Perhaps it doesn't appear prudent to debate both of these issues at once, but I think their interconnectivity makes it practical. The short answers are ''yes'', Mary was conceived without sin and Mary is the Mother of God. That is what is inerrantly recorded in Scripture and what was infallibly and universally proclaimed by the early church. In fact, these realities were never even seriously questioned for the first 1600 or so years of Christianity.
Protestant soteriology, for the most post, dismisses Mary as little more than a role player in the salvation drama. Not much different from you or I, average in every way, a sinner saved by grace, chosen almost at random to give birth to Jesus then to fade to the background.
This heretical case is built by no more than a handful of scriptural verses taken out of context and their eisegesis is easily refuted. To buttress their case, many protestants- my opponent included- have resorted to erecting a caricature of a Catholic Mary that is an idol to be worshipped, a mediator between God and Man, competing with Jesus, an alternative Catholics go to instead of Jesus.
I do not believe this is done, for the most part, out of any particular animus towards Mary but only because Mary, properly seen, is the ultimate threat to their false view of Jesus and how He saves us. They say it themselves in their sloganeering. Christ alone. That means no magisterium, no visible, authoritative church, no sacraments, no needed cooperation from humanity. Faith alone, in Christ alone.
It is, of course, baloney alone and Mary is the proof of this. The challenge for me, in this debate, is to focus on the two specific contentions, dealing with the peripheral issues only as much as needed and setting them up for future debates. Let's get to it.
Romans 5:10 tells us that we were enemies of God even as Christ died for us. The greek word is Ecthros
2190 |
echthros |
ecqron |
2190 echthros {ech-thros'} from a primary echtho (to hate); hateful (passively, odious, or actively, hostile); TDNT - 2:811,285; adj 1) hated, odious, hateful 2) hostile, hating, and opposing another 2a) used of men as at enmity with God by their sin 2a1) opposing (God) in the mind 2a2) a man that is hostile 2a3) a certain enemy 2a4) the hostile one 2a5) the devil who is the most bitter enemy of the divine government |
It means literally that we were at enmity with God because of our sin.
Well, in the very first Messianic prophecy recorded in Scripture in Genesis 3, a past tense of the same word is used in describing the relationship between the Mother of the Savior and the Devil. Her enmity is with the Devil, not with God. This is true whether you go to the Greek version, where the word Ecthra is used or the Hebrew, where the word is We -e- bah.
This prophecy came to be known as the Protoevangelium or first gospel. The text is clear that the Messiah would come from the seed of a woman who would, from the start, be the enemy of the devil. It's not hard to discern that, if sin makes you the enemy of God, sinlessness makes you the enemy of the Devil.
That certainly is the way the early church saw it.
The Biblical case certainly doesn't stop there.
In Luke 1, the Angel Gabriel greets Mary ''Hail, full of grace''. The greek words are Chaire, Kecharitomene.
Kecharitomene starts with the base word Charis which can either mean favor or grace. However, when Charis is expanded to Charitoo, it denotes a perfected Grace. Kecharitomene further expands this to mean a fully completed and perfected Grace.
In other words, Kecharitomene literally means that Mary was created in perfect Grace, lives in perfect Grace and will continue in perfect Grace. It leaves those who suggest that there is sin in Mary, even a speck of it, nowhere to go.
The literal translation of Kecharitomene is ''endured from the beginning in perfected Grace''. This really ends the debate right here because no amount of protestant spin can change the clear meaning of the word. In fact, it wasn't until the KJV of 1611 that any Bible translated Kecharitomene as anything other than "Full of Grace". They literally changed the Word of God to support their heresy.
So, from a straightforward exegetical standpoint, Mary's sinlessness is shown from Scripture. However, the strongest evidence comes from beneath the surface, from the treasure of typology and prophecy. That is where the evidence is so profound and overwhelming that mining it has led to many prominent protestants becoming Catholic. Doctor Scott Hahn is just one example.
It starts with the Ark of the Covenant. It contained the Word of God. John's Gospel tells us that the Word of God is a person. It contained the Bread from Heaven. John's Gospel tells us that the Bread from Heaven is a person. It contained the staff of Aaron who was a Shepherd and the High Priest. The Gospels and the letter to the Hebrews tell us again that the Good Shepherd and the High Priest were that same person. That person that dwelt within the Ark was none other than Jesus Christ and that Ark was none other than Mary.
John's Revelation tells us that in God's Temple in Heaven was seen the Ark of the Covenant, a Woman clothed with the Sun whose child was called up to God's throne, destined to rule all nations with a rod of iron. Once again, the Dragon's enmity with the Woman is made manifest as he wages war on the rest of Her children who are the true believers in God.
These are not my conclusions. This is what the text clearly shows and what the church has proclaimed since it's infancy.
You cannot honestly read Revelation 11:19-12:17 and come away not seeing Mary as the Ark of the Covenant, Assumed into heaven body and soul, Queen of Heaven and Mother of God.
The text says quite clearly that her son....her son was called up to the Throne of God. The enmity with the Devil that we talked about earlier, is also clearly shown.
Seeing Mary as the Ark of the Covenant who plays a prominent role in the true Israel certainly opens up entire new worlds of understanding as opposed to seeing her as nothing more than a surrogate God used then quickly cast aside. Show me another example in Scripture where God gives someone such an important job then pushes them aside.
Psalm 132 prophesizes that the Lord would rise up into heaven and take with Him the Ark of His Covenant. Some manuscripts even say the Ark of His Covenant that was made of incorruptible wood. This prophesizes both Jesus ascension and Mary's assumption.
We see in Exodus 25 that the Ark of the Covenant was indeed made of incorruptible wood and adorned with the purest gold. The Same gold adorns the Queen who stands by the King's side in Psalm 45, a psalm obviously projecting Jesus. The same Queen we see in Revelation 12. In the Old Testament it was well known that the Mother of the King was the Queen Mother and Gabriel clearly tells Mary in Luke 1 that her son was to be the Davidic King.
Why would God insist that the Ark of the Old Testament be incorruptible unless He was telling us this about the New Ark? Why would God demand the Old Ark be adorned with the purest gold unless it was a typology of the purity of the New Ark? Why would God tell us that the King would have a Queen Mother unless He wanted us to understand that this points to fulfilment in the King of Kings?
The Old Ark had to be pure and holy because it held within it God. Uzzah was struck dead for even inadvertently touching it. You find it easy to accept that the Ark that spiritually contained God could not be just another box but you cannot see that the Ark that physically contained God could not be just another woman?
Protestant inability to digest this stems from their lack of faith. It is a faith that forces you to understand that the entirety of Christianity consists in understanding that God was conceived in Mary, given birth to by Mary, raised by Joseph and Mary and died in front of Mary. It is not Mary's sinlessness you are struggling with, it is the full duality of Jesus humanity and Divinity. If the child Mary was the mother of isn't God, we are all in very deep trouble.
Simple logic dictates that if Mary was to hold eternity within her, God would take at least as much care to prepare her as He did to prepare the Old Testament Ark. Scripture proves that He did just that. He made her incorruptible and He made her pure. Was He compelled to? Could He has preserved Jesus from the impurity of sin in some other way? Sure.
However, Scripture provides no evidence that He did it another way. Scripture is clear that God preserved Mary from sin to make her that pure Ark that would hold the Messiah. Scripture also provides no support for the notion that the Jesus Mary gave birth to, was somehow different from the same Jesus who raised Lazarus from the dead and later. Himself.
All of this is ultimately problematic to many non-Catholics because of their desperate need to hold onto a paradigm where Jesus does everything in the salvation equation and we do nothing. Mary is the biggest threat to that false ideology because anyone honestly reading Scripture can see that Mary's "Yes" was a vital part of God's salvation plan and God Himself reached us through this sinless and pure Ark.
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