Posted on 11/02/2006 12:44:03 PM PST by Alex Murphy
"regardless of whether she was sinless or not, Mary's status was by a grace not her own,"
Well, we can certainly agree on that. Of course, these sorts of discussions, at base, implicate the differing notions of monergism and synergism, about which so much bandwidth has been expended around here! :)
luke
See what happens. :>)
See, I think that's the whole shebang. Mary was full of grace - but that grace is not intrinsic to her.
Of course they do - but, of course, how you define "monergism" would be determinative. Did Mary cooperate with this grace? You betcha. Did she choose to? Absolutely. Did she have a free choice? Without a doubt. Could it have come out any other way? Absolutely not.
bttt
Interesting take on the meaning of Luke 1:38. The Fathers generally pointed out Panagia's "assent" or "obedience", both terms in Greek implying a free choice, not the act of an automoton and therefore, while her assent freely given was foreseen, it was not inevitable. For example:
"And when she asked in her perplexity, How can this be, seeing I know not a man ? the angel again answered her, The Holy Spirit shall came upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God . And she said to him, Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me according to Thy word . So then, after the assent of the holy Virgin, the Holy Spirit descended on her, according to the word of the Lord which the angel spoke, purifying her , and granting her power to receive the divinity of the Word, and likewise power to bring forth." +John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book III, Chapter 2
"For inasmuch as He had a pre-existence as a saving Being, it was necessary that what might be saved should also be called into existence, in order that the Being who saves should not exist in vain. In accordance with this design, Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” But Eve was disobedient; for she did not obey when as yet she was a virgin. And even as she, having indeed a husband, Adam, but being nevertheless as yet a virgin (for in Paradise “they were both naked, and were not ashamed,” inasmuch as they, having been created a short time previously, had no understanding of the procreation of children: for it was necessary that they should first come to adult age, and then multiply from that time onward), having become disobedient, was made the cause of death, both to herself and to the entire human race; so also did Mary, having a man betrothed [to her], and being nevertheless a virgin, by yielding obedience, become the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race." +Irenaeus Against Heresies, Book III, Chapter 22
"Wherefore we acknowledge one Christ, one Son, our Lord Jesus Christ; knowing that being coeternal with His own Father as touching His Godhead, by virtue of which also He is creator of all, He deigned, after the assent of the Holy Virgin, when she said to the angel ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word’ to build after an ineffable fashion a temple out of her for Himself, and to unite this temple to Himself by her conception, not taking and uniting with Himself a body coeternal with His own substance, and brought from heaven, but of the matter of our substance, that is of the Virgin." Blessed Theodoretus, Bishop of Cyrus, Dialogue II
In consequence of this, Orthodoxy also teaches and holds, and I suspect the Latin Church does too, "...the Virign Mary is honored noy only because God chose her, or because she bore the Son of God in the flesh, but also because she herself chose to believe and obey God firmly."
I don't disagree at all. I think you have trouble with my concept that inevitability doesn't destroy the reality of her free-will decision to assent. The difference, I think is that I am friendlier to the concept of predestination than you by virtue of my Reformed tradition.
I think we agree a lot more than we disagree. We agree Mary was freely obedient, that she was preserved righteous by sanctifying grace, and this sanctifying grace was not intrinsic to her, but was rather divine in origin. The disagreements between me as a Protestant and you as Orthodox and Campion as Catholic are relatively small. The outer bounds of Mary's sanctifying grace are the main source of our disagreement - the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics believe Mary must have been preserved sinless (although I understand the logical chain of inferences the Catholics and the Orthodox follow to get to that conclusion), whereas I as a Protestant do not see that as theologically necessary. With that reservation, as a Protestant, I stand with Calvin and Luther in noting that Mary was quite the virtuous woman and one of the premier models for a Christian to emulate for obedience to the Almighty.
Remember - as a Predestinarian, I don't think "free choice" and inevitability are mutually exclusive - nor do I think predestination of anyone's choices, let alone that of Mary, would render them an automaton. As Phil 2:13 states - God is at work in us both to will and to work his good pleasure. The mechanism whereby our free will is conformed with his is quite a mystery, but it is clearly taught in the New Testament.
It seems a good and reasonable inference that this mechanism, however it works, applied to the Theokotos too.
(Campion - I meant to ping you above.)
Show-off.
I know.
If Mary is the second Eve, then she was like the first Eve, and the first Eve wa perfectly capable of saying "No."
But, of course not only are you the only one who knows what the Bible says, but you also know what Catholics really really mean deep down inside.
That's nice, dear. Run along and play now.
So Doc:
I gave you three quotes from Scripture. And you STILL haven't 'splained how it is okay to present a dependent clause from a sentence in the New Testament as evidence for a point of view, when the main clause would bring out nuances and challenges that substantially weaken the effectiveness of the dependent clause as an argument clincher.
This isn't high school forensics, here. Someone posts and incredibly venomous attack on someone -- all in the name of Love, don't you know. Then some folks who seem, more or less, to agree with the poster, if not with the writer of the article come roaring in, like orcs behind the boss Nazgul, to make a lot of offensive and mendacious comments about Catholics, again in the name of Love. And, then, like the skyrockets at the end of a hot July 4th evening, we end with ears_to_hear telling us he knows better than we do what we really mean and we're wrong to mean it and you offering half a verse to support an argument.
Reminds me of the time I called up one of my profs to help find a citation -- I'd left my concordance in my other pants -- and he said,"Darn it, Dawg, I'm asleep." I apologized profusely and said I'd call again in the morning. He said, "No, I'm awake and up now. I'm going from bed to verse."
Okay. Maybe you had to be there.
Thanks. Really lovely.
It was funny, really.
English cognates are irrelevant. The argument that presbuteros is the root for our word "priest," so presbuters must, of course, have cultic priestly duties (using "cultic" as a term of art, not as an attack) is an exegetical fallacy. The fact that, 2000 years later, presbuteros has come to mean "priest" in an unrelated language that has undergone centuries of cultural evolution is of no probative value in this discussion. Far more important is the semantic domain of presbuteros in the secular and ancient Christian world near the first century.
In the ancient secular world, presbuteros was frequently used as a title for the Spartan president of a college, in Egyptian inscriptions both in the Ptolemaic and Imperial periods to describe the board of national husbandmen, members in a miller's guild, and village government officials with administrative and judicial functions. In the ancient Jewish world, the term "presbyter" was used to refer the entire aristocratic gerousia, and eventually came to refer to the lay members on the Sanhedrin who were not members of the priestly families (and so the Sanhedrin was never within the hands of the presbuteroi.)
In the New Testament, presbyters clearly had teaching and disciplinary powers (1Pt. 5:2, Ac. 20:28, 1Ti. 5:17). In 1Timothy, Paul seems to use the phrase episkopos and presbuteros interchangeably, since they have the same powers (cf. 1Ti. 5:17 with 3:5, 3:2, and Tit. 1:9). This would lead to the inference (though not necessary) that the two are the same office.
Now, admittedly, the cultic ministry of the presbyters is referred to in the earliest of extrabiblical Christian literature (specifically, 1Clement 40:2; 44:2-6). According to Clement, the presbyters were tasked with presenting the offerings of the congregation (44:4) and were cultic officers of the church's Eucharist. Importantly, 1Clement 40-43 placed presbuteros expressly in the line of succession with Old Testament priests. By the time the Shepherd of Hermas was written, there was clearly an established presbyteral order with dignity derived from their association with the apostles. (Shep. visions 3, 5, 1).
This entire post is plagarized (but paraphrased) from the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. 6, pp. 672-673.
"The difference, I think is that I am friendlier to the concept of predestination than you by virtue of my Reformed tradition."
Its a hard topic, but one which the Fathers wrote on a good deal. What do you think of this from +John Damacene Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith Book II Chap. XXX:
"We ought to understand that while God knows all things beforehand, yet He does not predetermine all things. For He knows beforehand those things that are in our power, but He does not predetermine them. For it is not His will that there should be wickedness nor does He choose to compel virtue. So that predetermination is the work of the divine command based on fore-knowledge . But on the other hand God predetermines those things which are not within our power in accordance with His prescience. For already God in His prescience has prejudged all things in accordance with His goodness and justice.
Bear in mind, too, that virtue is a gift from God implanted in our nature, and that He Himself is the source and cause of all good, and without His co-operation and help we cannot will or do any good thing, But we have it in our power either to abide in virtue and follow God, Who calls us into ways of virtue, or to stray from paths of virtue, which is to dwell in wickedness, and to follow the devil who summons but cannot compel us. For wickedness is nothing else than the withdrawal of goodness, just as darkness is nothing else than the withdrawal of light While then we abide in the natural state we abide in virtue, but when we deviate from the natural state, that is from virtue, we come into an unnatural state and dwell in wickedness.
Repentance is the returning from the unnatural into the natural state, from the devil to God, through discipline and effort.
Man then the Creator made male, giving him to share in His own divine grace, and bringing him thus into communion with Himself: and thus it was that he gave in the manner of a prophet the names to living flyings, with authority as though they were given to be his slaves. For having been endowed with reason and mind, and free-will after the image of God, he was filly entrusted with dominion over earthly things by the common Creator and Master of all.
But since God in His prescience knew that man would transgress and become liable to destruction, He made from him a female to be a help to him like himself; a help, indeed, for the conservation of the race after the transgression from age to age by generation. For the earliest formation is called 'making' and not 'generation.' For 'making' is the original formation at God's hands, while 'generation' is the succession from each Other made necessary by the sentence of death imposed on us on account of the transgression.
This man He placed in Paradise, a home that was alike spiritual and sensible. For he lived in the body on the earth in the realm of sense, while he dwelt in the spirit among the angels, cultivating divine thoughts, and being supported by them: living in naked simplicity a life free from artificiality, and being led up through His creations to the one and only Creator, in Whose contemplation he found joy and gladness.
When therefore He had furnished his nature with free-will, He imposed a law on him, not to taste of the tree of knowledge. Concerning this tree, we have said as much as is necessary in the chapter about Paradise, at least as much as it was in our power to say. And with this command He gave the promise that, if he should preserve the dignity of the soul by giving the victory to reason, and acknowledging his Creator and observing His command, he should share eternal blessedness and live to all eternity, proving mightier than death: but if forsooth he should subject the soul to the body, and prefer the delights of the body, comparing himself in ignorance of his true dignity to the senseless beasts , and shaking off Iris Creator's yoke, and neglecting His divine injunction, he will be liable to death and corruption, and will be compelled to labour throughout a miserable life. For it was no profit to man to obtain incorruption while still untried and unproved, lest he should fall into pride and under the judgment of the devil. For through his incorruption the devil, when he had fallen as the result of his own free choice, was firmly established in wickedness, so that there was no room for repentance and no hope of change: just as, moreover, the angels also, when they had made free choice of virtue became through grace immoveably rooted in goodness.
It was necessary, therefore, that man should first be put to the test (for man untried and unproved would be worth nothing), and being made perfect by the trial through the observance of the command should thus receive incorruption as the prize of his virtue. For being intermediate between God and matter he was destined, if he kept the command, to be delivered from his natural relation to existing things and to be made one with God's estate, and to be immoveably established in goodness, but, if he transgressed and inclined the rather to what was material, and tore his mind from the Author of his being, I mean God, his fate was to be corruption, and he was to become subject to passion instead of passionless, and mortal instead of immortal, and dependent on connection and unsettled generation. And in his desire for life he would cling to pleasures as though they were necessary to maintain it, and would fearlessly abhor those who sought to deprive him of these, and transfer his desire from God to matter, and his anger from the real enemy of his salvation to his own brethren. The envy of the devil then was the reason of man's fall. For that same demon, so full of envy and with such a hatred of good, would not suffer us to enjoy the pleasures of heaven, when he himself was kept below on account of his arrogance, and hence the false one tempts miserable man with the hope of Godhead, and leading him up to as great a height of arrogance as himself, he hurls him down into a pit of destruction just as deep."
I have to say that the ancient usage of Presbytera probably answers the question of what the NT meaning of Prebyteros was.
Probably - although one cannot foreclose the possibility that the role of presbuteros evolved as Christianity evolved from an illegal religion.
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