I see what you're saying, but I respectfully disagree. What do you think of this? :
Gen 4:6-11 : 6 Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." 8 Now Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the field." And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. 9 Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?" 10 The Lord said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. 11 Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.
If you were Cain's lawyer, would you have said "But God, you never told Cain that killing was a sin"? Probably not. :) Indeed, even earlier we are told that Adam and Eve had a knowledge of "good and evil". So, I don't think that a lack of formal declaration of law relieves one from responsibility for sin. Now, there might be a case to be made for non-obvious or counterintuitive laws such as the dietary laws. Therefore, we have to decide whether what Noah did is of a kind as this.
I would not think so given that: as already discussed this was not Noah's first tilt, and he knew the effects of alcohol. He knew that drinking too much could cause one to lose control of one's faculties. Further, he knew that nakedness (in this context) was a sin from the story of Adam and Eve. Therefore, I would apply the felony murder rule here. :) -- For those who don't know, normally if you kill someone purely by accident (hunting, etc.) you are not charged with murder. However, if you accidentally kill someone while robbing a bank you DO get charged with murder. The idea is that you assume that risk when you make the original wrongful decision to rob the bank. -- I see Noah as falling into this category, given what he DID know at the time.
... historically, wine was not drunk for recreation as we do it, but because it was often the only way to hydrate your body in the field.
What??? Wine is a DE-hydrant because of the alcohol.
FK: "Jesus elevated the faith of the centurion above that of the Jews who HAD seen Him and known of Him."
That He did, at the expense of the Jews who were not equally quick to believe in Him without signs and miracles. Mary is not in that circle of comparison. The text says: "such great faith": not any faith but such faith that comes with zero prior knowledge.
In your immediately (unrelated) prior comment you said: "Again, this is a theory, and I am interested in what the scripture has to say." Sounds perfectly good to me. Why do you abandon it so quickly? :) You are building in something from nothing here. Jesus says: "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel." That's it, no qualifiers. Mary is either part of "Israel" or she is not.
The patristic teaching as I know it was that Mary was the first capable of saying "yes" and meaning it. If mankind were ready for Christ a second sooner, He would have come a second sooner. But this is precisely why we venerate Mary so much.
Do you mean to say that God was standing on the sidelines, waiting for man to be "ready" before Christ was sent? That makes no sense to me because surely Mary was not the first Godly (righteous) woman. The OT has plenty of them. What are you saying?
FK: "Didn't God's foreknowledge of her "yes" include His giving of the special grace? That would take the decision out of Mary's hands and ruin everything."
No it doesn't, -- God gives all of us grace, but the decision to accept it is ours, as it was Mary's.
Now wait a minute. :) You hail Mary because she was full of grace. You can't tell me now that it was the same grace that everyone else is free to receive. It had to have been some kind of exclusive, special grace that is not available to anyone else. Otherwise, you have to convince me that no one else has "chosen" to partake of it either before OR AFTER Mary. Why would none of you good Catholics choose to accept such grace?
Plus, I thought that the Immaculate Conception meant that Mary was graced in her mother's womb. Mary certainly never accepted that!
No, because Cain inherited from his parents the knowledge of good and evil. That implies the knowledge of God as well as sin (so he was not completely "dead" as the Reformed believe). That makes him liable in his freedom to choose. Besides, the ignorance of the law does not make you innocent if you break it.
Wine is a DE-hydrant because of the alcohol
Not in small quantities to any significant extent. A wine that is 10-12% alcohol still contains between 90-88% water. Any sugar in the wine will also contribute to dehydration, but dehydration is significant only in large quantities.
The reason they drank wine over water was hygienic. One was sure that wine would not make you sick. The same could not be said of water. Besides, they didn't really guzzle wine the way we do. They sponged it by dipping dry and often hard pita bread into it to soften it and that alone prevented anyone from getting drunk or dehydrated on a cupful or two of wine (as the wine remained in the bread while it was slowly digested).
You can read all this into the story. You can also, with Ping-Pong a few posts down, read incest into it. I simply go by the text: Noah is described by doing the natural thing without any sinful intent. He worked, then he drank wine, and feeling tired went to his tent to sleep, and his clothes shifted. A desire to get drunk is not mentioned, a loss of self control even is not mentioned as attributable to wine. The only person blamed is his son. Cain, in contrast, is described as sinning. The plain text favors Noah and disfavors Cain. You try to attach sin to Noah, and I point out that it is not the natural reading, especially since the law of Moses was not in operation.
Also mind you that my point is not necessarily that Noah is sinless, but that the scripture describes him as a sinless, in another contradiction to the absolute reading of Romans 3..
That's it, no qualifiers. Mary is either part of "Israel" or she is not.
The qualifier is "such great faith". It points to the faith specific to the Centurion, that is faith without familiarity with the person of Jesus.
Do you mean to say that God was standing on the sidelines, waiting for man to be "ready" before Christ was sent?
God was busy giving Israel the Law, which promulgated the concept of purity, which in due time culminated in Mary's exceptional purity, per Luke 1:28.
Why would none of you good Catholics choose to accept such grace?
It is of course same grace; one of the reasons to pray to Mary is to learn form her how to accept divine grace given us.