Mary is the most important figure in Christianity

[John Martin]

Said to have washed the feet of his disciples, which I find 12 mythical. I believe he only had his inner circle, and that would be why the gospels mention them the most.

Also the authors who wrote this were far removed from his actual life and events.

The author who wrote wanted to give a clear message. The son of God is one who serves( helps others to realize the truth he realized) others and not to be served.




I dont think he would approve of the large churches or church politics either. It evolved far from his real teachings.

Yes, he would not approve church politics. They are far from his teachings.Thank you.

 

[outhouse]

Isn't that what I said originally? Metaphysical Naturalism? :areyoucra

I'm not used to hearing it as scientific materialism.

I pulled up that wiki link to learn what you were saying, it was over my head.

It contained "scientific materialism" to which I stated I perfer.

also called ontological naturalism, philosophical naturalism and scientific materialism

"Also called"

You know more about it then I do in context.

 

[gnostic]

I am wondering if god may humans, and he made them to populate and dominate the world, as stated in Genesis 1, then biologically, humans can only give birth, through reproduction, hence through sex.

If this is true, then could it be a "sin", to have sex?

Supposedly god made people with mechanics to reproduce through sexual intercourse and through giving birth. If sex = sin, then there would be no "populating" the earth, if the first humans want to remain "sinless".

God did say:

"Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth..."

....and then said...

God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good

How could something like sex to be "good" back then, be "sin" later, in Jesus' time?

This is why I think Christian faith to bewilderingly confusing. The whole "Virgin Mary" and "Original Sin" to be contradictory, unworkable and insane.

Let just face it, Paul, Irenaeus and Augustine were just sex-hating and woman-hating hypocrites.

 

[Shiranui117]

I'm challenging the idea that one can't be sinless in this world. How exactly does that violate Christian (I speak of respective faiths only because we share much in common) doctrine?

We all agree that Pelagianism is a heresy, which is the most important thing. On the subject of Mary's sinlessness, I think we can also agree that, if she was without sin, then this could only be because God gave her very special graces. She couldn't be without sin merely on her own willpower.

 

[Shiranui117]

I am wondering if god may humans, and he made them to populate and dominate the world, as stated in Genesis 1, then biologically, humans can only give birth, through reproduction, hence through sex.

If this is true, then could it be a "sin", to have sex?

Supposedly god made people with mechanics to reproduce through sexual intercourse and through giving birth. If sex = sin, then there would be no "populating" the earth, if the first humans want to remain "sinless".

God did say:


....and then said...



How could something like sex to be "good" back then, be "sin" later, in Jesus' time?

This is why I think Christian faith to bewilderingly confusing. The whole "Virgin Mary" and "Original Sin" to be contradictory, unworkable and insane.

Let just face it, Paul, Irenaeus and Augustine were just sex-hating and woman-hating hypocrites.

Paul doesn't say anything of the sort. Nor am I aware of any such statements by Irenaeus.

 

[Shiranui117]

Its a worthy endeavour to aim for sinlessness. But the bible does not say anywhere that Mary was sinless.

Rather, it relates an account about Mary herself going to the temple to offer her sin sacrifice which was in accordance with the law:

Leviticus 12:2  “Tell the Israelites, ‘If a woman becomes pregnant and gives birth to a male, she will be unclean for seven days, ...6 When the days of her purification for a son or a daughter are completed, she will bring a young ram in its first year for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering to the entrance of the tent of meeting, to the priest. 7 He will present it before Jehovah and make atonement for her, and she will be clean from her flow of blood. This is the law about the woman who gives birth to either a male or a female. 8 But if she cannot afford a sheep, she must then take two turtledoves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and one for a sin offering, and the priest will make atonement for her, and she will be clean.’”

The account recorded in the gospels shows that Mary went to the priest to offer her turtledoves as a sin offerering:

Luke 2:21 After eight days, when it was time to circumcise him, he was named Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived.
22 Also, when the time came for purifying them according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to Jehovah, 23 just as it is written in Jehovah’s Law: “Every firstborn male must be called holy to Jehovah.” 24 And they offered a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of Jehovah: “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”


If Mary thought she was sinless, she would not have been required to make such an offering.

This is only because the Israelites considered uncleanness to be equivalent to sin. Unless you consider childbirth and menstruation to be sinful, Mary didn't commit a sin in giving birth to Jesus, which is what that particular offering was for--Mary's period of uncleanness ending.

 

[Agnostic75]

Do you think it is impossible to be sinless?

Romans 3:10

"As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one."

Romans 3:23

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God."

 

[columbus]

Romans 3:10

"As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one."

Romans 3:23

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God."

This reminds me of a joke my uncle, a priest, told me when I was a kid.

The whore was lying on the ground as the crowd gathered with their stones. Jesus looked around and said, "Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone." They all looked down, sheepishly.
Then, from the back, a rock whizzes past Jesus and clobbers the fallen woman right upside her head. Jesus yells, " Alright Mom, cut it out!"

Tom

 

[John Martin]

We can describe our spiritual evolution as a journey from the unconscious unity to the conscious unity. The serpent holding its own tail is the symbol of unconscious unity. It is sinless state but unconscious like small children before self-consciousness. We can describe this state as original blessing. It is the experience of Garden of Eden before the fall.
The serpent crawling on the ground is the symbol of ego, time, becoming, effort, sin, struggle, good and evil, duality, separation. It is coming out of the Garden of Eden and original blessing and taking the path of becoming and sin.
The serpent raising its hood is the symbol of conscious unity. It is reentering into the Garden of Eden but consciously. It is rediscovering our original blessing. It is like the prodigal son who comes out the original blessing- experiences the path of sin and returns back to the original blessing consciously.
If we see the statue of Mary, we see a serpent under her foot. This serpent is the symbol of becoming, ego, good and evil, fragmented self, psychological time. In Hinduism and Buddhism, they call it samsara, the movement of ignorance and desire and karma. Mary is the symbol of human consciousness which stops this movement and gives birth to incarnation, enlightenment and freedom.
Jesus Christ also had to encounter this serpent crawling on the ground and not to submit it. He also stops it and realizes oneness with God.
There is no direct path from the unconscious unity to the conscious unity, except by the special grace of God. Every one has to enter the second level, to eat the forbidden fruit and then come back to the original blessing.
I have no difficulty to accept if Mary and Jesus also have passed that level. So that they can be real models for every human being. If they were given a special grace then they stand above other human beings and create spiritual apartheid.
Sin belongs to the evolutionary process of our human consciousness. It is a necessary process. We cannot bypass it. We all need to grow through it. That is why St.Paul says that everyone has committed sin. But we have also the possibility to rise about it.

 

[Glaurung]

We Catholics are often accused of worshiping Mary as a divinity.

Quite ignorantly.

Mary was not a divinity: she was the daughter of two normal people. So she was human.

Agreed.

But she is the protagonist of Christianity because it was her who erased sin from human nature, that is, in her heart.

She did no such thing. What she did do was to bare Christ into the world. She was also one of the four people born without original sin; in Mary's case, this was by an exceptional intervention of God.

She "challenged" God because she wanted to show him that a human being can be sinless and pure. And she was sinless and pure.

Sinless and pure because of God's intervention. Her state is not a product of her own independent will, her dignity is entirely dependant on God.

But not because God had made her sinless (impossible, there is the free will)

She did have free will, but by God's grace she was exempt from original sin and thus not affected by the inherited tendency towards sin that plagues the rest of us.

 

[Pegg]

This is only because the Israelites considered uncleanness to be equivalent to sin. Unless you consider childbirth and menstruation to be sinful, Mary didn't commit a sin in giving birth to Jesus, which is what that particular offering was for--Mary's period of uncleanness ending.

It was not an offering for 'uncleaness'

it was an offering for sin according to leviticus.

If you dont believe this is the case can you point to any scriptures which tell us that Mary was sinless?

 

[Windwalker]

She, with her free will decided to be sinless. Because she conceived sin as incompatible with human nature. That's how she was able to incarnate God. (Immaculate conception)

Because God and her became one only thing.

Fascinating way to visualize this. I like the symbol she plays in this understanding to represent what should be our own path. I agree we can be sinless, and through this marriage with God, we are also able to incarnate God, and in fact we do. In my own way of visualizing this, or speaking about this realization I sometimes call it incarnational realization, or the nondual. We awaken to and live as God in the flesh, our flesh as the Son or Daughter of God. There is all our unique self, and our indivisible Self. It is God in diversity and Union, fully aware of that Self in others, while communioning with individualities, in all people and all things.

I listened to that video and I very much agreed with her vision, though Mary is not a symbol for me. That doesn't matter as much as what she realizes and says. I particularly like here comment at 1:40, "And from this vision of God divided from man, come all the divisions among men. Division produces wars, abuses, injustice, corruption." How we perceive and conceive of ourselves denies us God within.

 

[Sleeppy]

Do we have any scriptural support for these arguments, or is everyone just asserting whatever they believe?

 

[ruffen]

We Catholics are often accused of worshiping Mary as a divinity.
Mary was not a divinity: she was the daughter of two normal people. So she was human. But she is the protagonist of Christianity because it was her who erased sin from human nature, that is, in her heart.
She "challenged" God because she wanted to show him that a human being can be sinless and pure. And she was sinless and pure.

But not because God had made her sinless (impossible, there is the free will)
She, with her free will decided to be sinless. Because she conceived sin as incompatible with human nature. That's how she was able to incarnate God. (Immaculate conception)

Because God and her became one only thing.

This woman saw Mary when she was seven and she told her all these things
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoAqP4sNbwE

Ah, lady with glasses on YouTube says that this is how it is, so therefore it must be so! What makes her a source of credible information? Or what makes the Bible or the Pope or anyone a credible source for information on what The Maker Of The Universe wants us to do?

 

[sojourner]

We Catholics are often accused of worshiping Mary as a divinity.
Mary was not a divinity: she was the daughter of two normal people. So she was human. But she is the protagonist of Christianity because it was her who erased sin from human nature, that is, in her heart.
She "challenged" God because she wanted to show him that a human being can be sinless and pure. And she was sinless and pure.

But not because God had made her sinless (impossible, there is the free will)
She, with her free will decided to be sinless. Because she conceived sin as incompatible with human nature. That's how she was able to incarnate God. (Immaculate conception)

Because God and her became one only thing.

This woman saw Mary when she was seven and she told her all these things
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoAqP4sNbwE

There are several problems with your post. First, it disagrees with the Tradition of the Faith as handed down through the Church Fathers and Mothers and through the apostles' teaching. It simply does not fit theologically with the prevailing mythos.

This leads to the second problem: you say, "We Catholics," yet the RCC would never make such an assertion about Mary, so either you misunderstand what the Church teaches, or you're part of a splinter group. Since you claim to be Pelagian (who was branded as heretical by the Roman Church), I can only assume that the "We Catholics" are not part of the RCC.

If your splinter group has formed a particular mythic structure for the Faith that is contrary to the historic and continued jurisdiction of the apostles (whether East or West) and wishes to make the theological claim you make here, that's its business (and yours). However, you cannot pass yourself off as "Catholic," which is deceptive, since the term "Catholic" is almost universally synonymous with the Roman Rite. You are not "Catholic" in that sense. Therefore, it would be apropos for you to qualify that appellation, perhaps by saying, "Pelagian-Catholic."

But let's get back to your theological assertion. If, as you claim, Mary is the most important figure in Christianity, can you outline (preferably by citing sources) just how that works theologically, for a faith that claims to be Christian (which assumes that Christ is the central figure)? Can you give us a theological/historical context for how Mary abrogates human sin, how she was born of two parents, and how human will can overcome sinfulness on its own (that is, without the benefit of grace)? For those concepts clearly stand in stark juxtaposition to both the apostolic Tradition and the biblical texts.

 

[sojourner]

mary was a means to an end in a society where women are 2nd class citizens. If men had been able to give birth, you can be sure that it would have been the Virgin Maurice and not the virgin mary.

There are, I think, two reasons for the Marian tradition. First (at least as far as Luke is concerned), the whole "virgin birth thing" is a blatant attempt at setting Jesus up as "the New Augustus." This is corroborated by the many ancient, bas-relief sculptures still extant of scenes of Jesus' life, that mirror (almost identically, mind you) some extant bas-relief sculptures of that of Augustus. There was a big push in the early church to supplant Augustus with Jesus, as the Faith was imperialized.

Second, I think "virgin" is overplayed theologically. The text merely has it as "young woman" in the Greek -- not "virgin." In other words, Mary was an "unwed, Galilean teenager." In today's terms, she would be "an unwed teenager from East St. Louis." She had three strikes against her, in terms of purity: 1) she was "the wrong color" (Galilean); 2) she was a teenage girl (women embodied shame in that culture, and girls had less social status than women); 3) she was unwed (that is, impure, by virtue of not having a legal husband to bring honor to her). This makes the character of Mary fit very nicely with the overarching theme of the biblical story (that is, that God uses the outcast, the impure, the oppressed to accomplish God's purposes). In other words, Jesus, being born of an unwed, Galilean teenager, in a stable, without a father gives a whole lot of credence to this theological stance that early Xy took with regard to the championing of the poor and outcast.

So, I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss Mary's historic-theological importance.

 

[sojourner]

Do you think it is impossible to be sinless?

It depends what you mean by "sin" and its theological implications for human/Divine relationship. How do you define "sin?" What role does sin play in the spiritual well-being of humanity? If you define "sin" as "being apart from God," is it theologically (not physically) possible for human beings to be singular with God, as opposed to particular from God? IOW, is it possible for humans to be Divine? And what implications does that have for Jesus as both fully human and fully Divine?

 

[sojourner]

Christ's DNA was 100 % Mary's DNA. So I can't see any difference between God and Mary. It's like they were the same person.
And Mary was the best of the teachers for Jesus.

Besides, you may say that Jesus is important because he sacrificed himself on the Cross.
I am Pelagian...so I don't think it was a sacrifice. Just a murder

Jesus and Mary could not have been 100% genetically similar. That would indicate that Jesus was a clone. Since the sexes are different, this simply cannot be the case.

"Murder" is a legal term. "Sacrifice" is an ethical term. The two are not diametrically-opposed.

 

[Quiddity]

We all agree that Pelagianism is a heresy, which is the most important thing. On the subject of Mary's sinlessness, I think we can also agree that, if she was without sin, then this could only be because God gave her very special graces. She couldn't be without sin merely on her own willpower.

Of course; however, I've been informed in the past by other EO's (not OO's) that the Immaculate Conception is a problem for the East because [and I'm paraphrasing here as it was a while back] Christ assumes His humanity from Mary. And If the nature of Mary's humanity is different, then so also is the nature of Christ's humanity. Any change to Mary affects Christ. Much of this might be the divergent views of East vs. West. Unfortunately, I never got the opportunity to get further clarification.

 

[Estro Felino]

"Murder" is a legal term. "Sacrifice" is an ethical term. The two are not diametrically-opposed.

If Christ's sacrifice had been necessary, Caiaphas should have been worshiped as a Saint, given that it's thanks to him that this sacrifice took place.
but it was not necessary, that's why I say he's a murderer