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You are off on both of your explanations. those verses do not say 'all' that is needed. nowhere in the bible does it preach bible alone or sola Scriptura, nowhere does it say 'churches' . and nowhere does it say blessed Mary ever had a consummated marriage to Joseph, Joseph was a guardian of Jesus. Mary was" married" to the Holy Spirit only, ''in the eyes of God"but not in the eyes of modern day Protestants
Every Protestant calls Mary blessed, just not forever virgin or sinless. That has already been explained above. And like I said, which you obviously did not read
No one is even remotely saying that Mary is not "blessed"--She is the one and only Mother to the Son of God!! This has been stated over and over . You can't do better than that!!!! And no matter what, nothing could ever strip her of that. But she was not holy before Jesus was in her. It was the presence of Christ in her that made her holy. She didn't have to be sinless for it is Christ that saves, not her. As has been said, Christ could stand in a sewer and it would become holy. It is Him, not her that is sinless and perfect. He didn't need her to be sinless, it is the presence of God, the Holy Spirit, Christ that transforms a mountain into a holy place---It was God that made the mountain on which He stood holy. Moses took off his sandals at the burning bush, for the place was holy--but it hadn't been before God got there, and who knows how many people have walked over that spot by now--it is no longer holy because He is not there. But it would still be revered. Just as everywhere they think Christ walked is special, but not pure now. It didn't have to be before or after He was there.
Albion,the Holy Spirit overshadowed only Mary [ no other woman since ] and caused our Savior to be conceived within Mary because God had already prepared Mary for motherhood by filling Mary with His grace. Thus, Mary is "blessed among women" not just in her motherhood but in the preparation for motherhood that she received. Mary would not be able to hold up to the words: "for all generations shall call me blessed'' if she had later sinned. All generations can call her virgin and sinless. Mary was and still is the mother of Our Lord and being that Jesus is our Spiritual Brother and Savior ,Mary is also our spiritual mother and deserves the recognition given to her "perpetually" by God the Father.
mmksparbud, what I meant is why don't you follow the Bible in everything it tells us, isn't it appropriate to write or verbally call Mary "blessed Mary" when the bible tell us to do so?
When was the last time you or any other Protestant ever called Mary blessed and why not?
As Albion has pointed out, I will repreat, that we are seeing the typical Catholic playbook in action here. When you dare to suggest that one of their Marian dogmas (which no other Christians subscribe to) just might not be dogmatic, you get accused of hating Mary because you don't refer to her as the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Co-Redemptrix, Immaculately Conceived, etc., etc. then you HATE Mary and are to be condemned in hell forever.
"God filled Mary with His grace" means she was sinless??? There are 159 verses in the bible with the word grace---I can list them if needed--Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Jacob, Ruth, countless others are all said to have God's grace--were they sinless??
Why is YOUR private interpretation to be trusted, then? Mine at least is based upon relevant information.
You know, that kind of nonsense -- "I'm a Roman Catholic (or name your preferred denomination), so I can't be wrong" -- doesn't really make a dent with thinking people. It just signals that the speaker hasn't any factual information to contribute.
The KJV is a mistranslation--even if that were true--The JBS is written as "they" and "their"--and even if it read "she"---there is still no mention of a forever virgin or sinlessness. And to have some "Brother" decide that the Jewish translation is wrong is really bazaar--you'd think they would know their own language a whole lot better than any "Brother"--no matter how many Jewish classes he took!! When does "highly favored" become forever virgin, or "full of grace" become sinless birth and a sinless life?!!!
(Lev 20:25) Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean: and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast, or by fowl, or by any manner of living thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean.
(Lev 20:26) And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.
Where is the mention of a sinless virgin here?? These verses are talking about the people of Israel and what they should or should not do. Certainly not about any one individual! None of these verses have a single thing to do with Mary--not a single one!! "Stretching it" is putting it very, very, very mildly! This is no proof of anything except the far fetched ideas of some man many eons after the fact!! I was expecting a lot more than this.
My interpretation is the Church's interpretation expressed in my own words.
Why? Because you don't have 2000 years of sacred Tradition behind you.
First of all, the KJV is a mistranslation.
Then I would ask you not to assume that I just "thought up" what I've expressed here, with no reference to church teachings, church history, Bible scholars and scholarship, etc. That is deliberately insulting to do.
You like to say that the other person's POV is "personal interpretation" when the truth is that your approach and my approach are very similar except for the obvious--you have determined IMO to believe whatever your church tells you to believe at the moment, while I draw upon the entirety of the Christian experience, or try to do so.
But you don't have it behind you. You merely lay claim to whatever your denomination tells you it is!
Every well-educated member of the reformed churches is just as aware of the breadth and depth of Christian history as are the members of the unreformed churches. But again, the difference is that we do not comb through it and sort out the parts that do not support a predetermined set of beliefs and practices.
Which church teachings and Bible scholars have you referred to? Certainly not the Church Fathers. All you've been doing is objecting and criticizing. Anyway, bible scholars have no divine authority or charismatic aility to define Church doctrines.
I leave the interpretation of Scripture to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church in matters of faith and morals. That's how it's always been for faithful Christians since NT time.
The entirety of Christian experience? You're off by at least 1500 years, I'm afraid. My Church has told me from the beginning that Mary was without sin. I've provided plenty of excerpts from the Church Fathers and ample biblical support. I've even provided a list of Protestant scholars and linguists who accept the Catholic interpretation of Luke 1:28 and Jerome's translation of it from the Greek. Mary wasn't simply favoured by God to bear His Son. That's not what Luke meant to write.
Who, by the way, founded my "denomination" if it wasn't Christ?
These so-called educated members deny and reject much that was passed on to us by the Church Fathers because their teachings don't square with their preconceived beliefs and practices derived from studying the Bible divorced from Tradition and historical Christianity, i.e., sola fide., etc. Catholic doctrines aren't predetermined in a vacuum, but have developed over time harmoniously not unlike a living organism. For the first 1000 years there was a broad consensus among the Church Fathers (Greek and Latin) that Mary was without sin. It was just a matter of fully grasping what was meant by that proposition, just as it was in understanding the divine mystery of the hypostatic union of two natures in Christ which took centuries to resolve in Christendom.
And I would like to add this to my series of quotes from a man who highly revered Mary:
"She is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin. . . . God's grace fills her with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil. . . . God is with her, meaning that all she did or left undone is divine and the action of God in her. Moreover, God guarded and protected her from all that might be hurtful to her."
Martin Luther
PAX
Everything that I've read above might as well have been you reading your RCIA notes back to me.
I am interested having in an exchange of ideas, but that requires the other person to bring something worthwhile to the table.
I can get memorized punch lines, dubious claims, and boasts from any number of websites online. For that matter, I can get more than enough of that on the Unorthodox Theological Discussion forum here.
" The translation "she" of the Vulgate is interpretative; it originated after the fourth century, and cannot be defended critically. "
-NewAdvent.org-
So, Catholic Encyclopedia is wrong you are saying.
New Advent does present speculative items. There is no conclusive evidence whatsoever that Jerome's translation was marred by a copyist error. There are many more conservative Catholic scholars like Cornelius A Lapide who believe that Jerome chose the female pronoun, which can be found in some Jewish texts. It's a matter of interpretation and putting things into theological perspective.
PAX
From where many sit, it appears the various translations of "she" came about as a result of Mariology in RC. The site who has the axe to grind (NewAdvent.org) differs from your RC interpretation.
For my part, I'll stick to what the apostolic church founded by Christ teaches.
There were two Hebrew codices in the Vatican library that read "she" ( Kennicott numbers 227 and 239) and another in the Bernard de Rossi library. Also in the same library was an Onkelosi Codex [ a translation from the Hebrew into Aramaic] which read "she", according to Lapide in the 17th century. This is from the Haydock Catholic Commentary on the Old Testament, Genesis 3:15: "The Hebrew text, as Bellarmine observes, is ambiguous: He mentions one copy which had ipsa (she) instead of ipsum (it); and so it is even printed in the Hebrew interlineary edition, 1572, by Plantin, under the inspection of Boderianus." These Hebrew texts weren't translated by Roman Catholics.
Which church would that be? I've lost count.
PAX
There were two Hebrew codices in the Vatican library that read "she" ( Kennicott numbers 227 and 239) and another in the Bernard de Rossi library. Also in the same library was an Onkelosi Codex [ a translation from the Hebrew into Aramaic] which read "she", according to Lapide in the 17th century. This is from the Haydock Catholic Commentary on the Old Testament, Genesis 3:15: "The Hebrew text, as Bellarmine observes, is ambiguous: He mentions one copy which had ipsa (she) instead of ipsum (it); and so it is even printed in the Hebrew interlineary edition, 1572, by Plantin, under the inspection of Boderianus." These Hebrew texts weren't translated by Roman Catholics.
Which church would that be? I've lost count.
PAX
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