Jesus Blood came from Mary?

[joselauro]

Hi There.
This is my very first message.
Well, I am an antiochian converted orthodox from Brazil (but I am pro Traditional Orthodox Churches) and we usualy discuss a lot about the Church at "orkut.com".

We had a trouble with a Coptic one and one Roman Catholic concerning the encarnation mistery

We found an acient passage which reads that "Jesus got the body from Mary". Well, I am personaly not confortable with this passage.
Regarding the encarnation, we think there are three different possibilities, of course this is a mistery, but it looks like RC and CO already have a position.

1-Jesus, as a new Adam, was created with all human potential and only developed into Mary.
2-The Holy Ghost "fecundated" Mary and so 50% of the genetic code of Jesus as human came from Mary.
3-The body of Jesus is a "clone" of Mary and 100% of His genetic code came from Mary, only changing from woman to be a man.

What is the official position of the Orthodox Church?
Why am I asking this? Because it looks like while the 3th option is very popular among Roman ones (some people even say things like "The eucharistic is also Mary's body and blood"!!) the RCC and Coptic Church looks like to have chosen the 2th one officialy.

When I said to prefer 1th one, they said in this case Mary wouldn't be the true mother of God, while for me the 2th one looks like a lost of virginity of Mary, and even more, a blasfem against the Holy Ghost.

So what is the official teaching?

Thank you very much!

[1937 Miraculous Cross]

Dear Jose,

I missed this post as I don't often check this section of the Cafe out. Your post is an interesting one, but I don't know the Orthodox "official" postition on this, or if there even is one. It seems to me to be all speculative, and therein is the potential for error. People speculate, create theories, fall in love with those ideas, and before you know it, a new schism or heresy is created.

So, sorry I don't have any concrete answers for you. Maybe someone else does.

in Christ,
nectarios

[CorpusChristi]

Well I have one , unfortunately it was written over a thousand years ago by a more worthy man, then me the wretch.
"See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world, rather than on Christ" (Colossians 2:8).

[The Apostate]

1-Jesus, as a new Adam, was created with all human potential and only developed into Mary.
2-The Holy Ghost "fecundated" Mary and so 50% of the genetic code of Jesus as human came from Mary.
3-The body of Jesus is a "clone" of Mary and 100% of His genetic code came from Mary, only changing from woman to be a man.

With the greatest of respect to you, joselauro, I personally think that to reduce the Mystery of the Incarnation to terms of genetic code is itself to greatly miss the point, to be honest.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

The desire to explain away the Mystery is one that is prevalent in today's culture, where we are so accustomed to understanding how things work - much more so than in previous times. It is also a trait of RCism, which usually develops its doctrines to an excessively refined, level, to the point of taking a mechanical approach to them. Take, for example, their understanding of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Transubstantiation may well be a possible explanation of how the Real Presence comes about, but the point is that it is completely unnecessary, it is based on an Aristotolean concept of the physical world, and I think that any attempt to try to explain exactly how it happens completelty misses the point.

God's grace and power cannot be reduced to terms such as whether or not the presence of Christ is there on the molecular/atomic/quantum level or whether the Incarnation means that Christ took 50% of his DNA from his mother and 50% was supplied by the Holy Spirit or whether he was a clone - this completely misses the point.

If I were taking part in the discussion to which you refer, I would seriously question why people saw this question as even slightly relevant to their salvation or the salvation of mankind.

The Word became flesh. He was fully human and fully divine. He shared in our human nature by being born, living and dying. He conquered human death by overcoming it and he raised the human nature back into the heavenly state, opening to us the way to follow. Blessed be God!

[Sean]

Although the responses were correct of those who replied to your post, Brother, I still don't believe you had your question answered. It is true that all of the theology defended by the Church Councils were only articulated because of heresies which arose to contradict the faith "once delivered to the Saints." The whole of Patristic literature makes explicit what is implicit in its completeness in the the life of the Church. Fr. John Romanides wrote that the Christology of Chalcedon is the key to understanding the eucharist. The Roman Catholics are eucharistic Monophysites because they believe that the bread and wine cease to exist and is trumped by the Body and Blood of Our Savior. The sacramental Protestants who believe in the "real presence," are eucharistic Nestorians because they believe that the bread and wine "contain" the Body and Blood but is seperate from Our Lord. However, the Church teaches that as Christ took our human nature from the Virgin, and deified that nature, so also does He accomplish this in the eucharist. Christ takes the bread and wine and unites it unconfusedly with his Divine Nature in His Person. What Our Lord took from Our Lady was not a person, but our common human nature which He united with His Divine Nature in His Person.

[GOCTheophan]

Although the responses were correct of those who replied to your post, Brother, I still don't believe you had your question answered. It is true that all of the theology defended by the Church Councils were only articulated because of heresies which arose to contradict the faith "once delivered to the Saints." The whole of Patristic literature makes explicit what is implicit in its completeness in the the life of the Church. Fr. John Romanides wrote that the Christology of Chalcedon is the key to understanding the eucharist. The Roman Catholics are eucharistic Monophysites because they believe that the bread and wine cease to exist and is trumped by the Body and Blood of Our Savior. The sacramental Protestants who believe in the "real presence," are eucharistic Nestorians because they believe that the bread and wine "contain" the Body and Blood but is seperate from Our Lord. However, the Church teaches that as Christ took our human nature from the Virgin, and deified that nature, so also does He accomplish this in the eucharist. Christ takes the bread and wine and unites it unconfusedly with his Divine Nature in His Person. What Our Lord took from Our Lady was not a person, but our common human nature which He united with His Divine Nature in His Person.

Sean where did Prof Romanides write this? Is this the generally accepted teaching of HOCNA?

Thanks.

Theophan.