One helpful thing is to defend Original Sin through the Church Fathers. In his book “
Against Julian,” St. Augustine answers the charge that he “invented” original sin by (1) proving it from the Scriptures and (2) proving it from the Fathers. I’ve gone through and compiled some of his quotes. There are more in the original. Another resource to look up early references to original sin is Jurgens’ book “Faith of the Early Fathers.”
— 100 A.D. - 200 A.D. —
St. Irenaeus - “Men cannot be saved in any other way from the ancient wound of the Serpent except by believing in Him who according to the likeness of sinful flesh was lifted up from the earth on the tree of testimony and drew all things to Himself and gave life to the dead." (Against Heresies Book 4 Chapter 2 Paragraph 8)
And: “Just as the human race was bound to death by a virgin it is released through a virgin, the obedience of a virgin evenly counterbalancing the disobedience of a virgin. For the sin of the first-formed was wiped out by the chastisement of the First-born, the wisdom of the Serpent was conquered by the simplicity of the dove, and we were released from the chains by which we were bound to death.” (Against Heresies Book 5 Chapter 19)
— 200 A.D. - 300 A.D. —
St. Cyprian - “[Since] nobody is hindered from baptism and from grace, how much rather ought we to shrink from hindering an infant, who, being lately born, has not sinned, except in that, being born after the flesh according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of the ancient death at its earliest birth, who approaches the more easily on this very account to the reception of the forgiveness of sins—that to him are remitted, not his own sins, but the sins of another.” (Letter 58, To Fidus)
— 300 A.D. - 400 A.D. —
St. Hilary of Poiters - “[David] does not think he lives in this life, for he had said: ‘Behold I have been conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bear me.’ He knows that he was born of sinful origin and under the law of sin.” (Exposition of Psalm 118)
St. Ambrose of Milan - “Before we are born we are stained by contagion, and before seeing the light we receive the injury of our very origin, we are conceived in iniquity. [Scripture] does not say whether that of our parents or our own. [But] in sins his mother gives birth to each one. Nor does [Scripture] state here whether the mother gives birth in her own sins or whether there are already some sins in the one being born. But, consider whether both are not to be understood. The conception is not without iniquity, since the parents are not without sin, and if not even a child of one day is without sin, so much more are those days of the maternal conception not without sin. Thus, we are conceived in the sin of our parents and are born in their iniquities. But birth itself also has its own contagions, and the nature itself has not merely one contagion.” (Defense of the Prophet David 11)
St. Gregory Nazianzen (Eastern Father) - “Let the word of Christ persuade you of this, also, as He says that no one can enter into the kingdom of heaven unless he is born again of water and the Spirit. Through Him the stains of the first birth are cleansed away, through which we are conceived in iniquity and in sins have our mothers brought us forth.” (Oratio in natalem Christi.)
St. Basil of Caesarea (Eastern Father) - “Fasting was established in paradise by law. For Adam received the first commandment: ‘From the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you must not eat.’ But, ‘you must not eat’ means fasting, and the beginning of the Law. If Eve had fasted from the tree, we should not need [forgiveness]. For it is not the healthy who need a physician, but they who are sick. We have fallen ill through sin; we are healed by penance. But penance without fasting is vain. The accursed earth shall bring forth thorns and thistles for thee. Are you not ordained for sorrow and not for delights? … Because we did not fast we fell from paradise. Let us fast, therefore, that we may return to it.’ ” (Sermon 1)
Augustine comments: “[H]ear that we should not need this fast if man had not transgressed the law of fasting in the happiness of paradise, and [do not] deny that other men are born subject to the sin of those men. [H]ear what he adds: ‘Nor it is not the healthy who need a physician,’ and [do not] deny that we have lost by the sin of those men the health in which we were created. [T]he sentence pronounced against the first man… ‘The earth shall bring forth thorns and thistles for thee,’ applies to us also, [therefore do not] deny that they are subject to the sin whom you perceive to be subject to the same sentence.”
St. John Chrysostom (Eastern Father) - “When Adam sinned that great sin, and condemned all the human race in common, he paid the penalties in grief.” (Letter to Olympia) And: “Christ wept because mortality had transgressed to the point that, cast out from eternity, it loved the world of the dead. Christ wept because the Devil made mortal those who could have been immortal.” (Homily on the Resurrection of Lazarus) And: “It is clear that it is not the sin which comes from transgression of the law, but that sin which comes from the disobedience of Adam, which has defiled all.”
Augustine says: “We have fourteen other Eastern bishops Eulogius, John, Ammonianus, Porphyry, Eutonius, Porphyry, Fidus, Zoninus, Zoboennus, Nymphidius, Chromatius, Jovinus, Eleutherius, Clematius whom we have found together in one place and can introduce into this assembly, the very ones who sat as judges over Pelagius.” He says this because they “condemned those who say that the sin of Adam harmed him alone and not the human race; and that new-born infants are in that state in which Adam was before he sinned; and that infants even if they are not baptized have eternal life.”
