by Father Lev Gillet
I. It is generally agreed, I think, that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is one of the questions which make a clear and profound division between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Is this really the case? We shall try to examine quite objectively what Orthodox theological history has to teach us on this matter. Leaving aside the patristic period we shall start on our quest in the time of the Patriarch Photius.
II. It seems to me that three preliminary observations have to be made.
First, it is an undeniable fact that the great majority of the members of the Orthodox Church did not admit the dogma of the Immaculate Conception as it was defined by Pius IX in 1854.
Secondly, throughout the history of Orthodox theology, we find an unbroken line of theologians, of quite considerable authority, who have explicitly denied the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Among them I shall refer to Nicephorus Gallistus in the fourteenth century and Alexander Lebedev in the nineteenth, these two representing the extremities of a chain with many intermediary links. There is even an official document written against the Immaculate Conception: the letter of the Patriarch Anthimus VII, written in 1895; we shall come later to a discussion of its doctrinal value.
Thirdly, we recognize the fact that Latin theologians very often used inadequate arguments in their desire to prove that the Immaculate Conception belonged to the Byzantine theological tradition. They sometimes forced the sense of the poetic expressions to be found in the liturgy of Byzantium; at times they misinterpreted what were merely common Byzantine terms to describe Mary’s incomparable holiness, as a sign of belief in the Immaculate Conception; on other occasions they disregarded the fact that certain Byzantines had only a very vague idea of original sin. Speaking of the Theotokos, Orthodox writers multiplied expressions such as “all holy”, “all pure”, “immaculate”. This does not always mean that these writers believed in the Immaculate Conception. The vast majority – but not all – Orthodox theologians agreed that Mary was purified from original sin before the birth of Our Lord. By this, they usually mean that she was purified in her mother’s womb like John the Baptist. This “sanctification” is not the Immaculate Conception.
The question must be framed in precise theological terms. We do not want to know if Mary’s holiness surpasses all other holiness, or if Mary was sanctified in her mother’s womb. The question is: Was Mary, in the words of Pius IX, “preserved from all stain of original sin at the first moment of her conception” (in primo instanti suae conceptionis)? Is this doctrine foreign to the Orthodox tradition? Is it contrary to that tradition?
III. I shall begin by quoting several phrases which cannot be said with absolute certainty to imply a belief in the Immaculate Conception but in which it is quite possible to find traces of such a belief.
First of all – the patriarch Photius. In his first homily on the Annunciation, he says that Mary was sanctified ek Brephous. This is not an easy term to translate; the primary meaning of Brephos is that of a child in the embryonic state. Ek means origin or starting point. The phrase seems to me to mean not that Mary was sanctified in the embryonic state, that is to say, during her existence in her mother’s womb, but that she was sanctified from the moment of her existence as an embryo, from the very first moment of her formation – therefore – from the moment of her conception.1
A contemporary and opponent of Photius, the monk Theognostes, wrote in a homily for the feast of the Dormition, that Mary was conceived by “a sanctifying action”, ex arches – from the beginning. It seems to me that this ex arches exactly corresponds to the “in primo instanti“ of Roman theology.3
St Euthymes, patriarch of Constantinople (+917), in the course of a homily on the conception of St Anne (that is to say, on Mary’s conception by Anne and Joachim) said that it was on this very day (touto semerou) that the Father fashioned a tabernacle (Mary) for his Son, and that this tabernacle was “fully sanctified” (kathagiazei). There again we find the idea of Mary’s sanctification in primo instanti conceptionis.3
Let us now turn to more explicit evidence.
(St) Gregory Palamas, archbishop of Thessalonica and doctor of the hesychasm (+1360) 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”.4
The Emperor Manuel II Paleologus (+1425) also pronounced a homily on the Dormition. In it, he affirms in precise terms Mary’s sanctification in primo instanti. He says that Mary was full of grace “from the moment of her conception” and that as soon as she began to exist … there was no time when Jesus was not united to her”. We must note that Manuel was no mere amateur in theology. He had written at great length on the procession of the Holy Spirit and had taken part in doctrinal debates during his journeys in the West. One can, therefore, consider him as a qualified representative of the Byzantine theology of his time.5
George Scholarios (+1456), the last Patriarch of the Byzantine Empire, has also left us a homily on the Dormition and an explicit affirmation of the Immaculate Conception. He says that Mary was “all pure from the first moment of her existence” (gegne theion euthus).6
It is rather strange that the most precise Greek affirmation of the Immaculate Conception should come from the most anti-Latin, the most “Protestantizing” of the patriarchs of Constantinople, Cyril Lukaris (+1638). He too gave a sermon on the Dormition of Our Lady. He said that Mary “was wholly sanctified from the very first moment of her conception (ole egiasmene en aute te sullepsei) when her body was formed and when her soul was united to her body”; and further on he writes: “As for the Panaghia, who is there who does not know that she is pure and immaculate, that she was a spotless instrument, sanctified in her conception and her birth, as befits one who is to contain the One whom nothing can contain?”7
Gerasimo, patriarch of Alexandria (+1636), taught at the same time. according to the Chronicle of the Greek, Hypsilantis, that the Theotokos “was not subject to the sin of our first father” (ouk npekeito to propatopiko hamarte mati); and a manual of dogmatic theology of the same century, written by Nicholas Coursoulas (+1652) declared that “the soul of the Holy Virgin was made exempt from the stain of original sin from the first moment of its creation by God and union with the body.”8
I am not unaware that other voices were raised against the Immaculate Conception. Damascene the Studite, in the sixteenth century, Mitrophanes Cristopoulos, patriarch of Alexandria and Dosithes, patriarch of Jerusalem in the seventeenth century, all taught that Mary was sanctified only in her mother’s womb. Nicephorus Gallistus in the fourteenth century and the Hagiorite in the eighteenth century taught that Mary was purified from original sin on the day of the Annunciation. But the opinions that we have heard in favour of the Immaculate Conception are not less eminent or less well qualified.
It was after the Bull of Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, of 8 December, 1854, that the greater part of the Greek Church seems to have turned against belief in the Immaculate Conception. Yet, in 1855, the Athenian professor, Christopher Damalas, was able to declare: “We have always held and always taught this doctrine. This point is too sacred to give rise to quarrels and it has no need of a deputation from Rome”.9
But it was not until 1896 that we find an official text classing the Immaculate Conception among the differences between Rome and the Orthodox East. This text is the synodal letter written by the Oecumenical Patriarch, Anthimes VII, in reply to the encyclical Piaeclara Gratulationis addressed by Leo XIII to the people of the Eastern Churches. Moreover, from the Orthodox point of view, the Constantinopolitan document has only a very limited doctrinal importance. Although it should be read with respect and attention, yet it possesses none of the marks of infallibility, nor does ecclesiastical discipline impose belief in its teachings as a matter of conscience, and it leaves the ground quite clear for theological and historical discussions on this point.
IV. Let us now consider more closely the attitude of the Russian Church towards the question of the Immaculate Conception.
Every Russian theological student knows that St Dmitri, metropolitan of Rostov (17th century), supported the Latin ”theory of the epiklesis”;10 but young Russians are inclined to consider the case of Dmitri as a regrettable exception, an anomaly. If they knew the history of Russian theology a little better they would know that from the middle ages to the seventeenth century the Russian Church has, as a whole, accepted belief in the Immaculate Conception.11
The Academy of Kiev, with Peter Moghila, Stephen Gavorsky and many others, taught the Immaculate Conception in terms of Latin theology. A confraternity of the Immaculate Conception was established at Polotsk in 1651. The Orthodox members of the confraternity promised to honour the Immaculate Conception of Mary all the days of their life. The Council of Moscow of 1666 approved Simeon Polotsky’s book called The Rod of Direction, in which he said: “Mary was exempt from original sin from the moment of her conception”.12
All this cannot be explained as the work of Polish Latinising influence. We have seen that much was written on the same lines in the Greek East. When as a result of other Greek influences, attacks were launched in Moscow against the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, a protest was made by the Old Believers – a sect separated from the official Church by reason of its faithfulness to certain ancient rites. Again in 1841, the Old Believers said in an official declaration that “Mary has had no share in original sin”.13 To all those who know how deeply the Old Believers are attached to the most ancient beliefs and traditions, their testimony has a very special significance. In 1848, the “Dogmatic Theology” of the Archimandrite Antony Amphitheatroff, approved by the Holy Synod as a manual for seminaries, reproduced Palamas’ curious theory of the progressive purification of the Virgin’s ancestors, a theory which has already been mentioned and which proclaims Mary’s exemption from original sin. Finally, we should notice that the Roman definition of 1854 was not attacked by the most representative theologians of the time, Metropolitan Philaretes of Moscow and Macarius Boulgakov.
It was in 1881 that the first important writing appeared in Russian literature in opposition to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It was written by Professor A. Lebedev of Moscow who held the view that the Virgin was completely purified from original sin at Golgotha.14 In 1884, the Holy Synod included the question of the Immaculate Conception in the programme of “polemical”, that is to say, anti-Latin theology. Ever since then, official Russian theology has been unanimously opposed to the Immaculate Conception.
This attitude of the Russians has been strengthened by a frequent confusion of Mary’s immaculate conception with the virgin birth of Christ. This confusion is to be found not only among ignorant people, but also among many theologians and bishops. In 1898, Bishop Augustine, author of a “Fundamental Theology”, translated “immaculate conception” by “conception sine semine“. More recently still, Metropolitan Anthony then Archbishop of Volkynia, wrote against the “impious heresy of the immaculate and virginal conception of the Most Holy Mother of God by Joachim and Anne.” It was a theologian of the Old Believers, A. Morozov, who had to point out to the archbishop that he did not know what he was talking about.15
V. There are three principal causes which provide an explanation for the opposition with which the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception has been met in the Orthodox Church.
First and foremost, there is the mistrust felt a priori by many Orthodox about any doctrine defined by Rome since the separation of East and West. That, of course, is primarily a psychological reason.
There is also the fear of formulating a doctrine which might not seem to have sufficient foundation in Holy Scripture and the patristic tradition. We have left the patristic age outside the bounds of our discussion, limiting ourselves to the Orthodox theology of Byzantium: but it seems that (from St Andrew of Crete to St Theodore the Studite) much evidence can be produced from Greek sources in favour of the Immaculate Conception.
Finally there is the fear of restricting the redemptive work of Christ. Once you have exempted Mary from original sin, have you not exempted her from the effects of her Son’s redemption? Is it not possible for a single exception to destroy the whole economy of salvation? The Orthodox theologians who think on these lines have not given careful enough consideration, or indeed any at all, to the fact that according to Pius IX’s definition, Mary was only exempt from original sin in view of the merits of Christ: ”intuitu meritorum Christi Jesu Salvatoris humani generis“. Therefore, Christ’s redemptive action was operative in Mary’s case although in a quite different way from that of the rest of mankind.
We will add this, too. Orthodox theology has always insisted on the beauty of human nature in its integrity before the fall. Now it is the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception which alone can justify this ‘humanism’. It is only in Mary conceived without sin, that human nature has reached its fulfilment and actualized all its possibilities. Mary is the one and only success of the human race. It is through her and in her that humanity has escaped total failure and has offered to the divine a point of entry into the human. Mary, said Metropolitan George of Nicomedia (19th century) “was the magnificent first fruit offered by human nature to the Creator.”16 “She is”, said Nicholas Cabasilas (14th century), “truly the first man, the first and only being to have manifested in herself the fullness of human nature.”17
VI. Let us draw our conclusions:
1. The Immaculate Conception of Mary is not a defined dogma in the Orthodox Church.
2. One can say that since the first part of the nineteenth century the majority of Orthodox believers and theologians have taken their stand against this doctrine.
3. Nevertheless. it is impossible to say that from the Orthodox point of view the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception constitutes a heresy; for canonically it has never been defined as such by an oecumenical council and in fact it has never met with the disapproval of a universal and unchanging consensus of opinion.
4. There does exist a continuous line of eminent Orthodox authorities who have taught the Immaculate Conception.
5. Therefore the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception has every right to its existence in the Orthodox Church as an opinion of a school or as a personal theologoumenon based on a tradition worthy of respect.
6. It follows therefore that the Roman definition of 1854 does not constitute an obstacle to the reunion of the Eastern and Western Churches.
7. It is my own view that not only does the Immaculate Conception not contradict any Orthodox dogma but that it is a necessary and logical development of the whole of Orthodox belief.18
Regina sine labe concepta, ora pro nobis.
Footnotes
1. Photius, homil. I in Annunt., in the collection of St. Aristarchis, Photiou logoi kai homiliai, Constantinople 1901, t. II, p. 236.
2. Theognostes, hom. in fest. Dormitionis, Greek Cod. 763 of the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris, fol. 8. v.
3. Euthemius, hom. in concept. S. Annae, Cod. laudianus 69 of the Bodleian Library, fol. 122-126.
4. Photius, In Praesentat. Deiparae, in the collection of Sophoclis Grigoriou tou Palama homiliai kb’, Athens 1861.
5. Manuel Paleologus, orat. in Dormit., Vatic. graecus 1619. A Latin translation is to be found in Migne P.G. t. CLVI, 91-108.
6. Scholarios, hom. in Dormit., Greek Cod. 1294 of the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris, fol. 139 v.
7. Lukaris, hom. in Dormit., Cod. 263 of the Metochion of the Holy Sepulchre in Constantinople, fol. 612-613, and hom. in Nativ., Cod. 39 of the Metochion, fol. 93.
8. Hypsilantis, Ta meta ten alosin, Constantinople, 1870, p. 131. Coursoulas, Sunopsis ten ieras Theologias, Zante, 1862, vol. I, pp. 336-342.
9. Quoted by Frederic George Lee, in The Sinless Conception of the Mother of God, London 1891, p. 58.
10. See Chiliapkin, St Dmitri of Rostov and his times (Russian), in the Zapiski of the Faculty of history and philology of the University of St. Petersberg, t. XXIV, 1891, especially pp. 190-193.
11. See J. Gagarin, L’Eglise russe et L’immaculee conception, Paris 1876.
12. See Makary Bulgakov, History of the Russian Church (Russian) 1890, t. XII, p. 681. On the Polotsk brotherhood, see the article by Golubiev, in the Trudv of the Academy of Kiev, November 1904, pp. 164-167.
13. See N. Subbotin, History of the hierarchy of Bielo-Krinitza (Russian), Moscow, 1874, t. I, p. xlii of the Preface.
14. An article by M. Jugie, “Le dogme de l’immaculee conception d’apres un theologien russe,” in Echos d’Orient, 1920, t. XX, p. 22, gives an analysis of Lebedev’s monography.
15. Letter of Archbishop Anthony of Volhynia to the Old Believers, in the organ of the Russian Holy Synod, The Ecclesiastical News of 10 March 1912, p. 399. Morozov’s reply is contained in the same periodical on 14 July 1912, pp. 1142-1150.
16. Hom. III in Praesentat., Migne P.G. t. C, col. 1444.
17. Hom. in Nativ. B. Mariae, Greek Cod. 1213 of the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris, fol. 3, r.
18. On the whole subject see M. Jugie, “De immaculata Deiparae conceptione a byzantinis scriptoribus post schisma consummatum edocta”, in Acta II conventus Velehradensis, Prague 1910; and article “Immaculee Conception,” in Dictionnaire de theologie catholique, Paris 1922, t. VII, col. 894-975. This last article by Jugie gives a complete bibliography of the subject. Much will also be found in P. de Meester, “Le dogme de l’immaculee conception et la doctrine de l’Eglise grecque”: 5 articles published in the Revue de l’Orient chretien, Paris, 1904-1905.
(From Chrysostom, Vol. VI, No. 5 [Spring 1983]: 151-159)
Eclectic Orthodoxy 
Theologically I do not know, but. Mary was a sinner! Jesus Himself called her out more than once! Even to the point of eventually totally ignoring her, leaving her outside and saying to those within, ‘Who is my mother and my brothers? Who ever does the will of my father’ We make it so hard. Mary was born like everyone else. Not with original sin! That’s just daft. But with the capacity to sin, and inherited things from her own family, that damaged her…possibly why she had that encounter with Jesus ignoring her! But she was a virgin in that she had not slept or been with a man. And was pure not so much because of her virginity, but her ATTITUDE. Mary submitted to God. THAT was what purified her! Her obedience. Her choice to trust. Which, coincidentally, is what purifies ALL of us. I do not believe Mary is special in heaven. People have mad her into a god and she is not. She died like everyone else. There is only ONE Christ. And it is not Mary. She needed Him to save her just like us all. But she had more wisdom than many of us. And was given Grace. And she USED that grace to ponder. And when we ponder we think deeply. She did. And helped many. But still it was her choice to ‘Let it be as You will it’ that purified her. If she had refused that, well, she would have been like everyone else! Sometimes I think we can get lost in trying to work out the ‘workings’ rather than focusing on what Mary herself would say, ‘Look at my Son. Follow Him.’ She would acknowledge her human fallenness and encourage us to see and seek CHRIST alone! Not try to work out how, where and when God purified her. Because we are in danger of doing what Jesus said to the priests they did, ‘getting lost in discussing pointless genealogies’ I think Paul said that…either way, that’s what doing this kind of thing does if we are not careful. We are looking at the dead straw on the floor, trying to find meaning in it, rather than looking up and seeing Who made the straw!
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May I suggest that you do not in fact know that Mary was a sinner. The instances of Jesus “rebuking” her mother do not amount to sin, i.e., rebellion against God, nor does her death. Her errors do not evidence sin, only fallibility. Her death only shows that she too had to suffer the inevitable end of humanity’s fallen condition. May I suggest that you ruminate on the early patristic witness to Mary both as the Mother of God incarnate and the New Eve. I commend to you John Henry Newman’s reflections on Mary: https://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/pusey/index.html.
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We are all sinners! Romans 3v23. All have fallen short of the glory of God. But I am reading the early church fathers. And Thankyou SO much for the link! I will definitely chase that up and report back!
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I have – perhaps wrongly – thought that the Roman doctrine of the immaculate conception was a way to “escape” Augustine’s view of original guilt, that all of Adam’s progeny are already guilty of Adam’s sin. So the Theotokos “had to be absolved” of Adam’s guilt before Christ could be born in her so that, by Christ taking flesh from her He would not, by inheritance, become also guilty “in Adam”. Nothing in the article mentions this as part of the debate/discussion, but Orthodoxy, at least in my imperfect understanding, has always denied original and “inherited” (non-culpable) guilt just because we’re born. Ancestral sin we all inherited is a fallen, corrupted nature. It has never erased the create image in each of us, but clearly (Romans 7) it is “much easier to sin than to do right.” We are only guilty, culpable before God and others as a result of making choices to ignore or disobey God (our conscience, nature — Romans 2 et al). St. Mary, through her faithfulness to her Jewish parents and tradition, never knowingly or willingly cooperated with the fallen nature she inherited from Joachim and Anne. Thus, she lived, by grace and the Holy Spirit, a spotless, immaculate life, never culpable as all of the rest of us are. I would appreciate any comments to help me in my understanding. Am I thinking of this whole topic according to Orthodox consensus through all ages, or do some Orthodox theologians also agree with Augustine on the topic of inherited guilt?
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FWIW, I agree with you that the Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception depends on an Augustinian understanding of original sin. Because the Orthodox Church does not hold this understanding–hence the distinction many Orthodox make between “original sin” and “ancestral sin”–she has not felt it necessary to formulate or dogmatize Mary’s immaculate conception, as John Meyendorff notes in his book Byzantine Theology.
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Thanks for this clarification Father. On the Augustinian point – if something like a supratemporal view of the fall is correct, with Adam-as-all-humanity supratemporally choosing to fall away from th divine, what is the distinction between this view (in terms of our personal guilt for the fall) vs. the Augustinian view? i.e. if humanity, as a collective, has chosen to fall, then doesn’t that mean we are all in some sense personally guilty of the fall, and that the tendency to sin is not simply inherited via the ‘ancestral’ sin of living in the fallen world, but is rather something that we (or at least our ‘deeper self’ of supratemporal adamic humanity) are responsible for?
(perhaps that isn’t a view you hold to yourself – apologies if not – I’m making a bit of an assumption based on your mentions of the Silmarillion! – but either way I thought a view worth interacting with given DBH and Bulgakov appear to hold to something like it)
And to get to the point of why I’m raising this topic in a post about the IC…. if original sin is indeed a supratemporal fall of humanity… well doesn’t locating the fall in this way make it more difficult for us to hold Mary has escaped it? If our liability to sin is not simply a tendency inherited from another, but is something our deepest self has in some sense participated in, which humanity has supratemporally and collectively chosen, why isn’t that true of Mary also?
Does anyone know whether Bulgakov, who held to something like the supratemporal Adam-as-humanity view, explicitly addressed the question of how Mary’s sinlessness related to his supratemporal take on the fall?
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Thanks Father – much appreciate your blog, your ongoing efforts to look honestly and authentically at many of the issues which, sadly, still divide East and West. This article was of timely interest to me as I, an Orthodox Christian, have been invited with my long-time RC friend to team-teach an “advanced theological catechism” at his large downtown RC parish. We will focus our sessions on the first millennium, and I’d be surprised if this issue came up, but don’t want to misspeak if an attendee asks me.
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It seems to me that point 6 (in the conclusion) does not follow from point 5; an argument can be made because the IC can at best be an opinion a reconciliation would be difficult as the RC made a dogmatic move. Reconciliation would entail repudiation of the IC as dogma, not a small move.
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In ecumenical discussions, Rome has never demanded of Orthodoxy that it must affirm the dogma of Immaculate Conception; it has only asked that it not condemn it.
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Aha! There’s the path to reconciliation – condemn the dogma, but accept it as a theologoumenon. However, if it must stand as a dogma, I don’t see how this could be acceptable to the EO. And rejecting dogma strikes at the heart of what makes Rome Rome.
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This article, written by a deceased roman catholic ecumenist convert, does not have a quote which actually proves his thesis until at least the 17 century, and it is not from a saint.
Ironically, after that the only saint he cites is Nicodemus, and Nicodemus rejected the thesis…that does not look good.
“The Council of Moscow of 1666 approved Simeon Polotsky’s book called The Rod of Direction, in which he said: “Mary was exempt from original sin from the moment of her conception”.12.”
We would need context. We have ecumenical councils that approved canons and statements opposed to papal supremacy. We have council of Jerusalem in it’s sixth decree saying Mary had original sin. So, a council endorsing a book does not mean every statement in that book is instantly endowed with the authority of the council, any more the fifth council accepting “all the writings of Augustine and Theophilus of Alexandria” does the same. Plus, we know the council of jassy explicitly rejected Latinisms in st peter mogilas confession. So, without further context on how the council endorsed this book, we don’t know how much father lev is stretching it (which judging by how palamas was cited, who in the very first paragraph of his fifth homily asserts the theotokos had original sin, is quite a bit)
Mainstream Marian scholars like Stephen Shoemaker, Maria Evangelatou, and Brian Reynolds–all living scholars who are up to date on this stuff and have significant time after Father Julie and Wenger to see past a lot of the vague argumentation to “prove” a Byzantine Immaculate conception reject such notions and view them as quaint (Shoemaker speaks of Wengers scholarship as having “unconcealed prejudice” when dealing with roman catholic Marian doctrine). So granted this is the internet so no one really has access to stuff from living scholarship unless they buy books, know how to use JSTOR, and etc, but these arguments that the Orthodox affirm a roman catholic doctrine they rejected twice in two councisl, jersualem 1672 being a pan Orthodox one, are quaint at best and embarrassing at worst.
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Gillet’s claims are quite modest. All he asserts is that there exists a line of thought in second millennium Eastern thought that might be considered as analogous to the Latin doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. He does not claim that it enjoys dogmatic status. He explicitly describes it as theological opinion (theologoumenon). To assess his claims one would need to follow through with the sources he cites. And for what it’s worth, he does mention two saints specifically in support of his claim for a Byzantine equivalent of the Immaculate Conception: St Georges Scholarios and St Dimitry Rostov.
Even so, it does seem to me that important differences must exist between Byzantine construals of the original sanctity of the Theotokos and the defined Latin dogma of the Immaculate Conception, because the latter is clearly dependent upon a scholastic understanding of original sin (i.e., privation of grace, perhaps combined with an Augustinian intimation of original guilt)–understandings which the Orthodox do not affirm. Do these differences constitute insuperable obstacles to reunion? To point: have they been identified in official ecumenical discussions as obstacles? As far as I know, the Catholic Church does not insist that the East must embrace the either the Latin understanding of original sin or the Latin formulation of the IC for reunion. Regarding your claim that the 1672 Council of Jerusalem condemned the Latin doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, please provide citations. As far as I can tell, it simply reaffirmed the Eastern view of ancestral sin (decree 6). The IC dogma was not on the synodical agenda.
For those who might want to read the articles or books by Stephen Shoemaker, Maria Evangelatou, and Brian Reynolds on Byzantine Mariological thought, please provide specific citations. Thanks.
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Three things, because my intent is not to debate this topic.
1. Gillet does not bring up anything that explicitly teaches the immaculate conception until the 17th century (though I personally agree with his inference about Scholarios as the most likely interpretation of that saint’s words, though I disagree with many of his other inferences). Most of his quotes depend upon the context of works which are not available in English, so to an English speaking audience that can exact scrutiny on his claims, this requires simply trusting Gillet.
2. On that note, the fact you ask for citations, to me is evidence that we don’t simply take anyone at their word–which should include Gillet. As for the citations:
Evangelatou noted that “Mary had to face the inevitability of death” due to original sin. This is on the first page of “The symbolism of the censer in Byzantine representations of the Dormition of the Virgin”, ed. M. Vassilaki, Images of the Mother of God. Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 117-125.
Reynolds, while addressing the assumption, observed that the dormition homilies of Andrew of Crete, Germanus, and Damascene conveyed the concept that the Theotokos had original sin. This is in Gateway to Heaven: Marian Doctrine and Devotion, Image and Typology in the Patristic and Medieval Periods, Volume 1. All of this is covered in his chapter on the Assumption, which begins on p. 293. His main treatment is between 295-308. For example, he states that, “For Germanus, it was essential that Mary should truly undergo death…because she was subject to the law of death imposed on all decedents of Adam.” (p. 303) Concerning Andrew of Crete, Mary died as “human nature was condemned as a result of the Fall” and this “sentence” was not “removed by Redemption.” (p. 304) Later in the book in his chapter on the Immaculate Conception, Reynolds notes that “in the Greek Church a peculiar dichotomy long persisted between fulsome, hyperbolic praise that was heaped upon the Virgin and the belief she was not entirely free from defects.” (p. 334) He candidly notes that the Damascene “suggest[ed] she had some trace of original sin” (p. 342) and that the dormition homilies of Byzantium “should not be understood to be affirming the Immaculate Conception in the Western sense.”* (p. 339)
*Orthodox hymnography speaks of the Theotokos’ “immaculate conception,” (see Ode 7, Canon 2, Paragraph 4 during Matins of the Nativity of the Theotokos) but this is in reference to Saint Joachim and Anna’s dispassionate relations in conceiving her. See Damascene, Oration on the Nativity, Chapter 2; 6; Germanus, Oration on the Annunciation, Chapter 3; and Cosmas Vestitor, Sermon on Joachim and Anna, Chapter 3. All citations can be referenced in Cunningham, Wider than Heaven. Saint Paisios reports an apparition of the Theotokos who explicitly told him this when he was in Saint Catherine’s monastery.
As for Shoemaker, anyone who has read him pretty much anywhere would know this is how he feels. One needs to turn no farther than the first chapter of his first important Marian book, “The Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption.” He speaks of Jugie’s and Wenger’s “unconcealed prejudice.” (p. 16) In another article he states they have “theological prejudices” inconsistent with what the primary sources reveal vis a vis Roman Catholic dogma. (See Stephen J. Shoemaker, ‘The (Re?)Discovery of the Kathisma Church’, Maria: A Journal of Marian Studies 1.2, 2001, 41.)
Shoemaker is hardly original with his view. Meyendorf calls Jugie’s and Wenger’s analyses of the immaculate conception “out of context” in Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes. New York: Fordham University Press, 1974, 147.
Being that all I am asking is someone read the first page of a 12 page article, a chapter each of two books, (okay, maybe two chapters from Reynolds’), and a single page from Meyendorf, I believe one in the English language can get sufficient context behind what I quoted above.
3. Decree 6 of Jerusalem 1672 teaches what ancestral (it also uses the word “original” in it’s latin version) sin is and includes the Theotokos. So, it is irrelevant that the IC was not on the agenda, because it explicitly contradicts its very premise when treating the topic.
God bless,
Craig
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The greatest problem with the idea of immaculate conception is also the most obvious: namely, if God could just do that at any time why not have all conceptions immaculate? It makes sense if you’re a Calvinist, with all the horrifying ideas of cosmic lottery that implies, but not if you accept God genuinely does want to save all people. Simply doing that for everyone sounds like it would mean a lot less pain and misery for everyone involved.
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I agree, the arbitrariness of it all makes God out to be a voluntarist monster. Also, it does seem to contradict Rom 3:23.
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Eve was immaculately conceived…and she sinned. So immaculate conception does not predestine sinlessness, it still requires holiness. It’s just easier to not sin.
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Eve, assuming she was in fact a literal person, was not conceived in a conventional sense at all. She came out of Adam’s rib one night, presumably already an adult.
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Still no original sin, so I don’t see the significant of this. 🙂
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Rob, JBG, and others:
The objection of arbitrariness proves too much. It equally applies, as Robert Fortuin notes above, to divine healings, miracles, special acts of grace and visitations–indeed, the entire economy of salvation. Why did God choose the Hebrews to be his people and not the Egyptians or Moabites? For both Jews and Christians, the scandal of particularity and contingency is inescapable. We aren’t deists.
Why was Mary chosen to bear and raise the eternal Word within her womb? Why not Mabel down the road instead? And if God should deem that her vocation required a special gift of deifying grace, why should we complain? Did it relieve her from the hard ascetical work of self-denial, sacrifice, and obedience? No. Did it protect her from afflictions, grief, and death? No. Every calling from God brings its own burdens and sufferings. As Symeon warned the Theotokos while Jesus was still an infant, “A sword will pierce through your own soul.”
The “arbitrariness” of God is just another way of speaking of grace.
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Fr. Al: “The ‘arbitrariness’ of God is just another way of speaking of grace.”
This is reminiscent of what Calvinists employ as a defense of limited salvation.
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Except, in a universalist conception, that arbitrariness of grace always rebounds and overflows and does not remain in limited caprice, so also biblical Israel in its ideal and later the Church is to be a “royal priesthood and holy nation,” Abraham to be a “blessing for the nations,” intermediaries and intercessors for the cosmos. Mary’s grace and glory also becomes ours because, in her acceptance of God’s request, she chooses to share and sacrifice her own Son – and also her own human substance she gave to Him – to us, rather than keep Him around the house, as I suppose most mothers would do, to spare them that. It’s a gift that keeps giving.
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The complaint is simply that it seems to disprove the idea that a God who could in any meaningful sense be called loving exists. If any parent could snap their fingers and just remove any sort of character flaws from their children in the womb, wouldn’t any who weren’t utterly malicious (still less morally perfect) just do it?
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Rob, I also believe that it is right and proper to petition God for all sorts of things. Sometimes he says yes, sometimes no. Talk about arbitrary. But no one is going to talk me out of that belief. That’s just part of the biblical God’s job description.
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Phew, good thing salvation isn’t as arbitrary as other divine expressions of compassion!
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There’s a difference between not giving something inessential or even harmful and declining to do something both apparently effortless and unambiguously morally positive.
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Rob: “ if God could just do that at any time why not…”
The same question arises with so called divine healings of illness, which is why I don’t believe in them. Just as God saves all people, so God also doesn’t specially heal or specially bless anyone here on earth, in my opinion. A God that affords favorable treatment to a select few in the here and now is inconsistent with the core of the universalist message. Creation ex nihilo is the primal (and only) miracle given to human beings.
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Yikes – will have to redact the Gospel accounts then. 😉
Why not suppose that an occasional healing can be a foretelling of the universal healing, a breaking through of the end in our present? Doesn’t a healing have the ability to change more than just the person ailing? Isn’t the whole cosmos healed by a unique healing from death itself, afforded to an obscure carpenter?
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Hi Robert,
Yes, the cosmos is healed in that creation/salvation are the selfsame singular act.
“Why not suppose that an occasional healing can be a foretelling of the universal healing, a breaking through of the end in our present?”
But it still amounts to special treatment. God doesn’t save anyone in particular, so I don’t see God healing anyone (physically, psychologically) in particular. You may feel they are distinct but I would disagree.
Why to one and not another when, in the final analysis, all are equally deserving (or undeserving) of God’s healing grace right this very moment? We answer by invoking the mystery of God’s will.
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P.S.—Why not read the gospel accounts of healing as a foretelling of the universal spiritual healing of all, rather than as literal accounts of the miraculous healing of a particular person’s disease?
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I do, I just don’t think that an either/or interpretation is warranted. I don’t see the particular set against the universal. While the particular is a manifestation, an image, an instance, of the universal. (even in its tragic condition of the particular) the universal is likewise contained in the particular. I don’t see a sharp line between nature and grace.
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Right, but why one particular and not another? That is the question. Is there a reason why that particular person is miraculously healed, beyond the “breaking though” of the healing itself? Why were they chosen?
And for that matter, if there is no sharp dividing line between the universal and the particular and God miraculously heals one the experience of one particular in this very world, then why not all particulars? What precludes God from healing all particulars in the same way that he affords it to one, right here in this world?
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Although this may disappoint, allow me to invoke the world of divine mystery, a world I believe is more true and beautiful than that which the unexpecting eye, at first, beholds. A supernatural natural universe which appears strange yet feels like home, which is upside down yet turns out to be right side up. A world in which the common, the last, the least and the loathed are first, cherished and crowned; where it is more blessed to give than it is to receive; where indigence is preferred over wealth. Where enemies are embraced, the sinner restored, the outcast welcomed, the lost found. A world in which plain wheat is God’s body, a common grape the blood of Life. This world I see has nothing that is precluded, no thing, no person, no particular that is unchosen, forgotten, there is nothing left out. The table is set, the feast has started. It beckons: come all and sup and partake of the mysteries.
JBG I behold that world only in part and only occasionally, even though I am never not surrounded by it; it strangely breaks forth from the familiar and through the ordinary. Sometimes the mystery comes as the special, sometimes it is merely the plain. Sometimes I don’t want to see it, to my shame. And I do not know from whence are sorrow, pain and suffering; yet those too, I believe, with death itself shall not be left unknown, unchosen, forgotten, unredeemed.
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Robert – thank you so much for this short but absolutely wonderful glimpse into the mystical “supernatural natural world.” I immediately recognized that I will use this as my summary in two week when I present a session entitled “Theological Healing and the Divine Trinity.” Thank you for your faithfulness.
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I’ve had, like so many others, more than my fair share of tragic Illness in my family. I’ve seen innocent children suffer and die our in family while we prayed (literally begged God for years) for healing which, of course, never came.
I’ve stopped asking the questions “Why us?”, “Why them?”. They are questions that have no answers because in reality, no one was healed. Yes, people sometimes spontaneously recover from illness, accident, or disease in a way that most others don’t, but it has nothing to do with a special healing intervention from God.
Yes, I believe that all are saved but that none are singled out for anything in this present world, either positive or negative.
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This seems strange objection to divine healing or any special healing of any sort. If the idea is that all humans should get exactly the same treatment at all times so that God doesn’t specially bless people here and now, they bluntly (as a result of creation) why are some born into blessed lives (relatively speaking), into places, times, families, circumstances that give them also sorts of advantages over other people, genetically, temporally, financially, socially etc and so on. They are born to rich parents, in a rich and technological advanced country, with access to the best medical technology, the best genes, best situation to continue both possessing and hoarding their wealth. This compared with a poor person, with terminal conditions, or chronic and permanent conditions with no recourse to technology (either it’s there and they can’t get it, or are born before it), don’t have the financial, social and geographical connections to make the best what they could be. They don’t have the genetically advantages of others. So are resistant to diseases and conditions that take others down easily, and so on.
They are born in a place and time that either cursed by the world God has brought into being, in that place in what He brings into being, to a torturous life, or into a time and place to be condemned to a living hell.
You could argue that given what they are born into they might better far into the eternal (maybe) than the better off who abuse their position, but that just puts the blessing in a twisted way the other way around.
Either way in creating from nothing God would already be specially blessing some more than others. The issue with either way, is that we don’t see the whole picture, sometimes we can, someone has roles and connections (at least potentially) beyond themselves. So election is to take one example not to narrow but include, Israel is chosen to been the means of delivering all humanity (and they certainly suffered more because of that burden), and within Christianity Christ the full realisation of that, united to humanity to save and complete it (just as humanity is elected to do so for all creation). After all, the same logic applies to humans, why are we blessed beyond animals, why we are so blessed beyond them, and them beyond non-living so (and so and so on). But of course to be elected is to have not only a responsibility but to be the means of uplifting beyond yourself, the same goes for miracles and so on. Should they be they go far beyond the person they are done to, and form part of a tapestry into the eternal we don’t even fully see yet, including all but also specific to each person.
This logic also applies to the Theotokos, it isn’t some random person specifically blessed for arbitrary reasons, she is focal point of our union into God, saved and made holy by Christ’s power which is in all of us (because we are not separate but are union of persons, united to Christ). She isn’t made special just for her, but for the divnisation of humanity as a whole, so being the new Eve.
And I say this as someone who, like yourself, has lost very close family members who I loved dearly to disease and chronic health conditions (both arguably put in better situations might have survived) so I’m not talking as someone outside the seeming arbitrary and cruel suffering of this world that is currently realised. God also didn’t miraculously heal them either despite all prays and pleading. So while I get you egalitarian objections, it already fails anyway (at least now) just by creation from nothing, both between humans and certainly between humans and others forms of life (and they between each other, and non-life, assuming it is non-life). I don’t see the difference, of course you could site the eternal future dealing or providing the means to deliver from/sort that out and give reason for it. But the same could be said for any kind of beyond normal healing, or any other potential miracles.
So if you say that if God does miracles would somehow be an obstacle to his loving all equally and not fitting with universal salvation, than the world as it is already would speak to that. If your argument would hold true, than God already isn’t a God of love nor justice as we think it, he has favourites and other purposes that have nothing to do with concern for life or humankind apart from a larger purpose He alone has. I don’t accept that, though I feel the pull to that vew of the world, but rejecting healing doesn’t save you from the darker view of God you feel it implies. The current world is suffient for that already, all due to his creation from nothing, all time, space, every aspect a person find themselves born into. And again, if the argument is that there is an eternity that makes sense and in the light of which this arbitariness is shown to be not so, then the same allies to any and all supernatural interactions, including divine healings.
So your objections to just divine healing doesn’t really make much sense to me, at least not on the grounds you give.
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What seems altogether inconsistent is that a miraculous healing intervention for corporate humanity in the present world (say, eliminating disease) is always represented as a radical infringement upon the humanity’s agency and self-determination. We are told that God can’t do that. We are pulled from Nothingness and “condemned to freedom” and must experience all of the ineluctable ramification that this entails.
But strangely, this never seems to be an issue when it purported to happen to an individual. Why is this healing not a curtailment of their free will? There is a clear disjunction, especially if one is to claim that there is no clear line of demarcation from the particular and the universal.
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Again a strange objection. Everything that makes you up is therefore an ‘curtailment’ of your freewill, including the healing and self-defensive proporties of your body, God gave you that, however you look at it without your say so. That also includes in resistances you happen to have against certain diseases and conditions, any advantages you have biologically, socially, etc and so on, any good fortune that comes your way.
I mean, is this really a serious objection? Because it seems a silly hill to die on. Because again as I said above, if it really is such an issue for you, then recognise that God by your measure already is favouring all sort of people (and people over other life-forms). He isn’t egalitarian in that sense, if this a serious problem then perhaps he/it is something to feared and dreaded not that there’s much you can do about it. If that’s the case, if that be God we are all just puppets dancing to some other purpose, and objections would be meaningless to that utimate reality which would hardly care).
But in anycase, usually their aren’t forced, if we take Gospel accounts say as reflecting geniune healings, even the raising of the dead is not against people’s will. Same for most accounts of supernatural healing, those that are healed one way or another want to be healed.
Like I said, I find your objects a getting a little weird on these points. I can see other reasons people object to healing (disbelief in miracles for example) but this point seems odd to me.
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Grant: “I can see other reasons people object to healing (disbelief in miracles for example)”
This is what I am saying. Yes, I disbelieve in miracles.
If God intervenes to alter the regular course of nature for the benefit of one individual, well then certainly he could do the same for the benefit of all, since all are but a collection of individuals. In fact, there would be no plausible reason why he wouldn’t. God could theoretically intervene to make the world a better place without making it perfect, just as healing a person of disease improves their life without making it perfect.
The objection to the possibility of God intervening to improve the world as a whole are typically predicated on the tired old “free will” defense. This is what I am pointing out. This, as you rightly note, is not an valid argument. Improving the life of all beings in the present world would be no more of an assault on our “free will” than the healing of one is an assault on theirs. This is the problem.
So, explain why what is possible for one, is impossible for all… without recourse to “divine mystery”?
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Ah I see. But you believe that God creates from nothing, a miracle beyond any other (which includes this very moment). This also includes bringing a universe that is manifestly unfair into existence. Where soje people are blessed much more than others, have advantages over others, others are cursed. And it’s a universe where us humans are blessed over other animals and they over others, unless you think getting your face chewed off by a prwy mantis is leading a more blessed life 😉 ).
So if that’s the heart of the objection you have with just creation from nothing. If you were just skeptical that would be something else, but you believe in the spiritual so you already accept supernatural realities so that doesn’t seem to be it.
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Grant: “But you believe that God creates from nothing, a miracle beyond any other (which includes this very moment).”
But even in this sense, one might say that the whole is a kind of miracle in that it came from nothing. When “everything is a miracle” well then nothing is singled out as miracle above and beyond everything else. Do you understand that?
You might say that a child being born with Epidermolysis bullosa or Progeria syndrome are the very same miracles as a child born healthy. Or a young person dying from an agonizing neurodegenerative disease is the same miracle as a person who abuses their body but lives a long fruitful life. It’s all the very same miracle.
Grant: “Where soje people are blessed much more than others, have advantages over others, others are cursed. And it’s a universe where us humans are blessed over other animals and they over others…”
No, in fact I don’t think that some are more blessed by God. That’s the whole point. I don’t think that being born into wealth or being born into poverty, being born healthy or being born with disease, being born with talents or being born with disabilities are the results of God’s extra manipulation of creation. I think there are manifold complex causes for the arising of these conditions, not the least of which is chance (the lottery of birth), but most certainly not special supervening acts from God. Of that, I am unwaveringly convinced.
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To expound upon what I wrote:
God created a process wherein all of the conditions of our world both pleasant and unpleasant—including evil, suffering, and death—were from the very start at least possible, if not practically inevitable.
But there is a distinction, albeit a fine one, between creating the process wherein some condition may occur as opposed to directly creating the condition. Moreover, there is a greater distinction between the former and directly imparting said condition upon a particular person. Doesn’t DBH’s quasi-theodicy hinge upon that very distinction?
Remember, God formed the light and created darkness; He made peace and created evil. So yes, God makes peace (i.e., heals) in the sense that this world-process was created to include spontaneous remissions as a possible outcome. Likewise, God creates evil (imparts illness) in the sense that this process was created to include horrific disease as a possible outcome.
Grant, you write “…others are cursed.”
This brings me to a final point. If God doles special healing blessings upon particular people, then the inverse must also be true. To be deprived of a blessing (especially if one is in dire circumstances) differs little from what might be considered a “curse”. Believing that God singles out some for special blessings would mean, necessarily, that others are selected to NOT receive said blessing, even if this withholding results in untold misery and despair here on earth. It is frankly absurd to imagine God operating in this manner.
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One last thing…
Grant, I know that you are one that is especially nauseated by the mere intimation that evil is somehow necessary or utilized by God. But, as counterintuitive as it may seem at first blush, this is exactly what one would have if God doled out special blessings upon particular people. Let me explain…
Like you, I am one that holds evil and suffering to be absolutely devoid of reason, meaning and purpose. And this is especially true of particular instantiations of evil and suffering. I don’t think there is reason why individual X suffers in the particular way that they do. I don’t think Kate was specifically chosen to get MS rather than her neighbor Jill. I don’t think those specifics are part of the cosmic design. The very nature of evil and suffering is that they are senseless, irrational, and disordered.
But this perspective simply cannot be maintained in the event of special divine healing interventions. For if God heals some individuals, then there must be some reason why others are not healed. Therefore, there must be some reason why they are chosen to remain in their particular states of suffering. Their suffering is not only condoned, but divinely ordained.
In this scenario, all particular instances of evil are therefore deliberately chosen. Evil and suffering can no longer be claimed to be incidental. On the contrary, each instance of unimaginable pain and suffering would be specifically and deliberately chosen by God for each individual that experiences them.
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See I quite disagree, creation from nothing is everything, all of time and space, every part of it is created. God isn’t a god, he isn’t a watchmaker starting off the process and hoping for the best, all, everything, every moment of time, every aspect is brought from nothing. God brings it all into being, and for our perspective is, at this very moment bringing this moment into being. Each and every aspect is both a large and a particularly miracle, in light of that, I don’t see the objection to miracles of similar that in a more specific and particular aspect. Every act of conciousness, every spiritual experience is a example of that specific aspect of that interaction and supernatural nature being experienced and acted. Your thoughts, my thoughts in this very interaction is no different essential to any other supernatural action (and is the result of God’s direct action taking place), so the constant and intimate act of the one (since the creation is entirely initmate and specific even as it is also large scale) I don’t see it preventing miracles. The opposite really, as far as I can see.
And I also disagree about some not being more blessed, whatever the reason, creation as it is does make more people blessed (and humanity is of course far more blessed than any other lifeform on this planet) and some people (and certainly animals planets extra) are more cursed than other humans (or humanity as a whole). You can argue there is reasons for this, but clearly some have many advantages, and while from our perspective birth is a lottery (where and when and to whom a human is born, and beyond is something is born human or say 100 million years ago was born a small mammal, a dinosaur of some sort, a reptile, an amobea etc). But from the divine perspective it absolutely not a lottery, God creates from nothing, all time, all space, all aspects of reality, every moment, every connection, all is from Him freely created without constraints. That means it no lottery, everyone is born exactly where God wants them born (human or otherwise), and in the condtions their born into (biological, social, environmental, finanncial, etc and so on). It is exactly the result of God’s superventing actions (which is part and parcel of creation from nothing).
God cannot be creating darkness (if darkness is to be understood as evil),and still be good as we mean it. Then he is the author of evil, it’s as simple as that (or whatever else you want to call God), it would be beyond good and evil but as DBH points out, that just to say evil from our understanding/
And I would agree, distinctions would apply a suggestion that God both blesses and curses some with all the problems that applies, and yes, without divine healing God is stil opperating in exactly that manner. He is very specifically doling out blessings and cursings in the reality we inhabit.
Now, just as with the reaiity we have, you can say that (say super-temporal time actions between various rational beings) something in creation caused it to fall to nothingness. That this is what was possible, and was somehow actualised. That leads to the creation we have, and that God is providentially working withing and through that, as creation is a free thing responding dynamically in it’s mistaken Fall/Illusion whatever to this. In that respect what are still blessed and cursed states don’t come as direct intentions of God prior (that some are not) but He still creates it, working through it. THe blessing is allowed to potentially help in the cursed state, somehow in the redeemed creation all things work together to deliver and bring it completion, That includes those who get more blessed or a better advantage (so Christ raises all humanity, Israel is a means of redemption, someone is genius to potenially they could invent something to help many others, humans are the means by which all animals are delivered into glorification, that to be blessed is to be servant to others), and even these small bits make up something beyond current comprehension in the age (ages) to come when the illusion goes. The pattern of the whole delivered from futility reveals the whole.
But the same is exactly so of divine healing, it is a aspect not just for the person, and it’s role in what that person could do, others effected by it could do, and what it makes in the total reality to come (considering a damaged world) will should (just as creation) not to be God simply aribitarially blessing or cursing people.
But if that doesn’t convince then the world as it is faces you with exactly the same problem. If divine healing is truly aribtary leaving some blessed and some curesed, then that would just be example of what God is doing anyway. Then God is already like this, in that case we are just pawns in some larger story He’s doing and hardly cares much for us. Then God isn’t the God of Christianity or most theisms people look to, but something much more cold and ‘other’, something rather evil (kind of Calvinist God without the hyprocracy).
In that case all bets are off. Father Kimel once said he found atheism a constant temptation, I don’t. To me, in such a situation that would be the comforting delusion, the reality would be far more terrifying, that ulimate reality is something beautiful yes, but utterly terrifying and callous, essentially for our perspective evil.
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Grant: “everyone is born exactly where God wants them born (human or otherwise), and in the condtions their born into (biological, social, environmental, finanncial, etc and so on).”
I’m sorry, so God intentionally brings people into their particular conditions of great suffering? I simply cannot countenance that. I fail to see how this doesn’t consist in God utilizing suffering and therefore evil/suffering being indispensable to the revelation of Goodness. So, we’ll have to agree to disagree.
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Grant: “God isn’t a god, he isn’t a watchmaker starting off the process and hoping for the best, all, everything, every moment of time, every aspect is brought from.
On the contrary, one who tinkers with creation is very much of a watchmaker god. God doesn’t need to tinker with creation, as it is already imbued with his presence—presence alone sufficient to support it and its interior movement into the Good. Yes, the world is happening within God-Being. It cannot ultimately go astray. It doesn’t need to be micromanaged.
Contingency, chance, randomness, disorder, and chaos are aspects of finitude that the cosmos most certainly has to deal with on its journey of outgrowing such constraints. They do not arise from God and are not chosen by God. If the world was exactly as God wanted it, well then it would be heavenly joy and bliss.
A God who divinely ordains evil/suffering both in the abstract and uniquely crafts all of our particular travails and miseries cannot he called Good.
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It is incoherent in my view to suppose that an intentional act of beneficence is also the intentional privation of beneficence. It is non-sense. The virginal birth does not curse natural birth. The descent of the Holy Spirit on the particular does not doom the universal.
I surmise that in the present we live in age marked by a provisional dualism, in which evil has been granted a way and a place, a mixed brew in which the good and evil co-exist for the time being. Divine interventions do happen, the darkness cannot prevent them, and in this age these particular blessings are the breaking through, a foretaste, of that future kingdom which knows no evil, no dualism. The occasional miracle, the hallowing of the particular, serves to sanctify all, prophetically announcing to the cosmos the tidings of the evangel the cause of which is the “mother of all interventions” and the “healing of all healings”, the conception of the God-Man.
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Robert: “It is incoherent in my view to suppose that an intentional act of beneficence is also the intentional privation of beneficence. It is non-sense. The virginal birth does not curse natural birth. The descent of the Holy Spirit on the particular does not doom the universal.”
I was speaking more in the context of the purported miraculous healing of devastating disease. And no, it is not nonsense if one, for instance, considers two individuals with disease—a bit different than simply “the natural state”. Of course, the intentional choice to not to heal one is a privation of beneficence. To be left in a state of misery is not an act of beneficence, at least not in my world. But I guess we all live in different worlds, so to speak.
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“To be left in a state of misery is not an act of beneficence” – precisely my point my dear fellow, as such is neither an act of malice on God’s part but rather a manifestation of the condition of provisional dualism.
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Suppose, old chap, that you have a group of people all expectantly gathered together to receive a cure for their disease. There is enough for everyone, yet only two receive the medicine. This means, by definition, that the rest were intentionally deprived of the medicine. Of course, the deprivation of the many can only be deemed intentional if some were not deprived.
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Yes, JBG in such a case of course you are right, but I do not take the conditions and limits of such to be our lot. We find ourselves in that provisional dualism in which the “it is here” and the “but not yet” live side by side; where the healing of some in the now and the healing of all in the Eschaton are in tension, where the raising of Lazarus indicates the raising of all.
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Great discussion guys. I am sympathetic to both of your positions in different ways.
I agree with JBG that failure to prevent a natural evil is tantamount to committing that evil – and that any appearance of divine ‘favouritism’ constitutes a serious problem for theodicy. However I don’t believe that this problem is insurmountable. While we should not think of God as micromanaging evil, Grant is surely right that God is not at fault for endowing his creatures with different capacities and propensities – and that these might ultimately map on to different experiences of evil which occur as a result of the world being fallen. That doesn’t mean that God is deliberately deciding to give certain children deadly diseases and not others. It’s more like how we might say that God decides that Jenny will be born in Glasgow while Jane will be born in Edinburgh – it just part of their personality, or at least part of the natural differences between souls that God intends. However, if the world is fallen, and if in that fallen world Glasgow suffers a terrorist attack but Edinburgh does not, then perhaps Jenny will die while Jane lives. So God’s pretemporal – and logically ‘prior’ to the fall – decision to create different types of souls will result in some suffering while others being ‘saved’, but without this implying God is to blame or has caused those evils.
That said, the apparent arbitrariness of Jesus’ miracles is indeed tricky. It’s one thing to give creatures different personalities and forms of existence, with the inevitable consequence that, in a fallen world, some will cope better than others. But it’s surely another to be in a position to offer serious help – to cure blindness, for example – but only to bother to do this for some but not others. If I discovered a cure for blindness or cancer, but shared it only with a select few while leaving the rest in their misery, I would surely be considered a monster. So why not God/Jesus?
Well, why think of miracles like that? In my view, miracles are not arbitrary interruptions into purely ‘natural’ processes, but rather express nature’s true origin and goal: the world is a sacrament, the manifestation of God’s presence, so is it is only ‘natural’ that acts of great healing and love should occur. However this doesn’t happen all the time because nature is fallen and so expresses the divine only imperfectly – but, the closer a human being is to God, the more transparent their body, their field of action, will be to the divine – and so the better he or she will express the divine presence. Therefore I hold that – rather than seeing Jesus’ miracles as a purely unnatural and arbitrary intervention – we should instead suppose that all deeply holy men and women are ‘naturally’ able to manifest God’s presence to a greater degree than the rest of us – i.e. to perform deeds that we would normally label as miraculous – and that Jesus, as the all-holy-one, had the greatest capacity to perform miracles of all. However, even Jesus’ earthly abilities are not infinite as they still take place in the context of a fallen world, and in particular are affected by the capacity of individuals to receive his blessings – which, I would surmise, is why the Gospels report that, in those locations where Jesus did not exactly have the greatest of receptions, he ‘could not do any miracles there’ and ‘did not do any miracles there on account of their lack of faith’. Please don’t take that as implying that everyone who is not healed is lacking in some capacity to receive – spiritual ‘victim blaming’ is not my intention -no doubt there are a million and one factors governing these things in a kind of spatiopsychospiritual chaos theory.
Going back to the original topic of the sinlessness of Mary, I agree that it does seem to be a problem if God arbitrarily decided to cleanse Mary of the burdens of sin while deliberately leaving the rest of us to languish in it – but again, we need not consider things in this way. Perhaps it is a good thing that lots of different types of souls/personalities exist – essential for eschatological perfection perhaps – but only a small number are capable of being preserved from sin in the event of the fall. This number is then, in practical terms, further reduced – because certain souls which, while hypothetically capable of being preserved from original sin *if* they are subject to the correct experiences, are not in fact subject to those experiences on account of the limits of the fallen world, and are therefore infected by original sin. I believe something like this is what is behind Palamas’ idea of the gradual purification of Mary’s ancestors – God, through the history of Israel, slowly and gradually gives individuals certain experiences which allow them to sin a little less, which in turn enables their friends and children to sin a little less also, until eventually you end up with Mary, who does not sin at all.
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I don’t say God mirco-manages, it is as you say, brought forth in every aspect from His very being, imbedded with it, all is brought into existence. A watchmaker has a distance from his creation, God does not. Everything in it’s entirety is brought into existence at all parts by God, all this creation, all it’s horror and beauty is imbued with His existence.
If what what He brings into being (assuming He is Good and Joy and so on, and assuming, a big if, this has any relation to what we think those mean, and any relation to how they function at our level) it would be Good from it’s very origin, no darkness there for the start. God brings all things into being, every moment, all nature of being brought forth from Himself, not constrained by anything, His nature is it’s base and it’s destination, and the contours of it’s movement. The only question is can what He brings into being fall into nothing within this, and how is that so. BUt both that possibilty and it’s actually is also something God brings into being. By being part of HIs nature, infused with Him to use your langauge, He orders all things, even the what is random in creation is not from the divine perspective. All secondary reactions are part of HIs creation from thing (since He brings those things and there reactions and all aspects of those reactions, choices and movements into being). Even in the less optimial reactions God still in bringing all aspects of creation, every specific thing as well as the whole (since that is one and the same) determines even providential it’s shape, nature and it nature of even it’s fallen form (assume this reality is fallen).
That close and initmate nature means of course God determines when all are born, He brings that very nature of reality into being, knows it as He knows Himself. Before you were born He knew you, brought into being where you are, you were never going to appear anywhere else, any randomness was part of the creation He brings into being, all apsects know, reacted to and accounted as part of His very creation.
So no, God chooses that nature of things as they are, that what it means to say brings everything from nothing. Now this could be provindial, not the ideal version, and only a stage and form determined by the Fall that will work all things towards rescue and completion. That’s quite possible, but still God determines all aspects of the provindially ordered relatisation of creation, just as He determined creation to have all those possiblities. There just isn’t randomness from the divine perspective and the primary creative Act.
God therefore does determine and choose whether you are human or some animal, or insect, and where, what time, place, to whom and what advanatages or disadvantages you have. That could be ‘forced’ on Him in the sense due to creative reaction (which He also brought into being) but even that reaction and it’s outfalling is part of HIs creative act, which He still determines, creates and brings that nature. Therefore the nature of paritcularies in their specific stituations and whole existences into being where and how they are.
A inbuilt ‘second road’ is still created and determined by God in relation to all choices and actions of creation, particularly given He creates all aspects, potentials for and possiblities of those choices (and there results) in the first place. I’m afriad He necessary does choose where a person, or any life-form is formed and born, when it is, how it is, and so on.
That might not be the end of the story, I don’t think it is, and personally I believe it isn’t His chosen ideal but an accommidation as part of redemption from the nigthmare. But the nightmare possiblity was inbuilt as a possilbity of creation (perhaps necessarily so for creation to be truly other) as part of a overall apsect to contain, prevent full falling into nothing and so for that bondage to death to be destroyed and creation released. And all lost into that nightmare released, even therefore to work underneath it in each aspect of creation’s slavery to release and bring it into completion. So we do not currently see creation at it’s truly is or will be, or how things currently realised will be, and what aspects now at play will be when it is released, death dismissed and brought into full realisation. Why He let the pattern fall out this way, and brought people where they are in this pattern, or particularly animals and so on. This of course again applies to any miracles, including healing just as anything else.
Of course, you could say that doesn’t get God off the hook, that such a God isn’t Goodness, as you say. But there you are beginning to see what I’m driving at. If God’s being the Good can still be in this state of affairs (assuming it’s provindial fallen aspect of creation in which the release and healing makes these aspects of nature releasing the curse and allowing blessing to unlift to all, showing what lies underneath and what is revealed as why God providence brought that stage into being just so) if this is a fallen stage in which only slivers of light poke through that will make part of the whole. The same holds where miracles happen as part of that whole aspect.
And if it doesn’t hold for miracles, it doesn’t hold for creation as a whole, and God is not the Good, or rather what is Goodness would be evil to us, completely incomprehensible and cold, uncaring of us altogether, creation serving some other purpose. That’s also quite possible, and is part of the point I’m driving at. If you accept despite what God brings into being here and now, with all it’s blessing and curses, where He brings any living things into being, apparently choosing to favour some over others, sometimes vastly so, then I fail to see your issues with divine healing.
Because the same is true of then one, as the other. It’s only one smaller aspect of a much larger issue. And perhaps terrifyingly that is the case, I still look to Christ and choose not, to believe He reveals what God really is. But does that solve these questions, no. And does that terror remain a real possiblity to me, yes. That’s what haunts me.
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David: “In my view, miracles are not arbitrary interruptions into purely ‘natural’ processes, but rather express nature’s true origin and goal”
I am more amenable to this view—the “miracle” as an efflorescence from within of nature’s intrinsic potential rather than a magical tinkering from “above” to a chosen few.
In this view, under the right conditions in the here and now, the veil dissolves and the world takes on an entirely different quality—shimmering holiness. In this sense, the mystical experience is a kind of miracle. And interestingly, most mystical experiences are recounted by subjects as spontaneous and unprovoked, carrying the keen sense that they were not chosen in particular.
This kind of miracle is always available to all, given the right conditions. It carries no restriction of needing to be “chosen.” Under the right conditions, a flower will bloom into beauty, while in other conditions it will never even emerge from the soil. It is not as if the flower that bloomed was chosen to bloom anymore than the others were chosen not to bloom. But this is a tough lesson for the ego that wants to believe that they are (or can be) specially favored by God.
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I guess, as a person who has waffled between low church protestantism (Restorationist Movement) and then coming to Orthodoxy later in life, I’ve never understood on the insistence of this doctrine. I mean it just seems like a work around for “Original Sin.” I mean, if the almighty wants to be sinless and to transform Humanity, condescending to us and by becoming us, healing us miraculously from the inside out, he doesn’t need conditions to be so perfect/exact to make that happen. Maybe I’m wrong, but everything that centers around her in this way gives me pause. Why can’t she just be what we state her to be as the vessel of redemption by carrying God into the world? Isn’t that process enough to transform a soul in and of itself? We don’t need all this extra. Just as Moses was never the same after the burning bush, how could she ever be the same? It just seems like a lot of unnecessary hoop jumping to make one view “correct.” An over-complication of a rather simple event. And that, is always the downfall of the transcendent in our lives. Overcomplicating it for the sake of a view that may indeed be much simpler….the great sin of humanity.
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The Orthodox teaching on the Theotokos is a prime example of the lex orandi, lex credendi in action: the law of prayer is the law of faith, i.e., liturgy norms theology. The veneration of the Virgin Mary appears to have occurred spontaneously, instinctively, naturally in the life of the Church. It wasn’t imposed upon the faithful by the theologians, though it was certainly facilitated by the Nicene assertion of the consubstantiality of Jesus with God the Father (325) and the Ephesian affirmation of Mary as Theotokos (431).
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Correct. Which kind of raises the point I was trying to make. It seems to be a mystery for which there may or may not be answer, but that in affirming her role, we affirm the importance of the Theotokos as person. And that to me, is enough. I think the rest seems to be an outpouring of logical necessity is all I was trying to say for people that share a deeper seeded view of how sin works.
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But at some point some preacher is going to declare, e.g., that the Theotokos was guilty of personal sin, just like everyone else–at which point theological clarification becomes unavoidable and necessary.
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True, but at that point, if it is something that we’ve come to understand organically…the question would become even if she had, in the utter transformation of her person by encountering holiness at that level, would it really matter in the end? That’s where I’ve always had trouble. Not to distract from the fruitful commentary, and maybe I just can’t wrap my head around the NEED for her to have no sin, it isn’t that she couldn’t have been sinless but why is that so essential? I admit I could have never learned it properly, nor does my level of veneration drop in who she is regardless of her status pre-birth, but it just seems like a lot of unnecessary squabbling. It doesn’t change anything about her at all in my mind anyway. Sorry to interrupt the flow.
You’re always so kind in response.
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