Friday, November 16, 2012

No Immaculate Conception? Underdeveloped theology.



Thousands of people are going to read this and believe it. I am saddened to see this sort of thing still being thrown into the discussion. This is, simply put, an attempt at making palatable heresy.
(NC Register) - One objection raised by some Protestants is this: If the Immaculate Conception is truly apostolic teaching, then why do the Eastern Orthodox Churches reject it? After all, those Churches trace their lineage to apostolic times just as the Catholic Church does. To answer that, we have to understand why the Roman Church developed her doctrine in the way she did and why the East did not take the same path.

Some people have the notion the Eastern Orthodox Churches reject the Immaculate Conception because a few early Eastern Fathers (Origen, Basil, and John Chrysostom) expressed a couple of doubts about Mary’s sinlessness. Origen thought that, during Christ’s Passion, the sword that pierced Mary’s soul was disbelief. Basil had the same notion. And John Chrysostom thought her guilty of ambition and pushiness in Matthew 12:46 (an incident we have already examined).

But the remarkable thing about these opinions is how isolated they turn out to be. Essentially, they demonstrate (once again) something about the development of doctrine that we’ve already seen in connection with the Trinity: The Catholic Church is not a monolith and her people, even very good people, sometimes voice in good faith ideas that end up departing from the orthodox norm. For the reality is that, apart from these three, the overwhelming consensus of the Fathers in both east and west is that Mary is “most pure,” (Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom) “formed without any stain,” (Proclus, Laudatio in S. Dei Gen. ort., I, 3) “all-Holy,”( Hippolytus, Against Beron and Helix, Frag VIII) “undefiled,” (Ibid) “spotless,”( Hippolytus, A Discourse on the End of the World) “immaculate of the immaculate,”( Origen, Homily 1) “inviolate and free from every stain of sin,”( Ambrose, Commentary on Psalm 118, 22–30) and created in a condition more sublime and glorious than all other natures.( Theodorus of Jerusalem in Mansi, XII, 1140) In short, for the Eastern Fathers, as for the Catholic Church, Mary is as St. Ephraim describes her:

Most holy Lady, Mother of God, alone most pure in soul and body, alone exceeding all perfection of purity . . . alone made in thy entirety the home of all the graces of the Most Holy Spirit, and hence exceeding beyond all compare even the angelic virtues in purity and sanctity of soul and body . . . my Lady most holy, all-pure, all-immaculate, all-stainless, all-undefiled, all-incorrupt, all inviolate spotless robe of Him Who clothes Himself with light as with a garment . . . flower unfading, purple woven by God, alone most immaculate( Ephraim the Syrian, Precationes ad Deiparam in Opp. Graec. Lat., III, 524– 37).

So if the Eastern Orthodox Churches ignored Origen, Basil, and Chrysostom when they speculated that Mary was sinful, why do they reject the Immaculate Conception? In a nutshell, they reject it because the Immaculate Conception is the answer to a number of questions the Eastern Christians were never much interested in asking. And if you don’t ask the questions, you don’t come up with the answers. But, as we shall see, that’s cold comfort for Evangelicals.
The Pelagian Controversy

Here’s the deal: In the fifth century, a question arose in the Western Church: “Are we sinners because we sin or do we sin because we are sinners?” A monk from Britain named Pelagius began to teach that we are only sinners because we sin, and so we can save ourselves simply by willing not to sin anymore. Jesus, said Pelagius, was primarily sent as a good example. Our task was to just grit our teeth and, through sheer will power, imitate him perfectly, thereby freeing ourselves from sin. This notion began to attract some Christians in western Europe because it appealed to a cultural imperative that approved of demanding high and heroic deeds from oneself. There was only one problem: Pelagianism wasn’t true—a fact proven in the Laboratory of Human Experience by everybody who has ever tried it.

The foe of Pelagianism was the great Father of the Western Church, Augustine of Hippo. Basing his argument on Paul’s teaching, Augustine reminded the Pelagians that, in truth, we sin because we are sinners, born of the fallen Adam. This is why, Augustine argued, the Gospel says, “[S]in came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned” (Rom. 5:12). And so, concluded Augustine (with the agreement of the Western bishops and the pope), Pelagius is disastrously wrong to claim that we can, on our own and without God’s aid, save ourselves from sin. For sin is, in its most fundamental reality, the lack of the life of God. And it’s nonsense to speak of restoring the lack of God’s life in our souls without God.

Now all of this was basically believed in the Eastern Orthodox Churches as well. Eastern Orthodox Christians read the same Pauline letters their Roman cousins read. But the Pelagian controversy never really affected the Eastern Churches. So the Eastern theologians never saw much point to closely defining just how it occurs that we are sinners, and therefore they never got around to fussing much about philosophical terms like “original sin.” The East simply tended to affirm the broad and mysterious statement that we are all sinners “in Adam” and left it at that. What complete poppycock. Not only do we know Augustine and his formulation on this matter, we reject it in the strongest terms possible. We know the wages of sin and it is not your construct at all.

Why does this matter? Because if you don’t have a concept of original sin threshed out and articulated as it has been in the West, then you don’t need to explain how it is that Mary isn’t affected by original sin. You can—and, until need arises, probably should —simply do what the Eastern Churches did: acclaim Mary as “Panagia” or “All Holy” (i.e. sinless), sing “Hail, O Bride and Maiden ever-pure!”( Akathist Hymn to the Blessed Virgin Mary) and leave it at that. That’s why there’s not much comfort for Evangelicals in the Eastern Orthodox Churches. For Eastern Orthodoxy doesn’t bother with the notion of original sin (which Evangelicals, relying on Catholic tradition, insist upon) while heaping the same accolades on Mary’s sinless life that Catholics do.

22 comments:

  1. Lame. I should be used to it. But it still bothers me that Roman Catholics, who frequently and with some justification complain when Protestants habitually misrepresent their beliefs, are forever doing the same thing with us. We don't even agree on the nature of Original Sin. And since the entire theologumen of the IC is based on their understanding of Original Sin it seems to me that we are not even talking about the same thing!

    ReplyDelete
  2. http://fatherdavidbirdosb.blogspot.com/2012/06/immaculate-conception-and-orthodox.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. Could you describe the Orthodox definition of Original Sin for us inquiring Evangelicals?

    ReplyDelete
  4. through adam, death entered the world. and because he sinned, we too now sin. sin is almost like a disease, passed on through genes.

    catholics would say that because adam sinned, we have sinned.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The difference is that Orthodox teach that we inherit the consequences of Adam's sin not the guilt. Augustine read Romans 5:12 in an incorrect translation. The St. Paul's words "because all sinned" became "in whom all sinned." From this incorrect translation, Augustine developed the doctrine of inherited guilt and from it total depravity, which means that we can do no good until we are freed from the curse of original sin. Since the east read the text in the original Greek, it did not develop the concept of inherited guilt or total depravity. Instead, we believe that we inherit the consequences of ancestral sin which is death. Because we are mortal, we sin. Thus Mary did not have to be freed from original sin to respond to the Archangel Gabriel or even to live a sinless life. Salvation is not a gift for a sinless life, but is healing of the curse of death or ancestral sin. All traditional Protestants build their theology on the basis of Augustine's doctrine of original sin. Thus they see salvation in legalistic terms instead of healing as we do. Both Luther and Calvin were followers of Augustine. Calvin took Augustine to the obvious conclusion and completely denied free will developing the doctrine of predestination, through which God decides who to save and who not to save. According to this teaching we cannot accept or reject God's offer of salvation, but can only be saved if we are one of the elect chosen by God for salvation. Such though could not be farther from Orthodoxy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, this helps me clarify. I think the hardest part for me in trying to understand Orthodoxy is how different the Western and Eastern mindsets are from each other.

      Delete
  6. When my daughter asks me why bad things happen, I usually begin my explanation with, "Because we live in a fallen world." We inherited the conditions that emerged after Adam and Eve's free will decision to sin. Is this a correct way to stating it?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Babushka Joanna, that's exactly how I put it. It seems very easy to explain to non-Orthodox. My children can understand it that way too. (Honestly, I have been able to bear many things by reminding myself that I live in a fallen world.)

    ReplyDelete
  8. So Pelagius basically agreed with Ezekiel 18. Shocking. At least your CARICATURE of him makes him simply a Jew. But your caricature is inaccurate. "A monk from Britain named Pelagius began to teach that we are only sinners because we sin, and so we can save ourselves simply by willing not to sin anymore." Save ourselves by simply not sinning anymore? Really? He never said that. The reality is that Pelagius like everyone else in the church back then certainly believed baptism was necessary for salvation. But the disagreement between him and Augustine was over how necessary it is for infants. As adults, Pelagius would say, we all need baptism, because although technically we do have the ability to not sin if we will not to, realistically nobody is going to always will not to: so, Pelagius would and did say, all adults need baptism. But do infants absolutely need baptism? Augustine said that any and all infants who die without baptism go to hell. The idea that God would save them was intolerable to Augustine. Limbo was intolerable to Augustine -- they've inherited and original sin and must go burn forever. Pelagius says, no, only the body inherits Adam's sin not the soul (read Pelagius commentary on Romans 5) and therefore Adam's sin makes us born mortal but not damned to hell, we damn ourselves by improper use of freewill, we are not damned by nature. It is NOT that Pelagius said "we can save ourselves simply by willing not to sin anymore" but that he said "we are not damned until we personally misuse freewill and sin." Now, had he said what you claim, he would simply have been a Jew, and perfectly in line with the Old Testament. As it stands, however, he was a Christian, and perfectly in line with the Gospels. I don't care who is inline with Paul because Paul is incomprehensible anyway; even Peter thought so.

    ReplyDelete
  9. As to the immaculate conception. The idea is that in order to avoid Christ catching original sin, God made Mary be born without it so she could not pass it to Christ. But why couldn't God just make Christ not be born with it, yet without preventing Mary from catching it? I mean, if he can cheat the system at one point, why not another? In fact, if he has the ability to make one person, even just one, be it Mary or Christ, somehow break free of the cycle of original sin, why can't he do the same for everyone? If you're going to cheat, cheat big. If you're breaking the rules, don't just break them small. Why invalidate the spiritual order for only one -- if you are to invalidate, invalidate for all. Therefore, Pelagius makes more sense when he says nobody is damned by Adam's sin to hell but only to mortality and that hell we deserve on our own without inheriting it. Your system requires God to cheat, and yet be so stingy as to only cheat for Mary.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jose,

      If I remember correctly (and I don't have time to verify; very early flight tomorrow) the Catholic Dogma states that it was "fitting" for Mary to be Immaculately conceived, not "necessary."

      - dp

      Delete
    2. "Fitting" in the sense of "necessary" for the church's purpose rather than "necessary" according to some natural law.

      Delete
  10. That which was inherited from Adam is death and all that goes with it: the most obvious being aging, the decay of the living body (we men go bald, get arthritis in our hands and joints, etc.) and the like. This is the "consequence of Adam's sin. Panaghia Theotokos was as subject to this as is every person born of a woman. This is the "ancestral sin" which she inherited along with all of humankind.

    In Adam, all partake of this "sin" including His Holy Mother - and Christ Himself. Sinless as to will and purpose (He DID resist temptation, right?), yet sinful in that he inherited "the curse" - for "the wages of sin is death".

    If He did not inherit this "sin" from His Mother, then it is not healed in you and I. I refer you to Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 51, to Cledonius (First epistle against Apollinarius:

    "...that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved. If only half Adam fell, then that which Christ assumes and saves may be half also; but if the whole of his nature fell, it must be united to the whole nature of Him that was begotten, and so be saved as a whole."

    http://www.monachos.net/content/patristics/patristictexts/158

    ReplyDelete
  11. Jose, your understanding of Pelagius makes him sound perfectly Orthodox to me. That would explain why there were no anathemas forthcoming on him from the East.

    It may be just my Protestant background baggage showing here, but I have difficulty hearing the word "sinful" used to describe the Lord as Fr. Raphael does. That term implies to my hearing an inclination in the heart (whether realized fully or not) to sin, which I don't conceive of the Lord as having had, though clearly the Scripture teaches He was tempted in every way as we are "yet without sin." In other words, I think I hear the term "sinful" as indicating the activity of the disordered passions already at work within one, but perhaps this is not the only Orthodox connotation of this word. I do understand that the Lord, being fully human, born into our fallen condition, inherited corruption and death from Adam (as did the Mother of God) and so bore our curse.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Praising Pelagius and bashing Paul (and indirectly Christ and God) - where have I read this before? Oh yes, in the comment section of On Behalf of All's "Judaism as Pelagiansism?" post. Wonder if these are from the same author as they sound identical.

    As regards the linked article, there is nothing conciliatory or helpful coming from that writer on the subject. He is not fair in the least as regarding Orthodoxy's teaching on The Fall and therefore misses the mark entirely.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Measuring the glory of God and Christ by the glory of Paul is a big mistake, and trying to interpret the gospels so as to force them into a Pauline mold is a much bigger mistake. This is the mistake of Augustine. He read Romans 9 and tried to force the rest of the Bible into its mold, rather than (what Pelagius did) interpreting Romans 9 in light of the rest of the Bible. Augustine's mistake is the same as Calvin's and Luther's -- taking one little passage from Paul and using it to obliterate the rest of the Bible -- interpreting the clear by beating it into submission to the obscure, rather than interpreting the obscure by harmonizing it with the clear. Jesus is clear; Paul is not. We must therefore interpret Paul in light of Jesus not the other way around. To interpret Jesus in light of Paul leads directly to Calvinist heresy.

      Delete
  13. Who here was stating that Jesus must be interpreted through Paul?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nobody, although you came the closest of anyone. I was just offering a more in depth explanation of what I meant when I said "I don't care who is inline with Paul because Paul is incomprehensible anyway; even Peter thought so" since you seemed to or pretended to take offense to that. What I meant was that on his own, taken as if his thought is self-sustaining or can be comprehended on its own terms, he is incomprehensible. Only by harmonizing him (or really, forcing him into agreement) with Jesus can any sense (especially orthodox sense) be made of his arguments. Read apart from the gospels, or read as more important than the gospels, his arguments are outright heresy.

      Delete
  14. Saint Paul was an Apostle of the Lord. If you bash him, you bash God.

    Would you please provide examples of his potential outright heresies?

    ReplyDelete
  15. In Romans 3 he quotes or paraphrases out of context "there is none righteous no not one" from the Psalms against atheists (Psalm 14, Psalm 53) and uses them as if they spoke of all mankind rather than of the fools who say in their hearts there is no God. If you are too ignorant to either find the Psalms being referred to or to read the gospels in which Jesus says things like "I came to call sinners, not the righteous, to repentance" then you would conclude (as the Protestants do) that it is impossible to be righteous so lets just not try but instead believe we are justified by a lazy do-nothing faith.

    In Romans 4, the interpretation that "Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him as righteousness" leaves the Prot with the impression that faith alone justifies and that nothing else, no baptism, no confession, no morality, no nothing has any part in the process of salvation. Paul's interpretation of Genesis 15 is very problematic and questionable, especially in light of the fact that the Hebrew literally translates to "He believed the LORD and (he) counted it to him as righteousness." The second "he" is not written, but may be supplied (unnecessarily) by the translators. As far as the bare translation of the phrase divorced from considerations of context goes, it is ambiguous whether it means "He (Abraham) believed the LORD and counted it to him (the LORD) as righteousness" or "He (Abraham) believed the LORD and (he, the LORD) counted it to him (Abraham) as righteousness" -- but once the context of Genesis 15 is considered, the first option, that Abraham believed God and counted God as righteous is clearly preferable since the context is about how God has not as of yet kept his promise to multiply Abraham's seed, yet Abraham hearing God reiterate the promise believes God and counts God as righteous or faithful to his promises despite the fact God has not at that point yet kept the promise. Contextually, it has nothing to do with Abraham's justification by God but of Abraham's reasons for counting God as righteous. Despite the problematic nature of Paul's subpar interpretation of the verse, we can still avoid the Protestant heresy that his interpretation would lead to by itself, if we are grounded in the gospels which tell us plainly it is NOT by faith alone, or if we will listen to James who says explicitly that even Abraham was not justified by faith alone for he says faith was working together with his works and places the time of Abraham's justification at the attempt to offer Isaac.

    Furthermore, if we were to read that Jesus came "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Rom 8) without the gospels in our minds, would we not become Gnostics? Or if we were to read Colossians 2:2 "the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ" without knowledge of the Trinitarian baptismal formula of Matthew, would we not become Duitarians? That is, Paul speaks here of the mystery of God only as the Father and Christ, two persons, leaving out the Holy Spirit, and in another place (2 Cor 3) speaking of Jesus says "the Lord is the Spirit" thus compounding the Son and Holy Spirit into one person.

    By Paul alone, we would be heretics alone. We need the rest of the Bible, contrary to what Prots and Marcionites think who worship Paul as the paraclete!

    ReplyDelete
  16. I understand where you're coming from now. It seems your problem is not so much with St. Paul, but of erroneous expositions made by Protestants, et al, of his writings.

    ReplyDelete