Immaculate Conception question

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I am not Catholic, but am seriously looking into both Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy (much to the chagrin of my husband).😦 The sad face is for hubby’s chagrin, not the churches! 😛 My question is this- if Mary was immaculately conceived, which I have read interesting teachings to suggest, then isn’t she better than us regular folk? What I mean is, when Mary accepted what the angel told her about becoming Jesus’ mother as a virgin, she didn’t really have free will choice about it, did she? If she had even the idea of saying no, then that was a sin against God. She was already “pre-conditioned” spiritually to accept this, being “full of grace.” Therefore, that puts her on a pedestal of near-godliness in comparison to us b/c I bet if that happened to us, we wouldn’t just say “as he wills” or anything close to it!

What am I misunderstanding? Or am I misunderstanding? I understand the idea of a clean “ark of the new covenant.” I just don’t understand how she had any real choice in the matter being full of grace.

TIA,
oneseeker:)
 
Simple

She was born without the stain of original sin, but she still retained her human nature. She did have free will, as did Jesus.
 
**Q: In March 1993 you published a response to a letter in which you said that if Mary had said “No” to Gabriel in Luke 1:38, then the Incarnation would not have occurred. It seems to me God would have had a back-up plan unless Mary was pre-ordained to say “Yes.” But if she had been pre-ordained to say “Yes,” this would have negated her free will and eviscerated the meaning of both Gabriel’s question and her answer. **

A: It is not necessarily the case that God would have had a back-up plan if Mary had refused to say “Yes.” God does not have to offer salvation to any race. Other races have not received the grace we have. Peter states, “If God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of nether gloom to be kept until the judgment …then the Lord knows how . . . to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.” (2Pet. 2:4, 9 [RSV]; cf. Jude 6). If an angel fell, there was no redemption available to him. If Mary had said “No,” there might not have been any other redemption available for us. God is under no obligation to save us; it is purely an act of his grace, and we should not presume upon that grace.

On the issue of Mary being pre-ordained to say “Yes,” God’s foreknowledge alone told him Mary would respond positively to Gabriel’s message. This is no different from God’s knowledge of the future in general. Foreknowledge does not cause a person to lose his free will.

Suppose I were sitting atop a building, looking down at a traffic intersection. I see two cars speeding toward the intersection on different streets. The drivers cannot see each other because the building on which I am sitting is in the way. As they approach the intersection, I realize that they are going so fast that once they see each other they will never be able to stop in time and will collide. The mere fact I know they are going to run into each other does not mean that the wreck was not the product of the free-will choices the two drivers made.

I did not deprive them of their free will even though I saw what was about to happen to them. I knew they would collide, but I did not cause them to collide. That was the result of their own reckless driving habits. Similarly, God’s knowledge of what we will do in the future does not cause us to do those things.

The claim that knowledge of the future entails fatalism (lack of free will) involves committing a basic fallacy of logic. For an excellent and non-technical discussion of foreknowledge and fatalism, read The Only Wise God by William Lane Craig (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987).

source: catholic.com/thisrock/1993/9308qq.asp

Here’s another link that you might find informative on a broader scope:
geocities.com/thecatholicconvert/easternorthodoxy.html
 
oneseeker said:
I am not Catholic, but am seriously looking into both Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy (much to the chagrin of my husband).😦 The sad face is for hubby’s chagrin, not the churches! 😛 My question is this- if Mary was immaculately conceived, which I have read interesting teachings to suggest, then isn’t she better than us regular folk? What I mean is, when Mary accepted what the angel told her about becoming Jesus’ mother as a virgin, she didn’t really have free will choice about it, did she? If she had even the idea of saying no, then that was a sin against God. She was already “pre-conditioned” spiritually to accept this, being “full of grace.” Therefore, that puts her on a pedestal of near-godliness in comparison to us b/c I bet if that happened to us, we wouldn’t just say “as he wills” or anything close to it!

What am I misunderstanding? Or am I misunderstanding? I understand the idea of a clean “ark of the new covenant.” I just don’t understand how she had any real choice in the matter being full of grace.

TIA,
oneseeker:)
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Hey! Welcome!

First off, I wouldn’t get too hung up on the free-will verses “pre-conditioned” thing because that is an area which all Christians, Protestant or Catholic, struggle with, even when Mary isn’t an issue and we are looking at the verses that support Predestination in Scripture. What we have to accept is that we (even Mary) have free will, but that God’s will is ultimately soveriegn. Beyond that, it is a mystery that will not be fully comprehended in this lifetime.

Anyway, to your point that the idea of the Immaculate Conception puts Mary on a pedestal, remember that, had Adam and Eve not sinned, we would have all been like Mary, basically. We would have been born without original sin and we could have chosen a life free from sin. When we sin we are something less than human - sin is chaotic, and God is not a God of chaos. So … when Christ entered the world, he chose to enter in a perfectly human way. He wanted to be fully human, so he chose to enter as we all would have entered had the fall from grace not happened.

What this means is that Mary is not on a pedestal next to God. Rather, she is “normal”. It is the rest of us, through our sins, who have sunk below normal.
 
Although I am not as knowledgable as others on this forum, I would caution you against confusing the Immaculate Conception and The Virgin Birth. The Immaculate Conception pertains to Mary being conceived without the stain of original sin. The Virgin Birth is the miracle of the virgin Mary giving birth to our Lord, Jesus Christ, beyond the normal human method. Christ, being the second person of the Holy Trinity, saved Mary from this stain of sin at her conception by applying the gifts of His Incarnation and Resurrection to her. Since God is beyond time and space, He did this, knowing the heart of Mary, even before her conception, to ensure that the vessel that carried the human Incarnation of God was immaculate. So that, when the archangel Gabriel came to Mary at the Annuciation, he exalted her by saying, “Hail, Full of grace.” Gabriel understood Mary’s position in God’s plan and demonstrated that with his exultation.
 
Eve was created without Original Sin and she sinned.

Mary, born without Original Sin, could still have rejected the angel’s message.
 
Remember

Jesus said in the garden, and I paraphrase - Father, if it is possible, take this cup from me, but not my will but thy will be done. Certianly, if Jesus had free will so did Mary.
 
Just my two cents. I am in no way a theologian. Would it really have been sin for Mary to say “I don’t want to do this, please don’t make me”?
 
calchiquita said:
Just my two cents. I am in no way a theologian. Would it really have been sin for Mary to say “I don’t want to do this, please don’t make me”?
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I don’t think it would be sinful for Mary to have done that, but like her son’s attitude toward His impending suffering, she sacrificed her will for God’s.

The previous poster posted something to really think about:

Eve, born without sin, heard the will of the Father and chose not to obey.
Mary, born without sin, heard the will of the Father and chose to obey.
That’s why we should all honor her, because she obeyed the will of God, bringing forth the Saviour of all souls.👍
 
calchiquita said:
Just my two cents. I am in no way a theologian. Would it really have been sin for Mary to say “I don’t want to do this, please don’t make me”?
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I don’t think that was the OP’s point, which is why she used the word “pre-conditioned”. I think that her point was that, because God made Mary without sin, it was in his plan that she be the mother of Christ. To help understand the OP’s frustration, imagine that Mary had said “no”, so God asked another woman to be the mother of Christ, would that mean that we now had two women conceived without original sin, Mary and the actual mother of Christ?

The OP’s point is that, since it was in God’s plan that Mary be the mother of Christ, was it even within her ability to say “no”, creating the scenario I described above? Rather than implying that saying “no” would be sin, she was asking if her very nature of having been Immaculately Conceived vetos her ability to reject her role in bringing Christ into the world. Am I correct, oneseeker?

I think the best resolution is that Mary had free-will, but God had foreknowledge and chose her because he knew how she would answer. This is why I made the reference to predestination earlier. This resolution roughly fits with the Molinist view of predestination.
 
Mary enjoyed a spiritual condition similar that of Eve before the Original Sin. Like Eve, Mary could have disobeyed God but, fortunately for us, she was obedient.
 
oneseeker said:
What am I misunderstanding? Or am I misunderstanding? I understand the idea of a clean “ark of the new covenant.” I just don’t understand how she had any real choice in the matter being full of grace.

TIA,
oneseeker:)
Click to expand...
Eve was also without sin - full of grace, just as Mary was, and even more so, since sin had not yet entered the world, and Eve had not even the least concept of sin, yet she said “Yes” to the devil’s plan, and “No” to God’s plan.

Mary had the same free will that Eve had, to say yes or no to God’s plan. God was no more able to force Mary to say “Yes” than He was able to force Eve. (If He had, then that would have been the end of free will, and the end of humanity as we know it.)

In both cases, free choice was absolutely essential, since both women were choosing on behalf of the whole human race.
 
Romans 3:23 (New International Version)

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Ah, Jesus is the only one who did not fall short of the glory of God, therefore he is the only one without sin.

Hebrews 1

1God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,

2Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;

3Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high:

4Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.
 
oneseeker said:
My question is this- if Mary was immaculately conceived, which I have read interesting teachings to suggest, then isn’t she better than us regular folk?
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No. Mary was as we were ALL meant to be. Mary was as Adam and Eve were.
oneseeker said:
What I mean is, when Mary accepted what the angel told her about becoming Jesus’ mother as a virgin, she didn’t really have free will choice about it, did she?
Click to expand...
Yes, she absolutely had free will.

Adam and Eve were created perfect, without sin. The had free will, and *chose *sin.

Mary was without Original Sin and chose obedience and fidelity to God.
oneseeker said:
If she had even the idea of saying no, then that was a sin against God. She was already “pre-conditioned” spiritually to accept this, being “full of grace.”
Click to expand...
No, having the ‘idea’ to say no would not be a sin. Why do you think it would be?
oneseeker said:
Therefore, that puts her on a pedestal of near-godliness in comparison to us b/c I bet if that happened to us, we wouldn’t just say “as he wills” or anything close to it!
Click to expand...
Well, no she is not “near-godliness” because she is not divine. She is a human, limited as we all are. She is no different than Adam and Eve, who exercised their free will in opposition to God.

How do you know we wouldn’t say “as he wills”? There are many Saints who have done just that.
oneseeker said:
What am I misunderstanding? Or am I misunderstanding? I understand the idea of a clean “ark of the new covenant.” I just don’t understand how she had any real choice in the matter being full of grace.
Click to expand...
Did Adam and Eve have choice?
 
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