[the_conscience]

Here’s one:

1. God must be incarnated by an immaculate woman.

2. Jesus is God

3. Mary is a woman

Conc: Mary is immaculate

A good argument?

[RedHeeler]

Do you care?

[boatbums]

1. God has always existed and created all things
2. God created Mary
3. Mary is a Jewish virgin
4. God took on human form through being born of a virgin, Mary
5. Mary is the mother of the incarnated God - TRUE

6. Mary is the mother of God - FALSE

[D-fendr]

>>>>”A good argument?”

1. God must be incarnated by an immaculate woman.
2. Jesus is God
3. Mary is a woman
Conc: Mary is immaculate

You’d need “4. Mary incarnated Jesus”
for a better argument.

And it’d be better from an objective perspective to use “give/gave birth to” instead of “incarnate” in order to simplify the terms and remove as much complexity as possible without harming the point of the proof.

If you did these two things then the syllogism would be closer to proper form. However...

The original syllogism we were looking at proof for was:

Jesus is God
Mary is the mother of Jesus
Mary is the mother of God

The first premise, Jesus is God, would need to be proven; unless of course, both sides of the argument are willing to accept this as fact. Then the second premise, the same. The conclusion is true if the first and second premises are true - by definition of terms. So, it’s pretty tight for Christians, those accepting the divinity of Christ and Mary as his mother.

Now, in your new syllogism, we have the same consideration to deal with in the first premise: God must be incarnated by an immaculate woman.

This would have to be either proven or postulated by mutual agreement.

I don’t think you are willing to accept it, and the Catholic doctrine does not assert it.

I realize that many use something similar to your syllogism to argue for the Immaculate Conception; however, this has logical problems (among them infinite regress) for me personally - I’ve never used it or given it much weight. Others see it differently, but I haven’t seen a tight logic for it.

And it’s not required that I, or any other Catholic, give it weight or teach it or hold to it as doctrine.

The doctrine is not that Immaculate Conception was a requirement for Jesus’ birth, but that it was a “singular privilege and grace of God.” The full declaration is:

“We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the first instant of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was preserved immaculate from all stain of original sin, has been revealed by God, and therefore should firmly and constantly be believed by all the faithful.

Therefore, neither of us is accepting your first premise, so you must prove it, by another syllogism, in order to hope for a valid conclusion. I doubt you have a proof you accept, given that it’s most likely you don’t accept the IC.

So, I don’t see this route as something you’d pursue in your path to a simple syllogism to prove that “Mary is not the mother of God.”

[Mad Dawg]

MY problem with that argument is that the first premise is not self-evident (to me, at least, but I'm kinda thick).

That's why I limit my related assertions to language like "it is fitting that God be incarnate in ....). And if I were asked why I think that I would START by saying, "Well, the Church teaches that she is immaculate, and what's kind of neat about that is blah blah blah...."

As far as I can see the argument as you make it is internally okay, but, as I say, the first proposition is difficult. It seems to be that (while it's silly to talk this way) if God wanted to be incarnate in a hooker with a drug habit He could do it. I'm sure not going to tell Him how and where and when to do it.

(In fact, once at an AA meeting in Boston, I met a hooker in whose heart God was clearly struggling to be born. She had been converted, as far as I could see, sola gratia.)
(Ahem, for the record, I was there as part of my clinical work in chemical dependency.)

But, once He's done it, I can find reasons it's 'fitting' for it to have been done in such and such a way.

Is that at ALL clear? Sometimes I feel like I open my mouth (or bash my keyboard) and only fog comes out.