Problem with the retro-active redemption of Mary

[Portrait]

I wouldn’t get too hung up about what Protestants believe. One thing you should keep in mind when dealing with Mary is how unique she truly is. She was preserved from the stain of original sin at the moment of her conception. Nobody, before or since then can claim that. Protestants typically like to claim that she really isn’t that special and that she sinned just like everybody else. Catholics take a sharply different point of view of this and our two views can’t really be reconciled.

ChadS

Dear ChadS,

Cordial greetings and thankyou for your posts.

It is not so much an issue of being obsessed about what our Protestant brethren believe regarding our Lady, more a desire to be able to understand fully their objections with Catholic Marian doctrine and to cogently refute their erroneous theories respecting the same.

As I have stated previously, Protestants do not typically claim that our Lady is not that special. By and large they would concur with the language of the primitive Church, “Let her be honoured and esteemed, let Him be worshipped and adored”. As a former Anglican High Churchman I can assure you that many within that communion entertain a reverent regard for Mary.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[TommyWommy]

Dearly Beloved,

Thankyou kindly for all of your responses thus far.

However, I do not feel that any man has, as yet, grappled with biblical nature of redemption. Are not the Protestants correct when they say that the word redemption can only be understood against the backdrop of salvery, which is why it was applied to the deliverance of Israel from Egypt? For the same reason it was a word easily understood in the first century A.D. when a slave was emancipated after the redemption price had been paid. So we Christians were redeemed “not with perishible things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ” (I Pet. 1:18-19). Now when we consider this in the light of the Immaculate Conception it does seem somewhat problematic since the price was paid in Mary’s case to deliver from a slavery which never existed and the blood of Christ was shed to cleanse a non-existent stain.

I’m not sure why it is problematic to say that, in one case, the price was paid to get a slave out of slavery, and in another case, the price was paid to prevent one from becoming a slave. They have both been “purchased” out of bondage.

 

[Portrait]

The Catholic Church does NOT teach that we are personally GUILTY of Original Sin. Therefore there is no personal guilt on the part of any person because of original sin. However the mark of original sin is real, and is an offense to God nonetheless.

Dear AmbroseSJ,

Cordial greetings and thankyou for your response above.

Quite so, and it because original sin is an offence to God that redemption is urgently required for we are all by nature “children of wrath”, conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity.

Protestant theology contends that Mary had no doubt as to her own awareness of sin as she rejoices in knowing the God whom she describes as ‘my Saviour’. They say that the title ‘Saviour’ surely signifies a salvation which is needed. When the birth of Christ was announced He was described as the Saviour because He would ‘save his people from their sins’. Thus when Mary speaks of her Saviour she is, so the argument goes, acknowledging that she is one of those who need to be saved from their sins. If further confirmation of her own attitude is sought, then we are directed to her own readiness to fulfill the Mosaic Law of purification. Thus it is said that she goes to offer what is described in the Law (see Lev. 12: 6ff.) as being a sin offering which makes an atonement for her. It was not as one immaculate that Mary worshipped that day, but as a humble woman of God, confessing her need of a Saviour; to offer a sin offering is, so they allege, implicitly to acknowledge the need of forgiveness and cleansing. A person totally without sin would clearly not have such a need.

Well that is my final posting for now as it is my custom to take a breather from the boards at weekends. Thankyou all for your responses and contributions.

God bless and goodbye for now.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[Texas_Roofer]

?? I struggle to understand this thread at all however my guess is a misunderstanding of the word redeem?

*492 The “splendor of an entirely unique holiness” by which Mary is “enriched from the first instant of her conception” comes wholly from Christ: she is “redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son”.136 The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” and chose her “in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love”.*137

Catholic teaching as mentioned does not require nor reports any sins from Mary, combining that with an absence of original sin would indicate she could have reached heaven by her own accord. However the teaching notes that Mary received several burdens and also several special graces. Her burdens were she would only have Pauline marriage, only one child, leave her home to flee to Egypt, watch her son be tortured, and killed. Her special graces were visits from Angels, bearing god, and the assumption. As the catechism expresses Mary’s burdens alone would have been enough to redeem normal sins, however her graces created a sinless suffering for her.

Hope that helps

 

[TommyWommy]

?? I struggle to understand this thread at all however my guess is a misunderstanding of the word redeem?

I was wondering that, too. Maybe Mary should be regarded as having been "pre"deemed rather than "re"deemed(?) In that sense, she is an exception to the typical formula of redemption just as she is an exception to Rom 3:10.

 

[ChadS]

?? I struggle to understand this thread at all however my guess is a misunderstanding of the word redeem?

492 The “splendor of an entirely unique holiness” by which Mary is “enriched from the first instant of her conception” comes wholly from Christ: she is "redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son".136 The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” and chose her “in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love”.137

Catholic teaching as mentioned does not require nor reports any sins from Mary, combining that with an absence of original sin would indicate she could have reached heaven by her own accord. However the teaching notes that Mary received several burdens and also several special graces. Her burdens were she would only have Pauline marriage, only one child, leave her home to flee to Egypt, watch her son be tortured, and killed. Her special graces were visits from Angels, bearing god, and the assumption. As the catechism expresses Mary’s burdens alone would have been enough to redeem normal sins, however her graces created a sinless suffering for her.

Hope that helps

I think it would definitely be incorrect to say that Mary could’ve made it to heaven on her own accord. The Catholic Church definitely does not teach that and instead says Mary was preserved from the stain of original sin by a special gift from God at the moment of her conception.

If you haven’t read it you should check out Ineffabilis Deus.

ChadS

 

[Texas_Roofer]

I think it would definitely be incorrect to say that Mary could’ve made it to heaven on her own accord. The Catholic Church definitely does not teach that and instead says Mary was preserved from the stain of original sin by a special gift from God at the moment of her conception.

If you haven’t read it you should check out Ineffabilis Deus.

ChadS

It maybe a confusion of the teaching of no one can control their path to heaven, because only through God’s permission do you enter. And your attempt to control can in and of itself be the sin of presumption. It is certainly within the Catholic teaching that people (militant) pass through prudential judgment thus becoming the triumphant or saints. Since the church teaches Mary was assumed in to heaven it would make no sense to question if she even had prudential judge, thus again one could say her works and grace redeemed her leading to direct assumption, but can one really know that as proper interpretation?

 

[AmbroseSJ]

It maybe a confusion of the teaching of no one can control their path to heaven, because only through God’s permission do you enter. And your attempt to control can in and of itself be the sin of presumption. It is certainly within the Catholic teaching that people (militant) pass through prudential judgment thus becoming the triumphant or saints. Since the church teaches Mary was assumed in to heaven it would make no sense to question if she even had prudential judge, thus again one could say her works and grace redeemed her leading to direct assumption, but can one really know that as proper interpretation?

The Church definitely and authoritatively teaches that the Blessed Virgin was redeemed, just as everyone in humanity was. However with the BVM, it was applied to her at the moment of her conception, in anticipation of the redemption by her Son Jesus. The works and grace given to Mary*** in no way redeemed her***. It was only by the Life, death and Resurrection of her Son, Jesus, that she was redeemed.

 

[NHInsider]

If further confirmation of her own attitude is sought, then we are directed to her own readiness to fulfill the Mosaic Law of purification. Thus it is said that she goes to offer what is described in the Law (see Lev. 12: 6ff.) as being a sin offering which makes an atonement for her. It was not as one immaculate that Mary worshipped that day, but as a humble woman of God, confessing her need of a Saviour; to offer a sin offering is, so they allege, implicitly to acknowledge the need of forgiveness and cleansing. A person totally without sin would clearly not have such a need.

Portrait - with great respect for your efforts to explain the Protestant position and to find ways to address it -

Mary’s offering in Luke 2:22+ff, which as you rightly point out is the offering detailed in Lev. 12, was not a sin offering. It was the offering for purification after childbirth, which rendered a woman ritually unclean because, of course, there is a lot of blood and other bodily fluids involved with childbirth. So if your Protestant friends attempt to cite that offering as evidence that Mary believed herself to be a sinner, that should be an easy one to correct.

 

[Portrait]

I’m not sure why it is problematic to say that, in one case, the price was paid to get a slave out of slavery, and in another case, the price was paid to prevent one from becoming a slave. They have both been “purchased” out of bondage.

Dear TommyWommy,

Cordial greetings and thankyou for the above.

I think the reason why it is problematic for them is that redemption by exemption is not how redemption was understood in the first century A.D. nor throughout the entire O.T. history for that matter. From a biblical standpoint redemption is always seen as a deliverance from some existing state or, if you please, out of something already* present*. Thus, for example, God’s deliverance of His people from Egypt is spoken as a redemption (see Exod. 6: 6; 15: 13) and, again, the language of redemption is employed in connection with Israel’s emancipation from captivity in Babylon (see Jer. 31: 11; 50: 33-34). In the N.T. it is always about man’s deliverance from the bondage of sin (an existing condition) based upon the ransom price of the shed blood of Christ our Saviour (see Eph. 1: 7; I Pet. 1: 18-19).

As Catholics we have no problem with this, of course, since we believe, to cite the old scholastic maxim, ‘God could do it; God ought; therefore He did’. We would further contend that it was fitting and morally imperative that our Blessed Lady should be conceived free from the stain of sin and hence be an exception, along with her Son, to the general condition of mankind. However, for our Protestant brethren the IC stands condemned at the bar of Scripture and of Church history because explicit proofs for the dogma are wanting.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[elvisman]

Dearly Beloved,

Thankyou kindly for all of your responses thus far.

However, I do not feel that any man has, as yet, grappled with biblical nature of redemption. Are not the Protestants correct when they say that the word redemption can only be understood against the backdrop of salvery, which is why it was applied to the deliverance of Israel from Egypt? For the same reason it was a word easily understood in the first century A.D. when a slave was emancipated after the redemption price had been paid. So we Christians were redeemed “not with perishible things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ” (I Pet. 1:18-19). Now when we consider this in the light of the Immaculate Conception it does seem somewhat problematic since the price was paid in Mary’s case to deliver from a slavery which never existed and the blood of Christ was shed to cleanse a non-existent stain.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

**Actually - I’m glad you brought this up because it begs the question about OT types and NT fulfillments. Mary is compared to the Ark of the Covenant in the OT because she was the vessel of the New Covenant in the NT. This is why she was declared Theotokos (God-Bearer) at the Council of Ephesus in 431, which sought to defeat the Nestorian Heresy and define the Hypostatic Union of Christ’s 2 indivisible natures.

**Whereas the symbols of God’s word were contained in the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament, Mary actually carried God himself - the Word - in her womb in the New Testament. The OT Ark was not even to be touched under penalty of death.
******And, whereas the Old Testament Ark had to be made of pure materials and was blessed and undefiled, how much more pure and undefiled would the vessel that actually carried God have to be? **
New Testament fulfillments of types found in the Old Testament are more glorious and perfect than the type itself. This rule of Scripture is without exception.

 

[CharlesPaul]

Greetings!

My personal thoughts on the Immaculate Conception of The Lord’s Mother;

As a convert to The Catholic Faith, I had trouble jumping the theological hurdle of The Immaculate Conception. Then, perhaps,because of something I had read or heard, I decided the doctrine isn’t so far-fetched, but why not?

First, Our Lord Himself is perfect and without sin, and being perfect He honours His Father and Mother perfectly. As John Chapter 1 tells us concerning Our Lord; “*He was in the beginning, through Him all things were made.” * So if one who perfectly honours His mother, also creates her, she may be afforded some blessings the rest of us may not so readily aquire.

Second, simply because Our Lady, thanks her Savior, in the magnificat, doesn’t mean her Salvation occured by ordinary means. She may have simply came to realize the great honour done to her by Our Lord.

 

[TommyWommy]

I think the reason why it is problematic for them is that redemption by exemption is not how redemption was understood in the first century A.D. nor throughout the entire O.T. history for that matter.

The Trinity was also not understood throughout the O.T. nor the 1st century, nor is it “explicit,” yet it has been accepted by our Protestant bretheren (most of them) since the Church discerned it.

From a biblical standpoint redemption is always seen as a deliverance from some existing state or, if you please, out of something already* present*. Thus, for example, God’s deliverance of His people from Egypt is spoken as a redemption (see Exod. 6: 6; 15: 13) and, again, the language of redemption is employed in connection with Israel’s emancipation from captivity in Babylon (see Jer. 31: 11; 50: 33-34). In the N.T. it is always about man’s deliverance from the bondage of sin (an existing condition) based upon the ransom price of the shed blood of Christ our Saviour (see Eph. 1: 7; I Pet. 1: 18-19).

Biblically speaking, It was explicitly stated to Moses that God is the present “I AM”, and again by Christ that “I AM.” Everything, to God, is in an “existing state” and “already present.” It seems to me that the Protestant perspective is too linear in terms of what God can do within the framework of time and “boxes God in,” if you will. The same problem occurs when discussing the Eucharist when Catholics are accused of sacrificing Christ “again and again.” We don’t, of course, we are “made present.”

The IC is no sweat for God, as you and I know.

I’m no theologian, scholar or apologist, but this is my humble understanding thus far.

Peace.

 

[Portrait]

Portrait - with great respect for your efforts to explain the Protestant position and to find ways to address it -

Mary’s offering in Luke 2:22+ff, which as you rightly point out is the offering detailed in Lev. 12, was not a sin offering. It was the offering for purification after childbirth, which rendered a woman ritually unclean because, of course, there is a lot of blood and other bodily fluids involved with childbirth. So if your Protestant friends attempt to cite that offering as evidence that Mary believed herself to be a sinner, that should be an easy one to correct.

Dear NHInsider,

Cordial greetings and thankyou for the above.

You are mistaken as the Leviticus passage makes it perfectly clear that when a woman’s purification was at an end, she had to bring to the priest “…a lamb a year old for a burnt offering, and a young pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering, and he shall offer it before the Lord, and make atonement for her…if she cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtledoves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her, and she shall be clean” (Lev. 12: 6-8, emphasis mine). Indeed, both the circumcision and purification rituals after childbirth had reference to the state of sin in which each man is born and to the purification therefrom by blood-sprinkling and sacrifices. My point is that these Jewish ceremonies alluded to sin and its defilement and clearly prefigured the Lamb of God who would “take away the sin of the world” by His own sacrifice upon the Cross for us men and for our salvation.

The sacrifices in the Purification ritual symbolised that the sacrificer deserved death, but that the sacrificial animal is loaded with the guilt and death-sentence and for the sake of the sacrificer enters upon death to set him free from his guillt of sin. Thus the whole thing has very strong sin connotations and references, and that is what must be reckoned with* vis-a-vis *the Blessed Virgin mary. Now unless I have utterly misunderstood their meaning, some Protestant polemecists are asking, with this undeniably correct theological backdrop in mind, if the BVM brought a “bloody sacrifice” at her Purification, then was she not implicitly showing her felt need of cleansing from sin and its defilement as much as any other woman? To date, I have yet to even see this whole issue addressed by any Catholic apologist, let alone rebutted by a convincing argument.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[JimG]

Here is a Q&A from This Rock magazine:

"Q: Why did Mary go through the purification ceremony? She didn’t need to be freed from sin.

A: Mary went through the post-childbirth purification ceremony for the same reason Jesus went through the post-childbirth circumcision ceremony: out of obedience to the Mosaic law. Both rites—purification (ritual cleansing of the mother) and circumcision (removing the foreskin of the child)—symbolized being freed from sin. Jesus and Mary underwent them not because they needed to be freed from sin but because they were Jews who followed the Mosaic law. That’s why Jesus was baptized: not because he needed it himself but to set the pattern for us to follow."

catholic.com/thisrock/quickquestions/keyword/purification

It should also be noted that ritual uncleanness under the Mosaic law did not imply any personal moral fault.

Edit: For an in depth discussion of matters of ritual uncleanness in first century Judaism, I recommend Paula Frederikson’s book: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. A Jewish Life and the Emergency of Christianity.”

 

[Portrait]

The Trinity was also not

understood throughout the O.T. nor the 1st century, nor is it “explicit,” yet it has been accepted by our Protestant bretheren (most of them) since the Church discerned it.

Biblically speaking, It was explicitly stated to Moses that God is the present “I AM”, and again by Christ that “I AM.” Everything, to God, is in an “existing state” and “already present.” It seems to me that the Protestant perspective is too linear in terms of what God can do within the framework of time and “boxes God in,” if you will. The same problem occurs when discussing the Eucharist when Catholics are accused of sacrificing Christ
“again and again.” We don’t, of course, we are “made present.”

The IC is no sweat for God, as you and I know.

I’m no theologian, scholar or apologist, but this is my humble understanding thus far.

Peace.

Dear TommyWommy,

Cordial greetings and thankyou for your response to my post.

Although not itself a biblical term, “the Trinity” is a convenient designation for the one God self-revealed in Sacred Scripture as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Moreover, Christian theologians have observed adumbrations of the Trinity in the biblical narratives and the important thing is that the idea represented by the word is either taught or deducilble in many places. The term is employed to summarize the actual teaching of the bible that God is three persons yet one God. Thus Protestantism would argue that the doctrine of the Trinity, as with Original Sin, can be infered from Sacred Scripture itself without having to have recourse to Church teaching.

Sorry old chap, not quite sure I understand the drift of your argument in the second paragraph. It is not, I think, a question of Protestants being one demensional as regards their understanding of the meaning of redemption. If I understand them correctly, they are arguing that it is perfectly proper and logical to give due regard to the biblical meaning of redemption in both Testaments to ascertain how it was understood in the first century A.D. Now it does seem reasonable to assume that a historical contextual understanding of the word is likely to yield the correct meaning, rather than the personal insights of some man today.

As Catholics we receive the dogma of the IC on the authority of the infallible Church and believe that whilst it is not explicitly revealed in Sacred Scripture it is, notwithstanding, implicitly contained in various passages.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[Portrait]

Here is a Q&A from This Rock magazine:

"Q: Why did Mary go through the purification ceremony? She didn’t need to be freed from sin.

A: Mary went through the post-childbirth purification ceremony for the same reason Jesus went through the post-childbirth circumcision ceremony: out of obedience to the Mosaic law. Both rites—purification (ritual cleansing of the mother) and circumcision (removing the foreskin of the child)—symbolized being freed from sin. Jesus and Mary underwent them not because they needed to be freed from sin but because they were Jews who followed the Mosaic law. That’s why Jesus was baptized: not because he needed it himself but to set the pattern for us to follow."

catholic.com/thisrock/quickquestions/keyword/purification

It should also be noted that ritual uncleanness under the Mosaic law did not imply any personal moral fault.

Dear JimG,

Cordial greetings.

That is a jolly good reference from This Rock magazine and is a very convincing response to the Protestant argument respecting the Purification of our Blessed lady. Thankyou for that my dear friend - good sound clear biblical reasoning worthy of any Catholic apologist.

The words that came to mind as I read this were, “Thus it becomes her to fulfill all righteousness”. Jesus, her Divine Son, did not need to be circumcised, yet He was; He did not need to be baptized but to fulfill all righteousness He was baptized. Whilst there was no sin defiling His conception and birth, God nevertheless willed that our Lady should act in this respect as all mothers did, thus fulfilling all righteousness. Moreover, it arose from the necessities of the case as well. His immaculate conception and stainless birth could not be revealed until long after and if Mary had neglected the separation for forty days, and the offerings for purification incumbent upon every Jewess, then clearly it would have been a grevious scandal in the eyes of all who knew her.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[TommyWommy]

Sorry old chap, not quite sure I understand the drift of your argument in the second paragraph. It is not, I think, a question of Protestants being one demensional as regards their understanding of the meaning of redemption.

The drift was that, although to us the IC may appear to be “by exemption” (since it apparently happened prior to there having been an state of sin), to God, it is not “prior to” anything. It simply “is” what it “is.” This is a logical conclusion based upon explicit Scripture passages that tell us that God “is.” “I Am that I Am.”

 

[Portrait]

The drift was that, although to us the IC may appear to be “by exemption” (since it apparently happened prior to there having been an state of sin), to God, it is not “prior to” anything. It simply “is” what it “is.” This is a logical conclusion based upon explicit Scripture passages that tell us that God “is.” “I Am that I Am.”

Dear TommyWommy,

Hello again and thankyou for that clarification, but I fear that we are no further forward.

Whilst I do follow your meaning now, I do not think that it is actually sustainable or, indeed, a logical conclusion based upon Scripture. God, it is perfectly true, is outside of time as we know it but He has chosen to work within time in the history of mankind. In any event, we are specifically told by the our Church that Mary’s redemption was by exemption; it did not “appear” to be by exemption but was really so: “The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin” (Ineffabilis Deus (1854). This all occured within actual time and had a basis in the field of definite history. Thus it provides a firm context of historical reality in which the IC occured, much like the Crucifixtion of Christ which occured “under Pontius Pilate”.

Therefore we are no nearer to resolving the issue of how the BVM was delivered from a slavery which never existed and how the blood of Christ was shed to cleanse a non-existent stain. Moreover, as stated previously, the IC is at variance with the entire biblical testimony on the nature of redemption and for a Protestant that presents one huge insurmountable obstacle as regards Catholic Marian doctrine.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[TommyWommy]

Dear TommyWommy,

Hello again and thankyou for that clarification, but I fear that we are no further forward.

Whilst I do follow your meaning now, I do not think that it is actually sustainable or, indeed, a logical conclusion based upon Scripture. God, it is perfectly true, is outside of time as we know it but He has chosen to work within time in the history of mankind. In any event, we are specifically told by the our Church that Mary’s redemption was by exemption; it did not “appear” to be by exemption but was really so: “The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin” (Ineffabilis Deus (1854). This all occured within actual time and had a basis in the field of definite history. Thus it provides a firm context of historical reality in which the IC occured, much like the Crucifixtion of Christ which occured “under Pontius Pilate”.

Therefore we are no nearer to resolving the issue of how the BVM was delivered from a slavery which never existed and the blood of Christ was shed to cleanse a non-existent stain. Moreover, the IC is at variance with the entire biblical testimony on the nature of redemption and for a Protestant that presents one huge insurmountable problem.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

Ah, yes, thank you, I see what you mean. All that aside, however, isn’t the “insurmountable problem” ultimately within the realm of Sola Scriptura then? That’s what appears to be constraining them. Or are you saying that Protestants are using the IC to claim that Church teaching contradicts Scripture and is therefore proven to be a false authority?