Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
Posted on 12/08/2011 8:03:11 AM PST by fishtank
A Biblical Basis for the "Immaculate Conception"?
A Review and Rebuttal of Patrick Madrid's Article "Ark of the New Covenant" in "This Rock" magazine, December 1991.
by James White
Catholic Answers has some interesting ways of grabbing your attention. By placing the beginning paragraph or two of the lead article of their monthly magazine, This Rock, on the very cover of the work, they draw your attention into reading the rest of the article. True to form, the December, 1991 edition sported Pat Madrid's article, "Ark of the New Covenant" with the interesting lead in, "His face stiffened, and his eyes narrowed to slits. Until now the Calvary Chapel pastor had been calm as he `shared the gospel' with me, but when I mentioned my belief in Mary's Immaculate Conception, his attitude changed." Using a "real-life" backdrop for the presentation of some particular topic is another fine writing tool used by the folks at Catholic Answers. As you continue to read about this encounter, you discover that our author, Pat Madrid, is going to provide Biblical support for his belief in the Immaculate Conception of Mary. He writes of his encounter with the Protestant pastor,
More at link......
I do not understand anything about people that would be consumed with hatred for God.
Why does your understanding matter? And why do you care? Why can’t you accept ambiguity?
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
??? why did you address this to me, if you didn’t want a response?
Well, MHGinTN, this is moving quickly toward the pointless. You specifically declared that Mary was not - NOT - genetically the mother of our Lord. Now, you are saying that maybe she was, and that we can’t know.
You are also redefining the term “mother of.” You seem comfortable saying that He was conceived within her and that she gave birth to Him. What you seem to be avoiding is calling her His mother, which the Bible has no hesitation in doing so, e.g., Luke 2:33, in which context her relationship to Him is strikingly noted as different than that of Joseph to Him.
I find your insistence that the Scripture would need to say explicitly that Jesus is of Mary’s ovum before one could say that she is His biological, genetic mother to be very troubling. Words have a meaning. In the given contexts where Mary’s motherhood of Jesus is noted in the Holy Scriptures there is no call whatever to take the word mother in any metaphorical manner, which is what you are saying whether you agree or not.
Since you insist upon Mary's ovum being at least half of the chromosome complement for Jesus, perhaps you will explain for me how it is that Adam's original sin is passed to any other human descendant of Adam and why Mary would needs be sinless, genetically. Because you are asserting that somehow Mary's genetic contribution had to be sinless, thus you have apparently some means by which to explain the passing of Adam's sin nature to his desecendants such that this passing may be 'cured' with Mary?
What I am seeking to sort out for you is that unless there is some biological/genetic means by which Adam's original sin nature can be passed to Mary (a means which you have yet to point to), then there is no reason she would have to be sinless in gestating Jesus in her womb.
Mary is The Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible declares it and I believe it completely. The Bible does not specify just how she is the Mother of Jesus genetically.
The Bible gives the lineage of Joseph for paternal descendant rights conveyed to Jesus, and the lineage of Mary also, for maternal lineage rights.
Mary is not 'metaphorically' the Mother of Jesus. She bore Him in her body for the nine months of His gestation. She is physically His Mother, just as a woman may be The mother of one conceived in vitro and implanted in her body for the nine months of gestation. I'm sorry that trips you a bit, but there it is. We believe God miraculously conceived Jesus in Mary's womb. That makes her absolutely His Mother.
We do not have any thing further to establish genetic lineage. We do not know How God Did It. The Catholic Church does not know, nor do any other orthodoxies. The Catholic Church wants folks to believe they have the absolute facts on the issue, but they strain at a gnat to make Mary sinless from her mother's womb in order to support their not so specific claims of knowledge. has the Catholic Chruch referred for you just how it is that Adam's original sin is transmitted through the gene pool? If they have, I would like to read that!
As a matter of my personal beliefs, I do not in fact believe that Mary is the genetic Mother of Jesus. I simply do not know how God did it. I do however, most strongly believe that God did IT, conceived Jesus in Mary's womb.
You might want to contemplate the phrase 'conceived in you', because it is entirely possible that The Angel was referring to implantation in Mary's womb, not the union of spermatozoon and ovum conception. My personal belief is that God brought to Mary's womb the already formed embryo-aged Jesus for implantation. God may enter the womb of Mary as easily as Jesus entered the locked and shuttered upper room.
I answered you with questions for you to think on.
MNGinTN wrote:
“My personal belief is that God brought to Mary’s womb the already formed embryo-aged Jesus for implantation.”
So, now you make it clear that you are in fact placing yourself outside of the faith enumerated in the Apostles, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds. That is your prerogative ... unwise though it is ... and you also have demonstrated that the old heresies live on. You really, really cannot bring yourself to say that Mary is the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, even though that is the explicit teaching of the Holy Scriptures and is confessed rightly in the ecumenical creeds. You are dabbling in the kind of suppositions that in time will morph into full-blown abandonment of the plain meaning of Scripture, as it did for Mary Baker Eddy, Joseph Smith, Charles Taze Russell and others, whether in your life or in the lives of those you touch with your suppositions.
And so much for a rational discussion ... Have Nice Day.
Rational or rationalistic?
Very well, by your choice it is the end. But I will have you note that you didn’t want to answer specifically on two matters, first, in regard to the theology of the creeds, which - here is my admission - is the theology of the Holy Scriptures, and second, your reluctance (near refusal) to deal with the fact that the Bible calls Mary the mother of Jesus. Why, I asked myself, why? What is the issue here? You gave me only your speculations, quickly resorting to the terminology of genetics and avoiding the plain language of the Bible.
Your problem, my friend, is a Christological one. You have some issue in regard to the incarnation of Him who is “God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things are made.” In this realm “rational(istic) discussion” is the opposite of faith. Faith takes God at His word. Faith does not put together a rational construct, cherry picking what it wants from the Bible, and in which it then invests believe. That is rationalism.
Now you’re just being a deceiver. Read my post #149 again, if you ever read it. And put some ice on the rest of your sore spots. You are not an honest person to discuss these things with. I will not repond to your further taunting like a child. I have no respect for you or your twisted assertions at this point so ... Have Nice Day.
Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
‘If doing good and being moral makes you feel good, then there’s your reason.’
Why do you believe that your feelings should be the basis for what may be right or wrong? And related to that, do you believe there is an ultimate, unchangeable standardof Right and Wrong? If so what is it?
I am sure, positively sure, that Mr Sandusky would tell you that doing what he did to those boys made him feel good, therefore that was reason enough to do it. Yet what he did was an abomination on may levels.
The law? Whose law? Mans law? When mans law becomes wrong, then it is wrong to live within it. Or, do you believe that regardless, whatever mans law says, that is the way it is and we should comply?
‘What constitutes a scum-bag, is determined a lot by one’s current mores.’
Current mores? There is the crux. There is the problem people have with a holy, just, Law-giving God. What was wrong thousands of years ago is still wrong today. Or more correctly, that which God declared wrong is still wrong today.
Do you believe it is proper or even smart to rely on mans changing standards and morals to base your life on?
I believe this is correct: Trust in the Lord (and all that He is) and lean not to your own understanding.
‘Why does there have to be a hell?’
Why would you believe there is not? If there is to be a place of reward, Why would there not be an opposite place of non-reward?
If your child here behaves, reward is given. If he misbehaves, is not punishment?
Our heavenly Father is the same and will reward the behavior He wants (acceptance of His Son as your Savior) and will punish for the behavior that is unacceptable (rejection of His Son). It all comes down to that. Without Jesus, Mother Theresa goes to hell, with Jesus, the worst you could imagine (Pol Pot? Dahmer? Me?) would rejoice in heaven.
There must be hell because God is just.
Good Morning paladinan, hope all is well with you and yours.
‘1) “Needing a Saviour” does not translate into “having fallen into sin”; I can be saved (for example) from a muddy pit by being pulled out and cleaned off, or I can be saved from a muddy pit by having my Saviour prevent me from falling into the pit in the first place. We fall into the second category; the Blessed Virgin falls into the first. She was not free from sin by any merit of her own, apart from God; rather, she was kept sinless by God, Himself’
I suupose that one could opine that that could be the case. BUT, isn’t it true that Jesus Himself is the only human not to have sinned, who lived a ‘sinless’ life, and therefore was the perfect sacrificial ‘Lamb’? If mary was kept sinless, then SHE could have been that sacrifice, n’est pas?
“Noah was righteous per scripture, and Job was described as Perfect, per King James.
All right; then how do you square this with Romans 3:10? Either “there is none righteous, no, not one”, or there is one (or more) righteous; one cannot have it both ways. There are only three clear possibilities: (a) the Scriptural descriptions of Noah and Job were erroneous; (b) the statement of St. Paul in Romans 3:10 is erroneous; or (c) there is more to these statements than the merest and most flatly “English-face-value-without-context” approch might suggest. I assert to you that (c) is, in fact, the case.’
I will also go with ‘c’. Unfortunately for us, English can be a poor language when compared to others, lacking nuances that can be Very Important to meaning. (Agape vs Phileo vs Eros, yet all translate as ‘love’ into English. Just for an example). So, Job being ‘perfect’ does not necessarily mean ‘sinless’. But rather that he pursued God, folowed His word, which would include repenting of sin as it occurred. The same could be said of Noah.
The Apocrypha are included in the Catholic Bible, not in the King James, except as a reference. There are contradictions in them that rendered them not included. You may consider them scripture, I do not. No offense meant.
Having said that, the most important common ground is Jesus.
‘I agree... but what of the unborn children who (for example) die by abortion, well before they have any capacity to lie, act proudly, covet, or disobey their parents? Have they committed actual (personal) sin?’
They have not, yet they will, all are sinful. The first lie will come. Prior to that? It is my belief they are welcomed by Jesus, still unstained by sin. Being unstained it would follow they would welcome and see Jesus as who He is, their Savior.
‘Of course... and no faithful and well-informed Catholic would argue otherwise. But Mary (by a singular privilege) received Christ’s salvation “by prevention”, rather than salvation “by forgiveness and redemption”.’
It seems there is desire to elevate Mary, or grant her special characteristics to explain the apparent conflict in the idea that something ‘pure’ could come from something’sinful’.
Bear with me, as I try to get this all out intelligently.
Jesus was 100% man and 100% God, all in the same package. Another way to see it is that Jesus left His throne and came to wrap himself in the flesh of His creation.
Mary bore a baby son, an earthly son, a human and flesh son. That son was Human. And, also Divine, as Jesus lived in him. That flesh was not divine at all. As the man, Jesus was tempted in the flesh, as we are. He felt the desires we do. He felt pain as we do, wept, laughed, was anguished. He even prayed for another way to accomplish His work, though surrendering to the will of His Father. Through it all, He escaped surrender to sin.
He escaped sin here, by virtue of Himself, not by being birthed from a ‘sinless’ woman. In the final analysis, it is ALL Jesus, nothing else.
right
It is true that Mary was a virgin when she conceived, the Immaculate Mis-Conception that Mary is the mother of God is wrong. She is and was human. Just because Jesus is God as part of the Trinity, does not make her the mother of God.
I know many who are born again and left the RCC because of the lies and the worshipping of the saints, aka idols.
God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are the Holy Trinity. Making Mary out to be the mother is heretical.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.