Commenting in 1875 on the eisegesis of Gen 3:15 to support the Immaculate Conception of Mary, Edward Robinson wrote:
Genesis iii.15.—The Romish Church persists in translating:--“She shall crush thy head and thou shalt lie wait for her heel.” “This mistake of the Vulgate, ipsa for ipse,” is “an error which came into Latin about the time of St. Augustine” (Pussey). Even learned Papists cling to it as for life. Occasionally they perceive an ellipsis, which they fill up by saying that the adversary had the punishment “of hearing the humiliating sentence that a woman should come into the world to bring forth Him Who should crush his head” (Melia). But the following is the usual interpretation:--“A daughter of Eve, a woman with masculine courage, was to crush the head of the serpent beneath her feet, and regenerate for ever a guilty race: that woman was Mary” (Orsini). The devil, says another expositor, “fears her not only more than all angels and men, but in some sense more than God Himself . . . The devils fear one of her sights for a soul more than the prayers of all the saints, and one of her menaces against them more than all other torments” (Montfort). She is linked with the Redeemer. “The most holy Virgin, bound by a most close and indissoluble chain to Him, exercising with Him and through Him eternal enmity against the malignant serpent, and triumphing most amply over the same, has crushed his head with her immaculate foot . . . The most glorious Virgin was the reparatrix of her parents, the vivifier of posterity, chosen from the ages, prepared for Himself by the Most High, predicted by God when He said to the serpent, ‘I will place enmity between thee and the woman,’ who undoubtedly has crushed the poisonous head of the same serpent’ (Pius IX). The use of the word “Satan,” in connection with an omission of the clause, “and between thy seed and her seed,” is remarkable in the following extract:--“No sooner has Satan seduced Eve, than God declares to him, ‘I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and she shall crush thy head.’” “If that decree resounded for all future time, could they ever be friends? could Mary ever be his subject and his slave?” “Satan has not power even to touch her with a finger” (Ullathorne). “To bruise the serpent’s head implies to be free from original sin” (Melia). These words are sung to Mary:--
“Now crushed beneath thy dauntless foot,
The serpent writhes in vain
Subdued for evermore, and bound.
In an eternal chain” (Lyra).
The serpent writhes in vain
Subdued for evermore, and bound.
In an eternal chain” (Lyra).
(Edward Jewitt Robinson, The Mother of Jesus Not the Papal Mary [London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1875], 347-49)
Many modern Catholic apologists and theologians will now admit that Gen 3:15 is not “Marian” in focus, let alone a valid proof-text for the Immaculate Conception. For instance, Ludwig Ott wrote:
α) Gn. 3:15 (Protoevangelium): Inimicitas ponam inter te et mulierem et semen tuum et semen illius; ipsa conteret caput tuum, et tu insidiaberis calcaneo eius. The translation of these words, according to the original text, is: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. He (the seed of the woman) shall crush thy head, and thou shalt crush his heel.”
The literal sense of the passage is possibly the following: Between Satan and his followers on the one hand, and Eve and her posterity on the other hand, there is to be constant moral warfare. The posterity of Eve will achieve a complete and final victory over Satan and his followers, even if it is wounded in the struggle. The posterity of Eve includes the Messias, in whose power humanity will win a victory over Satan. Thus the passage is indirectly messianic. Cf. D 2123.
The seed of the woman was understood as referring to the Redeemer (the αὐτός of the Septuagint), and thus the Mother of the Redeemer came to be seen in the woman. Since the second century this direct messianic-marian interpretation has been expounded by individual Fathers, for example, St. Irenaeus, St. Epiphanius, Isidor of Pelusium, St. Cyprian, the author of the Epistola ad amicum aegrotum, St. Leo the Great. However, it is not found in the writings of the majority of the Fathers, among them the great teachers of the East and West. According to this interpretation, Mary stands with Christ in a perfect and victorious enmity towards Satan and his following. Many of the later scholastics and a great many modern theologians argue, in the light of this interpretation of the Proloevangelium that: Mary’s victory over Satan would not have been perfect, if she had ever been under his dominion. Consequently she must have entered this world without the stain of original sin.
The Bull “Ineffabilis” approves of this messianic-marianic interpretation. It draws from it the inference that Mary, in consequence of her intimate association with Christ, “with Him and through Him had eternal enmity towards the poisonous serpent, triumphed in the most complete fashion over him, and crushed its head with her immaculate foot.” The Bull does not give any authentic explanation of the passage. It must also be observed that the infallibility of the Papal doctrinal decision extends only to the dogma as such and not to the reasons given as leading up to the dogma. (Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 200)
Robert Sungenis, himself a traditionalist Catholic apologist who has a very high Mariology (e.g., he is heavily involved in Fatima-related topics and is the rare Catholic who has engaged in public debates defending the Assumption and Immaculate Conception), wrote a very good refutation of the claim that Gen 3:15 is Marian:
