AgLiving06 said:
The Banned said:
Thats a humongous document. I'll look through this later to see if maybe I find anything that changes my mind. As for the way you presented it, I'm not convinced.
1. You ignored Ambrose
2. He just removed her from conversation out of respect for Jesus? So he doesn't have the same respect for the apostles? He notes that she must have had some abundance of grace for the overcoming of sin that no one else had. Why not give a bit more of a nod to the men that Jesus founded the Church on. Why were they not noted for being so abundantly blessed in grace to help the world know about how sin was defeated? In my opinion, this is really reading what you want to into a fairly clear line.
3. You quote from chapter 47 conveniently leaves out Eve in the story of how sin came into the world. "By one man" sin entered the world. And now, when considering humans since, never could it be "said that he had no sin at all" it appears to me this is obviously a generalization, and likely proof texting on your part, but I may be wrong and I will read it in context.
4. The last paragraph will also be one I will search for context on. I could clip "one alone is there who was born without sin" or I can read all of the other qualifiers listed to describe Jesus that Mary would not have.
I'm not just tossing out your post as a whole, but those are my initial qualms. I'll read more when I have time.
Yeah...maybe instead of hunting out websites that cherry pick quotes you should actually read the Church Fathers....You might be surprised by what you find.
I do find it ironic, you accuse me of "quote clipping" when all you seemingly do is hunt websites.
But go ahead, what I pasted is the start of Chapter 57.
In fact, Here's the whole chapter...
Quote:
Chapter 57 [XXXV.]Turn to Neither Hand. Let us hold fast, then, the confession of this faith, without faltering or failure. One alone is there who was born without sin, in the likeness of sinful flesh, who lived without sin amid the sins of others, and who died without sin on account of our sins. "Let us turn neither to the right hand nor to the left."640 For to turn to the right hand is to deceive oneself, by saying that we are without sin; and to turn to the left is to surrender oneself to one's sins with a sort of impunity, in I know not how perverse and depraved a recklessness. "God indeed knoweth the ways on the right hand,"641 even He who alone is without sin, and is able to blot out our sins; "but the ways on the left hand are perverse,"642 in friendship with sins. Of such inflexibility were those youths of twenty years,643 who foretokened in figure God's new people; they entered the land of promise; they, it is said, turned neither to the right hand nor to the left.644 Now this age of twenty is not to be compared with the age of children's innocence, but if I mistake not, this number is the shadow and echo of a mystery. For the Old Testament has its excellence in the five books of Moses, while the New Testament is most refulgent in the authority of the four Gospels. These numbers, when multiplied together, reach to the number twenty: four times five, or five times four, are twenty. Such a people (as I have already said), instructed in the kingdom of heaven by the two Testamentsthe Old and the Newturning neither to the right hand, in a proud assumption of righteousness, nor to the left hand, in a reckless delight in sin, shall enter into the land of promise, where we shall have no longer either to pray that sins may be forgiven to us, or to fear that they may be punished in us, having been freed from them all by that Redeemer, who, not being "sold under sin,"645 "hath redeemed Israel out of all his iniquities,"646 whether committed in the actual life, or derived from the original transgression.
Your comment on Eve shows how much you're stretching. Eve was formed before the fall in the garden. That does not mean she didn't sin (as we know she did). So while she may have been formed before sin entered teh world, she fell. Nobody is excluded.
I've read the fathers. I'll always read it in context, with a page or two before and after what line i think are most powerful. If you want to say that i am only qualified to comment if ive read every page of every church father, I hope you hold yourself to the same standard.
It's abundantly clear to me that chapter 57 is exhorting all of us to belief in Jesus and to both avoid sin, and not be overly scrupulous, lest we believe we can earn our way to Heaven. None of this (and I mean none of it) has to do with Mary. I can not see how one could possibly elevate this to some sort of equal standing to what he
Specifically wrote about Mary. "Mary is ……." =\= "all men are….."
Brush away the Eve point all you want. He gives specific deference to Mary. If you want to use a passage where he can't even acknowledge there was a woman beside Adam as an equivalent, be my guest. But you're going to have to show me how a specific deference can be somehow negated by such a vague reference that the actual originator of sin is not named.
And you still have not shown me where Luther disavowed his belief that Mary was sinless at least 12 years prior to his death. I would love to see how he changed his views on this topic while the Bible didn't change at all. I
