I think we both agree that Adam and Eve were created not only good but in a state of friendship with God and in harmony with themselves and their environment. Adam and Eve were constituted in an original state of “holiness and justice” (Cf. Council of Trent). As long as they remained in an intimate relationship with God, they would not have to suffer and die.
“God created man neither mortal nor immortal, but susceptible to both conditions. Thus, if he were to incline himself toward those things that have to do with immortality, having kept the commandment of God, he would receive his reward of immortality from God and become God by grace. But if, on the other hand, he would incline himself toward those things that are related to death, having disobeyed God, he himself would be the cause of his own death. For God created man free and the master of his own will.” {Theophilus of Antioch}
Adam and Eve were in a state in which they could freely incline themselves to either obey God’s commandments or disobey them. Their goodness and friendship with God would last only as long as they inclined themselves to the divine will. Their original state of holiness and justice would be forfeited once they preferred themselves to God and by that very act scorned him. Indeed, by inclining themselves over and against God, against the necessities of their creaturely status and thus against their own good, Adam and Eve fell from God’s grace. The worst thing they did was attempt to be like God, but in a perverted way, not in the manner like Jesus proposed. Adam and Eve tried to “be like God”, but “without God, before God, and not in accordance with God” {St. Maximus the Confessor}. As a result, we are now under the authority of death, our minds are darkened, and so “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” {Genesis 8, 21}. This is the unfortunate lot of us who have inherited original sin. Neither Jesus (the Son of Man) nor Mary contracted this terrible stain on the human soul. Here we may disagree, but this is the point I am trying to make. Mary could not have inclined her will against God because she was created in such a way that she would never want to - not unlike the Son of Man, who also had a human free will. There was never any “evil imagination” in her heart from the time she was born. Free from the effects of original sin, the mother of our Lord could not even sin in her thoughts or entertain sinful acts in her mind. She was not that kind of human being to begin with because of her Immaculate Conception. Luke understood this, possibly by having met Mary, who discovered much about herself through the revelations personally granted her by her divine Son, and so he wrote:
“My soul magnifies the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my saviour.”
{Luke 1, 46}
The Magnificat may have been a Jewish Christian hymn that Luke found appropriate, according to scholars. Of the many themes contained in this canticle, two stand out in light of our discussion: the reversal of human fortunes, and the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. In other words, this canticle acknowledges the undoing of the Fall, which starts with Mary through the merits of her Son’s death on the Cross. We find the first prophecy pertaining to our salvation at the time immediately after the Fall, and this prophecy appears to reveal to us that Mary was restored to perfect friendship with God - the original state of holiness and justice - from the first moment of her conception before the rest of us who live and die in Christ. The ‘hypostasis’ of Mary’s soul to be immortal was guaranteed by the wisdom and power of Almighty God:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.”
{Genesis 3, 15}
All of us who have sinned have repeated the Fall, but by a true spirit of repentance and a firm desire of amendment, we can undo the consequences of our own descent. The same applies to Mary if she would have sinned, for she was in need of redemption just like the rest of us. Yet she won her salvation the moment she was immaculately conceived. It would be a different matter if Jesus had given in to the temptations of the devil. For our salvation comes from Christ alone. He was never in any need of redemption, for the “Word was with God” before he became flesh.
Pax vobiscum
Good Fella
, but your answer confused me at first.
You said it, not me