I’ll just copy and paste from my app.
He didn’t sacrifice himself in a burnt offering sense, satan tested him, and even went as far as putting him to death, unjustly. This doomed satan and all his demons to death. God resurrected his son because his son was faithful under test, and torture. He exalted him to a superior position for his obedience, and gave him the name above all.
I’m pretty close to certain that you aren’t even close to being the only Catholic in this forum - though in this particular thread - I can’t say. But even if you were, you wouldn’t be any less welcomed for it! Thanks for sharing your questions, and welcome to the forum!
While it’s true that protestants don’t generally exalt Mary to the same extent that Catholics do, I don’t think any of us in our more sober reflections [in other words, when we haven’t busied ourselves - going out of our way just to be anti-Catholic] would deny the special place she has in scriptures as the mother of our Lord. The Magnificat has always been a special passage to me, revealing the prophetic prowess and connection that helps reveal the larger arc of God’s justice reaching back through the trouble-ridden pages of the old testament.
You raise good questions worth reflecting on. Feel free to cast such light on them as you have been given too.
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Hi Mervin, and thank you for the welcome. Yes, I meant being the only RC in this discussion. Hopefully, my fellow Catholics are very active and prolific in the faith here. I have many, many Protestant friends that I, most of the time, enjoy exchanging ideas with.
The Magnificat is a wonderful praise to our Lord! An interesting read is: Five for Sorrow , Ten for Joy : Meditations on the Rosary, written by the late [J. Neville Ward] a Methodist Chaplain in London. Intercession of Mary started with the Wedding at Cana! And continues today, with her words; “do what He tells you.” Amen
Thank you for your encouragement! I have many questions and revelations that I still don’t understand. But, I constantly thank our Lord for giving and guiding me through all. And I am thanking Him now, and also member (Mark D.) for bringing me here to your very fine forum. I hope and pray to receive, be enlightened and filled with the Holy Spirit! And to contribute something worthwhile here. Amen
Elaborating on our Lord’s “journey in flesh”… It seems evident that “the curse of God” (death = the wages of sin) could only be broken, when someone (Jesus) suffered death, without sin. Meaning: “death” had no more exclusivity to sin! Yes, we still die. But now, we can have eternal life by eating from the tree of Life: Jesus on the cross. Praise the Lord.
As a side note, I’ve always fantasized that the serpent’s own words ("…you will be like God") in the Garden would strangle him at the very end of time. And satan unwittingly says what turns out to be the Truth (…as He shared in our humanity, we will share in His divinity, thru the Holy Spirit)!
Sort of like water on the wicked witch of oz… i.e. dying from an unlikely source! In satan’s case his own words!
I like your ambition! And it is a high bar you set. Keep in mind that our forum community here is open to all regardless of spiritual, scientific, or scholarly standing. So naturally we get many different walks and perspectives here - some fitting well with Biologos’ mission and others in opposition (or as a proposed corrective) to it. All voices are heard and allowed so long as they don’t egregiously violate our participation guidelines.
All that is to say … keep your critical glasses on as you read here. It isn’t your local Sunday school so much as it is a “secular” square with a disproportionately sizable presence of religious and scientific thinkers.
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Welcome, @ronedee. Ron, I think one reason we don’t see as too many Catholics here, is that the Catholic Church does not have the same deep division over evolution as the evangelicals, thus not as much angst. I look forward to hearing your insights.
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Hopefully, my demonstrative style of Faith isn’t a distraction, or negative in anyway? I’m not an evangelist.
As a side note, my father is an atheist. As well as my nine children. My brother is agnostic. We all still get along and love each other just fine! I’ll try to show the same respect and love to others here as well.
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As far back as the Apostolic Fathers, the Church embraced the communication of attributes to refer to the way in which we can say things about Christ’s person. Keep in mind, even the notion of Trinity was a struggle. Early Christians wrestled - only God is to be worshiped, Jesus is worthy of worship, how can this be? It took centuries for much of this to find a formal voice, to matrix the Scriptures and teachings.
Phrases like “God’s blood”, “God’s suffering”, “God’s death” and “God’s resurrection” did not sit well with Arians, Nestorians, Apollonarians, Platonists, and followers of Tertullian. At Ephesus, the Church partially settled the argument in that it is proper to refer to Mary as Theotokos, “God bearer”, often stated as “Mother of God.” God has no parent but Jesus is God and he has a mother. At Chalcedon, they lent further clarity to the hypostatic union - whatever we can say about Christ’s human nature, we can also say about His person. Whatever we can say about His divine nature, we can also say about His person.
In the person of Christ, God lived among us (John 1), experienced our existence, our pain, our separation from God, friendships, love, loss, testing, eating drinking, celebrating. God chose the person of Christ as the means through which He reconciled Himself to us. Wherever Jesus suffered, the person of Christ suffered. On the cross, the person of Christ died. If Christ had not died, he could not be resurrected. That’s built into the argument of 1 Corinthians 15.
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We crucified Jesus. Our sin put him on the cross, his love for us held him there. He bore the pain of OUR sin, not just the pain of torture from contemporaries. Satan has no such power to kill Christ or any of us. His power is deception, lies, temptation. Jesus is God and God cannot fall to temptation. God does not have to prove Himself to Himself.
You’re right, God does not have to prove himself to himself. But his son had to remain obedient even to death. That is why Christ’s death is so special, He took the place of Adam. If you read the Scriptures the Bible makes perfect sense.God created earth to be inhabited, and he created humans in his image and death would only enter the equation if they disobeyed and we know how that ended. God foretold The coming of the seed that would crush the head of the serpent. The seed was his first born, through whom and for whom everything was created.He transferred the life of his first born into the womb of Mary. Since a perfect man sinned against God, A sinless perfect man needed to die To rescue mankind from death. Jesus accomplished what no man could, remaining obedient to his father and his God even to death. Satan’s charge is no man can remain faithful and love God willfully… Jesus proved him wrong and now Jesus has been exalted above all (except the One who exalted him) an he will bring satan to ruin when he returns. See? Simple.
That is a really nice clarification.
I must admit that I have always been disturbed by the title of “Theotokos,” but certainly not because of the fully God and fully man status and nature of Jesus. I can certainly get behind “Theotokos” as a means to hammer that particular nail in. After all, the term only means “God bearer,” which is not quite the same thing as saying “mother of God.” So I think what disturbs people is when it seems to make Mary out to be something she was not. I am not even bothered by the idea that God has a parent, because the fact is that God has always had a parent, after all – and always had a Son. I would, in fact, suggest that God has always had every good thing and never lacked for anything. So again the disturbing aspect of this has to do with Mary alone - for she was never anything but human.
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“Mother of God” is certainly jarring but both Luther and Calvin took no issue with it since this is how it was rendered in Latin. I grew up around Roman Catholics, they’re by far the majority, where I live. Marian devotion can be, in my perception, both disturbing and distancing from God. But, one thing I think is cool about Theotokos and the Incarnation, is that Jesus, being conceived without original sin yet receiving a humanity through his mother shows that sin is grafted onto our natures at a level of being beyond genetic descent. Because, forgive me Rome, Mary was a normal human being, conceived in sin and saved by Christ alone.
But, how does that conflict with the Catholic doctrine of Immaculate Conception? As I understand it, they hold that Mary was without the stain of original sin at the time of conception.
Truthfully, this subject makes difficult the doctrine of original sin as well.
By and large, I agree. Being God, the Son of God, was always Lord over all creation, even at Satan’s seemingly powerful times. God is always in charge and Satan is always bound (the lesson of Job).
My biases are somewhat contained in my screen name. So, I am cautious concerning language overemphasizing humanity in the person of Christ if that leads to de-emphasizing the Divinity or in ascribing power to Satan that he does not possess. From the Quicunque Vult:
“And the catholic faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Spirit. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal.”
As God, the Son of God can do no other than what God would do. God’s faithfulness to Himself and to us is always without question. He was obedient unto death because God would be no less. Leveled at us, Satan’s charge is correct. But the person of Christ confounds him because God is faithful and Jesus is, therefore, beyond accusation. God provided a confirmed perfect offering, not a potentially perfect offering, in Christ. While the humanity of Christ qualifies Him to be our representative and permits Him to die in our place (substitution), the deity of Christ gives His suffering and death an intrinsic worth totally satisfying God’s wrath (cost).
Satan was never victorious, not even for the briefest instant, nor was there ever a hope for his victory. His power, even at the hour of crucifixion was the despair of the faithful who did not understand what was happening. Satan’s has no supernatural power against us. Rather, it is our weaknesses that God permits him to exploit and, against which, God always offers refuge. Thanks be to Christ, who gives us the victory. Satan is already ruined and defeated – no waiting, no chiliastic conflicts, no beasts - the war is already over.
“We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.”
Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius IX
My bias is in my screen name. I would need to see the Scripture separating Mary from the rest of mankind in terms of original sin. Interesting fact that both St. Bernard and St. Thomas objected to the folklore of immaculate conception in their day.
Not so. The Immaculate Conception says that Mary’s mother, St. Anne, conceived Mary without sex, so without sin. This of course closely links sin with sex.
Of course there is also the eternal virginity of Mary that says she was a Virgin even after she gave birth to Jesus and she did not conceive and give birth to those called the brothers of Jesus in the Bible, including James.
I am not Catholic, but I am nearly certain this is erroneous. Catholics believe Mary was guarded from original sin, not that she had a sexless conception. Her Father is specified.
At least, I confirmed this from Wikipedia, so I figure it must be true. But I’m open to correction, so If you have other information or documentation that supports your description above, I’d be interested to read further.
But from Wikipedia…
Catholics believe that Mary was conceived of both parents,[11] traditionally known by the names of Saint Joachim and Saint Anne. In 1677, the Holy See condemned the error of Imperiali who taught that St. Anne in the conception and birth of Mary remained virgin, which had been a belief surfacing occasionally since the 4th century.
Ok, the Immaculate Conception of Mary does involve sex in that she was conceived by the genes of her father. However the problem of Original Sin for the RC Church is not sex and DNA, but sexual desire.
The painting shows St. Anne becoming pregnant fully clothed and standing up. How this happened is a mystery that is not explained.