Since folks seemed to benefit from the recent series I did on the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, I decided I would follow it up with another series leading up to the next big Marian feast, the Immaculate Conception. In order to discuss it, we need to know 1) what it is and 2) why people have difficulties with it. In future articles we will systematically look at the answers to those objections and at the reasons the dogma is important.
What is the Immaculate Conception?
A lot of people confuse the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin Birth. The Virgin Birth refers to the birth of Jesus Christ. The Immaculate Conception refers to the conception of Mary, not Jesus. It is the dogma defined by the Catholic Church in 1854 that:
The Church not only teaches that Mary never sinned in thought, word, or deed, she teaches that Mary never even suffered from ‘‘original sin,’’ that hole in our souls where the life of God was originally intended to be. Original sin is the source of concupiscence, the haywiredness in our makeup that weakens our will, darkens our intellects, and disorders our desires so that we labor under the continual tendency to selfishly and sinfully put ourselves before everybody else, including God. It comes of being born of a race descended from our fallen first parents, Adam and Eve, who lost the life of grace when they rebelled against God (Gen. 3) and so had nothing to pass on to us. According to the Church, every son and daughter of Adam and Eve who ever lived is born with original sin—except for Jesus and Mary.
A Boatload of Objections
Probably no Marian doctrine has provoked more controversy than this one. For Evangelicals, no teaching of the Church is harder to square with their traditional reading of Romans 3:23: "[A]ll have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." As a recipient of that Evangelical tradition, I had always thought that this verse, coupled with Mary’s own declaration, "[M]y spirit rejoices in God my Savior" (Luke 1:47, emphasis added), proved the Immaculate Conception was against the inspired word of God. It’s a no-brainer, I thought. If all have sinned, how could Mary be sinless?
And why would she need a savior if she never had anything to be saved from? It amazed me that the Church could be so dumb (and I secretly cast an admiring glance at that sage in the mirror for Noticing what the wise elders of the Catholic Church had missed). The gratifying thought would steal over me: "I thank thee, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will" (Luke 10:21).
This sense of certainty that the Church had blown it in a major way was only increased by stories like Mark 3:21–35, where Jesus’ family (including Mary) comes looking for him because the word has gone out that he’s out of his mind, and Jesus (at least to me) appeared to rebuke their lack of faith. It was bolstered as well by the discovery that the Eastern Orthodox still don’t accept the Immaculate Conception of Mary, not to mention the fact that some of the Church’s greatest medieval theologians, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, had also put forward doctrines that had no room for the Immaculate Conception either. And besides, I thought, how could she be without sin? She’s human, not God!
Unfortunately for my towering humility, the day eventually came when each one of my objections encountered very serious difficulties, and I had to acknowledge that, once again, an apparent contradiction of Scripture is not necessarily the same thing as a real one. It began when I stopped reading Paul for proof texts and started reading him for what he was saying.
Of which more next time.
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Well, I for one, hope “next time” means SOON! :)
Maaaaybe because it’s a biological impossibility for a virgin to give birth. Where did the other set of chromosomes come from? Did Jesus only have one set - was he a clone of Mary (obviously not)? Could we have conceivably gotten the genome of God if the right technology was available at the time?
Julia, this post isn’t about the virgin birth, for one thing - the Immaculate Conception refers to Mary’s conception, not Jesus’s. But to your point, if God is the author of all the rules that govern the universe, I think He could make the virgin birth happen even if it would never be comprehensible (on a scientific level) to our tiny human brains.
Julia - To quote the article, “A lot of people confuse the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin Birth. The Virgin Birth refers to the birth of Jesus Christ. The Immaculate Conception refers to the conception of Mary, not Jesus.”
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But to answer your objection - the fact that the Virgin Birth is not possible under normal circumstances is in fact why we call it a miracle. It’s not that we’re so dumb that we think it’s possible, it’s that we know very well that it’s normally impossible and are amazed that it happened anyway. Also, I doubt the Church has any official position on Christ’s genetic material, that not being terribly important to anything.
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But again, Mark was writing about Mary’s conception, not Jesus’.
Julia:
Perhaps before jerking the knee, you should attempt to read what is actually written. The Immaculate Conception is not the Virgin Birth. Thanks for playing.
Maybe the reason so many folk get the Immaculate Conception confused with the Incarnation is that they assume human sexual relations are somehow tainted, even within a marriage.That’s certainly not Catholic teaching.
Kathleen, exactly. It’s funny how many people think that Immaculate Conception refers to Jesus’ conception. It must be because subconsciously, they think sex is “dirty” and so they assume that a conception is immaculate, meaning without taint, when is sexless. But that’s not the case here and as you pointed out, Jesus’ conception is called the Incarnation.
While I totally agree that most evangelicals have bad reasons for disagreeing with the Immaculate Conception, I think there are very genuine and good reasons to disagree with the Immaculate Conception’s definition as a dogma, especially from an Orthodox perspective.
The biggest one I can think of is that fact that the Immaculate Conception is and forever will be a WESTERN idea. It’s based entirely on a western (latin, if you will) understanding of the fall of man and western theology’s idea of “original sin”.
Since these doctrines appear in a VERY different way in the East—especially original sin, which does not occur at all—this forms a very legitimate concern: Why should the Eastern Rites except a dogma that in no way aligns with their doctrinal heritage or theological understanding?
In my opinion, this is one of the most horrible consequences of this dogma’s declaration. Our eastern brethren are pushed away and further separate from the communion with Christ’s Church for the simple reason that they CANNOT accept the Immaculate Conception. Many of them will completely agree that Mary was completely without sin, yet, since they have no theological definition for “original sin” and it is seen as an entirely western idea, there is no context for them to interpret the dogma in.
Thus, for those who do chose to convert to the Eastern Catholic Churches, they are forced into a theological belief which is foreign to them. And once this western infiltration in the eastern churches has begun, it cannot be easily stopped. This is the horrible tragedy which is becoming so apparent to man Eastern Catholics today.
As a Roman Catholic, I fully accept the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, yet I struggle with the Church’s decision to dogmatize the belief considering the overreaching and unstoppable consequences.
We will discuss the Eastern Churches in a future piece.
Mary was conceived without sin as she was chosen to be the Mother of Christ. She was given the choice to accept or decline this unvitation from God.She accepted and we have all benifited from her choice and she has become a Mother to all.
Can’t wait for the next “episode”!
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