Why Do We Need The Immaculate Conception?

[N/A Gone]

..."What the Lord took from his mother was nature, not guilt...Just as God is not altered by his compassion, so humanity is not destroyed by its elevation in honor."

According to Pope Leo in his rebuking of bishop Eutyches, the divinity inherited the human nature from Mary w/o the guilt. Ala original sin. How do we reconcile this to our development of the Immaculate conception? Does not this key letter from the Christological controversy show how there is not a need for the Immaculate Conception?


(**btw, in my class as the token catholic kid this issue came up and was pretty heavy)

[nowak.chris]

[quote name='Revprodeji' post='1057759' date='Sep 6 2006, 12:15 PM']
..."What the Lord took from his mother was nature, not guilt...Just as God is not altered by his compassion, so humanity is not destroyed by its elevation in honor."

According to Pope Leo in his rebuking of bishop Eutyches, the divinity inherited the human nature from Mary w/o the guilt. Ala original sin. How do we reconcile this to our development of the Immaculate conception? Does not this key letter from the Christological controversy show how there is not a need for the Immaculate Conception?
(**btw, in my class as the token catholic kid this issue came up and was pretty heavy)
[/quote]

While I am not versed enough to answer completely, there is another necessity involved: for Mary, rather than for Christ.

Relflecting on the Ark of the Old Covenant, no one could touch it and live, even to keep it from falling. The idols of the Philistines bowed down before it, paying homage to the true God.

Let us then consider how much greater the infant Jesus is then the Law contianed in the Ark. It would seem, then, that the new 'Ark' must be pure, completely untouched and undefiled. (The Immaculate Conception and Virginity of Mary). It remains necessary, for the human (Mary) to contain the divine.

hope this helps,
chris

[thessalonian]

Ineffabilis Deus


"And indeed it was [b]wholly fitting[/b] that so wonderful a mother should be ever resplendent with the glory of most sublime holiness and so completely free from all taint of original sin that she would triumph utterly over the ancient serpent. "

It doesn't matter really whether there is a need for the immaculate conception or not if it is true. Certainly God could theoretically have brought Christ in to the world in a non-immaculately concieved woman, just as Christ can be recieved in the Eucharist by a non-immucale human (you and I). I do not know that the Church says it HAD to be this way. Simply that it WAS . It is "wholly fitting". Certainly it was fitting for him to do so through an immaculately concieved woman. God chooses the women we marry for us. He fashions them for our compatibility and also for our sanctification (incompatibility actually). He chose the mother for his son. Like the Ark of the Covenant, which Mary can be clearly shown to parrellel in many ways, she was created per his own specifications. Pure and holy. That is a fact, not a neccesity.


Once again from ID.

"From the very beginning, and before time began, the eternal Father chose and prepared for his only-begotten Son a Mother in whom the Son of God would become incarnate and from whom, in the blessed fullness of time, he would be born into this world. "

Edited September 6, 2006 by thessalonian

[thessalonian]

By the way it's kind of like asking whether God "needed" to save mankind by sending his son to the cross. The answer is no. God is God and could have done it in a number of ways or not at all. The FACT is that this is the way he did it. It was fitting that he did it that way. But God does not need to do anything as if he is somehow forced by his creation and externals in to a certain path. The Church simply tells us how he did it.

Edited September 6, 2006 by thessalonian

[Era Might]

Our Lady was without original sin, yet was born from parents who did inherit original sin.

So we already have a case where a sinless person is born of sinful parents.

It's not strictly necessary (neither was it strictly necessary that God be born of a Virgin). But, like everyone said above, it's fitting.

[LouisvilleFan]

Is it possible that the Immaculate Conception is necessary for our salvation, and not merely "fitting"? I, for one, find it far more difficult to believe that our spiritual mother ever submitted to Satan (even in the smallest matter) than to believe that she was freed of original sin since her conception by the merits of Christ. We inherited original sin from Eve; from Mary we ought to inherit perfection. If Mary ever sinned, how can she be the mother of the new creation in Christ? How could she have been "full of grace"?

[Era Might]

[quote name='LouisvilleFan' post='1057887' date='Sep 6 2006, 02:18 PM']Is it possible that the Immaculate Conception is necessary for our salvation, and not merely "fitting"? I, for one, find it far more difficult to believe that our spiritual mother ever submitted to Satan (even in the smallest matter) than to believe that she was freed of original sin since her conception by the merits of Christ. We inherited original sin from Eve; from Mary we ought to inherit perfection. If Mary ever sinned, how can she be the mother of the new creation in Christ? How could she have been "full of grace"?
[/quote]
She was full of grace because she was immaculately conceived, not immaculately conceived because she was full of grace.

"Original sin" is not a guilt, but a condition. It's the lack of God's supernatural presence in our soul upon conception. In that sense, God's presence in her womb would be a great blessing, making up for that lack of grace.

We don't inherit perfection from Mary. We are given perfection through the Sacrament of Baptism. There is no intrinsic reason why she HAD to be born full of grace.

Mary is the "mother of all the living" in the sense that she said "Yes" to conceive Christ, whereas Eve said "no" to obey God. She gives us life in the sense that she gives us the man-God.

[Aloysius]

Leo's letter was approaching original sin as a guilt, as has often been done in the west. It can properly be referred to as both a guilt and a condition. In light of this understanding of original sin, perhaps a deeper understanding than Leo himself had, we can plainly see from Leo's words that it is necessary if Christ inherited His human nature from His mother. The guilt was not passed on, but the fallen nature would have been because He took His Human nature fully and completely from Mary.

Mary did not have to have sinless parents because she did not have to inheret her parent's human nature fully. But for Christ to fulfill all things, He had to be completely and fully "flesh of flesh, bone of bone" to Mary. Therefore He had to receive completely and fully His human nature from Mary. Pope Leo and all the creeds indicate Christ receiving fully uterly and completely the human nature of Mary. Even though Leo says Mary would not pass on any guilt (if she had had any) she still would have passed on a fallen nature unless she did not have a fallen nature.

Mary received from her parents a part of their human nature: the good part that was not fallen. She did not receive that part of their human nature which was falle. If Christ were born out of Mary in this way, He would not be fully bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh, and the typology of the New Adam and Eve would not have been fulfilled.

[Era Might]

It's not at all necessary to receive original sin (or lack thereof) in order to receive a "full human nature". Original sin is not part of human nature, but a deprivation of something that is beyond human nature, specifically, God's presence in a soul.

Mary wasn't "missing" some part of her human nature because she was conceived full of grace, although from the womb of a sinful mother, and neither would Christ. She was fully human, and Christ would be fully human even if Our Lady was conceived with original sin.

About original sin as a personal "guilt", Pope John Paul II addresses this:

[quote]Newborn infants are incapable of committing personal sin yet in accordance with the church's centuries old tradition, they are baptized shortly after birth for the remission of sin. The Decree states: "they are truly baptized for the remission of sin so that what they contracted in generation may be cleansed by regeneratio."

In this context [b]it is evident that original sin in Adam's descendants has not the character of personal guilt[/b]. [b]It is the privation of santifying grace in a nature which through the fault of the first parents has been diverted from its supernatural end[/b]. [b]It is a "sin of nature" and only analogically comparable to "personal sin."[/b] In the state of original justice before sin, sanctifying grace was like a supernatural "endowment" of human nature. Its loss is contained in the inner "logic" of sin which is a rejection of the will of God, the bestower of this gift. Sanctifying grace has ceased to constitute that supernatural enrichment of that nature which the first parents passed on to all their descendant in the state in which it existed when human generation began.

-[url="http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP2ORSIN.HTM"][u]Source[/u][/url]-[/quote]

[Aloysius]

I did not say "personal guilt", but there is a "collective guilt" which is passed to the whole human race according to the theological tradition of the west, and it is not wrong to describe an aspect of original sin as "guilt". John Paul II's personal theology completely does away with all talk of original sin as "guilt", but it is not theologically incorrect to talk of it as "guilt" in some sense, in the sense of a collective guilt upon all humanity for Adam's disobedience which is passed along with the fallen nature, in effect it is as if that fallen nature (though it not be a positive entity but a lack of something) can be called Adam's sin itself, for when we have that fallen nature we have the guilt for that fallen nature (for adam's sin). Guilt can be said to pass down with fallen nature as two aspects of original sin.

If Mary had a fallen nature, and Christ had received Mary's full human nature, He would have received that fallen Human nature. There is a necessity to remain a purity in where Christ's humanity comes from in relation to Mary: it must come fully and completely from Mary, it cannot be supplemented in any other way natural or supernatural because Christ's entire human nature comes from Mary.

There was no such necessity for Mary to receive, unsupplemented, human nature from her parents. Therefore, in her immaculate conception she was preserved from the fallen nature and the guilt that comes with it through God's supplementation of the human nature being given to her by her parents. God did not supplement Jesus' human nature, Jesus was meant to inheret fully and completely only the human nature which came from Mary.

[Era Might]

Your definition of "human nature" is erroneous. Original sin is not part of human nature. Original sin refers to something that is separate from human nature, God's grace, and its absense in the soul of man.

Original sin does not define human nature, it simply changes whether or not that human nature is endowed with God's presence.

To say that Mary didn't receive human nature fully from her parents is to say that she wasn't fully human. She didn't inherit original sin, but she did receive a full human nature from her parents, that is, a human body and a human soul.

There is nothing to require that Mary be conceived full of grace, except propriety. Mary received a full human nature from her parents, but that human nature was graced with the presence of God. And the same thing would have taken place with Christ, had Our Lady not been immaculately conceived. Aquinas argues against her Immaculate Conception on the grounds that only Christ could be free from original sin. He didn't have difficulties with Christ being born of a mother with original sin because original sin is not part of human nature, and a parent does not have to be free from original sin to conceive a child full of grace. God's grace is something that is above and beyond human nature, not part of it; it's not something that can be "passed on" like DNA. Original sin is not something that is passed on because it's part of human nature, but rather, God deprives all men of his grace because Adam forfeited that gift for all men. It's a decision by God that we are born without his grace, rather than an element of human nature (again, as opposed to DNA).

As for original sin as a collective "guilt", I would not speak of it that way, because man is not guilty before God when conceived in original sin. An infant who dies has no guilt before God, he simply does not have the presence of God in his soul. God does not look on humanity in guilt, except to the extent that humanity has sinned personally. Adam and Eve alone are looked on with guilt for their sin. We are no more guilty for their sin than crack babies are guilty for the sins of addiction.

Edited September 6, 2006 by Era Might