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the Greek fathers think differently than the Latin theologians about the most fundamental question of all: what it means simply to be a human being. They tend to see all human beings not as descendants of Adam but, in a mystical sense, as Adam—Adam is in a way the proper name of humanity.
Origen of Alexandria—while accepting that without the grace of baptism even an infant had to be damned, had speculated that this could be explained by some preexistence of the soul during which damnation-worthy sins had been committed. Augustine denied this.
Two hundred years earlier Tertullian (Augustine’s fellow North African) had identified each person closely with Adam, in such a way that we seem to be somehow inside the experience of the first man: “our participation in transgression, our fellowship in death, our expulsion from Paradise.”
