How the Church Fathers Saw Mary as the New Eve| National Catholic Register

The early Christians consistently recognized Mary as the New Eve, drawing a direct parallel between her obedience and Eve’s fall from grace.

Many Church Fathers referred to the Blessed Virgin Mary as the New Eve or Second Eve, meaning that she said Yes to God and obeyed him at the Annunciation, as opposed to Eve disobeying, leading to the fall of mankind. This was an analogy to St. Paul’s statement: “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22, RSV; cf. 15:45). St. John Henry Cardinal Newman alluded to the development of this notion:

As to the antiquity of the doctrine. In the first ages original sin was not formally spoken of in contrast to actual. … Not till the time of St. Augustine could the question be mooted precisely whether our Lady was without original sin or not. Up to his time, and after his time, it was usual to say or to imply that Mary had nothing to do with sin, in vague terms. … This does not go so far as actually to pronounce that she had the grace of God from the first moment of her existence, and never was under the power of original sin, but by comparing her with Eve, who was created of course without original sin, and by giving her so high an office, it implies it. (The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, vol. 22; letter to Lady Chatterton on Oct. 2, 1865)

Cardinal Newman noted that since the doctrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Conception involves original sin as well as actual sin, it couldn’t be fully understood until original sin itself was sufficiently developed — at the time of St. Augustine (354-430) — however, the New Eve analogy alone strongly implied absence from original sin.

Accordingly, the eminent Anglican patristics scholar J. N. D. Kelly writes about St. Irenaeus (130-202), that he “nowhere formulates a specific account of the connexion between Adam’s guilty act and the rest of mankind.” In the earlier St. Justin Martyr (100-165), we find an even simpler conception. Kelly describes it as “the sin of Adam and Eve … is the prototype of our sin.”

Likewise, Kelly notes that the view of Tertullian (c. 160-c. 225) “can hardly be read as implying our solidarity with the first man in his culpability (i.e., original guilt) as well as in the consequences of his act,” and that the position of Origen (c. 185-c. 254) “entails … the abandonment of any doctrine of corporate sinfulness.”

Cardinal Newman elaborated upon the implications of analogizing Eve and Mary, and pointed out that Eve was indeed created without original sin and was sinless before the fall. In other words, if Mary is directly compared to the pre-fall Eve, then she must have been sinless as Eve was, which was an actual, pure sinlessness, from before the fall of mankind — as God originally intended it to be for all of us.

Eve was the one person, along with Adam, who was absolutely pure and without sin. Moreover, this has implications for original sin, since Eve totally lacked that before her rebellion and fall, as well; hence, Mary would have to possess the same traits in order to do better than Eve did, and to be the New (Second) Eve. But the earlier Fathers wouldn’t have a full understanding of that because they didn’t yet grasp original sin in its fullness. All agree that Eve was sinless and without original sin before the fall.

Again, if Mary was the New Eve because she said Yes to God, then she had to be without sin because the analogy was to the pre-fallen Eve who was without actual or original sin at the time when she was called upon to choose God or herself. Mary said Yes, and so she had to be at least as “high” in the scheme of things as the unfallen Eve in order to do so.

This is how and why the New Eve analogy implies both a sinless Mary (free from actual sin) and by extension, a Mary free from original sin as well. What we see in earlier Fathers like St. Irenaeus in this respect is exactly the sort of thing that we would expect to find according to Newman’s famous theory of development.

Adam and Eve’s fateful decision involved the entire human race, according to standard original sin theology, based on 1 Corinthians 15:22 (“In Adam all die”) and a few other passages. Thus, if Mary undid what Eve did, as many Church Fathers taught, then it would likewise have enormous implications for the history of redemption (since she bore our Savior and Lord) and also, by straightforward extension, for her own sinlessness, because in effect, she was put back in Eve’s position of choosing between God (sinless original state) and herself (sin after willfully rebelling).

Mary would have inherited original sin like all of us because her Immaculate Conception has nothing to do with her mother and everything to do with God’s special miraculous act of grace. This is why she called God her Savior. God prevented her from sin, which has the same effect as someone else being rescued from the pit of sin after having fallen into it.

What we discover in Church history is that some doctrines develop very fast (e.g., baptismal regeneration, Real Presence in the Eucharist, episcopal Church government) and others very slowly (the Holy Trinity, original sin, the full understanding of the papacy, trinitarianism, the communion of saints, Christology, the canon of the Bible, Mariology).

Meanwhile, a third category of doctrines prove themselves — upon closer examination — to be corruptions of what came earlier or even outright novelties, and as such they were virtually universally rejected by the Fathers, till being revived in the 16th century, with the advent of Protestantism (sola Scriptura, sola fide, symbolic Eucharist and baptism, denominationalism, etc.).