Posted on 10/06/2010 7:56:37 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
Overall, Catholics liked the movie "The Nativity" but had several problems with it. For one thing they changed Scripture during the closing of the movie. On the screen they flashed the Bible passage from Luke 1:46-54. But they left out the words "for me" from middle of the sentence "The Lord has done great things for me, and Holy is his name." I don't think they should have taken that out of the Word of God, without using any elypses to show they skipped it. Another issue with the movie is they showed Mary screaming and pushing in pain as she gave birth to Jesus.
The Early Church Fathers are almost unanimous in the assertion that the birth was painless and had no loss of Mary's virginal integrity during the birth. In other words, her Hymen didn't break. St. Augustine said "Jesus passed through the womb of Mary as a ray of sun passes through glass." Pope Martin in 649 AD defined the doctrine that Mary:
Yes.
“misanthropic”
Your vocabulary doesn’t seem to be having a lapse. :)
That wasn’t the word I needed in the previous sentence!
The Church doesn't deny that at all. In fact, she herself recognized that. The actual debate is over WHEN she was saved. The Church teaches that she was preemptively saved, preserved from the stain of original sin, at her conception.
Mary did not need to be sinless so that Jesus could be sinless. Jesus is God and therefore sinless.
Mary, as the Ark of the New Covenant needed to be pure in order to hold the Word of God.
The Old Testament speaks of people being killed if they inappropriately touched the Ark of the Convenant, which contained the written word of God given to Moses and some of the manna in the desert. The Ark's construction was directed by God Himself to precise specifications and of the most precious materials available to the Israelites.
Fast forward to the Incarnation of Our Lord, who is the Word Himself and the "Bread of Life" come down from Heaven. Are you saying that God would treat His Mother (and Mary is His Mother because Jesus is God) in a different fashion than He treated the Ark of the Covenant?
Catholic Biblical Apologetics: Mary: Virgin and Ever Virgin
Luther, Calvin, and Other Early Protestants on the Perpetual Virginity of Mary
Luther, Calvin, and Other Early Protestants on the Perpetual Virginity of Mary
The Protestant Reformers on the Virgin Mary
Zwingli’s’ Mariology: On Mary “Full of Grace”
I think that Protestants do not accept Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant, nor do they understand that all the doctrines regarding Mary are a direct understanding and defense of who Jesus is, not who Mary is.
Many, much like an earlier poster here, seem to resent that Mary is elevated in any way, or that she is more blessed than anyone else.
God chose her, over all others, and prepared her to be the Mother of the Lord God, Jesus.
She was pure. Sinless and pure are two different things. The gold that was used in the ark of the covenant was not FOUND perfect. It was refined. Mary had relationship with God and loved Him. She found favor in with God because of her faith not because she was perfect.
I have heard others say that Mary had to be sinless because if she had sinned she would have passed on this sin to Jesus.
Also, I think Protestants do not understand that everything that was given to Mary will also be given to all those who believe and do the will of the Father.
Isn’t that OUR GOAL, to be in heaven with Jesus for eternity?
Isn’t that OUR GOAL, to wear the crown of the righteous?
Thanks for the scriptural documentation of that view. I’m still of the belief that James and Judas (from Acts) were Jesus’ half-brothers, and I also reject the notion of anyone being sinless except Jesus, but I’ll certainly be reading the scriptural references you provided. I should also mention that Mary’s perpetual virginity isn’t really in any way central to my faith, but if I thought she was sinless, I’d have to do so by tossing out the Bible, which clearly states that ALL have sinned...
Thanks for the scriptural documentation of that view. I’m still of the belief that James and Judas (from Acts) were Jesus’ half-brothers, and I also reject the notion of anyone being sinless except Jesus, but I’ll certainly be reading the scriptural references you provided. I should also mention that Mary’s perpetual virginity isn’t really in any way central to my faith, but if I thought she was sinless, I’d have to do so by tossing out the Bible, which clearly states that ALL have sinned...
No one resents Mary. The account of her in the Bible is awe inspiring to me. Could you imagine knowing that you were responsible for raising the Son of God? It gives me chills and makes me cry to just think about it. She is more blessed than me to be sure!!! However, I don’t need to believe things about her that the Bible never states and in places contradicts. I don’t need to raise her to the status of sinlessness to understand that she was special in God’s redemptive plan for mankind.
Not so. But I see you've been corrected here, so I just want to add that Mary had the same human nature as, say, Eve (and Adam, too, of course) before sin. That is to say, pre-sin, human nature had a certain natural excellence: the human body was not subject to disease, aging, death and decay, the mind was not clouded and weak, the emotions and passions weren't all outta whack. This is the undamaged nature we would have all inherited from our First Parents, Adam and Eve, had they not sinned.
Since the Catholic Church teaches that only one of Jesus' parents was human (the other was Divine), Jesus must have inherited his entire human nature from His mother. Since we believe that Jesus was not a screwed-up individual, but had a Plan A Excellent Eden-type human nature ("True" God and "True" Man), it follows that his mother's human nature must have been preserved from sin and the effects of sin, preveniently, that is, in view of the fact that He would be born from her.
So one question that occurred to people was, "Well, if it weren't for Eve's sin and the Curse and all that, would childbirth have been painful ordeal of blood and struggle and bruising and anguish, as it is now for most of womankind (absent the improvements of modern obstetrics)?"
And the answer is, "No, if it weren't for Eve's sin and the Curse, childbirth wouldn't involve pain and a boody mess and crying out and all the rest."
This line of thinking contributed to the idea that when Jesus was born of Mary, it would have been unmarred by the effects of Original Sin. The significance of Mary being a virgin "in partu" is not that she didn't have intercourse, but that even in childbirth she didn't experience suffering and "corruption", meaning not moral corruption, but the experience of fleshly weakness, fear, travail, and exhaustion which are evidences of our now-damaged human condition. (I'm using "corruption" in the physical sense of "tending toward failure, death and decay".)
This does not indicate that Mary would have been divine or semi-divine. It indicates that, in view of her future motherhood of our Lord, she was given the sheer free gift and grace of being human --- "blessed"-- the way humans were originally meant to be.
Mary was made perfect by God, who knew that she would say yes to Him, for He knows all things from the beginning to the end. So, before she was conceived, God perfected her in preparation for the mission she would agree to. It was her faith and love for Him that led to that yes, and knowing it, He gave her what she needed to bear His Word.
Very well stated.
Could you provide me with scriptural reference for this? If I am to believe a doctrinal issue it must be clear to me from the Word of God not the words of men.
I do believe that Mary was sinless when she conceived Jesus (her sins were forgiven). The old convenant provided a way for Mary to be forgiven of her sins. However, I don’t believe that Mary never sinned. The Bible contradicts this claim and you have provided no Biblical reference to support it. Only your words.
Judas is described as James' son in Acts 1:13, so we can safely discard the possibility that James and Judas were both half-brothers to anyone. Meanwhile, Judas describes himself in his own epistle as James' "brother", demonstrating that the word "brother" had a lot of fluidity in Hebraic usage, whether Greek or Hebrew was the actual language of composition.
And James' father is specified in Scripture, and it's not Joseph. His name is Alphaeus, who may be the same person as Clopas (a Hebrew/Greek name dualism, like Saul/Paul).
The Lutheran scholar Joachim Jeremias demolishes all "Mary had other children" arguments by pointing out that Jesus gave Mary to John on the cross. Unless you want to argue that all of Jesus' alleged siblings predeceased him, then either Mary had no other children, or Jesus sinned by absolving his siblings of their duty to care for Mary under the Torah commandment.
Mary was not raised to the status of sinlessness. She was preserved from sin in order to carry the Living Word of God.
Why do you think that if humans were meant to be blessed, God would create something that would tempt them, and as a result, lead them to a state of sin?
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