The Suspicious Early Silence About Later Marian Dogmas

In a recent post, I discussed some of the evidence against concepts like Mary's perpetual virginity, sinlessness, and assumption. Something to keep in mind when issues like those come up is that the lack of reference to those beliefs among the earliest sources carries some evidential weight against them. Think of the writings of Luke, for example. He wrote the longest gospel we have, said the most about Mary among the earliest Christians, and gave us our earliest church history. That church history doesn't end until the early 60s. Not only does he say nothing of concepts like Mary's perpetual virginity, sinlessness, assumption, praying to individuals like Mary, venerating images of such people, etc., but he even repeatedly uses language that most naturally suggests that he opposed some of those concepts. See here for a discussion of some examples. Or see here for many other examples of early opposition to later Marian beliefs and practices. My main point here, though, is that we should keep in mind that there's a double problem for the advocate of something like a modern Roman Catholic or modern Eastern Orthodox view of Mary. There's a suspicious lack of reference to their view, a view they claim to be so important, accompanied by so many apparent contradictions of it. And that's in a context in which they claim to belong to the one true church founded by Jesus, passing on all apostolic teaching in unbroken succession throughout church history, providing unity, providing doctrinal clarity, etc.

Bede On Jesus' Opposition To Mary In Luke 8:19

"Allegorically this text [Luke 8:19] harmonizes with the one above, where it is said of the Jews who attend only to the letter of the Law: And whoever has not, that also which he thinks he has, will be taken away from him. For the Synagogue from whose flesh he was begot is the mother and brothers of Jesus and the Jewish people. Because the Saviour is teaching inside they are unable to enter in, even though they come, since they neglect to understand his sayings spiritually. The crowd in anticipation enters his house, because, with Judea abandoning him, the Gentiles flocked to Christ, and being more mentally receptive the nearer they were in faith, they drank in the inward mysteries of life, in accordance with what the Psalmist says: Come to him and be enlightened." (Bede, Calvin Kendall and Faith Wallis, translators and editors, Bede: Commentary On The Gospel Of Luke [Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 2023], 324-25)

I've written elsewhere about Bede's ignorance of the assumption of Mary.

Mary's Sinfulness In Pre-Reformation Sources

Gavin Ortlund recently produced a video about the sinlessness of Mary. I've written a few posts over the years (here, here, and here) providing some of the many examples of references to her sinfulness among pre-Reformation sources. I've come across more over the years, but I haven't been posting all of them.

For example, earlier this year, I was looking something up in Michael O'Carroll's Theotokos (Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1988), and I came across a few more relevant sources unexpectedly. As I recall, I was looking up one of the entries in the "H" section. While I was there, I decided to read a few of the nearby entries. Over and over, there are references to how various pre-Reformation sources denied Mary's sinlessness in one way or another. Helinand of Froidmont, who died in the thirteenth century, is referred to as thinking that Mary "was sanctified in the womb", meaning that she wasn't immaculately conceived (169). Henry of Ghent, in the thirteenth century, held that "Mary's soul in the very moment in which it was united to the body was both contaminated by sin and sanctified" (169). Hesychius, who died in the fifth century, interprets the sword of Luke 2:35 as a reference to doubt on Mary's part, commenting that "though Mary was a virgin, she was a woman, though she was the Mother of God, she was of our stuff" (170). Those are just a few examples among so many others like that in O'Carroll's work alone. And he leaves out a lot that could have been included.

I want to make another point relevant to Luke 2:35. During the patristic era, the verse was commonly viewed as a reference to sin on Mary's part, which is likely a correct interpretation. Basil of Caesarea, one of the sources who saw a reference to sin on Mary's part in Luke 2:35, goes as far as to say that there's "no obscurity or variety of interpretation" (Letter 260:6). That's not accurate, but it does illustrate how widespread belief in Mary's sinfulness was, that Basil would go so far in describing how popular his view was at the time. And it illustrates how we need to take into account not only what sources like Basil tell us about their own views, but also what information we can gather from them about other sources.

The sinlessness of Mary isn't just denied by a few sources in the earliest centuries, but instead is widely contradicted for hundreds of years, from the first century onward, including by apostles, prominent church fathers, and Roman bishops. Rejection of her sinlessness is still found in some sources well into the medieval era, even into the second millennium.

If you could make your mother sinless...

One Catholic "argument" Mike Winger mentions in his demolition of Marian typology is: "If you could make your mother sinless, wouldn't you?"

Winger doesn't respond to that directly, in part because his focus is exegetical, and because he thinks that's bad theological method. I agree, but it's still good to address it head-on:

1. Ironically, it's a proof for the Immaculate Conception which, if sound, disproves the Immaculate Conception. If the Immaculate Conception is true, then Jesus wasn't the agent of the Immaculate Conception. For one thing, Jesus didn't exist prior to his own conception. Jesus is a product of the Incarnation. 

Of course, the Son is eternally preexistent, so that in principle, the Son could be the agent of the Immaculate Conception, but the Catholic prooftexts single out the Holy Spirit as the agent of the Immaculate Conception. So the argument, even on its own grounds, is self-refuting. 

2. Then there's the argument from analogy: 

i) How could a human son makes his mother sinless before he was conceived?

ii) As a preliminary step, a Catholic apologist would have to demonstrate that retrocausation is possible. That's a very tall order.  

iii) But even if (ex hypothesi), he could retroactively make his mother sinless, at her own conception, yet in that event he wouldn't exist in the first place since his mother would have a different future if she was sinless from the moment of conception. He wouldn't exist in that future. He only exists in the future where his mother isn't sinless. So the attempted parallel, using merely human sons and mothers as a basis of comparison, is incoherent on yet another ground. It's like the Grandfather paradox. If the time-traveler succeeds, he erases the future he came from. So he never existed! 

iv) In Catholic theology, Jesus and Mary are both sinless. Yet in the comparison with merely human mothers and sons, the mother would be sinless but the son would not be. That, however, would be a very strange mother/son relationship. How exactly is that supposed to work?

v) Everyone who dies in the faith will be sinless. So what's the hurry? I don't need to make my mother sinless. That will happen in due time. There's a reason why God doesn't make humans sinless in this life. Faith is waiting. 

Turning to Catholicism-4

This is the fourth installment in my review of Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain Their Turn to Catholicism. Here's I comment on some statements by Ed Feser in his chapter: 

If you are going to insist that Jesus was God in the flesh, that is going to have implications for what you say about his mother–such as whether she, functioning as essentially the tabernacle of God–could have been stained by sin (46).

i) Just in passing, shouldn't Feser say that Jesus is God in the flesh rather than was God in the flesh? Why the past tense?

ii) More to the point, even assuming that during her pregnancy, Mary was the tabernacle of God, why can't she be stained by sin? Does he think that if the vessel is stained, it will stain the contents of the vessel–figuratively speaking? Was Jesus stained by sin through contact with sinners during his earthly existence? 

Would it not be more accurate to say that Jesus is immune to sin? If anything, sinners don't defile Jesus; rather, Jesus purifies sinners. Some diseases are transmitted by touch. But Jesus has the healing touch. Rather than the sinner's touch infecting Jesus, his touch cures the sinner. 

A divine revelation is of no effect unless one can know both what counts as part of the revelation, and whether one has properly understood it. I came to see that the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura makes such knowledge impossible. A book cannot interpret itself, and it cannot even tell you what counts as part of the book. For even if there were some passage in it that said, "Here is a list of the materials that should be counted as part of this book," that would only raise the further question of how we can know that that passage should really be counted as part of the book. Obviously, to answer that question, we could not appeal to the book itself without begging the question (49).

i) I take it that he's alluding to the question of how to establish the canon. I've responded to that objection on multiple occasions. Since it's not a new objection, and I have nothing new to say in response, I'll let that pass.

ii) But consider the bolded statement. That falls under the purview of textual criticism. If our best MSS contain a passage, there's a presumption that the passage is original to the text–unless there's some positive evidence that it's a scribal interpolation. That's not a question to be answered a priori, but based on principles of textual criticism. This is a problem when philosophers act as though evidentiary questions can be settled through abstract, armchair postulates. 

iii) Apropos (ii), how do we know that the statements attributed to Feser in chap. 1 were penned by him rather than a ghostwriter? But the burden of proof is on the skeptic in that regard. Is it really begging the question to say we think Feser wrote it because that's what the book says? In theory, the book might be a hoax, but is the onus on the reader to prove otherwise? 

iv) It's simplistic to say a book cannot interpret itself. Since a book is an inanimate object, there's a sense in which it can't interpret itself. But that's very one-sided. Unless he's a deceiver, an author is writing to be understood. The trail is strewn with clues to guide the reader. Sometimes a book includes editorial asides that speak directly to the reader. Likewise, some parts of a book may provide clues to interpret other parts of a book. That's a standard interpretive procedure. 

…the institution cannot function unless there is some chief executive with authority to break any deadlock…Without such an institutional authority, whether to accept something as part of divine revelation, and how to interpret revelation, ultimately seem arbitrary, subjective, and fideistic… (49-50).

But had Catholicism really preserved the teaching of the early Church whole and undefiled? My study of the development of doctrine convinced me that it had (51).

What a hoot! You gotta wonder if this was written before or after Feser went ape over Pope Francis reversing Catholic tradition on the death penalty. For instance:

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/08/pope-francis-and-capital-punishment

https://catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2017/10/15/the-popes-remarks-on-capital-punishment-need-to-be-clarified/

Feser was gung-ho for a "chief executive with authority to break any deadlock"–right up to the moment when his position on capital punishment collided with Pope Francis. Now that Francis has rewritten the Catechism, Feser's entire argument lies in shambles. He could try to salvage his argument by claiming that the Catechism is just a fallible document. But the whole point of the Catechism is to do the sorting for the laity so that they don't have to decide for themselves which traditions are authoritative in contrast to reformable teaching. In defiance of the pope, Feser takes it upon himself to sift tradition to his own satisfaction.  

More Early Sources On Whether Mary Was Sinless

A decade ago, I put together a collection of patristic and medieval sources, including some Popes, who denied that Mary was sinless. See here and here. What I want to do in this post is add several more examples.

How to ruin an otherwise good apologetic

(Or, “on the need to get things straight”, along with a true account of the history of the Doctrine of the Immaculate Reception of Mary).

Jesus said, “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak….”

Here’s one way that works:

This recent article by Eric Davis at The Cripplegate site illustrates what I mean. Of course, it’s a long, thorough article that makes dozens and dozens of good points. But it gets a fact wrong:

She is sinless, having bypassed receiving a sin nature. Therefore, she was not in need of Christ’s saving work,...

While much of the article is spot-on correct, a Roman Catholic will point out that this particular statement is incorrect, and then all other Roman Catholics will have an excuse to disbelieve everything else in the article. So no matter how great the article is, the “see-no-evil-hear-no-evil” Roman Catholic converts have a reason (they think – but really it’s an excuse) to ignore the rest of it.

I know, the article wasn’t even about that! It’s a terrible way to think about things, but that’s the way that Roman Catholic converts think.

Because in fact, Roman dogma does allow that she WAS in need of Christ's saving work (just differently from all the rest of us).

Here is what should have been said by the Cripplegate author:

But what about the claim that Mary of Nazareth was conceived without sin? This too is an extraordinary claim and so it too requires extraordinary proof. But when we examine Scripture, we see no evidence that anyone thought Mary was conceived without sin, nor any evidence that she was exempted from Adam’s curse. While there are traditions about her sanctity from the womb and throughout her life, the church is mostly silent on the issue of her conception until the middle ages, and even then most theologians either didn’t see how it was possible for Mary to be conceived without sin or they outright denied it. The list of those opposed to the doctrine reads like a Who’s Who of the medieval church: Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Anselm of Canterbury, just to name a few.

But then in the early 1300s, two English Franciscans (William of Ware and Duns Scotus) came up with a way to overcome the objections that the doctrine was a “superstition” (so Bernard) or that it could not be reconciled with the uniqueness of Christ’s redemption (so Aquinas). William used the argument from conveniens (Latin for “convenience”), which used the formula, potuit, decuit, fecit: God could do it, it is fitting that He would do it, therefore He did do it. Since Mary’s Immaculate Conception was both possible for God and fitting (on the grounds of the medieval supposition that never too much can be said of Mary), then it follows that God must have preserved Mary from contracting original sin, and so her conception was “immaculate” (stainless).

Scotus, for his part, theorized how God was able to preserve Mary from Original Sin without denying her need for redemption. The eternal God, who sees all things as present, must have applied the merits of the redemption to Mary before the redemption actually took place. Thus Mary’s redemption was by exemption. Instead of grace taking away the power of original sin after contracting it, she was graced by not contracting it in the first place.

By all means, continue talking about Roman Catholicism. But by all means, be careful with how you present it.

HT for the OP: Bnonn Tennant