Mary and the Church (St Irenaeus)

Mary and the Church (St Irenaeus)

By linking the virginal birth of Jesus and that of the Christians operated through faith and baptism, Saint Irenaeus introduced a close identity between the Mother of God and the Mother of the Church:

"How will man go to God if God did not come to man? How will men depose the mortal birth, if not through a new birth, given against all hope by God as a sign of salvation, which took place in the womb of the Virgin, to regenerate them by the means of faith?"(Against Heresies IV 33, 4 in SC 100).

Saint Irenaeus thus goes from the Virgin Mary to the Church, applying to the latter all that happened to the Virgin Mother.

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A. Gila

A. Gila et l’équipe de MDN.