Mary was a good person and had a sinful nature like all of us.

[BobRyan]

The personification of human life starts at conception. The male role in procreation merely delivers the 'spark of life' - nothing more.

totally false.

This is the sole function of male in creating a new human life. No genetic material remains with the embryo.

totally false

The 'spark' starts the generative division of cells forming the child from a single cell of the mother's flesh. Eventually it forms a wholly individual rational being from a single embryo based on its DNA map, body, and soul. The resulting life is literally the flesh of its mother.

The resulting DNA is NOT the DNA of the mother - it is a combination of the mother and father's DNA -- sorry but that is how haploid cells form diploid ones. Just the facts.

The "machinery" of the infant generates its own blood. It takes food, nutrient from the mother as we would when we eat food - but then it makes its own cells. It does not steal cells from the mother and glue them onto itself (I suspect we both would agree on this point).

The child's veins are filled with blood generated within him;

Indeed - it is his own DNA designed machinery working to make his own blood. Where his DNA is not at all identical to his mother.

there is no transfer of blood from the mother to the child.

At least we can agree that the blood of the mother is not flowing through the child's veins .

 

[BobRyan]

Actually, "hail" is a greeting used by Jesus to the disciples after his resurrection (Mt 28:9),
as well as a salutation used by the enemies of Christ to mock him (Mt 26:49, 27:29, Mk 15:18, Jn 19:13),

Indeed. The efforts to inflate a simple greeting into a statement about "being born sinless" does not get much help from scripture.

 

[Valletta]

Interesting that no early Christian that actually wrote scripture - ever said that "Mary was without sin" or that "Mary was the mother of God" in an actual text of scripture.

Holy Scripture is not specific about everything, even important things. With something as important as the Holy Trinity it should be more interesting to you that the Bible does not say "There is one God, Three Persons." God is way more important than Mary. One must realize that the Bible consists of a variety f text that the Catholic Church deemed was God-breathed, not an instruction book in perfect order with everything spelled out. The bible DOES specifically say that Mary is the mother of God, Our Lord is God:

Luke 1:43 And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? RSVCE

It's sad that so much of what was known and understood in the early Church was abandoned. I think a lot of it was from the anti-Catholic Bible-only crowd that came out of the reformation who denied so many things that Catholics knew for over a thousand years unless those items were specifically spelled out in the Bible. More of a reactionary approach than anything else. A really deep study of the Bible should make one understand how important Mary's role is in salvation history.

 

[BeyondET]

God Himself provided the DNA that would be needed since Mary only had haploid cells for that.

Jesus did what no man could in human flesh same DNA as any other human. Man was created in God's image.

 

[Clare73]

I haven't mention Mary's sinlessness to date. Yet we hold that throughout her life and in conception she was protected from sin in a singular grace - one that is “completely, perfectly, enduringly endowed with grace." What we receive in Baptism, Mary receives justification at conception. Sin never touches her.

"We hold," but according to the word of God, Mary was charitoo (highly favored, endued with grace), the same word used of all those in Christ (Eph 1:6), neither of whom are sinless.

 

[Clare73]

Holy Scripture is not specific about everything, even important things. With something as important as the Holy Trinity it should be more interesting to you that the Bible does not say "There is one God, Three Persons."

The Bible does not say, but from the beginning to its end, the NT bears clear testimony to three distinct divine persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit:

The Son is sent by the Father, in the Father's name (John 5:23, 36, 43).
The Spirit is sent by the Father in the Son's name (John 14:26).
The Spirit is subject to the Son as well as to the Father, for the Spirit is sent by the Son as well as the Father (John 15:26, 16:7, 14:26).

One doesn't send oneself, one sends another who is distinct from oneself.

 

[BobRyan]

Jesus did what no man could in human flesh same DNA as any other human. Man was created in God's image.

Not the same as all fallen humans -- since He had a non-human Father and no sinful nature inherited from Adam, He needed no Savior.

 

[BobRyan]

Jesus could not be a descendant in every respect as Adam or He to would have a sinful nature just as we do -- just as Adam passed on to his own children -- and in that case He Himself would need the gospel to save Him as well.

Rom 5:
12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned— 13 (For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. ...15 But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. 16 And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. 17 For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.)

18 Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life.

There is no need to ignore Rom 5.

 

[JoeT]

not through Mary. Nothing about Mary was divine. In His humanity he demonstrates His divinity by His works.

If you believe the Messias is born of woman, then who else did He literally come through? Catholic don't say Mary was a divine figure. Mary was a God made creature just as you and me. How does Jesus Christ demonstrate by not being born of a woman? Wouldn't that be counter intuitive? As I explained previously, Christ is God/man, the nature of God and man inexplicably and inseparably joined without mingling, mixing, or confusion.

Jesus was not blind.

I wasn't speaking of Jesus Christ.

That much is true.

Its all true.

more than that... He is incarnate God rather than human reproduction God. He is God incarnate in human flesh so God can say at His birth "today have I begotten Thee".

Heb 1:5
For to which of the angels did He ever say: “You are My Son, Today I have begotten You”? And again: “I will be to Him a Father, And He shall be to Me a Son”?

The incarnation is the union of the Divine nature of the Son of God with human nature in the Person of Jesus Christ. "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," [John 1:14]

Specifically speaking of Christ's resurrection in Acts 13.

Acts 13:33 that God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that He raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, ‘You are My Son; today i have begotten You.’

You'll have to connect the dots for me. It is known that Christ is the only victim worthy of immolation.

No such thing.

That's the point.

Not at all true.

meiosis

both the sperm and egg are haploid living cells that are "alive" even before they join into one diploid cell.

You have to be kidding.

You do know about "mitochondrial Eve" and "y-Chromosome Adam" right?

I may have oversimplified it, but I'm not kidding.

not through Mary. Nothing about Mary was divine. In His humanity he demonstrates His divinity by His works.

Never indicated anything about Mary was divine.

JoeT

 

[JoeT]

BobRyan said:

God did not "make them evil". God made them without a sin nature. By choosing sin - they took the sin nature upon themselves.

Can a rabbit change his nature to, say, a turtle? No, it takes a Divine power to do that, thus if done this way man is "re-made" into sin.

JoeT

 

[JoeT]

BobRyan said:

God did not "make them evil". God made them without a sin nature. By choosing sin - they took the sin nature upon themselves.

The result is Rom 3:9-18

No "original justice" statement in all of scripture.

Rather we have the sinful nature, depraved ... a bent toward sin.

God did not have to "create Adam dead" for Adam to die. Breaking what God gave them - was entirely in their own power.,

The sinful nature is as Rom 3 states (as noted above ... interesting you are not even looking at it in your response)

Rom 3:
9 What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; 10 as it is written,

“There is none righteous, not even one;
11 There is none who understands,
There is none who seeks for God;
12 All have turned aside, together they have become useless;
There is none who does good,
There is not even one.”
13 “Their throat is an open grave,
With their tongues they keep deceiving,”
“The poison of asps is under their lips”;
14 “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness”;
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood,
16 Destruction and misery are in their paths,
17 And the path of peace they have not known.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

19 Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; 20 because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.

Also noted in Rom 8 for the one who is not born again.

Rom 8:3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, 7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.


Actually sinless -- is the nature of man before the fall.

We have a sinful nature as Romans 8 and Rom 3 states - a "bent" toward sin and rebellion such that "we DO NOT submit to the Law of God neither indeed CAN we".

It takes the New Birth to enable man to obey God's Word.

It takes the supernatural "drawing of all mankind" in John 12:32 to enable man to CHOOSE to accept the new birth.

Neither is a direct reference to the Trinity mentioned in Scripture.

The Early Church spoke of the immaculate conception. Ascension of Isaiah 11 [A.D. 70]; Odes of Solomon 19 [A.D. 80]; Dialogue with Trypho the Jew 100 [A.D. 155].

JoeT

 

[Valletta]

Indeed. The efforts to inflate a simple greeting into a statement about "being born sinless" does not get much help from scripture.

Yet both Mary and Jesus were born sinless. Adam and Eve were created sinless as well. Scripture also, as I have pointed out, does not give much help to the fact that there is one God, three Persons. Why do you believe that is?
Inflate? It's a good observation, and hardly the only such passage in the Bible that points to the fact that Mary is sinless. No Angel sent by God ever addressed another human in such a manner, using the word as a title--showing that Mary had previously been embued and filled with an eternal grace. A deeper understanding of the Koine Greek is needed. (Many too miss important points because of lack understanding of Jewish idioms.) Another example is found in Revelation, where Mary, the New Eve, is attacked by the serpent , but she does not fall to sin like Eve.

 

[JoeT]

totally false.

Christ is the Personification of all Life. Without Him, there is no life.

totally false

Totally true, short of a chromosomes the male participation adds no living matter.

The resulting DNA is NOT the DNA of the mother - it is a combination of the mother and father's DNA -- sorry but that is how haploid cells form diploid ones. Just the facts.

Bingo!

At least we can agree that the blood of the mother is not flowing through the child's veins .

Then you do agree

JoeT

 

[JoeT]

Yet both Mary and Jesus were born sinless. Adam and Eve were created sinless as well.

In that description Mary is a type of New Eve.

 

[BeyondET]

Not the same as all fallen humans -- since He had a non-human Father and no sinful nature inherited from Adam, He needed no Savior.

And He couldn't save others without being human. You think sin nature matters it doesn't that's the obstacles He came to over come. Can't conquer death partly, it's all or nothing.

 

[Valletta]

In that description Mary is a type of New Eve.

Yes, thank you, a type. The New Testament writers allude back so many times to the Old Testament. Not just to Jesus, but to Mary as well. And you see the contrast of Eve and the New Eve, Mary. The "woman" in Genesis, who believed the serpent, and Mary, who believed the Angel Gabriel. Jesus publicly launches his new ministry with this "woman," Mary, at Cana. And there is the "woman" at the cross, the tree, just as Eve was at the tree in the Garden of Eden. And finally the woman, attacked by the serpent, the new Eve, in Revelation. And this time the new Adam (Jesus) and the new Eve(Mary) prevail against the serpent. You can see it in the New Testament writers and then those in the generations that followed them.

 

[JoeT]

I am simply reporting the use of the word in the NT. It did not refer to sinlessness.
It's range was broad, including to the disciples (Mt 28:9) who also were not sinless.

Here is another source. The American Ecclesiastical Review, Vol., CXXXIX, No. 1, July 1958. c. What Did St. Luke Mean by Kecharitomene, by Eugene R. Cole. Pg 230-231

Kecharitomene is the perfect passive participle (feminine) of charitoo, a late Hellenistic verb. Like other verbs ending in oo (such as thaumatoo, fill with wonder; spodoomai, burn to ashes; haimatoo, turn into blood ; karoo, plunge into deep sleep ; ommatoo, furnish with eyes ;’ it expresses the full intensity of an action. In this case the action—as any dictionary will reveal—is one of “favoring” or “gracing.” There is but one other instance of its use in the New Testament, in Eph. 1:6. The verse reads: eis epainon doxes tes charitos autou, hes echaritosen hemas en to egapemeno. Such a mode of expression is very emphatic and finds frequent parallels in St. Paul. A few examples are: “on account of His great love with which He has loved us,”(7) “of the calling with which you are called,”(8) “by means of the consolations with which we our-selves are consoled.”!° A possible translation of the Greek phrase above would be: “to the praise of the glory of His grace with which He has thoroughly graced us.”(11) In other words, God is shown to have completely exhausted His favor and grace upon mankind through the redemption of His beloved Son.​

​

Divine favor is likewise expressed by charitoo in The Testament of The Twelve Patriarchs: “When I was in chains, the Savior showered His favor upon me and set me free (ho soter echaritose me en desmois, kai eluse me).”(12) Again, we read in Hermes the Pastor: “The Lord then seeing their simplicity and entire child- liness made them abound in the labors of their hands, and thor- oughly favored them in all their undertakings (ho oun kurios idon ten aploteta auton kai pasan nepioteta eplethunen autous en tois kopois ton cheiron auton kai echaritosen autous en pase praxei auton).”(13) In these instances of the verb the emphasis is upon the exhaustiveness of the action. Charitoo seems to have been the best expression of God’s ineffable beneficence to man.​

​

With these preliminary observations we may logically deduce a general meaning for the word kecharitomene. Its reference is obvi- ously to a woman who has been thoroughly favored or graced by God. Michael J. Gruenthaner, S.J., in his article “Mary in the New Testament,” sums up the grammatico-etymological signifi- cance of the word very nicely: “It denotes one who has been and still is the object of divine benevolence, one who has been favored and continues to be favored by God, one who has been granted supernatural grace and remains in this state.’’(14)​

​

This is perfectly true. For the perfect passive participle of every Greek verb conveys the notion of having received something in the past and of possessing it now in a stable fashion. Thus, it is distinguished from the present passive participle which emphasizes the reception of some action hic et nunc. Now, these and like considerations lie behind most of the translations of the word as found in versions of the Bible made during the last few centuries. Translators have felt that as long as they suggest some idea of God’s favor to Mary and her possession of that favor at the time of the Annunciation, and as long as they include a certain intensity of that action, their renderings must be deemed legitimate.15 And with nothing more than syntax and a dictionary to go by we would have to admit that kecharitomene might mean as little as “one who has been especially favored by her destiny to be Mother of Christ.” Yes, this would be a possible interpretation, and we could have no quarrel with Protestants where they keep to this minimum. However, we have the best possible assurance that the word means more than this. I refer to the assurance that the usage of kechari-tomenos affords us. For, after all, it is usage that reveals to us all those subtle overtones of a word—overtones that a cold grammatico- etymological analysis can never hope to capture. It is the “life” of a word that tells us most about it. We must therefore inquire into that life.​

​

7 Ommatomenos, the perf. pas. part. of this verb, was employed by the poets to describe the Argus as “all-eyes.”​

​

8 The New Testament, op. cit., Eph 2, 4. Ibid., 4, 1.​

​

10 [bid., 2 Cor 1, 4.​

​

11 The Peshitto has: “. . . grace which He has poured out (Sephah) upon us.”​

​

12 The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, PG, II, 1125.​

​

14 Michael J. Gruenthaner, S.J., “Mary in the New Testament,” Mariology, edited by Juniper B. Carol, O.F.M. (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1954), I, 85.​

​

15 Certain English translations, however, appear to be wholly uninfluenced by these considerations, e.g., the Revised Standard Version, the translations of James Moffat, J. B. Phillips, Edgar J. Goodspeed, etc., obstinately hold to “favored one.” The Authorized King James Version reads, more honestly, “highly favored one.”​

Source: The American Ecclesiastical Review 1958-10: Vol 139 Iss 4 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

 

[Clare73]

Yet both Mary and Jesus were born sinless. Adam and Eve were created sinless as well. Scripture also, as I have pointed out, does not give much help to the fact that there is one God, three Persons. Why do you believe that is?
Inflate? It's a good observation, and hardly the only such passage in the Bible that points to the fact that Mary is sinless. No Angel sent by God ever addressed another human in such a manner, using the word as a title--showing that Mary had previously been embued and filled with an eternal grace. A deeper understanding of the Koine Greek is needed. (Many too miss important points because of lack understanding of Jewish idioms.) Another example is found in Revelation, where Mary, the New Eve, is attacked by the serpent , but she does not fall to sin like Eve.

That is not Biblical doctrine, that is a doctrine of man contra-Biblical to Ro 3:10, 23, 11:32, Gal 3:22, etc. where all mankind was sinful, and for which sinless concept there is no need, for if Mary could be born sinless from a fallen human Anne, why couldn't Jesus be born sinless from a fallen human Mary?
Why would the means whereby Mary could be born sinless not simply be applied to Jesus?

 

[BobRyan]

Totally true, short of a chromosomes the male participation adds no living matter.

-- Chromosomes do not "travel on their own" to the womb. Living matter is needed.

When the TWO living cells join into a single diploid cell - we have the aggregate form of DNA from two haploid living cells.

 

[Valletta]

That is not Biblical doctrine, that is a contra-Biblical doctrine of man..

If Mary could be born sinless from a fallen human Anne, why couldn't Jesus be born sinless from a fallen human Mary?
Why would the means whereby Mary could be born sinless not simply be applied to Jesus?

God is all powerful, so there are no limitations to what God can do. Jesus didn't need the Apostles to go out and heal people or preach, Jesus could have done it Himself, from a distance or appeared in multiple areas at once if He so chose. God could have ordered the Ark of the Covenant to be made with old wood and rusty iron. So too God could have created Mary(the Ark of the New Covenant) to be an awful sinner or He could have redeemed Mary from sin at the moment of her creation