On the Latin Dogma of the Immaculate Conception (2)

By Archbishop Nathanael (Lvov)

Let us examine this Latin teaching from an Orthodox perspective.

Here is what the greatest Orthodox theologian, St. John of Damascus, says about the Most Holy Theotokos:

“When God desired to bring man from non-existence to existence, He expanded the heavens, established the earth, and enclosed the sea within bounds. But when in this world mankind was subjected to corruption through sin, the merciful God, not desiring that the work of His hands should be completely destroyed, created another, better heaven, earth, and sea, where He Who was previously incomprehensible to the created world deigned to be contained for the re-creation of the human race. This new heaven, earth, and sea is the Blessed and Most Glorious Virgin.”3

The ark in which Noah was saved from the Great Flood also foreshadowed the Most Holy Theotokos. “Noah built the ark to escape the flood, and Christ, who is our peace, prepared Mary for Himself to redeem the human race. The ark took a hundred years to build, and long did humanity prepare for the birth of the Most Pure Virgin. The ark was made of incorruptible wood, and Mary was filled with nothing but virtue. It floated unharmed above the waters of the flood; she did not suffer the shipwreck of sin. Through the ark, the chosen were saved from the flood. Through Mary, all who heed the calls of grace are saved. From Noah, who emerged from the ark, the human race received a new beginning, and from Christ, born of Mary, new life was imparted to humanity.” The burning bush is also an image of the Mother of God: “Loose your sandals from your feet,” God said to Moses at the burning bush, “for the place whereon you stand is holy ground. This is a clear transformation of the perfect purity of the Mother of God, to whom nothing impure can approach” (John of Damascus, Ibid.).

The idea of ​​the burning bush as an image of the Mother of God is developed by Saint Gregory of Nyssa.

Saint Epiphanius of Cyprus writes: “The first promise of a Redeemer, given to fallen man, already contained a prophecy about the Most Holy Virgin. ‘And I will put enmity,’ says the Lord to the deceiver, ‘between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed: he shall crush your head, and you shall bruise his heel.’” All divinely wise commentators see in these words of God the first good news of the future Redeemer of the human race. Whom then should we understand by the woman whose seed the future Redeemer is called, if not the Most Holy Virgin Mary, His Most Pure Mother? This promised woman is certainly not Eve. All these words apply only to Mary and Her most adored Son, and refer to Eve only as a transformation of Her. The future Redeemer is called the Seed of the Woman, not the man. Clearly, this does not refer to an ordinary woman, but to one who will give birth without a husband. Just as Adam was the image of our Lord Jesus Christ, so Eve was the image of His Most Pure Mother. If Eve was called the “mother of the living,” it was only as an image of Mary, for Eve was called the mother of the living after she heard the saying, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” It is astonishing how, after such a definition, such a name was given to her. For from Eve came the human race—the dying race—while from Mary came life in the world, for She gave birth to Eternal Life and, therefore, truly became the Mother of the living. And Eve was so named only because she prefigured Mary.”8

Saint Irenaeus of Lyons also emphasizes this idea. “Just as Eve was deceived into turning away from God, so Mary was bowed to obedience to God, so that the Virgin Mary might be the intercessor for the virgin Eve.”9

All these thoughts of the holy fathers, which could be multiplied almost ad infinitum, are vividly and inspiredly echoed in the hymns of the Church relating to the Mother of God. In these hymns, the Church calls the Virgin Mary Most Holy, Most Pure, Most Immaculate, Higher than the heavens, More Honorable than the Cherubim and Incomparably More Glorious than the Seraphim, and attributes to Her all the prophecies that point to Her imperfection in sin.

And yet, the Church rejects the dogma of the Immaculate Conception—that is, the dogma that the Mother of God, from Her birth, is impervious to original sin. This dogma, not the term “Immaculate Conception,” is precisely what the Church rejects, for this term first appeared in the East in the celebration of December 9th, which, before the establishment of the incorrect dogma in the West, was called “the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Most Holy Theotokos by Righteous Anna.”

To understand this problem, let us first consider what original sin is.

According to the Roman Catholic view, original sin consists of God’s removal from the first humans of the gift of “original righteousness” (justitia originalis), which they possessed before the Fall. This gift was taken from them after they sinned, but, by exception to the general law, was bestowed upon the soul of the Virgin Mary upon her incarnation. Therefore, the Virgin Mary is perfectly analogous to Eve before the Fall, who possessed the gift of justitia originalis.

According to the Orthodox view, original sin is the corruption of human nature by sin, rendering it incapable of fulfilling God’s plan, God’s design for man as the crown of creation of the entire visible world. God created the visible world (or rather, the world perceptible in one way or another to the five bodily senses and therefore accessible to external experience), a world subject to constant change, morally irresponsible, a material world, in order to accommodate within it a spiritual being, created in the image of God, who, being morally responsible, would impart moral value to the entire visible world and, being immutable due to his moral purity, would grant eternity to the world he inhabited.

By sin, man violated this divine plan for him, abused the gift of freedom inseparable from moral responsibility, and inclined toward evil.

However, not entirely. Expelled from Paradise, man began to repent. But to do so, he had to lose another of his godlike qualities—immutability. In order to be saved, to be reformed, man who had committed sin ceased to be God-like and immutable. His entire spiritual and physical nature, like the rest of the material world, became changeable and, therefore, subject to death.

The material world lost its crowning glory, that which had given it moral meaning and immortality—eternity.

All people, being descendants of Adam and Eve, by nature possess only what Adam and Eve possessed, and, consequently, in their place in Paradise, they too would have sinned. Therefore, by their human spiritual and physical nature, all people are enslaved to sin and, consequently, must change and be subject to death.

Everyone, even the most righteous people of the Old Testament, committed one sin or another and therefore became inevitably subject to change and death. This corruption of human nature, which renders it incapable of eternal life and, consequently, of fulfilling God’s plan for the material world, this essential distortion of the human being, resulting from the sin of our first parents, is original sin, according to the teaching of the Orthodox Church.

The existence of original sin, that is, the distortion of human nature, explains the futility of all attempts by ancient prophets and philosophers to bring redemption to humanity. A principle independent of Adam and Eve was needed to ground human salvation. Such a principle was brought by Christ—the Son of God, born of the Immaculate Virgin.

Immaculate in what sense?

In that She committed no personal sin, not a single sinful act.

Saint Athanasius the Great testifies that She “knew no sin.” Saint Demetrius of Rostov speaks of the same thing in his Sermon on the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos: “He knew not a single sin in His entire life, and He alone says: I ran without iniquity.”

This is also taught in the Epistle of the Patriarchs (1672 and 1723), which is the voice of the entire Orthodox Church: “…The first man… fell in paradise… and… from here the original sin was spread in succession to all descendants, so that there is not a single one of those born according to the flesh who is free from that burden… …Burden… we do not call sin itself, such as impiety-hatred and everything else that comes from the evil human heart… and not from nature… but the inclination to sin… many of the forefathers, prophets, and especially the Mother of God the Word and the Ever-Virgin Mary, were not involved in sins.”10 However, despite all her holiness and immaculateness, the Most Holy Virgin Mary in no way ceases to be entirely the daughter of Adam. She possessed nothing in her nature that Adam did not possess, and Adam possessed in his nature everything that she possessed. And this is the basis of original sin.

All holy thinkers and writers not only do not ignore, but tirelessly emphasize, the organic, complete descent of the Virgin Mary from Adam. This is also evidenced by the genealogies in the Gospels (from which, according to Church Tradition, the Evangelist Matthew traces the genealogy of the Holy Virgin Mary’s relative and betrothed Joseph, and the Evangelist Luke traces the genealogy of the Most Holy Virgin Herself, through Her father Joachim, who also bore the second name Heli).

The Church remembers and cherishes the unity of the human race, the descent of all of us, including the Most Holy Virgin, from a single forefather, not only in body but especially in soul, rightly seeing in this the guarantee of our common consubstantiality, the foundation of ancient and new conciliarity—catholicity—on which the entire economy of our salvation is built. And the teaching of the special “introduction” (infusio) of the soul of the Most Holy Virgin into Her body, descended solely from Adam, on which the Latin dogma of 1854 is based, is in no way consistent with this original ecclesiastical concept.

Being entirely a daughter of Adam in both soul and body, the Virgin Mary, although personally without sin, was nevertheless not “privilegedly exempt from original sin,” as the Roman dogma asserts, for if people could be saved by this means, then the Lord would certainly have granted this “privilege” to all others as well, for there is no partiality in Him.

But this could not be done. God could not save people, or even a single person, by the mechanical, unjust means of exemption from the general law.11

Thanks to Her supreme personal righteousness, the Most Holy Virgin Mary did not sin, but She could have sinned. Her will was not bound by any “immunity” from sin, any special “state of primeval holiness, innocence and righteousness,” as the Roman dogma teaches, thinking to exalt, but in fact to diminish – mechanizing Her feat.

The Virgin Mary, by Her feat, in which Her parents and Her parents’ parents participate – the entire genealogy cited in the Gospel and the spiritual environment that was around Her, all the generations of the creators of the Holy of Holies in which She lived, the writers of the holy books that nourished Her soul (let us remember that, according to Church Tradition, at the moment of the Annunciation, the Most Holy Virgin Mary read the prophecy of Isaiah), all those who saved and preserved these books, those who gave examples of, albeit partial, but still very high holiness and righteousness in the Old Testament – in a word, the feat of all that was best in humanity, the Virgin Mary, remaining a participant in original sin (for it is inseparable from the Old Testament nature of man, and She, with all Her highest holiness, was of the Old Testament nature and could not be otherwise, because it was precisely the Old Testament nature that He came to renew and (Christ regenerated), She rendered original sin within Herself fruitless and thereby shamed the devil.

Original sin corrupted human nature, but not completely. Even after the Fall, some goodness remained in human nature. This is why the repentance of Adam and Eve, the examples of great holiness in the Old Testament, and, finally, the appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary became possible.

All of God’s work on humanity during the Old Testament period of history was aimed at preserving, directing, and crystallizing this best that remained in human nature. This work of God—the most important, the most essential in human history, compared to which the noisy processes of history are insignificant—took place in the silence of the chosen branch of the chosen people, in a chaste silence, inaccessible to any idle or malicious observation. And this work of God was crowned with the appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Virgin Mary never succumbed to a single sinful act in her life. Despite all the devil’s temptations, her will never once sided with evil, and therefore the devil could not exploit original sin in her.

The question may arise: why then was the appearance of Christ the Savior necessary if a human being, partaking of original sin, could resist and not be tempted by sinful acts?

Precisely because, remaining immaculate, the Virgin Mary continued to be an Old Testament being, bearing within herself all the disastrous consequences of sin: the guilt of change, death, and hell. Her nature remained Adamic. She still contained nothing that was not in Adam. But, as we have already said, by Her feat and the feat of all the best that was in all of humanity, with the help of the grace of God – but not an exceptional grace, but a grace such as God is always ready to give to all people – with the help of this grace of God, She remained immaculate.

And as soon as such an immaculate Person matured within humanity, the possibility and necessity immediately arose for the Son of God to appear in the world. In the sense in which we have explained the doctrine of God’s omnipotence, the Son of God could not fail to come into the world immediately, as soon as a pure vessel capable of receiving Him was revealed. Salvation could not fail to appear immediately, as soon as a human person appeared, not personally guilty of being doomed to destruction, in no way deserving of destruction. This is the meaning of the pre-chosenness of the Most Holy Virgin Mary from the beginning of time in the Eternal Council of God. Foreseeing the fall of mankind and the terrible distortion of human nature resulting from this fall, the Lord foresees, however, that despite this seemingly irreparable and extreme distortion, it is not hopeless. He foresees that it will be possible, through a careful and careful process, to nurture, cultivate, and cultivate within the depths of the human race an Immaculate Flower that will be able to receive the Son of God. But this Flower must necessarily be the flower of the human race, grown in inseparable unity with all human nature, and not in isolation from it, not in privileged exclusion, not from a different nature.

For the salvation of human nature, distorted by the sin of Adam and Eve and powerless to overcome sin in the nature inherited from those same Adam and Eve, Christ comes, bringing with Him a different principle, not Adam’s—a Divine one, as the perfect God and the perfect Man. By incarnating a new Divine principle into the human world, Christ opened up the possibility for every person unwilling to be enslaved by sin to unite with Him and thereby be saved, not through their own human righteousness, but through His Divine holiness.

Who could more fully utilize this opportunity revealed by Christ than His Most Holy Mother, one with Him in bodily nature and unsullied by a single personal sin?

She unites with Christ, the Son of God, in the closest union, embodying Him, and thereby becomes the first person after Christ to enter the Church, the Divine-human organism that unites us with God through Christ, the Son of God.

Sin hinders the realization of this unity of all people with God in the Church. A person who commits sin, who is in sin, cannot unite with Christ, for it is impossible to bring sin into union with Him. The Most Holy Virgin Mary, being without personal sin, most fully realizes union with Christ, and therefore the Church attributes to Her all that Scripture and the writings of the Holy Fathers say about the Church. After Her union with Christ at His conception, the Virgin Mary becomes the most complete fulfillment of the Church.

In the process of gradual union with God, deification, about which St. Dionysius the Areopagite speaks in detail—a process to which all godlike creation, that is, angels and humans, are called—the Virgin Mary leads all. She is the most deified of all creation, and therefore we “follow God and resort to Her, as to an indestructible wall and intercession.” Therefore, even the highest angelic ranks pray to Her as their Mistress. Here is what Saint Dionysius writes about this: “Since the heavenly hierarchy is so arranged that lower spiritual beings receive enlightenment from the higher, the Most Holy Virgin, having risen above all other created beings, also became for the Angels a ladder of ascent to the highest perfection. For in Her they contemplate new mysteries and from Her receive greater illumination.”12

* * *

Thus, we reject the exclusion of the Virgin Mary from the universal pre-Christian subordination to original sin, but we confess Her as the highest of all creation, more honorable than the Cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim, the Life-giving Light for both Angels and men.

But if we reject the Roman dogma of 1854 regarding the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, then what does the term “Immaculate Conception,” which existed in our Typicon until the second half of the 19th century, mean? To answer this question, we must remember that the word “immaculate,” being complex, can have two meanings. One is the one in which we call the Most Holy Theotokos Immaculate. In this sense, the word “immaculate” is synonymous with the word “holy”—most immaculate, most holy. But the word “immaculate” can also be used to indicate that a given phenomenon is free from blemish. In this case, the word “immaculate” will not be the same as the word “holy.” For example: such-and-such a person is not blemished, but neither is he holy.

The act of conception is usually associated with greater or lesser sinfulness. Sin has penetrated no area of ​​human life as deeply as this area of ​​ancestry.

But this is not necessarily so—not inevitably so. The area of ​​ancestry itself is ontologically free of sinfulness. In itself, this area can be as neutral as any other bodily area. Therefore, the Church could sanctify ancestral life in the Sacrament of Marriage. If sin were ontologically inherent in this area, then the Sacrament of Marriage could not exist. Sin can never be sanctified by anything.

If marriage is lawful, that is, not associated with the violation of any moral principles for one’s own sake, if it is concluded not against God, but with God’s blessing, then in such a marriage its entire area can become sinless, pure, and immaculate.

This can be said to an even greater extent of God-blessed marriages in the Old Testament, where the union of marriage and the birth of children were associated with a profound religious feeling: the desire to serve the future Messiah, Christ, through their children, in their own flesh and blood.

Many pious marriages in the Old Testament were so pure from sin. And the marriages of Joachim and Anna—the parents of the Virgin Mary—and Zachariah and Elizabeth—the parents of St. John the Baptist—were especially pure.

These marriages were immaculate, and so were the conceptions of both the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist. Both of these events are celebrated by the Church. Since they are immaculate, free from sin, they can be glorified by the Church. And since they mark the beginning of great and saving events—the birth into the world of the Most Blessed Mother of God and the greatest of all those born of women, the Prophet, Forerunner, and Baptist John—they are glorified and celebrated solemnly.

The Holy Church teaches this: “Many mothers conceive children, but few are those whose conception is glorified and celebrated by the Holy Church of God. Only three such mothers were found, in whose wombs the conception that took place astonished the world: Saint Righteous Anna, Saint Elizabeth, and the Most Holy Virgin Mary. Saint Righteous Anna conceived the Mother of God, Elizabeth conceived the Forerunner, and the Virgin Mary conceived Christ our Savior. All these conceptions were announced by heavenly messengers; they were accomplished by the grace of God, but God also required the consent of those conceiving.”13 In the Service of the Most Blessed Conception of the Virgin Mary on December 9, in contrast to the scholastic and often reverent discussions of this Roman dogma, we see a chaste, truly reverent glorification of the holy event, which marks the shining of the first rays of That Dawn of the Mysterious Day, the appearance of which signified the imminent ascent of the Sun – Christ:

“From the root of David and Jesse, Anna now begins to blossom the Divine Staff, which has sprouted the mysterious flower of Christ, the Creator of all.”14 “The prophetic prophecies are now being fulfilled: for the holy mountain is being established in the womb; the divine ladder is being planted; the great throne of the king is being prepared; the place where God enters is being adorned; the burning bush begins to germinate; the myrrh-giving sanctuary is already flowing forth, stretching forth rivers of barrenness to the godly Anna, whom we bless by faith.” 15.

We see here joy over the conception of the Most Holy Virgin Mary and the glorification of Saint Anne, who became the mother of the Mother of God, and we see here no scholastic contrivances or conjectures.

The conception of Saint John the Baptist is similarly glorified—as the beginning, as the dawn of the joyful appearance of Christ’s Forerunner in the world. And since the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a greater event than the birth of St. John the Baptist, the beginning of birth—the conception of the Virgin Mary—is a greater celebration than the conception of St. John.

The Roman Catholic Church’s implementation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, in addition to being an error in this dogma itself, is also associated with a sin against conciliarity, that is, catholicity within the Roman Catholic Church itself. Such prominent Catholic church leaders as St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Peter Lombard clearly and unequivocally objected and rebelled against the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.

The obligation “for all the faithful” to believe in the dogma of the Immaculate Conception condemns all these theologians. Apparently understanding this, Pope Pius IX, when proclaiming the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, did not, as the Universal Church invariably does, add anathema to those who believe differently. But according to the entire meaning of the Church’s conscience regarding the truths proclaimed by the Church, such an omission is merely a diplomatic ploy. In essence, of course, anathematization—the separation, the exclusion of all who believe wrongly—inevitably accompanies every ecclesiastical definition of truth.

And the Church has never feared this.

When the Church proclaimed as an indisputable truth the consubstantiality of the Son of God with God the Father, it did not hesitate to pronounce anathema on all who thought and held different views, whether they lived before or after the proclamation of this dogma. And at the same time, the Church was not afraid that its fathers and teachers would fall under the anathema it proclaimed, although the ante-Nicene Holy Fathers and expressions that outwardly contradict the Nicene definition are encountered quite often.

But there, these were truly mere expressions, whereas here, in the case of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the greatest teachers of the Western Church clearly and essentially rebelled against a specific doctrine. The Pope threatened anathema to anyone who would call the denial of the Immaculate Conception heresy, and then, suddenly, by a single act of the Bishop of Rome, even without a council, even a conventional one, this teaching was proclaimed as binding dogma, despite the contemporary faith of significant parts of the Latin world—for example, the powerful Dominican Order, which was so unwilling to accept the new teaching until the very moment of its official proclamation that even the Feast of the Immaculate Conception was called the Feast of the Blessed Conception by the Dominicans.

* * *

Is the question of the conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary closely connected with the very important question of the origin of the human soul? Are human souls created each time by a special, new creative act of God at the moment of birth (so-called creationism), or do souls originate from parents, just as a child’s body originates from them (traditionalism)?

The Roman Catholic Church, in formulating the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, has apparently adopted the creationist viewpoint, for it affirms the creation of the Virgin Mary’s soul without original sin by a special creative act of God, and its introduction, already in this sinless state, into her body, born of Joachim and Anna.

Orthodox theology, with its living memory of the conciliar consubstantiality of the human race, will, of course, always stand for traditionalism.

Saint Macarius the Great clearly states: “Earthly parents give birth to children from their own nature, both their bodies and souls.”16 The dogmatic definition attributed to Saint Athanasius the Great (according to many researchers, written on the basis of the works of Saint Athanasius the Great by Fulgentius, Bishop of Ruspius), placed at the beginning of the Psalter precisely so that every Orthodox Christian would be familiar with it, says the following about Christ the Savior: “…God from the essence of the Father, born before the ages; and Man is from the essence of the Mother, born in time. …The Perfect Man from the rational soul and human flesh”17. That is, here is clearly expressed the teaching that Christ was born as Man from the Mother both in soul and body. Furthermore, in his discourse “Against Apollinaris,” Saint Athanasius the Great writes: “God the Word of Nazareth, who existed before the ages, became Man, born of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit in Bethlehem of Judea, as it is written, of the seed of David, Abraham, and Adam, receiving from the Virgin all that God had originally formed and created in the composition of man, except sin, as the Apostle says: ‘In likeness, in every way, except sin’ (cf. Heb. 4:15).” 18

Furthermore, in the same book and in the same chapter, Saint Athanasius writes: “The Lord clearly showed that He has flesh, blood, bones, and a soul that is troubled and distressed. But let no one say that this is part of the nature of God. “And this (that is, flesh, blood, bones, and soul) became by nature proper to God when the Word deigned to accept human birth from the Virgin and to restore His creation, weakened by sin, corruption, and death, within Himself in a renewed image.”

Only in light of such a conception—not merely of the flesh, but of the entire unity of both soul and body—of the human race does the teaching of Saints Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Athanasius the Great, and Dionysius the Areopagite on the consubstantiality of people become understandable, as does the ecclesiastical expression “human race,” the placement of the genealogy of Jesus Christ in the Gospel, the blessing and glorification of the fathers and forefathers of Christ in the weeks preceding the feast of the Nativity of Christ, our responsibility for Adam’s sin, and the possibility of the restoration of human nature in Christ the Savior.

Under the assumption that God continually creates the human soul anew, the possibility of anything sinful appearing in the human soul becomes completely incomprehensible. God creates only that which is very good19, and not that which is damaged by the seal of sin.

The creationist concept of the origin of the human soul contradicts the Church’s teaching on God’s Sabbath observance on the seventh day, which, according to Church teaching, lasts from the days of the creation until now, to be replaced by the eighth day after the Second Coming of Christ.

Even the very expression in the Bible and theology—”such and such a person was born of such and such parents”—can only mean a complete birth of soul and body, because the Bible and theology, when speaking of man, always mean the complete person, not just the body.

Nevertheless, the Church has never pronounced a final, decisive word on this issue, and some Holy Fathers hold a different opinion. Archpriest S. Bulgakov, in his book “The Burning Bush,” rightly writes: “It is inappropriate, immodest, and even naive to ask whether it was sufficient for God to breathe a living soul into Adam’s body once and thereby reflect His image in him, or whether this was repeated many times. After all, both are already contained in the single creative act of creating man.”

Let us add to this that the entire human being, both soul and body, received the Divine command: be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.20

Archpriest S. Bulgakov further adds: “The assertion of radical creationism about the complete independence of the created soul from the body it engenders would lead to a complete denial of heredity and genealogy, the unity and connection of the entire human race, original sin, and the entire Old Testament dispensation, including the Savior’s genealogy. For the meaning of the latter would be reduced, at most, to the preparation of the Savior’s body alone, divorced from any spiritual connection. Creationism in this sense is a crude and naive occasionalism and atomism in understanding human destinies: each person arises separately, has their own destiny, and is separated from their peers through their origin by virtue of a new creative act. If consistently applied, this teaching ruptures all Christology and soteriology, like the doctrine of a single Adam—the Old and the New.

Since creationism is prepared to embrace a pre-established relationship between the spirit created by God and the body born of parents, it effectively surrenders its position and represents only a form of traditionalism.

Of course, Christian traditionalism cannot conceive of the origin of both the human soul and body solely through the power of heredity, without the creative, guiding power of God. If not a hair falls from a person’s head without the will of God, then, of course, we must imagine that the birth of a person, both spiritual and physical, occurs under the constant influence of God’s guiding hand. And perhaps it is true: in the birth of a new soul, God’s guiding power is more directly manifested than in the birth of the body, because in the beginning, at the creation of the first man, the body was created by God (assa) from the dust of the earth, while the spirit of man was created (bara) from nothing by the word of the Lord, in the image and likeness of God. But in any case, the meaning of traditionalism is that it affirms a consubstantial, and therefore conciliar, catholic, succession between parents and children, and that, unlike the soul of the first man, created from nothing, the souls of all subsequent people, like their bodies, are created by God from the souls and bodies of their parents, and not from nothing. And the Mother of God, having received her soul and body from her blessed parents, was united in a catholic, conciliar manner with them, and through them with the entire line of her ancestors, including Adam and Eve, and, consequently, with the entire human race, for whom, precisely for this reason, she became the saving Ark, their glory and adornment.

This is what the Orthodox Church believes and confesses.

Notes:

3 St. John of Damascus. Sermon on the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos // Christian Reading. 1841. P. 395.

4 St. John of Damascus // The Greatness of the Most Holy Theotokos. P. 20.

5 Ex. 3:5. – Ed.

6 Cf.: Gen. 3:15. – Ed.

7 Gen. 3:19. – Ed.

8 St. Epiphanius. Against Heresies. Book III, Chapter 18.

9 St. Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies. Book 5, Chapter 19.

10 Cf.: Epistle of the Patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Church on the Orthodox Faith (1723). Article 6 // Dogmatic Epistles of Orthodox Hierarchs of the 17th-19th Centuries on the Orthodox Faith. [Sergiev Posad], 1995. Pp. 153–154. – Ed.

11 Here we touch on the topic of the possibility or impossibility of God doing this or that. Let us touch on this briefly: we confess God as Almighty in the sense that there is no external force that could limit Him. But He is limited by Himself, by His Divine nature: He cannot do anything contrary to Himself, for example, sin, untruth, injustice, nonsense, etc.

12 Dionysius, St. // The Greatness of the Most Holy Theotokos. P. 22.

13 Synaxarion on the Conception of the Honorable and Glorious Prophet, Forerunner, and Baptist John. September 23.

14 Menaion. December 9. Matins. Canon. Song 5, Troparion 1. – Ed.

15 Ibid. Vespers. At “Lord, I have cried,” Stichera 3. – Ed.

16 Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Spiritual Homilies, Epistle, and Homilies. Homily 30:1. – Ed.

17 The Symbol, also known as the Confession of our holy father Athanasius, Patriarch of Alexandria. About Christ // Psalter. Moscow, 1996. Page 2 reversed. – 3. – Ed.

18 Saint Athanasius the Great. Against Apollinaris. Book 1, Chapter 5. – Ed.

19 Cf.: Gen. 1:31. – Ed.

20 Cf.: Gen. 1:28. – Ed.

Source in Russian: Reader on Comparative Theology: Textbook for the 3rd year of the Theological Seminary / [Ed. by nun Juliana (Samsonova)]. – Moscow: Publishing House of the Moscow Representation of the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra, 2005. – 846 p. / Archbishop Nathanael (Lvov). On the Latin Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. p. 672-692.