What the Early Church Believed: Mary's Immaculate Nature

The New Eve

The key to Mary's graces is her role as the New Eve. As the first Adam and Eve were created immaculate, so the New Adam and the New Eve were immaculate. As Eve was mother of humanity, Mary is mother of the new humanity, Christians. And as the first Adam and Eve died and returned to dust, the New Adam and Eve were taken up bodily into heaven.

We will all one day be made sinless, but Mary, the model Christian, received this grace early, to be a fitting mother for God's Son. Even before "original sin" and "immaculate conception" were defined, early texts imply them. Many say Mary gave birth without pain, yet pain in childbirth is a penalty of original sin (Genesis 3:16), so she was not under that penalty. By God's grace she was immaculate in anticipation of her Son's redemptive death.

The witness of the early Church

• The Ascension of Isaiah (70) and the Odes of Solomon (80) record that Mary gave birth without pain or a midwife.
• Justin Martyr (155): Eve, a virgin, conceived the serpent's word and bore disobedience and death; Mary received faith and joy and said, "Be it done unto me according to your word" (Luke 1:38).
• Irenaeus (189): Eve's disobedience brought death; Mary's obedience made her the cause of salvation for herself and the whole human race. "The knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary," and Mary became the advocate of Eve.
• Tertullian (210): Eve believed the serpent, Mary believed Gabriel; what one destroyed by believing, the other set straight.
• Pseudo-Melito (300) narrates Christ raising his Mother's body into heaven.
• Ephraim the Syrian (361): there is no blemish in Christ nor any stain on his Mother.
• Ambrose (377, 387) holds Mary up as a model of virtue and calls her a virgin whom grace made "free of every stain of sin."
• Augustine (401, 415) calls Mary the spiritual mother of Christ's members and, for the Lord's honor, will raise no question of sin regarding her.
• Timothy of Jerusalem (400) and John the Theologian (400) speak of her assumption and spotless body taken to paradise.
• Gregory of Tours (584) records that the Lord took Mary's body in a cloud into paradise, where, rejoined to her soul, she rejoices with the chosen.