Question
Dear brothers of apologeticacatolica.org. A Protestant friend has shown me an article showing quotes from the fathers of the Church where they denied that the Virgin Mary had been conceived without sin. I attach them waiting for you to clarify if this is true and the reasons you had for doing so.
Answer
Dear brother, before commenting on the quotes you send us, I suggest you read these two articles where the history of the dogma of the immaculate conception and what the fathers of the Church have said about it are analyzed in detail.
History of the dogma of the immaculate conception, by Pascual Rambla
The Immaculate Conception, Catholic Encyclopedia
They explain in detail how the Church advanced in understanding this truth of faith, the difficulties it encountered when trying to reconcile this doctrine with the universality of original sin and how these difficulties were subsequently overcome.
Now let’s start analyzing the patristic quotes that your Protestant friend has provided you.
-St. Augustine (354-430), bishop of Hippo and doctor of the church, fought the idea that Mary was born without stain of original sin (in Psalm 34, sermon 3) says: “Mary died because of original sin transmitted from Adam to all his descendants.” And in his writing De Peccatorum Meritis, he declares that Mary’s flesh was “sinful flesh” and that Mary, who descended from Adam, died as a result of sin.
This quote is false. You can consult the exposition of Psalm 34 of St. Augustine here:
And the other text cited here:
The first quote that at first we thought had been literally invented, we later verified (thanks to the attempt made by the author of the Primitive-Christianity website to vindicate it) that it is nothing more than a manipulation of a quite different one, which is this:
“Maria ex Adam mortua propter peccatum, Adam mortuus propter”
When compared to the fraudulent and manipulated quote, original sin is neither mentioned nor said to have been passed on to Mary. They have needed to increase and distort the phrase to adapt it. In addition to this, the author omits that when St. Augustine, disputing with Julian (a heretic supporter of Pelagianism), is accused by him of attributing the sinful condition to Mary by virtue of his defense of the universality of original sin. Julian rejected the doctrine of original sin while St. Augustine defended it. Julian argued that by defending the doctrine of original sin, St. Augustine was affirming that Mary was a sinner.
Juliano said: “You hand Mary over to the devil because of her birth.”, That is to say, if you affirm that original sin is transmitted by natural generation, Mary was a subject of the devil, because in this way she descended and in this way she was conceived by her parents,” To this St. Augustine did not grant that Mary had been conceived in sin but responded:
St. Augustine, C. Iul. I heard. 4,122
“We did not consign Mary to the devil because of the condition of her birth – this was the accusation – but – this was the answer – the condition of birth was eliminated by the grace of regeneration.”
He also wrote:
St. Augustine. Of nat. et. gr. 36.42
“With the exception of the Holy Virgin Mary, of whom, out of the honor due to the Lord, I absolutely do not tolerate mention being made when talking about sin.…”
The most curious thing is that even though the quote is fraudulent, it has been copied without verification by numerous Protestant sites that have not bothered to verify the source.
Note: After a debate began on Catholic.net about this controversial quote, a Protestant apologist had to acknowledge that St. Augustine believed that Mary had never committed sin in her entire life, defending only that he believed that she had contracted original sin. Evidently this confession in itself says a lot about Augustine’s thought, centuries distant from the Protestant thought that affirms that Mary was a “sinner.” It is important to note that they have also been unable to verify the second quote attributed to St. Augustine, where it is said that Mary was “sinful flesh” contrary to Augustine’s own words that Mary’s flesh was the same as that of Jesus.
-Ambrose (340-397), doctor of the church and bishop of Milan says: “Jesus is the only one whom the arms of sin did not overcome; no creature conceived by the contact of man and woman has been excepted from original sin; only He who was conceived without that contact and of a virgin, by the work of the Holy Spirit, has been excepted” (Commentary on Psalm 118):
After the commentary on Psalm 118 of St. Ambrose we find that not only does it not say that, but quite the opposite.
“Come, therefore, discover your sheep, not through your servants or employees, do it by yourselves. Lift me up bodily and in the flesh, which has fallen through Adam. Lift me up not from Sarah, but from Mary, the Virgin not only incorrupt but the Virgin whom grace has made intact, free from any stain of sin.” (Commentary on Psalm 118:22-30).
-Eusebius of Caesarea (265-340)(Emiss, in Orat.2 of Nativ.) says: “No one is exempt from the stain of original sin, not even the mother of the redeemer of the world.. Only Jesus was found exempt from the law of sin even though he was born of a woman subject to sin.”
Harnack’s work “Altchrist. Lit.”, on pages 554 and following, mentions the total work of Eusebius of Caesarea:
(1) The life of Pamphilus, (2) An ancient Martyrology, (3) On the Martyrs of Palestine,
(4) The Chronicle, (5) Ecclesiastical History, (6) Life of Constantine, IV Books., (7) Against Hierocles,
(8) Against Porphyry, (9) “Præparatio Evangelica”, in Books XV., (10) “Demonstratio Evangelica”,
(11) “Præparatio Ecclesiastica”, (12) “Demonstratio Ecclesiastica”, (13) Objections and defense, in Books II, (14) The Theophany, (15) On the genealogy of the ancients, (16) Eusebius narrates in the “Life of Constantine” (IV, 36, 37), how he was commissioned by the emperor to prepare fifteen copies of the Bible for the use of the Churches of Constantinople., (17) Sessions and Canons., (18) An edition of the Septuagint, (19) (a) Etymological interpretation of Hebrew words from the Scriptures; (b) Chronography of the Patriarchs of Judea; (c) A plan of Jerusalem and the Temple; (d) On the names and places of the Scriptures., (20) Nomenclature on the names of the books of the Prophets, (21) Commentaries on the Psalms, (22) Commentary on Isaiah., (23 to 28) Commentaries on different books of the Scriptures (lost), (29) Commentary on Saint Luke (lost), (30) Commentary on I Corinthians (lost), (31) Commentary on the Hebrews (lost), (32) On the Discrepancies of the Gospels, II Books, (33) Introduction to theology (Lost),
(34) Apology for Origen, (35) “Against Marcellus, Bishop of Ancyra”, (36) “On the Theology of the Church” (Only fragments exist), (37) “On the Feast of the Passover” (lost), (38) Against the Manichaeans (lost), (39) Dedication to the Church of Tyre, (40) Letter to Constantine, (41) On the burial of the Savior, (42) “De Laudibus Constantini”, (43) Prayer of the Martyrs, (44) Three letters: (a) To Alexander of Alexandria (b) To Euphrasius (c) To the Empress Constantia, (45) To the Church of Caesarea,
As we see, in the long catalog of works by this historian, there is nothing that can be abbreviated as “Emiss,en Orat.2 de Nativ.”
His exegetical works have been lost for the most part, and none of them allude to a “Nativ orat”…in other words, there is not a single comment on Christmas in the work of Eusebius of Caesarea, which I imagine is what the quote alludes to, so we cannot assume that the quote is true.
Note: After writing to the author of the website Christianity-primitivo.org who had these quotes published in an article, he could not help but try to justify the first quote from St. Augustine and this one, which he had to recognize after going to ask a French Catholic priest (because he recognized that he had copied those quotes literally from a book without verifying them), that Eusebius of Caesarea never really said that, but that the quote belongs to a disciple of his (Eusebius Emissenus). We are not able to verify whether this is true either, because the author of the Protestant website was also unable to provide an additional source for his word of what the priest told him.
-Tertullian, one of the highest authorities of the early Christian Church, warned against this assumption of the birth of Mary and further maintained that after the birth of Christ, Joseph and Mary led a married life like that of any other couple united before God in holy matrimony.
Tertullian is recognized as a notable ecclesiastical writer widely read in the Catholic Church before embracing the heresy of Montanism and later founding his own sect (the Tertullianites). To call him one of the highest authorities of the early Christian Church is quite an exaggeration.
Now, the quote in question does not have the source, and we have not found any text where it refers to the immaculate conception in any of his works. In his works he rather rejects Mary’s virginity during and after childbirth. Writes ““Although she was a virgin when she conceived, she was a woman when she gave birth.” (De Carne Christi 23) and by brothers of Jesus he understands the children of Mary according to the flesh. Later another heretic (Helvidio) would quote him to support his rejection of Mary’s virginity, to which Saint Jerome responded “As far as Tertullian is concerned, all I have to say is that he was not a man of the Church.”. However, it is not analyzed now. the position of the fathers of the Church regarding the virginity of Mary, but about the immaculate conception and we do not find that in that sense the quote is true.
-Pope Innocent III, in the year 1226, says: “Eve was formed without guilt, and she gave birth in guilt; Mary was formed in guilt, and she gave birth without guilt” (De Festo Assump., Sermon 2).
I have not found a single work by Innocent III called “De Festus Assump” that has a sermon 2.
-Pope Gelassius, in the year 492, wrote: “It belongs only to the Immaculate Lamb to have no sin” (Gelassii papae Dicta, Volume 4, Colossians).
Another rather suspicious quote, because there is not a single resource that proves such a quote.
“Gelasii” is not the name of any pope and that word does not even exist in a Latinized form.
Nor does “dicta” exist in any Latin-Spanish Dictionary. The closest thing to a similar work is the Dictatus Papae attributed to Pope Gregory VII (not Pope Gelasius) and it goes without saying that it does not say anything remotely similar to what the quote affirms.
-Anselm (1033-1109), archbishop and doctor of the church wrote (OP., P.92): “Although the conception of Christ has been immaculate, nevertheless, the same Virgin from whom He was born has been conceived in iniquity and was born with original sin, because she sinned in Adam, just as all sinned through him.”
The closest thing to the abbreviation “OP. P” of Saint Anselm is the work “Opuscula Patrum” which is a compendium of Patrology made by the ed. Hurter from Germany in 1886 and which contains the work of Saint Anselm called Monologium.
What is cited in the previous paragraph does not appear anywhere in this work.
-Pope Sixtus IV himself, belonging to the order of Scotus, preferred to keep a prudent distance in the dispute, and insist that “nothing has yet been decided by the Roman Church and the apostolic see.” In other words, almost a millennium and a half after Mary’s birth there was no certainty that her conception had been immaculate.
It must be objected that this statement hides many events that, if mentioned, would show that Pope Sixtus IV certainly agreed with the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin, he simply did not want to make a dogmatic declaration in this regard.
The author of this quote, for example, does not say that it was precisely Pope Sixtus IV who issued a Decree of February 28, 1476 adopting the feast of the Immaculate Conception for the entire Latin Church and granting an indulgence to all those who attended the Divine Offices of the solemnity (Denzinger, 734). This was certainly an implicit recognition of his support for the doctrine:
Pope Sixtus IV in the Constitution Cum praeexcelsa, February 28, 1476
When, investigating with devout consideration, we scrutinize the exalted prerogatives of the merits with which the queen of heaven, the glorious Virgin Mother of God, raised to the eternal thrones, shines like a morning star among the stars…: A worthy thing, or rather a due thing we consider, to invite all the faithful of Christ with indulgence and forgiveness of sins, to give thanks to the omnipotent God (whose providence, looking ab eternal the humility of the Virgin herself, with preparation of the Holy Spirit, constituted it as the habitation of his Only Begotten, to reconcile with its Author human nature, subject by the fall of the first man to eternal death, taking from it the flesh of our mortality for the redemption of the people and remaining, however, after childbirth, a virgin without stain), give thanks, we say, and praise for the wonderful conception of the same immaculate Virgin and, therefore, say the masses and other divine offices instituted in the Church and attend them, so that, through the merits and intercession of the Virgin herself, they may become more suitable for divine grace.“(Magisterium of Sixtus IV)
However, this did not completely calm the disputes on this issue and he then published a constitution in 1483 in which he punished with excommunication anyone whose opinion was accused of heresy (Grave nimis, September 4, 1483; Denzinger, 735). He thus rebuked those who preached that those who believed that Mary had been conceived without spot were gravely sinning, and he also rebuked those who accused the Maculinists of heresy since there was no dogmatic pronouncement in this regard:
Pope Sixtus IV in Of the Constitution Grave nimis, September 4, 1483
In truth, despite the Roman Church celebrating the solemn public feast of the conception of the immaculate and always Virgin Mary and having ordained a special and proper office for this purpose, we have known that some preachers of various orders have not been ashamed to publicly affirm until now in their sermons to the people in various cities and lands, and every day they do not cease to preach it, that all those who believe and affirm that the immaculate Mother of God was conceived without a stain of original sin, commit mortal sin, or that they are heretics celebrating the office of the same immaculate conception, and who, hearing the sermons of those who affirm that she was conceived without that stain, seriously sin… We, by apostolic authority, in accordance with the present, reprove and condemn such statements as false, erroneous and totally foreign to the truth and equally, on that point, the books published on the subject… [but those who] dare to affirm that those who hold the contrary opinion are also rebuked, namely, that the glorious Virgin Mary was conceived with original sin, they incur the crime of heresy or mortal sin, as it has not yet been decided by the Roman Church and the Apostolic See…
So, as you can see, things are not as the author of the quote tries to imply.
Pope Leo I, in the year 440, stated: “Only the Lord Jesus Christ among the children of men was born immaculate, because He alone was conceived without the dirt and lust of the flesh” (Sermon 24 of Nativ.Dom.).
In sermon 24 Leo I does not say what is attributed to him, you can verify it here:
Sermon XXIV of the Feast of the Nativity
What it really says there is: “In this Son of the Blessed Virgin he only produced a seed that was blessed and free from the guilt of his lineage. And each one participates in this spiritual origin in regeneration; and each one, when reborn, The waters of baptism are like the womb of the Virgin; Because the same Holy Spirit that fills the fountain filled the Virgin, that the sin that this sacred conception has overthrown can be removed by this mystical water.“
In this text, St. Leo considered Mary to be completely filled with the Holy Spirit, and he draws a similarity between the water of baptism, liberator from sin, and Mary’s womb.
The quote given by the author of the article actually corresponds to sermon 25 which we have been able to obtain from Latin
Agnoscat igitur catholica fides in humilitate Domini gloriam suam, et de salutis suae sacramentis gaudeat Ecclesia, quae corpus est Christi: quia nisi Verbum Dei caro ièret et habitaret in nobis, nisi in communionem creaturae Creator ipse descenderet, et vetustatem humanom ad novum principium sua nativitate revocaret, regnaret mors ab Adam (Rom. V, 14) usque in finem, et super omnes homines condemnatio insolubilis permaneret, cum de sola conditione nascendi, una cunctis esset causa pereundi. Solus itaque inter filios hominum Dominus Jesus innocens natus est, quia solus sine carnalis concupiscentiae pollutione conceptus. Factus est homo nostri generis, ut nos divinae naturae possimus esse consortes. Originem quam sumpsit in utero virginis, posit in fonte baptismatis; dedit aquae, quod dedit matri; virtus enim Altissimi et obumbratio Spiritus sancti (Luc. I, 35), quae fecit ut Maria pareret Salvatorem, eadem facit ut regeneret unda credentem. Quid autem sanandis aegris, illuminandis caecis, vivificandis mortuis aptius Fuit, quam ut superbiae vulnera humilitatis remediis curaentur? Adam praecepta Dei negligens, peccati induxit damnationem; Jesus factus sub lege reddidit justitiae libertatem. Ille diabolo obtemperans usque ad praevaricationem, meruit ut in ipso omnes morerentur; hic Patri obediens usque ad cruzem, fecit ut in ipso omnes vivificadorentur. Ille cupidus honoris angelici, naturae suae perdidit dignitatem; hic infirmitatis nostrae suscipiens conditionem, propter quos ad inferna descendit, eo dem in coelestibus collocavit. Postremo illi per elationem lapse dictum est: Terra es, et in terram ibis (Genes. III, 19); huic per subjectionem exaltato dictum est: Sede a dextris meis, donec ponam inimicos tuos scabellum pedum tuorum (Ps. CIX, 1).
The quote in question corresponds to this:
“Solus itaque inter filios hominum Dominus Jesus innocens natus est, quia solus sine carnalis concupiscentiae pollutione conceptus.”
However, St. Leo writes his homily, not focusing on Mary, but attacking the Pelagian heresy. Because, despite those words, there is a distinction between “the sons of men” that the pope mentions, and the Virgin Mary.
Let us also remember that in the West, Mariology did not advance at that time due to the barbarian invasions, which is why it is constrained to be applied to the conservation and dissemination of the achievements already obtained among the invading peoples, not to the advancement of theology.
Therefore, if we read the Fathers of that time, we see that there is an ambivalence: on the one hand they speak of the universality of original sin from which only Christ is excluded (so that the barbarians would not fall into the heresy of Pelagius), and on the other hand, they praise the singular holiness and purity of Mary.
For example, Fulgencio, in De ceritate praedest et gratiae Dei, lib 2, cap 2, tells us practically the same thing as St. Leo the Great in his Sermon XXV, 5. But in another work, in Sermo 2, De duplici Nativ Christi, No. 6, he does not hesitate to admit the absolute holiness of Mary. In a commentary on the Angel’s Greeting to Mary, he explains with extreme precision the meaning of “full of grace,” practically bringing it to bear on what is understood today as her immunity from original sin. (Sermo 36, De laudibus Mariae ex partu Salvatoris; PL 65:899C).
-Pope Gregory the Great (540-604), commenting on Job 14:4, expresses that Jesus Christ is the only one who was not conceived of impure blood and truly pure in his flesh.
The “New Advent Encyclopedia” gives us the following list of the works of St. Gregory the Great: “Moralium Libri XXXV”; “Regulae Pastoralis Liber”; “Dialogorum Libri IV”; “Homiliarum in Ezechielem Prophetam Libri II”; “Homiliarum in Evangelia Libri II”; “Epistolarum Libri XIV”; “In Librum Primum Regum Variarum Expositionum Libri VI”; “expositio super Cantica Canticorum”; “Expositio in VII Psalmos Poenitentiales”; “Concordia Quorundam Testimoniorum S. Scripturae”
Of all these he comments on the book of Job in Moralium Libri XXXV. What comes closest to the quote in question is this text from said work:
See. 4. Who can bring purity from the impure? Nobody.
70. He, who alone is pure by Himself, is the one who can cleanse impure things. The man who lives in corruptible flesh has the filth of temptation imprinted on him, which he carries from birth. Due to its conception, being through carnal satisfaction, it is impure. Therefore, the psalmist said, “Behold, I was formed in iniquity, and my mother conceived me in sin” [Psalm 51:7]. This is the reason why he is frequently tempted even against his wishes. That is why he is subject to impurities in his mind, even as he strives against them, because being conceived in impurity, even after his purification, he continues to strive to become better than he is. But he who has overcome the stalks of hidden temptations and has mastered the impurities of thought, must never attribute that purity to himself, since no one can purify something conceived in impure seed, except He who alone is pure by himself. Since according to his judgment he has already achieved purity, he must look towards the origin of his conception, and consequently convince himself that by his own strength he does not have any purity of life, since the beginning of his existence was in an impure form. But the meaning here, perhaps the blessed Job was referring to the Incarnation of the Redeemer, since this unique Man in the world was not conceived of impure seed, He who entered the world from the womb of the Virgin, who in no way came from an impure conception. He does not come from man and woman, but from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. Only He has turned out to be truly pure in His flesh, He who was incapable of being affected by the satisfaction of the flesh, since it was not for the satisfaction of the flesh that He came.
However this particular text could not be used to prove that Pope Gregory the Great was against the perfect holiness of Mary. Firstly, because in the text in question it does not affirm that she was conceived from impure seed, but rather that Christ was not. He doesn’t even claim that only he wasn’t.
If we also look closely, the Protestant quote has been altered and what follows has been cut, since it speaks of the Virgin later:
“But the meaning here, perhaps the blessed Job was referring to the Incarnation of the Redeemer, since this unique Man in the world was not conceived of impure seed, He who entered the world from the womb of the Virgin, who in no way came from an impure conception. He does not come from man and woman, but from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. Only He has turned out to be truly pure in His flesh, He who was incapable of being affected by the satisfaction of the flesh, since it was not for the satisfaction of the flesh that He came.”
It is very interesting that when speaking of the Conception of Christ, St. Gregory mentions the Holy Spirit and Mary together. The Conception of Jesus was pure…because it proceeds of the Holy Spirit and….of Mary. If St. Gregory thought that Mary was impure, then he would not place her next to the Holy Spirit nor would he make the distinction between Mary and other women.
Conclusion
With this we do not intend to deny that throughout history there were some fathers of the Church and ecclesiastical writers who showed their doubts regarding the perfect holiness of Mary (for example Saint Thomas Aquinas or Saint John Chrysostom), there were certainly disputes regarding this issue as explained in detail in the first two links that we present. The difficulties presented by harmonizing the universality of original sin with the perfect holiness of Mary must be taken into account, and as long as the Church had not made a definitive statement on this point, private judgment on this matter was permitted.
However, we hope that the analysis of these quotes will serve to be more cautious; after all, the Internet abounds with a lot of false, adulterated and often decontextualized information, and the mistake is frequently made of assuming that because it is published on the Web it is true. The problem usually increases when other people take these quotes and incorporate them into new studies without first verifying them, thus generating a vicious circle distorting history.
The quotes you have sent us appear on many Protestant apologetics pages and are frequently used by Protestant forum members in debates on the Internet.
Author: Alex Grandet
Collaborator: José Miguel Arráiz
