Transcription
[music] Today is the solemnity of the immaculate conception of the blessed virgin Mary. The Catholic Church teaches that this is a dogma revealed by God and is to be believed by all with divine faith.
Now, obviously, there is no passage in scripture that explicitly [music] testifies to this in the literal sense. But is this privilege of Mary found in scripture at least implicitly? Is it at least virtually contained therein? What about in the spiritual senses? While the answer to all of these is yes, today I want to present my favorite biblical argument for the Marian privilege given by Catholic marologists. My proposition is the following. While I grant that this exegesis of Genesis 3:15 is not explicitly clear and does not absolutely necessitate the immaculate conception, [music] there is no better reading that can properly explain the verse.
This dogma was solemnly defined on December 8th of 1854 in Pope Blessed Pius the 9th's bull *Ineffabilis Deus*, or "God Ineffable," which says: "We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most blessed virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by almighty God in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful."
This dogma must be briefly explained, as it is often misunderstood by many who are either Eastern Orthodox or Protestant. Simply put, the Virgin Mary should have contracted the stain of original sin, which is the privation of sanctifying grace in the soul like all other descendants of Adam, but was preserved from this stain and redeemed by the merits of Jesus Christ. For a longer theological explanation of the dogma, either watch my live stream on this or read my article linked below.
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So, first, we got to do two things. First, I want to disprove a common myth from those outside the Catholic [music] Church regarding the Latin Vulgate and the claim that the Catholic Church was misled [music] by a mistranslation in the Vulgate.
Now, let's get to Genesis 3:15. The verse reads: "The Lord said to the serpent, 'I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He shall crush your head, and you shall strike his heel.'"
In context, God is setting down the punishments to the serpent, later on to the woman, and then to Adam for having transgressed his law. After saying that the serpent will have to crawl on its stomach for all its life, the final punishment that God gives the serpent is an enmity between [music] him and the woman and between the serpent's seed and the woman's seed.
Now, as we've just read, we see here that it is the woman's seed who crushes the head of the serpent. But in the Latin Vulgate, it records that the woman strikes the head of the serpent, not her seed. We will see why this doesn't matter for our purpose. But an objection, which ought to be called a myth, must first be addressed. [music]
Many outside the church claim that since the Vulgate translation attributes the defeat of the devil to the feminine pronoun "she," which in the original text [music] reads as a masculine "he," the church was misled by this translation error to dogmatize the immaculate conception. Now, it is true that in popular Catholic [music] piety, going back even to the church fathers, both East and West, Mary is sometimes said to crush the head of the serpent. This represents Mary's unique and exalted participation in the salvation of the world. It's also true that in the original Hebrew and Septuagint [music] Greek texts of the Old Testament, the correct text contains a masculine pronoun "he" instead of the feminine mistranslation in the Vulgate, expressing the serpent's defeat by the man or the seed of a woman, instead of the woman herself. [music]
Now, what's false here is to claim that this mistranslation served as the basis for the dogma's scriptural support. I've seen plenty claim this, even Protestants with PhDs who obviously should know better. Instead, while Genesis 3:15 does teach Mary's sinless conception, it does so in a totally different way than us arguing from the crushing of the head of the serpent being done by the woman in a mistranslation. I could cite plenty of Catholic [music] dogmaticians who concede that the "she" reading, the feminine pronoun, is not at all essential to the dogma. But rather than just citing any theologian to prove my point, I could simply cite the [music] theologians in the theological committee that was tasked by the pope to investigate the doctrine, make recommendations, and prepare the dogma's definition.
In session four of the committee, [music] they wrote: "Conclusion one: A solid argument for the immaculate conception of the blessed virgin [music] cannot be drawn from the words of Genesis, 'she shall crush your head.' The first reason is that it cannot be considered free from controversy whether the text should read 'she' rather than 'he.' Further, [music] reading *ipsa* or 'she' is opposed not only to the original text of both the Hebrew and Samaritan versions but also by all ancient translations, including the Old Latin, and by all the Greek fathers, and even the Latin fathers up to the middle of the fourth century. The Vulgate itself, in which such a reading appears to originate, contains manuscripts that disagree on the matter. Therefore, one cannot invoke in support of this [music] reading the Trident decree on the Vulgate, either because it is not certain that this reading is indeed from the Vulgate, or because the Trident decree does not require the rejection of the original text."
This alone proves that the Genesis mistranslation is not the scriptural basis for the dogma, as many who are outside of the church like to claim. I could also, you know, quote the bull itself and show that it uses Genesis 3:15 in the way that I will argue for the Marian privilege here in a second, and never to claim that Mary directly and primarily crushes the head of the devil. This should be even more obvious to anyone who picks up a manual of mariology and reads through the biblical arguments for the immaculate conception. For example, Juniper [music] Carol's *Mariology*, *The Sacred Theologia Summa*—I can go on and on.
Now that we have disproven this common myth, we can actually get to the argument for why the proper exegesis of Genesis 3:15 supports the immaculate conception. This text is often called the protoevangelium, the first gospel, because immediately after the first sin and before God has even issued any punishments to Adam and Eve, he announces the ultimate defeat of Satan, the serpent, by the woman's seed.
How then is the immaculate conception taught in this verse? We have to answer first, who are the [music] woman, her seed, the serpent, and his seed? And second, what is this enmity between them and the serpent with his seed?
First, the woman here, and when God says that "I will place enmity between you and the woman," could only be the Virgin Mary. And we can only identify her as the Virgin Mary after we know who her seed is. In light of later revelation in the Old Testament and obviously specifically in the New Testament, we know for certain that the woman's seed is the Messiah who destroyed the devil's kingdom, crushing his head by his death on the cross. No one disputes this point.
Now, the woman must be the Virgin Mary for several reasons. First, the woman is not Eve because the seed is said to be hers, not Adam's. In scripture, the seed always belongs to the man due to his seminal fluid. To speak of the seed as the woman's points to the virginal conception of Jesus in Mary's womb with the absence of a male seed, a male father. Furthermore, every member of the human race is always spoken of as descending from Adam, the man, and inheriting his sin, since he is the moral head of humanity. It would be much more proper to say "the man and his seed" if God's intention was to speak of Jesus as coming from the first parents, but rather he said "the woman and her seed."
Third, in the larger context and what follows after verse 15, God is constituting punishments for the serpent, Eve, and Adam in that particular order. Verse 15 is only a punishment for the serpent, which is then followed by other punishments for Eve and Adam. Verse 16 says: "To the woman he said, 'I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing.'" And later in verse 17, he says: "And to Adam he said, 'Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and so on.'"
Now, though it's not universal, there are several church fathers who read the woman of Genesis 3:15 as Mary. The first is as early as the second century, St. Irenaeus. He says: "He has therefore, in his work of recapitulation, summed up all things, both waging war against our enemy and crushing him who had at the beginning led us away captives in Adam and trampled upon his head. As you can perceive in Genesis, that God said to the serpent, 'And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. For from that time, he who should be born of a woman, from the virgin, after the likeness of Adam, was preached as keeping watch for the head of the serpent.' This is the seed of which the apostle says in the epistle to the Galatians, 'that the law of works was established until the seed should come to whom the promise was made.' This fact is exhibited in a still clearer light in the same epistle, where he thus speaks: 'But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, made of a woman.' For indeed, the enemy would not have been fairly vanquished unless it had been a man born of a woman who conquered him."
So, for St. Irenaeus, very clearly, the Virgin Mary is the woman of Genesis 3:15, who fulfills the prophecy. St. Cyprian writes: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel. This seed God had foretold would proceed from the woman that should trample on the head of the devil. In Genesis, then, God said to the serpent, 'Because you have done this, I will place enmity between you and the woman and her seed. He shall regard your head, and you shall watch his heel.'"
Here, very clearly, he connects Isaiah 7 and the virgin who will conceive to the same woman of Genesis 3:15. And finally, St. Epiphanius, he says: "For in paradise, God tells the serpent, 'And I shall put enmity between thee and her, and between thy seed and her seed.' But there is no instance of a woman's seed with an enmity toward the physical seed of a snake, unless, as the riddle suggests, the enmity here is taken to mean Eve's enmity towards the progeny of the snake itself, and of the devil who dwelt in the snake and his envy. And in fact, the whole cannot have its complete fulfillment in Eve, but it will be truly fulfilled in the holy seed, the elect seed, the unique seed, the seed which originated from Mary alone, and not from union with a man."
Thus, the prophecy in Genesis 3:15 is not talking about Mary and Jesus in the spiritual sense. It is talking about Mary and Jesus in the [music] literal sense. Just like, for example, in Psalm 21, where David uh narrates the events of the passion of Christ, he is not talking about the passion in the spiritual sense, but is actually prophesying in the [music] literal sense about Christ himself.
Next, we may ask, who is the serpent's seed? This doesn't ultimately matter because it could either mean the human descendants born under the effects of the fall, or to the dominion itself established by Satan and by sin itself. But regardless, what's clear is that Jesus, the woman's seed, is going to be [music] at enmity with the serpent's seed. Father Scharfen writes: "The meaning of the passage becomes more graphic and more natural if we understand the seed of the serpent to mean not sinners, but rather sin itself, specifically the sin of the earthly world, which was born in Adam through the intervention of the first woman, the sin of mankind, through which and in which all mankind is subject to the devil's dominion." Yet, this interpretation too is not essential for our purpose.
So we see here so far that Genesis 3:15 is a prophecy between a future enmity between a woman and the devil, and the woman's seed, Jesus the Messiah, and the devil's seed. And the woman's seed is going to crush the head of the devil. And this enmity that will exist between the devil and the woman, between the devil's seed and the woman's seed, is going to be a sort of punishment for the devil himself in the context of Genesis 3.
So how do we get the immaculate conception from this? Well, God punishes the serpent by promising that Mary's son, the Messiah, will crush his head. Furthermore, Mary and Jesus will be at enmity with Satan and his kingdom. Note that Mary's enmity with Satan is not distinct from the enmity between Christ and the devil's kingdom. They are one and the same enmity. Again, the verse reads: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed."
So, whatever enmity Christ has with the devil's kingdom or the devil's progeny is shared by Mary with the devil himself. If Mary was ever touched by her original sin, or really any effect of the fall which is opposed to God, such as personal sin, then there would not be a perfect enmity between her and the devil.
Now, you might object, and rightly, why does this enmity between the woman and the serpent have to be perfect if the verse doesn't say that it's a perfect enmity? But remember, this enmity between the woman and the devil is the very same enmity placed between Christ and the devil's seed. And it's obviously blasphemous to suggest that Christ had any friendship, any sort of allegiance [music] at all towards the devil's progeny. It then follows, according to this prophecy, that Mary is going to share this perfect enmity with her son Jesus Christ the Messiah against the devil and his kingdom, against his progeny. And this, of course, makes any stain of sin, whether original or personal, on the blessed virgin Mary incompatible, because again, if she did, then this text would not hold up. There would, in fact, not be this enmity between her and the devil, but rather some sort of friendship.
This is what makes the problem in the modern Eastern Orthodox teaching apparent, which tends to deny Mary's sinless conception. I say modern because this was not the case historically, at least prior to the 18th and 19th century, but that will be treated in a future video. First, the modern Eastern Orthodox position, though it teaches that Mary never committed a personal sin, places the Mother of God under the kingdom of the devil for some time in her life until she is reborn. Furthermore, if one reads Genesis 3:15 as saying that Mary's enmity with the devil consisted in her never committing a personal sin only, this simply would not satisfy the prophecy, which says that Mary's enmity with Satan is going to be the same as Christ's.
Thus, Father Scharfen comments: "Mary, together with Christ, are contrasted to the devil as a human couple with whom he will indeed be at enmity, but whom he will not conquer as he did the first pair. Instead, he is to be conquered by them. And even if, according to the original text, the conquering of the devil is ascribed above all to Christ as the work of his own power, nevertheless, in the enmity generally, the woman is placed first, because in so far as the devil's victory, just as it was won over the woman first and was mediated by the woman in its breadth, so too was to be thwarted with respect to the woman first and generally defeated precisely through her mediation, together with Christ. Such an invincible and victorious enmity, by which the devil was to be punished for leading human beings astray, and specifically was to be shamed for deceiving the woman, obviously excludes, however, the possibility that Mary ever had any fellowship whatsoever with the devil or was subject to his dominion. Rather, it demands that Mary, with Christ, was always excluded from the kingdom of the devil from the first moment of her existence."
Now, this is the same logic used in the bull itself, which reads: "The most blessed Mother, the Virgin Mary, was prophetically indicated, and at the same time the very enmity of both against the evil one was significantly expressed. Hence, just as Christ, the mediator between God and man, assumed human nature, blotted out the handwriting of the decree that stood against us, and fastened it triumphantly to the cross, so the most holy virgin, united with him by a most intimate and indissoluble bond, was with him and through him eternally at enmity with the evil serpent, and most completely triumphed over him, and thus crushed his head with her immaculate foot."
We could actually see this position articulated by a few in the early church. For example, St. Augustine regularly affirms against Julian the Pelagian that all children descending from Adam are born under the dominion of the devil, and that they are later transferred over to the kingdom of Christ once they are baptized. Again, they are initially under the devil and later they are transferred to Christ. And this is due, according to St. Augustine, to the condition of their birth because they come from two parents who descend from Adam and Eve. However, when confronted about Mary on the question of original sin, St. Augustine accepts her from ever being under the devil at all, and this is due to grace. He says: "We do not transfer Mary to the devil by the condition of her birth, but because the condition itself is resolved by the grace of rebirth."
For more on St. Augustine's doctrine, you can watch my video or read my article also linked below. In an anonymous sermon addressed to several clergymen, given in North Africa between the late fifth century and sixth century, and the sermon was previously attributed to St. Augustine, the author includes Mary in the human race but exempts her from the sin of the human race. He sees the wedding feast at Cana in John 2 as humanity's marriage to the devil, which Mary was invited to despite her not being guilty with the rest of mankind. The preacher says: "So while the soul and the devil were being excessively exuberant during a foolish meal, after Jesus had been invited, they lacked wine. But the mother of Christ, who shrank from accompanying the shameful meal, who remained a virgin not only in body but also in spirit, participated as an invited guest in the condition of the human race, not by sharing in the crime of the human race, but as being a part of the whole race, which had to be born, not by association in the sin. She who refers to Christ, she who is not an unclean person, who refers to the unclean."
In the future, I'll make more content on the church fathers and this Marian privilege. But this video is supposed to focus only on scripture. I want to end in noting how this passage, Genesis 3:15, not only has extremely strong support for [music] the immaculate conception, but also illuminates other Marian passages. So far, it's clear that since the dawn of time, in God's plan of predestination, Mary is united to her son's work of redemption and victory over the devil, so that she is not at all included in the devil's seed.
Thus, reading the second chapter of John, in which Mary informs Jesus that the wedding party is out of wine, we see that Jesus responds the following: "Woman, what does that have to do with you and me? My hour has not yet come."
Now, it's important to note that modern translations will not read in this way, but the original Greek does say, "Woman, what does this have to do with you and me?" So, note here how Jesus reminds his mother that because his hour has not yet come, the absence of wine does not concern him nor her. He doesn't merely say it does not concern him, but also to her. Mary, the woman of Genesis 3:15, is united to Christ and the work of redemption as the new Eve, not to the rest of humanity.
Three decades earlier in Mary's life, when she visited her cousin Elizabeth, we see this pairing occur again in her cousin's greeting, which says: "She called out with a loud voice and said, 'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.'"
Father Martin Jugie comments on this quote: "If Elizabeth had simply said, 'You are blessed among women,' one might think that these words refer only to the privilege of the divine and virginal motherhood, which would suffice to distinguish Mary from all other women. But she added, 'And blessed is the fruit of your womb.' The blessing that Mary shares is the very same blessing that applies to Jesus. Mary is blessed as Jesus is blessed. Jesus is blessed, perfectly blessed. There is nothing in him worthy of a curse. The same must be true of his mother. In terms of blessing, she stands on the same level as her son." This parallel between the son and the mother suggests the idea of exemption from original sin and contains a defined dogma implicitly.
Again, I get it. This doesn't necessitate the immaculate conception. It's not a totally hardcore proof that can have no other meaning. But just because something is not explicitly clear doesn't mean that it's wrong, even if I grant that it's not totally expressly set down.
Finally, we may look at Revelation 12, which depicts the mother of the Messiah, Mary, escaping every attack of the devil. The devil is referred to as "that ancient serpent" in this passage, clearly alluding to Genesis 3. Father Jugie comments: "What can be drawn from this in favor of the doctrine of immaculate conception? The fact that Mary, with the help of God, completely escaped the dragon's attacks, just as Jesus, her son, did, suggests that the devil never had any hold on her at any point in her life, that she was therefore free from all sin." This is only a suggestion, a very implicit and distant argument.
So, as I said in the beginning, these passages are not demonstrative. But going back to Genesis 3:15, I really don't think that you can come up with a better explanation of this prophecy. Now, if you think you have a better explanation of this prophecy, go ahead and leave your thoughts below. Most importantly, if you have an alternative reading, keep in mind that the woman of Genesis 3:15 is not a part of the devil's seed. Whether you take "seed" to mean either the kingdom of sin or every person conceived and born in original sin, the woman is not included in it. So, leave your thoughts below what you think.
What I would say is that these verses communicate a more general principle of Mary's uniqueness among mankind, her union with Christ, and her immunity from the devil's venom, which would include all her privileges, not only the immaculate conception, but also her freedom from personal sin and so on. Now, from this more general principle, this total enmity of Mary with the devil, Catholic theologians deduce the specific privilege of her spotless conception in this verse. And while I am truly convinced that these verses, written by the Holy Spirit, do communicate this principle, this absolute enmity between Mary and the devil, including the immaculate conception, I acknowledge that this is not demonstrative. It is very convincing. It makes sense. It paints a perfect picture, but it is not set in explicit terms. I get that. Even as a Catholic, I would never give the assent of faith to this conclusion from these arguments alone, because even if they make a great sense of the texts, they still involve a great deal of fallible human reasoning upon which divine [music] faith cannot rest.
Nevertheless, I hope I painted a more complete picture of Mary's immaculate conception for the viewer. I hope you enjoyed this video. Like, leave your thoughts below. Subscribe if you're not already subscribed. And God bless you. [music]