O
OrdinaryMelkite
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I have not posted on the EC forum for a LONG TIME-------but this is as good of an explanation as I can find.**Original Sin, the Consequences of the Fall, and the Immaculate Conception
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In the Byzantine East, grace is the uncreated Energies of God (there are no created graces in our theology).
The consequences of the Fall is the separation of soul and body with the soul being placed in hades. The Mother of God did not give into temptation just as Christ did not. In the East, we do not teach that man cannot have grace because of the fall, therefore, we have no need to teach the immaculate conception.
The East teaches consequences of the Fall is the separation of soul and body with the soul being placed in hades. The West teaches that those in a state of Original Sin lack sanctifying grace.
Christ was fully man. He voluntarily submitted to having his soul separated from his body and his soul sent to hades since that is what happens to man and he was (and is) a man. Christ was made like us in all things except for sin. The Mother of God was subject to the same consequences of the Fall as her Son, Christ, was.
We do not teach that losing God’s grace is a part of the consequences of the Fall. Therefore, we cannot use the Latin defined, teaching of the Immaculate Conception because it is foreign to the theological language of the East. The Mother of God was born with all of the consequences of the Fall and was full of God’s grace at the same time. She chose out of her free will to never sin.
Here is the Byzantine view presented by Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky in his book, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology:
According to the Roman teaching, the burden of the sin of our first ancestors consists in the removal from mankind of a supernatural gift of grace. But here there arose a theological question: if mankind had been deprived of the gifts of grace, then how is one to understand the words of the Archangel addressed to Mary: “Rejoice, thou that art full of grace, the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art thou among women . . . Thou hast found grace with God?” One could only conclude that the Most Holy Virgin Mary had been removed from the general law of the “deprivation of grace” and of the guilt of the sin of Adam. And since her life was holy from her birth, consequently she received, in the form of an exception, a supernatural gift, a grace of sanctity, even before her birth, that is, at her conception. Such a deduction was made by the Latin theologians. They called this removal a “privilege” of the Mother of God One must note that the acknowledgement of this dogma was preceded in the West by a long period of theological dispute, which lasted from the 12th century, when this teaching appeared, until the 17th century, when it was spread by Jesuits in the Roman Catholic world.
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On the one hand, we see that God did not deprive mankind, even after its fall, of His grace-giving gifts, as for example, the words of the 50th Psalm indicate: “Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me… With Thy governing Spirit establish me;” or the words of Psalm 70: “On Thee have I been made fast from the womb; from my mother’s womb Thou art my protector.”
On the other hand, in accordance with the teaching of Sacred Scripture, in Adam all mankind tasted the forbidden fruit. Only the God-man Christ begins with Himself the new mankind, freed by Him from the sin of Adam. Therefore, He is called the “Firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29), that is: the First in the new human race; He is the “new Adam.” The Most Holy Virgin was born as subject to the sin of Adam together with all mankind, and with him she shared the need for redemption (the Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs, Par. 6). The pure and immaculate life of the Virgin Mary up to the Annunciation by the Archangel, her freedom from personal sins, was the fruit of the union of her spiritual labor upon herself and the abundance of grace that was poured out upon her. “Thou hast found grace with God,” the Archangel said to her in his greeting: “thou hast found,” that is, attained, acquired, earned. The Most Holy Virgin Mary was prepared by the best part of mankind as a worthy vessel for the descent of God theWord to earth The coming down of the Holy Spirit (“the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee”) totally sanctified the womb of the Virgin Mary for the reception of God the Word.
Read more: intratext.com/IXT/ENG0824/__P1N.HTM
St John Chrysostom says:
[Romans 5] Ver. 18. “Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of One the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.”
And he insists again upon it, saying,
Ver. 19. “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous.
What he says seems indeed to involve no small question: but if any one attends to it diligently, this too will admit of an easy solution. What then is the question? It is the saying that through the offence of one many were made sinners. For the fact that when he had sinned and become mortal, those who were of him should be so also, is nothing unlikely. But how would it follow that from his disobedience another would become a sinner? For at this rate a man of this sort will not even deserve punishment, if, that is, it was not from his own self that he became a sinner. What then does the word “sinners” mean here? To me it seems to mean liable to punishment and condemned to death. Now that by Adam’s death we all became mortals, he had shown clearly and at large.
Source: ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf111.vii.xii.html]
The East and the West have different theological language, terminology, and patrimony.
CONTINUED (below):
Thanks.
