The great reversal is not only the Lord’s unseating of the mighty and raising the humble; it is also our own repentance. — John Howard Yoder

A Proper Marian Dialectic

The doctrine of the immaculate conception makes maddeningly difficult what seems to me a proper Marian dialectic, which is able at different moments to emphasize now the extent of her deification, by which she our greatest example, and now the extent of her inadequacy, by which we see the profundity of Christ’s self-humiliation.

3 January 2008 |
tags: Mariology

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» On 11 January 2008, Spencer said:

The way that the Immaculate Conception is often explained – including by the Magisterium – certainly gives rise to the problem you mention. Mary is conceived without sin in order to provide a tabernacle worthy of the divine presence.

But the doctrine seems susceptible of another reading: Mary’s immaculate conception shows that humanity, even at its best, is undeserving of the Incarnation. That being born of the best that humanity has to offer is nonetheless a divine self-humiliation exposes the lie behind all human pretension to divinity.

Even at our best we do not deserve God – I offer this as an alternative interpretation of the Immaculate Conception.

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Brian Hamilton recently completed his M.T.S. in historical theology at Notre Dame, and now teaches at Messiah College as an adjunct instructor in theology.

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