The Immaculate Conception was declared a dogma in the year 1854. But the belief has been with the Church since the beginning.
In the fourth century, St. Athanasius said, “The Lord, who knows his entire creation well, saw in it nothing like Mary. In the entire creation, everything else was subject to the curse of the Fall of Adam and Eve.” So what was that curse?
It was original sin, with all its horrible effects (see Genesis 3:16–19). Instead of paradise, our first parents faced a life of pain and futility that must end in death.
Adam was a “type.” That’s what St. Paul called him (Romans 5:14), and that means that Adam foreshadowed an eventual fulfillment. St. Paul also tells us that the New Adam is Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:22, 45, 47).
Paul said explicitly that Jesus is the New Adam. The Church Fathers said overwhelmingly that the Virgin Mary is the New Eve.
The earliest Christians insisted that Mary did not suffer labor pains in giving birth. We see this already in the first century — in documents known as the Ascension of Isaiah, the Odes of Solomon, and the Infancy Gospel of James.
It mattered because they believed that the New Creation was a fulfillment of the Old. They believed that God had made the conditions of the New Creation to be recognizably like the conditions of the original creation.
That’s why the story of Jesus, as it appears in the Book of Revelation, turns on the interaction of a man, a woman, and a serpent.
The difference in the story of the New Adam and Eve is that their story ends well.
It’s reasonable for us to expect that the New Man and New Woman should enjoy the privileges of their first forebears. So, as the early Christians told the story, Mary’s pregnancy and birth proceeded without pain, as if God had never pronounced the punishing curse of Genesis 3:16.
This, in turn, led the Fathers to the conclusion that Mary was without sin. Listen to Ephrem of Syria as he sang a song to Jesus in the fourth century: “You alone and your mother are more beautiful than any others, for there is no blemish in you nor any stains upon your mother.”
In the same century, St. Ambrose called Mary “a virgin not only undefiled, but a virgin whom grace had made inviolate, free of every stain of sin.”
In a second-century epitaph in Rome, the virgin is hailed as “spotless,” “immaculate.”
And St. Augustine would not even allow himself to speak of the virgin Mary in the context of his discussion of sin. He acknowledges that all have sinned, but he goes on to say, “We must make an exception of the holy virgin Mary, concerning whom I wish to raise no question when it touches the subject of sins, out of honor to the Lord.”
Other voices sing in this choir. I’ve mentioned only a few. Add your own voice as the Church celebrates the Immaculate Conception on December 8. Make sure to go to Mass.
