Posted on 05/03/2004 8:48:00 AM PDT by NYer
That is what I have always believed also. Never occurred to me to think of her as anything else actually. It is amazing to read the different ways people think about the Scriptures. We get locked in our own Church worldviews and never know there are so many who see things so differently. Gotta love FR!
By "we" here I infer you're not including the "protestants of the dispensationalist stripe" in your previous post.
Which others would you include in the "we?" Calvinists, Arminians, for example?
If they disagree on what scripture supports, wouldn't one or the other have to contradict ("or at best [be] unsupported by) scripture?
There is a flaw in your argument. Original sin is passed on through the race of Adam. It is inherited. Since Mary was part of the race of Adam she too inherited original sin.
If Mary did not have original sin there would have been no need for a virgin birth since it would mean original sin must be picked up some other way besides birth. Consequently, our Lord Jesus could have just been born the normal fashion and not have original sin. No need for the virgin birth.
I think you also make to much of the comparison of the Ark of the Covenant and Mary. The Ark was a symbol for the people of Israel that God was with them-that's all. When they acted badly the Ark was meaningless (1 Samuel 4).
There is a certain irony in your comparison for the people of Israel tended to worshipped the created rather than the Creator. The Ark is one example. The serpent on the brazen stick is another. We should hold Mary in high regards like Esther, Ruth, Paul, Peter, etc. But to worship Mary is equivalent, to use your analogy, to worshipping the Ark or brazen serpent.
I'm not sure what the Reformers positions were about Mary and sin but if they held Mary was sinless this is contrary to what the Bible says and they were wrong. This shouldn't come as a shock to you since you feel they were in error in other places where they ARE supported by scriptures.
Yes, certainly. Though not necessarily her egg. Otherwise there would have been no need for Jesus to have said what He said of John.
I've had enough people demand verses from me only to throw them back in my face to realize that people want their very own name in the bible in order to believe it's speaking to them. I met a gay guy at a bar the other day and discussed the bible with him. He said "I think the bible is not meant to be taken that literally". I have no doubt that I could have shown him Romans 1 and 2 and he would have tried to slither away form what it said about homos too. I also know people who hate the very word Trinity and since it's not in the bible, it can't be true.
How 'bout the relationship between God the Father and God the Son?
So how would Mary achieve and maintain a state of grace during her pregnancy ...
It seems to me that that is a matter for God, since He is the one who bestows grace and maintains us in our condition. The declaration of the angel, the messenger of God, was that she was presetnly in the proper relationship to God.
I'm not sure why you are stuggling with this fact. Your problem is that you place the burden on Mary to maintain her condition. That is one of the more pernicious errors of RC theology.
No, we know of no sin committed by the Blessed Virgin Mary.
We know of no explicit sin of lots of folks in the Bible. What does that prove? Was Stephen, for example, immaculately conceived?
Of course the controlling text that Mary devotees are unable to deal with honestly is Rom. 3:23.
When you get to Heaven, how are you going to explain to Him your trash-talking His mother?
Since I have said nothing about His mother than is not recorded in the Bible I have no concerns in this area. I would be more concerned about the possibility of elevating her to a position (co-redemptrix, mediatrix of all grace) unsupported in the Bible that undermines the worship due to God alone as RCs are prone to do in their practical experiences. Y'all do have a problem with your Mary cults.
I do not believe any of the Reformers held Mary to be sinless (i.e., superhuman). Some of them, like Luther and Calvin, held to the extant view of Mary's virginity, and that the "brethren" of Jesus were cousins or some relative other than half-brothers.
Luther, for example, made rash statements such as, "Christ, we believe, came forth from a womb left perfectly intact." A bloodless birth?? Perhaps, too, a bloodless circumcision eight days later. The problem is, when you study the Reformers you find no Scriptural support for their wild suggestions. They were men, prone to error, as all men are. Let's not make them out to be protestant popes. That's why we can only trust Scripture alone as the ultimate arbiter of divine truth.
I do not believe they had any good theological reasons for maintaining that view. And remember that they lived long before the extreme beliefs of modern RCism on things like the immaculate conception and assumption were codified by the RCs.
The errors they were dealing with in the church were much more grave than devotion to Mary, although one might argument that Mary devotion was a symptom of the larger problem. They may have a different view if they had witnessed the extremes of Mariology in modern times.
Perhaps. It does remind me of the time when I was a new Christian and attended a Bible study with some friends. One of the participants was commenting on some text and reading from the Bible in his hand. I could not find the verse he was reading in the version I was using, so I turned to the person next to me for help. I turned out the person was actually reading from the notes in his Scofield Bible as if they were the very Word of God.
Some men's popes don't live in Rome, but down the street in their local church, or on the radio dial, on in their libraries.
If they disagree on what scripture supports, wouldn't one or the other have to contradict ("or at best [be] unsupported by) scripture?
Absolutely. As they say, if we disagree on a text we can't both be right, but we can certainly both be wrong. Popes, bishops, pastors, teachers, reformers, churchmen of all types suffer from the same affliction. It's called imperfection. If we were omniscient we would be God.
The reality of Christ's humanity is one of the most important points of Christian doctrine. Remember what St. John said: the one who denies that Christ is come in the flesh is Anti-Christ. Heresies about Christ's humanity have plagued the Church since the time of the Apostles: in one way or another, different people have sought to disconnect the Lord from our humanity. It is a grievous error.
The wonder of the Incarnation is that Christ fully assumed human nature. Mary truly is Theotokos, because God did not become human merely in semblance. He did not spurn having a human mother, from whom He truly inherited genetic material. He took on a fully human nature, perfectly and indivisibly united to His divinity, in one person. In so doing He broguht salvation to man, by turning the direction of man back to God. As a man, beset by our weaknesses, He overcame temptation and struck down sin and death. Becasue He was man He was able to assume the curse we had brought down upon oursevles: but when He did so He dealt an end to it. As a man He was able to die: but in so doing He destroyed death. As a man prone to weakness He could be tempted by the devil: but He conquered over him.
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