Dear Francisg,
For the record, I personally do not find your posting style offensive at all. I find PaxTecum offensive
You presented a sincere and, I'll say, well thought out perspective on the Immaculate Conception.
And now I hope to present one of my own . . .
I don't think we can compare the death of the Mother of God with that of Christ. In other words, the FACT of her dying is not the same as the fact of Christ dying. The two are clean different things.
Original Sin in the East is also not ONLY death, but concupiscence, the darkening of the mind and will and the like.
Original Sin is the condition, the effect of the sin of Adam. In Adam's fall, we have fallen. But we do not share in the personal, actual sin of Adam. And I'm not going to get into the topic of whether the RC Church believed in Original Sin as the biological passing on of Adam's actual sin of disobedience or not.
However, God has raised certain holy individuals for specific roles in His plan of salvation. He prepared them by specially anointing them with the unction of His Holy Spirit, in certain cases, from the very wombs of their mothers.
The Eastern Church celebrates highly the Holy Conception of the Mother of God and that of John the Baptist in this way with established Feasts. As I said, John the Theologian and St Nicholas are two others about whom there is a strong popular view that they also were sanctified by the Spirit at their conception.
The Mother of God was, and is, the Temple of the Holy Spirit because of her exalted, and unparalleled role, as the Mother of the Word Incarnate, as we know.
In her, all the effects of Original Sin that we suffer were severaly mitigated, if not completely blotted out.
For example, as our liturgical prayers exclaim, she did not feel any pain in giving birth to Christ.
When the Archangel Gabriel went to announce to her the news of the Annunciation, he had to look away, this fleshless, holy being, from the Light of Grace that shone so brightly in the Mother of God "More honourable than the Cherubim and more glorious without compare than the Seraphim" as our famous Eastern prayer sings.
And her repose in the Lord was so light, so sweet that it was a true "falling asleep" or "Dormition" rather than a "death."
And of course the grave could not hold her who bore the Eternal Word of God Incarnate. He came and took her, body and soul, to the heavenly mansions.
We tend to see the Immaculate Conception doctrine, then, simply as a way the Western Church decided to get out of the Augustinian view of Original Sin as "inherited stain on the soul."
The East never subscribed to Augustine's views in this respect, whether his own or later exaggerated by others - even though Augustine himself would NEVER ascribe sin of any kind to the Mother of God.
I'm just wondering to what extent later Western theologians made more of Augustine's view of Original Sin than the African Father's works bear out.
In any event, Augustine is not the primary theologian the East turns to - its primary ones are the Cappadocian and Alexandrian Fathers.
In pith and substance, the IC doctrine asserts that the Virgin Mary never had the stain of any sin on her soul, beginning at her conception.
The East not only agrees, but has always said so - that is what the Feast of the Conception of St Anne means, a Feast first adopted in the West by England.
For the East, the Immaculate Conception doctrine is an unnecessary statement that says what we already always believed - and liturgically celebrated.
If it is true that the West believes as the East does on the subject of Original Sin - IF that is true, then that would make the IC doctrine completely meaningless for the West as well.
Alex
