This is correct.
Right - being sinless was not enough. It had to be God because all of our sins are an affront to God.
Mary was sinless because of a special grace anticipating Christ’s redeeming work for her on the cross. Without Christ on the cross, there’s no redeeming work for her, and therefore no special grace, so she would have original sin which is to say she would inherit a state of being deprived of original holiness.
No, because she was conceived without sin by the graces of her son’s death acting outside of time. It was Christ’s blameless death that protected Mary from sin.
Yes this is correct.
Good point, but Adam, someone merely human, is the one who commited this “infinite” offense. It stands to reason that Mary, another mere human, could provide “infinite” reparation.
No. Since God is infinitely good, an offense done against him by a perfectly knowledgeable, sentient person with free will is an infinite offense. It is the fact that God is infinitely good that makes it so bad.
Couldn’t the same thing be said of Jesus? What prevented his human nature from inheriting original sin?
I see. Thanks!
Christ was protected by his own divine nature.
If God had the ability to do that, he would have created every human nature without original sin. No need for a sacrifce.
First of all, we need to be careful about claiming what God would or would not do.
That being said, I always understood Original Sin to be something that we inherited from our parents all the way back to Adam. Since Mary was Immaculately Conceived, she was free from the stain and therefore could not have passed it on to Jesus. Furthermore, since Jesus’ Father is God, He could not have possibly inherited it that way, either. TBH though, this explanation seem a little legalistic and lacking in the “awesome power” department that God is so good at.
I know it’s not much of an answer, but see the quote from Isaiah. God does things in His own way, in His own time. Although, I believe this relates to the age-old question, “If God is perfect and can do anything He wants, why didn’t He create a world in which no one would ever sin?” The honest answer is that even the greatest minds of our (and all) times have struggled with this question. Hopefully we will know and understand all when we see God face-to-face. In the meantime, all we can do is hope and trust.Jesus didn’t need to do anything. As God, he was perfectly complete. His sacrifice was motivated out of love for his creation.
That does not stand to reason at all. Just because I squeeze toothpaste out of the tube, it does not follow that I have the ability to squeeze it back in.
common Catholic teaching is that it was necessary for Jesus to sacrifice himself on the cross in order to save us from our sins. That wouldn’t be the case if God could simply wisk away original sin.
Yes, God could have just forgiven us, or done some small thing to make reparation for our sins. A single drop of Jesus’ blood would have been enough. But He chose to die on the cross as an expression of His love for us, and to show us how great He is.
There is something horrifying in the idea that Jesus did not actually have to die on the cross, but did so to show how much he loves us. Suppose you are a trained life gaurd. You see someone drowning in the pool, and jump in to save him. If your description of the redemption is correct, then a loving act would be to save the person but then drown yourself unnecessarily. No, it seems to me that Jesus must have* had *to die on the cross in order to redeem us.