On Catholic Answers live (June 20, 2026) Joe Heschmeyer again tried to (deceptively) defend the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and the doctrine of the personal sinlessness of Mary:
Did
the Early Church Teach That Mary Sinned? AMA Catholicism @shamelesspopery
BTW, concerning Augustine seemingly exempting Mary from personal
(not original) sin, consider the following which you will not get from Heschmeyer et al:
During the first phase of his controversy
Pelagius argumentatively presented Augustine with the case of the Virgin “whom
it is necessary to recognize as sinless.” Until then no one had
expressed Mary’s holiness in such a clear-cut formula. In such heated
argumentation there could have easily arisen the temptation to discuss the
heretic’s thesis. Saint Augustine resolved the difficulty from the beginning
with a genial touch. He granted the opponent’s statement, but gave it a wholly
different meaning: this sanctity of hers was an exception, having God’s
grace as its principle, and not free will alone. (René Laurentin, A
Short Treatise on the Virgin Mary [6th ed.; trans. Charles
Neumann; Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022], 69)
The question of her sinlessness
arose in the course of his debate with Pelagius, who had cited the Blessed
Virgin as an example of a human being who had remained wholly untouched by sin
by her own free will. Augustine denied the possibility for all other men (the
saints themselves would have been the first to avow their sinfulness), but
agreed that Mary was the unique exception; she had been kept sinless, however,
not by the effort of her own will, but as a result of a grace given her in view
of the incarnation. On the other hand, he did not hold (as has sometimes been
alleged) that she was born exempt from all taint of original sin (the later
doctrine of the immaculate conception). Julian of Eclanum maintained this as a
clinching argument in his onslaught on the whole idea of original sin, but
Augustine’s rejoinder [Opus imperf. c. Iul. 4, 122: cf. enarr. in ps. 34] was
that Mary had indeed been born subject to original sin like all other human
beings, but had been delivered from its effects ‘by the grace of rebirth’.
(J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian
Doctrines, [5th ed.; London: Bloomsbury, 1977], 497, emphasis in bold added)
For Augustine, it was greater for Mary to be a
disciple and a person of faith than to be the mother of Christ: “Mary is more
blessed for grasping faith in Christ than for conceding his flesh; the maternal
relationship would not have profited Mary had she not borne Christ in her heart
more happily than in her womb” (Sanct. Virg. 3.3 [PL 40:398]) (Eugene
LaVerdiere, “Mary,” in Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, ed. Everett
Ferguson ([d ed.; New York: Routledge, 1999], 744)
Augustine
on John 2:4 being a rebuke of Mary by Jesus:
Tract. In Ioannem VIII.9—“His mother then demanded a miracle of
Him; but He, about to perform divine works, so far did not recognize a human
womb; saying in effect, ‘That in me which works a miracle was not born of thee,
thou gavest not birth to my divine nature; but because my weakness was born of
thee, I will recognize thee at the time when the same weakness shall hang upon
the cross.’ This indeed is the meaning of ‘Mine hour is not yet come.’”
Tractate CXIX.1—“At that time, therefore, when about to
engage in divine acts [at Cana], He replied, as one unknown, her who was the
mother, not of His divinity, but of his [human] infirmity.”
There seems no doubt that Augustine considered
Mary’s exemption from sin to be a great grace. But what sins did he mean?
Undoubtedly he excludes any personal sin from Mary. It is possible to
hypothesize that Augustine also intended to exclude original sin? Some scholars
think so and make him a forerunner to the Immaculate Conception. A full
treatment of the question would call for al lengthy discussion. To us
it seems safer to adopt the contrary position, which is held by many experts
and appears more in accord with numerous Augustinian texts. (Gambero, Mary
and the Fathers of the Church, 226; emphasis added)
With the collapse of the Western Roman Empire
in the fifth century, conditions favorable to the consistent development of
speculative theology so deteriorated that the question of the Immaculate
Conception of Mary was not often mentioned in the West until the end of the
eleventh century with St. Anselm. One or another writer such as Paschasius
Radbert asserted it; but others, such as St. Anselm clearly denied it on the
basis of the transmission of original sin via intercourse infected by
concupiscence. On the other hand, Anselm clearly asserted a purity of Mary
greater than which none can be conceived under God. (Fehlner, "The
Predestination of the Virgin Mother and Her Immaculate Conception," in Mariology:
A Guide for Priests, Deacons, Seminarians, and Consecrated Persons, ed.
Mark I. Miravalle [Goleta, Calif.: Queenship Publishing, 2007], 249);
"[Augustine’s] reply to the specific point
does not say that Mary is stainless at conception; rather he leaves the door
open to a ‘liberative sanctification’ in the womb. He wrote: ‘We do not deliver
Mary to the Devil by the condition of her birth; for this reason, that her very
condition finds a solution in the grace of rebirth” (Ibid., p. 248; square
brackets added for clarification)
Augustine understands Mary’s holiness in terms
of her faith and radical obedience to the Word of God. She first conceived
Christ in her mind and heart before conceiving him in her womb: “Fides in
mente, Christus in ventre” (s. 196.1; also see s. 215;
245.4). She is a model of faith for all Christian believers. The bishop never
questions Mary’s holiness and immunity from sin, even though he is unable to
explain how it is so. His position must be understood in the context of the
Pelagian controversy. Pelagius himself had already admitted that Mary, like the
other just women of the Old Testament, was spared from any sin. Augustine never
concedes that Mary was sinless but prefers to dismiss the question: “Let us
then leave aside the holy Virgin Mary; on account of the honor due to the Lord,
I do not want to raise any questions here about her when we are dealing with
sins” (nat. et gr. 36.42). Since medieval times this passage has
sometimes been invoked to ground Augustine’s presumed acceptance of the
doctrine of the immaculate conception. It is clear nonetheless that, given
the various theories regarding the transmission of original sin current in his
time, Augustine in that passage would not have meant to imply Mary’s immunity
from it. Julian of Eclanum had accused him of being worse than
Jovinian in consigning Mary to the devil by the condition of her birth (conditio
nascendi). Augustine, in Contra Julianum opus imperfectum 4.1.22,
replies that Mary was spared this by the grace of her rebirth (“ipsa condition
solvitur gratia renascendi”), implying her baptism. His understanding of
concupiscence as an integral part of all marital relations made it difficult,
if not impossible, to accept that she herself was conceived immaculately. He
further specifies in the following chapter (5.15.52) that the body of Mary,
“although it came from this [concupiscence], nevertheless did not transmit it
for she did not conceive in this way.” Lastly, De Genesi ad litteram 10.18.32 asserts: “And what more
undefiled than the womb of the Virgin, whose flesh, although it came from
procreation tainted by sin, nevertheless did not conceive from that
source.” (Daniel E. Doyle, "Mary, Mother of God," in Allan D.
Fitzgerald, ed. Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia [Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999], 544)
Again, I am
reiterating my challenge to Joe to have a moderated debate on the following
thesis:
“The
Immaculate Conception and Personal Sinlessness of Mary are Apostolic in Origin”
Robert
Boylan
