The following are some excerpts from:
Christiaan
W. Kappes, The Immaculate Conception: Why Thomas Aquinas denied, While John
Duns Scotus, Gregory Palamas, and Mark Eugenicus Professed the Absolute
Immaculate Existence of Mary (Mariological Studies in Honor of Our Lady of
Guadalupe 2; New Bedford, Mass.: Academy of the Immaculate, 2014); On his study
of "prepurification" and the Immaculate Conception in this book, click
here.
It is assumed that before the studies
of Duns Scotus, the mystery of the Immaculate Conception was only implicit in
the deposit of faith and that it was first confessed clearly and explicitly in
relation to the mystery of the redemption, once the notion of perfect
redemption included not only liberative redemption (delivery from sin),
but preservative as well. (Peter M. Fehlner, “Preface,” in Christiaan W.
Kappes, The Immaculate Conception: Why Thomas Aquinas denied, While John Duns
Scotus, Gregory Palamas, and Mark Eugenicus Professed the Absolute Immaculate
Existence of Mary [Mariological Studies in Honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe
2; New Bedford, Mass.: Academy of the Immaculate, 2014], xv [note: Fehlner and
Kaapes disputes this, but it shows the commonly-held view of many Catholic
Mariologists])
Theological development of Mary’s
prepurification seems to have undergone little development and received little
attention at the end of the first millennium, despite the importance of the Synodikon
in the history of Orthodoxy. (p. 66; Andrew Libadenus [c. 1308-c. 1361] is
listed as being “a Last Medieval Witness” [ibid., 67f.])
Re.
Nicholas Cabasilas (died 1391), an Eastern Orthodox saint and a Palamite
theologian:
. . . the Palamite author ingeniously
employed Aquinas’ own citation of Ps.-Dionysius (ch. 6)on angelology against
the Doctor Angelicus. Cabasilas asserts that, since the natures of Mary
and the angels are univocal in some way, the controlling idea must refer to both
Mary and angels being exempt from any moral defect due to the
perfection of their created natures. Ergo, Mary literally merits the title
“Queen of Angels.” (p. 89, italics in original)
Re.
Mark Eugenicus (Palamite theologian):
. . . Mark goes beyond the thoughts of
his more contemporary magister (Palamas) and reconnects the Virgin’s hagiasmos
to the following source-texts within the Byzantine tradition:
13.5.1 Exegesis
(1.) [Re: “a bush unburnt by
fire on the mountain”] She is the fulfillment of the (antitype) burning bus of
Mt. Horeb seen by Moses. Because she has no impurity (viz. imperfection) in her
created nature, Mary is not annihilated by the divinity. The implication is that
the divine nature destroys anything imperfect. The BVM’s absolute exemption
from ethico-physical stain preserves her life and allows for Incarnation of a
divine hypostasis (contra Kalekam).
(2.) [Re: :”a dewy-aired
Chaldean furnace”] Mary’s nature allows for something analogous to the three
young men to survive within her. Christ’s human nature (as Son of God) is apt
to take on the divinity due to the BVM. Her in utero bedewment of the
human nature of the Christ keeps it from being burnt up.
(3.) [Re: “radiance of glory,
etc. (via the waters . . . ), I make thee clean”] Christ, referring to His hagiasmos
or katharotês, at His own baptism, applies this anticipatory
activity of the redemptive waters (accomplished on the cross) to Mary’s own
purification. Mary participates in redemptive graces before the actual
sacrifice of the cross. Christ’s substitutionary baptism was long ago mentioned
in Nazianzen’s Theophany oration (cf. supra, nn. 8, 15).
(4.) [Re: “I [, who am Mary,
am] an enclosed garden of your divinity, [314] I burn through fire”]
Mark ends with the stunning leitmotif, for Mary responds to Christ’s gift to
her of purification, whose meritorious moment was gloriously celebrated at His
own baptism. Anachronistically, Mary refers to Christ’s substitutionary
(purifying) baptism as a reminder of her own glorious “purification” long past
at the moment of the virginal conception of the Word.
(5.) Conclusion: Mary’s fiat
is once again a parallel moment of grace like Christs own baptism. Mary’s
actualized nature parallels that of her Son even before the redemptive
act of the cross. (pp. 150-53)
One can wonder if this is yet another
association of virginity to “incorruptibility.” Though we have already referred
to Latin and Greek patristic authorities for this doctrine . . . the potential
semantic equivalency between the term “virginity” and “incorruption” was likely
a natural development of the primordial evangelical doctrine, specifically
attested to in the Synoptic gospels. E.g., The Gospel of Mark provides the
strongest framework for such a theory, where he writes: “Jesus said to them:
‘Because of this isn’t it so that you are in error, since you know neither the
Scriptures nor the power of God. For when people have risen from the dead,
neither do they marry nor are they given in marriage. They are just like the
angels in the heavens. Now concerning the dead—since you say they are not
raised—have you not read in the Book of Moses, as the occurrence of the burning
busy (επι του
βατου), how God (when
speaking) said to him: ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God
of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are seriously
in error (Mark 12:23-27).” A patristic hermeneutic might lead the
exegete to note: (a.) Christ equates angelic creatures to asexual beings (b.)
the “asexual” rational beings after the resurrection abstain from sexual
relations since they are clothed in incorrupt (resurrected) flesh, (c. ) and mutatis
mutandis, the most spiritual and angelic beings before the resurrection are
virgins, (d.) a fortiori those most angelic images of incorruption among
virgins are perpetual virgins! Lastly, God bears witness to incorruption of the
flesh in the burning bush through invocation of the continuous existence of
Abraham, etc. Therefore, the burning bush is a symbol and testimony to
(aeviternity and) incorruptibility. In conclusion, the perpetual Virgin of the
Annunciation communes with angels (as like to like) because of her perpetual
virginity and she is fittingly symbolized by the burning bush as a sign of
perpetuity and immortal incorruptibility of her flesh. (Ibid., 152 n. 314)
