach that original sin was passed on to all though generation. 287 287 Elsewhere, Augustine makes a distinction between sinning after someone and sinning in someone. His concept of the passing of sin by propagation is deeply rooted in other explanations of the unity of human nature that I presented above. It is linked with the concept of Adam as human nature (to sin with someone) and the idea of massa peccati; it is explicitly illustrated by the fragment Sermo 294, 15, in which Augustine combines and intermingles those concepts: In another text the idea of the law of propagation (lex propaginis) was linked with the vision of the sin of nature: Clamat Apostolus: Per unum hominem peccatum intravit in mundum, et per peccatum mors; et ita in omnes homines pertransiit, in quo omnes peccaverunt. Unde nec illud liquide dici potest, quod peccatum Adae etiam non peccantibus nocuit, cum Scriptura dicat, in quo omnes peccaverunt. Nec sic dicuntur ista aliena peccata, tanquam omnino ad parvulos non pertineant: siquidem in Adam omnes tunc peccaverunt, quando in ejus natura illa insita vi qua eos gignere poterat, adhuc omnes ille unus fuerunt: sed dicuntur aliena, quia nondum ipsi agebant vitas proprias, sed quidquid erat in futura propagine, vita unius hominis continebat.
The Apostle cries out: Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death, and thus it was passed on to all human beings in whom all have sinned (Rom 5:12). Hence, one cannot simply say that Adam's sin did not harm those who did not sin, since scripture says, in whom all have sinned. And these sins are not called those of another, as if they did not belong to the little ones. For they all sinned then in Adam, when they were all still that one man in virtue of that power implanted in his nature by which he was able to beget them. They are, rather, called the sins of another, because the little ones themselves were not yet living their own lives, but the life of one human being contained whatever was in his future posterity. 289 289 Williams sums up Augustine's thoughts as follows: Through his sin Adam entered into guilt and was condemned to eternal damnation. When he was transgressing he comprised in the strictly physiological sense the entire human race, countless myriads of those who existed from his loins. Or, if we prefer a more metaphysical expression, Adam was a universal of human nature and as such subsumed in himself each and every man who was born since.290 As we could see above Augustine's explanations are even more diverse and he himself excluded the possibility of the physical existence in Adam's loins of semen of which all people are to be born; nevertheless Williams rightly pointed out in his text the real and physical side of the unity of mankind with Adam.
Moreover, Augustine declared that sin destroyed unity, and the return to it is possible thanks to the inclusion of all people into the Body of Christ being a single head that unites all. By wickedness and ungodliness with a crashing discord we had bounced away and flowed and faded away from the one supreme true God into the many, divided by the many, clinging to the many. And so it was fitting that at the beck and bidding of a compassionate God the many should themselves acclaim together the one who was to come, and that acclaimed by the many together the one should come, and that the many should testify together that the one had come, and that we being disburdened of the many should come to the one; and that being dead in soul through many sins and destined to die in the flesh because of sin, we should love the one who died in the flesh for us without sin, and that believing in him raised from the dead, and rising ourselves with him in spirit through faith, we should be made one in the one just one; and that we should not despair of ourselves rising in the flesh when we observed that we the many members had been preceded by the one head, in whom we have been purified by faith and will then be made completely whole by sight, and that thus fully reconciled to God by him the mediator, we may be able to cling to the one, enjoy the one, and remain forever one. 291 291 In the fragment above Augustine sums up the history of mankind by way of the opposition of one and many. Initially mankind was created as an entity by one God and it was sin that introduced multiplicity to human nature. Leading mankind to unity is the purpose and the ultimate effect of the coming of the Son of God and it is also a challenge for all people as long as they live.