St Thomas Aquinas and the Immaculate Conception

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Fr Ambrose:
The agelong teaching of the Church of Rome is that Mary was conceived in original sin. It was only when a few zealous Franciscans got together in the 13th century and proposed clever and logical ways to justify the new doctrine of the Immaculate Conception that it began to circulate and gain credence.

Here are the words of Thomas Aquinas:

“Certainly Mary was conceived with original sin, as is natural. . . . If she would not have been born with original sin, she would not have needed to be redeemed by Christ, and, this being so, Christ would not be the universal Redeemer of men, which would abolish the dignity of Christ.”

Chapter CCXXXII bis. Thomas Aquinas, Compendio do Teologia, Barcelona, 1985.

So Thomas denies the Immaculate Conception and one must therefore conclude that it was NOT the belief of the Church at his time - in the 13th century or in earlier centuries. Aquinas would not have denied it if it were.

Therefore, it fails to measure up the Vincentian Canon for the Faith and it must be rejected or at least accepted as a mere private opinion and not an article of faith - *ubique, semper, ab omnibus *- what have been believed at all places, at all times, by everyone.

Move back a century earlier, to Bernard of Clairvaux, another great Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church who died in 1150. Bernard has the title of “Doctor of the Church” given to him by Pius VIII. Bernard has an overwhelming love for Mary and it is vividely expressed in his writings and his sermons and his hymns.

And yet, Bernard wrote against the new doctrine of the Immaculate Conception which was then gaining ground. His wrote:

The Mother of God does not need to be glorified with a false glorification

Once again, this shows that the Immaculate Conception was not believed by the Church and it fails the test of faith. Yes, later on, clever men with more clever minds even than Aquinas found ways to introduce the doctrine and bring about its acceptance but history proves conclusively that it was not a doctrine of the undivided Church.

Fr Ambrose/Russian Orthodox
“Remove not the ancient landmarks which your fathers have set”
-Proverbs 22.28
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Fr. Ambose:
You’re here just for a thrill in debate trying to sell your Orthodox agenda, right? lol, that’s okay, us apologists need challenges.
The Church has never officially taught that Mary was concieved in Original sin. The Church does not go around pointing fingers at saints saying who had original sin. Saying that the Church taught this is ridiculous. The Church taught that Mary was without sin and ever virgin.
At the time the Church always held the Immaculate Conception as a possibility and allowed people to believe in it. In fact, the Church put a feastday: The feast of the Conception of Mary. What would’ve been the point on putting a feastday commemorating the conception if it were not special and immaculate? Pope Pius IX explained this point in his encyclical that officially and infallibly proclaimed the Immaculate Conception. Many of his predecessors defended the doctrine. The doctrine was like the doctrine of Limbo which is not an official teaching but is a possibility and allowed.
Theologians are always in constant debate with one another. If we were to take them as authoritative, we’d be in serious trouble since the liberation theology is going around and that is heresy. Aquinas was not even a bishop, he was a priest and a church theologian. If he were around today, certainly he would accept the doctrine.
 
we must also remember that aquinas may not have had a clearer understanding of the Immaculate Conception. The church’s understanding of Her most mysterious beliefs, over the ages and with intense meditation become clearer… this could simply be the case here…
 
Has Eastern Orthodoxy always opposed the doctrine of the
Immaculate Conception of the Theotokos, the Mother of God? She is
praised in the Megalynarion hymn in the Divine Liturgy and in Vespers
and Matins showing the pre-eminence of Mary among the saints:
Code: 
       It is truly right to bless you, O Theotokos, ever-blessed and
       most pure, and the Mother of our God. More honorable than the
       Cheribum, and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim,
       without defilement you gave birth to God the Word: True
       Theotokos, we magnify you.

    How is the Theotokos "most pure"? Most Orthodox would say that
she was without sin at the Annunciation, but would disagree that the
Virgin Mary was conceived immaculate by St. Anne. Fr. Peter E. Gillquist
comments in Becoming Orthodox:
Code: 
       However, the Immaculate Conception of Mary is a doctrine
       unknown in the ancient Church and unique to the modern Roman
       Church.

    He later refers to

       the Roman Church with its questionable late dogmatic
       additions concerning Mary. (pp. 119, 122)

    Fr. Casimir Kucharek in his magnus opus _The Byzantine-Slav
Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom_ (1971; Alleluia Press, pp. 355-357)
marshals the evidence that the early Eastern Church did believe in and
commemorate the Immaculate Conception of the Theotokos:
Code: 
       Also, from end to end of the Byzantine world, both Catholic
       and Orthodox greet the Mother of God as _archrantos_, "the
       immaculate, spotless one," no less than eight times in the
       Divine Liturgy alone. But especially on the feast of her
       conception (December 9 in the Byzantine Church) is her
       immaculateness stressed: "This day, O faithful, from saintly
       parents begins to take being the spotless lamb, the most pure
       tabernacle, Mary..."; "She is conceived...the only immaculate
       one"; "or "Having conceived the most pure dove, Anne
       filled...." [References: From the Office of Matins, the Third
       Ode of the Canon for the feast; From the Office of Matins,
       the Stanzas during the Seating, for the same feast; From the
       Office of Matins, the Sixth Ode of the Canon for the same
       feast.]
More here: cin.org/imconcep.html
 
How did Orthodoxy come to reject the Immaculate Conception of
the Theotokos? Fr. Kucharek concludes:
Code: 
       The Greek Orthodox Church's belief in the immaculate
       conception continued unanimously until the fifteenth century,
       then many Greek theologians began to adopt the idea that Mary
       had been made immaculate at the moment of the Annunciation.
       [Nicholas Callixtus, however, expressed doubt during the
       fourteenth century (cf. Jugie _L'Immaculee Conception dans
       l'Ecriture Sainte et dans la tradition orientale_, p. 2130,
       but the great Cabasilas' (1371) teaching on the immaculate
       conception (_In nativitatem_ [PO 19, pp. 468-482]; _In
       dormitionem_ [PO 19, pp. 498-504]) still had great influence
       in the subsequent centuries. Perhaps even more influential
       was Patriarch Gregory Palamas (1446-1452) whose homilies on
       the Mother of God are second to none even today (_De
       hypapante_; _De annuntiatione_; _De dormitione_ [PG 151];
       also _In Christi genealogiam_ and _In praesentationem_ [edit.
       K. Sophocles, _Tou en hagiois patros emon Gregoriou tou
       Palama homiliai_, Athens, 1861]). Among the Eastern Slavs,
       belief in the immaculate conception went undisturbed until
       the seventeenth century, when the Skrizhal (Book of Laws)
       appeared in Russia, and proposed what the Slavs considered
       the "novel" doctrine of the Greeks. The views proposed in the
       Skrizhal were branded as blasphemous, especially among the
       _Staroviery_ (Old Believers), who maintained the ancient
       customs and beliefs, however small or inconsequential. [Cf.
       N. Subbotin, _Materialy dlja istorii Roskola_, Vol. IV
       (Moscow, 1878), pp. 39-50, 229, and Vol. 1 (Moscow, 1874), p.
       457.] This reaction confirms the ancient Byzantine and Slav
       tradition of the immaculate conception. Only after Pope Pius
       IX defined the dogma in 1854 did opposition to the doctrine
       solidify among most Orthodox theologians. The Orthodox
       Church, however, has never made any definitive pronouncement
       on the matter. **When Patriarch Anthimos VII, for example,
       wrote his reply to Pope Leo XIII's letter in 1895, and listed
       what he believed to be the errors of the Latins, he found no
       fault with their belief in the immaculate conception, but
       objected to the fact that the Pope had defined it.**
**cin.org/imconcep.html

**
 
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piety101:
Hmmm, since Thomas Aquinas didn’t hold 100% to the immaculate conception doctrine, wouldn’t that make him a heretic, by today’s standards?
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No. The Immaculate Conception was tradition at the time of Thomas Aquinas. It was not defined as dogma (required) until the 19th century.
 
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Axion:
The key point is that theologians, east and West have constantly recognised that Mary was **sinless **from the womb.
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Actually they haven’t expressed this as a constant although we accept it as such today. Some major Church Fathers, such as Saint John Chrysostom, wrote that the Mother of God sinned during her lifetime. She had personal sin. Today probably nobody from the East or the West would want to argue that position but it could, maybe? be held as a private opinion without involving heresy?
 
Fr Ambrose:
Actually they haven’t expressed this as a constant although we accept it as such today. Some major Church Fathers, such as Saint John Chrysostom, wrote that the Mother of God sinned during her lifetime. She had personal sin. Today probably nobody from the East or the West would want to argue that position but it could, maybe? be held as a private opinion without involving heresy?
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Obviously, Father Ambrose, this would depend on which Magisterium one is following. Yours might not regard it as heretical; ours (i.e. the Catholics’) today would.
 
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Sacramentalist:
Obviously, Father Ambrose, this would depend on which Magisterium one is following. Yours might not regard it as heretical; ours (i.e. the Catholics’) today would.
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No “Magisterium” in the Orthodox Church. The whole body of the faithful are entrusted with guarding the Tradition.
 
Obviously, Father Ambrose, the laypeople do not guard the Tradition in the same way the bishops do.

Or are layperople allowed to vote now in Ecumenical Councils?

Or are laypeople now allowed to “bind and loose” in Orthodoxy, in the same way bishops do?

Or am I to understand that, in Orthodoxy, the bishop is nothing more than a layman with a fancy hat and dress, who can confer Holy Orders?

Quit tripping on semantics. Orthodoxy does have a Magisterium.
 
All of this sensless bickering and arguing is why we NEED a Papacy. Oh thank the LORD for that. If not for the Catholic Church I would have left ALL CHURCHES as they just seem so ridiculous debating over so many different issues. Who is right and why should I believe either? Perhaps they are all wrong! After all if there is a God concerned for His Church and Truth then why can’t He keep it clean WITHOUT DIVISONS that just lead to seperation and chaos?

“The gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.” Oh thank God for the Catholic Chuch:)
 
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Sacramentalist:
Or are layperople allowed to vote now in Ecumenical Councils?
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They have the final “vote” -any Council which is not accepted by the fulness of the Church is relegated to the scrapheap of history. We have seen this happen from time to time.

Western Catholicism has a decidedly top-down approach; Orthodoxy does not really have this.
Quit tripping on semantics. Orthodoxy does have a Magisterium.
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Care to go out on a limb and try to explain what the “Orthodox Magisterium” actually is? 🙂

Here is someone who expresses this rather eloquently, far better than I am able…

plasticsusa.com/ortho/Florovski.htm

“…conviction of the Orthodox Church that the “guardian” of tradition and piety is the whole people, i.e. the Body of Christ, in no wise lessens or limits the power of teaching given to the hierarchy. It only means that the power of teaching given to the hierarchy is one of the functions of the catholic completeness of the Church; it is the power of testifying, of expressing and speaking the faith and the experience of the Church, which have been preserved in the whole body. The teaching of the hierarchy is, as it were, the mouthpiece of the Church. De omnium fidelium ore pendeamus, quia in omnem fidelem Spiritus Dei Spirat. [We depend upon the word of all the faithful, because the Spirit of God breathes in each of the faithful, St. Paulin. Nolan, epist. 23, 25, M.L. 61. col. 281]. Only to the hierarchy has it been given to teach “with authority.” The hierarchs have received this power to teach, not from the church-people but from the High Priest, Jesus Christ, in the Sacrament of Orders. But this teaching finds its limits in the expression of the whole Church. The Church is called to witness to this experience, which is an inexhaustible experience, a spiritual vision. A bishop of the Church, episcopus in ecclesia, must be a teacher. Only the bishop has received full power and authority to speak in the name of his flock. The latter receives the right of speaking through the bishop. But to do so the bishop must embrace his Church within himself; he must make manifest its experience and its faith. He must speak not from himself, but in the name of the Church, ex consensu ecclesiae. This is just the contrary of the Vatican formula*: ex sese, non autem ex consensu ecclesiae*. [From himself, but not from the consensus of the Church].
It is not from his flock that the bishop receives full power to teach, but from Christ through the Apostolic Succession. But full power has been given to him to bear witness to the catholic experience of the body of the Church. He is limited by this experience, and therefore in questions of faith the people must judge concerning his teaching. The duty of obedience ceases when the bishop deviates from the catholic norm, and the people have the right to accuse and even to depose him.”

(For some more details cp. my articles: “The Work of the Holy Spirit in Revelation,” The Christian East, 5.13, No. 2, 1932, and “The Sacrament of Pentecost,” The Journal of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, No 23, March 1934).
 
Fr. Ambrose, what about groups such as the Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, etc. who did not accept decisions of certain councils and schismed from the Catholic Church even before the Eastern Orthodox did in 1054? Does it have to do with the majority (if the majority of the faithful accept it, it’s true, if they don’t, it isn’t), and I’m assuming the Copts and other groups were not in the majority?
 
Anima Christi:
…what about groups such as the Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, etc. who did not accept decisions of certain councils and schismed from the Catholic…
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This is a curious situation. The latest understanding is that the Copts and the Ethiopians have always held the exact same faith as the (Roman) Catholics hold today and the misunderstanding was only a matter of semantics. So the question is begging: why did the Pope cast these people out of the Church when there were no valid grounds for doing so? That does not seem just at all. Why was he unable to see that the Coptic teaching was in fact identical to his own? Even today when we are told that the Pope and the Copts have come to a full theological understanding there is still no communion between your two Churches. I have to admit that I find it very puzzling.
 
J.W.B.:
All of this sensless bickering and arguing is why we NEED a Papacy. Oh thank the LORD for that. If not for the Catholic Church I would have left ALL CHURCHES as they just seem so ridiculous debating over so many different issues. Who is right and why should I believe either? Perhaps they are all wrong! After all if there is a God concerned for His Church and Truth then why can’t He keep it clean WITHOUT DIVISONS that just lead to seperation and chaos?

“The gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.” Oh thank God for the Catholic Chuch:)
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Haha yes! Excellent! a heart :amen: to that!
 
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Eden:
Fr. Kucharek concludes:…

When Patriarch Anthimos VII, for example,
wrote his reply to Pope Leo XIII’s letter in 1895, and listed
what he believed to be the errors of the Latins, he found no
fault with their belief in the immaculate conception, but
objected to the fact that the Pope had defined it.
cin.org/imconcep.html
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Fr Kucharek should have taken the time to read this letter by Patriarch Anthimos and the other Orthodox hierarchs before he allowed himself to pen such an erroneous statement.

The Patriarch and the other bishops specifically reject the following Western teachings because they are not to be found in the faith of the Church of the first millennium:
  1. the addition of the filioque to the Creed
  2. the doctrine of a purgatorial fire
  3. sprinkling instead of baptism,
  4. the immaculate conception of the ever-Virgin
  5. the temporal power, the infallibility and absolutism of the Bishop of Rome
And indeed for the holy purpose of union, the Eastern orthodox and catholic Church of Christ is heartily ready to accept all that which both the Eastern and Western Churches unanimously professed before the ninth century, if she has perchance perverted or does not hold it. And if the Westerns prove from the teaching of the holy Fathers and the divinely assembled Ecumenical Councils that the then orthodox Roman Church, which was throughout the West, even before the ninth century read the Creed with the addition, or used unleavened bread, or accepted the doctrine of a purgatorial fire, or sprinkling instead of baptism, or the immaculate conception of the ever-Virgin, or the temporal power, or the infallibility and absolutism of the Bishop of Rome, we have no more to say. But if, on the contrary, it is plainly demonstrated, as those of the Latins themselves, who love the truth, also acknowledge, that the Eastern and orthodox catholic Church of Christ holds fast the anciently transmitted doctrines which were at that time professed in common both in the East and the West, and that the Western Church perverted them by divers innovations, then it is clear, even to children, that the more natural way to union is the return of the Western Church to the ancient doctrinal and administrative condition of things; for the faith does not change in any way with time or circumstances, but remains the same always and everywhere,

66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:9EYHfhV3zUMJ:www.geocities.com/trvalentine/orthodox/ency1895.html+anthimos+leo+xiii+1895&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
 
In December of 2004, the Vatican newspaper Thirty Days ran a story about the 150th anniversary of the Roman proclamation of the Immaculate Conception as dogma. As part of that, they interviewed Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew about the Orthodox Akathist to the Theotokos – a truly beautiful prayer/poem/song – and in passing asked him about the Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The Patriarch politely told them that it was wrong, and correctly identified its roots as being in the notion of original sin. It is a brief but excellent presentation of the Orthodox position:

*(Question): The Catholic Church this year celebrates the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. How does the Eastern Christian and Byzantine Tradition celebrate the Conception of Mary and her full and immaculate holiness? *

Bartholomew I: The Catholic Church found that it needed to institute a new dogma for Christendom about one thousand and eight hundred years after the appearance of the Christianity, because it had accepted a perception of original sin – a mistaken one for us Orthodox – according to which original sin passes on a moral stain or a legal responsibility to the descendants of Adam, instead of that recognized as correct by the Orthodox faith – according to which the sin transmitted through inheritance the corruption, caused by the separation of mankind from the uncreated grace of God, which makes him live spiritually and in the flesh. Mankind shaped in the image of God, with the possibility and destiny of being like to God, by freely choosing love towards Him and obedience to his commandments, can even after the fall of Adam and Eve become friend of God according to intention; then God sanctifies them, as he sanctified many of the progenitors before Christ, even if the accomplishment of their ransom from corruption, that is their salvation, was achieved after the incarnation of Christ and through Him.
Code: 
In consequence, according to the Orthodox faith, Mary the All-holy Mother of God was not conceived exempt from the corruption of original sin, but loved God above of all things and obeyed his commandments, and thus was sanctified by God through Jesus Christ who incarnated himself of her. She obeyed Him like one of the faithful, and addressed herself to Him with a Mother’s trust. Her holiness and purity were not blemished by the corruption, handed on to her by original sin as to every man, precisely because she was reborn in Christ like all the saints, sanctified above every saint. 

Her reinstatement in the condition prior to the Fall did not necessarily take place at the moment of her conception. We believe that it happened afterwards, as consequence of the progress in her of the action of the uncreated divine grace through the visit of the Holy Spirit, which brought about the conception of the Lord within her, purifying her from every stain. 

As already said, original sin weighs on the descendants of Adam and of Eve as corruption, and not as legal responsibility or moral stain. The sin brought hereditary corruption and not a hereditary legal responsibility or a hereditary moral stain. In consequence the All-holy participated in the hereditary corruption, like all mankind, but with her love for God and her purity – understood as an imperturbable and unhesitating dedication of her love to God alone – she succeeded, through the grace of God, in sanctifying herself in Christ and making herself worthy of becoming the house of God, as God wants all us human beings to become.
Therefore we in the Orthodox Church honor the All-holy Mother of God above all the saints, albeit we don’t accept the new dogma of her Immaculate Conception. The non-acceptance of this dogma in no way diminishes our love and veneration of the All-holy Mother of God.

minorclergy.journalspace.com/?cmd=forward&entryid=145
 
You gave me this quote:

And indeed for the holy purpose of union, the Eastern orthodox and catholic Church of Christ is heartily ready to accept all that which both the Eastern and Western Churches unanimously professed before the ninth century, if she has perchance perverted or does not hold it. And if the Westerns prove from the teaching of the holy Fathers and the divinely assembled Ecumenical Councils that the then orthodox Roman Church, which was throughout the West, even before the ninth century read the Creed with the addition, or used unleavened bread, or accepted the doctrine of a purgatorial fire, or sprinkling instead of baptism, or the immaculate conception of the ever-Virgin, or the temporal power, or the infallibility and absolutism of the Bishop of Rome, we have no more to say. But if, on the contrary, it is plainly demonstrated, as those of the Latins themselves, who love the truth, also acknowledge, that the Eastern and orthodox catholic Church of Christ holds fast the anciently transmitted doctrines which were at that time professed in common both in the East and the West, and that the Western Church perverted them by divers innovations, then it is clear, even to children, that the more natural way to union is the return of the Western Church to the ancient doctrinal and administrative condition of things; for the faith does not change in any way with time or circumstances, but remains the same always and everywhere,

And concluded this:

The Patriarch and the other bishops specifically reject the following Western teachings because they are not to be found in the faith of the Church of the first millennium:
  1. the addition of the filioque to the Creed
  2. the doctrine of a purgatorial fire
  3. sprinkling instead of baptism,
  4. the immaculate conception of the ever-Virgin
  5. the temporal power, the infallibility and absolutism of the Bishop of Rome
Where in the world did you get your interpretation? It clearly says if the Western Church can prove these things were part of the Church before the 9th century, the Eastern Church has nothing more to say on them.

Here is another article about the Eastern Church and the Immaculate Conception:

home.nyc.rr.com/mysticalrose/barton2.html

**Kucharek states that “the great St Gregory Palamas himself (d.1359) believed that Mary was purified from the very first of her existence.” Kucharek also states that the Greek Orthodox Church belief of the Immaculate Conception until the 15th century only began to change wherein Greek theologians began to propose the idea of Mary being only made immaculate at her Annunciation. But belief in the Immaculate Conception in eastern Slavs was undisturbed until the late 17th century when the Skirzhal (Book of Laws - also spelled Skrigeal due to problems of translating Cyrillic alphabet to Latin alphabet) appeared in Russia, and proposed what the Slavs considered as a “novel doctrine” of the Greeks (ie that the Theotokos was purified at the Annunciation). **
**Kucharek says these “new” views were branded blasphemous by the Russian Old Believers, who maintained the ancient customs/traditions however small or inconsequential. Fr Kucharek points out that when Greek Patriarch Anthimos VII wrote his reply to Pope Leo XIII’s letter in 1895, listing what he believed to be the errors of the Latins, the Patriarch found no fault with the Latin belief of the Immaculate Conception, but objected to the Pope defining it as a required dogmate. **
 
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Eden:
And concluded this:

The Patriarch and the other bishops specifically reject the following Western teachings because they are not to be found in the faith of the Church of the first millennium:
  1. the addition of the filioque to the Creed
  2. the doctrine of a purgatorial fire
  3. sprinkling instead of baptism,
  4. the immaculate conception of the ever-Virgin
  5. the temporal power, the infallibility and absolutism of the Bishop of Rome
Where in the world did you get your interpretation? It clearly says if the Western Church can prove these things were part of the Church before the 9th century, the Eastern Church has nothing more to say on them.
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Please read the very next sentence which begins “If on the contrary…” and concludes with the assertion that the Western Church has made perversions and innovations with the 5 doctrines listed above and that it should return to the ancient doctrines.
 
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