Doi: https://doi.org/10.17398/2340-4256.15.619
HAEC PORTA DOMINI. EXEGESES
OF SOME GREEK CHURCH FATHERS ON EZEKIEL’S PORTA CLAUSA (5TH -
10TH CENTURIES)
HAEC PORTA DOMINI. EXÉGESIS DE
PADRES DE LA IGLESIA GRIEGA SOBRE LA PORTA CLAUSA DE EZEQUIEL (SIGLOS V-X)
José María Salvador-González
Complutense University of
Madrid
Recibido:
14/10/2019 Aceptado: 22/12/2019
Abstract
This article aims
to highlight a large amount of exegeses proposed from 5th to 10th
century by many Fathers of the Greek-Eastern Church on the shut gate (porta clausa) of the temple revealed to
Ezekiel during the exile of the Jewish people in Babylon: a closed door facing
East, through which God enters and leaves without opening it, and which, after
entering and leaving through it, He left closed forever. Regardless of their
respective formulations, all these Christian thinkers agreed on this unanimous
interpretation: this Ezekiel’s porta
clausa is a double and complementary metaphor of Christ and Mary, since it
is an eloquent dogmatic symbol that means simultaneously the virginal divine
maternity of Mary and her perpetual virginity, as well as the supernatural
conception and birth of Jesus from the virginal womb of Mary.
Keywords: Porta clausa, Ezekiel, Greek
Patrology, Mary's divine motherhood, Christ’s incarnation..
Resumen
Este artículo tiene como objetivo poner en luz una
gran cantidad de exégesis propuestas desde el siglo V al siglo X por muchos
Padres de la Iglesia Greco-Oriental sobre la puerta cerrada (porta clausa) del templo revelada a
Ezequiel durante el exilio del pueblo judío en Babilonia: una puerta cerrada
hacia que daba hacia Oriente, por la cual Dios entra y sale sin abrirla, y que,
después de entrar y salir por ella, dejó cerrada para siempre.
Independientemente de sus formulaciones respectivas, todos estos pensadores
cristianos coincidieron en esta interpretación unánime: esta porta clausa de Ezequiel es una metáfora
doble y complementaria de Cristo y María, pues es un símbolo dogmático
elocuente que significa simultáneamente la virginal maternidad divina de María
y su virginidad perpetua, así como la concepción sobrenatural y el nacimiento
de Jesús del vientre virginal de María.
Palabras clave: Porta clausa, Ezequiel,
Patrología Griega, maternidad divina de María, encarnación de Cristo.
INTRODUCTION
During his long
research into the primary sources of Christian doctrine, the author was
discovering with growing surprise the immense amount of exegetical commentaries
with which numerous Church Fathers and medieval theologians interpret the
eastern door of the temple described by the prophet Ezekiel in his book. This
finding led the author to search satisfactory answers to this surprising
reiteration and coincidence of those exegeses. The current article is, in fact,
a partial result of that search. To give clues to the problem, it is convenient
to remember the original narration of the prophet.
Ezekiel refers in
his book that, at the 25th year of the captivity of the Jewish
people in Babylon, he had a revelation in which Yahweh made him see the Temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem after the destruction of the
previous one. In the context of the detailed description of all parts,
measures, ornamentation and ceremonies that would distinguish this future
Temple,[1] Ezekiel refers to
its eastern gate or portico in these terms:
Then the Lord
God brought me back through the east-facing outer gate of the sanctuary. But it
was shut. The Lord told me, “This gate is to remain shut. It will not be
opened. No man is to enter through it, because the Lord God of Israel entered
through it, so it is to remain shut.”[2]
Now well, even if at first glance the
prophet’s data on this gate facing East are likely factual, nevertheless the
Greek and Latin Church Fathers and medieval theologians interpreted from early
date this Ezekiel’s cryptic text in a double key, Christological and
Mariological at the same time. All these Christian thinkers assumed that the
mysterious eastern gate revealed to the prophet is a clear symbol of the womb
of the Virgin Mary when conceiving and giving birth to God the Son incarnate,
while preserving her virginity forever thanks to the divine power. In fact,
they interpreted this closed gate with a double Christological and Mariological
projection, as a simultaneous and complementary metaphoric figure of both the
Virgin Mary's divine maternity and her perpetual virginity, as well as of the
supernatural conception and birth of Jesus.
The uncountable patristic and
theological exegeses on Ezekiel’s porta
clausa spread over more than a thousand years, since at least the 4th
century until the 14th. Nonetheless, this relevant Mariological and
Christological interpretation, emphatically asserted by many influential
authorities of Christian doctrine, has been surprisingly eluded by some
historians of Christianity, especially those experts in Mariology[3] and in Marian iconography.[4] This is also the case, for example,
of Fernand Cabrol[5] and Henri Leclercq[6] in their monographic entries on
the Annunciation in the Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Chrétienne et de Liturgie,[7] as well as Igino Cecchetti in a
similar entry in the Enciclopedia
Cattolica.[8]
Due to the extraordinarily large
amount of Eastern and Western Christian exegeses on Ezekiel’s shut door, the
author will analyze in the current paper
only the exegeses that many Fathers of the Greek-Eastern Church provide between the 5th and 10th
centuries on the aforementioned shut
door.
I. The Patristic tradition in the Greek-Eastern Church on
Ezekiel’s porta clausa from the 5th to the 10th century
Toward
the end of the 5th century or beginning of the 6th the
theologian and hymnographer Jacob of Serugh (ca. 451-521), a
prestigious writer of hymns and homilies in verse in Syriac, interprets over
and over with obsessive insistence the shut eastern gate of Ezekiel in
Mariological and Christological sense. Thus, in a homily in honor of Mary, he
paraphrases the text of the prophet,[9]
and then says apodictically:
The
Virgin Mary is the shut gate of prophecy,
That
the Lord Messiah left shut, after joining the world through it.
By
going through this gate, the Lord did not open it;
Ezekiel,
son of Hebrews, is a witness to this [miracle] together with us.[10]
The
Syriac bard emphasizes the idea that God entered the world through the gate of
the birth (the vulva) by his own will, but leaving well shut the gate of virginity;
for, if the sanctuary whose gate Ezekiel saw shut means the Virgin Mary, that
implies her virginity not being violated.[11] This
writer then proclaims that the Messiah is holy, and Mary is his holy House,
because the gate truly shut means that she kept intact for ever the signs or
seals of her virginity, as seen by Ezekiel: he saw a gate, because through it a
man (God the Son incarnate) entered, and he saw it shut because in exiting (at
his birth) He did not break the seals of her virginity.[12]
At
once the Sarugensis highlights once more insistently that God the Son came into
the world at birth by the gate of the newborns (the maternal vulva), and when
exiting He did not open this gate, since He himself foreshadowed his Virgin
Mother in the form of a gate splendidly shut, as it was revealed to Ezekiel.[13]
Then he comes on by explaining that, like Jesus in being conceived and giving
birth did not open the human gate (the uterus and the vulva), the virginal seal
of Mary remains inviolate; the Virgin’s womb is explained by the shut gate of
Ezekiel, so since this gate is shut, her virginal womb remains sealed.[14]
The
hymnographer then goes on insisting that, as God said that this gate will not
be open any more, and as everyone says that nobody will break the virginal
seals, that means that the Word of God sealed the womb of the Blessed Virgin,
so that he did not broke the signs of virginity when being conceived or being
born. And, for it is God who entered through the Virgin’s gate, He did not
break the seal or the signs of her virginity, because, as seen by Ezekiel, God
himself passed through it and it will remain shut for ever.[15]
And
shortly after this hymnographer continues by explaining that the gate revealed
to Ezekiel as being shut when God passed through it means that God in his
divine condition did not open it when passing through it.[16]
For this reason, the writer explains:
If
someone who was not God should enter through it [this gate]
It
would be necessary that it be opened, as he would not be able to enter through
it remaining shut.
And,
as this gate is truly guarded by the Lord that passes through it,
He
himself shut and sealed it, ordering that it will not be opened never more.[17]
At
once, leaving the symbolic dimension, Jabob of Serugh reports that Mary was
preserved in inviolable virginity in her childbirth, when giving birth
miraculously to God: if she had given birth to a man who was not God, he would
have broken the signs of her virginity, which a simple man cannot preserve when
being delivered.[18] And some verses later this author persists in these
ideas:
It
was convenient that she [Mary] remains in virginity,
With
which it would be certified who was the father of his Only-Begotten Son.
The
Wonder that enlightens us dwelt in a chaste womb;
For,
if in exiting [at birth] he violated the seals [of virginity], he would not be
the Wonder.
He
should enter the world through a shut gate, as it is written;
If,
on the contrary, he opened it, he would not be the Lord nor God.[19]
And
right away the hymnographer goes on saying that, as Christ, wanting to be born
actually, safeguarded the signs of his mother’s virginity, everyone profess
that Jesus is the Lord and the Wonder. So Ezekiel can rejoice for this mother
that remained virgin, just the same that he saw as the shut gate through which
Christ, sent by the divine Father, came to visit the world, and that, being God
the Son, was not opposed in any way by this accessible gate.[20]
Then,
noting some verses later that “the
Strong of the centuries [God the Son] entered the world through a shut gate /
to pursue tacitly the tyrant [the demon, sin] that devastated the earth”,[21] the Sarugensis clarifies this idea some stanzas
later, saying:
The
Virgin was pure when the beam of the Father dwelt therein,
And
virgin when the child grew in her womb.
The
Virgin conceived [carried] the strong that carries the world,
And
was a virgin engendering the virtue of the Father.
[…]
Mary
is a Virgin and her virginity is eternal.
Blessed
be the one who increased the decorum of the pure virgin in childbirth.[22]
Toward
the end of the 5th century or beginning of the 6th,
Philoxenus of Mabbug, bishop of Hierapolis (ca. 440-523), declares that, as well as the angel Gabriel
came down from heaven to earth and, when finding shut the gate of Mary’s house,
entered through it without opening it, in the same way the Lord Christ came
from heaven without damaging anything of the heavenly home (Mary); so that, as
well as Gabriel came to the Virgin flying with their wings of spirit, the Lord
Jesus lived in her, after coming flying with the wings of the Holy Spirit.[23]
At
the beginning of the 6th century the Greek monk and theologian St.
Severus, Patriarch of Antioch (456-538), says in a homily that the Word of God,
exceeding any way, had entered wonderfully and unusually into our world by a
divine and royal gate, i.e. by virginity, born in human flesh by means of the
power of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mother of God.[24]
Perhaps
for the same years the monk, theologian and aristotelian philosopher
Leontius of Byzantium (ca. 485-ca. 543), endorses in a controversial treatise
against the Nestorians the dogma of Christian orthodoxy that, being truly shut
the gate of the virginity of Mary, the truly natural body of the divine Christ
was born to the world through the intact vulva of the Virgin, after the Spirit
of the Word inhabited her virginal womb by a supernatural virtue.[25] A
little later Leontius of Byzantius explains more precisely this thesis when
pointing out that, at his spiritual birth by the intact vulva of the Virgin,
the Word of God brought about the qualities of his flesh, in the same way that,
when entering without flesh by the maternal vulva, he was not compressed; and,
having been infused by his goodness in the Virgin when being conceived, He who
lacked flesh, was formed fleshly in a divine way of Mary’s flesh, and from her
he joined the flesh (the human nature) to him (to his divine nature).[26]
In
the year 567 the abbot Theodosius, Archbishop of Alexandria, declares in a
sermon that Moses called the Virgin
Mary the Meeting Tent in which the dry rod of Aaron flourished
for us, Isaias announced the virginal birth of her son Emmanuel,
Jeremias called her stem of hazelnut, Ezekiel titled her the gate of the Most
High, and Daniel named her the holy mountain of God.[27]
In the first half of the 6th century the Syrian Romanos the
Melodist (ca. 485-ca. 555/562) sets in a poetic hymn a suggestive parallel
between two gates, in pointing out that in the Epiphany Mary did open the
gate (of her house) and received the procession of the Three Magi, without opening
the gate (of her virginity) by which Christ alone entered. She did open the
gate of her house to the Magi, she, who was
the virginal gate accessible to Christ without being ever stripped of the
treasure of chastity, did “open” (in the sense of “allowed access through”) the
gate of which the other Gate (of Heaven), who is the eternal God made a new
child, was born.[28]
In another song this poet emphasizes
that Jesus Christ was foreshadowed by the prophets by means of several symbolic
figures, some prophets calling him the manna and its containing vase, other the
flower sprouted from the root, while other appointed the mother of Jesus as the
flower, rod, gate that is “open” (in
the sense of “accessible”) by
the power of the Holy Spirit and remaining shut afterwards, so that it can be
said that a virgin gave birth, and after childbirth remains virgin again.[29]
And finally in another hymn Romanos expresses:
When
hearing these things, the immaculate Virgin appeared and went on ahead. To whom
the elderly [Simeon] told her: All the prophets proclaimed to your Son, whom
you conceived without semen. A prophet also had cried on you. And he announced
the miracle of the fact that you exist as a shut gate, oh Mother of God, since
the Lord entered and exited through you, and the gate of your virginal
integrity was not open or injured. One who is the only one who loves men was
the only one that entered through you and kept you safe and sound.[30]
In
the second half of the 6th century, the monk Gregory, Patriarch of
Antioch († 593), in a sermon on the three women who brought spices to the tomb
of Jesus, says about that:
In the
same way that He [Jesus] was born while the virginal closures [of Mary]
remained shut, so also he rose from the shut tomb: and, as well as the Only-Begotten
Son of God was made the firstborn of a mother, so He was also made the
firstborn [resurrected] from the dead. Because, as well as at his birth He did
not break in any way the virginity of his mother, so when resurrecting He did
nor break the seals of the tomb.[31]
And
in another sermon on the baptism of Christ, Gregory of Antioch, after
indicating that Jesus proceeds from Mary’s womb as the bridegroom comes out of
his happily nuptial chamber, argues that with his conception He honored the conception
of all humans, that at birth He entered the world through the gate of Mary’s
virginity without breaking her virginal closures, and that after the childbirth
He sealed the virginity of his mother.[32]
Toward
the 6th century an anonymous hymnographer, after stating in a hymn
that the Lord showed to prophet Ezekiel a shut gate in the atrium, telling him
that it will always be shut because God will pass through it,[33]
expresses in another canticle in lyrical terms:
A nuptial
chamber was conditioned in the uterus [of Mary], in which the heavenly
Bridegroom rested recumbent; the virginal attributes retained their gates with
diligent custody. But, when the glorious husband wanted to leave, He left the
virginal attributes overcome by sleep so they did not feel his exit.[34]
In another
hymn this unknown poet, after proclaiming
that today Ezekiel must rejoice, for his prophecy
about the shut gate through which the Lord would pass was fulfilled completely,
wishes to explain that Mary is this shut gate, since Christ
entered through it to the world and He did not open it.[35]
In
the first decades of the 7th century the Byzantine poet George of
Pisida († 641) says that men saw the bridal seal of the miraculous birth of
Christ, or better said, the mystic key of the gate that allowed God to exit,
into which the Word entered without flesh, and from which, exiting already with
flesh (incarnate), he kept well shut and sealed this gate, as He had found it.[36]
Toward
the middle of the 7th century the
hagiographer and bishop Leontios of Neapolis (ca. 600-ca. 670), speaking on the
presentation of Jesus in the temple, expresses that Jesus at birth did not open
the vulva of Mary, as do other people, for He kept shut the gate of his
mother’s virginity, as prophesied by Ezekiel with the gate shut for ever,
through wich the Lord enters and exits.[37] For
this reason, this power of exiting without
opening the gate and leaving it shut after the exit demonstrates that one can
call Christ –even before being conceived— Holy
and Son of God, as he was declared by the corroborating testimony of God
the Father and the Holy Spirit.[38]
In that same
century Theotecnos, bishop of Livias in Palestine, in a laudatory oration on
the Assumption, after highlighting several prophecies of the Old Testament that
foreshadowed the Virgin Mary under various symbolic figures, including the shut
eastern gate of Ezekiel, concludes by stating that all these prophetic figures
mean that Christ was born of Mary preserving her virginity.[39]
Toward the end of the 7th
century Anastasios of Sinai (ca. 630-post 700),
abbot of Saint Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai, exposing one of his
dogmatic questions begins by noting that the prophetic vision of the gold
candelabrum carrying seven candels means the virginal conception of the
incarnate Word of God, because the candelabrum means the incarnate Son of God
who comes to bring the light; and the fact that it is made of gold means that
his mother Mary remained virgin after childbirth.[40] Then after writing out the prophecy
of Ezekiel on the shut east-facing gate through which only the Lord entered and
exited, Anastasios clarifies that this gate means the maternal uterus, as Job
testifies when complaining to God why He did not shut the gates of his mother’s
womb.[41]
Two or three
decades later St. Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople (ca.
650/60-ca.730/33), in a sermon on the Presentation of Mary to the temple,
proclaims that today –that is to say, at this early consecration of the Virgin
to the Lord— the open gate of the divine temple (in Jerusalem) receives the one who
enters through it as the shut eastern gate of Emmanuel.[42] The
Constantinopolitan prelate then asserts that Ezekiel, by the revelation of the
Spirit of God, narrates the praises of the east-facing gate of the temple and
that, remaining shut, allows the passage of God;[43] he
concludes that then the gates (of the temple of Jerusalem) are open to receive
the spiritual gate (Mary) of God Emmanuel, and they are sanctified with the
footsteps of Mary.[44]
At the
beginning of the 8th century the
hymnographer and homilist St. Andrew of Crete (ca. 660-ca. 740), bishop of
Gortyn (Crete), mentions in an oration on the birth of Mary that she, the
Mother of God, is the common refuge of all Christians and the gate of Heaven,
through which only the Lord of Heaven passed, not granting the passage through
it to anyone else before or after.[45]
In another sermon on the Annunciation this author proclaims that Mary is trully
blessed, for, as prophesied by Ezekiel, she is the shut gate through which only
God passes, and which will be again shut.[46]
In
his Oration 12 on the Dormition of Mary,
Andrew of Crete affirms that she is, among other values, the dignity of the
royal, celestial gender, the Levitical rod of Aaron, the root of Jesse, the
east gate of Christ, who was born of a high Orient (God the Father).[47]
And in another oration on the same Marian event, this author recalls once again
that Mary was prophesied by Isaiah when saying that a Virgin will conceive in
her womb, and that a stem will spring from the root of Jesse, from which a
flower would blossom; and she also was prophesied by Ezekiel when proclaiming
her as the shut east gate through which only the Lord would enter and pass,
remaining then shut forever.[48]
More or less
at the same years the influential theologian and polygraph St. John of
Damascus (675-749), in a sermon on the Annunciation, dedicates to
Mary three metaphorical praises for her perpetual virginity: for being the only
Virgin of virgins, because she remained a virgin before childbirth, at
childbirth and after childbirth; for being the only shut gate between the
gates; and for being the only city provided with defensive towers between all
cities.[49]
In the first
homily on the birth of the Virgin, the Damascene says that today the gates of
the sterility (her sterile mother Anna) have been opened, and the divine and
the virginal gate (Mary) was born, from which and through which God who is
above all entered the world in the form of a body.[50] And
a little later this writer points out with greater precision:
Today
this East-facing gate has been raised, through which Christ enters and exits;
and it will be a shut gate, in which Christ is installed, the gate of the
sheep, whose name is Orient, through whom we had access to the Father,
principle of light.[51]
And,
wile in the same homily, in one of whose excerpts he praises the bodily organs
of the Virgin Mary, the Damascene designates her as “the gate of God
resplendent with perpetual virginity”,[52]
in a second sermon on the same Marian feast he insists in praising Mary with
the symbolic figure of Ezekiel: “Hail, gate facing East, from which the Orient of life [Christ] ruined
the sunset of the men’s death.”[53]
Finally, in his first homily on
the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, St. John of Damascus, noting that Mary gave
birth without semen, and after childbirth remained virgin, brings up the
prophecy of Ezekiel on the shut gate, passable for the Lord, though not open.
This intuitive prophecy shows undoubtedly that Mary is this shut gate, and,
when passing through it after becoming incarnate, the Almighty God did not open
at all the gate of virginity, so that the virginal seal remains in perpetuity.[54]
Toward the middle of the 8th century the theologian
and bishop John of Euboea asserts poetically that, “without needing human
hands, the palace of the King of heaven has been built, and this palace in
Paradise has an east-facing gate, and nobody, except God alone, passes through
that gate, and it will be a shut gate.”[55]
By the
end of the 8th century or beginning of the 9th St.
Epiphanius the Monk,
in a
sermon in honor of the Virgin, affirms that Mary had the virginity and
continence, but not with temptations such as other women, having these virtues
by nature, as a unique and extraordinary privilege above other women.[56] Such
a privilege is precisely what, according to this monk, means the prophecy of
Ezekiel on the gate always shut through which only God enters and leaves,
keeping it shut forever.[57]
Toward the middle of the 9th
century the Sicilian liturgical
poet Joseph the Hymnographer
(ca. 816-886), in a canon in
honor of Mary asks her to rejoice for being the only gate by which only God
passed, who destroyed with his delivery the locks and the gates of Hell; she,
being very worthy of all praise, is the divine entrance of all who are saved.[58] In another Marian hymn, after
praising her as “the Gate of grace, that opened the gates of heaven to the
mortals”, he asks her to open to himself the gates of penance and release him
from the gates of death.[59] In another similar canticle he
calls Mary “the inviolate”, designated by the prophet Ezekiel as the gate not
accessible to anyone and by which only the Creator passed, leaving it shut, as
it was before the delivery.[60] In a new hymn the holy bard of
Sicily prays the Virgin that, in her condition of gate through which nobody has
access, to open to him the gates of the penance and direct him toward the
straight roads.[61]
In another liturgical poem Joseph the
Hymnographer labels Mary “a
gate inaccessible (in the
metaphorical sense of “without sexual access”), which leads to God”; the he
insists in asking her to open the gates of penance to him, erasing the stains
of his sins with her mercy, before asking her, being herself “the gate of God”,
to display the divine entrances to his miserable soul, through which he can
enter by means of the confession and the absolution of his sins.[62] In another Marian poem he points
out that Ezekiel saw her (being the Mother of God) as the gate by which the sun
of glory (Jesus) passed, who snatched the man from corruption;[63] then the lyrical hymnographer
invokes Mary in these devoted terms:
Oh shut
gate of God, by which only the Lord passed! Take me to the divine paths, and
open the gates of salvation to me, oh the most beloved of God! In you I
shelter, oh Virgin, the only protection of the human race.[64]
In
many other Marian canticles Joseph the Hymnographer asks Mary –whom he
names “healthy gate, bridge leading to God, protectress of Christians, the most
chaste Madam”— to govern him in the middle of the calamities and the cries of
life;[65]
besides he clears up that the prophets called symbolically the Virgin Mary
“gate, and mount, and holy tabernacle: cloud of light, of which the Sun was
born, the only giver of light [Jesus] for those who sit in the darkness and
shadow”.[66]
In another poem the Sicilian bard qualifies the Virgin as “the most pure”,
“shining gate” (revealed to Ezekiel), that “gave birth in an ineffable way to
the giver of the light, made like us”,[67] whereas in other verses he summons
Mary with these expressive praises: “Oh gate of those who succeed in the
salvation by faith! Oh gate by which only one who became incarnate for love to
us has passed! Open the gates of the justice to those who praise thee
faithfully.”[68]
In
other hymns in honor of the Virgin, Joseph the Hymnographer urges the believer to
celebrate with praises the heavenly gate through which all sinners have access
to indulgence;[69]
and he asks the inviolate Virgin –being herself the gate revealed to Ezekiel by
which the Lord passed in a prodigious way— to open the gates of penance to him.[70]
In another song this poet synthesizes thus a set of biblical figures with which
the exegetes traditionally identify the Virgin:
Oh pure,
we call you an impassable gate, and field unploughed; and ark that contains the
manna, and urn, and candelabrum, and censer of immaterial coal, oh pure! Oh
chaste, we praise you, only Virgin that gives birth, preserving incorrupt your
vulva: Lord's throne, gate, and mount; spiritual chandelier, the most refulgent
nuptial chamber of God, tabernacle in which the glory is manifested; ark, urn,
and altar.[71]
In
an umpteenth poem Joseph the Hymnographer praises the Virgin Mary in these
terms:
Mother of
God, we call you the Spiritual Gate of the Light, through which Christ,
appearing beautiful with the splendours of the divinity, entered next to us,
hidden under the stole of flesh, invisible as God, but visible with our human
form.[72]
In
that same 9th century the bishop George of Nicomedia, in a writing
about the conception of Mary, states that, in being fixed with this conception
the King’s gate by which no one else can pass, also Who will pass through it
(Jesus) is prepared, making thus beforehand passable to us the gates of heaven.[73]
Finally,
at the beginning of the 10th century, Peter, bishop of Argos († post 922), in a homily on the conception
of the Virgin, says that the east-facing gate whose access, according to
Ezekiel, is reserved only for Christ, is built at the very moment of the Mary’s
begetting.[74]
CONCLUSIONS
Since
the early 4th century, and for at least a millennium, a very large
group of Church Fathers and medieval theologians of Greek and Latin Church
placed special emphasis on interpreting the doctrinal meanings of the shut
eastern gate of the temple that the prophet Ezekiel foresaw in a revelation.
This
article, restricted in its research focus solely to the field of Greek-Eastern
Patrology from 5th to 10th century, highlights an
eloquent unanimity of opinions in all these authors when interpreting the
aforementioned excerpt from Ezekiel in a simultaneously Mariological and
Christological key, which consolidated thus a continuous and concordant
exegetical and dogmatic tradition on the matter.
In
fact, all these ecclesiastical writers of the Greek-Eastern Church promote, one
after the other with obsessive insistence, two fundamental, complementary
interpretations. First of all, the Ezekiel’s sentence, by which God entered and
exited, without opening it, through the east gate of the temple, which was shut
and should remain shut, means Jesus’ conception (He entered through the gate)
and birth (He exited by the gate) of Mary’s virginal womb (the gate was shut
and remained shut in both cases without being violated). Second, the prophet’s
statement according to which “This gate is to remain shut. It will not be
opened. No man is to enter through it, because the Lord God of Israel entered
through it, so it is to remain shut”, is unanimously interpreted by all those
ecclesiastical writers as a clear confirmation of Mary’s perpetual virginity,
for no man –nor even her husband Joseph— will ever have intercourse with her,
after the incarnate Son of God entered (was conceived) and exited (was
delivered) through her. Both concordant interpretations are summarized in the
consolidated dogmatic tradition of the Greek-Eastern and Latin Church according
to which Mary was a virgin before childbirth, virgin in childbirth, and virgin
forever after childbirth.
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—. Oratio V.
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José María Salvador-González
Facultad
de Geografía e Historia
Universidad
Complutense de Madrid
Facultad
de Filosofía B, Calle Profesor Aranguren, s/n Ciudad Universitaria
28040
Madrid (España)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6854-8652