This is why so many do not read scripture. God’s post is too long. TLDR.
K.I.S. - Keep It Simple.It is an oversimplification of the doctrine and belief. The Church is still discussing the matter. The Holy Spirit is still guiding the Church. It’s not so simple that it can be reduced to one sentance or one quote.
Ah the Fed X analogy.
Personally, my problem with matters such as this is that it overly complicates things for many people, particularly since it has no real effect on our daily walk. By that I mean, Grace comes from God…It comes to us…the route it takes to get here is of no real import to us.
As a rather silly example…(also from the business world)…
If’ you’ve ever ordered something online from a shipper far away, you have probably received a “tracking number” and were able to follow it’s routing from them to you. Some of that routing can even seem a little strange…Yet - it works for the shipper and for you it does not matter HOW the shipper gets it to you…You are only concerned with who sent it and that you receive it.
Ah well…
Peace
James
This is the point and repeated. The deposit of faith is the same. We are still viewing a Saint as a Saint and a Devotion as a Devotion in regard to the deposit of faith. I hope.
I’d also like to add… don’t we all accept that the Church is, in a sense, the mediatrix of all grace? All graces comes to us through the Church, which is the universal sacrament of salvation (see CCC 775). Our Lady is often seen as the perfect prototype or model of the Church… if all graces comes to us through the Church, why not through the Theotokos, by whom the God-Man entered the world and won us salvation? This is similar to my analogy of all sacramental grace coming to us through the priest but on a wider scale. In none of these cases do these secondary mediations detract from our very real, direct, and personal encounter with Christ.
James, the doctrine that Mary is the Mediatrix of all graces is not difficult to understand. It simply means that we receive all graces from the hands of Mary. That it doesn’t have any effect in our daily lives is not the teaching of St Louis de Montfort, St Maximilian Kolbe, St Bernard, and other saints. For if the doctrine that Mary is the Mediatrix of all graces is true, then it is quite obvious that some kind of devotion to Mary is necessary for our salvation. Mary does not detract us from Jesus and God. She leads us to Jesus and God. I think God wants us to appreciate and recognize what our Lady did for us in regard to our salvation. For it was Mary who freely cooperated in the incarnation of the Son of God which incarnation brought about the redemption of the human race.
Personally, my problem with matters such as this is that it overly complicates things for many people, particularly since it has no real effect on our daily walk. By that I mean, Grace comes from God…It comes to us…the route it takes to get here is of no real import to us.
As a rather silly example…(also from the business world)…
If’ you’ve ever ordered something online from a shipper far away, you have probably received a “tracking number” and were able to follow it’s routing from them to you. Some of that routing can even seem a little strange…Yet - it works for the shipper and for you it does not matter HOW the shipper gets it to you…You are only concerned with who sent it and that you receive it.
Ah well…
Peace
James
Without a doubt I do, and to add I thought your analogy was excellent. Let me see if I can find St Athanasius.
First of all: the only reason why it took Timothy longer to explain is because you took his very simply statement “But the Holy Spirit works through our Lady in the sanctification of mankind” (back on page 2 of the thread and claimed it was dangerous when you inserted the word “only” as a possible misinterpretation. And that word only has stuck, but you originated it, not Timothy.
Excuse me, but I never inserted “only”. It was in the original post. Please, before making such accusations, read the whole thread. And it was not from Timothy, it was from Richca right here forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=9898563&postcount=34
Same banana. If one sentence needs more sentences to explain that one sentence, it is not an effective sentence.
Even so, one sentence shouldn’t go off as being heterodox. You could write a whole book on one subject, but if one sentence there makes the entire book heterodox, then the entire book is worthless.
It is only a myth to those in denial.
Scripture was simple in the First Millennium. It was written in the context of their culture and their time so it went without explaining to them back then. They did not need any explanation about the greater context of it, we do because we are not in that time.
Then it should be relatively simple to show consistent thought on this matter from early Patristic times to the times of those two saints as it relates to Sacred Tradition as well as Biblical exegesis.
I was not under the impression that the Church has stated that devotion to Mary is a requirement of salvation.
Beholden carries too negative of a connotation, but we have a duty to uphold the teachings of the Early Fathers.
Ultra-Marian is hardly a way to describe Palamas. Everything he writes about the Mother of God can only be understood in virtue of patristic typology and the incarnation. I do not presume to know whether the same applies for Kolbe or de Montfort, but for Palamas, the Theotokos is called these wondrous names because she gave birth to God in the flesh. So it is understood that she is not called the source of life in the sense that life flows from her by nature, but in the sense that He who has life by nature came through her and bestowed life on the World. She is compared to the tongs which held to coal from the altar of Heaven, because it was from her flesh that the intangible God took flesh and became tangible. There is really nothing ultra-Marian about it.
It depends on what beliefs are being referenced, and whether or not such beliefs are actually being taught.
I don’t think this is very conscious of how the Orthodox understand the relationship between language and theology. Language is merely a tool. The Scholastic approach taken by the two anti-Protestant (for lack of a better term) synods was not unorthodox, but only deficient. It was a deficient approach because it used terminology for which the Orthodox have no common point of reference. When metousiosis is used to describe the Eucharistic change, what is meant by the term? Does it mean that the ousia of the bread is replaced by the ousia of the body and blood of Christ? What is the ousia of the body and blood of Christ? Is it merely the ousia of His human nature? Of the divine nature? His compound hypostasis? Do we eat the divine nature, which is intangible, uncircumscribed, and all-present, and which no man has ever seen or even been able to speak of with words? Terminology like metousiosis is generally frowned upon now not because the intention behind its use was unorthodox but because it implies more knowledge of the Eucharist than we can actually have. The term, in fact, is orthodox so long as it comes with the qualification that it does not explain how the mystery happens, but that does not mean that it should therefore be treated as the best possible explanation for the mystery of the Eucharist or that its use should be encouraged.
There are certainly some views of Mary which are foreign to Orthodoxy. Whether de Montfort and Kolbe taught such views is another matter.
I actually agree with what you write here, but I would point out that Palamas stresses that Mary is the conduit of Grace not just in one moment, but for all time. She is eternally the mediator of all Grace, according to Palamas, precisely because of the relationship you point out.
So, at least for Palamas, she is not simply the bearer of Christ, but the distributor of Grace, by virtue of God sharing Himself fully with her.