Removing Jesus

White Horse Inn ^ | June 1, 2014 | Timothy F. Kauffman

[RnMomof7]

Long before Jesus turned water into wine, He turned Mary’s amniotic fluid into meconium, and her breast milk into transitional stools. Anyone who has ever changed a child’s diaper knows that the resulting odor offends the nostrils greatly. As Jesus would later instruct us, “whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly” and ends up in the toilet (Matthew 15:17), or in His case as an infant, in the diaper. Thus did Jesus’ lower gastrointestinal tract operate as it must for all men, and thus did our Lord endure the gastrocolic reflex, as all we mortals do. We therefore have no doubt that Mary’s milk passed through Him according to the course of nature, and into His diapers in a common and necessary movement. And thus did Jesus come all the way down to earth to save us, “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Hebrews 4:15).

If that opening paragraph offends you, you do not know why Jesus came to earth, and you have not understood the Gospel. Jesus did not come to seek the whole, for the “whole need not a physician” (Matthew 9:12). He “came not to call the righteous” (Luke 5:32), for the righteous have no need of a Savior. He did not come to avoid sinners, but to find them. He touched lepers and whores (Mark 1:41, Luke 7:39), asked for a drink from an adulteress (John 4:7), asked for lodging from a tax collector (Luke 19:5), was adored by prostitutes (Luke 7:37-38), feted by sinners (Luke 5:29) and pursued by the ceremonially unclean, and He received them (Matthew 9:20, Luke 17:14).

In short, He is the sinners’ Savior, and He came to earth to pursue them, not to avoid them (1 Timothy 1:15). To find sinners, He became a man like us. Not a man like us in all ways but sweat and dirt. Not a man like us in all ways but meconium. He became a man like us—”touched with the feeling of our infirmities”—in all ways but sin (Hebrews 4:15). And as if it were not enough that His feet were soiled to walk among us, He stooped even further and soiled His hands as well (John 8:6). Thus Jesus truly condescended to be born into a sinful world to save sinners, and was like us in all ways but sin.

Except, say our Roman Catholic acquaintances, such condescension must have its limits. There is only so much stooping God can do without soiling Himself beyond what He can bear. Sure, He fixed his tabernacle among His people, but God ministers at the door of the Tabernacle (Exodus 33:9), and that tabernacle is Mary. And such a tabernacle would need to be sinless. But aside from having a sinless mother, Jesus condescended to be born into a sinful world to save sinners, and was like us in all ways but sin.

Except, of course, being sinless, the womb of Mary was a step up, not a step down, from Heaven. He actually did not, and could not, condescend all the way to our level, say the Roman Catholics:

“The womb of Mary—I will not call it womb, but temple; … the more secret tabernacle, … Yea verily above the heavens must Mary’s womb be accounted, since it sent back the Son of God to heaven more glorious than He had come down from heaven.” (St. Maximus, Homily V)

Thus, while it is true that Jesus “humbled” Himself to become man, He did not so humble Himself that He actually came down from heaven. No, by the testimony of Rome’s saints, He actually went up into Mary’s womb! So aside from having a sinless mother, and a first earthly home that was actually higher than the heavens that He had left behind, Jesus condescended to be born into a sinful world to save sinners, and was like us in all ways but sin.

Except, of course, for the fact that He was raised in a perfectly sinless home. Someone as holy as Jesus could not come this far and then live in a household contaminated by the sins He had come to take away. Therefore, Joseph must have been preserved from sin, too. The Apparition of Joseph in 1956 assured Sister Mary Ephrem that “immediately after my conception … because of my exceptional role of future Virgin-Father …  I was from that moment confirmed in grace and never had the slightest stain on my soul.” So, aside from having a sinless mother, and a first earthly home that was higher, not lower, than the heavens, and aside from having a sinless step-father, Jesus condescended to be born into a sinful world to save sinners, and was like us in all ways but sin.

Except, of course, for the fact that His cousin, John the Baptist, the herald of the King, also lived a life without sin. This “acceptable belief,” as you can read here, is freely accepted as true by Roman Catholics. As one member of the Catholic Answers forum explains, “It is crystal clear from Scripture that St. John the Baptist was baptized within his mother’s womb … [and] was free of all sin from that point on.”

So widespread is this “pious belief,” that even Pope John XXIII in 1960 taught the logical implications of it: namely that Joseph and John the Baptist must have been assumed bodily into heaven, just as Jesus and Mary had been. “So we may piously believe,” said John XXIII, that the grace of assumption into heaven, so recently and infallibly declared for Mary in 1950, was also granted both to John the Baptist and to Joseph (Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. 52 (1960) 456). So, aside from having a sinless mother, and a first earthly home that was higher, not lower, than the heavens, and aside from having a sinless step-father, and a sinless cousin, Jesus condescended to be born into a sinful world to save sinners, and was like us in all ways but sin.

Except, of course, the fact that all of the apostles were sinless, too. That this is “acceptable belief” in Rome is evidenced from another writer at the Catholic Answers forum, who holds that not only the apostles, but many, many Roman Catholics led perfectly sinless lives after encountering Christ:

“What is being said is that they led sinless, blameless lives with the help of God’s grace. … Not only the Apostles, but many Saints, Martyrs, Fathers, desert fathers, Confessors and other members of the Church led sinless, blameless lives.”

So, aside from having a sinless mother, and a first earthly home that was higher, not lower, than the heavens, and aside from having a sinless step-father, a sinless cousin, and sinless apostles, disciples, saints, martyrs and other members of the church, Jesus condescended to be born into a sinful world to save sinners, and was like us in all ways but sin.

Except, of course, that His maternal grandparents must have been “profoundly pure” as well. Consider this pious tradition of the conception of Mary in the womb of St. Anne. If Mary was housed in her mother, Anne, and Mary was the tabernacle, then that would make Anne “the inner sanctuary in which was formed the living tabernacle which was to house the Son of God made Man.”

It is thus difficult for Roman Catholics to picture in their minds that Mary had been conceived through normal, biological, copulative processes, including the physical pleasure and all of the attendant physical intimacy between man and wife. So taught Christopher West in his lecture, Theology of the Body and Our Lady of Fatima:

“In the east, do you know how they depict the Immaculate ConceptIon? …  The icon is of a chaste embrace between Joachim and Anne, with the marriage bed behind them. How is it possible that their marital embrace led to the immaculate conception, if their hearts had not also in some way been made profoundly pure.”(59:30-1:00:40)

It is apparently inconceivable to Mr. West that Mary might have been conceived in an intimate sexual embrace, her parents lying down in bed, naked, enjoying the sheer physical pleasure that, as Paul wrote, was the “proper gift of God” to each of them (1 Corinthians 7:7). No, their hearts had to be “profoundly pure,” and that level of purity does not countenance the horizontality of unashamedly pleasurable marital sex.

So, aside from having a sinless mother, and a first earthly home that was higher, not lower, than the heavens, and aside from having a sinless step-father, a sinless cousin, sinless apostles, disciples, saints, martyrs and other members of the church, and “profoundly pure” maternal grandparents, Jesus was born into a sinful world to save sinners, and was like us in all ways but sin.

The point we are making is that Jesus was incarnated to save sinners, yet Rome has built up a religion that is intent on saving Jesus from the sinners He came to save! We see this in the march of Roman Catholic tradition that is constantly expanding the circle of sinlessness that surrounds this Man who, so we thought, had come to dine with sinners, touch lepers and be worshiped by prostitutes. Is it unfathomable that Jesus, Who freely and deliberately dined and lodged with sinners might have taken up His first residence in one, and received His first meal from one?  Is it unfathomable that Jesus, Who left Heaven to find sinners might have included among them a mother, a step-father, a cousin and two grandparents who were as eager to be cleansed of their sin as the harlots and lepers? To Roman Catholics, the answer is yes—it is unfathomable. So far removed is Jesus from sinners in the religion of Rome, that to approach Him to be cleansed, one must already be clean.

But this not the only way Rome separates Jesus from the sinners He came to save. We are all too familiar with Mary’s alleged role as “mediatress.” Yes, Roman Catholics tell us, there is one mediator between God and men, the Man Jesus Christ (1 Timothy 2:5), but despite His incarnation, Jesus’ divinity is still a hindrance, not a help, to His mediation. Read as Roman apologist William Most cleverly transitions from Jesus being “the answer,” to Mary being the much better answer, because her humanity makes her better qualified than Jesus to mediate on our behalf:

“How then can I understand God, how [to] know what He wills, how to deal with him? But In Jesus we have the answer. … Yes, but His heart is the heart of a Divine Person. However, her heart is purely, entirely human, … So her Immaculate Heart can and does assure us we have in heaven an Advocate whom we can understand, who understands us, who loves us to the extent that like the Father, she did not spare her only Son, but gave Him up for all of us” (Most, William G., Mary’s Cooperation in Our Redemption)

But even this cannot be sufficient for Rome, who ever strives by remarkable ingenuity to separate sinners further from their Savior. It is true, says Rome, that Mary is the Mediatress of all graces, and every grace that flows to us from Jesus comes through Mary. But every grace from Mary must necessarily flow through Joseph. In his book, True Devotion to St. Joseph and the Church, Fr. Domenico, makes the case:

“It seems fitting then that by his intercession St. Joseph should now obtain all the graces that Our Lady dispenses to the human race. …  these grace come through Mary first, and then through St. Joseph who obtains them only through her. …  all the other saints rely on St. Joseph in their intercessions, just as St. Joseph relies on the mediation of Our Lady.” (True Devotion to St. Joseph, 381, 383, 400).

One Mediator can never be enough, nor two, nor three, so far removed is Jesus from sinners in the religion of Rome.

But there is yet another way Rome separates Christ from sinners, and that is by reducing Jesus’ death on the cross to merely a symbolic gesture. It was hardly necessary to die and bleed, they say, but Jesus did it anyway—not to pay for sins, but to demonstrate the horror of sin. So taught Fr. William Most:

“Really an incarnation in a palace with no suffering or death would have been an infinite reparation. Yet to show the horror of sin, and the immensity of His love, the Father willed, and He agreed, to go so dreadfully far.” (Most, William, Eschatology).

That is completely contrary to the Scriptures (Hebrews 2:14-17, 9:22), for “it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren … to make reconciliation for the sins of the people,” for “without shedding of blood is no remission.” Yet as it turns out, in Rome, the real sacrifice of Jesus was not what He offered on the cross at all, but the bread He offered the night before in the Last Supper. That, we are told, was the real sacrifice:

“Those who crucified Christ did so at the sixth hour. But Jesus our High Priest immolated the lamb which He took towards the evening [the night before], when He celebrated the paschal banquet with His disciples and imparted to them the sacred mysteries.”

Indeed, Rome teaches that Jesus’ death on the cross was not an offering for sin. They do not hide this, but say it proudly and openly as the Catholic Legate demonstrates:

“The Last Supper was the real sacrificial offering of Christ for sin and it certainly was unbloody. Without the Last Supper I defy you to find any reference to the Body and Blood of Christ being offered as a sacrifice for sin in the entire of the Passion Narratives.”

Thus does the religion of Rome nullify the incarnation and “make the cross of Christ of none effect” (1 Corinthians 1:17)—as if Paul had not said we have access to the Father by the blood of the cross (Ephesians 2:13-19), and Peter had not said Jesus “bare our sins in his own body on the tree ” (1 Peter 2:24-3:18), and as if Hebrews did not instruct us that Jesus is “mediator of the new testament … by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions” (Hebrews 9:15). Rome would have Him mediate the new covenant, without blood, without death, without the cross and without suffering for our transgressions, for “an incarnation in a palace with no suffering or death” would have sufficed.

Couple this with the visions of Mary, and what we find is an utter and absolute denial of everything the incarnation was to accomplish. The visions of Mary teach Roman Catholics that it is Jesus Who is angry at them, and that Mary is holding back His wrath, and she is suffering for them—contrary to Romans 5:9 which assures us that “we shall be saved from wrath through him.”  The visions of Mary also teach that it is Jesus Who needs to be consoled by our sufferings—contrary to 2 Corinthians 1:5 which assures us that “as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.” Compare these Scripture verses, above, with what the apparitions of Mary teach (Both of these visions and messages, La Salette and Akita, have the ecclesiastical approval of the Roman religion):

“If my people will not obey I shall be compelled to loose my Son’s arm. It is so heavy, so pressing that I can no longer restrain it. How long I have suffered for you! If my Son is not to cast you off, I am obliged to entreat Him without ceasing.” (Apparition of Mary in LaSalette, France to Maximin Giraud and Melanie Mathieu, 1846)

“Many men in this world afflict the Lord. I desire souls to console Him to soften the anger of the Heavenly Father. I wish, with my Son, for souls who will repair by their suffering and their poverty for the sinners and ingrates.” (Apparition of Mary in Akita, Japan, to Sr. Agnes Sasagawa, 1973)

So far removed is Jesus from sinners in the religion of Rome, that we are told that Jesus is angry with us, and that we must suffer to console Him and save Him from His Father’s wrath! Is not the sum total of Rome’s doctrines a material denial of the incarnation?

Consider Rome’s teachings in light of John’s instruction in his first epistle. 1 John is an exquisite magnification of the incarnation, “which we have heard, … seen with our eyes, … looked upon, and our hands have handled,” (1 John 1:1). If we have sinned, there is a Mediator for us, for “we have an advocate with the Father” (1 John 2:1).  “God … sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” and “your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake.” (1 John 2:12, 4:10). “He was manifested to take away our sins” (1 John 3:1). All these speak of an incarnation that provided us with one Mediator, provided us with one propitiation for our sins, and let us boldly approach Him (1 John 4:17) not because we are without sins (1 John 1:8-10), but because He Himself has made propitiation for them. “This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son” (1 John 5:11). But Rome denies this record. The Serpent attempted to prevent the incarnation from occurring (Revelation 12:4), and failing that, now every effort is made by Rome to undo all of the benefits to be gained from it.

Did Jesus come in the flesh to seek and save sinners? Rome responds by surrounding Him with as many sinless people as possible to make Him distant an inaccessible to those who need Him.

Did Jesus come in the flesh to make a propitiation to the Father? Rome responds by relegating His sacrifice to the background—merely a profound gesture that was not strictly necessary—and making the real sacrifice an unbloody one the night before the crucifixion, when He “offered” bread for sins of the world.

Did Jesus come in the flesh to die, making peace through the blood of His cross? Rome responds by teaching that every sin Jesus pays for just makes the Father and Jesus angrier and angrier, and it is we who must, by our sufferings, make reparation for sin and thus save Jesus from His Father’s wrath.

Did Jesus become a man to be a Mediator between God and His people? Rome responds by adding as many mediators as possible between Jesus and sinners, as if His incarnation had failed, and left Him incapacitated, unfit and unable to serve.

Was Jesus “made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death” (Hebrews 2:9)? Rome responds by saying He was made higher than the heavens, so high is Mary’s womb above the children of men. The leisure of a palace, they say, instead of the humiliation of the cross, would have sufficed as a reparation.

Like the disciples, Rome would send away the unclean (Matthew 15:23), keep the simple from approaching Him (Luke 18:16), and rebuke Jesus for dying on the cross (Matthew 16:22)—for Rome has “taken away the key of knowledge,” not entering themselves, and hindering those who would (Luke 11:52).

When John wrote, “every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God” (1 John 4:3), he did not write this as an isolated formulaic incantation. He did not write this as if the mere recitation of the Nicæan Creed was sufficient as a substitute for faith in what had really been accomplished in the incarnation. John wrote this in the context of an incarnation that guaranteed to us a propitiation for sins and the favorable disposition of our heavenly Father, that provided us an Advocate who took on flesh to represent us and intercede before Him, that comforted us with an assurance of pardon for our sin through an accessible Savior Who hears us when we call upon Him. All these things are in practice denied by Rome, and we are offered no peace, no security, an angry Father, an angry Son, an endless line of mediators and a Savior unable to sympathize with our weakness, unapproachable and inaccessible except by those who are already “whole” and already “righteous.”

We hold therefore that when John wrote, “he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son.” (1 John 5:10), it is proof that the religion of Rome, at its core, is a rejection of the incarnation, for Rome has done all in its power to nullify it and make God a liar. Does Rome recite the Nicæan Creed? Well did Isaiah speak of her:

“Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men:” (Isaiah 29:13).

The priests of Rome honor the incarnation with their lips, but by removing Jesus from sinners, they have denied the incarnation, and have removed their hearts from God.

“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15)

[CynicalBear]

>>and it seems the key is that she was not (in the full sense) married to Joseph<<

Matthew 1:19 Whereupon Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing publicly to expose her, was minded to put her away privately. [Douay-Rheims Bible]

That's the Catholic bible you may note. As for the rest of your made up conjecture it's bunk.

[MHGinTN]

A most astute observation!

[Mrs. Don-o]

Mary Ever-Virgin:
the pattern of Covenant fidelity

Metmom: You wrote, ”There could NOT have been a conjugal relationship between Mary, a human being, and the Holy Spirit, deity”

That would be a reasonable assumption for anybody to make, but only if they were not familiar with the Bible.

On the contrary, the expectation and celebration of a nuptial relationship between God and His Beloved is one of the most widespread and multivalent themes of the Bible. It highlights the conjugality of the covenant-bond God has with the land of Israel; the Jewish people; Daughter of Jerusalem; Daughter Zion; between Christ and the Church; between Christ and the soul; directing all of the Bridal canticles (Song of Songs) and Psalms to God as Spouse, and culminating with “the Spirit and the Bride say, Come” (Rev 22:17.)

Consider the importance of covenant and conjugality:

Hosea 2:19-20
I will betroth you to me forever:
I will betroth you to me with justice and with judgment,
with loyalty and with compassion;
I will betroth you to me with fidelity,
and you shall KNOW the Lord.

Isaiah 54:5
For your Maker is your husband--
the LORD Almighty is his name--
the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer;
he is called the God of all the earth.

Isaiah 62:5
As a young man marries a young woman,
so will your Builder marry you;
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride,
so will your God rejoice over you.

Ezekiel 16:8
"'Later I passed by, and when I looked at you
and saw that you were old enough for love,
I spread the corner of my garment over you
and covered your naked body.
I gave you my solemn oath
and entered into a covenant with you, “
declares the Sovereign LORD,
”and you became mine.”

As a contrast, St. Paul presents the Abraham-Hagar-Sarah situation as an allegory (Galatians 4:24-15), showing the opposition between a base, slavish sexual liaison (with Hagar), and a true, free and faithful covenant (with Sarah.)

What do we learn about God’s character here? We learn that He rejects a reproductive liaison with a borrowed concubine as unworthy of the Covenant, and that He privileges instead Abraham’s union with the free and faithful Sarah, as being the one which will carry the Covenant forward.

All of these are foreshadowings which carry us on to the scene of fulfillment, when God’s own Son will become incarnate in the world.

Does God choose Mary on the on the pattern of Hagar, or on the pattern of Sarah? Is Mary’s offspring to be slave, or free? Is Mary a temporary reproductive “fix,” or is she His Beloved, His Blessed-among-women?

If Mary is seen as having been married to Joseph in every sense of the word, then her being tapped by God was just a temporary reproductive expedient: she is a breeding surrogate (call her Hagar!) , and Joseph is a betrayed claimant, a fall-guy, and a chump. God is founding the Incarnation of His divine Son, not on Covenant, but on concubinage and cuckoldry.

Thus --- if we accept that account --- God resorted to a coarse non-covenantal ploy to bring about the coming of the Messiah of Israel and Redeemer of the World. He treated Mary as a reproductive utiilty. He robbed Joseph, “a just man,” of his conjugal right: “OK, I took her; I got what I wanted; now you can have her.” There is a solid Biblical reason to reject this repellent account of things; and that is, the evidence that Mary and Joseph had never had, nor intended, the exchange of exclusive conjugal rights, each to the other. This evidence is found in Mary’s otherwise inexplicable response to the Angelic Salutation in Luke 1:. When Gabriel brought her the tidings that she was chosen to ”conceive in her womb and bear a son,” Mary, “greatly troubled,” responded, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” This is inexplicable because marvelous tidings of fertility are a repeated theme of Scripture. In every other case, it’s accomplished by natural spousal union. Mary would have known this. When Sarah, Hannah, and Samson’s mother are told they will bear sons, they don’t become “troubled” and say “Whoa. What??! How can this be?” They have no reason to think it will be by any means except their expected relations with their husbands.

If Mary, being betrothed to Joseph, had pledged to him the reciprocal and exclusive conjugal rights which define marriage, there would be no reason for her to think anything other than that she would be like Sarah, Hannah and Samson’s mother: that she would bear a son because of her inevitable future relations with her husband.

So there are only two possibilities: either she was baffled because she didn’t know where babies come from; or she was not expecting conjugal relations with Joseph.

And no, the fact that she was at that time a virgin is not the deciding factor. The Angel Gabriel didn’t say “You have conceived.” He said “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son.” It was left as an event in the undefined future.

This key Biblical fact, “Mary’s Perplexity,” points to the conclusion that she did not have, and did not intend to have, full conjugal relations with Joseph.

This may well strike us as strange, since Judaism had no tradition of consecrated virginity, and every espoused Jewish maiden would fully expect to conceive and bear children through her intended sexual relations with her husband. Nor is there any indication that Mary knew she had been predestined to be the mother of God’s own Son.

However, it’s the only way the evidence can be seen coherently. A dedicated, lasting virginity explains Mary’s Perplexity, and also shields her (and God!) from the repellent alternative: that God intended to found the Incarnation upon a base and temporary relation of concubinage with Mary and marital fraud against Joseph, and not upon the basis of the kind of exclusive and lifelong covenant anticipated by all the prophets.

Mary was ever-Virgin because she was ever-faithful. God had the conjugal right to her: God alone. She was no borrowed breeding-slave like Hagar; she was the new Sarah, the faithful, the free, the mother of the Lord of the Covenant.

[metmom]

Is there any other explanation for Mary, a young, betrothed woman, being "troubled" and surprised when she was told that she would bear a son?

Because she knew she could be stoned for adultery when people found out she was pregnant during the time when she and Joseph were not supposed to be having sex. And because she had to break the news to Joseph and tell him she was pregnant, didn't have sex, and was bearing the Messiah.

Yeah,.... riiiight.....

There was a reason that an angel had to appear in a dream to tell Joseph the same thing.

[metmom]

Not one bit of Scripture either, to support that God had conjugal rights to Mary.

Joseph, her HUSBAND.

Conjugal rights are for the physical sexual union. Unless you are willing to state that God had sex with Mary, He had no conjugal rights to Mary because she was a married woman at the time the angel visited her.

[metmom]

She was baffled as to how she could be pregnant because she knew how babies are made and she knew she had not yet had sex with a man.

It makes no sense at all to say Mary was puzzled because she never intended to ever have sex.

It neither says no implies anything about future intent.

So, she (allegedly) decided to be perpetually virgin for what reason?

So Mary was ever virgin because she was ever faithful? So those who are not ever virgin are not faithful?

Is Mary more spiritual, more holy because she remained a virgin?

[aMorePerfectUnion]

It was an interesting article FRiend, but all those words do not Biblical teaching make...

For no where in the Scriptures is God married to Mary.
No where in Scriptures is Mary ever virgin.

So lots of words to try to back into the Scriptures teaching something, which it does not teach. It is simply a pagan doctrine, taken back into the Scriptures to try to prove it must be there somewhere.

And to what end?

To support the original unbiblical doctrine that originated outside Christianity.

[metmom]

So, you’re saying that Mary took a vow pf perpetual virginity and yet still got married to Joseph with no intention of consumating the marriage?

That would be getting married under false pretenses.

It would be grounds for annullment in Catholicism.

Joseph clearly didn’t know that otherwise he would not have considered divorcing her.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Yes, as I understand it, it would have been grounds for annulment in Catholicism. Tis a puzzle. But these were exceptional circumstances. And we're not told a whole lot in the Gospels; more in what was passed down, initially orally, from Apostolic times.

Another FReeper Private-Messaged me and told me that the idea of Mary being perpetually consecrated to the Lord was actually not unknown in Israel. A faithful Jewish mother could vow that she would devote her child to the service of the Lord, as Samuel had been by his mother (1 Sam. 1:11). Mary would thus, by this pious custom, serve the Lord at the Temple, as women had for centuries (1 Sam. 2:22), and as Anna the prophetess did at the time of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:36–37). A life of continual, devoted service to the Lord at the Temple meant that Mary would not be able to live the ordinary life of a child-rearing mother. Rather, she would in effect be dedicated to perpetual virginity.

This belief is common to all the apostolic Churches east and west–---from Catholic to Orthodox to Copt to Chaldean to the Thomas Churches of India–-- and not just something peculiar to the “Roman Catholic Church”. That's how it qualifies as Sacred Tradition: it was accepted in all the Apostolic Churches as a part of their oral heritage later written down but originating with the Apostles and their first-generation successors who were the founders of these churches.

You don't support the other interpretation, do you? That God rejected the "You are Mine," "espoused in righteousness and faithfulness," "covenant" idea, and decided instead to base the Incarnation on making Mary a borrowed concubine and Joseph a cuckold?

[aMorePerfectUnion]

"Metmom: You wrote, ”There could NOT have been a conjugal relationship between Mary, a human being, and the Holy Spirit, deity”

"That would be a reasonable assumption for anybody to make, but only if they were not familiar with the Bible."

Frankly, metmom has demonstrated she is familiar with the Scriptures a multitude of times. This appears a cheap shot. I hope it was posted without thought instead of as an insult.

"On the contrary, the expectation and celebration of a nuptial relationship between God and His Beloved"

"Beloved" is Israel. Not Mary. This verse is not about Mary bearing Messiah. "is one of the most widespread and multivalent themes of the Bible. It highlights the conjugality of the covenant-bond God has with the land of Israel; the Jewish people; Daughter of Jerusalem; Daughter Zion; between Christ and the Church; between Christ and the soul; directing all of the Bridal canticles (Song of Songs) and Psalms to God as Spouse, and culminating with “the Spirit and the Bride say, Come” (Rev 22:17.)" Song of Songs is about married love and married pleasure in sex. It is not about God's covenant with Israel, nor a boy's bah mitzva. Nor the Church. Nor Mary.

"Consider the importance of covenant and conjugality:"

Hosea 2:19-20
Isaiah 54:5
Isaiah 62:5
Ezekiel 16:8

Not a single passage is about more than God's covenant relationship with Israel. It is an interesting sidenote there that Romanism wants to claim this translates to Mary and the Church, but wants to abrogate promises to the nation of Israel He chose and made a covenant relationship with forever, but that is a sidenote for another time.

"As a contrast, St. Paul presents the Abraham-Hagar-Sarah situation as an allegory (Galatians 4:24-15), showing the opposition between a base, slavish sexual liaison (with Hagar), and a true, free and faithful covenant (with Sarah.)" ALlegory: a literary device that is used to reveal a hidden meaning. The hidden meaning was not a base sexual liaison. Abraham was attempting - via human effort - to fulfill the promises of God that he would have an heir, after he perceived God took too long and Sarah had not conceived. The offspring of Hagar was not to be the heir of grace, but was given specific promises as an offspring of Abraham.

BOTH relationships with BOTH women involved SEX.

Again, not a word of Mary or anything to support her eternal virginity.

"What do we learn about God’s character here? We learn that He rejects a reproductive liaison with a borrowed concubine as unworthy of the Covenant, and that He privileges instead Abraham’s union with the free and faithful Sarah, as being the one which will carry the Covenant forward." No FRiend, this is not what we learn. We learn that God rejects man's effort to fulfill the promise of God through man's own effort. He said Sarah will conceive. Again, nothing about Mary, nor does Scripture apply this allegory to Mary in any way. God through Paul does apply the allegory to show that salvation comes through GRACE and not works.

"All of these are foreshadowings which carry us on to the scene of fulfillment, when God’s own Son will become incarnate in the world."

When you choose to use the word, "foreshadowings", please realize this is an opinion. It is not in the Scriptures anywhere. It has nothing to do with the birth of Christ. It has to do with the SALVATION Christ brings.

"Does God choose Mary on the on the pattern of Hagar, or on the pattern of Sarah?"

Neither. Category mistake. He makes a sovereign choice of Mary to fulfill prophecy that a virgin will be found with child.

Scripture no where says Mary is part of a pattern, nor foreshadowing of Sarah or Hagar, nor that there is a foreshadowing or pattern beyond the limited use of allegory about salvation flowing from grace. That is the point of the allegory. You do not need a foreshadowing. You can read Paul's explanation of what he wrote,

"24 These things are being taken figuratively: The women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother. 27"

"Is Mary’s offspring to be slave, or free? Is Mary a temporary reproductive “fix,” or is she His Beloved, His Blessed-among-women?"

Again, not in the passage. "If Mary is seen as having been married to Joseph in every sense of the word, then her being tapped by God was just a temporary reproductive expedient: she is a breeding surrogate (call her Hagar!)"

again, this is an opinion phrased in a pejorative way that becomes a straw man argument. A breeding surogate indeed!

God did not come to Joseph in Scripture and say, "Hey Joseph, I want you to have a pseudo-marriage for show, but Mary is all mine as a wife."

Didn't happen. God specifically told Joseph not to divorce his wife. God isn't an adulterer. "Thus --- if we accept that account --- God resorted to a coarse non-covenantal ploy to bring about the coming of the Messiah of Israel and Redeemer of the World. He treated Mary as a reproductive utiilty. He robbed Joseph, “a just man,” of his conjugal right: “OK, I took her; I got what I wanted; now you can have her.”

After setting up this straw man, you gave it a good kick!

"There is a solid Biblical reason to reject this repellent account of things; and that is, the evidence that Mary and Joseph had never had, nor intended, the exchange of exclusive conjugal rights, each to the other."

Not in the Scriptures anywhere.

"This evidence is found in Mary’s otherwise inexplicable response to the Angelic Salutation in Luke 1:. When Gabriel brought her the tidings that she was chosen to ”conceive in her womb and bear a son,” Mary, “greatly troubled,” responded, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” "

Lots of explanations possible. The most likely is what she said, "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" I suggest it is best to assume Mary is telling the truth.

"This is inexplicable because marvelous tidings of fertility are a repeated theme of Scripture. In every other case, it’s accomplished by natural spousal union."

That is the very fact that makes the virgin birth a miracle!

"If Mary, being betrothed to Joseph, had pledged to him the reciprocal and exclusive conjugal rights which define marriage, there would be no reason for her to think anything other than that she would be like Sarah, Hannah and Samson’s mother: that she would bear a son because of her inevitable future relations with her husband."

Conjecture, your Honor.

"So there are only two possibilities: either she was baffled because she didn’t know where babies come from; or she was not expecting conjugal relations with Joseph."

Or we take her at her word. Always better.

"This key Biblical fact, “Mary’s Perplexity,” points to the conclusion that she did not have, and did not intend to have, full conjugal relations with Joseph."

Wow, you have veered off the road of logic and careened into a ditch there.

"However, it’s the only way the evidence can be seen coherently."

But of course, this is simply an opinion that is apart from what the Scriptures teach. It is an addition to what it taught. Many words to get around the basic facts.

"A dedicated, lasting virginity explains Mary’s Perplexity, and also shields her (and God!) from the repellent alternative: that God intended to found the Incarnation upon a base and temporary relation of concubinage with Mary and marital fraud against Joseph, and not upon the basis of the kind of exclusive and lifelong covenant anticipated by all the prophets."

It does not explain it. It reads it into a passage where it does not exist, to explain a teaching that isn't there, to support a non-Christian doctrine that the Apostles never believed.

"Mary was ever-Virgin because she was ever-faithful."

Again, nothing in Scripture betroths her to God. There was not sexual limitation with her actual husband, Joseph.

"God had the conjugal right to her: God alone."

Not in the Bible.

Sorry, your post is made up out of borrowed cloth FRiend.

[metmom]

You know, the reasons people think that Catholics think sex between man and wife is somehow dirty, is because of this very kind of rationalization about Mary conceiving and her relationship with Joseph.

Mary was a married woman at the time of the annunciation. She was puzzled about how she could be pregnant or become pregnant without having sex. Very simple, easy to explain, and easy to understand. Nothing read into it at all, nothing *interpreted* to mean something different.

It is NO indicator that she NEVER intended to have sex with Joseph, just that she hadn’t and probably didn’t plan to until they got married, like they were supposed to wait for.

Scripture clearly says that Joseph was told to take Mary as his WIFE. That comes with all the responsibilities and privileges marriage comes with.

The idea that God let Mary become betrothed and then told Joseph to marry her but don’t touch, forces Joseph into a sexless marriage that he clearly wasn’t anticipating, else he would not have divorced her, thinking that she had cheated on him. That would be God Himself defrauding Joseph.

There is not one reason in the world for Mary to have remained a virgin after the birth of Christ when the prophecy that a virgin shall bear a son, was fulfilled.

What makes virginity so special and married sex so objectionable that Catholics flip over the thought that she had sex with her husband?

And then Catholics can’t figure out why they’re perceived as thinking sex between a husband and wife is wrong.

Y’all set yourselves up for it with absolutely ZERO basis from Scripture. It’s all rationalization, speculation, and extrapolation.

And phrases like, *a borrowed concubine*, *Joseph a cuckold*, God being a *divine rapist*, don’t help y’all either. Nobody every suggested those things. Those are CATHOLIC concepts thrown in accusation against non-Catholics, and they never entered the minds of ANY non-Catholics I ever met.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I would like for us to re-examine the opinion that anything which is not found in the Bible must have been either fraudulent or of pagan origin. This not the case.

As you know, the Apostles and disciples and their successors fanned out from Jerusalem during the first century AD to evangelize and plant churches throughout the Mediterranean basin (the coastal areas of Southern Europe, Northern Africa, Ethiopia, Eritrea and the Levant), up through what's now Iraq and Iran and into south-central Asia, along the Silk Road to the borders of Western China, among the Southern Caucasians and Southern Slavs, etc., a process that accelerated particularly after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.

Very little of this is in the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, most of which highlight Peter, James, John, Jude and, of course, Paul above all.

So, while all of the Apostles' teachings were authoritative, quite a bit of it did not come down to us in written form in the NT. What do we know from the NT about the missionary activities of Thomas Didymus, or the churches founded by Jude Thaddeus, or Bartholomew?

For this kind of information, we need to go to early guys like Polycarp (disciple of John the Evangelist) and Irenaeus (Polycarp's disciple), historians like Hippolytus of Rome and and Eusebius of Cesarea, and to the earliest manuscripts in places like Scythia [modern day Georgia] and Thrace[modern day Bulgaria].

They're not all going to be Roman Catholics, they're going to be Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian Church (Syria), Chaldean Church (Iraq), Coptic Orthodox (Egypt), the Mar Thoma Christians (India).You'll find that widely-dispersed, ancient communities are in agreement on many doctrines and practices, and so these things pass the history test. Agreement across languages, continents and cultures constitutes very strong evidence that these teachings were, as they claim, part of what was handed on to them by their founders, the Apostles.

I don't want to rattle on too long here, I just to point out that there's a lot there that is neither pagan nor fraud. It's Apostolic. You're got to take the whole dimensions of ancient Christianity into account.

This is where you'll find othewise inexplicable agreement on --- among other things --- customs like the Sign of the Cross, liturgical music and poetry, honor for the Lord's Mother as Blessed Mary Ever Virgin.

[Elsie]

This is where you'll find othewise inexplicable agreement on --- among other things --- customs like the Sign of the Cross, liturgical music and poetry, honor for the Lord's Mother as Blessed Mary Ever Virgin.

And HERE is where you'll find the Catholic false teaching was SO bad that an angel had to tell John to warn them in WRITING!

[Elsie]

Mary was ever-Virgin because she was ever-faithful.

more Roman teaching with NO basis in FACT!

[Elsie]

It's that omnipotence thingy.

So you have no data.

I can accept that.

[Elsie]

Still unable to defend the heresy of Mormonism?

Too bad.

[Elsie]

There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four.

Anna and her husband never got it on; either?

[metmom]

So, while all of the Apostles' teachings were authoritative, quite a bit of it did not come down to us in written form in the NT.

If the Holy Spirit did not see fit to include it in Scripture, then we don't need to know it either for salvation or to grow and mature in Christ.

Nor does that give anyone permission or authority to make up stuff that could have happened simply on the basis of the claim that Scripture doesn't say it didn't happen so we can assume it did until someone proves us wrong.

Also, there's the issue that someone making a truth claim, needs to be able to verify it and present proofs that their claim is reliable and verifiable. What are the sources that the Catholic church has to back up its claims about Mary, for example.

How do you know, after 2,000 years, that what someone claims was said by an apostle was REALLY something said by an apostle?

How do you know that it was passed down faithfully, without corruption?

Please provide the proofs for verification purposes.

[metmom]

A faithful Jewish mother could vow that she would devote her child to the service of the Lord, as Samuel had been by his mother (1 Sam. 1:11). Mary would thus, by this pious custom, serve the Lord at the Temple, as women had for centuries (1 Sam. 2:22), and as Anna the prophetess did at the time of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:36–37). A life of continual, devoted service to the Lord at the Temple meant that Mary would not be able to live the ordinary life of a child-rearing mother. Rather, she would in effect be dedicated to perpetual virginity.

Then why on earth would she ever have been married to a man?

Nor is there any indication that she was serving in the Temple at the time of the annunciation. The angel was sent to Galilee, not the Temple at Jerusalem.

[metmom]

The prophetess Anna was married for seven years and there’s no indication that she was a virgin.