Hey, I don’t question God. Mary is the “Woman of the Promise” prophesied in the Old Testament. God wanted to come among us, and chose to do so in the form of a baby, who grew to manhood enduring the trials and tribulations of humans, and giving us tenets to live by, along the way. She was chosen by Him, not by any of us, and Jesus revered and respected her, so I figure we should do the same.
Excuse me PEOPLE ... OUR ENEMY is islamist TERRORIST MURDERERS. and maybe the Westboro baptist Cult
our enemy is NOT the CATHOLICS, Protestants, or the MORMONS.
If you wanna fight over religious grounds.. lets get to the REAL ENEMY..
C’mon PEOPLE... I don’t want to be carrying a PRAYER RUG around with me.
I think this is the critical statement: “The word literally means “God bearer,” not “God generator.” To “generate” God would imply that one is His origin, but this cannot be true because God exists from all eternity. To “bear” God means to hold him in one’s womb.”
A human mother generates a new being, so calling her “Mother of God” is both accurate and misleading. The norms break down for a totally unique event.
“The reality of Mary’s divine maternity was
proclaimed a dogma of the faith by the Council
of Ephesus in 431, ...”
That is the problem with elevating tradition to doctrine -
it never ends.... even where it is in conflict with the Bible.
Saying that Mary was chosen to bear Christ is vastly different
than saying she is the Mother of God. Christ was God the Son
before His incarnation into Mary’s womb. Mary contributed to
Christ’s human nature. Not His divine nature, which He always
possessed.
One reflects a fact, as a result of God’s divine choice.
The other says more than it should.
not that any of that would change your belief. Just a comment.
...
It would be an issue if it was said Mary was:
the mother of all Gods.
Surrogate Mother? God the Son (one third of the Holy Trinity) had to come in the flesh and Mary was chosen to be his flesh mother. Both Mary and Joseph could trace their ancestors back to King David. Thus Jesus was born of Royalty, and will soon sit on the thrown in Jerusalem.
This thing called the “Trinity” includes the Father, The Son and the Holy Ghost. That would necessarily include Mother Mary as the vessel of Christ’s birth.
I will never believe Mary was a virgin...I will believe that GOD put a soul in Jesus.
“Mary contributed all genetic material to the formation of His human nature. As Pope John Paul II states in his encyclical Redemptoris Mater, “[Jesus] is the flesh and blood of Mary!” (see Catechism 485)”
Don’t know how accurate it is, but many years ago, Dr. M.R. De Haan, the originator of The Radio Bible Class from Grand Rapids, MI stated that a baby gets its FLESH from its mother, but its BLOOD from its FATHER.
To my little six-volt mind; in order for Christ’s blood to be sinless, perfect, and acceptable to purge our sins, that would have to be the case.
Obviously, the Pope would attribute it ALL to Mary, as he did in the cited Encyclical, because he is/was involved in Maryolitry! IMHO
So, was Mary a hermaphrodite? If Mary contributed all the genetic material, then where did the Y chromosome come from?
From Mary?
From Joseph, despite scripture?
By a miracle of G-d? in which case not all the genetic material came from Mary’s DNA.
Or, was the Y chromosome a Roman soldier....despite scripture?
Or was Jesus a woman, in which case artificial parthogenisis would be an added alternative?
C’mon, folks, you are overthinking this. You gotta have FAITH, first, then the inconsistencies resolve themselves.
Some things had to be transformed down to a very basic level for wide numbers of folks to believe in God, angels, the afterlife, and redemption. If it takes what may only be termed a “miracle” to change the hearts and minds of the multitude, then God has got to do what it takes.
God, or one of the manifestations of God, born through a mortal woman? Why should that be an unpopular idea, especially in these days of welcoming secular idols whose image is spread via an electromagnetic medium that a couple of hundred years ago would have been denounced as “magic” or worse, “Satan’s handiwork”?
You work with what you have at hand. Two thousand years ago, communication traveled about as fast as a man could walk, run, or ride a horse at full gallop. So it took a while for the message of God to travel, and only extraordinary events would make this transmission of the word of God widespread as quickly as it was.
The idea that Mary is divine has no basis in scripture. Mary was a virgin chosen by God to bear Jesus. and nothing more.
This difference in doctrine is in fact a major difference between the Catholics and say the Baptists.
Here’s how I see it. All babies look like Winston Churchill.
Churchill had an English father and American mother. Jesus was half human, though without sin. The Son of Man, and God.
And he had a number of siblings: “Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his BRETHREN, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his SISTERS, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?” Matthew 13:55-56
Common experience tells us that the birth canal is not a one way street—there’s no such thing, at least in our species, as parthenogenesis. Mary was “intact” when she became pregnant with Him—if you ignore the passage about what a swell guy Joseph was for marrying her even though she was, um, in a `delicate condition’—because she was artificially inseminated by an Angel, right? So Jesus had to be the oldest and, well, there it is.
I hope that clears things up for you all.
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And to this day, orthodox Protestants agree. Only fringe groups part ways on this.
On the other hand, since there is no example in scripture, Protestants do not accept that a human in Heaven can hear and answer prayers--only the all present, all knowing and all powerful God can do that.