Today is the feast day of the Immaculate Conception, as well as the anniversary of it being elevated to the position of a de fide dogma by Pius IX in his bull, Ineffabilis Deus.
It is common for some Catholics to cite Ephrem the Syrian as
an early witness, if not the, earliest witness to the Immaculate
Conception. As Ludwig Ott wrote:
St. Ephrem says: “Thou and thy
mother are the only ones who are totally beautiful in every respect; for in
thee, O Lord, there is no spot, and in thy Mother no stain” (Carm. Nisib. 27).
(Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 201)
However, again, when one examines the facts, we find that
the Catholic Church's claims are to be found wanting at the bar of history. The
following notes on Ephrem and his Mariology show that, contra Ott et al., not
only is Ephrem not a witness for the Immaculate Conception, he is also a
witness against the Immaculate Conception being an apostolic
tradition:
The first apparently explicit
testimony is in the Nisibene hymns of St Ephraem, a fourth century Syrian
writer: “Certainly you are alone and your mother are from every aspect
completely beautiful, for there is no blemish in you, my Lord, and no stain in
your mother.” But there are other texts in the same author’s writings which, to
put it mildly, call for subtle interpretation to maintain the doctrine—he spoke
for example of Mary’s baptism. (Michael O’Carroll, CSSp, “The Immaculate
Conception and Assumption of our Lady in Today’s Thinking” in John Hyland, ed.,
Mary in the Church [Dublin: Veritas, 1989], 44-56, here, p. 45)
Ephrem’s insistence on Mary’s
spiritual beauty and holiness, and her freedom from any stain of sin, has led
some scholars to hold that he was aware of the privilege of the Immaculate
Conception and to point to him as a witness to the dogma. Yet it does not
appear that our author was familiar with the problem, at least not in the terms
in which it was made clear by later tradition and the dogmatic declaration of
1854. In one passage he even used the term “baptized” to indicate her Son’s
saving intervention in her regard:
Handmaid and daughter
of blood and water [am I] whom
You redeemed and baptized. (Hymns on the Nativity 16, 10) (Gambero, Mary and
the Fathers of the Church: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought [trans.
Thomas Buffer; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999 110)
O [You] Who brought forth His
mother [in] another birth out of the water?. . . I am
mother because of Your conception, and bride am I because of your chastity.
Handmaiden and daughter of blood and water [am I] whom you redeemed and
baptized. “Son of the Most High Who came and dwelt in me, [in] another
birth, He bore me also [in] a second birth. I put on the glory of
Him Who put on the body, the garment of His mother. (Hymns on the Nativity
16:9-11 as found in Kathleen E. McVey, trans., Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns
[Classics of Western Spirituality; New York: Paulist Press, 1989], 150)
“Second/Another birth” in the fathers is always a reference
to the forgiveness of sins through the instrumentality of baptism. For Ephrem,
it appears that the incarnation was Mary’s appropriation
of the graces of baptism:
Despite Ephrem’s emphasis on
Mary’s role as second Eve, here he makes it clear that that she is redeemed
along with all of humankind by Christ. (Kathleen E. McVey, trans., Ephrem
the Syrian: Hymns [Classics of Western Spirituality; New York: Paulist
Press, 1989], 150 n. 362—in Ephrem’s Mariology, Mary became “panagia”
at the annunciation [as did many other Eastern Fathers]).
As with many early Christians, Ephrem understood John 2:4 to
be Jesus rebuking Mary:
§4a. She said to him, My son,
there is no wine here. He said to her, What is that to me and to you, Woman?
What was wrong with what she said? She was in great doubt concerning his
word, because there was no wine there. Wherefore [the response], What is
that to me and to you, Woman? For she had perceived that he was about to
perform a miracle, according to what he had said to her. [This can be seen]
from what she said to the servants, Whatever my son tell you do. (Saint
Ephrem's Commentary on Tatian's Diatessaron: An English Translation of Chester
Beatty Syriac MS 709 with Introduction and Notes V §4a [trans. Carmel McCarthy;
Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 2; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993,
2000], 96—Ephrem believed Mary was [1] being rebuked in John 2:4 due to [2] her
doubt of Christ’s words—to doubt the words of Christ/God is sinful)
Ishoʿdad of
Merv (~850 AD), in his own copy of Ephrem’s commentary on the Diatessaron understood
Ephrem to be interpreting John 2:4 as a rebuke:
Mar Ephrem the great says: she
had heard from him that he was about to work a miracle, and therefore he
answered her when she persuaded him that the wine had failed, What have I to do
with thee, woman? Certainly it is not proper for me to go to them by force, but
let them all feel that the wine has failed, and let them ask to drink in order
that the gift of God may be magnified in their sight. (Fragments of the
Commentary of Ephrem Syrus upon the Diatessaron [trans. J. Rendel Harris;
London: C. J. Clay and Sons, 1895], 46 [f. 252 v.])
The Syriac uses bakhta (lexical form: attha [“woman”]).
This term in Syriac does not have a positive, but a neutral or even negative
connotation.
Elsewhere, on Luke 1:35, Ephrem wrote:
He said to her, The Holy
Spirit will come, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Why
did he not mention the Father's name but instead, the name of his Power and the
name of the Holy Spirit? Because it was fitting that the Architect of the works
[of creation] should come and raise up the house that had fallen, and the
hovering Spirit should sanctify the buildings that were unclean . . . He
dwelt in the womb and cleansed it and sanctified the place of birthpangs and
curses.(Saint Ephrem's Commentary on Tatian's Diatessaron: An
English Translation of Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709 with Introduction and Notes
[trans. Carmel McCarthy; Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 2; Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1993, 2000], 59 [book 1 paragraph 25])
On Ephrem conflating Mary (mother of Jesus) with Mary Magdalene:
Homily on the Lord, 49:
Mary anointed the head of our Lord’s
body, as a symbol of the "better part" she had chosen. The oil was a
prophecy of what her mind had chosen. While Martha was occupied with serving,
Mary hungered to be satisfied with spiritual things from the one who also
satisfies bodily needs for us. So Mary refreshed Him with precious oil, just as
He had refreshed her with His most excellent teaching. With her oil, Mary
indicated a symbol of the death of Him who put to death her carnal desire
with His teaching. (Edward G. Mathews, Jr., and Joseph P. Amar, St. Ephrem
the Syrian: Selected Prose Works [The Fathers of the Church 91; Washington,
D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1994], 324)
Ephrem
identifies Mary (and Martha) who anoints the feet of Jesus (John 12.3), with
the woman mentioned in Matt 26.7 (Mark 14.3) who anointed the head of Jesus. On
the fusing of Mary the mother of Jesus with Mary Magdalene see S. Brock,
"Mary and the Gardener," FriO 11 (1983): 223-34; and Murray, Symbols,
146-48 and 329-3.'). (Ibid., 324 n. 247)
besides his poetic hymns, he
wrote a commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron, where confusing Mary Magdalene with
Mary the mother of Jesus (he does this very often, e.g. The Homily on Our Lord
49, Selected Prose Works: Commentary on Genesis, Commentary on Exodus, Homily
on Our Lord, Letter to Publius, The Fathers of the Church, Volume 91, p. 324),
he attributes to Mary, Jesus’ mother, the guilt of unbelief and doubt on the
Resurrection (Michael O’Carroll, Theotokos: A Theological Encyclopedia of the
Blessed Virgin Mary [Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf & Stock Pub 2000], 132-133)
Sebastian Brock on Ephrem’s Conflation of Mary, Mother of
Jesus, with Mary Magdalene
Certainly, the most remarkable
feature of the poem is the identification of Mary, not with Mary Magdalene (so
the Greek text of John 20:1 and 18), but with the mother of Jesus; this emerges
from stanza 2:
‘Who will show me’, she was
saying.
‘my son and my Lord, for
whom I am seeking?’
This is indeed a feature not unknown
in the Syriac (and in Greek) tradition, for it is already found in some of Ephrem’s
works and in Jacob of Serugh; it implies a biblical text omitting Magdalene in
John 20:1 and 18 (thus the Old Syriac (Sinaiticus) at verse 18, and the Arabic
Diatessaron).
This identification of the Mary
of John 20 with the mother of Jesus suggests that the poem may be of considerable
antiquity; since it does not seem likely that a composition of the Arab period
would any longer make such an identification, the text might hesitantly be attributed
to about the sixth century. (Sebastian P. Brock, "Maryand the Gardiner: An Early Syrian Dialogue Soghitha for the Resurrection,"
Parole de l'Orient 11 [1983]: 223-34, here, 225-26)
Robert Murray on Ephrem’s Conflation of Mary, the Mother
of Jesus a\with Mary Magdalene nd Ephrem imputing the sin of “doubt” to the Mother of Jesus
One of the most curious features
of Ephrem's doctrine concerning Mary as type of the Church is found in passages
where he speaks of the appearance of the risen Christ to Mary Magdalen; in this
context he often regards it as not the Magdalen but the Virgin to whom Christ
appeared in the garden, while several times he seems to confuse them, or rather
deliberately run them into one, both Maries acting together as type of the
Church. This 'fusion' is not a peculiarity of Ephrem but is found in other
Syrian witnesses . . . (Robert Murray, Symbols of the Church and Kingdom: A
Study in Early Syriac Tradition [rev. ed.; London: T&T Clark, 2006],
146)
To consider further evidence in
Ephrem first, in E[vangelium]C[oncordans] 2,17 the 'sword' in Mary's
heart, foretold by Simeon, is interpreted as doubt that Mary would undergo,
and this is explained by Magdalen's thinking that Christ was a gardener. (EC
Arm. C[orpus]S[criptorum]C[hristianorum]O[rientalium] 137, Arm. 1), p.
32.14-20; tr. (SC) p. 75) On Christ's words at Cana, 'My time is not yet come',
Ephrem sees that 'time' as the reunion of Christ with his mother in the garden:
'thus after his victory over Sheol, when his mother saw him, like a mother she
wanted to caress him'. (EC Arm. 5.5, p. 61:12-14; tr. (SC) p. 109) In
the comment on John 20: 11-17 Ephrem repeats his interpretation of the sword in
Mary's heart as her doubts in the garden; as for why Jesus would not let
Mary touch him, Ephrem suggests: 'Perhaps because he had delivered her to John
in his place: "Woman, behold thy Son". And yet not without her was
the first sign, and not without her were the first fruits from Sheol. And so,
even if she did not touch him, she was strengthened by him.' (EC Syr.
21.27, Syr.) (Ibid., 329-30)