www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Patriarch Bartholomew on the "Immaculate Conception"

Ghosty,

As an addendum, you may also be interested in: View of Sin in the Early Church [antiochian.org] . There, the author seems to say that the "because of" still refers to Adam, but we sin because of Adam in that we inherit a diseased nature which "misses the mark," so to speak. There's a bit of stuff in there about the meaning of Greek and Hebrew terms, the early Church's interpretation, Augustine's view and its influence, and so on.

God bless,
Jason

My Dear Patriarch Bartolomew said:

"... The sin brought hereditary corruption and not a hereditary legal responsibility or a hereditary moral stain."

I say:

Sounds like good old fashion Greek double-talk to me.

Actually at the time, it was not the dogma that the Orthodox Patriarch was upset at but rather the arrogance of making something dogma without an Ecumenical Council.

Now to understand that, one has to imagine themselves as being part of the Universal Church, and suddenly one branch of that Church decides to make a dogma without consulting the others. The fear was that this branch could fall into heresy.

Zenovia

Ghostly,
I wasnt referring to your post, but just leting my thoughts run as I thought about other post sometime ago on the question of teaching infallibly.
Stephanos I
PS I think that post was a long time before you became a member.

Zenovia,

You said: Why do you say that? The distinction Patriarch Bartholomew is making in that quotation is a classic distinction between person and nature. Persons are not reducible to nature, just as there are three Persons in the Godhead but one divine nature. The point Patriarch Bartholomew is making, I think, is that natures can be corrupted and passed on by heredity, but natures are not responsible or guilty -- persons are.

Thanks, and God bless,
Jason

Indeed, as that seems to be the case here. I was simply running with what Bishop Ware seemed to be saying in the linked article, which does seem to preclude any kind of damage to individuals and places it squarely in the environment. Perhaps you can read it and explain to me where I go wrong in my reading?

Since my background in these discussions is almost exclusively Latin and Jewish thought, I do tend to rely a bit on what people can toss my way. It's not to say that I don't try to look up stuff on my own, but I generally go first to where I'm directed by those in the know (you guys), and branch out from there. Finding nothing to contradict my assumption about Greek thought in this thread or elsewhere, I just ran with that concept in addressing Rillian who at least appears to hold to the "environmental" concept.

Honestly, I can't remember why I put it that way at all. :p What I can tell you is that all conteporary Catholic bibles approved by the Vatican for liturgical use in English render it in the sense of "insomuch as" and "because" all have sinned. I didn't do an exhaustive study of the Latin in this case, I just did a hack job with what I had in order to spit out the official translation in contrast to supposed Greek understanding

As a cool sidenote, Wisdom 2:24 also speaks of how death entered the world, and how it affects humanity.

That's already been established, but in all fairness it's based entirely on my (mis)reading of Bishop Ware's writing and Rillian's response :p

Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that the Eastern conception (or at least my understanding of it) is flatly wrong, just foreign to Judaism. Foreing doesn't imply disagreement, either, just that it seems to my eyes to be an understanding that developed from outside and upon later reflection, and is not implicit in anything that Paul writes, or indeed anything that I'm aware of from Scripture. Paul seems to consistantly refer to the moral troubles being "of the flesh", even though he certainly recognizes that Creation is damaged by Original Sin as well. Again they are not opposed, but they are not clearly or even implicitly linked in anything I'm seeing.

I'm far from closed minded about this, however. Heck, I'm only just learning about this (or at least this presentation of it), so are there any online sources, preferably of the Church Fathers, that deal with this idea that environmental damage is a predominate factor in the sinful leanings of humanity? This is with the understanding that I'll be checking out the resources you've already mentioned, I'm just really looking for Church Fathers on this so I can see exactly how it developed

I'm also interested in seeing how this line of thought avoids Pelegianism, espescially as it approaches environmental factors as predominant to a greater and greater degree.

Not closely, completely I think that the Eastern understanding, at least as you are describing it, is far more similar to the Latin conception than seems to be recognized by many. I think it comes from the fact that words like guilt are used, but such terms are extremely confusing without a basis in Thomistic thought, and it is through Thomistic thought that Augustine's writings are understood and clarified.

Of course, since Augustine comes before the split, and Thomas after, it makes sense that many Easterners would be wholly unfamiliar with his writings. Despite the fact that I think Thomas Aquinas brings much unity to Western and Eastern thought (he makes extensive use of Eastern Fathers, and even pre-Christian Greek philosophers), the fact that he arose when the Latin Church was all but completely seperated from the East and that his thoughts were expressed exclusively in Latin makes him a hard sell in many cases. Ultimately, however, I think his works, and the results of them, played a huge part in the softening up of the Latin stance on the East.

On a final note:

He'd make a brilliant Thomist, then

Well, morning comes early! God bless.

Dear Ghostly...

This particular debate... I have researched well before... and the Orthodox take literally what was meant figuratively (Augustine�s �stain�) and insist that the Latin teach - that sin is passed in the semen.

While they allow themselves the use of words in figurative way - they deny that same right and use - to Latin theology.

So they do not use the same measure for both theologies. One yard-stick for their own and another yard-stick for the Latin.

Latin theology says that sin, once introduced into human nature, corrupts that nature.

Since there is only - one - human nature (and not many) that corruption (is now felt by all who share that one human nature) is manifested as a tendency toward sin. A tendency in likeness to the power of habit.

It remains a free will choice of everyone (individual persons) as to if they will chose to sin (cooperate with that tendency) or not. Now - we are speaking of personal guilt.

And so the doctrine of Original Sin for the Latin - is that there was - an original sin - which corrupted human nature. What is passed to us (by corruption of that one human nature which we all share) are the effects of that original sin. The effects which are bound to the guilt of that - orginal and first - sin.

Again, it comes down to semantics.

This whole approach - is harmful. It is to place the semantics of language and words - as master over men. A trump card over intended meaning.

The two flaws with this is that language and words are tools we use - as tools they are never the master and always the servant.

The second flaw is that meaning is - a mental experience - which can not be contained within words (marks on paper and sounds in the air). All words - must be interpreted. And they can be interpreted several ways - if the anchor of the intended meaning of the author of the words - is not the goal.

In the disputes between Latin and Orthodox (and the Latin has no dispute Eastern theology) it is the Orthodox who have the dispute - and it invariably winds up to be a dispute based upon the possibilities of the semantics - with no regard to the intended meaning.

-ray

I got in to a discussion about this elsewhere and I'm actually having a difficult time with something he Ecumenical Patriarch said. He says in the interview

Here's my problem. How did she remain sinless then between her birth and the Annunciation if she is born with the "corruption of original sin" as he says and not just subject to the effects of the Fall?

I'm rather stumped.

Andrew

That is basically what I was asking a few posts back, without reply.

The heresy called Pelagianism held that each man is born with the ability to withstand sin under their own power. What the Patriarch says about Mary seems to tend towards that heresy, as it seems to credit Mary with the ability to remain sinless without the benefit of God's special grace. I'm sure that the Patriarch is not a Pelagianist, but I'd love to hear an explanation of what he meant.

Francis, sorry, I must have missed that. Here is my basic understanding.

I thought ultimately in a nutshell what Pelagius was saying was that we can bring about our own salvation through our own efforts, and what the Blessed Augustine reacted to was this idea. Pelagius was most definitely a heretic.

My understanding of what the church teaches is that we are neither saved by our own efforts or with the freely given grace of God alone, both are required. God has extended his grace to us firstly, and our response to his grace sets us on the path of Theosis.

We are born in to a world of fallen creation, but not as fallen creatures. Original Sin is not an imprint in our soul, it just has damaged everything around us and put us in an environment where it is likely we will sin. The consequences then are really about an absence, namely the state we had before the Fall of communion with God. The other lasting effect of the first sin is the introduction of death in to the world. The overall effect is that we are born subject to the effects of sin, but not personal state of sin.

My understanding is we can all resist sinning because we can exercise our own free will, and it is through this that we show our acceptance of God and his grace and it is how we acquire the Holy Spirit. I believe the Theotokos is sinless and was purified and exalted at the Annuncation because of the exercise of her will which showed her total acceptance of God�s divine plan for us. She is the absolute pinnacle of humanity. She did however remain subject to the effects of Original Sin, and reposed before her bodily assumption.

Hopefully I haven�t misrepresented anything too terribly.

Andrew

Rillian: A ha! You've hit upon the 10 million dollar question that turns at the heart of the Immaculate Conception doctrine.

The Protestants took your question and answered "She couldn't have", and combined with their already faulty doctrine concerning concupiscence being actual, personal sin you can see that this leads to a gross depreciation in the honor and dignity of the Theotokos.

Catholics, in response, tried to take an approach that was acceptable to both Augustinian and Thomistic theology. Remember, the Augustinian view is that the "corruption" is the actual presence of this unhealthy "fleshy" impulse. Basically they would say that Adam and Eve, being without corruption, had no innate drive to sin and had to make a fully rational and concious choice to sin. When they sinned, a "fleshy" longing became a part of the human nature in reflection of the nature of their sin (feeding themselves, attempting to grasp knowledge that wasn't rightly theirs, and irrationally going against God's warning of death).

Thomistic theology, on the other hand, argues that "fleshy" impulses are actually natural and healthy, in that they include the desire to eat, sleep, wash, procreate, ect. Nothing is inherently sinful in the innate drive to eat, so desires that spring from "the flesh" are not inherently sinful. When they become sinful is when they rise up and overwhelm the rational mind, the mind geared towards God. In otherwords, when hunger becomes gluttony, sexual desire becomes lust, desire to be clean becomes pride, ect. What came to pass with the sin of Adam and Eve was that the original grace of God that allowed humans to keep these fleshy desires properly fettered to the rational mind was remitted upon the sin of Adam and Eve. Their human nature was not necessarily wounded, but it was deprived of that extra oomph that God bestowed on His most beloved creatures to help them keep pure. In abandoning themselves to their fleshy side against their rational mind, they spurned the grace of God that had been freely given, and left us in a natural state that isn't well equipped to handle the difficulties of the world, the temptations of demons, and the irrational impulses of our own flesh.

Now neither of these views impart a personal guilt on the descendants of Adam and Eve, only an inherited "wound", for lack of a better word. The exact details of the wound varies between theologies, but the same basic principle holds.

Now in the Augustinian view the "repair" enacted by the Incarnation, Sacrifice, and Resurrection of Christ is that we are given graces to combat and contain our fleshy impulses until such time as the Resurrection of the Saints occurs and all who are saved are restored to the Original Nature of Adam and Eve, and indeed taken above and beyond it. In the Thomistic view it amounts to roughly the same thing, except that what is being fettered is simply the natural impulse run amuck, and additional graces are bestowed upon humanity upon the Resurrection in which humans are made to even more fully represent "the image of God"; both believe in the ultimate "divinization" of humanity, not that we become Gods, or God, but rather that we become perfect mirrors of God's image, as perfect as a creature can be.

So Mary, being fully human and sharing completely in our human nature, must have remained sinless until the Annunciation to be a fitting vessel for the Son. The question is how, since our human nature seems to lead everyone else to some type of sin, however small. Indeed, it seems even more appropriate that Mary was more than simply sinless, but actually a model of virtue. The Mother of God would seem to have to be the pinnacle of human achievement, the kind of person God intendeds us all to be. That's a lot to expect of someone who labors under human nature, whether human nature is either damaged or merely "unfettered" by God's grace.

The hint, Catholics observed, might be in the angel's greeting to Mary in Luke 1:28: "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women." The interesting thing about the passage, and my understanding is that this in the Greek too, as it's most definately in the Latin Vulgate, is that this "full of grace" is a title, not something that is being done at that moment. What's more, it's the Greek word Kecharitomene, which means "has been filled with grace" (past perfect) which becomes "fully graced" in Latin, and "full of grace" in English. The angel is making a very odd identification for Mary if she's laboring under the same difficulties as the rest of us, no matter which theological model you're using.

Again, Mary is completely and totally human, and has the exact same nature as the rest of us, but unlike the rest of us she must have not been a sinful person to be so dignified as to have God conceived in her womb. How does she dodge this totally human bullet? She's been filled with grace according to the Greek. This is indisputable according to the language, the only question is then when she became filled with grace.

"Before the age of reason," answers the Thomist, because the age of reason is when we can make honest choices to sin against God by following our fleshy natures over and above our rational mind. It doesn't matter when this happened, according to Thomism, only that it happened before the age of reason. The Protestants who are destroying the honor of Mary, however, are not Thomists, they're Augustinians gone wild. They believe that ever having the mark of concupiscence makes you a personal sinner, a wretched, broken thing with no hope except that God might ignore how wretched you really are. That's hardly a fitting vessel for the Son of the Father, however.

Looking at the issue the answer becomes apparent. If she must never have been "unfettered" or "unclean" according to the Protestants, and the only limit the Thomists place on this "filling" with grace is that it must have happened before she became personally responsible for sin, then why not at the very moment she was conceived? Her soul came into being filled with grace, her passions fettered just like Adam and Eve's. This would not take away her free will at all, however, because Adam and Eve had the same grace initially as well, and they sinned just as surely as anyone. She was filled with grace, but it was up to her to use it correctly and not abuse it with sin.

So the Catholic Church issues the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, with decidely Augustinian language so the Protestants will have no wiggle room. Mary was conceived filled with the grace of God, not inclined to sin like the rest of us, but sharing fully in our nature because it is by grace that our fleshy lusts are fettered. Just as our human nature is inclined to die, however, she will die. Death is not the issue, but sin and loosed passions. Furthermore, above and beyond her grace-fettered impulses, she personally acts in a meritorious manner, doing everything pleasing for God, so much so that when the angel makes the Annunciation, Mary responds in Luke 1:38 with: "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word."

Perfect obedience and love for God, something that Adam and Eve did not display. Far from taking away Mary's personal merit, being "filled with grace" highlights it, because she never did anything to tarnish that grace as so many others had in history with the various graces God had given them. In a sense, Mary cooperated with God from the moment of her birth. She truly loved God, was truly the daughter He had designed in humanity, and she did it with her full human nature intact, even while sharing in the damage of the rest of the world, even dying like the rest of us. That's why she's the Theotokos

Now I realize that this all might sound ridiculous to Eastern ears, and I don't expect it to be an acceptable dogma right out of hand. All I want to do is illustrate why the dogma was proclaimed, and how it is based on Scripture and not on pure conjecture and navel-gazing on the part of the Catholic Church. I would also point out that the history of honoring the conception of Mary, rather than just her birth, originated in the East, not the West. That isn't to say that the dogma originated there, just that the feast day of her conception did. Perhaps the question you have in your mind, Rillian, may lead to a better understanding of why Catholics answered the way we did when the question was raised "in our court" by the Protestants. At the very least you might accept the Immaculate Conception as a valid opinion, if not a necessary dogma.

Peace and God bless!

Ghosty, interesting thoughts.

You said

I ran across an article on the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary [home.it.net.au] by Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos which I think adds an interesting perspective. I'll just quote the section I think is most relevant:

The Archangel Gabriel called the Virgin Mary "full of grace." He told her: "Rejoice, O thou who art full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women" (Luke 1:28-29). The Virgin Mary is called "full of grace" and is characterised as "blessed" since God is with her.

According to Saint Gregory Palamas and other holy Fathers, the Virgin Mary had already been filled with grace, and was not just filled with grace on the day of the Annunciation. Having remained in the holy of holies of the Temple, she reached the holy of holies of the spiritual life, theosis. If the courtyard of the Temple was destined for the proselytes and the main Temple for the priests, then the holy of holies was destined for the high priest. There the Virgin Mary entered, a sign that she had reached theosis. It is known that in the Christian age, the narthex was destined for the catechumens and the impure, the main church for the illumined, the members of the Church, and the holy of holies (altar) for those who had reached theosis.

Thus, the Virgin Mary had reached theosis even before she received the visitation of the Archangel. Toward this goal, she used a special method of knowing God and communing with God, as Saint Gregory Palamas interprets in a wonderful and divinely inspired manner. This refers to stillness, the hesychastic way. The Virgin Mary realised that no one can reach God with reasoning, with the senses, with imagination or human glory, but rather only through the intellect. Thus she deadened all the powers of the soul that came from the senses, and through noetic prayer she activated the intellect. In this manner she reached illumination and theosis. And for this reason she was granted to become the Mother of Christ, to give her flesh to Christ. She didn't have simply virtues, but the god-making Grace of God.

The Virgin Mary had the fullness of God's Grace, in comparison to (other) people. Of course, Christ, as the Word of God, has the whole fullness of Graces, but the Virgin Mary received the fullness of Grace from the fullness of Graces of her Son. For this reason, in relation to Christ she is lower, since - Christ had the Grace by nature, whereas the Virgin Mary had it through participation. In relation to people, however, she is higher.

The Virgin Mary had the fullness of Grace, from the fullness of Graces of her Son, prior to the conception, during the conception and after the conception. Prior to the conception the fullness of Grace was perfect, during the conception it was more perfect, and after the conception it was very perfect (St. Nikodemos the Haghiorite). In this manner the Virgin Mary was a virgin in body and a virgin in soul. And this physical virginity of hers is higher and more perfect than the virginity of the souls of the Saints, which is achieved through the energy of the All-holy Spirit.

No human is born delivered of the original sin. The fall of Adam and of Eve and the consequences of this fall were inherited by the whole human race. It was natural that the Virgin Mary would not be delivered from the original sin. The word of the Apostle Paul is clear: "all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God" (Rom 3:23). In this apostolic passage it shows that sin is considered to be a deprivation of the glory of God, and furthermore that no one is delivered from it. Thus, the Virgin Mary was born with the original sin. When, though, was she delivered from it? The answer to this question must be freed from scholastic viewpoints.

To begin with we must say that the original sin was the deprivation of the glory of God, the estrangement from God, the loss of communion with God. This also had physical consequences, however, because in the bodies of Adam and of Eve corruption and death entered. When in the Orthodox Tradition there is talk of inheriting the original sin, this does not mean the inheriting of the guilt of the original sin, but mainly its consequences, which are corruption and death. Just as when the root of a plant dies, the branches and the leaves become ill, so it happened with the fall of Adam. The whole human race became ill. The corruption and death which man inherits is the favourable climate for the cultivation of passions and in this manner the intellect of man is darkened.

Precisely for this reason the adoption by Christ through His Incarnation of this mortal and suffering body, without sin, aided in correcting the consequences of Adam's sin. Theosis existed in the Old Testament as well, just as the illumination of the intellect also did, but death had not been abolished; for this reason the god-seeing Prophets all went to Hades. With Christ's Incarnation and His Resurrection, human nature was deified and thus the possibility was given to each person to be deified. Because with holy Baptism we become members of the deified and resurrected Body of Christ, for this reason we say that through holy Baptism man is delivered from the original sin.

When we apply these things to the case of the Virgin Mary we can understand her relationship with the original sin and her being freed from it. The Virgin Mary was born with the original sin; she had all the consequences of corruption and death in her body. With her entrance into the holy of holies, she reached theosis. This theosis though was not enough to deliver her from its consequences, which are corruption and death, precisely because the divine nature had not yet united with the human nature in the hypostasis of the Word. Thus, at the moment when, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the divine nature was united with human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the Virgin Mary first tasted her freedom from the so-called original sin and its consequences. Furthermore, at that moment that which Adam and Eve failed to do with their free personal struggle, occurred. For this reason, the Virgin Mary at the moment of the Annunciation reached a greater state than that in which Adam and Eve were prior to the fall. She was granted to taste the end of the goal of creation, as we will see in other analyses.

For this reason for the Virgin Mary Pentecost did not have to happen, it was not necessary for her to be baptised. That which the Apostles experienced on the day of Pentecost, when they became members of Christ's Body through the Holy Spirit, and that which happened to all of us during the mystery of Baptism, occurred for the Virgin Mary on the day of Annunciation. Then she was delivered from the original sin, not in the sense that she was delivered from the guilt, but that she obtained the theosis in her soul and body, due to her union with Christ.

Indeed, and the Metropolitan's comments directly mirror the Catholic idea. The only difference is what is being described as the "inheritance of original sin", which is easily understood by the difference in how each tradition defines it. In the West, one can be freed of original sin and still die, because physical mortality is a result of a removal of a special grace that God had given Adam and Eve, not a placement of a new kind of mark. In otherwords, by the grace of God Adam and Eve were preserved from their animal mortality before sinning, just as they were preserved from the inordinate desires of their animal flesh. Upon sinning, they divorced themselves from God's grace, therefore removing from themselves what God had always intended for us to have.

Mary was given that grace back, not by her own work but by a kind of "paying forward" to the Sacrifice of Christ (and since God is eternal, He can do that sort of thing). Mary cooperated with this grace, and in doing so became even more than Adam and Eve, carrying God in her womb. Although we don't use the term Theosis in the West, we absolutely agree and believe that Mary attained it during her life, likely at the moment of the Incarnation/Annunciation. This, incidently, is why we dogmatized that she was Assumed into Heaven upon her death, because that dogma (despite its relation to her physical remains) is actually the dogmatization of the fact that Mary attained Theosis in life.

In light of this and her special relationship with God, her body was Assumed (taken up) into Heaven as a kind of "paying forward" of the Resurrection. To support this view, the Catholics point to the fact that no "graves" of Mary have ever been officially recognized by East or West. Given the Christian tendency to venerate the relics of the dead, and that Mary travelled with John the Apostle and likely died in his care, such a glaring absence of relics and a burial place for the most highly praised human saint is exceptionally odd.

In fact, it's my understanding that there is a pious tradition within the Orthodox Church that Mary's remains were indeed assumed into Heaven. In other words, it appears we are indeed saying the same thing about Mary through very different languages and traditions. I could be wrong, but it seems like it to me.

Peace and God bless!