"Devotion" to Mary...

Oh boy, I know this isn't going to go over well. Mary can be figurative for Israel is the Male Child is figurative for the Christian faith and not Jesus at all. However, then for consistency you couldn't say one was literal and the other figurative.

 

Why doesn't the passage say 'Israel' then?

Flight into Egypt?

It all adds up to me.

 

I've not heard that at all. If Mary is supposed to be the 'new Eve' (as the Catholic Church claims --I'm not sure I agree with that), then we do know from Scripture that Eve before the Fall would have some pain in childbirth because God said in Gen 3 that he would increase her childbirth pains.

But regardless of what the Vatican teaches - and whether or not I agree with it - Rev 12 does seem pretty plain in its meaning: it is far more likely that the woman is Mary not Israel, the Church or some other allegory.

 

Why doesn't the passage say Mary then?

That was the argument being used. What was the flight of Mary and Joseph? To where? Why? For how long? None of it corresponds to what is going on in Revelation 12. Read the entire chapter.

You have not added. Let me repeat again: Read the entire chapter.

 

It doesn't need to: the child is clearly Christ, and we know the name of the woman who gave birth to Him.

Egypt (Matt 2:13-14)

Because Herod, effectively acting as agent for Satan (the dragon) wanted to destroy the child.

The Gospel passage doesn't specify, but until Herod was dead

 

Just as Christ, the second Adam, is our spiritual father, Mary, the second Eve, is our spiritual mother. Therefore when Rev. 12:17 speaks of the rest of the woman's seed, i.e., Christiainity, it is referring to the spiritual offspring of Mary.

As for the 3.5 years in the wilderness, we don't know from other scripture exactly how long the holy family was in Egypt but we know it was likely more than a few months. It could have been 3.5 years. Besides, they had to go through the wilderness to get to Egypt.

 

When did you start believing RCC theology? Who convinced you?
There is no second Eve. That is aberrant theology that leads into all kinds of heretical doctrines. There is a second Adam that came to take away the curse; the curse that came via the first Adam. He atoned for the sins of the world. There is no such thing as a second Eve, as the implication would be that she would be a redemptrix, a position that even the Bible strongly condemns.
There is only one mediator between man and God, the man Christ Jesus.
There is no other mediator--not Mary, not any one else.

Secondly, God has no mother. That is the other implication of this theology. God is eternal--from eternity past to eternity future. Mary is a mere sinner; a mortal; just as we. She was a human, used of God in one point in history to bear the human body of Jesus, and nothing more. Mary admitted her need of a Saviour, thus admitting that she was a Saviour. She brought a sin offering to the priest. Why? She knew that she was a sinner. This disqualifies her as being any such "Second Eve." There is no such person.

Christianity did not spring from a woman. It has no spiritual mother.
Christianity means followers of Christ, not followers of Mary.

No, it was not 3 1/2 years. I challenge you to give evidence of that. Don't give me, "It could have been." Give me exact figures from the Word of God.

 

So are you saying Jesus isn't God?

 

You're a hoot DHK....so there's a "second" Adam and that's Christ...I can buy that, but why can't Mary be the second Eve? After all Mary said yes, where Eve said no....

Furthermore, believing Mary to be the second Eve doesn't elevate her to a Redemtrix status whatsoever...you're making it up.

Yes, there's but one mediator between God and man, and that being Jesus. Mary is NOT a "mediator" in the sense that Mary is a our advocate before God...that's just being uneducated.

Mary can "intercede" for us, just as I can intercede for you...

...and per St. John's Gospel...in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and WAS God...and the Word was made flesh...

The Word that IS God was made flesh through Mary! God took on our humanity from Mary...So, Mary IS the mother of God, she IS truly Theotokos.

In XC
-

 

You're conflating 'beginning' with 'birth', I believe.

 

No. You don't understand the history of the Word Theotokos. There was a debate about the Nature of Christ. Was he born a man then possessed by the Holy Spirit? Or was he in Actuality God? Nestorius wanted only to use the term Christokos allowing for the God "possession" type thinking or the fact that Jesus was independently two beings somehow joined at the incarnation. Theotokos was to show that from the outset of the incarnation Jesus was fully God who became man. So theotokos is directly associated with the incarnation not with the eternal existance of Jesus. See the problem with many views today is very few people understand the historical context in which something is said. So they apply modern termonology to something not meant in that way.

 

What Thinkingstuff said. Mary gave birth to God the Son and raised Him as her own child. Therefore she is rightly referred to as theotokos = God-bearer ie: she who gave birth to God. That doesn't mean that the Second Person of the Godhead , the Eternal Word, didn't have an existence prior to His birth - of course He did! - but it does mean that He - God the Son - underwent a real human birth just like the rest of us, and Mary was the woman who gave birth to Him.

 

The Theotokos is more about who Christ is than Mary...the term Theotokos safeguards the correct understanding of the incarnation...as has been alluded to by Thinkingstuff and Matt.

In XC
-

 

Why? Because your imagination doesn't take the place of the Word of God.

I don't make up things that Bob Ryan and others have already quoted to you on this board written by the RCC that they have concluded because of believing in this theology. There is only one mediator, and it ain't Mary.

Remember I was a Catholic.
And everytime I prayed:
"Hail Mary full of grace pray for us sinners now...", I was asking Mary to intercede for me.
If you don't believe that in that prayer, that every Catholic prays, that Mary is not playing the role of a mediator, then "that's just being uneducated."

Your game of semantics doesn't work with me. Mary is dead. Mary is not a priestess between me and God. I don't need you to intercede between me and God. You speak blasphemously. You cannot intercede for me, that is on my behalf. I can go straight before the throne of grace, on my own behalf without you. You are not a mediator. That is blasphemous. If you want to pray for me, that is a different matter. You can bring some of the requests that I share with you before God. But you are no mediator.

Speaking of the deity and eternality of Christ.

No it isn't. It is teaching that Christ became flesh, and that is all. It doesn't say a whit about Mary. Quit reading into the Scripture that which is not there. Mary is not the mother of God, and never was. You sound like a Mormon: "As man was, God is; As God is, man will become." Mary is not an eternal spirit being. This is nonsense. She was used by God at one time in history to bring the body of Jesus to this earth, and that is all. She is not the mother of God.

 

The origin of the "mother of God" statement was a defense of the deity of Christ. It never meant that Mary was the mother of God the Father or that she somehow gave existence to Jesus.

It meant that Mary gave birth to Jesus, who was both God and man. That was the point of the statement - it was about Jesus, not Mary. If anyone researches this, they will see that. I learned this in one of my seminary classes - either Christology or historical theology, can't recall.

 

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