Originally posted by Daniel Vollmer:
Thanks for the reply and sharing your view point. I am always interested in what my brothers opinions are. I would like to try and explain further my view which I feel is the Catholic view point on some of these issues.
And I am always interested in hearing different viewpoints.
As has been mentioned already the title given to Mary was Full of Grace and if you look into the greek translation you will see that full of grace does not just mean one who has alot of grace but one who is completed in grace. As I understand it, when one is completed in grace they will not have any sinful nature to them so this would imply that Mary was born immaculate since after her birth she had not yet been baptised before the Angel appeared to her.
Why would you assume that Mary must be baptized before she could be completed in grace? Your entire line of reasoning is predicated upon this one assumption, so you must provide at least some reasoning for this.
She had also not conceived Jesus at that point so she would not have been full of grace due to the presence of Jesus in her womb.
You are correct, she was not 'with child' at that moment, but you must be willing to accept that it is possible to be called 'full of grace' because of Jesus' presence if you are going to even broach the subject of God being outside of time (as you do below). For, if you attempt to use the 'God outside of time' argument, one could argue that when angel speaks to Mary, God views her as being pregenant with Jesus.
I believe that Adam and Eve where both blessed as God blessed his creation. Here is a verse from Genesis 1:27-28 And God made man in his image, in the image of God he made him: male and female he made them.And God gave them his blessing and said to them, Be fertile and have increase, and make the earth full and be masters of it; be rulers over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing moving on the earth.
That was not the argument. The argument was that they were blessed because they were born without sin. Notice how both Adam and Eve were already alive when God blessed them. This supports my assertion that they were blessed just because God is good, not because they were born without sin.
So, yes, I agree; Adam and Eve were blessed. Now, why were they blessed and then try to relate that back to the original argument. You will see it falls painfully short of your original assertion.
I agree that we are cursed due to the sin commited by Adam and Eve. But because of the sin they commited they fell from grace. It is true that they were not perfected in grace since they sinned. Because Mary was perfected in grace she did not fall to sin.
This is an interesting argument. You should follow this more. Try to expound upon this.
In regards to everyone has sinned, what is your take on the use of the word sinned. It appears to be a verb in which action is implied as it commiting a sin. If this is the case then someone who has not commited a sin through throught, word, or deed would not have sinned.
Though, under that definition, being born would not be a sin because it is not the childs action, word or thought; rather it is the parents action (birth) involving no child thought or word. So, original sin would not be a sin.
Sin, I believe, is much more complicated that just action/thought/word. Sin is a completely other topic.
Besides that we know God can transend time and space, why would it be so unreasonable to say that Mary as a human being would have a sinful nature could have been given special graces to avoid sin as is mentioned when she is called Full of Grace.
Why would we assume that she was given special grace?
Also, logical extension. If Jesus, having to have been born of a sinless vessel, needed Mary to be sinless all her life (including original sin), by extension, Mary's mother, Mary's grandmother (...) would also have to have the same sinless lineage. Why would it only apply to Mary?
It also seems to me that since God hates sin, why would he be born of someone stained with sin. Its almost like saying sin is ok.
Why would God take on the sin of the world? Why would God create the world?
Well masterpeiece is someones greatest creation, so what other creation did God make that was greater than Mary?
Quite simply, you are attributing too much to Mary. What right do we have to call her God's masterpiece? God's createst creation is creation itself. The fact that there is 'something' is greater than a small portion of that something.
What is more impressive, the circuit or the computer? the computer or the internet? The navigation system or the entire aircraft? (Rhetorical questions, no need to answer the obvious)
Yes it is true that the Catholic church through its authority gives us guidelines and dogmas which we are to believe as Catholics. We trust the churches teaching. If many protestants believe that they can interpret scripture infallibly with the help of the Holy Spirit then why couldn't the Pope have the same ability.
So, because some people us incorrect logic, you feel it is ok for the catholic church to do so as well? No, that is not the case.
Though, even your logical arguments do not fit as you, as an individual believer, would have that abiblity as well. So, just going on the Pope's interpretation would not be good enough as you would have to trust the holy spirit to individually lead you.
I know being told what to believe by the teaching Majesterium of the Catholic church seems very burdensome to many Protestants but in many ways it gives Catholics much more freedom for we believe we know what is true and what is not and this allows us to explore deeper the scriptures.
I think however that because of our belief in the authority of the Church, we have become lazy in our faith and some Catholics never crack open their Bibles because they feel that all they need is taught by the Church. What they are missing is the deeper understanding of God that we can enjoy through the scriptures.
You fail to see exactly why this 'deeper understanding' is not possible with the catholic church. If you are mandated to believe what the catholic church has dogmatically declared, you cannot use private interpretation of the scriptures for further exploration. At that point, reading the scriptures is useless. What would be the point of reading the scriptures?
In Christ,
jason
