Regarding the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception: the quicksand pit is a parable. (Remember, Our Lord often taught by parables. ) I did not imply that falling in quicksand was a sin, or even a congenital predisposition to sin.
I do not know how Our Lord saved Mary from this woeful predisposition, although via the Eastern Churches (Orthodox and Byzantines) I have read wonderful writings --- if I can find them on the internet, I'll send links --- associating Genesis 3:15 ("I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed...") with Hebrews 10:5 ("Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith,...a body thou hast prepared me.")
The conclusion was that God was working through all the generations between Adam/Eve, and Mary, preparing perfect seed so that Our Lord could be born of a perfect mother.
Being 21st century persons, we naturally think of this in terms of the DNA, and the various permutations and combinations which come about via meiosis, generation after generation. The OT Jews didn't know genetics per se, but their intense interest in genealogy in the OT suggests that with each generation, God was preparing the sacred Messianic line. The life being transmitted in that line was free of random genetic deterioration, indeed undergoing successive genetic improvements as different alleles were selected and rejected.
But why would one bump that back to the conception of Mary in her mother's womb? Why not simply say that Jesus Himself, upon His conception, must have received those "all-star" genes when the finally-flawless sequencing clicked into place?
The reason would be that be that, contrary to what was thought by perinatologists until very recently, there ARE interchanges between maternal and fetal blood involving stem cells and proteins which switch different genes on and off. A perfect Jesus carried in the womb of an imperfect mother for nine months, would have had His phenotype (despite his pure His genotype) rendered impure by microchimerism and related processes while still in her contaminated, and actively contaminating, womb.
Not only that, but the mother's egg cell (which, when fertilized, becomes the zygote) also contains mitchondria, which have their own independent genome, and are involved in other tasks such as signaling, cellular differentiation, the control of the cell cycle and cell growth and death. This is another event pathway by which an imperfect mother would pervasively degrade a perfect offspring.
There's also the til-now largely unexplored question of living cells transmitted to the suckling infant via breast milk. It is well known that the mother passes on 40 million maternal cells per ounce of breast milk: mammary epithelial cells, leukocytes (white blood cells) --- macrophages, neutrophils, and lymphocytes. With the exception of the epithelial cells, these are the same cells found in the mother's blood.
Bottom line, modern science can be seen as confirming what our fathers in the faith knew only by divine inspiration: that the "seed of the woman" (unheard of for a woman to be thought to have "seed"!) would be "prepared" (as it says in Hebrews) until a perfected genetic, somatic and mitochondrial line was present in a woman who would give birth to the Messiah.
I don't know how much of theology of Jesus' perfect humanity is dependent on the biology as I have just described it. Much of it must necessarily remain veiled in mystery. Nevertheless, the most advanced scienctific research provides converging lines of evidence that the genetic, gestational and lactational mother would have to be perfect in order to give birth to an offspring entirely free of defect, and nurture him perfectly through infancy.
As one the most ancient hymns in Christendom says, "[You] who without corruption gave birth to God the Word, the very Theotokos, we magnify you."
And all this, done for a lowly handmaid, by her Savior! It was a work of God alone. "My soul magnifies the Lord!"
I am so stealing this. thank for such a clear logical explanation.
It rained a thunderating heavy storm here with a cellphone flooding warning coming in. But the storm cleared up and now it is cook and sunny, and perhaps I cam get some work done outside.
On the biological/theological problem under discussion, there has been some creative writing going on about it, but little solid application of what we already have--The Holy Scriptures.
I do not know how Our Lord saved Mary from this woeful predisposition,
I do know. Basically, The Anointed Child born from her womb saved her just like He provided for every other human's salvation, from Adam and Eve on, by his purchase of us with His Blood, and by suffering at the Hands of The God the total penalty for sins, on the Cross.
... with each generation, God was preparing the sacred Messianic line.
Jesus' genealogy provided him with a connection to Seth, Shem and Jacob, a legitimate title of royalty from Judah to David to Joseph on the one side, and a validation of His physical sonship from David's Nathan to Mary on the other side (which Joseph was not to provide), as having been born from Mary's womb.
Why not simply say that Jesus Himself, upon His conception, must have received those "all-star" genes when the finally-flawless sequencing clicked into place?
It seems that He must have had a very durable genetic construction, but until the past few years we did not know how, even though our medical / technological knowledge was surpassing. That has now changed.
First, consider that Adam was created to live for ever. But he had no mother. God created his body out of the dust of the earth--the body which even we still have. Having been made perfectly, there was no hint of death, anywhere, until his irreversible moment of diaobedience. God breathed into that body, and it became a living soul.
From that living flesh body, God also made a woman. However, in doing so, He left something out of every cell of that body: the y chromosome. Therefore, without some miracle, a woman could not parthenogenetically produce a male.
Point two is that in the last forty or fifty years, another aspect of biology has given us skills to extract an embryo from one woman and plant it into another woman. Or (I think) it has become possible to place an in vitro fertilized egg into a woman's womb. Of these factors I have a speculation that it most certainly is possible for the All-Mighty, Omniscient, Omnipotent God to create just such an incipient body within the womb of a young virgin, unite with it as The Son of His Love, and come to fruition as The Sinless Son born into this world, with the task and ability to meet The God's righteous demands, and thus vanquish both the Devil and the Death introdued beacause of Adam's disobedience.
Never forget that such a Divine Birth could have taken place at any time, but The God waited until the fullness of time to integrate this phase of his purposes to install His Messiah and His Kingdom of Righteousness and peace.
The above speculation of Mary being granted the Blessed Mother; the trusting, willing, and obedient host of The Fully Human and Fully God Servant should not scandalize you.
As far as His leucocytes passing into her, that is oly another speculation. Andas far as His blood being left on the Shroud of Turin, I'm mighty suspicious of that claim.
You are talking about PHYSICAL, free of genetic defects, traits being passed down from mother to child. But, sin is a SPIRITUAL defect that has nothing to do with what Mary did or did not pass down to Jesus. Jesus was perfect and sinless because he was GOD, not because his mother was also sinless. Jesus didn't even need a physically "perfect" mother to be born of human flesh. What mattered is that Almighty God was incarnated in the likeness of sinful flesh: