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To: Forest Keeper
Then I quoted Ignatius saying that it was of a normal type.

Look again at the entire quotation from Ignatius. Here it is:

"... But as for me, I do not place my hopes in one who died for me in appearance, but in reality. For that which is false is quite abhorrent to the truth. Mary then did truly conceive a body which had God inhabiting it. And God the Word was truly born of the Virgin, having clothed Himself with a body of like passions with our own. He who forms all men in the womb, was Himself really in the womb, and made for Himself a body of the seed of the Virgin, but without any intercourse of man. He was carried in the womb, even as we are, for the usual period of time; and was really born, as we also are; and was in reality nourished with milk, and partook of common meat and drink, even as we do. ..."

Here's the relevant line from Ignatius:

"...and was really born, as we also are"

Ignatius does not say "of a normal type". He says that Christ was "really born", as we also are "really born". That says absolutely nothing about whether Mary endured pain in the birth or whether Mary's virginity was preserved through the birth. In the context of the whole paragraph (and the heresies Ignatius is confronting in his time), Ignatius is not attempting to deal with the particularities of the manner of the birth. He is defending the incarnation, that Christ was really human, that He was really conceived in the womb of Mary without the seed of man, that He was really carried in Mary's womb for nine months, and that He was really born, and really nursed. If children had been born to Eve prior to the Fall, they too would have been "really born" even as we are really born, but without the pain that resulted from the curse. So the "and was really born as we also are", refers to the *really born*, meaning really came out of her womb. It says nothing about the particularities of that real birth, because Ignatius is not trying to saying about those particularities; he's addressing docetism, not antidicomarianism.

You have to be careful to read the fathers carefully, and not make them say what you want them to say, but let them say only what they are trying to say. And that requires being very aware of the context in which they are writing.

-A8

1,390 posted on 12/14/2006 7:25:55 AM PST by adiaireton8 ("There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse." - Plato, Phaedo 89d)
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To: adiaireton8; xzins
Here's the relevant line from Ignatius: "...and was really born, as we also are"

Ignatius does not say "of a normal type". He says that Christ was "really born", as we also are "really born". That says absolutely nothing about whether Mary endured pain in the birth or whether Mary's virginity was preserved through the birth.

If that's true then his word choice was extraordinarily poor. However, this would be in full accordance with other writings of the Magisterium in terms of scripture interpretation. I understand the part that all of scripture was written in secret code, but now we have the Fathers' themselves also writing in secret code. Who interprets them? :)

The context of Ignatius is absolutely clear to me. He was describing the humanity of Jesus and pointing out that His birth was of the same kind as our own. It makes no sense whatsoever to me that his real meaning was "Jesus was fully human. In fact, He spent some time in the womb. However, the similarities end there because He was magically transported out of Mary's womb, and Mary had no birth pains." This is not credible. Let's look at a passage yet again:

He was carried in the womb, even as we are, for the usual period of time; and was really born, as we also are; and was in reality nourished with milk, and partook of common meat and drink, even as we do. ..."

So, you are saying that for the first one, it means He was in the womb just like we are. However, for the second one, a totally different metric applies because the birth process was not like ours at all. You say the only thing that matters is that He was born at all, by any supernatural method, totally unlike us. However again, in the third one, we go back to everything being normal and like us again.

If all this is true, then I suppose that would make Ignatius among the most cryptic authors in the history of literature, second only to the Apostles themselves, according to the interpretations of their writings we get from the Magisterium. :)

You have to be careful to read the fathers carefully, and not make them say what you want them to say, but let them say only what they are trying to say.

I'll never trust the actual words of a Father again. :)

1,617 posted on 12/16/2006 4:22:56 PM PST by Forest Keeper
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