"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd." ~Flannery O'Connor

Monday, July 28, 2008

The Immaculate Conception: trying to be erenic

Several friends have called my attention to a pair of posts over at Eirenikon: one called "On Original Sin and the Immaculate Conception," the other "More on the Immaculate Conception in Eastern Orthodoxy." Well, they have my attention.

I like Eirenikon: its Orthodox "editor," to whom I shall refer as "EE" in deference to his wish for anonymity, openly states that his blog's purpose is "Orthodox-Catholic reconciliation." That makes EE almost as quixotic as I and certainly braver, considering the reaction he sometimes gets from his co-religionists. At any rate, the long combox to the first of the two aforementioned posts, a combox that took me nearly an hour to read, tends to confirm that impression. EE's support came from "the West" not "the East"—unsurprising given that the post consisted of a quotation from a Jesuit theologian. Of course that should be balanced by the quotation of which the second post mostly consists; from a Greek-Catholic scholar, it impressively presents evidence for old, established Eastern-Christian belief in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception ('DIC' for short). EE invited refutation of said scholar's point, but did not really get one.

Of course the naysayers had already said their nays in the combox to the earlier post. In response to them, I offer again two old posts of mine: Freedom, evolution, and original sin, and Our "solitary boast". The best point of that might be to take some of the pressure off EE.
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