D. Marian doctrines

Note: This list is a work in progress, and may change at any time both in the selection of quotations and the content of the annotations. In the meantime, feel free to offer any suggestions.

IRENAEUS

“1. That the Lord then was manifestly coming to His own things, and was sustaining them by means of that creation which is supported by Himself, and was making a recapitulation of that disobedience which had occurred in connection with a tree, through the obedience which was [exhibited by Himself when He hung] upon a tree, [the effects] also of that deception being done away with, by which that virgin Eve, who was already espoused to a man, was unhappily misled,—was happily announced, through means of the truth [spoken] by the angel to the Virgin Mary, who was [also espoused] to a man. For just as the former was led astray by the word of an angel, so that she fled from God when she had transgressed His word; so did the latter, by an angelic communication, receive the glad tidings that she should sustain (portaret) God, being obedient to His word. And if the former did disobey God, yet the latter was persuaded to be obedient to God, in order that the Virgin Mary might become the patroness (advocata) of the virgin Eve. And thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so is it rescued by a virgin; virginal disobedience having been balanced in the opposite scale by virginal obedience. For in the same way the sin of the first created man (protoplasti) receives amendment by the correction of the First-begotten, and the coming of the serpent is conquered by the harmlessness of the dove, those bonds being unloosed by which we had been fast bound to death.” (Against Heresies, Book Five, chap. 19).1

  1. This interesting passage, while according an appropriate degree of respect to the virgin whom God chose for a unique and exceedingly precious ministry in redemptive history, gives no indication of any higher honor to her than to all those men whom God, in his paradoxical ways, has used to bring about the opposite of that which the Serpent had tried, and initially succeeded, in doing. Thus, Haman built a gallows to destroy God’s people and was hanged on it himself; even as the Serpent built a cross to destroy God’s Son with, and by it received his death-wound. In a similar way, which well accords with Irenaeus’s peculiar emphasis on recapitulation, when the Serpent sought to destroy the human race by enticing a virgin to disobedience, God in his wisdom saw fit to save it through the obedience of a virgin; not, however, as though she were immaculate in every respect, but only in that she obeyed God in the matter through which he was pleased to bring the Savior into the world.

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