The Regeneration of the Immaculate Conception

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GIVEN that Mary the Blessed Virgin Mother of Jesus was conceived without sin, i.e., that she was immaculately conceived, something I am not inclined to argue (not here, anyway, but maybe on some other thread), how then was she regenerate?
3 Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
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So, somehow, Mary must have been born again. Her spirit must have been regenerated. But why? If it was without sin to begin with, why bother? But if we as Christians receive a new nature, dispensing with the old, then did she simply not have an old nature to be discarded?
 
Well, since we as Catholics believe that Mary, like all of us, was ‘saved’ by Christ’s sacrifice (her difference from us being that she was saved “before the sacrifice”), why could not she equally have been ‘born again’ before her conception?
 
**Didn’t Mary need a Saviour? **
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I received an email from an Evangelical that said:
“Mary needed a Saviour.”
Catholics totally agree. Mary spoke in tongues with the apostles at the Pentecost. (Acts 1:14, 2:3) In fact, she was probably the first Christian. Here is the doctrine:
We pronounce and define that the doctrine which states that the Most Blessed Virgin Mary was in the first instant of her conception, by the singular grace and privilege of God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin. (Pope Pius IX, 1854)
It is fundamental Dogma that Mary needed a Saviour.
Christ, as the Church teaches, “conquered the enemy of the human race alone (solus)” (D711); In the same way, He alone acquired the grace of Redemption for the whole human race,** including Mary**…" (Dr. Ludwigg Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma 212-13)
Catholics believe that Mary was saved by God from sin, but in a preventative way. Art Sippo puts it this way:
Catholic Christianity does believe that Mary was a sinner. Not an ACTUAL sinner, but a POTENTIAL sinner who was redeemed by God from the moment of her conception so that she never fell into sin. So yes, Mary was redeemed, but she was also predestined by God to bear his Son and so she was upheld from falling into sin.
The following is an imperfect analogy. Imagine I am parachuting and falling through the air into quicksand. Suddenly, a gust of wind comes along and blows me away from the quicksand. I would say that at the moment of conception all human beings fall into a pit of quicksand called original sin. But in Mary’s case God intervened and protected her from this at the moment of her conception by the merits of Jesus. She has no power or merit of her own that prevented her from falling into the quicksand of original sin. It was Divine Mercy which was preparing a place for the Incarnation. God was preparing an Ark of the Covenant to carry the Word of God.
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–Bridging the Gap
 
Tantum_ergo said:
Well, since we as Catholics believe that Mary, like all of us, was ‘saved’ by Christ’s sacrifice (her difference from us being that she was saved “before the sacrifice”), why could not she equally have been ‘born again’ before her conception?
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I’ll go along with Mary being saved by Christ’s sacrifice. I*'ll go along with her being saved before the sacrifice, but what I see as a problem is that you seem to imply she must have then existed before her conception, which I don’t believe you would agree with. The only other solution I can see is to turn time sidewise and look at the whole of creation as God does, that is, all times are the same. You would then quote Aquinas quoting Augustine in Summa 1, 14, 7
On the contrary, Augustine says (De Trin. xv), “God does not see all things in their particularity or separately, as if He saw alternately here and there; but He sees all things together at once.”
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and so He sees Mary always as born again, requiring no antecedent condition.

Or do I put words in your mouth, and you have a better answer?

On the other point, regenerate man has a superior spirit to his old fallen spirit; presumably you would argue that Mary was initially given a new spirit rather than her old one, which then never existed. But doesn’t this cause certain problems?
 
kell,

Thank you for that post. That is good background material that I concede.
 
I just noticed Aquinas discusses this question in Summa 3, Question 27. I just scanned it and it seems to be at odds with Catholic teaching. Am I misreading something? I’m going to read this in more depth but I don’t have time right now.
 
God creates us, body and soul, ‘before He forms us in the womb’, but that need not relate to a matter of physical time or time as we understand it. One could just as easily say that He simultaneously created Mary as she was 'conceived and that she was conceived without sin and also ‘born again’ without ever having to ‘give up’ or ‘replace’ her ‘old spirit’. He is God. All we have to know right now is the result–Mary, immaculately conceived, saved by Christ, and ‘regenerated’ according to the thought and understanding of God as to what is needed for Christian salvation.
 
Hi Truthstalker,
If I understand correctly, you’re talking about the “re” in the word “regeneration” - that if Mary was to be re-generated she needed first to be generated. (Generated to be understood as existing in a state of original sin; re-generation as being cleansed of original sin) So, that is what I am going to reply to.

My response is that generation and need for regeneration does not come into existence only when/as each individual is conceived. When Adam sinned, it was not just Adam, the individual, whose nature became “de”-generate (wounded in nature); it was human nature in general - the human nature of all future persons. You might say, the condition pre-exists the individual human person. It is from this fallen condition, that all men need to be saved or regenerated. The timing varies with all individuals. For me, it was about a week after I was born. For Mary, the condition of a wounded human nature was regenerated at the instant of her conception.

I don’t know if the above will help. I had a terrible time trying to express my thoughts in words that are understandable. :o

Nita
 
Truthstalker said:
GIVEN that Mary the Blessed Virgin Mother of Jesus was conceived without sin, i.e., that she was immaculately conceived, something I am not inclined to argue (not here, anyway, but maybe on some other thread), how then was she regenerate?

So, somehow, Mary must have been born again. Her spirit must have been regenerated. But why? If it was without sin to begin with, why bother? But if we as Christians receive a new nature, dispensing with the old, then did she simply not have an old nature to be discarded?
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Regeneration makes someone right with God in light of the separation between man and God that resulted from the fall of Man.

By a singular privilege, Mary was made right with God from the moment of her conception meaning she did not need to be “regenerated” since there was no stain of original sin upon her soul.

She was saved by God as we all are but in a different manner.
 
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