The Theotokos and the Immaculate Conception

Orthodoxy honours the Theotokos above every creature and does not hold the Immaculate Conception, the dogma defined at Rome in 1854 that she was preserved from the stain of original sin from the first moment of her conception. The Orthodox objection is not that she is less holy but that the dogma answers a question Orthodoxy does not ask: it presupposes inherited guilt, which the East has never taught, so there is no stain for her to be preserved from. She was mortal as we are mortal, she died, and her purity is the fruit of a free obedience rather than an exemption granted before she could consent. Making her an exception makes her less like us, and it is precisely as one of us that she gave the Word His flesh.