Good Fella;4304775 said:
“The very fact that God has elected her proves that none was ever holier than Mary; if any stain had ever disfigured her soul, if any other virgin had been purer and holier, God would have selected her and rejected Mary.”
Jacob of Sarug [ante A.D. 521]
Jacob of Sarug sermonized that if any maiden were purer and holier than Mary, God would have chosen her instead. He meant that Mary was the purest and holiest of Jewish maidens by the time of the Annunciation. No other woman compared with her in blessedness, and so God selected her from among all women. All the same, Mary was in the mind of God from all eternity before she was ever conceived. God knew when he fashioned Mary’s soul and preserved it free from the stain of original sin that she would freely respond to his will by cooperating with his grace. Thus she was granted this singular privilege upon her conception at which instant she was redeemed by Christ.
If it were not Mary who would have obeyed his word, then God would have sent the angel Gabriel to another maiden. God has ordained that a woman (Eve’s anti-type) cooperate with him in a state of sanctifying grace as a means to our salvation. Paul teaches us that all Christians are “co-workers with God” in his plan of salvation. But Mary’s collaboration was unique in that it directly contributed to Christ’s victory over sin and death, which makes our respective contributions possible through prayer and self-sacrifice now that salvation has been offered to the whole world.
From the beginning of the history of salvation the chosen mother of our Lord and Saviour was Mary (Gen 3:15) and could be no woman other than her, since God has chosen her from all eternity on account of her faithfulness and true blessedness (Lk 11:28) which he foresaw. Because of God’s omniscience, it is absolutely impossible that Mary could have refused to be the mother of our Lord. Once we know the outcome of a story in a novel by having read it the first time, we cannot expect the climax and ending to be different the next time we read the novel again. But neither should we expect the same outcome of the story to depend on our reading it a second time with the foreknowledge we have acquired by our first reading of the novel. The climax and ending are the result of the author’s liberty to write what he pleases.
Likewise, foreknowledge does not predetermine an event in the history of salavtion. God is the author of a plan or script, but the characters involved are free to choose as they please. E.M. Forster (Aspects of a Novel) tells us that the best authors of a novel are the ones who relinquish absolute control over the characters in their stories. So it’s a mistake to confuse God’s foreknowledge with predetermination. This is the grand fallacy behind Calvin’s doctrine of Predestination and the Elect. God does not consume our free will, the slavery of sin does. True human freedom lies in cooperating with God’s grace and thereby obeying his word. Thus to be saved, we must decide to be with a strong faith and confident hope in God’s promise. Mary is the exemplar par excellence of these Christian virtues among all human creatures. For by her trust in God we have all been saved.
In any event, Mary could not have been anything but faithful, since God had chosen her from among all women on account of foreseeing her faithfulness. No Christian can hold merit for being truly faithful if she has no free will. As an eternal and constant object of thought in the mind of God, Mary could never have been faithless, since she had proved herself faithful. God foresaw a woman who was free to either accept or reject his will, just as Eve had the freedom to obey or disobey God by listening to the serpent. God refused to control either woman. But he chose a woman whom he knew would freely obey his word. For this we who hope to be saved honour her.
If Eve had no free will on account of God’s foreknowledge, then God would have been responsible for the fall. God let it happen, but he did not intend that it should happen. Yet God did intend to save mankind after the fall (not after He saw something), so he chose a woman who would be the anti-type of Eve, a woman who would freely obey his word to reverse the fall in like manner it had originally occurred. When we speak of Mary’s obedience, we do not mean that she was a bondslave or a puppet on a string. Mary is a woman created in the image of God. We perceive Mary as the antithesis of fallen mankind and the anti-type of our ancestral biological maternal parent who rejected God’s word.
“And thus also it was that the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the Virgin Mary set free through faith.”
Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3:22 [A.D. 180]
Good Fella on a good day…:juggle: If you can, subtract the personality conflict from this and actually read the words. This is what the Church (which same authority gave you the bible) has believed from the earliest days. This is what the Muslims believe about Mary. Only since the Protestant rebellion has Mary’s name been dragged through the mud. Thank about that for a while - say, over the weekend.
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I answered your question elvisman. Take off your “blinders”!