Do you agree with this statement?

[Albion]

So you don't believe that an obedient act of faith is an instrumental means of salvation? Or is it only the blood of Christ (sola Christo)?

PAX

I didn't say that. I just noted that the cause of salvation is not synonymous with the means of salvation. The words deal with different issues. It's worth your consideration.

 

[justinangel]

I didn't say that. I just noted that the cause of salvation is not synonymous with the means of salvation. The words deal with different issues. It's worth your consideration.

What different issues? The one issue we're concerned with is salvation and whether Mary had a redemptive role in union with her Son in the Divine plan.

Mary isn't a means of salvation, as though she were merely a biological instrument utilized by God to beget His Son with no regard for her human dignity. In her person, Mary was a cause of salvation both for herself and the human race in a secondary and subordinate way. By this we mean she brought about the Incarnation which resulted from her salutary consent to be the mother of our Lord and Saviour. Her free will and obedient act of faith informed by charity and grace were the means by which she helped save the world. By default the Incarnation would not have happened if Mary had said No to God as Eve had. This is what Irenaeus means to say along with Justin Martyr in the 2nd century. Neither Father regarded Mary as only a means and Jesus as the sole cause. These foreign notions spawned from the novel 16th century Protestant doctrine of sola fide and its corollary sola Christo.

“He [Jesus] became man by the Virgin so that the course which was taken by disobedience in the beginning through the agency of the serpent might be also the very course by which it would be put down. Eve, a virgin and undefiled, conceived the word of the serpent and bore disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy when the angel Gabriel announced to her the glad tidings that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her and the power of the Most High would overshadow her, for which reason the Holy One being born of her is the Son of God. And she replied ‘Be it done unto me according to your word’.”
Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 100 [A.D. 155]

“Consequently, then, Mary the Virgin is found to be obedient, saying, ‘Behold, O Lord, your handmaid; be it done to me according to your word.’ Eve, however, was disobedient, and, when yet a virgin, she did not obey. Just as she, who was then still a virgin although she had Adam for a husband—for in paradise they were both naked but were not ashamed; for, having been created only a short time, they had no understanding of the procreation of children, and it was necessary that they first come to maturity before beginning to multiply—having become disobedient, was made the cause of death for herself and for the whole human race; so also Mary, betrothed to a man but nevertheless still a virgin, being obedient, was made the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race. . . . Thus, the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. What the virgin Eve had bound in unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosed through faith.”
Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3:22:24 [A.D. 189]

“The Lord then was manifestly coming to his own things, and was sustaining them by means of that creation that is supported by himself. He was making a recapitulation of that disobedience that had occurred in connection with a tree, through the obedience that was upon a tree [i.e., the cross]. Furthermore, the original deception was to be done away with—the deception by which that virgin Eve (who was already espoused to a man) was unhappily misled. That this was to be overturned was happily announced through means of the truth by the angel to the Virgin Mary (who was also [espoused] to a man). . . . So if Eve disobeyed God, yet Mary was persuaded to be obedient to God. In this way, the Virgin Mary might become the advocate of the virgin Eve. And thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so it is rescued by a virgin. Virginal disobedience has been balanced in the opposite scale by virginal obedience. For in the same way, the sin of the first created man received amendment by the correction of the First-Begotten”
(ibid., 5:19:1)

Here we have early testimony to the Church's perception of Mary as our co-Redemptrix (the new Eve) in subordinate union with our Redeemer Jesus (the new Adam). So Mary is no more a means than Jesus is. Both play a causative role in God's plan of redemption. What Jesus merits in strict justice, Mary merits by right of friendship with God as her Son's helpmate. By her consent to the will of God, Mary merited the right to the reward for us. And by his consent to the will of his heavenly Father, Jesus produced the reward solely by his merit. Only his act of charity could equal the value of the reward because of his divinity and substantial grace of union with the Father. Mary's act of charity was worthy of a supernatural reward on our behalf. And though it could not equal the value of the reward, her act was meritorious in the sense that it was proportionate to it, since it proceeded from the fullness of the habitual and sanctifying grace she was endowed with through God's gratuitousness.

"I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel."

PAX

 

[patricius79]

Great post, Justin. I love Christ through Mary. I'm too pathetic to love Christ much without her help. But through Mary even I can love Christ a lot.

 

[topcare]

For anyone thinking of labelling the early church fathers as Nestorian heretics is bordering on insanity.

Is the list mentioned below Nestorian heretics. Who came first them or Nestorus who had a falling out with the Roman relgious Empire.


At least have a little respect for the church at Babylon who are of the church of the East.



After all it is the church at Babylon who ordained a Roman clergy as bishop who later became the pope.

The Church has declared which you advocate as heresy. Christ is fully God and Fully Man, you want to separate Christ. Mary is the God bearer

 

[Berean777]

The church is built up on the blood of the Living Word who took upon him the likeness of man at the incarnation as scriptures tells us and by so doing he has made us living stones before his Father.

Without the Living Word nothing that is created would be here, not you, not me and not Mary. The Living Word is eternal and before creation, for he is not a creature but the Creator.

Mary being purposed for the miraculous act of God and to fulfil his will was the blessed hand maiden that he chose to come into the world through the incarnation. The Living Word chose Mary because she found favour with God. The Living Word created Mary through the lineage of David to be the Virgin that God planned when he brought forth his Son into the world. The Living Word is the active will and purpose of God who transcends time and space, because all Chrsianity is centred on him as the Living Vine.

We can't look at our Creator as a natural human being who has a mother, even though he chose his natures to be inseparable. A mother from a human sense is one that has an active will imposed on when she would be pregnant and to whom, her active will imposed on the child to fulfil her will and purpose. From a natural human mother point of view, there was absolutely no will imposed on Jesus from Mary, but rather the will of the Father was over and above anything Mary would want, do or impose on the child who came into the world. In this regard this is why Mary was above all women because she accepted this. Tell me how many women throughout the generations would have accepted to have no say on their child's future and purpose?

None, except the women that God had purposed.

 

[topcare]

For some reason you insist on the heresy of separating Christ into two, is this endemic of your brand protestantism? Christ is and always will be fully God and fully Man, when Mary gave birth and carried Christ in her blessed womb He was God. Christ just didn't become God after birth. Christ cannot be separated from who He is.

 

[Berean777]

A person can love the Living Word Christ Jesus without ever refering to the Virgin, that is the truth. The love of Christ is to love the church.

When a person loves someone they don't bring others along in that relationship.

A person is married to a wife, not to the mother of the wife, so that the two become one flesh.

When Jesus said you in me and I in you from a spiritual marriage context, the faithful twains with Christ spiritually and not his mother. Though we acknowledge Mary in prayers of the saints, we don't establish a lovers relationship with Mary.

There is a difference when a person is truly in love because the relationship is between two hearts.

You can choose to love Mary, Christ's mother, but is that true love? and which do you give your heart to Mary or Jesus? There can only be two in a relationship as Jesus said you in me and I in you. It is your choice.

The church is Christ and not Mary. Mary didn't die for our sins. There is only one saviour and only one mediator and one lover.

You can invent a gospel for Mary and choose her that is your religion, but don't call others who don't ascribe to this teaching as heretics. Christ has inseparable natures but Mary is not the mother of God who created and purposed her.

Mary is not goddess and not lourdes, this is the truth. Mary is not the church she was redeemed by the blood of the only begotten Son Christ Jesus who redeemed you and me.

Our loyalty is to the Living Word and our love is to the one who the Father sent. Mary a blessed women had long passed fulfilled the Virgin role in the same way John the baptist fulfilled his role and all the other saints for that matter.

Love is between two hearts. How many hearts do you have in yoir relationship with God?

 

[topcare]

When did anyone say that? Really stop making stuff up. No one said Mary died for ours sins so don't pull that garbage.

 

[Berean777]

The serpent always accuses the true lovers of Christ from the Garden even to this very day. The Living Word in the incarnation is God and man equal and inseparable. We can not look at the Living Word from a natural mother and son relationship because the Living Word is eternal and is before Mary.
The heresy is to say that God has a natural mother.

The church father warned about those Egyptians (pagan Rome) post 425AD that tried to bring Sophia-ism into the gospel of Jesus Christ. Once the church fathers were removed the veneration of Sophia-ism commenced.

Truth hurts friends, but you have to ascribe to the teachings of the church at Babylon the Assyrians the handy work of God.

 

[justinangel]

A person can love the Living Word Christ Jesus without ever refering to the Virgin, that is the truth. The love of Christ is to love the church.

When a person loves someone they don't bring others along in that relationship.

When you love your brother and sister, your mother enters into that relationship. Paul tells us in Romans that Jesus is the first of many brethren. He isn't perceived to be only our bridegroom, but also our brother. In this context we are untrue, if we say that we love him as our brother without loving the mother who begot all of us by bearing the Son who would regenerate mankind with his grace. The love we all have for each other within a family establishes it notwithstanding biological ties. Your concept of the Church is too individualistic and self-centred. The Church isn't comprised of between-only-Jesus-and-me individuals but rather Jesus-my brethren-and-me family members. Not only do our brethren enter into our loving relationship with Jesus, but Jesus also enters into the love we have for our brethren; since Jesus is the head of his mystical body and we are its members connected to him. Mary is the neck through which Jesus channels all his graces. You make it sound like the love we have for Mary or for each other negates our love for Jesus or distracts us from focussing on our love for him. This is nonsense. A child who is alone with their father and feels intimately close and attached to him doesn't stop loving their mother or lose any degree of love for her. They may still love both their parents, but only in a different way.

A person is married to a wife, not to the mother of the wife, so that the two become one flesh.

We have never regarded Mary as our mother-in-law, since we speak of Jesus being the bridegroom in a figurative sense, while at the same time we regard him as our brother in our shared humanity. Do you suppose people should stop loving their mothers once they get married and only love their spouses? You are obviously suggesting that.

When Jesus said you in me and I in you from a spiritual marriage context, the faithful twains with Christ spiritually and not his mother. Though we acknowledge Mary in prayers of the saints, we don't establish a lovers relationship with Mary.

Our love for Mary is the love we should have for our spiritual mother. People don't normally break their family relationship with their mother or any other family member once they form a marital relationship with their spouse. Do you suppose we shouldn't have more than one form of relationship with another person based on love? Or that we shouldn't love different people in different ways depending on how we are related to them?

There is a difference when a person is truly in love because the relationship is between two hearts.

Hmmm. Maybe Jesus doesn't truly love us at all because he loves his mother. Or maybe he doesn't truly love his mother because he loves his spouse.

You can choose to love Mary, Christ's mother, but is that true love? and which do you give your heart to Mary or Jesus? There can only be two in a relationship as Jesus said you in me and I in you. It is your choice.

But for us there can be more than one relationship between two people without disparaging the others.

The church is Christ and not Mary.

The Church is Christ, Mary, and all the brethren.

Mary didn't die for our sins.

Straw man! We don't love mary because we believe she died for our sins; nor should we stop loving her as a mother or a sister because she didn't.

There is only one saviour and only one mediator and one lover.

There is only one mediator who has ransomed us all from sin and death (1Tim. 2:5-6), but not only one mediator (1 Tim. 2:1-4).

You can invent a gospel for Mary and choose her that is your religion, but don't call others who don't ascribe to this teaching as heretics.

In the 5th century there was only one holy Catholic Apostolic Church. Unorthodox beliefs and teachings within the Church were considered heretical if they diverged from the Apostolic Tradition of the Church which the ecumenical councils primarily appealed to when defining the faith in the wake of heresies. Scripture served as the objective norm to confirm Tradition.

Christ has inseparable natures but Mary is not the mother of God who created and purposed her.

But Christ is one person. Either he is divine or a human creature. His two natures are attributes of his, and mothers don't conceive and bear attributes.

Mary is not goddess ....

Another straw man! We Catholics certainly don't believe she is or worship her as a goddess. We venerate her as the new Eve and honour her as Mother of the Church.

Mary is not the church she was redeemed by the blood of the only begotten Son Christ Jesus who redeemed you and me.

By giving birth to Jesus, the living source of all grace, she typifies the Church (cf. Rev. 12). Mary was redeemed in the most perfect way by being preserved from contracting the stain of original sin (not to be confused with Adam's personal guilt) at the first instant of her conception. Like us she was subject to inheriting it and dependent upon God's intervening grace.

Our loyalty is to the Living Word and our love is to the one who the Father sent. Mary a blessed women had long passed fulfilled the Virgin role in the same way John the baptist fulfilled his role and all the other saints for that matter.

Then why did you say above that you acknowledge Mary in the prayers of the saints? I thought you believed that they had an intercessory role in Heaven. Now you consider them expendable.

Love is between two hearts. How many hearts do you have in your relationship with God?

There can be no loving relationship with God unless we have a loving relationship with other people in any capacity or situation. Have you actually stopped loving your own mother or sister because it distracts you from loving God?

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love... Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.
1 John 4, 7-8, 20

The Greek word for hate (miseo) by extension in the given context literally means "to love less". So what John is telling us is that we ought to love others as much as we should for their sake. Unless we do, we cannot really know and love God. So the love we have for other people for whatever reason cannot come between God and us. On the contrary, we actually deny God our love for Him by not loving others as much as they should be loved. For us Catholics, Mary should be loved as a mother ought to be by her children. By refusing her the love she is entitled to, we dishonour her and thereby offend the One whom we verbally profess to love. We can only please God by our acts of devotion to Mary, seeing that Jesus proclaimed her to be our mother from the cross (cf. Jn. 19:26-27).

PAX

 

[justinangel]

Without the Virgin, there would be no Jesus Christ?

Without the Living Word there would be no Virgin.

Without the Virgin Mary there would be no Mother Church?

The Living Word is the Church. Jesus said My Church, for we are his living stones that make up his church. The Living Word made Mary HIS SERVANT, one of those living stones amongst the many.

You just flunked Bible History 101. The Incarnation comes before the Nativity and Pentecost.

One particular living stone said: "Let it be done to me according to your word." This is not just one living stone among many - but a very significant one.

PAX

 

[Berean777]

I cannot have a personal relationship with any departed created being and that includes my earthly father. My father passed away several years back and after his passing my relationship with him stopped when we buried him. Seven days later the Lord comforted me by showing him in a vision, when he was without his cancer that made him bone dry skinny. In the vision I saw him in his suit that I bought him. He loved that suit and wore it always when going to church and helping priests in communion prayer services and in visiting family of departed with priest at wakes.

In the vision a voice spoke in both English and Aramaic at the same time and said he is with Jesus, he is with Christ.

I loved my dad and shared with him in many things and he always accompanied me and helped me through my school and university years and he was there for my graduation, two graduations.

Now though I loved my dad, yet if you asked me the same question today, I would say that I do not have that relationship with him anymore. My relationship with him ended at the grave, where I prayed to God and said you sent this stranger into my life to take care of me on your behalf but I knew from the start you were always my Father.

So I said my goodbyes to the stranger and I no longer consider him family anymore.

So the only constant in my life yesterday, today and tomorrow is the Lord. My relationship with the Living Word doesn't stop at the grave and doesn't stop even if the world keels over and perishes.

I don't have a relationship with Mary and never had because she is not the constant in my life in the same way I do not have a relationship with my departed father.

 

[Berean777]

What do they call it when people have relationship with the departed?

Necromancy.

Family or no family I am not a necromancer, who speaks to the departed, even if the departed are with the Lord.

We have to draw a line in the sand, that is, to death do us apart. This applies to all departed including Mary.

 

[Berean777]

Yes I do agree with you justinangel to a degree, that is, I do consider the Living in Christ as my family but once they depart from this life, it is adios muchachos.

It is like that song, "Let it go, Let it go".

 

[Berean777]

God makes us strong when we rely on him when the time comes, that is, if we put everything in his hand. If you were to hold onto one thing and one thing only, what would that be?

I hope you would say the Lord.

Because if you said your mother, sister, brother or someone else, then once that person is no longer in your life, you have lost everything. If you hold onto only one thing and your holding onto Christ for dear life, then you will not suffer loss.

I look at my life and sometimes I ask the Lord I was only born yesterday so to speak, who are these strangers that you have introduced to me. Were not my mother, sister, wife, daughters, sons strangers to me not long ago.

Hmmmmmmmm...............

When we look towards created beings the family is conceived and constructed in this life time and beyond this life they revert to being strangers that we did not know. That is why I say I never knew Mary to begin with, so how could I establish a relationship with a person whom I didn't know.

Jesus have an excellent answer to the Sadducees who gave him the example of the women that married seven brother. Jesus answered in heaven they will not marry, meaning they will not carry the constructs of this lifetime into the eternal life to comes.

 

[prodromos]

What do they call it when people have relationship with the departed?

Necromancy.

Nope. Necromancy is when people seek to gain knowledge of future events or hidden knowledge, from the dead.
Look it up, don't make it up.

 

[Berean777]

Nope. Necromancy is when people seek to gain knowledge of future events or hidden knowledge, from the dead.
Look it up, don't make it up.

Ok you are technically correct, but you understand what I mean.

 

[patricius79]

The Mother of God is alive and intercedes for us at all times. I call on her frequently, because she is the Mediatrix of All Graces.

 

[Berean777]

The Creator is much more than our earthly experiences and we have not yet been revealed that reality. When you are brought before the creator you are not being introduced to a stranger like members of your earthly family or even your church congregation who are the family of Christ. When you come before Christ's feet you know with all your being that this Devine being is in essence your very own existence, you just know this. I call it the Creator's DNA soul signature, it is his created rights. I was revealed this because I have been brought before his feet.

This changed my life and see that everything in this world including myself and my agenda is meaningless and that this Devine being is the source to knowing who I am and my place. You don't find that out from saints or Mary or any other created being. Those people are in the same boat like you and I.

 

[Berean777]

God doesn't have a mother from a human point of view. Death separates us from the definition of family, that is until death do us apart.
Mary mother of Jesus according to the earthly definition. After Christ arose and was glorified he can't continue to have a mother from a human point of view.
The sadducees tempted Jesus when giving the example of the wife that had all seven brothers. Jesus's said in the resurrection she belongs to no one because the earthly family structure does not continue beyond the grave.
Mary was a mother to Jesus of Nazareth but her separation from this earthly life separated her from that earthly definition as mother.
In the same way you cannot be a father or mother in heaven.