The Eastern Orthodox Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, Part 2a

''Mark Eugenicus (1392–1447), disciple of Palamas and pillar of orthodoxy at [the Council of Ferrara-Florence] ... offers a synthesis of the entire [immaculatist] development, not only in favor of doctrinal certitude of the mystery of the Immaculate Conception in eastern tradition, but [also] of its profound links with key doctrinal questions concerning the Trinity: the filioque and the mission of the Spirit. This development might well be considered a proximate preparation for the subsequent decisions of the Franciscan theologian, Francesco della Rovere[,] who, as Pope Sixtus IV, inserted the feast into the universal calendar of the Roman Church [cf. the 1476 apostolic constitution Cum Praeexcelsa]. ...   

"[T]he [immaculatist] synthesis of Mark Eugenicus is not the result of a study of Scotus, but of long meditation on the explicit Greek tradition concerning the Immaculate Conception, just as the work of Scotus, though paralleling the Greek tradition is not, immediately at least, dependent upon it. Nonetheless, the Greek patristic tradition and the 'metaphysical' Mariology of Scotus stand in substantial agreement. Once recognized, it also inspires both study of that Oriental tradition and its more explicit incorporation into Latin Mariology, as in fact occurred during the fifteenth century before and after the Council of Florence. As Fr. Kappes notes, that advancement is reflected in the solemn definition of the dogma by Bl. Pius IX in 1854, and subsequently in the work of St. Maximilian M. Kolbe."*

-- Fr. Peter M. Fehlner, FI, "Preface" to Fr. Christiaan Kappes, The Immaculate Conception: Why Thomas Aquinas Denied, While John Duns Scotus, Gregory Palamas, & Mark Eugenicus Professed the Absolute Immaculate Existence of Mary (New Bedford, MA: Academy of the Immaculate, 2014)

* This post is meant to be read after this and before this.

The Eastern Orthodox Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, Part 2

"[The first part of this study] deals with the first known use of this title [viz., Mary as "prepurified"] during the patristic era, that of St. Gregory Nazianzen (c. 329 – c. 390), the Theologian. The teaching of St. Gregory on this title, clearly an immaculist one, was kept alive by many representatives of Byzantine theology during the medieval period. On this tradition depends the considerably more detailed exposition of the title in an immaculist sense by St. John Damascene (c. 675 – 749). His teaching on this title has notable links with St. Maximus Confessor and the Third Council of Constantinople (680) where the title appears to be a part of the ordinary Magisterium of the Church.* 

I am extremely eager to explore this last claim, and I think Fr. Kappes elaborates on it in this 2016 lecture, which I shall address in a separate post.

As a disciple of Scotus, the Martyr of Charity [viz., St. Maximilian M. Kolbe] stresses not only the "negative" definition of the Immaculate Conception: preserved from all stain of original sin from the first moment of conception, but more so the "positive" in pointing out how the name of Immaculate Conception is name of both the Mother of God and of the Holy Spirit, respectively the created and uncreated Immaculate Conception. This perfect union of wills: divine and human, in the Mother of God and of the Church through the operation of the Holy Spirit, makes possible that mysterious, maternal mediation by which the disjunctive transcendentals: infinite and finite, uncreated and created, are united in the Person of the Incarnate Word. This union, through the maternal mediation of the Immaculate, makes possible a sharing in the divine life of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for those incorporated into the mystical Body of Christ by Baptism.* 

This latter synthesis is not only breathtaking in its own right, but resonates strongly with prior research I was conducting based on Fr. Donald J. Keefe's magnum opus, Covenantal Theology [also here, here, etc.]. As part of a large, ongoing "ressourcement" of books and research interests I engaged as far back as my college days, I look forward to seeing how much overlap there is indeed between "maternal mediation" of the "disjunctive tranascendentals" in Fr. Kappes's work and the theme of "One Flesh " (mia sarx) in Fr. Keefe's.

* from Fr. Peter Fehlner's preface to Fr. Kappes's The Immaculate Conception, pp. xviii-xx.

The Eastern Orthodox Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, Part 1

"The All[-]Holiness of Mary, or Immaculate Conception, as it was sometimes called even in the East and now commonly called in the Latin West, was primarily linked in the East, not to the redemption, but to what we know as the absolute primacy of Christ for the sake of whom the entire creation and then the work of redemption were undertaken. The notion of perfect redemption by a perfect redeemer, as St. Maximilian Kolbe notes, depends on that of the absolute primacy of Christ; and the Immaculate Conception is the Marian mode of that primacy, for us the sign of its actuality. ... 

"Fr. Kappes's study ... is rather a detailed analysis of one particular title of Mary: Prepurified, common in the East from the earliest times, a synonym for Immaculate Conception. ... In the West, however, it initially [ab origine lol] appeared to mean just the opposite, viz., one gradually purified from sin after conception, not preserved. So it was understood by St. Thomas and Scotus in their reading of the Damascene and thereafter among Latins until the time of Gregory Palamas (1296-1359) and Mark Eugenicus (1392-1447) when the disciples of Scotus first began to realize, not only that the real meaning of the title, far from supporting maculism ([the] position of St. Thomas), but that it supported just the opposite: immaculatism ([the] position of Scotus) and had a strong biblical basis in the account of the purification-presentation of Mary and Jesus in the Temple (cf. Lk 2: 22-40). Once the interpretation of the Damascene was corrected and the antiquity of the title in Scripture and tradition was recognized, the basis for this doctrine in the deposit of faith became clearly evident to those supporting the views of Duns Scotus. ... [T]he mystery of Mary's person is our key — to both the study of theology and of the economy of salvation — one pointing to crucial features of a Christian metaphysics as Marian."

-- Fr. Peter M. Fehlner, FI, "Preface"to Fr. Christiaan W. Kappes, The Immaculate Conception: The Immaculate Conception: Why Thomas Aquinas Denied, While John Duns Scotus, Gregory Palamas, & Mark Eugenicus Professed the Absolute Immaculate Existence of Mary (New Bedford, MA: Academy of the Immaculate, 2014), pp. xvi-xvii.