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But in the above definition you do narrowly define "mortality", and even invert the original revealed order of causality (death causes sin instead of sin causes death). To me, it is possible to reconcile the two by saying that "mortality" has both a physical and a spiritual dimension which is inhertied by the seed of Adam.

God bless!

Gordo

Gordo,

East and West have different understandings of the nature of man at the time of his creation, and different views of what the redemption of Christ achieves in restoring man to communion with God. Perhaps the following quotation from St. Maximos about the salvation of man will be helpful: "When God brought into being natures endowed with intelligence and intellect He communicated to them, in His supreme goodness, four of the divine attributes by which He sustains, protects and preserves created things. These attributes are being, eternal being, goodness and wisdom. Of the four He granted the first two, being and ever being, to their essence, and the second two, goodness and wisdom, to their volitive faculty, so that what He is by essence the creature may become by participation. This is why man is said to have been created in the image and likeness of God, He is made in the image of God, since his being is in the image of God's being, and his eternal being is in the image of God's eternal being (in the sense that, though not without origin, it is nevertheless without end). He is also made in the likeness of God, since he is good in the likeness of God's goodness, and wise in the likeness of God's wisdom, God being good and wise by nature, and man by grace. Every intelligent nature is in the image of God, but only the good and the wise attain to His likeness." [The Philokalia, 2:86-87] In the Byzantine tradition being and ever being are predestined by God and all men, without giving any consent, are givem being and ever being, but whether one receives ever well being or ever ill being is in the power of his own will in cooperation with the divine energy.

That being said, in the Eastern tradition the idea that the Theotokos -- or anyone else for that matter -- without enacting her own will, and working synergistically with God through the ascetic practice of virtue, can be immaculate, is non-sensical. Holiness, like virtuous activity, requires the enactment of the will in choosing in course of action, and until one is able to act in a deliberate manner, that is, until one has attained the age of reason, it is not possible to be holy in the sense that the dogmatic decree of 1854 proclaims. That is also why St. John Chrysostom when talking about the baptism of infants said, "This is why we baptize children, although they have no sins, so that sanctification, justification, sonship, inheritance, brotherhood, will be added to them, so that they may become members of Christ and a dwelling place of the Spirit." [St. John Chrysostom, Homilies to the Neophytes] Now, these gifts are given to them as a capacity, but they are not actualize until they can exercise their wills in doing the good. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception as it was formulated by Blessed Pope Pius IX does not make sense in the Byzantine theological tradition, in fact it only makes sense if a man accepts the Augustinian view of the nature of original sin as somehow causing a "stain" that needs to be either removed or prevented from being applied to her soul, and as a Byzantine I do not accept the Augustinian position on that doctrine. Mary's holiness is not something done to her; rather, it is something that she does in synergy with God.

Blessings to you,
Todd

That is only how you read my post. Mortality involves the dissolution of existence, not just bodily existence. This is the teaching of St. Athanasios and St. John Chrysostom as well, along with other Eastern Fathers, because by Adam's sin all of creation is in the process of dissolution, that is, it is in the process of ceasing to exist. So, when I speak of mortality I am not referring simply to the morality of the body, but to loss of existence itself.

One other thing needs to be mentioned, I have not inverted the order of sin causing death and then in Adam's descendants death causing sin, St. Augustine did that when he, either knowingly or unknowingly, rejected the teaching of the Church Fathers of the 1st to the 4th centuries.

Blessings to you,
Todd

djs, in this instance I�m just repeating what your own dogma says.

by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race." The immunity from original sin was given to Mary by a singular exemption from a universal law through the same merits of Christ, by which other men are cleansed from sin by baptism. Mary needed the redeeming Saviour to obtain this exemption, and to be delivered from the universal necessity and debt (debitum) of being subject to original sin. The person of Mary, in consequence of her origin from Adam, should have been subject to sin, but, being the new Eve who was to be the mother of the new Adam, she was, by the eternal counsel of God and by the merits of Christ, withdrawn from the general law of original sin. Her redemption was the very masterpiece of Christ's redeeming wisdom. He is a greater redeemer who pays the debt that it may not be incurred than he who pays after it has fallen on the debtor.

The merits of Christ are applied to her for chronological reasons. She is redeemed before the Incarnation itself according to this belief.

Personally it does not make sense to me that an absence is a presence. It goes on to say this about the stain however

Which shows the Latin teaching of Original Sin means this privation is manifest, it is not simply an absence. I for one do not believe children a born with a moral deformity or turning away from God. Also Concupiscence in the Latin teaching is most certainly a presence.

lost&found, you�re not missing anything. Like anyone who achieves theosis, it is a combination of God�s grace and the human will. That is what is truly remarkable about the Theotokos. She was like mankind in her nature, but unlike them in her response to God�s grace.

I don�t understand what this whole question has to do with this thread. There is no dogma on this in the East because nobody is questioning the sinlesness of the Theotokos, and I find the teaching on the matter to be quite consistent.

Authority is derived from the Fathers, the Councils, and Holy Scripture; it is passed to us through the charism of apostolic succession.

Authority is not derived from an infallible Pope or an infallible Bible, the two main models developed in western Christendom.

Andrew

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Andrew, what are you assuming about that manner in which God experiences time, or the limits His ability to do His will?
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djs, in this instance I'm just repeating what your own dogma says
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Please. What you wrote that prompted my question was not "just what [our] own dogma says". You mentioned our being "confronted with the issue..." "put in the position of positing...to explain" ... . My point is that your questions have hidden assumptions. And that while there is certainly mystery in this teaching, there is nothing to confront, posit, or explain.
The fact is that, whatever it is that you for one wish beleive, you can find plenty of Orthodox texts (I've posted excepts from several on an earlier thread on Original Sin) that dovetail with what I've posted here (omitted by you) from New Advent. I like especially the language of "ontological deficit" from Orlapubs. It ought to be easy to grasp that such genetic defects, or ontlogical deficits, are manifest as deformities. The ideas are not paradoxical in the least.

As the Catholic Church teaches, we do not inherit the personal guilt of Adam. Nevertheless we are penalized, we suffer a profound liability for his action, because his fallen nature is passed to us, and we are most certainly deformed and are turned away, as compared to what would have been, and are called to be. We have the fallen nature and are born deprived of grace that we otherwise would have had - just a the children of a man who looses his fortune in criminal fines deprives his heirs of that wealth. And there is nothing unjust in that.


Now, please do go back and read the text.


On this, we agree completely.

http://www.stjohndc.org/Homilies/9609a.htm

http://www.stots.edu/library/rags.html

http://www.gocanada.org/Catechism/catorsin.htm

http://www.philthompson.net/pages/about/faq/12.html

I decided to go back and repost these Orthodox teachings. ISTM that they have a different tone that what Todd is expressing and is very similar to the CCC. And that, Andrew, is why the question of finding authoritative Orthodox teachings arises.

" No one is saying anything like this. The assimilation being made, in broad terms, is of Mary and Eve. So consider: was Eve, pre-fall, human or not? Was she - or for that matter Adam - hypostatically united to God or not? And finally did Eve and Adam, pre-fall, face "struggle" or not ?"

Yes, our first parents were entirely human and had a perfect nature. However, they lost this state of original innocence, thus causing Christ to come and raise us up. A logical part of this "raising up" is that He would not be in the same state that we are in. He reversed the curse of the Fall by his Incarnation. This was the purpose of Him being exempt from the spiritual effects of the Fall - to bring us Redemption from it (including the Theotokos, who we all agree was human). He shows us the way back to the original innocence; He doesn't magically overturn it for us. If Mary is a picture of the Atonement (to use an apt description of the Theotokos given by Dr. Scott Hahn), then we should expect her to reach glorification after a struggle similar to ours, not due to a retroactive sharing in Christ's nature.

The Blessed Theotokos untied the knot of Eve's disobedience, by her obedience (as St. Irenaeus states), not by God making her some kind of "great exception" to the fallen nature. Teaching that Christ allowed Mary to share His same freedom from the spiritual effects of the Fall is superfluous at best, and an assault on the necessity for ascetical struggle to attain theosis, at worst (not to mention a, de facto, rejection of Mary�s humanity).

" This is Catholic belief, with the IC; it is the opposition to the Pelagian taint, and to the odd idea that through Mary's own virtue and her own struggle she somehow merited becomiing the Theotokos ."

Well, Orthodoxy teaches such a thing as "synergism", viz., our free will cooperates with God's grace in order to reach salvation. Nobody is claiming that the All-holy Theotokos reached her exalted state via pulling up her own bootstraps. No, God's grace was offered every step of the way. She chose to accept the grace given her, thus she remained near the source of all sanctity - her Savior, Jesus Christ. And she loved Him so much that she never let go of this source. This is anything but Pelagianism. However, the idea that God exempts the human Mary from the natural state of man sounds a lot like the abhorrent "Sophia Theology." Indeed, is it any wonder that the "goddess" is popular in the West, seeing that for centuries many there have treated the humanity of the Theotokos as a mere technicality?

Adam

I don�t think we do. The dogma says two things:

Mary was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin at the first moment of her animation, and sanctifying grace was given to her before sin could have taken effect in her soul.

The state of original sanctity, innocence, and justice, as opposed to original sin, was conferred upon her, by which gift every stain and fault, all depraved emotions, passions, and debilities, essentially pertaining to original sin, were excluded.

She had no possibility to achieve theosis by her own participation. The part of her that is like other humans was cleansed and removed, and she was fully sanctified as Eve was before the Fall. This is really the principle error of the dogma, and the underlying Augustinian aspect.

I�m not seeing a wild variance, aside from the text on the Greek site which seems poorly worded. I have mentioned what I consider authoritative, and the Internet was not on my list.

What seems odd to me is based on what I�m reading is if I said �what is authoritative for Eastern Catholicism� my answer would be the Pope and the western catechism. It seems to be the case with Original Sin and the Immaculate Conception.

Andrew

Of course. Notice, for example in the New Advent quotes, the careful delimination, among all of the various consequences of the Fall, what is specifically included in OS and the inhertied "stigmata" to use an Orthodox word. What the IC entails then is mitigation of the deprivation of grace, not immunity to concupiscence, or death. And certainly there is no suggestion whatsoever of sharing in Christ's nature (let alone hypostasis). The suggestion of a lack of ascetical struggle or exemption from human nature frankly belongs in a Jack Chick comic book, not here.

Good, because on this we can agree. And I hope also on the idea that God's grace and favor somehow diminishes her accomplishments.

What are your saying is the the natural state of man? And again what are saying, in contrast to Catholic teaching, is Mary exempt from.

Hmmm. Well, I accept that the Theotokos was sinless (as all Orthodox Christians should and do) and that she was given special graces throughout her life, especially at her Conception. However, I cannot accept that she didn't have to struggle with a weak fallen nature. Such an opinion (and I call it an opinion as I've always understood the IC dogma as only dealing with the sinlessness of the Theotokos) is not correct.


The "natural" (a better word would be, "present") state of man is a fallen one. Man is still fallen, even though Christ has died for him. If not, then we would have no fallen nature right now. The primordial state of man was complete perfection. However, that is not our present condition. That is forever lost, at least as a gift given at conception/birth. It must be fought for now. And this is what all humans, including the Blessed Theotokos, have done.

Andrew, If you quoted that passage in full, it would have been inescapable that there is a delimitation of effects of the fall that are involved in the IC. But even in what you quoted there is a delimitation to characteritics, "essentially pertaining to original sin". You might like to gloss over that, or attach some meaning of your own devising. But when you try to tell Catholics what their dogma is - well it's actually better to listen, if you sincerely want to know.

I think that consistency with Catholic perspectives is pretty clear; the variance is with what Todd was writing. As discussed in earlier threads, it's the "death therefore" vs. the "death and ..." perspectives of the consequences of the ancestral sin.

:rolleyes: So statements made by those in apostolic succession lose force if posted on their websites?

Well this one may even exceed the Catholics-would-feel-more-at-home-at-Protestant-than-Orthodox-churches line from another thread for sheer hubris. The question, of course, is really not yours to answer. And it's certainly not one that I, or, IIRC, others, have in any way addressed here.

In the words of Groucho Marx, "Excuse me while I pause for a weird interlude", or something like that. Wow, this thread really took off.

I must admit I haven't read anything since my last post and am now going to read all that's been written here since.

I've always taken the IC at face value, Mary conceived without sin, and her remaining sinless throughout her life without ever delving into the theological aspects and implications of it. I find this thread interesting and thank you all for sharing your insights.

OK I'm outta here. Carry on.

Bill

The natural effect of Adam's sin is death, because human nature came from nothing and without God it will return to non-existence.

But where does the moral defect in man lie? Does it lie in his nature or in his person? If it lies in his nature as St. Augustine taught, one tends toward Manichaeanism, because sin is conceived as an existing thing within man's nature. But the difficulty here is that Christ assumes a complete human nature, identical with our own, and so if sin is somehow natural to man, that is, if it is found within man's nature, it follows that Christ is sinful, and this is why St. Maximos, in his Dialogue with Pyrrhus, emphasized the fact that nature was uneffected by the fall, and that it was man's hypostatic (personal) existence that was wounded. Sin is not found in our nature, and our natural will, that is, in our capacity to will (which Christ assumed in the incarnation), but our enactment of our will, because of our mortality, and the resulting tendency toward preserving our existence, leads us to sin.

Thus, Mary was not born sinful, but she was born mortal, and so she had to live a life without sin through the enactment of her own will in a true synergy with God's grace. She did this perfectly, but all human beings are called to do the same thing, and this is nothing else but the process of theosis.

The main questions that must be answered are these: (1) Are we born sinful? (2) Is sin a part of our nature?

The West, at least since the time of St. Augustine, tends to answer "yes" to both of these questions, while the East answers by saying, "no," because for the East sin is not a part of human nature per se; instead, it is part of man's personal existence. Moreover, anything that makes sin a quality of human nature ultimately involves insurmountable Christological problems.

If sin is in our nature, then the Immaculate Conception dogma which was issued in the 19th century becomes necessary, because without it Mary is sinful even if she never commits a personal sin, but if the Augustinian presuppositions underlying the decree are not accepted, then the decree itself becomes unnecessary.

The causal chain mentioned in an earlier post can be summarized as follows:

The Eastern view: Adam's sin causes death, and the mortality that he brings is passed on from generation to generation in his descendants, and it is this mortality that can be seen as a cause of sin within all of those born in his likeness.

The Augustinian (Western) view: Adam's sin causes death, and because of Adam's sin all men are born sinful, and the effect of this hereditary sin and guilt, i.e., the possession of a sinful nature, is death.

Todd:

ISTM that to be more clear, you might have to discuss the idea of sin. IIRC it was Andrew Rubis who used to write about sin in the Eastern sense as simply "missing the mark" - a perspective that could admit both the sin as somethign personally commited, as well as that of an ontological deficiency.

How comfortable are you with causal trains as "Eastern" and "Western" church views rather than views of one or another of the Fathers? The CCC and the Orthodox tracts that I quoted clearly do not take these trains but consider that the sin of Adam had multiple consequences with no specification of causal linkage.