Posted on 07/11/2009 6:11:46 AM PDT by GonzoII
In order for eve to be disobedient she had to freely fall from perfection by not following the will of God and thus sin-in order for Mary to overturn eve’s disobedience and become the New Eve she had to overcome sin through obedience to the will of God in order to become the New Eve
I really see it as this simple if your going to accept Mary as the New Eve. It makes no sense any other way to me.
The east accepts Mary as the New Eve, Right?
The eastern early Church fathers certainly did write about Mary as the New Eve.
You’re never going to convince me that Mary was not sinless because it makes no sense to me that Christ would enter the world through anything other than perfection
Free will outweighs ontology. Obviously, being created spotless does not prevent one from sinning, or else Adam or Eve would not have sinned. If the free will is higher than ontology, then ontology is irrelevant. No need for a special favor. No need for imamculate Conception (IC).
Also, the Church in the East never developed Augstinian-like "original sin" without which the IC is not needed.
The east accepts Mary as the New Eve, Right?
Sure, in a typological sense.
The eastern early Church fathers certainly did write about Mary as the New Eve
Depends what you mean by "early" and Church Fathers. +Ignatius (technically an Apostolic Father) basically calls her a "clean vessel." +Justin Martyr is the first to compare her to New Eve. +Irenaeus picks up on this and goes a step further calling her an advocata interceding on behalf of Eve.
The only problem is: advocata translates into Greek as Paraclete which is title for the Holy Spirit! Unfortunately, the Greek original of +Irenaeus does not exist; the oldest extant work is a late 4th century Latin text.
Tertullian, +Irenaeus' contemporary, technically not a Church Father, but someone who at the time and for some time, functioned as one, explicitly denied Mary was sinless.
Origen, also not a Church Father, but one who was for all practical purposes the Farther of Eastern theology, is the first to call her Theotokos, but never spotless.
+John Chrysostom, a Cappadocian Father, actually argued that Mary may have sinned at Cana. It is not until well into he 5th and 6th centuries that Mary's spotlessness takes on a life of its own, in the East and the West.
You’re never going to convince me that Mary was not sinless because it makes no sense to me that Christ would enter the world through anything other than perfection
I never wanted to. Your friends dsc implied it with his double negative sentence. The Eastern tradition teaches that Mary was made perfect at the moment of Annunciation, so that she would be free of all corruption and fit to receive the eternal Word, basically the same thing +Ignatius said—a perfect vessel.
I guess we are going to have to disagree on this,dear brother, because I truly believe the Incarnation requires a special need and any sin makes something imperfect
St. Ephraem calls Mary and Eve identical without guilt-this means they were both sinless from the start to me...
Mary and Eve, two people without guilt, two simple people, were identical. Later, however, one became the cause of our death, the other the cause of our life (Op. syr. II, 327; Ott, 201)St. Ephraem
Thou and thy mother are the only ones who are totally beautiful in every respect; for in thee, O Lord, there is no spot, and in thy Mother no stain. (Nisibene Hymns, 27, v. 8; Ott, 201)St. Ephraem
...And St. John Damascene agrees that Mary never had any sin
O most blessed loins of Joachim from which came forth a spotless seed! O glorious womb of Anne in which a most holy offspring grew. (Homily I on the Nativity of Mary; O’Carroll, 200; cf. Graef, 154; Gambero, 402)
The Orthodox Church believes she is without sin. The Orthodox Church does not consider the original sin as our "sin" but only a consequence of Adam's and Eve's sin, mortality. Sin is something we do, not somrething we are born with—the way a drug-addicted infant is born with the consequence of his drug-addicted mother's sin. Surely, you can't blame the baby for his addiction and call him sinful!
So, there was no need for Mary to be "cleansed" of original sin, because if she were and she remained sinless, as the Orthodox believe, she would NOT have died just as Eve would have never died without the sin. But Eve died because she committed sin. If Mary were exactly like Eve, through immaculate Conception, then the only way Mary would have died is if she committed sin, which the Church believes she did not.
Unlike the West, the East believes, and has pretty much always believed, that Mary died (exemplified by the ancient anhnual Feast of the Dormition of Theotokos not celebrayted in the West) and was raised on the third day and assumed bodily to heaven.
She didn't die because she sinned but because she was human, as we all are. We are all born mortal, but not sinful. Obviosuly Christ found no sin in the "little ones," for theirs is the kingdom of heaven accoridng to him.
She didn't die because she sinned but because she was human, as we all are. We are all born mortal, but not sinful. Obviosuly Christ found no sin in the "little ones," for theirs is the kingdom of heaven accoridng to him.
So, are you saying the Orthodox Church believes Adam and Eve would have died anyway if they had not sinned ?
... And what about Romans 5:19? " For as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners"
You are interested in bashing Protestantism, rather than dealing with the issues of the Gospel. That is a shame. You have turned so many Scriptures on end that you are in danger of doing what is warned about when Scriptures speak of those who “twist the Scriptures to their own destruction.”
NO CHURCH has the sole authority to interpret Scripture - nor do the Scriptures support this in any way. It is, and always has been, a power play by those who claim it.
You claim you base your salvation on Christ - but if You do not even know what He has said (and hasn’t said!), that is problematic in itself. That is the danger of relying on a particular interpretation which departs from Scripture on so many important points.
We clearly are arguing to no end here since you claim a particular Church’s teaching as co-equal to Scripture: a second “Truth”, if you will. I claim Scripture as the only authoritative source of Truth. PERIOD. As indeed it is, God be praised. We simply have two different points of reference. I will stick with Scripture here rather than man-made dogma.
No Church’s claim (regardless of what it chooses to say about itself) can equal Scripture. This is against Scriptures and not what they teach.
By the way, I do not fear to quote any Scripture - and have made references to Scripture far more than you (who have relied heavily on Catholic interpretation and commentaries, which have no Truth-value whatsoever as they were written by men and not inspired of God - which is clear since so much of what they teach is erroneous and not in line with Scripture.) The fact that I have not chosen to write out the entire quote was to save space, since I assume you have a Bible (but perhaps I should not have assumed that.) My apologies if you were unable to look up the verses for yourself.
You have indeed conflated the Catholic Church with a universal one. You claim they are the same and that Christ has established the Catholic Church (no where can that be found in Scripture, by the way). There is one body of Christ - but it is and never was the Catholic Church. Christ is the Head of His church - His body. There is no other: no infallible Pope, no Apostle, none - who has the right to claim this.
You state: “Again, I am not discussing “Roman Catholicism”. I would be more than happy to discuss Catholicism, however. You could at the very least muster up enough decency to call me by the proper appellation: Catholic.” Here we are arguing semantics, I think. The Catholic Church IS the Roman Catholic Church. You may call yourself anything you like, but they are one and the same. Decency does not dictate that I lie about such things - nor that you continue to deny them.
As for my wishing you well, why would I not? You are obviously confused about the role of Scripture for a believer and I will continue to pray for you - as I would anyone who trusts a particular Church’s teaching above clear Scriptural truth. (You have, again, shown a confusion in your understanding of the role of baptism as a purely symbolic act of obedience. And the idea that you claim that Christ is symbolic is purely frightening for one who claims to be a believer.)
The Catholic Church (call it whatever you wish) confuses sanctification with justification - as you did with the passage in James. We are justified by Christ before God, but IF we are justified, we will continually show, by our fruits of the spirit - sanctification. They are NOT one and the same. To claim salvation by works, as the CC does (and please, no cracks about Credit Cards here - you know exactly to what I am referring - as you did with “RC” - and it is an abbreviation), one must completely deny John 3:16, Ephesians 2:8-9, and the others I cited in my reply to you several posts ago.
Your repeated assumptions that I am a man are off-base as well, by the way. Yet you have assumed so much I should not be surprised (and I am not).
I am not interested in continuing any conversation with so many “sidelines” rather than dealing with the Gospel. If you wish to continue to trumpet Catholicism over Protestantism, be my guest - but remember that your Church (regardless of the name by which you wish to call it!) cannot save you. Christ has not ordained any specific Church or denomination as His arbiter of Truth. He has given us the Scriptures. Inasmuch as ANY Church has departed or does depart from these, it is in danger of heresy. PERIOD. The Scriptures ALONE are infallible. No man-made commentary, creed, canon, opinion, etc... can compare - regardless of the claims of legitimacy by the Church putting it out. Putting one’s faith in the hands of what a particular Church says about the Bible is dangerous ground indeed.
We are obviously at an impasse here. I had hoped to discuss the Gospel with you but see that you are not genuinely interested in doing anything but trumpeting the Catholic Church. Since one cannot conflate Scriptural Truth and Catholicism, here we remain on opposite sides.
You wrote:
“You are interested in bashing Protestantism, rather than dealing with the issues of the Gospel.”
I am not interested in bashing Protestantism. I, instead, deride Protestantism as a matter of course. Since Protestantism is a product of heresy and schism, I have no logical recourse but to deal with it as such. Also, you’re not dealing with issues of the gospel. All you’re doing is putting forward another gospel and claiming it is the gospel.
“That is a shame. You have turned so many Scriptures on end that you are in danger of doing what is warned about when Scriptures speak of those who “twist the Scriptures to their own destruction.””
No. I am not the one twisting scripture here. You are. There is no sola fide preached in scripture.
“NO CHURCH has the sole authority to interpret Scripture -”
Of course it does. The Church Christ founded must logically be the only one with authority. A sect founded by men - like yours - can only be a sect and never will have authority.
“...nor do the Scriptures support this in any way.”
Of course they do. Again, Jesus gave the Apostles authority. He did not give it to all men.
“It is, and always has been, a power play by those who claim it.”
No. It is common sense. WHat you are doing is a power grab. You are grasping at the Church’s legitimate power and trying to make it your own. The Church didn’t grab authority - it always had it and it came from Christ.
“You claim you base your salvation on Christ - but if You do not even know what He has said (and hasn’t said!), that is problematic in itself.”
I know what He said and hasn’t said far better than you and have already proved it.
“That is the danger of relying on a particular interpretation which departs from Scripture on so many important points.”
I never in my life have relied on an interpretation that departs from scripture. I’m not a Protestant.
“We clearly are arguing to no end here since you claim a particular Church’s teaching as co-equal to Scripture: a second “Truth”, if you will.”
Wrong. Truth is simply truth. Both sacred scripture and sacred tradition are from the same source. It is not a second truth. It is just truth. Period.
“I claim Scripture as the only authoritative source of Truth. PERIOD. As indeed it is, God be praised.”
It isn’t, nor does it claim to be. No where in scripture is it claimed that only scripture is the “authoritative source of truth”.
“We simply have two different points of reference. I will stick with Scripture here rather than man-made dogma.”
No you won’t. Your sola scriptura IS A MAN-MADE DOGMA. It exists NOWHERE in scripture. NOWHERE.
“By the way, I do not fear to quote any Scripture - and have made references to Scripture far more than you (who have relied heavily on Catholic interpretation and commentaries, which have no Truth-value whatsoever as they were written by men and not inspired of God - which is clear since so much of what they teach is erroneous and not in line with Scripture.)”
I’m sorry, but your whole approach here is not grounded in scripture but ignorance. I have posted numerous links to articles that discuss scripture in more detail than you have remotely attempted. Unlike you I have not merely made false claims and then posted verse references as if that proved the false claims true. I posted links to substantial articles that discusses issues - often which you were in serious error about - and you ignored all of them. Now what do you do? You make the ridiculous claim that uou have posted more scripture than I have. Clearly you never looked at a single thing I linked to.
“The fact that I have not chosen to write out the entire quote was to save space, since I assume you have a Bible (but perhaps I should not have assumed that.) My apologies if you were unable to look up the verses for yourself.”
Are you really that ignorant? I’m on vacation at the moment. I still have a wonderful vintage New Testament with me. I also have access to the internet (I assume you noticed that, “but perhaps I should not have assumed that”) and therefore have access to online Bibles and Bible tools. What you do not apparently have access to is common sense or an understanding of scripture that makes sense...or at least that’s what your posts betray so far. I’m hoping you’ll smarten up soon, but perhaps your smugness is arresting your God given abilities?
“You have indeed conflated the Catholic Church with a universal one.”
No. First of all, last time you posted about this it was “universalism”. Now youre claiming something else. You need to make up your mind and choose the appropriate wrd. I conflated nothing. I noted the simple fact that the Catholic Church is the Church. That is not conflation, but recognition of reality.
“You claim they are the same and that Christ has established the Catholic Church (no where can that be found in Scripture, by the way).”
Yes, it can. Did Jesus establish a Church? He dicussed the Church Himself so cearly He did. No Protestant sect qualifies bcause they’re all less than 500 years old. This is universally known. Thus, what is left?
“There is one body of Christ - but it is and never was the Catholic Church. Christ is the Head of His church - His body. There is no other: no infallible Pope, no Apostle, none - who has the right to claim this.”
Christ founded the Catholic Church. She is the ONLY Church founded by Christ.
“As for my wishing you well, why would I not? You are obviously confused about the role of Scripture for a believer and I will continue to pray for you - as I would anyone who trusts a particular Church’s teaching above clear Scriptural truth. (You have, again, shown a confusion in your understanding of the role of baptism as a purely symbolic act of obedience. And the idea that you claim that Christ is symbolic is purely frightening for one who claims to be a believer.)”
You’re the one confused. I used an analogy. I never claimed Christ was ONLY symbolic. If you deny Christ is symbolic then you deny the truth. He is symbolic. He is symboic of God’s love of man. He also is perfectly real. So is baptism. Remember, the Bible says baptism saves. You deny it, but it says it. You deny scripture. And then you twist my words. How pathetic on your part.
“The Catholic Church (call it whatever you wish) confuses sanctification with justification - as you did with the passage in James.”
No. The Catholic Church confuses nothing. You are the one confused. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08573a.htm
“They are NOT one and the same. To claim salvation by works, as the CC does (and please, no cracks about Credit Cards here - you know exactly to what I am referring - as you did with “RC” - and it is an abbreviation),...”
I actually have no idea of what you’re talking about because we don’t believe in salvation by works. We believe in salvation by grace. We just believe that God gives us grace through the sacraments which are the works of God for us to particpate in. Here’s another article that destroys your false points (and of course you won’t read it): http://www.therealpresence.org/essentials/sacraments/acc33.htm
“...one must completely deny John 3:16, Ephesians 2:8-9, and the others I cited in my reply to you several posts ago.”
No. One must simply understand it properly - which you don’t.
“Your repeated assumptions that I am a man are off-base as well, by the way. Yet you have assumed so much I should not be surprised (and I am not).”
In English, the standard rule is to assume a writer is a man unless otherwise told. Since you are only saying I assume you are a man and not actually correctly me on tha point, I will continue to assume you are a man. At least if I am making a mistake I am doing so out of a simple lack of knowledge about something you never discussed and no one online would know. Your mistakes are not so easily explained away. You should know better...much better.
“I am not interested in continuing any conversation with so many “sidelines” rather than dealing with the Gospel. If you wish to continue to trumpet Catholicism over Protestantism, be my guest - but remember that your Church (regardless of the name by which you wish to call it!) cannot save you. Christ has not ordained any specific Church or denomination as His arbiter of Truth.”
Actually He did. He founded ONE Church. The Catholic Church. He never established a Protestant sect like yours nor did He give it any authority.
“He has given us the Scriptures. Inasmuch as ANY Church has departed or does depart from these, it is in danger of heresy. PERIOD. The Scriptures ALONE are infallible. No man-made commentary, creed, canon, opinion, etc... can compare - regardless of the claims of legitimacy by the Church putting it out. Putting one’s faith in the hands of what a particular Church says about the Bible is dangerous ground indeed.”
Christ founded the Church before He sent the scriptures. He, through the Holy Spirit, gave us the scripturs through the work of the Church. The Church was given authority. You were not. He gave the Church knowledge. You were not.
“We are obviously at an impasse here. I had hoped to discuss the Gospel with you but see that you are not genuinely interested in doing anything but trumpeting the Catholic Church.”
No. I see no evidence you are interested at all in discussing the gospel. If you were then you would have just done that and not repeatedly - and falsely - attacked the Catholic Church which you clearly know little or nothing about. What you discuss ad call the gospel, and not even that very well, is the Protestant version of it and that is a false gospel made up by men in the 16th century. It is false.
” Since one cannot conflate Scriptural Truth and Catholicism, here we remain on opposite sides.”
Since one cannot conflate scriptural truth and Protestanism, I remain in truth as a Catholic and you remain outside of it.
So, are you saying the Orthodox Church believes Adam and Eve would have died anyway if they had not sinned ?
No, not at all! Orthodoxy states that when they were created there was no death. But once our ancestral parents committed sin, their nature became corrupt (mortal). And mortal parents can only have mortal offspring, because our essence (nature) is their nature (mortal). Our mortality is simply the corrupt nature passed on from generation to generation, a consequence of our ancetral parents' sin, but not our sin.
With Mary, the Immaculate Conception would have removed the mortality (or the fall) of her nature as she would have been another Eve ontologically speaking. Because she was ontologically a pre-fall human, she would not die because, unlike Adam and Eve, she never did sin.
But since the ealiest days onward the East believed that she did die, and was not a pre-fall human, but a human like all of us, mortal. The fact that she never sinned did stop her from dying because it has been "not appointed that all men shall die..."
Apparently, the fall is irreversable, or else God could have just done to Adam and Eve what he supposedly did to Mary—remove the stigma of the original sin, so we could all be like her! in fact, the Bile telsl us that the fall is so irreversable that God had to acquire human nature and offer himself as a substitute sacrifice to death. And even then, through mighty efforts, fasting and prayer, and a Eucharistic communion, we may be given new, uncorrupt bodies; but there is no retroengineering possible!
The belief that Mary never sinned despite her mortal human nature is what makes her the saint above all saints! For Adam and Eve it was easy to say no to sin. They chose to but their natures were not such that they were slaves to it (until their fall). Mary was the human known to the Church who broke the bonds of her own fallen nature and refused to sin.
That makes her a true saint of saints. If she was free from corruption, her effort would have been nothing in comparison.
And what about Romans 5:19? " For as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners"?
Dear Paul contradicts himself in 19 as opposed to 12, where he states "just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned."
And even verse 12 is ambiguous, as it can be read in two ways. The key wording (ef ho pantes hemarton) can be interpreted as "because all men sinned" or as "in whom [Adam] all men sinned." The former (eastern) understanding of this says that we are all responsible for our sin and that Adam is simply the first to sin; the latter (western) suggests that his sin is passed on to all Adam's descendants.
Thus, the east-west difference in what constitutes the original (ancestral) sin leads to differing Mariologies: the East sees her as an ordinary human who loved God more than anyone else on earth and remained pure despite her fallen nature; the west sees her as ontologically equal to Eve, free from any corruption, through an act of God that made her "sin-proof." In the eyes of the east, an Immaculate Conception Mary can never be a model for us to aspire to? She is obviously not one of us.
in fact, the Bile telsl BIBLE TELLS us
uncorrupt=incorrupt
Mary was the human known=Mary was the ONLY human known
The East sees Adam's transgression as a "genetic" defect passed on to all subsequent generations. His own sin corrupted human nature and made it defective. This defect (in will) is then passed on to the offspring as a curse of sorts. We are all born with a tendency to sin, which invariably (except in Mary's case) leads us to commit personal sin.
Because we are born defective, we are not in communion with God, who is life and without whom everything dies. It is not through sin, but through ontological separation of our fallen (corrupt) nature from God why even infants die.
I compare it to Huntonton's Chorea, a neurological condition that is one rare example of a dominant genetic defect. Because it is associated with a dominant gene, it is expressed in every generation. In other words, if one parent has the gene, he or she will pass that gene on to their children and they will develop the same neurological defect and die from it in their 30s. It's a certainty.
Most people with this condition, however, choose to have children, regardless, even tough they are told of the consequences. Huntiongton's Chorea could be eliminated in one generation if all those who have the defective gene abstained form having children, but humans selfishness would rather pass on a deadly defect then spare the world of that horrible predicament.
So, if this is true,how does the Orthodox view the fact that Christ joined with a corrupt human nature (Mary)and not be effected by corruption since He assumed a human nature? It makes no sense to me that God had to remove corruption at the point of conception of Christ by the Holy Spirit as if He did not know Mary's free decision to say "YES" from eternity .( Of course all seen as one NOW to God)
Another thing to consider ,dear brother, is that Mary has greater power over satan than eve .... In Genesis 3:15.."I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed: he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." Again,this points to the New Eve(Mary) as greater that OT eve
Where does it say that he took her flesh (he would have been genetically a woman with two X chromosomes!). In Judaism, the woman was simply a fertile field, nothing more. Apostolic Father, +Ignatius (105 AD) refers to her simply as a "suitable vessel" and not much more, even though he reocgnizes that she is the one who brought forth the Logos.
+Paul calls Christ the second Adam. But Adam had no mother, so there is no comparison, just as Eve had no mother. If God could fashion flesh for Adam he could fashion flesh for himself. Was Adam human? Yet he was not brought forth! Why would Christ's humanity depend on his Mother? Yet he refers to himself as "Son of man" (ben adam = son of adam, who is also referred to, not surprisingly, the son of God). Shouldn't he then be the brother of Adam? It appears Christ would have made himself a true 'son of Adam' (post-fall) rather than some Super-Adam.
It makes no sense to me that God had to remove corruption at the point of conception of Christ by the Holy Spirit as if He did not know Mary's free decision to say "YES" from eternity.(Of course all seen as one NOW to God)
But there was no corruption save for her mortality (which we do not see as sin, but as evidence of Adam's sin that made all humans ontologically fallen) and Jesus was subject to thirst, hungar, pain, pleasure, temptation and fear (all corruption), and he did die of his wounds (or did he commit suicide?).
If he wasn't mortal, then he wasn't human, and without feeling the corruption of being human he could not suffer as one. The Church believes that he suffered but did not give in to corurption.
And even the Bible says that after he resurrected no one could recongize or touch him because his body had not been glorified yet. So, even his body had to be glorified!
For a Mary who has been "sin-proofed" from the moment of her own conception saying "Yes" would have been no supreme effort. It would have been a given, and not a choice.
Another thing to consider ,dear brother, is that Mary has greater power over satan than eve ....
I think there are some really fundamental conceptual issues hiding behind our common veneration of Mary, separated by an almost unbridgeable chasm. The Latin side thinks of her as some Platonic superwoman, a demi-goddess, and the Orthodox side as a really fantastic human who loved God more than anyone else, a saint of saints by choice made in devotion to God, and not sas ome perfect robotic supercreature who can only say "Yes."
In Genesis 3:15.."I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed: he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." Again,this points to the New Eve(Mary) as greater that OT eve
I am sorry that is absurd, because then God intentionally created Adam and Eve so that they would sin. That makes God the author of sin, and that is Calvinism.
Patristic Christianity would never venture there.
The Latin Church does not say Mary was not mortal and did not die.It's actually not defined(probably should be) but the consensus is that she did die and than was assumed to heaven. The Church believes that Mary suffered as well..."A word will pierce your heart" and was threatened by satan as we see in typology.. A satanic serpent tempted her, Gen 3:4-6 = A satanic dragon threatened her, Rev 12:4-6,13-17
For a Mary who has been "sin-proofed" from the moment of her own conception saying "Yes" would have been no supreme effort. It would have been a given, and not a choice.
Adam and Eve had the choice and they were sinless ,thus, if Mary is the New Eve, what makes you think Mary did not have a choice? Her Choice to say Yes was exactly a supreme choice in perfect union with the will of God
The Latin side thinks of her as some Platonic superwoman, a demi-goddess
This is uncalled for and "over the top" ,I usually enjoy conversing with you,dear brother.You know better! This type of comment serves no purpose and you know it!I'm just merely trying to understand the EO's viewpoint from someone I have learned from and have always respected
Referring to Genesis 3;15.I am sorry that is absurd, because then God intentionally created Adam and Eve so that they would sin. That makes God the author of sin, and that is Calvinism.
God's foreknowledge is all seen as one Now to God,thus ,allowing for free choice not making God the author of sin.
I wish you a Blessed evening
Thought I would share with you this wonderful section from The aate Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s “Love begins with a dream”..
“But God not only thought of her in eternity; He also had her in mind at the beginning of time. In the beginning of history, when the human race fell through the solicitation of a woman, God spoke to the Devil and said, “I will establish a feud between thee and the woman, between thy offspring and hers; she is to crush thy head, while thou dost lie in wait at her heels” (Gen. 3:15). God was saying that, if it was by a woman that man fell, it would be through a woman that God would be revenged. Whoever His Mother would be, she would certainly be blessed among women, and because God Himself chose her, He would see to it that all generations would call her blessed.
When God willed to become Man, He had to decide on the time of His coming, the country in which He would be born, the city in which He would be raised, the people, the race, the political and economic systems that would surround Him, the language He would speak, and the psychological attitudes with which He would come in contact as the Lord of History and the Savior of the World.
All these details would depend entirely on one factor: the woman who would be His Mother. To choose a mother is to choose a social position, a language, a city, an environment, a crisis, and a destiny.
His Mother was not like ours, whom we accepted as something historically fixed, which we could not change; He was born of a Mother whom He chose before He was born. It is the only instance in history where both the Son willed the Mother and the Mother willed the Son. And this is what the Creed means when it says “born of the Virgin Mary.” She was called by God as Aaron was, and Our Lord was born not just of her flesh but also by her consent.
Before taking unto Himself a human nature, He consulted with the Woman, to ask her if she would give Him a man. The Manhood of Jesus was not stolen from humanity, as Prometheus stole fire from heaven; it was given as a gift.
The first man, Adam, was made from the slime of the earth. The first woman was made from a man in an ecstasy. The new Adam, Christ, comes from the new Eve, Mary, in an ecstasy of prayer and love of God and the fullness of freedom.
We should not be surprised that she is spoken of as a thought by God before the world was made. When Whistler painted the picture of his mother, did he not have the image of her in his mind before he ever gathered his colors on his palette? If you could have preexisted your mother (not artistically, but really), would you not have made her the most perfect woman that ever lived -— one so beautiful she would have been the sweet envy of all women, and one so gentle and so merciful that all other mothers would have sought to imitate her virtues? Why, then, should we think that God would do otherwise? When Whistler was complimented on the portrait of his mother, he said, “You know how it is; one tries to make one’s Mummy just as nice as he can.” When God became Man, He too, I believe, would make His Mother as nice as He could -— and that would make her a perfect Mother.
God never does anything without exceeding preparation. The two great masterpieces of God are Creation of man and Re-creation or Redemption of man. Creation was made for unfallen men; His Mystical Body, for fallen men. Before making man, God made a garden of delights -— as God alone knows how to make a garden beautiful. In that Paradise of Creation there were celebrated the first nuptials of man and woman. But man willed not to have blessings, except according to his lower nature. Not only did he lose his happiness; he even wounded his own mind and will. Then God planned the remaking or redeeming of man. But before doing so, he would make another Garden. This new one would be not of earth but of flesh; it would be a Garden over whose portals the name of sin would never be written -— a Garden in which there would grow no weeds of rebellion to choke the growth of the flowers of grace -— a Garden from which there would flow four rivers of redemption to the four corners of the earth -— a Garden so pure that the Heavenly Father would not blush at sending His Own Son into it -— and this “flesh-girt Paradise to be gardened by the Adam new” was Our Blessed Mother.” Fulton J Sheen
http://www.catholictradition.org/Mary/dream.htm
Beautiful! don’t you think so,dear Brother?
Here is a wonderful explanation of the Immaculate Conception from Blessed Fulton Sheen that explains why some of the early church would not understand because it was not relevant to the time they lived in. I think we must understand that Christ guides the Church through the ages and shows that modernists thinking has no effect on the faith..
From Fulton Sheen..
The Assumption and the World
by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
1952
The definition of the Immaculate Conception was made when the Modern World was born. Within five years of that date, and within six months of the apparition of Lourdes where Mary said, “I am the Immaculate Conception,” Charles Darwin wrote his Origin of Species, Karl Marx completed his Introduction to the Critique of the Philosophy of Hegel (”Religion is the Opium of the people”), and John Stuart Mill published his Essay on Liberty. At the moment the spirit of the world was drawing up a philosophy that would issue in two World Wars in twenty-one years, and the threat of a third, the Church came forward to challenge the falsity of the new philosophy. Darwin took man’s mind off his Divine Origin and fastened it on an unlimited future when he would become a kind of God. Marx was so impressed with this idea of inevitable progress that he asked Darwin if he would accept a dedication of one of his books. Then, following Feuerbach, Marx affirmed not a bourgeois atheism of the intellect, but an atheism of the will, in which man hates God because man is God. Mill reduced the freedom of the new man to license and the right to do whatever he pleases, thus preparing a chaos of conflicting egotisms, which the world would solve by Totalitarianism.
If these philosophers were right, and if man is naturally good and capable of deification through his own efforts, then it follows that everyone is immaculately conceived. The Church arose in protest and affirmed that only one human person in all the world is immaculately conceived, that man is prone to sin, and that freedom is best preserved when, like Mary, a creature answers Fiat to the Divine Will.
The dogma of the Immaculate Conception wilted and killed the false optimism of the inevitable and necessary progress of man without God. Humbled in his Darwinian-Marxian-Millian pride, modern man saw his doctrine of progress evaporate. The interval between the Napoleonic and Franco-Prussian Wars was fifty-five years; the interval between the Franco-Prussian War and World War I was forty-three years; the interval between World Wars I and II, twenty-one years. Fifty-five, forty-three, twenty-one, and a Korean War five years after World War II is hardly progress. Man finally saw that he was not naturally good. Once having boasted that he came from the beast, he now found himself to be acting as a beast.
Then came the reaction. The Optimistic Man who boasted of his immaculate conception now became the Pessimistic Man who could see within himself nothing but a bundle of libidinous, dark, cavernous drives. As in the definition of the Immaculate Conception, the Church had to remind the world that perfection is not biologically inevitable, so now in the definition of the Assumption, it has to give hope to the creature of despair. Modern despair is the effect of a disappointed hedonism and centers principally around Sex and Death. To these two ideas, which preoccupy the modern mind, the Assumption is indirectly related.
The primacy of Sex is to a great extent due to Sigmund Freud, whose basic principle in his own words is: “Human actions and customs derive from sexual impulses, and fundamentally, human wishes are unsatisfied sexual desires. ... Consciously or unconsciously, we all wish to unite with our mothers and kill our fathers, as Oedipus did unless we are female, in which case we wish to unite with our fathers and murder our mothers.” The other major concern of modern thought is Death. The beautiful philosophy of being is reduced to Dasein, which is only in-der-Weltsein. There is no freedom, no spirit, and no personality. Freedom is for death. Liberty is contingency threatened with complete destruction. The future is nothing but a projection of death. The aim of existence is to look death in the eye.
Jean-Paul Sartre passes from a phenomenology of sexuality to that which he calls “nausea,” or a brazen confrontation of nothingness, toward which existence tends. Nothing precedes man; nothing follows man. Whatever is opposite him is a negation of his ego, and therefore nothingness. God created the world out of nothingness; Sartre creates nothingness out of the world and the despairing human heart. “Man is a useless passion.”
Agnosticism and Pride were the twin errors the Church had to meet in the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception; now it is the despair resulting from Sex and Death it has to meet in this hour. When the Agnostics of the last century came in contact with the world and its three libidos, they became libertines. But when pleasure diminished and made hungry where most it satisfied, the agnostics, who had become libertines by attaching themselves to the world, now began in disgust to withdraw themselves from the world and became philosophers of Existentialism. Philosophers like Sartre, and Heidegger, and others are born of a detachment from the world, not as the Christian ascetic, because he loves God, but because they are disgusted with the world. They become contemplatives, not to enjoy God, but to wallow in their despair, to make a philosophy out of it, to be brazen about their boredom, and to make death the center of their destiny. The new contemplatives are in the monasteries of the jaded, which are built not along the waters of Siloe, but along the dark banks of the Styx.
These two basic ideas of modem thought, Sex and Death, are not unrelated. Freud himself hinted at the union of Eros and Thanatos. Sex brings death, first of all because in sex the other person is possessed, or annihilated, or ignored for the sake of pleasure. But this subjection implies a compression and a destruction of life for the sake of the c Eros. Secondly, death is a shadow which is cast over sex. Sex seeks pleasure, but since it assumes that this life is all, every pleasure is seasoned not only with a diminishing return, but also with the thought that death will end pleasure forever. Eros is Thanatos. Sex is Death.
From a philosophical point of view, the Doctrine of the Assumption meets the Eros-Thanatos philosophy head on, by lifting humanity from the darkness of Sex and Death to the light of Love and Life. These are the two philosophical pillars on which rests the belief in the Assumption.
1. Love. The Assumption affirms not Sex but Love. St. Thomas in his inquiry into the effects of love mentions ecstasy as one of them. In ecstasy one is “lifted out of his body,” an experience which poets and authors and orators have felt in a mild form when in common parlance, “they were carried away by their subject.” On a higher level, the spiritual phenomenon of levitation is due to such an intense love of God that saints are literally lifted off the earth. Love, like fire, burns upward, since it is basically desire. It seeks to become more and more united with the object that is loved. Our sensate experiences are familiar with the earthly law of gravitation which draws material bodies to the earth. But in addition to terrestrial gravitation, there is a law of spiritual gravitation, which increases as we get closer to God. This “pull” on our hearts by the Spirit of God is always present, and it is only our refusing wills and the weakness of our bodies as a result of sin which keep us earth-bound. Some souls become impatient with the restraining body; St. Paul asks to be delivered from its prison house.
If God exerts a gravitational pull on all souls, given the intense love of Our Lord for His Blessed Mother which descended, and the intense love of Mary for Her Lord which ascended, there is created a suspicion that love at this stage would be so great as “to pull the body with it.” Given further an immunity from Original Sin, there would not be in the Body of Our Lady the dichotomy, tension, and opposition that exists in us between body and soul. If the distant moon moves all the surging tides of earth, then the love of Mary for Jesus and the love of Jesus for Mary should result in such an ecstasy as “to lift her out of this
world.”
Love in its nature is an Ascension in Christ and an Assumption in Mary. So closely are Love and the Assumption related that a few years ago the writer, when instructing a Chinese lady, found that the one truth in Christianity which was easiest for her to believe was the Assumption. She personally knew a saintly soul who lived on a mat in the woods, whom thousands of people visited to receive her blessing. One day, according to the belief of all who knew the saint, she was “assumed” into heaven. The explanation the convert from Confucianism gave was: “Her love was so great that her body followed her soul.” One thing is certain: the Assumption is easy to understand if one loves God deeply, but it is hard to understand if one loves not.
Plato in his Symposium, reflecting the Grecian view of the elevation of love, says that love of the flesh should lead to love of the spirit. The true meaning of love is that it leads to God. Once the earthly love has fulfilled its task, it disappears, as the symbol gives way to reality. The Assumption is not the killing of the Eros, but its transfiguration through Agape. It does not say that love in a body is wrong, but it does hold that it can be so right, when it is Godward, that the beauty of the body itself is enhanced.
Our Age of Carnality which loves the Body Beautiful is lifted out of its despair, born of the Electra and Oedipus incests, to a Body that is Beautiful because it is a Temple of God, a Gate through which the Word of Heaven passed to earth, a Tower of Ivory up which climbed Divine Love to kiss upon the lips of His Mother a Mystic Rose. With one stroke of an infallible dogmatic pen, the Church lifts the sacredness of love out of sex without denying the role of the body in love. Here is one body that reflects in its uncounted hues the creative love of God. To a world that worships the body, the Church now says: “There are two bodies in Heaven, one the glorified human nature of Jesus, the other the assumed human nature of Mary. Love is the secret of the Ascension of one and of the Assumption of the other, for Love craves unity with its Beloved. The Son returns to the Father in the unity of Divine Nature; and Mary returns to Jesus in the unity of human nature. Her nuptial flight is the event to which our whole generation moves.”
2. Life. Life is the second philosophical pillar on which the Assumption rests. Life is unitive; death is divisive. Goodness is the food of life, as evil is the food of death. Errant sex impulses are the symbol of the body’s division from God as a result of original sm. Death is the last stroke of that division. Wherever there is sin, there is multiplicity: the Devil says, “My name is Legion; there are many of us.” (Mark 5:9.) But life is immanent activity. The higher the life, the more immanent is the activity, says St. Thomas. The plant drops its fruit from a tree, the animal drops its kind for a separate existence, but the spiritual mind of man begets the fruit of a thought which remains united to the mind, although distinct from it. Hence intelligence and life are intimately related. Da mihi intellectum et vivam. God is perfect life because of perfect inner intellectual activity. There is no extrinsicism, no dependence, no necessary outgoing on the part of God.
Since the imperfection of life comes from remoteness to the source of life and because of sin, it follows that the creature who is preserved from Original Sin is immune from that psychological division which sin begets. The Immaculate Conception guarantees a highly integrated and unified life. The purity of such a life is threefold: a physical purity which is integrity of body; a mental purity without any desire for a division of love, which love of creatures apart from God would imply; and finally, a psychological purity which is immunity from the uprising of concupiscence, the sign and symbol of our weakness and diversity. This triple purity is the essence of the most highly unified creature whom this world has ever seen.
Added to this intense life in Mary, which is free from the division caused by sin, there is still a higher degree of life because of her Divine Motherhood. Through her portals Eternity became young and appeared as a Child; through her, as to another Moses, not the tables of the Law, but the Logos was given and written on her own heart; through her, not a manna which men eat and die, but the Eucharist descends, which if a man eats, he will never die.
But if those who commune with the Bread of Life never die, then what shall we say of her who was the first living Ciborium of that Eucharist, and who on Christmas day opened it at the communion rail of Bethlehem to say to Wise Men and Shepherds: “Behold the Lamb of God Who taketh away the sins of the world”?
Here there is not just a life free from the division which brings death, but a life united with Eternal Life. Shall she, as the garden in which grew the lily of Divine sinlessness and the red rose of the passion of redemption, be delivered over to the weeds and be forgotten by the Heavenly Gardener? Would not one communion preserved in grace through life ensure a heavenly immortality? Then shall not she, in whose womb was celebrated the nuptials of eternity and time, be more of eternity than time? As she carried Him for nine months, there was fulfilled in another way the law of life: “And they shall be two in one flesh.”
No grown men and women would like to see the home in which they were reared subjected to the violent destruction of a bomb, even though they no longer lived in it. Neither would Omnipotence, Who tabernacled Himself within Mary, consent to see His fleshy home subjected to the dissolution of the tomb. If grown men love to go back to their homes when they reach the fullness of life, and become more conscious of the debt they owe their mothers, then shall not Divine Life go back in search of His living cradle and take that “flesh-girt paradise” to Heaven with Him, there to be “gardenered by the Adam new”?
In this Doctrine of the Assumption, the Church meets the despair of the world in a second way. It affirms the beauty of life as against death. When wars, sex, and sin multiply the discords of men, and death threatens on every side, the Church bids us lift up our hearts to the life that has the immortality of the Life which nourished it. Feuerbach said that a man is what he eats. He was more right than he knew. Eat the food of earth, and one dies; eat the Eucharist, and one lives eternally. She, who is the mother of the Eucharist, escapes the decomposition of death.
The Assumption challenges the nothingness of the Mortician philosophers in a new way. The greatest task of the spiritual leaders today is to save mankind from despair, into which Sex and Fear of Death have cast it. The world that used to say, “Why worry about the next world, when we live in this one?” has finally learned the hard way that, by not thinking about the next life, one cannot even enjoy this life. When optimism completely breaks down and becomes pessimism, the Church holds forth the promise of hope. Threatened as we are by war on all sides, with death about to be rained from the sky by Promethean fires, the Church defines a Truth that has Life at its center. Like a kindly mother whose sons are going off to war, she strokes our heads and says: “You will come back alive, as Mary came back again after walking down the valley of Death.” As the world fears defeat by death, the Church sings the defeat of death. Is not this the harbinger of a better world, as the refrain of life rings out amidst the clamors of the philosophers of death?
As Communism teaches that man has only a body, but not a soul, so the Church answers: “Then let us begin with a Body.” As the mystical body of the anti-Christ gathers around the tabernacle doors of the cadaver of Lenin, periodically filled with wax to give the illusion of immortality to those who deny immortality, the Mystical Body of Christ bids the despairing to gaze on the two most serious wounds earth ever received: the empty tomb of Christ and the empty tomb of Mary. In 1854 the Church spoke of the Soul in the Immaculate Conception. In 1950 its language was about the Body: the Mystical Body, the Eucharist, and the Assumption. With deft dogmatic strokes the Church is repeating Paul’s truth to another pagan age: “Your bodies are meant for the Lord.” There is nothing in a body to beget despair. Man is related to Nothingness, as the philosophers of Decadentism teach, but only in his origin, not in his destiny. They put Nothingness as the end; the Church puts it at the beginning, for man was created ex nihilo. The modern man gets back to nothingness through despair; the Christian knows nothingness only through self-negation, which is humility. The more that the pagan “nothings” himself, the closer he gets to the hell of despair and suicide. The more the Christian “nothings” himself, the closer he gets to God. Mary went so deep down into Nothingness that she became exalted. Respexit humilitatem ancillae suae. And her exaltation was also her Assumption.
Coming back to the beginning ... to Eros and Thanatos: Sex and Death, said Freud, are related. They are related in this sense: Eros as egotistic love leads to the death of the soul. But the world need not live under that curse. The Assumption gives Eros a new meaning. Love does lead to death. Where there is love, there is self-forgetfulness, and the maximum in self-forgetfulness is the surrender of life. “Greater love than this no man hath, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13.) Our Lord’s love led to His death. Mary’s love led to her transfixion with seven swords. Greater love than this no woman hath, that she stand beneath the Cross of her Son to share, in her own way, in the Redemption of the world.
Within three decades the definition of the Assumption will cure the pessimism and despair of the modern world. Freud, who did so much to develop this pessimism, took as his motto: “If I cannot move the Gods on high, I shall set all hell in an uproar.” That uproar which he created will now be stilled by a Lady as powerful as an “army drawn up in battle array.” The age of the “body beautiful” will now become the age of the Assumption.
In Mary there is a triple transition. In the Annunciation we pass from the holiness of the Old Testament to the holiness of Christ. At Pentecost we pass from the holiness, of the Historical Christ to the holiness of the Mystical Christ or His Body, which is the Church. Mary here receives the Spirit for a second time. The first overshadowing was to give birth to the Head of the Church; this second overshadowing is to give birth to His Body as she is in the midst of the Apostles abiding in prayer. The third transition is the Assumption, as she becomes the first human person to realize the historical destiny of the faithful as members of Christ’s Mystical Body, beyond time, beyond death, and beyond judgment.
Mary is always in the vanguard of humanity. She is compared to Wisdom, presiding at Creation; she is announced as the Woman who will conquer Satan, as the Virgin who will conceive. She becomes the first person since the Fall to have a unique and unrepeatable kind of union with God; she mothers the infant Christ in Bethlehem; she mothers the Mystical Christ at Jerusalem; and now, by her Assumption, she goes ahead like her Son to prepare a place for us. She participates in the glory of Her Son, reigns with Him, presides at His Side over the destinies of the Church in time, and intercedes for us, to Him, as He, in His turn, intercedes to the Heavenly Father.
Adam came before Eve chronologically. The new Adam, Christ, comes after the new Eve, Mary, chronologically, although existentially He preceded her as the Creator a creature. By stressing for the moment only the time element, Mary always seems to be the Advent of what is in store for man. She anticipates Christ for nine months, as she bears Heaven within her; she anticipates His Passion at Cana, and His Church at Pentecost. Now, in the last great Doctrine of the Assumption, she anticipates heavenly glory, and the definition comes at a time when men think of it least.
One wonders if this could not be the last of the great Truths of Mary to be defined by the Church. Anything else might seem to be an anticlimax after she is declared to be in Heaven, body and soul. But actually there is one other truth left to be defined, and that is that she is the Mediatrix, under Her Son, of all graces. As St. Paul speaks of the Ascension of Our Lord as the prelude to His intercession for us, so we, fittingly, should speak of the Assumption of Our Lady as a prelude to her intercession for us. First, the place, Heaven; then, the function, intercession. The nature of her role is not to call Her Son’s attention to some need, in an emergency unnoticed by Him, nor is it to “win” a difficult consent. Rather it is to unite herself to His compassionate Mercy and give a human voice to His Infinite Love. The main ministry of Mary is to incline men’s hearts to obedience to the Will of Her Divine Son. Her last recorded words at Cana are still her words in the Assumption: “Whatsoever He shall say to you, that do ye.”
Since her sinlessness is not disputed, the only other reason why she would have died would have been her own mortality (fallen nature), which pretty much leaves the Immaculate Conception out of the picture.
The Church believes that Mary suffered as well...A satanic serpent tempted her, Gen 3:4-6 = A satanic dragon threatened her, Rev 12:4-6,13-17
The Book of Revelation rests on dust covered shelves of Orthodox churches. It is the last book to be canonized in the East (9th century), and is never read liturgically. As for Genesis 3, or the Old Testament as a whole, the serpent is never explicitly called or associated with anything satanic. Ha satan (The Accuser) is a title of an angel, and therefore son of God, whom he uses (the Book of Job and elsewhere in the Old Testament) to tempt and to test.
Pre-Babylonian Judaism does not know the dualism between Good and Evil. The dualism is an import which found its way into messianic Judaism through Zoroastrianism, and through messianic Judaism into Christianity. The parallel between Gen 3 and Rev 12 is artificial and meaningless.
Besides, when was Mary tempted by satan and why? In fact, the whole recurring theme in the Bible of God constantly testing and tempting people, sending deceiving spirits, etc. is ridiculous if you think about it. For what possible reason would God tempt anyone, even himself (i.e. Jesus)?!?
And for what possible purpose did he allow temptation of Eve if he already knew that she would fail the test? Is this the world he intentionally created, or did it fall in spite of him? Genesis 6:6 seems to suggest the latter! The OT God is not an all-knowing, all-seeing God, at least not uniformly throughout the Old Testament. There are sections which say that God had to "come down" to "see" and know what was going on!
Adam and Eve had the choice and they were sinless ,thus, if Mary is the New Eve, what makes you think Mary did not have a choice? Her Choice to say Yes was exactly a supreme choice in perfect union with the will of God
But it was no effort to obey God because that's how pre-fall humanity was created—in communion with God. If you read what I wrote you will see that I say "saying 'Yes' would have been no supreme effort" on her part. Besides, he already knew she would say "Yes" as you suggest, or did he close his eyes and "hope" she wouldn't say "No?"
This is uncalled for and "over the top" ,I usually enjoy conversing with you,dear brother.
No "over the top" intended. If, through the Immaculate Conception, Mary was created a pre-fall human with powers that are above those of Eve, as you suggest, then she is not really human. She is unlike any other noëtic creature, whether man (fallen or not) or angel. Think about it: she is ontologically not one of us, so what is she?
I'm just merely trying to understand the EO's viewpoint from someone I have learned from and have always respected
And I am trying to understand the Latins' point of view from someone I have learned from and have always respected, but if I tell you that someone is ontologically not human you'd be more than justified in concluding that this is someone we can not look up to as out role model.
God's foreknowledge is all seen as one Now to God,thus ,allowing for free choice not making God the author of sin.
How did the fall from grace happen to our ancestral parents? By accident? Was it not choreographed first by God planting the tree for the sole purpose of tempting, then stating the forbidden nature of the fruit, then by God creating and placing a talking serpent into the tree so he can test and tempt Eve? Why would God do that? Would you tempt your children and when they fall for it, kick them out of the house for all subsequent generations? Is that the Christ we know?
More importantly, did the Fall happen against God's will, plan and knowledge? Judging from Gen 6:6 it did! It seems that God is blind sided by man's wickedness which developed right on his watch as if he didn't know about it.
Not to belabor the point, but God's first reaction seems to have been to drown the whole wicked lot, including the "sinful" animals.
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