Questions about the Immaculate Conception

Catholic_NE · #1 12th July 2009, 10:23 PM

Dorothea, an Orthodox poster, asked some questions regarding Mary's Immaculate Conception and sinlessness. I'm going to try to tackle one of them (her other questions can be found on this thread):

Originally Posted by Dorothea

How could she be prevented from sinning?? She did not have free will?

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception doesn't imply that Mary was incapable of sinning. Like Adam and Eve, Mary could have sinned, but unlike them she didn't.

Polycarp1 · #2 13th July 2009, 02:30 AM

As I understand it, Catholic doctrine holds that we are all the victims of original sin, from which baptism saves us. Mary would have been, like all other humans, subject to this curse. However, in order to preserve an unsullied, pure host for the incarnation of Jesus, His redemption of mankind was applied retroactively to Mary, resulting in her being conceived free of original sin.

To grasp this from a non-Catholic perspective, it's important to note that Catholicism does not claim Mary in and of herself had any virtue distinct from the rest of the human race -- she is perhaps the ideal of human womanhood, but no more. However, by a special work of grace, she was saved by Christ's Atonement as of her own conception, years before His annunciation. He was her Savior no less than He was others'; the only difference is that since God is the master of time, He caused an effect to occur before the cause.

It's not a doctrine that I subscribe to -- but I think it's important to see it in perspective, as a part of Jesus's work of salvation, not as something divorced from Him and focused solely on His mother.

Timothy · #3 14th July 2009, 05:05 PM

Have split out relevant posts from the other thread to here:

http://www.christianforums.com/t7384536/

ContraMundum · #4 22nd July 2009, 12:12 PM

One Catholic apologist said that there's two ways to be saved from a sin- one afterward, and one preventative, occuring before. Like when some people say that they've been saved from drug addiction, but they have never had any drugs in the first place. Or, like a man being saved from falling in a ditch.

WarriorAngel · #5 24th July 2009, 11:32 PM

It only makes sense she was preserved from this taint due to her role for the Lord.
The Blood of His Blood.
The Flesh of His Flesh.

choirfiend · #6 25th July 2009, 10:53 AM

Unless, of course, you don't believe in any "taint" to begin with. Which is, I think, the root of the difference between Orthodox and Catholics on this.

JJM · #7 3rd August 2009, 08:57 PM

Originally Posted by choirfiend

Unless, of course, you don't believe in any "taint" to begin with. Which is, I think, the root of the difference between Orthodox and Catholics on this.

How do you understand then St. Paui's statements about sin living within him etc.

WarriorAngel · #8 3rd August 2009, 10:43 PM

Originally Posted by choirfiend

Unless, of course, you don't believe in any "taint" to begin with. Which is, I think, the root of the difference between Orthodox and Catholics on this.

With God nothing is impossible.
Adam and Eve were not created with the fall, they accepted it.
Mary like them, as the ecf's have said - and called her the new Eve was also preserved from taint.
And unlike Eve she choose to cooperate with God and not sin.

It's not impossible since we know she was infused with graces beyond the normal human.

The actual name in Greek is unusual...and it renders her condition - presaved - according to the past and present tense of the unsual name Gabriel gave her.

Caire, kecaritomene!
kecharitomene [kecaritomene]

Mister_Al · #9 7th August 2009, 05:08 PM

The Bible doesn't say that Mary was sinless. It says she was a virgin. If she was born in the family line of Adam she had his sin just like everybody else.

However, since sin does follow the bloodline of the head of the house (family), when a man and woman are married the two become one flesh and the bride takes on the family name of the husband (head). She is now bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh and she is of his family line now and guilty of all the sins of his bloodline. Their offspring also carry the same family name, and sin, since they were created from that which carried that name and sin. If the root is holy then so are the branches, but if the root is corrupt then the branches will be also.

Since God--Who Fathered Jesus--was sinless, His Bloodline, and Family Name, are pure. Jesus was born without sin because His Father (Head) was without sin and Mary had nothing to do with it. Mary's sin couldn't have any bearing on Jesus because Jesus wasn't of her familyline but of God's familyline.

1 Corinthians 11:3 (Amplified Bible)

3)But I want you to know and realize that Christ is the Head of every man, the head of a woman is her husband, and the Head of Christ is God.

Blessings
Alan

Albion · #10 10th August 2009, 07:26 PM

Originally Posted by Mister_Al

The Bible doesn't say that Mary was sinless. It says she was a virgin. If she was born in the family line of Adam she had his sin just like everybody else.

However, since sin does follow the bloodline of the head of the house (family), when a man and woman are married the two become one flesh and the bride takes on the family name of the husband (head). She is now bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh and she is of his family line now and guilty of all the sins of his bloodline. Their offspring also carry the same family name, and sin, since they were created from that which carried that name and sin. If the root is holy then so are the branches, but if the root is corrupt then the branches will be also.

Since God--Who Fathered Jesus--was sinless, His Bloodline, and Family Name, are pure. Jesus was born without sin because His Father (Head) was without sin and Mary had nothing to do with it. Mary's sin couldn't have any bearing on Jesus because Jesus wasn't of her familyline but of God's familyline.

1 Corinthians 11:3 (Amplified Bible)

3)But I want you to know and realize that Christ is the Head of every man, the head of a woman is her husband, and the Head of Christ is God.

Blessings
Alan

Do you want to know where this whole Immacualte Conception idea came from? Here 'tis.

In the growing trend to heap honors upon Mary, the words spoken to her by the angel were seized upon to create an idea of her being sinless from before her birth--no actual sin and no original sin, either. According to some fond logic, God couldn't countenance a sinner for his Son's mother, etc. etc., although it's not explained why he couldn't. (Of course also, the Son didn't hesitate to associate with sinners all his life, as we know, and also we believe that he was as human as the rest of us--that's the idea of the Incarnation, God becoming a real human!). So that approach was just a rationalization, and a weak one at that.

But linguists and Bible scholars generally have rendered the meaning of the angel's words at the Annunciation to be that she had found favor with God or was favored by him. Only in older Catholic translations is the archaic and ambiguous wording, "full of grace" found, and it is an interpretation of this wording that is necessary for the teaching of the Immaculate Conception. If she was "full" of grace, it was reasoned that she could not have ever been not full of it, i.e. without sin.

But if so...

1. Why wouldn't her mother also be sinless from her conception? After all, if Mary needed to be this pure vessel and that is defined in the way it was, why not the vessel of the vessel?

2. Why doesn't it make just as much sense or more sense to conclude that Mary was MADE sinless by an act of God at the Annunciation or at the moment the angel was sent to her? There is, in fact, no reason not to see the verse in that way instead of the rather far-fetched idea of being kept from that which every human inherits from Adam and Eve and which the Bible says we all have.

Certainly I am not advocating the acceptance of either #1 or #2 as doctrine, but they show how weak the basis for the Immacualate Conception idea is that it does not even hold up in the face of its own line of reasoning.