The Four Marian Dogmas

The doctrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary reveals the role of the Mother of Jesus in relation to Christ and his Church. Authentic doctrine regarding Mary is, in fact, a revelation of the person of Mary herself. That is why by truly understanding what Mary's role is in God's work of Redemption, we can know better who Mary is. Authentic love of Mary must be based on the truth about Mary.

This matter of Mary's self-revelation is exemplified at Lourdes during her apparitions in 1858. To Bernadette's question concerning who she was, Mary responded, "I am the Immaculate Conception."

In this article we will look at four central Catholic truths, known as "dogmas," regarding the Blessed Virgin Mary: her Motherhood of God, her Immaculate Conception, her Perpetual Virginity, and her Assumption. A dogma is a Church doctrine that has been solemnly defined as constituting the highest level of revealed truth and something directly revealed by God, whether by an infallible declaration by a pope, or by an ecumenical council confirmed by the Roman Pontiff.

Mother of God

The first and foremost revealed truth about Mary from which all her other roles and all her other honors flow is that she is the Mother of God. This dogma proclaims that the Virgin Mary is true Mother of Jesus Christ who is God the Son made man. The dogma of Mary's Divine Motherhood, as it is commonly referred to, is explicitly revealed in Sacred Scripture. At the Annunciation the Angel Gabriel declares to Mary: "Behold, you shall conceive in your womb and shall bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus... therefore, the holy one who shall be born of you shall be called Son of God" (Lk 1:31, 35).

The angelic message which originates from God Himself attests that Mary is true Mother of Jesus and secondly, that Jesus is true Son of God. From these words of the angel, we can derive the following simple theological syllogism: Mary is Mother of Jesus; Jesus is God; therefore, Mary is Mother of God. Since Jesus is truly God the Son, and Mary is repeatedly referred to in Scripture as the "Mother of Jesus" (cf. Mt 2:13, 2:20; Jn 2:1,3; Acts 1:14, etc.), then Mary must be true Mother of God made man.

In Tradition we first find the revealed truth of Mary's Divine Motherhood in the Apostles' Creed. This great formula of the essential doctrinal beliefs of the early Church professes faith in "Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary."

From the teaching authority of the Church, we have the great Marian event of the third ecumenical council of the Church, the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. Ecumenical councils are those general assemblies of bishops who, with the authority and confirmation of the pope, and guided by the Holy Spirit, teach and define doctrine as found in Divine Revelation that is binding on the universal Church (hence, the name ecumenical or general council).

The ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431 declared the Blessed Virgin Mary to be the Mother of God or Theotokos, literally the "God-bearer." The Council approved the teaching of St. Cyril of Alexandria who, against the errors of Nestorius, declared:

Nestorius refused to call Mary "Mother of God" not primarily because of a mariological error, but because of a christological error (an error concerning the true doctrine of Jesus).

Nestorius erroneously divided the one person of Jesus Christ into two separate persons, and thus Mary would be Mother only of the "human person of Jesus," and not the Mother of God. The Ephesus definition of the Blessed Virgin as the Theotokos is actually a protection of the revealed truth about Jesus: that Jesus is one divine person with two natures, a divine nature and a human nature, and that the two natures are inseparably united in the one, and only one, divine person of Jesus. We see then at Ephesus a case in point of the truth that authentic Marian doctrine will always protect and safeguard authentic doctrine about Jesus Christ. Several times in the early Church, when there was a statement about Our Lord Jesus which lacked clarity concerning its ramifications, it was applied to the Mother of Jesus, whereby it became clear that the christological statement was incompatible with authentic Catholic doctrine. It is in this way that Marian doctrine safeguards the true doctrine about Jesus Christ.

Motherhood

To have an accurate understanding of Mary as Mother of God we must first have a clear understanding of the nature of motherhood itself. How do we define motherhood?

Motherhood is the act of a woman giving to her offspring the same type of nature that she herself has. This gift of nature is given through the process of conception, growth or gestation, and birth. The fruit of this process, which we may call maternal generation, is the whole child, the son or daughter, and not only the physical body.

For example, we rightly say that St. Elizabeth is the "mother" of St. John the Baptist, that is, mother of the complete person, not just of St. John's body. This is a true statement even though we know that Elizabeth did not give John his soul which is created and infused directly by God. Motherhood then refers to the gift of like nature, with the fruit of motherhood always including the entire person.

It is in this same accurate sense that Mary is rightly called the "Mother of God." What precisely does Mary give Jesus in the act of motherhood? First of all, let us establish what she did not give Jesus. Mary did not give Jesus his divine nature, nor did Mary give Jesus his divine personhood. Both of these aspects of Our Lord, in his divinity, existed from all eternity. But, "when in the fullness of time, God sent his son born of a woman" (Gal 4:4), Mary gave Jesus a human nature identical to her own, in the same way that each of our human mothers gave each of us a human nature. Since the human nature of Jesus is inseparably united to his divine nature in the one person of Christ, we correctly say that Mary gave birth to a Son who is truly God and, through Mary, truly man. In short, Mary gave flesh to the Word made flesh and is rightfully proclaimed "Mother of God." (1)

It is for this reason that Jesus is called both "Son of God" and "Son of Mary." Jesus is Son of the Father, since his divine nature was generated (not made) by the Father from all eternity. Jesus is Son of Mary since his human nature was given to him by Mary, his earthly Mother.

The truth of the Blessed Virgin Mary's divine Motherhood and its corresponding dignity are found in these words of the Second Vatican Council:

The Immaculate Conception

The second central Marian dogma is the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. This dogma, which received the added certainty of an infallible definition by Pope Pius IX in 1854, proclaims that the Mother of God was conceived without any stain of Original Sin. Before examining the full solemn pronouncement of Pope Pius IX, which was issued with the papal charism of being protected from error by the power of the Holy Spirit, let us first examine the revealed seeds of this dogma as they are contained in Scripture and Tradition.

From Sacred Scripture we have at least two passages of the Bible that present the implicit seed of the revealed truth of Mary's Immaculate Conception.

In Genesis 3:15, after Adam and Eve committed Original Sin, God addresses Satan, who is represented by the serpent: "I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed; he (2) shall crush your head, and you shall lie in wait for his heel." Since the "seed" of the woman is Jesus Christ, who is to crush Satan victoriously in the Redemption, then the woman must in fact refer to Mary, Mother of the Redeemer.

The word "enmity," which is rich in meaning in this passage, signifies "in opposition to." The enmity established between the "seed" of the woman, which is Jesus, and the "seed" of the serpent, which is sin, and all evil angels and humans, is in absolute and complete opposition, because there is absolute and complete opposition between Jesus and all evil. In other words, the seed of the woman and the seed of Satan have to be in complete and total opposition to each other as depicted in the term "enmity."

Further in the passage we see the identical God-given opposition or enmity given and proclaimed by God between the woman, Mary, and the serpent, Satan. Mary is given the same absolute and perpetual opposition to Satan as Jesus possesses in relation to sin. It is for this reason that Mary could not have received a fallen nature as a result of Original Sin. Any participation in the effects of Original Sin would place the Mother of Jesus in at least partial participation with Satan and sin, thereby destroying the complete God-given opposition as revealed in Genesis 3:15.

The opposition between Jesus and sin is paralleled by the opposition between the woman, Mary, and the serpent, Satan. Again, this tells us that the Mother of Jesus could not participate in the fallen nature of man because that would mean participating, at least partially, in the domain of sin, a reality to which God gave Mary complete opposition.

From the New Testament the principal scriptural seed for the Immaculate Conception is revealed in the inspired words of the Angel Gabriel, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you" (Lk 1:28). In the angelic greeting, Mary's name is nowhere used. Rather, the title "full of grace" is used as a substitute for Mary's name by the angelic messenger of God. These angelic words refer to a fullness of grace, a plentitude of grace that is part of Mary's very nature. So much is Mary's very being full of grace that this title serves to identify Mary in place of her own name. It is also true that no person with a fallen nature could possess a fullness of grace, a plentitude of grace, appropriate only for the woman who was to give God the Son an identical, immaculate human nature. Mary was conceived in providence to be the woman who would give her same immaculate nature to God when God became man. Certainly we can see the fittingness in God receiving a human nature from a human mother, and receiving an immaculate nature from a truly immaculate mother.

In the Greek text of Luke 1:28, we have an additional implicit reference to Mary's Immaculate Conception taking place before the announcement of the Angel. The Greek word "kecharitomene," is a perfect participle, which, in Greek, denotes an action completed in the past but still holding a relevance to the present. Therefore we translate Luke 1:28 most accurately in this way, "Hail, you who have been graced" or "Hail, you who have been perfected in grace." The Greek translation of the angel's greeting refers to an event of profound grace experienced by Mary that was already completed in the past. (3)

These implicitly revealed seeds of the Immaculate Conception blossomed gradually but steadily in the Tradition of the Church. The early Church Fathers refer to Mary under such titles as "all holy," "all pure," "most innocent," "a miracle of grace," "purer than the angels," "altogether without sin," and these within the first three centuries of the Church. Since the word "immaculate" means "without sin," then the titles used for Mary by the early Fathers, such as "altogether without sin," certainly contain the understanding of her immaculate nature (cf. Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus).

The early Church Fathers also compared the Mother of God's sinless state as being identical to Eve's state before the participation of Eve in Original Sin. Mary as the "New Eve" was seen to be in the same state of original grace and justice that Eve was in when she was created by God. Since Eve was obviously conceived in grace, without the fallen nature that we receive due to Original Sin, the parallel made by the Church Fathers between Mary and Eve before the fall illustrates their understanding of Mary's likewise immaculate nature.

In the words of St. Ephraem (d.373): "Those two innocent...women, Mary and Eve, had been (created) utterly equal, but afterwards one became the cause of our death, the other the cause of our life." We can see the complete parallel between the sinless Eve before the fall and the sinless Mary. St. Ephraem also refers to Mary's sinless nature in this address to Our Lord: "You and your Mother are the only ones who are immune from all stain; for there is no spot in Thee, O Lord, nor any taint in Your Mother." (4)