Replies

Perhaps someone better to explain in detail is needed. If you are truly searching for truth as to the erroneous teachings of the RCC you will read this all.

From: http://ichthys.com/mail-Mary-full-of-grace.htm

Response #1: Nonsense like this "bugs" me too! Let me begin by pointing out that Mary too was a bit confused by this greeting, wondering "what kind of greeting this might be" (Lk.1:29 NIV). The angel Gabriel himself responds with the explanation: "But the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor (charis-grace) with God'" (Lk.1:30). The word italicized here, favor or "grace", is the root word of the verbal form in question. That is to say, kecharitomene is "grace", charis, made into a verb (to be specific, a verbal participle). Thus we have from God's messenger himself an answer to this question, if we are but ready to receive it, namely, Mary is called by this epithet because she had "garnered grace" in God's eyes through her exemplary spiritual life (cf. the similar praise given to her cousins, Zechariah and Elizabeth earlier in the chapter: Lk.1:6). And that, after all, is the literal meaning of kecharitomene, namely, "having been graced". Further, because Mary had "found" this favor/grace/charis at some point in the past, by definition she was not born with it. This favor came about from something she did, namely, believing in the Lord and walking in a way pleasing to Him through spiritual growth and service. This explanation from Gabriel proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that his appellation in question here does not imply sinlessness, but rather demonstrates Mary's spiritual prominence, divine favor of the sort available to all believers but, sadly, appropriated by few.

It really irritates me when people who are used to dealing with others who don't have degrees in Greek use their insufficient knowledge as a sort of sledge hammer to "settle" all arguments. Based on the above, a simple answer to give your respondent would be: "hogwash!", but I suppose we should go into the details:

1) Transliterated the actual form of the word in question would be kecharitomene, but anyone dealing with Greek would describe it as what it is, a participle of the verb charitoo.

2) Of all Indo-European languages of which I am aware, Greek is the most root-focused. The import of that fact here is that this verb is based on a root meaning "favor" (cf. Greek charis); that is what is at the core of charitoo's meaning, and that is the key to discovering what this particular form of the verb means or might mean in turn. To put the matter in terms of its essential accidence, charitoo is merely a factitive verb, that is, it's what someone does when they want to take a noun and turn it into a transitive/causative verb. Therefore, by its structure and root the verb ought to mean "to give or bestow favor-grace to or on someone". In the case of a perfect participle in passive voice (such as we have here), the form would then mean "someone who has had favor-grace given/bestowed to/on them (i.e., from some source)".

3) To call this word a "hapax" in an attempt to bestow some sort of uniqueness on it is disingenuous. Not only does this verb occur throughout Greek literature - it also occurs elsewhere in the Bible at Ephesians 1:6:

Having foreordained us for adoption to Himself through Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of His will, for the purpose of producing (at salvation) praise for the glory of His grace which He has graciously bestowed on us in the Beloved [One]. Ephesians 1:5-6

Another way to put the italicized phrase is "the favor-grace with which He has favored-graced us"; in the Greek its charin hes echaritosen. In other words, the verb in question from Luke 1:28 has as its first or internal object "favor/grace" and as its second or true direct object "us". We get / have gotten favor/grace from God in Jesus Christ. We know that here because the verse says so explicitly, but that is not any kind of surprise for anyone who understands that grace is favor, and specifically and importantly in the Bible it is God's favor, His beneficence, good will, grace, kindliness, etc. directed our way because of our relationship with His Son. We are all said to have this grace in Ephesians 1:6 expressed by exactly the same verb as is used in Luke 1:28. That doesn't mean, of course, that we never sin!

4) The voice is surely not significant here in terms of changing the essential meaning of the verb (it merely views the action from the recipient's point of view instead of the donor's as is the case in the Ephesians passage above). As your correspondent doesn't make any claim based on the voice in any case, I will pass on immediately to the tense of the participle. The perfect tense is the rarest of the four tense stems in Greek – outside of biblical literature. The reason is simple enough. The Greeks are very big on duality, and in the aorist and present stems they are able to express either continuous "Aktionsart" (as the Germans would say) with the present stem (i.e., "it is happen-ing"), or with the aorist stem a punctiliar idea of timelessness (i.e., "it happen-s"). This is true whether or not one wishes to apply such timeless "happening" to a small or to an infinite amount of time. I like to describe this phenomenon to my classes as the difference between a straight line with an arrow indicating motion (present), and an "x" which marks an unmoving spot (aorist) – they never seem to get it without much pain, however, so don't despair if all this seems a tad confusing. Essentially, "aspect" is of little true effect in Greek usage. There are very few instances when the difference between these stems means very much except as it has a temporal application. Generally speaking, authors will use an aorist versus a present infinitive, e.g., more because they like the way it sounds in context than for any other apparent reason. But the fact is that they were able to make all the distinction they wanted or needed to make with these two. The perfect stem forms, as can be plainly seen from kecharitomene, tend to be long and cumbersome, and so from the same stylistic concerns (coupled with the dislike of the idea of perfect – the Greeks are much more likely to say something "happened" when we would say it "has happened"), the perfect is used much less frequently – in non-biblical Greek. In all biblically derived Greek, however, one cannot discount the enormous influence of Hebrew, and it is often the case in scripture that the tenses – especially where the perfect is used – reflect the fact that Hebrew has an imperfect and a perfect to deal with past tense ideas, and that is all. For this reason it should not be surprising that faced with a choice translators and writers under Hebrew influence would often gravitate to the use of the perfective forms in Greek when they have in mind a perfective exemplar in Hebrew (not unlike the similar influence that Latin begins to wield later on some non-biblical Greek). These facts taken together have the decided effect of greatly diminishing the significance of the occurrence of a perfect form in biblical Greek (as in our case).

5) The idea that one can read into this word meaning "object of grace/favor" any degree of sinlessness or perfection on the basis of a "perfect" verb form indicates a complete misunderstanding of what "perfect" means in grammatical terms. In verbs, it only means "completed action" – not sinlessness! To go back to the discussion in point 4 above, if the present is a line with an arrow and the aorist is an "x", then the perfect would be a line with an "x" at the end, that is, action begun in the past and now complete. The action doesn't have to have begun in eternity nor does the completion of the action impart perfection of any sort on the object. In our case all it would mean is that Mary had received favor from God in the past and was still in His good-graces. In short, this is just a verb form, not a miracle or the representation of one. If the perfect tense could do all the author claims, then every time it says anything about "knowing" in scripture (for oida is perfective in all of its forms), it would mean "knowing with a perfect knowledge that was conceived in eternity past": such a convention of translation would lead only to utter nonsense (cf. Acts 16:3).

6) Finally as to the translation "full of grace", while there is nothing to recommend the "full of" here, it's not really the translation that's the problem but rather what R.C. theology attempts to do with it (and would no doubt attempt to do with any reasonable translation), namely, to make Mary sinless or special in some super-human way based upon this appellation. Mary was special indeed, a true believer in a time of wide-spread apostasy, and obviously an exceptionally good one too, with whom the Lord was well-pleased indeed. But there is no indication that she was perfect, nor was there any need for her to be, for the only way to avoid the reception of a sin nature is to be virgin born as the sin nature is passed down through the male side (see Bible Basics 3B: Hamartiology, section I.2, "The Sin Nature"). It was the fact that Jesus was born without human male participation that produces a body free from sin, not any supposed sinlessness on Mary's part.

Also in Luke, Luke 2:52 to be precise, we are told that "Jesus continued to grow in wisdom, and in stature, and in grace with God and men". If grace or favor is progressive in the case of our unquestionably perfect Lord, how could it be that in Mary's case she was "perfectly filled with grace from eternity"? Clearly, even our Lord in His capacity as a true human being was required to grow spiritually, showing that even in the case of someone who did not in fact possess a sin nature or ever sin, still, grace or favor received from God remains a relative thing and is still dependent upon one's actions rather than being some sort of "magic" one just has. Long story short, this idea about Mary being perfect coming from Luke 1:28 is ridiculous on the face of it. Even the preferred R.C. translation doesn't say or imply that – unless, as I say, we imagine grace as "magic" and give "full of" the idea of absolute perfection and eternal residency, neither of which is either biblical or theologically reasonable to anyone who is consulting scripture and thinking for themselves.

In our truly perfect Lord in whom we have been given grace abundantly, our dear Savior Jesus Christ.

Bob L.

Galatians 4:4-5, "But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons."