Was the Virgin Mary Sinful?
An Alexandrian and Oriental Orthodox Reflection on Her Holiness
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Among Coptic Orthodox Christians today it is not unusual to hear the claim, sometimes expressed with great confidence, that the Virgin Mary must have been sinful, simply because all human beings are sinners. Often this claim is motivated by a sincere desire to protect the uniqueness of Christ, or by a fear of adopting Roman Catholic doctrines that do not belong to the Orthodox Church. These concerns are understandable. Yet it is precisely because of such concerns that we must ask a more careful question: what does the Alexandrian and Oriental Orthodox tradition itself actually teach about the holiness of the Mother of God?
When the Church calls the Virgin Mary Panagia, the All-Holy, is this merely pious exaggeration? Is it poetic language without theological weight? Or does it express something real and concrete about her life before God? In particular, can the Orthodox Church, without contradiction, confess that the Virgin Mary was fully human and yet did not commit personal sin?
To answer this, we must listen attentively to the Fathers and to the liturgy of the Church, rather than relying on modern assumptions or isolated proof texts.
Humanity, the Fall, and the Alexandrian understanding of sin
Much confusion surrounding this question arises from a misunderstanding of how sin itself is understood in the Alexandrian tradition. From St Athanasius onwards, the Church of Alexandria has not spoken of sin primarily in legal terms. Humanity did not inherit personal guilt from Adam, as though each child were born already morally culpable. Rather, humanity inherited corruption and death.
St Athanasius famously describes the human condition after the fall as a movement toward phthora, toward corruption and non-being. Humanity, created from nothing, begins to return to nothing when separated from God, who alone is Life. Salvation, therefore, is not merely forgiveness of guilt, but healing, restoration, and re-creation. This is why St Athanasius can summarise the whole Gospel by saying that the Word became man so that we might become divine, and elsewhere he says, the Word took a body capable of death so that, by participating in the Word, it might be preserved from corruption.
Within this framework, it is entirely possible to say that a human being may share in mortality and corruption without necessarily committing personal sin. To be born under the consequences of the fall does not automatically mean that one must live in active rebellion against God. Children, for example, are fully human and fully fallen, yet the Church does not speak of them as personally sinful in the same sense as adults who knowingly transgress. Indeed the church teaches that a child cannot be considered sinful in the same way as an adult because it does not have a formed will, which is necessary for sin. St Gregory of Nyssa says, Sin is a matter of free choice, and choice does not exist where reason is not yet developed.
This distinction is crucial. The claim that “all humans are sinners” often collapses two different realities into one: mortality and personal transgression. But Alexandrian theology has always kept them distinct. We are certainly all subject to mortality, and we are born corruptible, as both St Cyril and St Severus describe, but they are also insistent that we are not born sinners, though we are mortal and broken, but we become sinners. St Severus says, We are born subject to death, not subject to sin; for sin is not of nature, but of deliberate choice, and also, Each person becomes sinful through his own acts, not by birth.
Therefore the Alexandrian Fathers, and the authentic tradition of the Church is that a child is born mortal, and corruptible, but we become corrupt and sinful through our own choices, and these choices become sinful only as we develop a reasonable mind. Every person needs a Saviour, and is born separated from God, but we become sinners by our own reasonable and sinful choices as we grow from infancy.
What does this mean for the Virgin Mary? It means that the Church has always taught that just as small children are not liable as having committed deiberate sin, so the Virgin Mary, certainly at the time of her infancy and her entrance into the Temple when she was three years old, was practically sinless, though entirely human.
Eve and Mary: a contrast of obedience and disobedience
One of the most ancient and authoritative patterns in Christian theology is the contrast between Eve and Mary. This is not a Western development, nor a late medieval idea. It is found already in the second century and was deeply received in the Alexandrian world.
St Irenaeus of Lyons, whose theology exercised great influence on Alexandria, writes with striking clarity:
“The knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary; for what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith.”
This is not merely a comparison of biological roles. Eve’s fall was not an accident; it was a deliberate act of disobedience, a turning of the will away from God. When the Fathers speak of Mary undoing Eve’s disobedience, they are presenting Mary as the one who embodies obedience where Eve embodied rebellion.
This contrast makes little sense if Mary herself is imagined as living a life marked by personal sin. The typology only works if Mary’s life is characterised by faithfulness rather than transgression. Her “Behold the handmaid of the Lord” is not an isolated moment detached from the rest of her life; it reveals who she already is.
St Ephrem the Syrian: “no stain in your Mother”
The Syriac tradition, which stands very close to Alexandria in spirit and theology, speaks even more boldly. St Ephrem the Syrian, revered throughout the Oriental Orthodox world, does not hesitate to use language that many modern Christians find unsettling precisely because it is so clear.
In one of his hymns he addresses Christ and says:
“You and your Mother are alone in this: you are wholly beautiful, and there is no blemish in you, nor any stain in your Mother.”
Ephrem is not careless with words. He does not say that Mary is sinless in the same way as Christ, nor that she is divine, nor that she did not need salvation. Christ alone is “wholly beautiful” by nature. Yet Ephrem nevertheless dares to say that there is no stain in Mary.
What is especially striking is what Ephrem does not say. He does not speak of Mary repenting of sin, being purified from moral defilement, or struggling with habitual transgression. Her purity is presented as a given, as something stable and personal. In another hymn he says,
“Holy is her body, resplendent her soul, pure her mind,
her understanding most luminous;
her thought is most perfect,
chaste, temperate, pure,
well proved, and full of beauty.“
It would not make sense to say that these descriptions only applied to the Virgin Mary after the Annunciation and Incarnation. It was because of all of these things that she was found to be the best that mankind could offer to God. This language was not rejected by the Church as excessive. On the contrary, it was received and echoed in hymnography and preaching for centuries.
St Cyril of Alexandria and the holiness implied by the Incarnation
St Cyril of Alexandria does not write extended treatises on the Virgin Mary, but Marian theology is woven deeply into his Christology. For Cyril, the confession of Mary as Theotokos is essential because it safeguards the truth that the one born of her is God the Word incarnate.
In Alexandrian theology, the Incarnation is not a morally neutral event. The Word does not merely pass through humanity; He truly takes flesh from the Virgin, making it His own. What is assumed is healed, sanctified, and glorified. Mary is therefore not a passive instrument. She offers her humanity freely and obediently. Her consent is not mechanical, nor isolated from her life. It is the expression of a will already turned toward God.
Cyril’s theology does not require us to imagine Mary as morally compromised in order to preserve Christ’s holiness. On the contrary, the fittingness (prepon) of the Incarnation is often emphasised by later Alexandrian and Oriental writers: it is fitting that the dwelling place of God should be holy, not merely ritually, but personally. He says in one of his Commentaries,
“She is called full of grace, for she has received the fullness of divine favour, and no stain of sin has any place in her.”
Of course the Virgin Mary is called full of grace, and it is said that she has found favour with God before she gives her consent and obedience to the incarnation. It cannot be said that this was a result only of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon her to bring about the divine conception. We also believe in our authentic Orthodox tradition that from the age of 3 years to about 13, she had spent all of her life in the prayerful and sancitifying environment of the Temple, and had been visited by angels, so that it is possible for us to understand and insist on the words of Scripture and the Archangel that she was already full of grace, and God pleasing.
St Severus of Antioch: fully human and immaculate
St Severus of Antioch, so deeply revered in the Coptic Orthodox Church that he has three feasts, and is named in the liturgies and prayers before all other saints, except St Mark, speaks with great balance and clarity about the Virgin Mary. He is careful never to remove her from humanity, yet he speaks of her purity without hesitation.
In one of his homilies he insists that Mary
“belonged to the earth and was of the same essence as us,”
and yet he immediately describes her as
“pure from all defilement and immaculate.”
This pairing is deliberate. Her purity does not make her less human; it reveals what humanity can become by grace. St Severus’ theology is profoundly synergistic. Grace does not destroy freedom but perfects it. Mary’s holiness is therefore not automatic, but personal. She is holy because she cooperates fully with divine grace.
Significantly, St Severus never associates Mary with repentance from sin. His Marian homilies assume her purity as part of the Church’s inheritance, not as a controversial claim requiring defence. In his hymns he also addresses her holiness, speaking in one place of Christ receiving a pure and uncorrupted humanity into union with himself. This cannot mean an “unfallen” humanity, since St Severus wrote extensively against those followers of the Julianist heresy, which said that the humanity of Christ did not share our nature but was already entirely glorified. It was our humanity he received from the Virgin Mart, but it must have the sense that he had received a holy humanity from one who was free from deliberate sin, from the 14 year old Virgin Mary, who had been fed by angels in the Temple all of her short life, and who had never deliberately chosen to turn from God.
The witness of the Coptic liturgy
If there were any doubt about the mind of the Church, it would be resolved by listening attentively to her prayer. The liturgy is not careless speech; it is theology prayed aloud.
In the Coptic Orthodox tradition, the Virgin Mary is called the All-Pure Virgin, the second heaven, the golden censer, the undefiled vine, and the ark overlaid with gold within and without. These are not neutral metaphors. They express a conviction about her holiness. Notably, the Church never speaks of Mary as repenting of sin. She is never placed among penitents. She is invoked as intercessor, protector, and model of obedience. The silence here is eloquent. If the Church believed she lived in personal sin, this silence would be inexplicable.
The very title Panagia, used consistently in Orthodox worship, is itself a theological statement. The Church does not apply this title to every saint. It belongs uniquely to Mary and refers to her as a person, not merely to her role in the Incarnation.
When we sing the words,
“The King desired your beauty… he directed us to the soul of Mary,”
we are not speaking only of some condition that occurred after Annunciation, but that the Virgin Mary was always favoured by God, and had an interior beauty that was seen by God, so that he was pleased with her.
Even in the daily prayers of the Agpeya we confess,
“The Father chose you, the Holy Spirit overshadowed you, and the Son condescended and took flesh from you.”
All of these words apply to the Virgin Mary before the Annunciation and Incarnation. She was not chosen because the Holy Spirit had come upon her after her obedience to the will of God in the Incarnation, but she was chosen because she had always lived in the grace of God and in obedience from her infancy.
The Dormition: death without condemnation
The feast of the Dormition and Assumption provides a final and decisive insight. The Church insists that the Virgin Mary truly died. She did not escape death; she shared fully in the human condition. And yet the tone of the feast is remarkable. Her death is described as a falling asleep. There is no language of fear, judgment, or purification from sin. Instead, the hymns speak of peace, glory, and her continuing intercession for the world.
Death remains, because she is human. But moral condemnation is absent. This fits perfectly with the Alexandrian understanding of fallen humanity: mortality without inherited guilt, death without personal transgression. In the Coptic Orthodox tradition, the Dormition of the Virgin Mary is received not as a problem to be explained but as a mystery to be prayed. What is most striking—precisely because it is never argued—is the complete absence of repentance, purification, or fear of judgment in the Church’s remembrance of her departure from this life. The tradition speaks quietly, confidently, and without apology, assuming a holiness that does not need to be defended.
The Synaxarion of 21 Tobe, which recounts the Virgin’s repose, sets the tone. Mary is not portrayed as preparing for death through confession or tears, as so many saints are in their final hours. Instead, Christ Himself comes to receive her soul. The apostles are gathered by divine power, angels accompany her, and her passing is described as peaceful and glorious. There is no weighing of the soul, no plea for mercy, no narrative space for repentance. Death is not treated as a punishment or a cleansing fire, but as a passage into life.
This narrative restraint is not accidental; it reflects the Church’s Alexandrian theological inheritance. Following Cyril of Alexandria, the Coptic tradition understands Mary’s holiness as the result of divine election and grace, not of autonomous moral achievement. She is called Panagia—all-holy—not because she stands outside humanity, but because the God who sanctifies what He assumes chose to dwell in her. Holiness, in this framework, precedes moral struggle rather than emerging from it.
Severus of Antioch further sharpens this vision. He distinguishes carefully between mortality, which belongs to nature, and sin, which belongs to the will. Mary is fully mortal; she truly dies. But sin, for Severus, arises only through deliberate misuse of freedom. The Coptic tradition presupposes that in Mary there was no personal sin requiring repentance, and therefore no purification at death. Her Dormition is real death, yet without the drama of guilt.
This theology is most powerfully expressed in the daily liturgical life of the Church. In the Midnight Praise (Tasbeha) and the Theotokia, Mary is addressed again and again as the all-pure, the undefiled, the second heaven, the dwelling place of God. These hymns are not exceptional texts reserved for feasts; they are prayed constantly. Not once does the Church ask forgiveness for her, nor does it allude to cleansing or repentance in her regard. The silence is as doctrinal as any explicit statement.
The contrast with other saints is instructive. In the Synaxarion, even the greatest ascetics often approach death with trembling, repentance, and pleas for mercy. Angels weigh souls; saints beg God to overlook their faults. None of this imagery is applied to Mary. Her Dormition stands apart, not because she escapes death, but because death has no moral claim over her.
What emerges, then, is a distinctly Coptic synthesis: repentance is necessary where sin is present; where sin is absent, repentance has no place. Mary’s departure is not the end of repentance but the revelation that repentance was never required. The Church does not say this polemically or philosophically; it simply prays it. In this way, the Coptic tradition offers a profound witness. It does not define Mary’s holiness in abstract terms, nor does it speculate about juridical categories. Instead, it remembers her Dormition as a quiet victory of grace, where death is real, glory is immediate, and the absence of repentance speaks louder than any argument.
Christ alone is sinless by nature
At this point it is essential to be clear. Christ alone is sinless by nature. Any suggestion that Mary shares His sinlessness in the same way would be heretical. But Mary’s practical sinlessness does not diminish Christ’s uniqueness. On the contrary, it magnifies His saving work. If Christ truly heals human nature, then it is fitting that His salvation should be visibly effective in at least one human life in a complete and exemplary way. Mary is not a rival to Christ. She is the greatest fruit of His grace.
Why this matters
This question is not about exaggerating Marian devotion, nor about winning arguments. It is about hope. If the Virgin Mary, fully human and fallen, could live without personal sin by grace and obedience, then holiness is not a fantasy. It is our calling. She does not stand above us as a reproach, but before us as a promise of what Christ can do in a human life wholly given to God.
Conclusion
The insistence that the Virgin Mary was sinful does not arise from the Alexandrian or Coptic Orthodox tradition. It arises from modern assumptions that confuse mortality with moral guilt and from a failure to attend carefully to the Church’s own voice. The Fathers of the Alexandrian and Oriental Orthodox tradition, together with the unceasing witness of the liturgy, speak with one voice. The Virgin Mary was fully human, truly shared our fallen condition, truly died, and yet, by grace and obedience, did not commit personal sin.
This is what the Church confesses when she calls her Panagia.
May her prayers be with us all, and glory be to God forever. Amen.