www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Immaculate conception - eastern view?

Perhaps others can offer other translations, but the Matins of the Dormition (Festal Menaion)used by the Byzantine Catholic Church suggests endorsement of the concept of "Immaculate Conception."

Ode 3 - O most pure Virgin, the holy apostles acknowledged you to be both a mortal and one who was beyond and above nature, the Mother of God.

And again, in Ode 6.... The Divine King of all bestowed upon you gifts that are beyond nature. Just as He preserved your virginity in childbirth, He saved your body from suffering corruption in the tomb. he exalted you, His Mother, through your divine passage in glory.e

If other translations confirm these texts, then the East is saying that the Theotokos was gifted as "above nature," which implies the possibility that she is exempt "from the curse" of Adam and Eve.

Fr Deacon Paul

One can easily read more into a text than the text can support. One must also consider such exuberant language within the context of the Byzantine rhetorical tradition.

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Does my response not qualify as "liturgical deposits?" Again, let me quote, this time from the vespers of the Conception of St Anne. At the Litija (from the Festal Menaion) we sing:
It is fitting that the Queen of heaven and earth, who is more precious than the Cherubim, and incomparably more glorious than the Seraphim, be conceived and remain immaculate as the angels, so that they who are servants of the Lord can boast of their own Queen, the Mother of God. Glory and praise to the Lord who willed it so, the Creator of all things.

It is fitting the the second Eve be created and remain without sin in the manner of the second Adam; for the rebirth of the human race now takes place, just as the fall came through the first Adam and the first Eve. Christ has renewed all through His new birth, and it was Mary that gave birth to Him....

Is this bad translation, or is it Eastern theology through Liturgy? Does anyone have access to ancient eastern Matins for the Dormition or Vespers for the Conception of the Theotokos in the Womb of St Ann? How does the Slavonic translate?

Where does "exuberant language" end and theology begin? Is this to say that we have a conflict between what we say and what we believe?

I'm not taking a position here.....but just what do we believe? I tend to rate liturgical (or scriptural) text over a stated opinion, whether by a modern theologian or an early Church Father.

I hope someone can present some authoritative facts on this very interesting thread.

Fr Deacon Paul

There have been many Byzantine Saints who explicitely believed and taught that Mary was conceived without sin/in Grace (including the likes of St. Gregory Palamas), and they were not merely using exuberant language (St. Gregory, for example, even detailed how he believed she came to be conceived in such a state).

The texts of the Liturgy seem to support this belief, and that's good enough for me. Had the Pope not dogmatized the issue, I doubt there would be any major Eastern Orthodox objection to the teaching, since I agree with Paul B that it is part of both the Liturgy and the tradition that has been handed down through the Saints. There's simply no grounds, from a Byzantine perspective at least, to argue against the teaching IMO.

Peace and God bless!

I agree with you Ghosty, I think if the Pope hadn't dogmatized the Immaculate conception then it wouldn't be so widely debated.

I didn't know that Saint Gregory Palamas believed in the Immaculate conception. Does anyone have a quote by him that supports that? I would be most interested to read it.

May Mary the Immaculate Theotokos pray for us on this the feast of her Holy Dormition.

Ghosty wrote: There have been many Byzantine Saints who explicitely believed and taught that Mary was conceived without sin/in Grace (including the likes of St. Gregory Palamas///
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Saint Gregory Palamas’ solution to the problem is totally unique to himself and has no echo in any of the Church Fathers or the Church's dogmatic tradition.


"...in his 65 published Mariological homilies, developed an entirely original theory about her sanctification. On the one hand, Palamas does not use the formula “immaculate conception” because he believes that Mary was sanctified long before the “primus instans conceptionis“, and on the other, he states quite as categorically as any Roman theologian that Mary was never at any moment sullied by the stain of original sin.

"Palamas’ solution to the problem, of which as far as we know, he has been the sole supporter, is that God progressively purified all Mary’s ancestors, one after the other and each to a greater degree than his predecessor so that at the end, eis telos, Mary was able to grow, from a completely purified root, like a spotless stem “on the limits between created and uncreated".

http://curiosus002.livejournal.com/2287.html


Palamas believes that her ancestors were one by one gradually and increasingly purified until finally Joachim appeared at the end of this multi-generational process of purification and was the first fully purified man and therefore able, by his immaculate seed, to produce an immaculate daughter.

However, it has to be noted that Palamas is not speaking of an increase in immaculateness but of increasing purification. We do him a disservice by trying to impose a modern view of immaculate comception.

One is always on shaky ground when trying to make theological deductions from a translation (or, in some cases, a translation of a translation). One must go back to the original Slavonic or Greek to determine what is said.

And nobody, with the exception of a few Orthodox zealots, believes there is anything inherently heretical about immaculate conception as the personal theologumenon. It is elevating something of tertiary import to the level of dogma that is objectionable, especially as the only reason for dogmatizing the immaculate conception is the need for internal consistency in the Latin understanding of the effects of Adam's sin.

Then by all means let's have the translations. I'm certain that someone on this forum can provide them. I don't have access to anything Slavonic or Greek, unfortunately.


I'm not so worried about this as it's irrelevant to me; my point is simply that if the law of prayer is the law of belief, we have solid ground for believing in the Immaculate Conception both from the Liturgy and from the Saints. That's not the same as arguing for the dogmatization of this belief, of course.

Peace and God bless!

The point remains that he explicitely believed in Mary's Grace and purity from conception, something unique to her (leaving aside Christ, of course). While his theory on how it came about is certainly unique, his belief in her purity is certainly not. He was not theorizing in a vacuum, but working from the tradition he himself had received.

Peace and God bless!

We all believe in Mary's purity. That is the Tradition. That is the theology. How Mary became and remained pure is a matter of speculation and philosophy.

I don't think anyone here is arguing against this, so I don't see the point in saying it. Speculation it may be, but it is speculation that is well grounded in the Liturgy and the writings of the Saints.

The matter at hand is which line of speculation is more likely and/or more reflective of the whole Byzantine tradition, as it's clear that there have been people on both sides of the issue (just as in the West as well). Given the citations by Paul B., I think this is a very legitimate question to pursue. Speculation, after all, doesn't mean "fruitless" or "unimportant".

Peace and God bless!

Theologoumena are things such as: do the tollhouses exist? and, do animals go to heaven?

Reducing the Immaculate Conception to a theologoumen is really a significant insult to the holy Mother of God. If it is true it ought to be "dogmatized" so that no Christian may reject it. If it is untrue it ought to be discarded. Let's not insult her majesty and glory by making it a petty matter of a theologoumenon.

Shocking though it may be for us today, some of the greatest of the Church Fathers believed that the Mother of God sinned in her life.

Saint John Chrysostom accuses her of the sin of presumption in his commentary on the wedding at Cana in John 3 (21st Homily.) In his 44th homily on Matthew 12: 46–49 he goes so far as to accuse her of vaingloriousness and having a worldly mind.

Saint Basil the Great says she sinned because she doubted the prediction of Symeon in the temple. (Cannot put my finger on the reference.) One or two fathers make similar comments.

The point is that during the great flowering of the patristic age in the 4th and 5th centuries, after the Church had had four centuries to ruminate on the glories of the Mother of God, the Fathers obviously did not see her as personally sinless and the obvious inference is that any doctrine of the Immaculate Conception would have seemed strange to them.

I'm well aware that there are such opinions to be found in the Fathers, but it must be noted that such opinions do fall outside the Liturgical tradition handed down to us, regardless of whether one accepts the Immaculate Conception. When we honor Mary in the Liturgy, we honor her as utterly pure and sinless, and that carries more weight than the opinion of a handful of theologians, Saints and Fathers though they be.

Peace and God bless!

This begs the questions, because we do not know and have no way of knowing. It is not part of the divine revelation.