One of the contested points of doctrine between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians is the issue of the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Mother of God. It is a dogma for Catholics, and highly debatable within Orthodoxy, but in general denied and frowned upon (some will even go as far as to label it a heresy.) This dogma teaches that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was exempt from a participation in the sin of Adam. (Or a simpler, lay reading: Adam's sin resulted in the loss of communion with God in his soul, and not his soul only, but also that of his descendants, but Mary never suffered from this repercussion.)
It is commonly argued from the side of the Orthodox that the teaching is a deficient development, taking its start from after the schism, and that it leans too heavily on the St. Augustine of Hippo's understanding of Original Sin (and his doctrinal formulations all around are commonly out-of-sync with standard Byzantine understanding. However, it can be sufficiently shown that this teaching is too deeply impressed within the history of the Church to simply be written off as a "papist innovation." Aside from the fact that a strictly Augustinian understanding of Original Sin is not required (for Rome's own stance is not 100% identical to that of St. Augustine) to make sense of the doctrine, this understanding of Mary as the privileged perfection of mankind, a perfection which takes its origin from the very start of her being, is in fact taught by Patristic theologians, even in the East.
This article does not claim to suggest the Immaculate Conception is the unanimous teaching of the Eastern Fathers, but it does seek to demonstrate that it has its roots in the teachings of the early Church, at least in germ form, and that it is found in the writings of saints revered by both communions, including the East.
SCHOLARLY WITNESSES (Preliminary)
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware:
"The Orthodox Church calls Mary all-holy, immaculate, free from actual sin. The Orthodox Church has never made any formal and definitive pronouncement on the matter of the Immaculate Conception. In the past, individual Orthodox theologians have made statements that, if not definitively affirming the Doctrine of Immaculate Conception, at any rate closely approach it. But since 1854, the great majority of Orthodox reject it as necessary; as implying a false understanding of original sin; as suspecting the doctrine because it seems to separate Mary from the rest of the descendants of Adam and Eve, putting her in a different class. However, if an individual Orthodox today felt impelled to believe it, he could not be termed a heretic for doing so."Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck
(Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993 edition, Penguin Press, pages 259-260)
“There are many Orthodox Christians who make the sweeping statement that this Roman Catholic belief is a heresy ‘flatly rejected’ by the Orthodox Church. When asked to point to a local or Ecumenical Council of the Orthodox Church to justify this assertion, they reluctantly have to admit that there is no such authority—only one’s very private opinion” (His Broken Body, 45)Fr. Lev Gillet
"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."______________________________
PATRISTIC WITNESSES
St. Sophronius of Jerusalem
[She is] full of divine wisdom, and free from all contamination of body, soul, and spirit. For this purpose, a holy Virgin is chosen and is sanctified in soul and body; and thus, because pure, chaste and immaculate, she is able to serve in the Incarnation of the Creator.
(Epistola synodica ad Sergium)
St. John Damascene
“Nature has been defeated by grace and stands trembling, no longer ready to take the lead. Therefore when the God-bearing Virgin was about to be born from Anna, nature did not dare to anticipate the offshoot of grace; instead it remained without fruit until grace sprouted its fruit. For it was necessary for her to be the first-born, she who would bear the “Firstborn of all creation” in whom “all things subsist” (Col 1.15,17). O blessed couple, Joachim and Anna, all nature is indebted to you! For through you it has offered a gift to the Creator which is more excellent than all [other] gifts: a holy mother who alone is worthy of the Creator. O blessed loins of Joachim, whence the all-pure seed was poured out! O glorious womb of Anna, in which the most holy fetus grew and was formed, silently increasing! O womb in which was conceived the living heaven, wider than the wideness of the heavens” (St. John of Damascus, Homily on the Nativity 2)
St. Andrew of Crete
“Today that [human] nature, which was first brought forth from the earth, receives divinity for the first time; the dust, having been raised up, hastens with festive tread toward the highest peak of glory. Today, from us [Anne’s humanity] and for us [humanity], Adam offers Mary to God as first-fruits, and, with the unpoisoned parts of the muddy dough, is formed a bread for the rebuilding of the human …Today, pure human nature receives from God the gift of the original creation and reverts to its original purity. By giving our inherited splendor, which had been hidden by the deformity of vice, to the Mother of Him who is beautiful, human nature receives a magnificent and most divine renovation, which becomes a complete restoration. The restoration, in turn, becomes deification, and this becomes a new formation, like its pristine state“
(St. Andrew of Crete, Homily 1 on the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
Isidore Glabas (d. 1396), Metropolitan of Thessalonika
“The all-pure Virgin, as is right, alone can refuse to apply to herself the words of the royal prophet, she alone can say: I was not conceived in iniquity, and again: My mother did not conceive me in sin; this privilege is contained in the great things done to me by him who is mighty.”
St. Nicholas Cabasilas
“If there are some of the holy doctors who say that the Virgin is ‘prepurified (προκεκαθάρθαι)’ by the Spirit, then it is yet necessary to think that ‘purification’ (i.e. an addition of graces) is intended by these authors, and these [doctors] say that this is the way the angels are ‘purified,’ with respect to whom there is nothing knavish.”
St. George Scholarios
“(She was) all pure from the first moment of her existence”Cyril Lukaris
"[The Theotokos] was wholly sanctified from the very first moment of her conception when her body was formed and when her soul was united to her body... 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?"
