I am closing the combox, not because it’s out of control, but because I think the debate has pretty much run its course.

Dr William Tighe has kindly posted me a rare article by Archimandrite Lev Gillet on the Immaculate Conception, which I will post as soon as I receive it.

“All things are clear and open that are in the divine Scriptures; the necessary things are all plain. But because ye are hearers for pleasure’s sake, for that reason also you seek these things. For tell me, with what pomp of words did Paul speak? and yet he converted the world. Or with what the unlettered Peter? But I know not, you say, the things that are contained in the Scriptures. Why? For are they spoken in Hebrew? Are they in Latin, or in foreign tongues? Are they not in Greek? But they are expressed obscurely, you say: What is it that is obscure? Tell me.” — NPNF Series I, Vol. VIII, p.383, St. John Chrysostom Homily III on 2nd epistle to the Thessalonians

Where is the perspecuity of scripture mentioned or implied by anything Daniel wrote above?

Meeting the conditions on knowledge isn’t the same thing as meeting the conditions on making normative statements. I can do the first without being able to the second.

If this wasn’t true then you wouldn’t be able to know that Rome was right or the pope was infallible.

But…do you not see how much you sound like a Calvinist or fundamentalist, insisting on the perspicuity of Scripture?

Holy Tradition is no more perspicuous than Scripture. How do you know that your interpretation of it is correct?

Am I infallible? Of course not. The issue isn’t about me. It’s about things far greater than me.

From where I stand (to sound a little bit like Luther for the moment) and how I see the implications of accepting the IC and all that it stands for, I would see myself giving up Maximian Christology and the men who made it possible like Cyril of Alexandria, Emperor Justinian, the men at the 4th and 5th Councils, and most importantly the 6th Council which is the codification of Maximus’ view and his refutation made that Council possible.

Photios

I’m very troubled by this notion that contingent persons do not have a will at conception and then only to gain the status of a will at some arbitrary point in time (i.e. the age of reason, and being a person is not dependent on some arbitrary age of “devlopment” because there is no final static stasis of “development” even in the Eschaton). This is the danger I think of not thinking Christologically first as your starting point and paradigm. Per Maximus, there is ‘no time’ that a created person ceases or does not move, and movement for him involves the employment of the will which is rooted as a natural faculty of every hypostasis (which is something you have at conception, because Christ does). He says, “No created being, ever, in any manner, stands fast while being moved by [its] natural power towards the End proper to that power; neither does it cease from the energy proper to that End, [even] after it is fixed up on it.” (Ambigua 7 PG 91:1073B) If we were to regress our life, every step of the stage and ever “age” of our development the choices we made then always seem somewhat trivial to where we are now. However, did we not make choice and employ our wills as toddlers, when we were in elementary school, as a teenager, high school? And do not our choices that we made then at those times seem barely comprehensible at the time they were made? I deny that employment of the will is solely on this static age of consciousness that somehow makes you a ‘willer,’ for consciousness is something that is dynamic it is developed. And this is the function of the gnomic will. The Awareness that I have now is not the awareness I’ll have when I’m 50 or 60 or older, or in the Eschaton, which in some ways looking back from that fulcrum I may look like a toddler now. Such is the same way I view infants and their personal mode of willing however very simple it might be.

Photios

Simply fist pounding and asserting the contrary isn’t going to prove your claims. Second, it isn’t ecumenical. Third, it doesn’t meet people where they are at and consequently isn’t a manifesation of any kind of spirit oriented towards reconciliation. I’d take your cue from Fr. Kirby.

Nonetheless, the Theotokos was immaculate from the moment of her conception.

Period.

Diane, slicer of Gordian knots ;)

The distinction between a fallen and pre-fallen gnomic will is a significant part of Maximus’ teaching and a part of his refutation of Monothelitism. It also has the added benefit of staving off objections to Christian belief in contemporary philosophy of religion. And we’d argue the gnomic will can be found in scripture expressed with sufficient clarity as well as many Fathers both before and after Maximus.
If there is a distinction between sufficient and efficient with intrinsically irresistible grace, then a few questions answered would be helpful. What needs to be added to the former conceptually to get the latter? Which did the Theotokos have? And who has the latter, if anyone? Further, if the Theotokos has only the former but not the latter, then how would it be the case that it was impossible for her to sin?

It is somewhat troubling and confusing to me that you speak of someone not having a will. Perhaps you mean that they haven’t employed their will or are not an age when they can do so. Some clarification here would be helpful. The structure you propose in any case at the end of the day still seems to leave it possible for the Theotokos to sin since effectual sanctifying grace is resistible. I am not clear on why this could not be done for everyone though if it is given apart from volitional activity of the agent and is gratuitous.

As for characteristics caused in us by uncreated grace, I think we’d reject the idea that they are something other than uncreated. Part of what is at work here is a different understanding of the relation of cause to effect or rather if there are “effects” properly speaking at all. And a further worry would be are these “characteristics” virtues or no? If no, what are they? If yes, then aren’t we right back to the worry concerning virtue being had apart from volitional activity?

If the initial grace is not determinative, then I can’t see how election to glory doesn’t go out the window. And I can’t see how it is compatible with the condition on free will of alternative possibilities as well as sourcehood. I’d view the initial grace you speak of as being secured in the incarnation so that the will of all is put in a new position. The imago dei then supplies us with the initial grace. Obviously this will cut across a strong nature/grace distinction, which is in part the way I see it, without falling into Pelagianism. This is why Maximus speaks of virtues as “natural things.”

As for supernatural gifts to Adam, we deny the doctrine of Original Righteousness following the gloss given by Theophilus of Antioch for example. Adam was created neither righteous nor evil, but innocent. As for teleology, we’d see that as the logoi of human nature, which is Christ. Christ is the image in whom we are made. This is why the incarnation enjoys independence from the fall. The temptation of the devil was in response to the divine intention to become incarnate and not the other way around. The devil is trying to stop the Incarnation and thwart the divine will. If the telos is a constituent of the logoi or imago dei, then “grace” is never lost, but only the means to accomplish, rather than will, righteousness. (Rom 7) We both then believe in an initial grace, we seem to view it differently.

No, I do not think that I will have to say without DD that Justin or Origen deny outright the divinity of the Son. There is a simple reason why that is the case. They don’t explicitly do so and affirm his divinity explicitly in a number of places. What they struggle with is using Greek philosophical terms and categories to explicate Christian doctrine. So for example, Justin has to speak of Christ as a second deity, but it is obvious from the text that he does not want to say this in an unqualified manner. The problem is that the philosophical categories won’t permit him to distinguish between person and nature in such a away that allows for the plurality of the former within a singular nature. Later on via Origen and Lucian, Arius had a choice-either to distinguish the Son as a creature and a distinct person or face the absorption of the Son into the Father in a modalistic way, making not only the Son deity but the world as well. Either all relations were intrinsic and essential (because essences were simple) or all relations were extrinsic and contingent.

If the line demarcating say Bernard and Thomas from Protestant theologians is that the former only appear to deny that the Theotokos was conceived in a state of grace whereas the latter deny it, I’d claim that this is simply not the case. Just read what Bernard for example says. It is explicit. It certainly looks like an outright denial, rather than an articulation of a theory which could appear to implicitly deny the IC. Further, the comparison should be Orthodox theologians and not Protestant theologians. And if the line were that Protestants thought it was possible for her to sin whereas the scholastics, then you have just put Protestants in the same category as people like Basil, Chrysostom, Cyril and probably Ambrose as well. And it is a very bad idea to generalize with the scholastics and so I’d wager that your claim that the scholastics thought that the Theotokos was incapable of sin is probably false in at least once instance, if not more.

I don’t think that Vicent’s view of DD is the same as Newman’s. And further, Vincent’s entire theory was constructed to refute Augustine’s predestinarianism. As for the OT, that isn’t doctrinal development but rather progressive revelation. The two are not the same. And I have argued with more JW’s at my door than you can possibly imagine. Just ask the (now former) chief apologist of the Watchtower, Greg Stafford, whom I have known off and on for well over a decade.