I came across a rather amusing post on the Orthodox Christianity forum which suggests that the Roman Church's unveiling of Mary's deity has biblical precedent. The user writes: I know that Mary's magnificat quotes Sirach 10:14 and someone mentioned that this was similar to how Jesus points to a prophecy about himself by partially quoting from the Tanakh in the synagogue. I do not understand the deuterocanon books well enough to comment on this. Can anyone chime in and shed some light on whether Sirach 24 is really about Mary?
He's not wrong. The physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist is such a catastrophe for the RC world, and how Mary figures into it is just another manifestation. Plus there are other issues: if Mary needed to be immaculately conceived and had to lack original sin for Jesus to be born, then why not her mother too in order to produce a sinless daughter? And therefore her mother's mother; and so on. The RC world is hopelessly muddled in heterodox proclamations borne out of foreign and strange piety.
I don't know if most Catholics really believe in sinless regression as the reason for Mary being immaculate, though. From what I understand, it's just Mary as a compliment to Jesus. It has to do with the pious opinion that Jesus and Mary are the new Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve brought forth children while in death and Jesus/Mary brought forth spiritual children while in life. Another quote says "God saw that it was fit to do and it was so". But one church father (can't remember which) did say that "Eve, conceived without sin, brought death through disobedience, and Mary, conceived in sin, brought life through obedience", which is a totally different way of suggesting the parallel without conceding to the idea of the immaculate conception.
If Mary is from everlasting, as the eternal mother of Jesus she would be the heavenly spouse of God the Father. A God who is married, who along with His spouse begets children? That is a Mormon doctrine. RCs may as well convert to the LDS church!
Oh I'm sure they don't, because it hasn't been codified yet. But just like your point that Mary's body is necessarily consumed in the "physical Jesus" Eucharist, just so if Mary is born sinless in order to produce the sinless Jesus, then her mother will have to be concluded to be sinless in order to produce the sinless Mary. Just give it a few centuries, and the RC's will incorporate Mary into the Eucharist, and declare her whole matrilineal line as sinless going all the way back.
It was actually an Orthodox saint who suggested an infinite sinless regression of Mary's line. It was discussed on the OrthodoxChristianity forums. However, the members concluded that he was in the minority and not taken seriously by the consensus of Orthodoxy. I can't remember his name. Liturgyworks probably knows more about this than I do, and I'd also like to know his understanding of Sirach 24's application to Mary in Catholic thought, as I've heard it suggested a few times by apologists, though not to the extent of saying Mary is in the eucharist (Taylor Marshall wrote an article about it denying that Mary was eternal or being consumed in the host).
Odd, given that the Orthodox don’t generally hold to the Immaculate Conception. It’s his job to try to steady a sinking ship, after all.
I was told that the heresy of placing Mary in the Godhead is called Sophianism which was particularly criticized in Russian Orthodoxy.
Don't the orthodox consider St. Augustine borderline heretical? I think I remember a few years ago there was a movement in Greece to declare a cause for canonizing Pelagius.
Pelagius is remembered as a heretic. If there have been members of the Orthodox Church who wanted him canonized, they were decidedly going against the defined teaching of the Church. And, thank God, weren't successful. There are many Orthodox who see Augustine's theology as deeply flawed, and there was even a movement to decanonize him back in the 70s. That nonsense got shut down, and he has remained on the church calendar even if he's not the most popular theologian for Orthodox at the moment. The root of the problem is that too many people judge St. Augustine based on how Calvin used him rather than on his own writing. Fr. George Florovksy called him the greatest of the Church Fathers, and Fr. Seraphim Rose wrote a book defending him, so the anti-Augustine sentiment isn't universal.
Unfortunately we don't actually know if he was or not because we don't have enough of what he wrote or said to make a judgment on it. All we have are what other people who called him a heretic said he had said and wrote. I am given to believe that most of what he actually said and wrote which was considered by his enemies to be heresy at the time, was lost to us, so we are none the wiser concerning the extent of his supposed heresies. Some of that 'memory' may be false recollection. .
Just fyi (perhaps we need another thread for this?), here are some of those who have striven to vindicate Pelagius: Pelagius: To Demetrius (Rehabilitating Pelagius), by Deacon Geoffrey Ó Riada https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1345082/posts https://web.archive.org/web/20110610131854/http://www.brojed.org/pelagius.php "Pelagius's lonely and thankless struggle against the novel doctrines of Augustine and Jerome was eventually taken up by monks in southern Gaul. They were alarmed to hear of the "Pelagian controversy," especially Augustine's teaching on election and predestination, which they believed to be "contrary to the opinion of the Fathers and the common view of the Church."[28] They saw the Augustinian theological system as a threat to grace as synergy, as a partnership between God and man. Their champion was St John Cassian, a disciple of St John Chrysostom. Together with his supporters, St Vincent of Lérins and St Faustus of Riez, he upheld the Patristic Tradition against Augustinianism and its proponents, especially Prosper of Aquitaine, as well as against the extreme "Pelagians" who indeed denied the necessity of God's grace for salvation. These noble Gallic monks were later branded "Semi-Pelagians," and their doctrine of synergy was condemned at the Synod of Orange in 529. This council rejected Augustinian predestination but accepted much of Augustine's theology of sin and grace, definitively setting the Western Church on a path diverging from the Apostolic and Patristic Orthodox Tradition." Scheck, Thomas P. (2012). "Pelagius's Interpretation of Romans" "An important result of the modern reappraisal of Pelagius’s theology has been a more sympathetic assessment of his theology and doctrine of grace and the recognition of its deep rootedness in the antecedent Greek theologians... Pelagius’s doctrine of grace, free will and predestination, as represented in his Commentary on Romans, has very strong links with Eastern (Greek) theology and, for the most part, these doctrines are no more reproachable than those of orthodox Greek theologians such as Origen and John Chrysostom, and of St. Jerome" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelagianism#Scholarly_reassessment A Heretic Reconsidered | Pelagius, Augustine, And "Original Sin" Craig St. Clair College of Saint Benedict/Saint John's University https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=sot_papers Not saying that all of Eastern Orthodox have rehabilitated Pelagius, just that the traditional tension against St. Augustine has naturally opened the door toward Pelagius, which some in the recent times have been willing to enter.
A fair point. I suppose I should have said, "The Orthodox Church condemns Pelagianism as a heresy," leaving open the possibility that Pelagius was not actually a Pelagian.
Not at all unusual for someone's followers to get their leader's teachings wrong. Goes for a good many Christians too I guess. .