www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Hi, I'm Orthodox, and I believe in the IC.

"According to the IC, Mary is unique ontologically." That's the problem.

On the one hand, we are told "all God did was to restore to Mary the same internal freedom that Eve originally possessed," and "Whatever we received at Baptism, the Mother of God, through a special and unique grace from God, received at the moment of her conception," which on the other hand, doesn't all sound much like "a singular privilege and grace." Which is it?

At baptism, change is not confined to the "moral plain." An ontological change occurs, caused by puting on Christ, who has reconciled God and creation in Himself, making it possible. But if this occured at His mother's conception, then the ontological change in the universe occured then, not at the Incarnation. Indeed, it reduces the Incarnation into the mere retroactive validation of what alleged happened at the IC.

It is one thing for human nature to be created free from sin, and quite another to have a human after the fall free from sin. Sin is not part of human nature, but free will, the target of sin's corruption, is. That human will cannot be scrubbed clean of sin without scrapping the human nature of which it is part. Christ accomplishes this, however, by the union of His divine will to His human will, purging the gnomic will and leaving human will as it was created. Such an action (again, unless you follow Fr. Kolbe's train of thought) cannot take place in the Theotokos until the divine nature came an united Himself with her womb.


Then she cannot accomplish what is attributed to her, an immaculate nature without violation of human nature.

This putting Mary on a par with Christ ("unique counterpart") via the IC (with all its fine print disclaimers) that leads to the Coredemtrix and Fr. Kole's Immaculata. On the former, let me state that the Orthodox do not teach, nor have we ever taught, the Coredemptrix. I say that lest, as has happened with the IC, we be accused that we just deny it, once the Vatican (as it seems likely will one day do) proclaims it dogma ex cathedra, because the pope of Rome proclaimed it, our denial stemming only out of a perverse need to be contrary to "St. Peter's successor" and not by the demands of Orthodox dogma. On the latter (and on the IC in general), St. Cyril warns in his "On the Unity of Christ" that Nestorius' ideas do not allow an assumption of human nature by the divine, but rather "singular privilege and grace" given to a man whom God had used. There is no diffence between the Christ of Nestorius and the Theotokos of the IC, except their sex.


No, He takes fallen humanity, which is still true humanity, and restores it to its true state, as Adam before the fall. He does not take it restored from His mother.


One need only to understand the gulf between the Incarnation and the conception of the Theotokos by St. Anne to know that any similarity between the Theotokos conceiving and being conceived is misplaced.

We understand the IC: we just don't believe it.

I am sorry. I usually just read the forums. But I feel I must correct some misconceptions. Orthodox Christians do NOT believe in the IC ( at least not in large numbers). How could we we don't believe in RC's definition of Original Sin we only believe in an ancestral curse. And while I agree with Fr Ambrose 9 out of 10 times. I must respectfully disagree with him. I do not think that the Theotokos was free from all sin I think the NT is clear on that. Just to make sure it wasn''t just my view I asked many other Orthodox Christians and they shared the same view as myself and St John Maximovich. I know of no Ecumenical or Local council which was accepted by the Universal Church that ever came to this conclusion. I agree with the post that qouted St John Maximovich. I will also add that the IC is one of the main reasons RCs convert to the OC.

You raise an interesting point about the teaching of Saint John Maximovitch. As far as I understand what he wrote in his monograph "The Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God" he believed that she had the temptation to sin and the possibility of sinning but with God's grace she overcame all temptation and remained sinless throughout her life.

Saint John quotes Saint John Chrysostom and St Basil the Great and I believe that this sums up his own teaching

"....as Sts. Basil the Great and John Chrysostom speak of this, She was not placed in the state of being unable to sin, but continued to take care of Her salvation and overcame all temptations (St. John Chrysostom, Commentary on John, Homily 85; St. Basil the Great, Epistle-160)."

http://www.trueorthodoxy.info/apo_stjohnmaximovitch_orthodox_veneration_Mother_God.shtml

Dear Fr Ambrose,

Thank you for your kind response. I have read the website you listed. I did not see how the part under Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God contradicted the points St John makes in Zeal not according to knowledge. I will quote some of those points specifically so you know which ones I am speaking about and then I will just put down some of my own thoughts or questions that I would have to grapple with in order to share your view. I am not trying to put you on the spot nor do I expect you to answer them (though if you want to that is agreeable) however it is more just food for thought.
It is true that in the very definition of the new dogma it is said that a new teaching is not being established, but that there is only being proclaimed as the church's that which always existed in the church and which has been held by many Holy Fathers, excerpts from whose writings are cited. However, all the cited references speak only of the exalted sanctity of the Virgin Mary and of Her immaculateness, and give Her various names which define Her purity and spiritual might; but nowhere is there any word of the immaculateness of Her conception. Meanwhile, these same Holy Fathers in other places say that only Jesus Christ is completely pure of every sin, while all men, being born of Adam, have borne a flesh subject to the law of sin. ( This among other passages listed below especially from the New Testament would need to be reconciled in some way. Jesus Christ cannot be the ONLY one without sin if there is someone else without sin just as He cannot be the only way to the Father if there is another way)

None of the ancient Holy Fathers say that God in miraculous fashion purified the Virgin Mary while yet in the womb; and many directly indicate that the Virgin Mary, just as all men, endured a battle with sinfulness, but was victorious over temptations and was saved by Her Divine Son.( The Meaning here is debatable. As I read it a battle with sinfulness is what we all experience especially when we fall we pick ourselves back up only when we overcome our own sins are we victorious.)
The teaching of the complete sinlessness of the Mother of God (1) does not correspond to Sacred Scripture, where there is repeatedly mentioned the sinlessness of the One Mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ (I Tim. 2:5); and in Him is no sin U John 3:5); Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth (I Peter 2:22); One that hath been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin (Heb. 4:15); Him Who knew no sin, He made to be sin on our behalf (II Cor. 5:2 1). But concerning the rest of men it is said, Who is pure of defilement? No one who has lived a single day of his life on earth (Job 14:4). God commendeth His own love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us If, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life (Rom. 5:8-10).
The teaching that the Mother of God was purified before Her birth, so that from Her might be born the Pure Christ, is meaningless; because if the Pure Christ could be born only if the Virgin might be born pure, it would be necessary that Her parents also should be pure of original sin, and they again would have to be born of purified parents, and going further in this way, one would have to come to the conclusion that Christ could not have become incarnate unless all His ancestors in the flesh, right up to Adam inclusive, had been purified beforehand of original sin. But then there would not have been any need for the very Incarnation of Christ, since Christ came down to earth in order to annihilate sin.
I believe there is no real difference from the Roman doctrine of IC and Sinlessness of Mary, why is Mary capable or even need to be uniquely sinless? Wouldn’t her parents also need to be sinless?
If the Theotokos never sinned she would have had to attain theosis at the moment of her conception. How can a person attain Theosis before even knowing sin and overcoming it through ascetical labors, prayer, and repentance? How does this really affect how we see the Theotokos? How can she be a role model since she would only have Jesus as a Savior in a general sense of fixing the fallen humanity she received i.e. death but not specifically like you and I for our personal sins. Jesus died on the cross for our personal sins or just the first sin? How can Mary represent Repentance which is at the heart of the Gospel if she had nothing to repent of?

This in no way is meant as an attack on the Panagia whom I deeply love. I am sure that if she did sin it would have been infrequent by our standards and she may have attained theosis and followed Christ's commandment given to us all to sin no more at a point in her life.

Oddly enough what you are saying here is, partially, the teaching of Saint Gregory Palamas. I say partially because Saint Gregory did not stretch it right back to Adam as you have done,

But he believed that the ancestors of the Mother of God were gradually and increasingly purifed from sin one by one until, finally, with Joachim and Anna, the conception of a sinless child became possible.

It's interesting as a viewpoint and if nothing else it shows that the somewhat rigid parameters within which we and the Roman Catholics battle over the RC dogma these days would have seemed simply one viewpoint to the Fathers. They, it seems, were willing to explore other theories.

The teaching of Saint Gregory Palamas has an earlier articulation with Saint Ambrose of Milan (may he always be praised!) who belived that with Joachim a man had been born with immaculate semen and from this immaculate semen a sinless child was conceived.

It goes without saying of course that neither of these views gained acceptance in the universal Church and they are simply interesting but discarded speculations in the theological history of the Church.

Of course it is prior: the Incarnation required the Theotokos' consent. Hence the reason for the Anunciation, and why the Anunciation is a Feast of the Virgin rather than of the Lord. The Prophecy of Isaiah was before. The overshadowing of Temple by the presence of God was before. Moses' face shining was before. The promised birth of Isaac was before. The call of Abraham was before.

You leave out a step: the Orthodox do not read into "Full of Grace" what the IC has. As such, the greeting occuring before the Incarnation is not a problem. In John 1:14 Christ is full of grace, but the terms used are not the same as the greeting: in Acts 6:8 the terms are the same, but refering to St. Stephen. Are we to conclude too that St. Stephen was immaculate. In Luke 1, the term is perfective, not aorist, as the IC would demand it.

I'll have to finish later, Lord willing.

This, I think, is the strongest argument against the IC doctrine; indeed, it was not until Bl. John Duns Scotus proposed the possibility of a poleptic sanctification grounded in the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ that the Latin Church finally found itself able to fully embrace the doctrine.

But even if finds the Scotist proposal unpersuasive (and I certainly understand why one would), the fact remains that deep in the Tradition there is to be found an intuition that God sanctified and cleansed Holy Mary before the conception of our Lord. Even before the conception of Christ, Mary's sanctity is qualitatively superior to all who preceded her. I direct you especially to the Marian homilies of St Gregory Palamas [amazon.com] and the Marian homilies of Jacob of Serug [amazon.com], as well as the Annunciation homily of St Nicholas Cabasilas [synodinresistance.org]. St Nicholas declares that Mary was chosen by God because of resplendent holiness:

How was it possible for one who was conceived and born before the Incarnation to achieve such a level of sanctity and righteousness? How did she acquire the freedom, the freedom of Eve, to surrender herself fully and completely to God's plan for herself and for the world? Why has the Church refused to attribute personal sin to Mary? Even if one finds the IC doctrine excessively speculative and lacking in patristic support, even if one judges the dogmatic formulation of Pope Pius IX to be defective, and within an Eastern context perhaps meaningless, surely Orthodox Christians can acknowledge that the doctrine seeks to express something deep and true in the faith of the Church catholic. There is a mystery of grace here that begins with the very beginning of the Blessed Virgin's existence.

Ah! The destruction of the claim of the Immaculate Conception and the claim that the Mother of God was possessed of the Holy Spirit, Uncreated Grace, from the moment of Conception.

And that would be a very hasty, and thoughtless, inference, indeed.

Uniqueness is not a problem at all if one understands the word, doesn't abridge the context, and doesn't limit God's prerogatives by one's finite and often erroneous human logic and subsequent non sequiturs. One can be unique and still very much a member of the "set" so to speak. Take the number 2. It is the only prime number that is even yet it is certainly prime, very much a number and the very essence of being even. Almighty God can accomplish in His creation what may not seem proper according to one's logic and, though a mystery, is still quite proper.

As an example of a non sequitur:


The very wording of the dogma, which you have not read or don't recall, is not that Mary "accomplishes" but that God accomplishes. Again, you are limited in your understanding of the word "unique." As for putting her on a par with Christ and choosing to misunderstand, consider the East's "O Most Holy Theotokos save us."


I could go on, but jumping to the end.

I accept that you (plural) don't believe it but neither do you (singular) understand it, as is demonstrated by your responses in the post.

It is an incontrovertible fact that Roman Catholics believe the Orthodox are incapable of understanding the Immaculate Conception.

Mention was made that Fr Michael Pomazamsky understood it but examination proved that it was not so.

This is a really, really stupid discussion. A pox on all your houses.

Hey, I've been missing you lately.

Dear Father Ambrose,

Your 'sparring partner'-- as it were-- *wink ( ) *wink* is going to remain silent for the rest of Holy Lent. You will just have to be patient!

In Christ,
Alice

Despite Stuart's solemn poxing, I will venture to walk once again where angels fear to tread ...

Come, come, come, Father. You, and you alone, are the one that has advanced the thesis that Catholics believe that the Orthodox are incapable of understanding the Immaculate Conception. I certainly would never assert this, though I will say that you are doing a very good job of persuading me that you do not understand the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Whether you are incapable of understanding it ... well ... I certainly would not want to speculate.
Actually, examination proved no such thing. Pomazansky accurately presents the mature Latin doctrine of original sin as a privation of supernatural grace, a privation that is overcome by grace, according to the IC dogma, in the person of the Virgin Mary. It's as simple as that.

Once again I refer you to the catechetical addresses of John Paul II on original sin [ewtn.com] and the Immaculate Conception [ewtn.com]. Read these carefully and you too will understand the Catholic teaching. You will disagree with it, of course; but you will understand it, I confidently believe.

In her article "Mary in the Orthodox Tradition [campus.udayton.edu]," Greek Orthodox theologian Virginia Kimball refers to an ecumenical discussion between Kallistos Ware and Edward Yarnold on the Immaculate Conception:
Apparently there are at least two Orthodox theologians who understand the Latin teaching on the Immaculate Conception. Perhaps one might also add Virginia Kimball [books.google.com] herself to this illustrious category, as she has written what appears to be (despite the missing pages) an illuminating article on the Immaculate Conception and theosis. So do not despair, Fr Ambrose. Even though they may disagree with it, Orthodox theologians are indeed capable of understanding the rudiments of the Immaculate Conception. It just requires a little work.