If Jesus couldn’t be born of a sinful mother because He would have been *tainted* by her original sin, how could Mary have been born sinless of sinful parents without being *tainted* by THEIR original sin?
Wouldn’t HER parents have had to be sinless to produce a sinless girl?
Just how far back does this need to go?
And whatever miracle that God did to keep Mary free from sin, He could have done for Jesus directly alone.
And where in Scripture does it say that contact with sinful beings is what passes on sin? Does sin not come from the heart through the father?
The Church teaching is that Christ's sacrifice is what won us our Salvation. Church teaching is that His sacrifice is super-sufficient for our salvation.And YOU somehow twist that to say
Mary was the tool, the ark for holding God. This ark had to be purified, pure, clean, filled with grace to be able to bear God.
Just as the Ark of the First Covenant was so powerful that even priests who were uncleansed and men who aimed to prevent it from falling could get filled by one touch, so even more so the Ark of the second, greater, covenant had to be pure, filled utterly with grace.
All for God, all by God -- Mary did NOT save herself, she needed salvation and got that from her God, her Son, her Savior. Jesus saved Mary, He was her savior. He saved her, protected her from sin.
He would have been *tainted* by her original sinWhereever did you get THAT from my post?
The Church teaching is that Christ's sacrifice is what won us our Salvation. Church teaching is that His sacrifice is super-sufficient for our salvation.And YOU somehow twist that to say
Mary was the tool, the ark for holding God. This ark had to be purified, pure, clean, filled with grace to be able to bear God.
Just as the Ark of the First Covenant was so powerful that even priests who were uncleansed and men who aimed to prevent it from falling could get filled by one touch, so even more so the Ark of the second, greater, covenant had to be pure, filled utterly with grace.
All for God, all by God -- Mary did NOT save herself, she needed salvation and got that from her God, her Son, her Savior. Jesus saved Mary, He was her savior. He saved her, protected her from sin.
He would have been *tainted* by her original sinWhereever did you get THAT from my post?
The Church teaching is that Christ's sacrifice is what won us our Salvation. Church teaching is that His sacrifice is super-sufficient for our salvation.And YOU somehow twist that to say
Mary was the tool, the ark for holding God. This ark had to be purified, pure, clean, filled with grace to be able to bear God.
Just as the Ark of the First Covenant was so powerful that even priests who were uncleansed and men who aimed to prevent it from falling could get filled by one touch, so even more so the Ark of the second, greater, covenant had to be pure, filled utterly with grace.
All for God, all by God -- Mary did NOT save herself, she needed salvation and got that from her God, her Son, her Savior. Jesus saved Mary, He was her savior. He saved her, protected her from sin.
He would have been *tainted* by her original sinWhereever did you get THAT from my post?
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, light from light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and became truly human.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father [and the Son],
who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
As you may know, m-mom, Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christians, who certainly take no back seat to the Latins when it comes to veneration of the Most Holy Theotokos, do not subscribe to the innovative and modern Latin Church dogma of the Immaculate Conception. This is a doctrine whose dogmatic status was declared by no Ecumenical Council but rather by a 19th century pope, not to fight a heresy as all the other real dogmas to that point were, but for other reasons apparently sufficient to him.
While no Orthodox Christian accepts this doctrine, some of us believe that it is positively heretical as a denial of the dual nature of Christ (True God and True Man)as declared by the 4th Ecumenical Council held at Chalcedon in 451 AD. If the Most Holy Theotokos was ontologically different from all the rest of mankind by being born without the tendencies to sinfulness we all carry as a result of the Sin of Adam, then she was not a human being, she was a "goddess" and her Son was not True Man.
This whole notion that she had to be "pure" or "without the stain (Macula) of Original Sin" is, it has been argued, driven by the fundamentally flawed Manichean notions of Blessed Augustine (whose Greek was not good at all and so he was cut off from the writings of the Greek Fathers) about "Original Sin". That whole concept is outside the consensus of The Fathers and is rejected by Eastern Christians, but this flawed doctrine probably lies at the base of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.
A number of the Fathers rejected this idea of the Immaculate Conception and some of the greatest theologians of the Latin Church did too. No less a figure than +Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, denied it. It was essentially a doctrine developed by "Schoolmen" like Duns Scotus.
It is my understanding that many Protestants accept the Augustinian idea that man is utterly depraved. If so, then it stands to reason that such Protestants should immediately accept the Immaculate Conception doctrine since it strains credulity that God would be born out of depravity.
Once the West, including Protestants, accepted Blessed Augustine's non-patristic concept of Original Sin, all sorts of theological aberrations developed.