www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West St. Bernard and the Immaculate Conception

And the Catholic position is that Mary is the New Eve. To be the New Eve, that is the Mother not only of Christ but of the New Man in Christ, she had to be sinless as Eve was initially sinless.

The typology of Mary as the New Eve and Christ as the New Adam is an essential understanding for all of Catholic theology.

It is interesting how Easterners when they look at an East-West impasse they always presume that Rome must collapse. I dont think that is a helpful attitude or even a Christian one. All sides have to approach each other with humility.

It is a little funny to me to have Easterners pontificating over the non-necessity of a pontiff and making universal theological pronouncements insisting there can be no universal authority.

As the Anglicans say, in the absence of a pope, everyone becomes one.

Oh, but Father, there is a universal authority. It just is not the Pope, but rather the Church.

Alexandr

Oh, but Alexandr, you cannot speak for future bishops centuries from now because they are the Church, the universal authority. To speak for them with absolute certainty is to make yourself a pope.

It is interesting how Westerners, when they look at an East-West impasse, they always presume that the East has to come around to agreeing with Rome. I don't think that is a helpful attitude or even a Christian one. All sides have to approach each other with humility.

Ryan

Nice try, Ryan. But if you actually look over this conversation, you will see that the flexibility has been very one-sided.

Fr. J.

Fr.,

I disagree, and I'll think you'll find that most Eastern Christians will agree with me. It comes across as arrogant, condescending, and hypocritical when Roman Catholics claim to be the flexible ones and imply that Eastern inflexibility is the major impediment to reunion, but then you call Eastern Catholics "cafeteria catholics" because we don't accept teachings such as the Immaculate Conception (which are not part of the Eastern Christian theological tradition) and in so doing, you not only insult us, but the Orthodox as well. Please, spare us your lectures about flexibility and humility.

Ryan

It is not a Dogma that the blessed Virgin Mary never once committed a sin. Some Church fathers, such as St. John Chrysostom, held that she had minor faults. Most Orthodox do believe that she never sinned (at least that is my impression), but there is nothing requiring that belief. She is called Immaculate and Blameless because she achieved Theosis and was made Immaculate and Blameless. When we are in heaven, we will also be Immaculate and Blameless. Also, the Bible uses the term "blameless" and "righteous" for many men, such as Job, who were not entirely without sin. Personally, I think that the idea that the blessed Theotokos never once sinned is problematic. And while it is most certainly an acceptable theological opinion and one held by most Orthodox, I think that it is at least in tension which the claim in the Bible that "all have sinned, there is none righteous, no not one," and in our prayers and Liturgies where we proclaim to Christ, "for there is not a man who lives and does not sin, you alone are without sin..."

Joe

In my view, the fact that the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was disputed by the Latin Church's greatest theologians (including Bernard and Thomas Aquinas) and the fact that initially, the Pope could not decide whether it was true or not and so had to call a moratorium on both sides calling each other heretics shows that this teaching is not a part of the apostolic doctrine. In Orthodoxy, we do not believe in development of doctrine. You cannot create new doctrines just because they sound good or solve a particular theological problem of a particular era.

Here is another problem. They way in which an explanation was worked out in order to allow the IC to be proclaimed dogma, depended on a speculative theory of John Duns Scotus. Scotus' theory is ingenious of course, but there is no Scriptural or Patristic evidence for it. The theory I am mentioning claims that the benefits of Christ's passion were applied to the blessed Theotokos in advance. Now, of course this is true, in a sense, for all old testament saints.

The other thing is that the IC is not really necessary. What does it matter whether she was conceived without origin sin, cleansed in the womb, or sanctified at the Annunciation? And what was essential was that her womb was inviolate (she was a true Virgin) and that she was faithful to God so that she could be a temple of the Word of God. I don't see how it is essential that she be absolutely sinless. Clearly, this idea that she was absolutely sinless in every way was not known to the apostles, certainly not to St. Paul.

In Orthodoxy, as far as Dogma goes, we do not develop doctrine, we clarify it. Development of doctrine does not mean for us that new doctrines are added and harmonized with the old. Rather, it is that the old doctrines are clarified.

Joe

I think this just reflects the fact that even great saints (and St. Bernard (1090-1153) was a great saint, famous for his devotion to Our Lady, and is attributed with composing the Memorare) are not necessarily all-knowing.

The following I found on CCEL, and they say it is Letter XLV (45) but it seems to be the same, or a similar, letter on the topic, and he is writing to the Canons of the cathedral of Lyons (St. Iraeneus's see).

[St. Anselm of Canterbury had written that an English Benedictine Abbot, Elsin (flourished 1020 AD), passed on the idea of this Feast. St. Bernard may not have known about that. In my old Missal, it says that the predecessor feast to that composed by Pius IX was known in the "East" from the 8th C., in Ireland from the 9th C. and in England from the 11th C.]

The meat of St. Bernard's argument (beyond reluctance to allow something "new" into the Liturgy) seems to me to be the following:


The first paragraph attests the bewilderment of what one might call the "chicken/egg" paradox, which was later put to rest by someone who noted that one could "save" someone either by pulling them out of a hole in the road, or by warning them that there was a hole in the road to be avoided.

The second attests to a cultural (and religious) qualm: "concupiscence", which is regarded as itself sinful. This was examined in detail by St. Thomas Aquinas, after his masterful treatment of the Mystery of God's Creation (which he dealt with both metaphysically and theologically) so that it came to be seen that "lust" had many meanings, but that as "natural appetite" it was part of the "valde bonum (very good)" Creation of God, and in and of itself not sinful at all.

And BTW, St. Thomas's issue with the Immaculate Conception was not an aggressive argument against the theology of it, but rather, based on the "best science" of his day he was led to believe that the "human being" was not wholly present (ensoulment) until "quickening", rather than conception. (He took the word of the scientists that there might be a progression of "beings" in the womb -- egg, fish, mammal, etc. -- until finally God infused the soul.

The last sentence of Letter 45, while probably "standard", does seem to imply that Bernard is not completely sure of his opinion here, and is advancing his arguments "respectfully":


God bless,
Michael

Joe,

Factual note: St. Bernard was not a "great theologian" but a "great mystic" and teacher about the interior life (theosis), and that is why he was made a "doctor of the Church".

When you say "in Orthodoxy, we do not believe in development of doctrine...we do not develop doctrine, we clarify it" you are expressing the very concept of "development of doctrine" itself, which is itself not a dogma.

In my previous post, I note that one of St. Bernard's "qualms" was "concupiscence". This was not a peculiarly Western qualm, it was all over the cultured world. The East had been imbibing Platonic and Neo-Platonic theories for centuries (even the great Greek Fathers) and had eschewed Aristotle because his metaphysics were indeed pantheistic and "atheistic" in Christian terms (God was a part of the world, the Prime Mover, its "engine", and not a sovereign Creator as we see him in the Old Testament passim). Historically, it took the work of St. Thomas on the Creation, and therefore on man, before misconceptions about the "sinfulness" of "lust" could be understood in properly Christian terms.

The "development of doctrine" is nothing other than the clarification of what is already part of the deposit of faith; otherwise it is, or begets, heresy (Commonitorium of St. Vincent of Lerins). That is the Catholic Orthodox Faith. Period.

As to the Scriptural or Patristic (or Liturgical) evidence in the East, what about the Feast of Sts. Joachim and Ann? Isn't the germ of the idea of the Immaculate Conception there? The Saints of the Old Testament were saints "before Christ's Incarnation and Redemption", and there ain't no "in a sense" about it! But "before" is here used chronologically; whereas the Logos pre-existed those saints. We are always dealing with Mysteries of God.

God bless,
Michael

Well, let me say that I do not believe nor do I disbelieve in the Immaculate Conception of Mary. The same is true concerning the question of whether she was always entirely sinless. Whatever be the truth in these matters, I hold what I understand to be the universal teaching of the Church that she is Theotokos, made blameless and pure by God's grace and her cooperation with that grace; that she is Ever-Virgin, the model of purity and the greatest of the saints, the greatest of God's creatures, higher than the angels, and our intercessor and mediatrix in heaven.

Joe

St Bernard of Clairvaux never rejected a defined teaching of the church. As Catholics we believe that had the majesterium made a ruling during his lifetime, as a devout Catholic he would most assuredly have accepted the teaching.

Mary as the "New Eve" is part of the patristic record. Why the IC is seen as necessary is that both Eve and Adam were necessary for the fall. If Christ is the New Adam, Mary is the New Eve.

There are typological parallels in scripture for both. By his obedience in the garden of Gethsemane Christ undid the work of Adam's disobedience in the Garden of Eden. Likewise, Mary's yes to the Angel Gabriel undid the work of Eve's yes to the serpent. The curse of enmity between the serpent and the children of Eve is played out throughout the scriptures culminating in the battle of the dragon and the Woman of the Apocalypse, mother of the Christ in Revelations 12. In other words, Mary and Jesus are a new beginning for Man. To be such, they cannot be subject to the curse of the fall.

I understand the political opposition to this theology, but I am not sure I understand the theological opposition.

The theological opposition is based in a different understanding of original sin and the effects of the fall.

Although Latin theology see the IC as necessary for the reasons above, I do see how one can think of salvation without reference to Eve's sinlessness. But for Latin theology the IC is necessary because it is a matter of fidelity to the patristic record on the New Eve.

From an Eastern perspective if it doesnt matter when Eve was freed from taint of sin, then why the opposition to the IC? Seems it works both ways.