mickw

This thought is not original with me, but I don't recall seeing it anywhere here; the first I recall seeing it was in something by Carl Jung.

In essence, the Immaculate Conception doctrine holds that the BVM was born without the "taint" of Original Sin, as was Jesus.

Is she was without Original Sin, she did not share in the one thing that all humans/mortals had in common. Being created without sin puts her somehow above or beyond mere humans; some would call that being a goddess.

Jung's point was, in effect, that if she is some sort of goddess then that means there was not a true Incarnation; that Jesus did not enter the world via a merely human vessel.

Thoughts?

Atheos

Threads regarding the Virgin Birth crop up here on a regular basis. There are many issues to resolve before even considering the Catholic Traditions of immaculate conception. See this library article for a treatment of the question of whether or not the bible even teaches that Mary was a virgin as opposed to "young" when she conceived.

Meanwhile, the real issue at hand is one of recursion. Immaculate Conception proponents seem to think that if Jesus had been born of a non-immaculate woman, then he himself could not be immaculate at birth. Of course that begs the question, could Mary have been immaculate had she been born of non-immaculate parents? And if so, could her parents have been immaculate had they been born of immaculate parents? Go back 16 generations and suddenly you're deluged with a minimum of 65,536 immaculate individuals. It doesn't take many more generations before the entire population of the planet has to be immaculate just so Mary can eventually be.

Like many tenets of religion it's just another senseless absurdity.

gstafleu

Arthur Clarke said something to the effect that any sufficiently developed technology will look like magic to those who don't understand it (paraphrasing off the top of my head here). Similarly, if we see something in a religion that looks like "senseless absurdity," then I would say we should consider that we don't understand something. Of course it is quite possible that what we don't understand is how the people who came up with the absurdity didn't understand something else in the first place .

Gerard (the bible is Cryptic so why shouldn't BC&H be too) Stafleu

mickw

I understand there may be a question as to whether that is what the text actually meant, but I believe that Catholic doctrine insists that Mary was a virgin (and actually remained so her whole life). I was just trying to get at the implications of that belief.

Good point. Also, we often hear that the Incarnation needed to happen so that humankind could be redeemed from Original Sin. However, if the IC doctrine is true, it shows very clearly that Yahweh could have taken away the taint of Original Sin for everyone, had he wanted to. That is, he engineered it for Mary, so why not do it for everyone born from then on?

Doug Shaver

There is no question that the New Testament says Mary conceived and gave birth while still a virgin. The relevant texts are unambiguous on that point.

The dispute is over the proper construal of the passage in Isaiah that the NT authors claimed was a prophecy of that event.

Clivedurdle

Of course, not original though!

http://www.artandvision.com/webpages...aphrodite.html

cajela

Questions like this always make me wonder if people have thought their langage through. Of course Mary isn't a goddess in the religion that she features in. What do you actually mean by the word goddess that is distinct from 'being called a god/dess by the members of that religion'?

Thomas II

Let me ask you this...

If someone would have asked Mary if she was a goddess, what do you think she would have said?

(I'm going to write my answer in private,and see if it coincides with yours...)

neilgodfrey

Wasn't it only from Augustine on that the question of "original sin" as such entered the doctrinal playing field?

If so, then I don't know if there is any basis for thinking that this is a question that played itself out as such in the minds of the biblical authors. It's a question that is the product of 4th century doctrinal webs only, yes?


Neil Godfrey

http://vridar.wordpress.com

Clivedurdle

Jung wrote that during the nineteenth century Catholicism promoted Mary to mother of god - making the trinity into a quaternity. I can't see how she ain't God if she is co-equal - catholics do a huge amount of stuff that is indisgishinable from worship!