Dr. John Bergsma

What does it imply?

And so holiness is the central affirmation about the blessed mother.

And then it gets defined, like the picture of it gets sharper as we go through church history as reflecting upon it under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we say, you know what?

The proper thing to say is she's holy from her conception ultimately, okay?

And this relates to another question that's gonna come up, which is the development of doctrine.

And what I would say is the development doctrine is not the idea that, oh, the picture is changing and over time we have a different picture of what the Christian faith is.

I would say the picture of the Christian faith always stays the same and we're cranking the focus knob.

And it's getting increasingly defined and clear.

So we always knew that there was something special about the blessed mother.

How special?

Well, she's holy.

Well, how holy?

Well, all holy.

Well, how far does that go?

Does it go back to, yeah, that's got to at least go back to her birth.

Okay, can we say anything more?

Hmm, thinking about it, you know, what is fitting, what's appropriate, what seems to be required by other doctrines is that we affirm that she was holy even from her conception.

Constantinople is 451-ish.

Well, let's see.

Cranking the focus knob so that the picture becomes increasingly well-defined.