Posted on 04/09/2008 12:36:13 PM PDT by annalex
Psalms 68: Douay-Rheims
9 I am become a stranger to my brethren, and an alien to the sons of my mother.
>>The beauty of it is that God CHOSE to have a mother-son relationship in taking the flesh. Since God does nothing imperfectly, to ignore the significance of God’s decision to enter into such a relationship is sheer folly. To deny that the relationship even existed is pure heresy.<<
I’m only seeing a couple on this thread that are doing that. Most here that are in disagreement as to the original subject of the thread are clearly giving that Mary was the mother (lower case) of God. It is the virtual/literal deificaton of Mary that many here are taking exception to.
And if Mary truly was a “woman of god” I suspect that after the “until” passed, her relationship with her betrothed was at least somewhat in line with 1 Corrinthians. Especially what with all Jesus siblings.
There is no remotely compelling evidence within the Bible to suggest otherwise.
>>I had a fierce desire for children by the time I was 12.<<
Yeah. In my generation, girls wanted children. Boys wanted “stuff”. Both are genetic.
I would say that is little proof of a theme- say... Mary as Co-Redemtrix, Mary as Co-Mediatrix... There is nothing.
Just because she is mentioned in passing (which the lion's share of those descriptions are) does not present a theme.
I will grant you the themes of "The Virgin Birth" and "Blessed Virgin", as an example, and that those must certainly refer to Mary, but they do not instruct us to venerate her in the method and veracity as found in your traditions.
>>And why wouldn’t have Mary been willing to sacrifice that personal desire after her first?<<
A more burning question may be, why WOULD she?
>>That is the essence of our modern-day product of Luther and Calvin: they reject the Pope because they want Luther or Calvin to be their pope; or, worse still, they want to be their own pope (”autopapists?”).<<
Actually, for all the Protties I know, it is that they consider their “Pope” to be Jesus. There is NOTHING between us and Jesus. All religious leaders are like elected politicians. They are our servants, not our “in with God”.
That’s Jesus’ role.
We need no Pope.
a) The "perspicuity" of the Scriptures and
b) The private interpretation thereof
are fundamental principles of Protestantism. I believe I have seen both explicitly articulated on this thread.
The odd thing about those principles are that they give neither "Smith" nor "Jones" any grounds with which to beat the other up over Scriptural interpretation. Neither Smith's nor Jones' interpretation is necessarily any better than the other, even if they are contradictory. Yet we have no end of Protestant Smiths berating Catholic Joneses for "wrongly" interpreting Scripture. Where is their authority to do so? Who are they to hold up their interpretation as CORRECT? The answers, of course, are "nowhere" and "nobody". The whole business is insane. It illustrates to me why God left us with a "church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth", and further illustrates the perils of abandoning His church.
****************
Agreed!
Of course, but to what end is it ordained?
The irony is that the only people who claim that Mary is a goddess are the Protestants. We don't deify her anymore than you deify your own mother with the special love you have for her (I presume). If God would deign to send out sinful men to spread His sinless Gospel, where is the inconsistency in setting aside a mortal woman to be mother of his flesh, which contained inseparably both Jesus the man and Jesus the Son?
I get that it's not logical that Mary could be mother to something uncreated. But it's no less logical than an eternal God who has seen the beginning, middle, and end somehow inserting Himself into a finite body and the constraints of time to accomplish salvation of the world. In other words, if Mary somehow only mothered the human nature of Christ, do you also assert that only the human nature of Christ died on the cross? If the uncreated can't be mothered, then the immortal certainly can't die, in which case, God didn't die for our sins, just some guy named Jesus.
>>Poor Mary. Her sex life is a subject of endless fascination for Protestants.<<
Not outside this thread it isn’t.
It is just assumed that it is something normal married human beings do. It is when someone argues, from a Christian perspective, that a particular person DOES NOT do it that I kind of cock my head and go “Say what? Why are they even bringing it up?”.
And that last sentence pretty much wraps up everything I have been trying to say with every post.
Say what? Why are they even bringing it up?
And why would God demand such a thing? He didn’t demand an equal sacrifice from any of the others who served Him.
Also, if such a thing is true, a marriage to Joseph would be completely unnecessary, and totally unfair to him.
If you'll forgive my truncating of your post, I would like to offer agreement. That sense, or the meaning, fits best within not only the context of the whole Word, but fortified also by the testimonies of a great many, and what they themselves have received by the Spirit.
I cannot argue much at all with the balance of your post, either. Dittos to chuckles!
“suggenes” is not “cousins”, it is “relatives”, — perhaps too broad and distant, when the speaker’s intention is to imply an intimate relation to plain Nazarene folk.
Second time I ask, what does Psalm 68 have to do with Jesus or His mother?
Psalms 68: Douay-Rheims
3 I stick fast in the mire of the deep: and there is no sure standing. I am come into the depth of the sea: and a tempest hath overwhelmed me.
Did Christ suffer a literal Poseidon Adventure not mentioned elsewhere in the Bible?
>>and further illustrates the perils of abandoning His church.<<
His church is the body of believers.
>>The odd thing about those principles are that they give neither “Smith” nor “Jones” any grounds with which to beat the other up over Scriptural interpretation. Where is their authority to do so? Who are they to hold up their interpretation as CORRECT? The answers, of course, are “nowhere” and “nobody”.<<
Would you feel that way if one side was denying the deity of Christ?
We actually ALL have the God given authority to interpret scripture. We also have the God given authority to accept or reject someone elses interpretation.
Nice strawman.
Mary’s role in salvation history enables us to call her co-Redemptrix, as God chose her as the vehicle fo the Incarnation. Co-Mediatrix follows from her urging Jesus to begin His ministry on earth at Cana by pointing at a humble need of His people.
>>The irony is that the only people who claim that Mary is a goddess are the Protestants.<<
I’m not seeing that anywhere.
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