immaculate conception

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Daedelus76

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I am having trouble understanding this. The Immaculate Conception dogma seems to rest upon predestination. I thought Catholics did not believe in predestination?

I personally do not believe in predestination, because it denies free will. It seems to me, to believe the Immaculate Conception, you have to believe that God knew that Mary would say “yes” before it happened, meaning that she had no real choice in the matter. Can somebody clarify this point? One also has to wonder why God just didn’t immaculate conceive us all, it would have saved alot of time and trouble. I tried reading an article by a Catholic Marian theologian on this point, defending the traditional view against Catholic reform-minded theologians that would prefer it would be de-dogmatized, and it just made my head feel like it was going to explode.

It’s my understanding that Orthodox avoid this issue entirely because they don’t view original sin as imputing a stain and/or being ransmitted through sexual union (Augustine emphasized this). They also don’t spell out the metaphysics of how the Theotokos was holy, nor is there an assertion of it being a dogmatic teaching, it’s just part of the traditional usage. Synergy, rather than monergy is emphasized in questions of how free will works, rather than grace and total depravity.

My own views on free will and original sin are closer to the Orthodox or Arminian Protestants.
 
God knew Mary would say Yes if He gave her the role of Divine Maternity, so He chose her to be the Mother of God, whereby He freed her from original sin at conception so she could be a Holy Mother and so her Yes would be completely whole: i.e., she would give her whole self over to God for Him to accomplish His Will in her. There are also other factors which God ordered around Mary, for example, being born at the just the time she was in the Roman Empire so that Jesus could work at just the right time He needed to in time and space.
 
<< The Immaculate Conception dogma seems to rest upon predestination. >>

Not in a Calvinist sense, but a Catholic sense. Mary freed from original sin was an even greater act of redemption. From my article by Juniper Carol:

The Franciscan John Duns Scotus (d. 1308), perhaps under the influence of his confrere, William of Ware (d. 1300), showed that a preservation from original sin by the merits of Christ would be an even more perfect form of Redemption than to be rescued from already contracted sin.

“Christ was the most perfect mediator. Therefore he exercised the highest degree of mediation in favor of another person. Now he could not be a most perfect mediator and could not repair the effects of sin to the highest degree if he did not preserve his Mother from original sin (as we shall prove). Therefore, since he was the most perfect mediator regarding the person of his Mother, from this it follows that he preserved her from original sin…[above all] it is more noble to forgive one’s guilt by preserving that person from it, than by permitting that same person to fall into guilt, and then to remit that person’s guilt…since the passion of Christ was immediately and principally ordered to delete original guilt as well as actual guilt, in such a way that all the Trinity, since it had the foresight of the merits of the passion of Christ, applied them to the Virgin and preserved her from all actual sin, and also from all original sin.” (Blessed John Duns Scotus, Lectura III Sent 123,126,138)

From Juniper Carol’s Immaculate Conception of Mother of God

Of course predestination we are still working on, there are two Catholic "camps" (Molinism vs. Banezianism, according to the NCE), and lots of “middle” positions.

Phil P
 
Snerticus said:
It may help, but it may also cause you to ask more questions.

God Bless,
Snert
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No kidding. I didn’t understand what i was reading completely. It sounds alot like Calvinism, though, but not quite the same. Basicly, it denies that God pre-ordains people will go to Hell, but yet it says that God pre-ordains that some won’t go to Heaven?

My concern with the Immaculate Conception is that it makes it sound like the BVM had no will of her own. If you say her choice was free, then it seems to ring hollow if you also say it was pre-ordained. Basicly, her will and God’s will are the same thing (and it’s very similar to the two wills in one person of Christ of the orthodox non-miaphysite understanding of the Incarnation. A difference that ultimately made no difference). If you go to the logical conclusion, God ordains everything that happens, ergo God also ordains evil and sin (Calvinism). In the name of having an omnipotent, omniscient God, that’s what you get.

Why does it sound like the goal if you had this kind of worldview is a kind of quietism where your will becomes nothing and God takes over? I’m an ex-Buddhist but it’s kind of creepy how this kind of thinking is so much like the Buddhist concept of “no-self”, getting rid of the ego, etc. Also, the “middle position” talk sounds like the “dependent origination” or “dependent co-arising” of Buddhism, which denies both free will and fate. (BTW, I hate theology… I can’t say that enough. I don’t want to figure out why I believe what I believe anymore.).

Why exactly does God have to be absolutely omnipotent and omniscient? How did Scholastic theologians come up with that one? Oh, and are there any Catholics that do anything but Scholasticism? How about Process philosophy/theology (I’m more familiar with that).

OK, one more question… I heard from an Orthodox priest in his sermon one time that they don’t believe in Predestination/fate… is that true for their theology (hesychasm)?
 
All good questions but unfortunately I can’t answer any of them.

About all I can say is Mary had free will. So did Jesus. The angels and saints in heaven still have free will - but that’s a different thread, so I won’t get into it here.

Sorry I couldn’t help you any more than that. But search the Catholic Encyclopedia for “free will” and any other word or phrase that might answer your question. The article might be written in a bit more readable style and may answer some of your questions. Also there are editions of the Catechism online that you may want to search through too. There’s one Here and another Here.

God Bless,
Snert
 
Just because the Virgin Mary came into existance free from the stain of Original Sin, does not mean that she would necessarily obey the will of God. After all, Adam and Eve came into existance with this and even greater gifts and still disobeyed God. Like Adam and Eve, the Virgin Mary was given a free choice to obey God or not and she chose to obey.
 
Snerticus said:
About all I can say is Mary had free will. So did Jesus.
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Then Jesus could have just walked away and not have been arrested and all that? What would have happened with all the OT prophesies? Do you really think Jesus could have refused to be crucified?
 
Namesake said:
Then Jesus could have just walked away and not have been arrested and all that? What would have happened with all the OT prophesies? Do you really think Jesus could have refused to be crucified?
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I tried thinking about this myself, but end the end I came to the conclusion that there was something in Jesus’ nature that made him act in the way he did. So, while he was free in the general sense, he also was simultaneously not free. Given the Christology of orthodox Christianity, this actually makes sense since Christ is said to have two natures (or one composite nature, if you are a miaphysite, which is an orthodox position due to an agreement between the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox a few years ago).
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I just don't understand where Catholicism got so seemingly off-track that it made anything uniquely Mariological infallible dogma, perhaps it was a sense of triumphalism of the Pope against the Italian Republicans/secularists.   I'm not sure how this relates to salvation in any really important way.   And I wouldn't be surprised if this teaching were in fact NOT "the way it really happened". 

Good "orthodoxy" should set limits on what is a Christian belief based on tradition and scriptures, it shouldn't try and set "the way it actually happened".  The idea of Mary being specially conceived wasn't part of the Ecumenical Councils... which makes it a novel teaching and a barrier to Christian unity (the Orthodox reject it, and not just because they have a different view of Original Sin).  The idea of Mary being especially holy or immaculate was part of the traditions of the church, especially on a popular level (sometimes to the point excesses), but that hardly, in my mind, makes it worthy of an infallible teaching that ones salvation suppossedly rests upon.   Who knows... maybe I'm wrong on this one (and in big trouble).  I just hope Roman Catholics come away from this with a new appreciation for how hard some of their infallible teachings are to stomach.
OT prophecies - I know many wouldn’t want to hear this, but I actually looked into liberal scholarship of these prophecies months ago when I was researching Christianity . Many of them are far more vague than traditional church teaching. My faith as a Christian lies in other things other than having OT prophecies as proof-texts for Jesus divinity. The way that Jews of Jesus day would look for “prophecis” was alot like Dan Brown looking for clues for the “da Vinci code”, sometimes it was very wild. Also, the book of Ezekiel has at least one failed prophecy that didn’t happen, and possibly another as well. Tyre was not destroyed by Nebudchednezzer. I’m far from a biblical fundamentalist/inerrantists, too. While I believe the Nicene Creed… I don’t believe the Bible is inerrant or literal history and it’s possible some of the NT contains Jewish pesher or later interpolation.
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Alot of these OT prophecies are only true in a spiritual sense, not a literal sense.  In the literal sene, the Jews were withing their "rights" to reject Jesus, as he didn't restore the kingdom of Israel and he wasn't a military leader.  Christian liturgy is full of images of Jesus as a king and ruler of everything, the Messiah, but again, this is only true in a spiritual sense.  In the nuts and bolts world, Jesus was a relatively minor rabbi and miracle worker and was executed by the Romans and Jews, and then appeared to his followers afterwards, and Christianity was a minor sect for centuries, only growing slowly until the emperor Constantine.   I have my own reasons why that actually makes Christianity more credible, not less so, but it is something spiritual rather than rational.
Perhaps my thinking on things is more intuitive and less rationalist- I think I’d probably fit in better some ways with the Orthodox than the Scholastic tradition.
 
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