Protestant View of Mariology

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ConstantineTG said:
Why? So you can make a conclusion that is not my own so you can put words into my mouth?
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I think that everyone can see the logic that I have presented. You cannot argue that the IC ought not be believed because St. A doesn’t mention it…

without arguing that the Virgin Birth ought not be believed because St. Paul doesn’t mention it.

There is no other answer you can have proclaim except to deny both the IC and the VB, or accept the IC and the VB, if you want to use the paradigm: “This saint doesn’t mention it in his writings, so he didn’t believe in it.”

[SIGN1]It is incontrovertible.[/SIGN1]

Of course you believe that St. Paul believed in the VB, even if he didn’t mention it (not even once!)

So it’s quite disingenuous of you to say, “St. A didn’t believe in the IC, since he didn’t mention it his 57 page summary of the Incarnation”

Nothing more needs to be said.

And for me to continue this part of the discourse is for me to be a bully. It’s like a 2nd grader coming to a school and saying, “Abe Lincoln was the 1st president of the US!” and a Senior correcting the 2nd grader, showing indisputable proof, everyone knowing that this 2nd grader is wrong…and for the Senior to continue to say, “And here’s another example that shows that AL was not the 1st president! Do you still want to say that he was, 2nd grader? And here’s another document that proves you wrong!”

I can’t bully like that. 🤷
 
Second obstacle of understanding Mary’s immaculate conception:

"Since Mary was a daughter of Adam, when – was she preserved from original sin and its consequences?

Duns Scotus saw solution by making a distinction between order of nature vs time.

We do not look at time, "but rather in the order of nature. Because physical generation precedes sanctification by God’s grace, Mary was an heir to the debt of Adam — before being made a child of God. In our thinking we consider Mary first as a daughter of Adam, and then sanctified as a daughter of God. But this does not necessarily place the soul of our Blessed Mother in two successive states – sin followed by grace…my emphases

With Mary…conception and sanctification were simultaneous, producing a twofold situation at the first moment of existence.

At one and the same time Mary, as a human descendant of Adam and Eve, contracted the debt of original sin and became by the privileged infusion of grace a daughter of God, which preserved her from the consequences of the common lot of fallen nature by a special anticipation of the anticipated merits of the Savior."

John Duns Scotus: Champion of the Immaculate Conception, Brother John M Samaha, SM

www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=5825
 
GaryTaylor said:
V-II “This motherhood of Mary in the economy of grace lasts without interruption, from the consent which she gave in faith at the annunciation, and which she unhesitatingly bore with under the cross, even to the perpetual consummation of all the elect. For after being assumed into heaven, she has not put aside this saving function, but by her manifold intercession, she continues to win the gifts of eternal salvation for us. By her motherly love, she takes care of the brothers of her Son who are still in pilgrimage and in dangers and difficulties, until they be led through to the happy fatherland”

Mediatrix of Grace is what you mean that’s not dogma?
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Yes, I mean mediatrix of all grace is not a dogma. Or said another way the idea that Mary stands between God and Man for all grace.
 
PRmerger said:
Where? Book, chapter and verse that says “only Christ is sinless”. Emphasis on the “only” part.
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Romans 3 clearly states that all have sinned, and then Hebrews 4 states that Christ is sinless.
 
PRmerger said:
I think that everyone can see the logic that I have presented. You cannot argue that the IC ought not be believed because St. A doesn’t mention it…
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No offense, but it is faulty logic. My argument is that St. Athanasius has presented a complete understanding based on the topic he covered. You are coming back by saying that St. Paul never covered a topic, therefore it is not part of belief? Thats a false analogy right there. The fact that St. Paul never covered a topic doesn’t fall in line with the reasoning for St. Athanasius (or any other saint) covering a topic. You are arguing that every saint must write about everything, that is not what I said. You not only completely misunderstood what I was saying or what I was trying to do, you don’t even understand the comparison of it.
 
KathleenGee said:
Constantine…

In regards to your remark that only Jesus is sinless, that is indeed Scripture which is the Word of God.

Likewise Christ says to Peter that what is bound on earth in the Church will be bound in heaven.

Consider context of the times. Jesus is the new beginning and the new life. Christology as a science did not take off as a scientific discipline until after the 300’s. And likewise, the nature of Christ Himself was not defined in Scripture but more completely so through the Church at the Council of Nicea, True God and True Man.

Likewise, Mary began to make her presence and work known beginning as early as 200 AD. And she did not want to detract from the foundation and understanding of authentic Christology.

So to imply that the Church is not thorough, which further implies something of Pelagiasism, making pronouncements on whimsy, cannot be applied to the understanding of the Immaculate Conception.

St. Thomas Aquinas shared your sentiments of not wanting to declare Mary immaculately conceived because he considered it a detraction against Christ. Likewise he had a very domineering mother who had him locked up to study, and he wrote in the ‘Our Father’ that women had defective genes compared to men.

It was Franciscan Scot Duns who successfully argued against the Dominicans in the 1500’s that Mary was conceived without sin.

We need to find the original and beginning documents of Scot Duns to read his arguments in asserting the immaculate conception of Mary. This debate continued among Catholic theologians well into the 1800’s, and it was being discussed again when Mary appeared to Bernadette in Lourdes in the 1850’s.

I saw the photos of Bernadette before she saw Mary, and then afterwards, and how she evolved in her recalling this event. She asked the Lady’s name, who replied, ‘I am the Immaculate Conception’. When she returned to her parish priest, he asked who she was, and Bernadette replied what Mary said, a girl with little education and sickly, and from a very poor family that lived in the basement of a former police station, in a jail.

Mary, conceived without sin, appeared to Bernadette on top of a garbage dump.

Such is the contradictions of life…and sacred mysteries.

St. Louis De Montfort said the knowledge of Mary was reserved for the latter days and the final struggles between the woman and her seed and Satan.

Likewise, can we not say that as Mary is our greatest advocate before God in heaven, that she stands over the dump of our sins to help redeem us and restore us before the Lord???
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The problem is the necessity of the Immaculate Conception comes from a faulty understanding of the impact of The Fall on mankind, and an equally faulty understanding of God’s sanctifying work in creation.
 
ConstantineTG said:
Romans 3 clearly states that all have sinned, and then Hebrews 4 states that Christ is sinless.
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So Romans 3 doesn’t count because there’s exceptions.

And Hebrews 4 states Christ is sinless but not ONLY Christ is sinless.
 
ConstantineTG said:
Romans 3 clearly states that all have sinned, and then Hebrews 4 states that Christ is sinless.
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Seems to be a contradiction, or exceptions can be made. Why would Paul say that all have sinned in Romans and then deny that fact in the letter to the Hebrews? If Jesus, fully man (new Adam) at the time, can be the exception to the all claim, then surely Mary (new Eve) can too. Now if Paul had said, all but Jesus in Romans, that would not be a contradiction with the Hebrews quote.

In the following passage do you believe literally that every single human turned away and became corrupt? What about the psalmist and the prophets?

The Lord looks down from heaven
on all mankind
to see if there are any who understand,
any who seek God.
3All have turned away, all have become corrupt;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.
 
ConstantineTG said:
The problem is the necessity of the Immaculate Conception comes from a faulty understanding of the impact of The Fall on mankind, and an equally faulty understanding of God’s sanctifying work in creation.
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Is that your personal take on the subject, or your take based on the teachings of your church? My understanding is derived from the teachings of my church.
 
Mary was made full of grace, Constantine…and Jesus came to her with a more perfect form of perfection, of redemption when she conceived Him in her womb.

We cannot just simply say she is full of grace because she was picked by God to be Christ’s mother. Likewise all of creation was waiting for the Savior, even Christ choosing the time to be born…in the Constellation of the Ram, Aries…Jesus, the Lamb of God.

Mary was a unique form, the highest of God’s creation, blessed above all women, not because she simply said yes, but in who she was and how she was created.

We cannot say Mary was chosen among other women, she had royal lineage, she was born in that time Christ chose, Mary the bridge between creation and Christ, the Eternal Word.

Again, Jesus is grace, He is YES in His humanity, and He and Mary were in communion with this Fiat. No other woman could be in this mystery, without being created in mystery herself.

Otherwise, you reduce Mary, and subsequently Christ Himself to be lesser than the One True God and True Man.

And you are denying the reality I found out today that her Immaculate Conception was formally celebrated in the Eastern Church in the 7th century. So you cannot refer to the Latin Church as arbitrating this idea of the Immaculate Conception.
 
PR…like your responses, analogies…

When the Angel Gabriel declared Mary full of grace, the Lord is with you…that there states she had no sin.

But the event of her sinlessness happened in her redemption in the nature of her conception. hers a more perfect redemption. How could it not be othrewise for the Mother of God?..
 
Richca…thanks for the clarification…my missive about the 1500’s…

John Duns Scotus joined the Franciscans in 1290, I not realizing he lived when Francis was alive, who died in the early 1300’s. The article I shared here gives some background in context of St. Thomas Aquinas.

About the mother thing, I did read some time ago something negative Thomas had towards women, it is brought up by feminists, and the comment about his mother came from a Franciscan friar at a recent retreat I went to.

Another good point about John Duns Scotus vs Aquinas was that he said that God Loves Reality, and every created thing was made by God out of love, uniquely loved.

So if you look at two identical species of plants, God loves each individual one uniquely for what it is. Thomas stated that everything has its own intellect, or definition of what it is…more intellectual.

God loves reality, God loves everything for its unique self.
 
joe371 said:
Is that your personal take on the subject, or your take based on the teachings of your church? My understanding is derived from the teachings of my church.
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Right, my same thoughts. Kathleen’s point with the history also. We can trace this to the 15 century Greeks, and 17th Russia IC. Then I don’t know what happened which caused the reversal of thinking. Could well be someone came along I haven’t read. I don’t believe this to be the case though. I believe the East reverted back and preserved the faith. Which is a good thing. Nevertheless we have much misunderstanding now also. I don’t find it odd that anyone should believe something other than we do, I just wonder where the thinking come’s from and understanding the continuity of it.
 
ConstantineTG said:
Romans 3 clearly states that all have sinned, and then Hebrews 4 states that Christ is sinless.
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If you stand by Romans 3 then your understanding of the fall is faulty. The only way for an infant to sin would be through Adam’s original sin, since an infant can’t sin on their own.
 
Isaiah45_9 said:
If you stand by Romans 3 then your understanding of the fall is faulty. The only way for an infant to sin would be through Adam’s original sin, since an infant can’t sin on their own.
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The Garden aspect is the part I’m not grasping from the East. Now I’ve read Bishop Ware on this and though he didn’t elaborate, he stated the West places a higher status on Adam and Eves nature than the East does. I can’t connect that in my mind with the transgression to what specifically is being said. But with creation and incarnation closely connected. Seems this is an aspect we need to all be on the same page with.

The Church’s have to go with the Apostle Paul, who else?
 
By the way, from the most educated in Orthodoxy, the whole schism was brought about by mistranslations, then the tempest in the teapot that led to the Schism.

Those who join in the fray, on both sides, keep the schism.

There needs to be a breakthrough on the historical fact that it was the mistranslation of langauge between East and West that led to our split. And I was surprised to hear today that the Eastern Church celebrated the Immaculate Conception over a thousand years before we were allowed to if one considers the dogma in 1954 then allowing us to celebrate this feast of Mary.
 
ConstantineTG said:
Romans 3 clearly states that all have sinned, and then Hebrews 4 states that Christ is sinless.
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Mark 1 clearly states that ALL of Jerusalem went out to see John the Baptist as well as the everyone in the Judean countryside. Be careful of context and one has to be careful of the word “whole” and “all”. Only as an example below.

4 And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him.
 
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