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

Just arguing from the Fathers, however, if they had this view that Mary was conceived in sin, and stood in need of being saved "like everybody else", why did they speak so much and so often of Mary as the New Eve, "mother of all the living"?

And she needed to be redeemed the same as us. The manner of her redemption was different than ours, but she was redeemed, and from then on all her actions were done as an adopted child of God, indeed as the Mother of her Creator!

I would just say that only God could make an infinite atonement for an offense to God (infinite offense by virtue of the person offended). But without the Incarnation, humanity would not have been credited with that action, so it was fitting that the Logos assume human nature, and make full atonement to God. Note I say "fitting", not necessary: God could have redeemed us in other ways. The fact that He chose this way of doing it, should tell us something, i.e., it is not unimportant. That's what the Fathers picked up on "intuitively".

Our Lady was and is a human person. Even filled with grace, she has not the power to perform an infinite action. And she needed to be redeemed the same as us. The manner of her redemption was different than ours, but she was redeemed, and from then on all her actions were done as an adopted child of God, indeed as the Mother of her Creator!

If I recall correctly, St. Irenaeus was the first Father to mention the analogy between Eve and Mary. And in his development of the analogy, he states that the knot of Eve's disobedience (which included original sin) was untied by Mary's obedience. I think this lends more support for the belief that the Theotokos was cleansed from the original sin at the Annunciation than at any point prior to this. To argue otherwise is to posit that the knot of Eve�s disobedience (original sin) was untied before the fiat of Mary was uttered, thus making no sense of St. Irenaeus' words. When discussing Mary as the �new Eve� we must keep in mind the context the analogy was first formed in.

God bless,

Adam Michael

In effect, you're saying that God is Mary's Savior by keeping her from ever being in sin. If we follow the biblical and patristic meaning of "salvation" as salvation out of sin, we couldn't interpret the Theotokos' words in Luke 1:47 as anything more than saying that she was saved from needing a Savior, which makes no sense. Do you have any patristic quotes that give us reason to believe that Mary had a different kind of salvation than everyone has? Thanks.

God bless,

Adam Michael

Gordo, I believe that we have no other choice but to affirm that the Most Holy Theotokos was conceived in original sin...

If I recall correctly, St. Irenaeus was the first Father to mention the analogy between Eve and Mary. And in his development of the analogy, he states that the knot of Eve's disobedience (which included original sin) was untied by Mary's obedience. I think this lends more support for the belief that the Theotokos was cleansed from the original sin at the Annunciation than at any point prior to this. To argue otherwise is to posit that the knot of Eve�s disobedience (original sin) was untied before the fiat of Mary was uttered, thus making no sense of St. Irenaeus' words. When discussing Mary as the �new Eve� we must keep in mind the context the analogy was first formed in.

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.

Paradosis, Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos wrote an article on the Annunciation which I think touches on the subject. He says


http://home.it.net.au/~jgrapsas/pages/annunciation.htm

I honestly don't know what the RC dogma of the IC states, but if it states that Mary was born without being subject to Original Sin, then I think that such a viewpoint would not be compatible with Orthodox belief.

[ Furthermore, St. Paul says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God in Romans 3:23 (the context of this verse clearly indicates that just as all have experienced sin in verse 23, all need the justification of the following verse, 24).
God bless,

Adam Michael

Here I am quoting the text of Behr, pp. 129-130; 140 (any typos are mine)

From John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir�s Seminary Press, 2006

In the infancy narratives of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and in the Passion as it is presented in the Gospel of John, and, following them, in the celebration of the Annunciation and the Crucifixion, we look on Mary as the one who is obedient to God, enabling the birth of the Son of God and opening the way for others to become sons of God. Elsewhere in the Gospels, however, Mary is not portrayed as the embodiment of this virtue: she searches anxiously for her young son, and is astonished to find him in his Father�s house debating with the teachers (LK 2.41-51); when Jesus was rumored to be �beside himself,� �possessed by Beelzebub,� his mother and his brothers went �to seize him� but were told in return that �whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother� (MK 3.21-35); and, when Mary makes her request at the marriage celebration in Cana, she receives a sharp rebuke from Christ: �O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come!� (In JN 2.4, as in RSV, Literally, �what [is there between] you and me�). St. John Chrysostom picks up on these two aspects of the presentation of Jesus� mother in the Gospels. Commenting on the words of Christ about his mother and his brothers, he describes Mary as being a demanding mother, overconfident in her authority over her son, �not yet thinking,� as Chrysostom says, �anything great about him.� His conclusion is that �we learn here that even to have borne Christ in the womb, and to have brought forth that marvelous birth, has no profit, if there is not virtue.� But, he continues, Christ �has pointed out a spacious road: and it is granted not only to women but also to men, to be of this rank, or rather of one yet higher. For this makes one his mother much more than those pangs did.�

This latter image of Mary does not sit well with much popular Marian piety (though St. John Chrysostom was not averse to it). But rather than avoiding the image of Mary that it presents, we should consider them both together and, more specifically, how Mary is spoken of in each, to be led more fully into the mystery of Christ. As we have seen in the preceding chapters, how we view Christ, the scriptures, and the whole of creation and its history, depends on our first principle, our hypothesis. Such also is the case for Mary: the two images presented of her in the New Testament depend on two different ways of speaking about her. In one, what has been called a �dynamic view,� �Mary starts off, as it were, in the position to which Eve had reduced the human race,� so that it is through Christ alone that we are brought back into paradise, for his work re-creates all creation and its history. This enables us to see Mary as the New Eve, and is the starting point for the second of speaking about Mary, a �static view�: beginning with Mary as the New Eve, the one who by her obedience to God conceived and gave flesh to the Word, it now regards �Mary�s position as having been throughout her life that of Eve before the Fall.

[Here, Behr is quoting from S. Brock�s �Jacob of Serug: On the Mother of God,� trans. By M. Hansbury, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir�s Seminary Press, 1998. In a footnote Behr basically continues to quote Brock�s view. What I (Joe) think is interesting is that here Behr cites Brock as saying that the �static� view has a tendency��to take as literal truth what was originally intended to be the language of the symbol, poetry, metaphor, midrash,� and he calls this �a fundamentalist approach, and one that fossilizes typology, using it as a basis for creating fixed dogmas�the typological approach to the Bible�is essentially a fluid one, refusing to be contained by dogmatic statements, on the one hand, or considerations of modern biblical scholarship and its findings on the other.�

Joe,

The problem with Behr's analysis is that from what little I know about The Law is that a good Jewish boy doesn't rebuke his mom in public (see St. Matthew 15:4 and Exodus 20:12.) Remember Our Lord was the only one who kept the Law perfectly.

Paradosis, Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos wrote an article on the Annunciation which I think touches on the subject.

Are we taking all to mean each and every single being from the beginning of time? Then one would have to count the angels and Christ himself. I think a better way of thinking is that St. Paul was making a generalization here. I don't think he was including Christ, the angels, infants, and the mentally handicapped.