Sinlessness of Mary
Question
How exactly does the
Orthodox Church view
the sinlessness of Mary?
In the Liturgy it is said,
“One is Holy, One is Lord,
Jesus Christ, to the Glory
of God the Father” and in
other places that Jesus
is the only sinless one.
Also, in reference to
1 John 1:8 where it
says, “If we claim to be
without sin, we deceive
ourselves and the truth
is not in us.” How can
these be reconciled? Is
the Theotokos all-pure,
all-holy,
all-blameless
because of her deification
through her Son, so that
she is those things because
her Son is, as we are holy,
pure, etc. through our union
to Christ?
Also, how is it that she
is referred to as the only
refuge for sinners, and
various
phrases
like
this? Isn’t Christ our only
refuge and the salvation of
sinners?
This is the main stumbling
block I have with Orthodoxy
right now. There seems to
be varying beliefs within
the Orthodoxy on the
Theotokos. Didn’t St John
Chrysostom teach that
Mary had sinned at least
once? When I read the
earliest Church Fathers
there seems to be little
focus on Mary apart from
the Christological issue
of whether she was the
Mother of God, or only
of Christ. Doesn’t the
teaching that Mary was
sinless from birth state the
same general concept,
that Mary is more than the
rest of humanity, as the
44
Immaculate
Conception
(apart from the idea of
original sin) except that it
moves the moment of the
supernatural grace of God
to birth from conception?
I am not trying to answer
my
own
questions,
but am simply not
understanding
how
these contradictions, at
least seemingly, can be
resolved.
Answer
I can say, in short, that
the Orthodox Church
believes that Mary, as
a human being, could
indeed have sinned, but
chose not to. In the Roman
Catholic
understanding,
it seems that Mary, who
according
to
Roman
doctrine
had
been
exempted from the guilt of
original sin [the Orthodox
do not accept that humans
share the guilt of the first
sin but, rather, only the
consequences] before all
eternity, and thus could not