Topic: 16-year-old Latin whiz finds new liturgy language lacking

[ialmisry]

Don't you think there's a difference, though, between saying the Theotokos never sinned and saying that the Theotokos was basically rendered incapable of sinning from conception? If you render it impossible that she be able to sin, then what does it matter that she didn't -- in other words, how is she a model of purity and sinlessness? It seems like it places her outside of human nature, which makes me wonder what it means to say that Christ took flesh from her...

There was a rather lively discussion about this in the thread linked below:

Immaculate Conception

I said at the time and it is still true:

Father Hardon has never been recognized by the Church as being representative of either pre- or post-Vatican II teaching.  So all of your "wowing" is actually for nothing.

I will add this much only: There was an element in the Church from about the mid-1700s to the beginning of the 20th century who taught in such a way that free will was compromised.  That teaching has not withstood the test of time and though it remains in individuals who continue to think and teach that way, it has never been picked up as a formal part of Church teaching.

Dom Marmion has, for example.  Find his works and read them and you will see a very different approach from the French and Irish Jansenists who influenced Father Hardon.

If you are not that interested, don't bother, but don't expect to find much traction for your ideas outside of these kinds of venues where the history of the Catholic Church in any real accurate detail, is virtually unknown.

The ideas are certainly alive and well in the CCD, RCIA and Religion classes taught by the Vatican's school system, where we have come across it.

[jmbejdl]

I'm not sure how to answer your question, James, since I do believe that the fall had an effect on human nature. That's the unspoken assumption that I've held in my replies in this thread, as I had assumed that this was relatively basic theology. You know, "For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved" and all that.

Thank goodness. I was starting to think I must have missed something major for the last decade. My understanding was always that in the Incarnation Christ assumed our fallen human nature, thus reconciling it with God (so reversing the Fall which was a separation from God) and healing it. If I reread 'On the Incarnation' I still see the same thing so as far as I'm concerned my objection to the IC remains. I'm perfectly happy to admit that I don't completely understand Roman Catholicism, though (I just don't think I need to to see the heresy in the IC). I don't know (m)any Roman Catholics who do either judging from EM's posts, though.

James

[jmbejdl]

I'm not sure how to answer your question, James, since I do believe that the fall had an effect on human nature. That's the unspoken assumption that I've held in my replies in this thread, as I had assumed that this was relatively basic theology. You know, "For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved" and all that.

It is fully protestant to say that human nature was changed rather than it was wounded, as it is said in the Catholic Church whose patrimony is the Holy Fathers of East and West.  Can you show us from the holy fathers, where human nature was destroyed by the ancestral sin and come into being outside of paradise as something other than what it was prior to the fall?

That is more of a rhetorical question than anything else...

You neglected to tell us what your religious affiliation was prior to your passing through the Catholic Church into Orthodoxy...

M.

How is a wound not a change? Why do you seem to think that if we say changed we mean destroyed, or that there must a complete change? If I get a sun tan I'm changed, so I'm pretty sure becoming mortal and all the rest of what the Fall entailed can quite rightly be described as a change in human nature, particularly as it is a heritable change and therefore part and parcel of that nature in a way that my sun tan example is not. I don't think that any of us said human nature was destroyed (in fact I'm almost certain nobody here did). Incidentally, I'm an ex-Protestant being brought up kind of Lutheran at home while mostly attending Anglican churches and I never ever heard anyone teach the view you call 'fully protestant' at all, not in either church. I certainly don't hold to it and never have. In fact, in my Protestant days I would have never been familiar with the idea of the Incarnation as healing human nature at all, rather I'd have seen Christ as paying the price of our sins on the Cross in our place. I think any idea of changes in human nature at the fall would have been an after thought if that and certainly of no real soteriological significance.

James

[Cyrillic]

Is it really Orthodox teaching that human nature was changed in the fall? If so, wouldn't probably mean that Adam wasn't consubstantion with us or even a different being altogether?

[jmbejdl]

Is it really Orthodox teaching that human nature was changed in the fall? If so, wouldn't probably mean that Adam wasn't consubstantion with us or even a different being altogether?

What are you asking? Adam fell and after the Fall he was different to before - surely this is not controversial. We inherited Adam's nature, which by that point was fallen, so we are fallen too. It doesn't mean we aren't of the same substance as Adam (indeed exactly the opposite) and nor does it mean he was 'a different being altogether' before the Fall. Why do you seem to insist, like EM, that any change must be complete or no change at all? I'm really struggling to see anything that would lead you and EM to such a point.

James

[Justin Kolodziej]

I agree 100% that Christ assumed our human nature, to say otherwise is heresy.

Here is a quote that states the crucial point of the IC, in my view: source http://newadvent.org/cathen/07674d.htm

The state of original sanctity, innocence, and justice, as opposed to original sin, was conferred upon her, by which gift every stain and fault, all depraved emotions, passions, and debilities, essentially pertaining to original sin, were excluded. But she was not made exempt from the temporal penalties of Adam — from sorrow, bodily infirmities, and death.

So, it sounds to me like she was restored spiritually at the first moment of her existence to the state Adam and Eve were created in. Therefore it makes a massive difference whether that state amounts to having a different nature to us, or if it is the same nature but wounded.

If the two states are different enough that they are two different natures, say "unfallen human nature" and "fallen human nature", and if the IC is true, then everything collapses. For, if Mary was like Adam and Eve spiritually, then she had an unfallen human nature. Therefore, the Christ born of her would have also had an unfallen human nature, different from our fallen human nature. So, we would not be saved.

Now, you have been stating that Christ took on fallen human nature. But if Christ had a fallen human nature, it would appear that would include having all the same "depraved emotions, passions, and debilities" as any of us, as well as the physical consequences, and that would clearly be blasphemy and heresy to claim.

Therefore, I would say there is only one human nature, damaged at the Fall, restored to Mary by the Immaculate Conception, transmitted to Christ by the Incarnation so that He was "like us in all things but sin".

However, I also have to grant that if there was no damage to human nature at the Fall at all, then there is no need for an Immaculate Conception. But I think only Pelagians would say that.

Feel free to point out all the errors in the above statements 

[jmbejdl]

Now, you have been stating that Christ took on fallen human nature. But if Christ had a fallen human nature, it would appear that would include having all the same "depraved emotions, passions, and debilities" as any of us, as well as the physical consequences, and that would clearly be blasphemy and heresy to claim.

I stated that He took on fallen human nature and in uniting it with God healed it. Now you can call it wounded rather than fallen if you like but that seems like semantics to me. What I did not say is that Christ's human nature was fallen, as His assumption of that nature is what results in the reconciliation with God. There is no difference one way or the other in the eventual nature of Christ. Either way His human nature is healed. The difference between what I am saying and the IC is that in the IC God heals the human nature of the Theotokos miraculously and individually at her conception so that she is a 'fit' mother for Christ whereas what I'm saying is that in the Incarnation God healed fallen human nature by uniting it with His Divinity. There's no need to invent a two stage process, diminishing the Theotokos in the process and, frankly, I still can't see in what way one could possibly look at the IC, from an Orthodox perspective, and not see heresy. We believe what is not assumed is not healed (as has been mentioned earlier), so if He did not assume fallen human nature, He didn't heal the effects of the Fall and we are not saved. You are left having to come up with some other mechanism of salvation (which has certainly often been true in the west - witness PSA) but it simply will not mesh with Incarnational soteriology, which is the Orthodox view, a view I find in the Fathers while noting an absence of the IC.

James

[Cyrillic]

However, I also have to grant that if there was no damage to human nature at the Fall at all, then there is no need for an Immaculate Conception. But I think only Pelagians would say that.

Our will is damaged, perhaps. But I doubt it whether human nature (as in physis) changed.  A change of physis would for me mean that a new creature has come into being. Perhaps I'm wrong though.

[dzheremi]

"Thus, then, God has made man, and willed that he should abide in incorruption; but men, having despised and rejected the contemplation of God, and devised and contrived evil for themselves (as was said in the former treatise), received the condemnation with which they had been threatened; and from thenceforth no longer remained as they had been made, but were being corrupted according to their devices; and death had the mastery over them as a king." -- St. Athanasius the Apostolic, On the Incarnation (A. Robinson, Trans., 1885; emphasis added)

I'm with James...you can call it a "wound" or a "change" or whatever you want, but you can't seriously say that we remained the same as we had been before.

[Cyrillic]

"This, then, was the plight of men. God had not only made them out of nothing, but had also graciously bestowed on them His own life by the grace of the Word. Then, turning from eternal things to things corruptible, by counsel of the devil, they had become the cause of their own corruption in death; for, as I said before, though they were by nature subject to corruption, the grace of their union with the Word made them capable of escaping from the natural law, provided that they retained the beauty of innocence with which they were created. That is to say, the presence of the Word with them shielded them even from natural corruption, as also Wisdom says: God created man for incorruption and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death entered into the world." - St. Athanasius the Apostolic, On the Incarnation (tr. Sister Penelope Lawson, emphasis mine)

I interpret this as that human nature didn't change, yet "the grace of their union with the Word made them capable  of escaping from the natural law" and "even from natural corruption" but that "but by envy of the devil death entered into the world" and that our union with the Word was damaged by which we lost our good state from before the fall.

This thread is pretty off topic, though. My fault, I admit it.

[ialmisry]

"Thus, then, God has made man, and willed that he should abide in incorruption; but men, having despised and rejected the contemplation of God, and devised and contrived evil for themselves (as was said in the former treatise), received the condemnation with which they had been threatened; and from thenceforth no longer remained as they had been made, but were being corrupted according to their devices; and death had the mastery over them as a king." -- St. Athanasius the Apostolic, On the Incarnation (A. Robinson, Trans., 1885; emphasis added)

I'm with James...you can call it a "wound" or a "change" or whatever you want, but you can't seriously say that we remained the same as we had been before.

For one thing, if we had, what is this "singular grace and privilege" that the IC supposedly conferred?

[Cyrillic]

"Thus, then, God has made man, and willed that he should abide in incorruption; but men, having despised and rejected the contemplation of God, and devised and contrived evil for themselves (as was said in the former treatise), received the condemnation with which they had been threatened; and from thenceforth no longer remained as they had been made, but were being corrupted according to their devices; and death had the mastery over them as a king." -- St. Athanasius the Apostolic, On the Incarnation (A. Robinson, Trans., 1885; emphasis added)

I'm with James...you can call it a "wound" or a "change" or whatever you want, but you can't seriously say that we remained the same as we had been before.

For one thing, if we had, what is this "singular grace and privilege" that the IC supposedly conferred?

I wonder too.

[elijahmaria]

I'm not sure how to answer your question, James, since I do believe that the fall had an effect on human nature. That's the unspoken assumption that I've held in my replies in this thread, as I had assumed that this was relatively basic theology. You know, "For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved" and all that.

It is fully protestant to say that human nature was changed rather than it was wounded, as it is said in the Catholic Church whose patrimony is the Holy Fathers of East and West.  Can you show us from the holy fathers, where human nature was destroyed by the ancestral sin and come into being outside of paradise as something other than what it was prior to the fall?

That is more of a rhetorical question than anything else...

You neglected to tell us what your religious affiliation was prior to your passing through the Catholic Church into Orthodoxy...

M.

How is a wound not a change? Why do you seem to think that if we say changed we mean destroyed, or that there must a complete change? If I get a sun tan I'm changed, so I'm pretty sure becoming mortal and all the rest of what the Fall entailed can quite rightly be described as a change in human nature, particularly as it is a heritable change and therefore part and parcel of that nature in a way that my sun tan example is not. I don't think that any of us said human nature was destroyed (in fact I'm almost certain nobody here did). Incidentally, I'm an ex-Protestant being brought up kind of Lutheran at home while mostly attending Anglican churches and I never ever heard anyone teach the view you call 'fully protestant' at all, not in either church. I certainly don't hold to it and never have. In fact, in my Protestant days I would have never been familiar with the idea of the Incarnation as healing human nature at all, rather I'd have seen Christ as paying the price of our sins on the Cross in our place. I think any idea of changes in human nature at the fall would have been an after thought if that and certainly of no real soteriological significance.

James

Again...If I fall and cut my leg open, laying the muscles bare, or if I fall and my leg breaks and tears out of the skin ripping muscle and tendon in the process...I am wounded...badly wounded...incapacitated....I cannot use that leg. 

Is it any less a leg...has it's nature changed?  Or has the expression of its substantial nature changed?

That is the point that is missing here.  It is why I say that many times these discussions bog down due to very inadequate understandings of the nature of nature.

M.

[Apotheoun]

I always like how a few posters focus on the fact that I quoted Fr. Hardon, while ignoring the more than twenty other Catholic theologians who affirmed Mary's impeccability.

Click the link to download a pdf document containing all the quotations I supplied in an earlier thread:

Quotations from Various Catholic Theologians on the Doctrine of Mary's Impeccability

[dzheremi]

Cyrillic: I think we're talking about two different things at this point. You seem to be focusing on the means by which man came to be corrupted, saying that it did not involve a change in our nature, as we were "by nature" subject to corruption. Fair enough. I'm looking at it with more a "before and after" view, emphasizing the point that, as both of our quotes show, man was created in incorruption and to remain in incorruption, and so the fact that we did not remain in the incorruption in which we were created to live is itself all the necessary proof that a change/wound/whatever you want to call it did in fact occur. And, of course, the corruption that entered the world did not only effect Adam and Eve, but effects us all, even as we do not bare any personal guilt for their particular sin. 

[Cyrillic]

I always like how a few posters focus on the fact that I quoted Fr. Hardon, while ignoring the more than twenty other Catholic theologians who affirmed Mary's impeccability.

Click the link to download a pdf document containing all the quotations I supplied in an earlier thread:

Quotations from Various Catholic Theologians on the Doctrine of Mary's Impeccability

Even if it were a hundred theologians it wouldn't change a thing. St. Mary's impeccability isn't a teaching of the RCC.

[Cyrillic]

Fair enough. I'm looking at it with more a "before and after" view, emphasizing the point that, as both of our quotes show, man was created in incorruption and to remain in incorruption, and so the fact that we did not remain in the incorruption in which we were created to live is itself all the necessary proof that a change/wound/whatever you want to call it did in fact occur.

The quote of St. Athanasius that I gave seemed to imply that it was God's grace which made us incorruptible, not our nature because according to nature we are corruptible, even before the fall, but in the fall we lost grace. The change then, I think, is the loss of grace, not a change of nature.

[Apotheoun]

I always like how a few posters focus on the fact that I quoted Fr. Hardon, while ignoring the more than twenty other Catholic theologians who affirmed Mary's impeccability.

Click the link to download a pdf document containing all the quotations I supplied in an earlier thread:

Quotations from Various Catholic Theologians on the Doctrine of Mary's Impeccability

Even if it were a hundred theologians it wouldn't change a thing. St. Mary's impeccability isn't a teaching of the RCC.

Who I am to believe?  You?  Or Catholic theologians of high repute?  I guess I will go with the Catholic theologians.

[elijahmaria]

I always like how a few posters focus on the fact that I quoted Fr. Hardon, while ignoring the more than twenty other Catholic theologians who affirmed Mary's impeccability.

Click the link to download a pdf document containing all the quotations I supplied in an earlier thread:

Quotations from Various Catholic Theologians on the Doctrine of Mary's Impeccability

Even if it were a hundred theologians it wouldn't change a thing. St. Mary's impeccability isn't a teaching of the RCC.

I am a little confused by this...

M.

[elijahmaria]

Fair enough. I'm looking at it with more a "before and after" view, emphasizing the point that, as both of our quotes show, man was created in incorruption and to remain in incorruption, and so the fact that we did not remain in the incorruption in which we were created to live is itself all the necessary proof that a change/wound/whatever you want to call it did in fact occur.

The quote of St. Athanasius that I gave seemed to imply that it was God's grace which made us incorruptible, not our nature because according to nature we are corruptible, even before the fall, but in the fall we lost grace. The change then, I think, is the loss of grace, not a change of nature.

This is something interesting isn't it.  How can something that God creates become corrupted...?  I am pleased that you see this.  It is a necessary correction to the idea that the good corrupts without God's hand in it or in this case...withdrawn from it.

M.

[Cyrillic]

I always like how a few posters focus on the fact that I quoted Fr. Hardon, while ignoring the more than twenty other Catholic theologians who affirmed Mary's impeccability.

Click the link to download a pdf document containing all the quotations I supplied in an earlier thread:

Quotations from Various Catholic Theologians on the Doctrine of Mary's Impeccability

Even if it were a hundred theologians it wouldn't change a thing. St. Mary's impeccability isn't a teaching of the RCC.

I am a little confused by this...

M.

Apotheoun was implying RC's believe St. Mary was incapable of sinning

[elijahmaria]

I always like how a few posters focus on the fact that I quoted Fr. Hardon, while ignoring the more than twenty other Catholic theologians who affirmed Mary's impeccability.

Click the link to download a pdf document containing all the quotations I supplied in an earlier thread:

Quotations from Various Catholic Theologians on the Doctrine of Mary's Impeccability

Even if it were a hundred theologians it wouldn't change a thing. St. Mary's impeccability isn't a teaching of the RCC.

I am a little confused by this...

M.

Apotheoun was implying RC's believe St. Mary was incapable of sinning

It may be a pious belief of some but it is not the formal teaching of the Church.  They say that the Mother of God had free will and could be tempted and leave it at that.

I am sure that you know that the desert fathers teach that as a soul gains in grace and holiness here on earth it becomes ever increasingly difficult for that soul to yield to temptation...It becomes near impossible to sin.  It is in that spirit that some Catholics teach that the Mother of God could not sin.  It was that her will was so aligned with the will of God that it would have been nearly impossible for her to sin, not that she COULD not have sinned.

Do you see?

[ialmisry]

I always like how a few posters focus on the fact that I quoted Fr. Hardon, while ignoring the more than twenty other Catholic theologians who affirmed Mary's impeccability.

Click the link to download a pdf document containing all the quotations I supplied in an earlier thread:

Quotations from Various Catholic Theologians on the Doctrine of Mary's Impeccability

Even if it were a hundred theologians it wouldn't change a thing. St. Mary's impeccability isn't a teaching of the RCC.

Au contraire. Back in the day, the IC wasn't the teaching of the Vatican.  Its theologians changed that.

[elijahmaria]

I always like how a few posters focus on the fact that I quoted Fr. Hardon, while ignoring the more than twenty other Catholic theologians who affirmed Mary's impeccability.

Click the link to download a pdf document containing all the quotations I supplied in an earlier thread:

Quotations from Various Catholic Theologians on the Doctrine of Mary's Impeccability

Even if it were a hundred theologians it wouldn't change a thing. St. Mary's impeccability isn't a teaching of the RCC.

Au contraire. Back in the day, the IC wasn't the teaching of the Vatican.  Its theologians changed that.

This is just ignorance based in animus.  Or it is purposefully designed to mislead and then it is something else...

It is very difficult for me to not just say it is stupid.

M.

[ialmisry]

I always like how a few posters focus on the fact that I quoted Fr. Hardon, while ignoring the more than twenty other Catholic theologians who affirmed Mary's impeccability.

Click the link to download a pdf document containing all the quotations I supplied in an earlier thread:

Quotations from Various Catholic Theologians on the Doctrine of Mary's Impeccability

Even if it were a hundred theologians it wouldn't change a thing. St. Mary's impeccability isn't a teaching of the RCC.

I am a little confused by this...

M.

Apotheoun was implying RC's believe St. Mary was incapable of sinning

It may be a pious belief of some but it is not the formal teaching of the Church.

 
The same may be said of the IC for 90% of your church's existence.

They say

who's "they"?

that the Mother of God had free will and could be tempted and leave it at that.

They should leave it at that.

I am sure that you know that the desert fathers teach that as a soul gains in grace and holiness here on earth it becomes ever increasingly difficult for that soul to yield to temptation...It becomes near impossible to sin.  It is in that spirit that some Catholics teach that the Mother of God could not sin.  It was that her will was so aligned with the will of God that it would have been nearly impossible for her to sin, not that she COULD not have sinned.

Do you see?

The Desert Fathers' point? Yes.  The IC? No.

[Cyrillic]

I always like how a few posters focus on the fact that I quoted Fr. Hardon, while ignoring the more than twenty other Catholic theologians who affirmed Mary's impeccability.

Click the link to download a pdf document containing all the quotations I supplied in an earlier thread:

Quotations from Various Catholic Theologians on the Doctrine of Mary's Impeccability

Even if it were a hundred theologians it wouldn't change a thing. St. Mary's impeccability isn't a teaching of the RCC.

Au contraire. Back in the day, the IC wasn't the teaching of the Vatican.  Its theologians changed that.

If I remember correctly, Bernard of Clairvaux mentioned the IC a lot.

[ialmisry]

I always like how a few posters focus on the fact that I quoted Fr. Hardon, while ignoring the more than twenty other Catholic theologians who affirmed Mary's impeccability.

Click the link to download a pdf document containing all the quotations I supplied in an earlier thread:

Quotations from Various Catholic Theologians on the Doctrine of Mary's Impeccability

Even if it were a hundred theologians it wouldn't change a thing. St. Mary's impeccability isn't a teaching of the RCC.

Au contraire. Back in the day, the IC wasn't the teaching of the Vatican.  Its theologians changed that.

This is just ignorance based in animus.  Or it is purposefully designed to mislead and then it is something else...

It is very difficult for me to not just say it is stupid.

It is very easy for me to just say that is denial.

I would say that it is just ignorance based in apologia, but I know you know the facts.  You're just denying them, purposefully designed to mislead to what end we know

[ialmisry]

I always like how a few posters focus on the fact that I quoted Fr. Hardon, while ignoring the more than twenty other Catholic theologians who affirmed Mary's impeccability.

Click the link to download a pdf document containing all the quotations I supplied in an earlier thread:

Quotations from Various Catholic Theologians on the Doctrine of Mary's Impeccability

Even if it were a hundred theologians it wouldn't change a thing. St. Mary's impeccability isn't a teaching of the RCC.

Au contraire. Back in the day, the IC wasn't the teaching of the Vatican.  Its theologians changed that.

If I remember correctly, Bernard of Clairvaux mentioned the IC a lot.

Yes, to condemn it.

[Cavaradossi]

I always like how a few posters focus on the fact that I quoted Fr. Hardon, while ignoring the more than twenty other Catholic theologians who affirmed Mary's impeccability.

Click the link to download a pdf document containing all the quotations I supplied in an earlier thread:

Quotations from Various Catholic Theologians on the Doctrine of Mary's Impeccability

Even if it were a hundred theologians it wouldn't change a thing. St. Mary's impeccability isn't a teaching of the RCC.

This argument I find problematic. This would be like saying that St. Basil's appropriation of the term hypostasis to describe the threeness (for lack of a better term) of God was not until the Second Council of Constantinople an official teaching of the Church, but rather a private (and possibly heretical) opinion introduced by St. Basil and shared by some of the Church's most eminent theologians, since the Creed of Nicaea specifically condemns the proposition that the Son is of another hypostasis or ousia, and also since, to my knowledge, neither the Nicene Creed, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, nor the Chalcedonian Definition specifically teach that God is trihypostatic. But this argument is flawed because the Christological use of the term hypostasis already presupposes that God is a triad of hypostases. To deny this would be to make the Chalcedonian Definition and the teaching of the hypostatic union to be meaningless utterances.

If so many respectable Roman Catholic theologians expound upon the Mariology of the Roman Catholic Church by teaching that the Virgin is made impeccable by a unique grace of God bestowed upon her (one bestowed from her very conception), what reason do we have to believe that they are only expressing a private opinion? It is unfair, I think, to decontextualize the Immaculate Conception in an attempt to make it orthodox. Should we not evaluate the belief on the terms that the Roman Catholics understand it, rather than evaluating what we think it should mean? If the Roman Catholics understand it in an orthodox manner, then we should rejoice in knowing that it presents no barrier to reestablishing communion, and if they understand it in a heterodox manner, then we should reject the teaching as an error, but let us not out of a good desire for peace and unity fool ourselves by robbing the teaching of its meaning, or reading our own meanings into it, when a perfectly viable hermeneutic tradition for understanding the teaching already exists.

[ialmisry]

I always like how a few posters focus on the fact that I quoted Fr. Hardon, while ignoring the more than twenty other Catholic theologians who affirmed Mary's impeccability.

Click the link to download a pdf document containing all the quotations I supplied in an earlier thread:

Quotations from Various Catholic Theologians on the Doctrine of Mary's Impeccability

Even if it were a hundred theologians it wouldn't change a thing. St. Mary's impeccability isn't a teaching of the RCC.

This argument I find problematic. This would be like saying that St. Basil's appropriation of the term hypostasis to describe the threeness (for lack of a better term) of God was not until the Second Council of Constantinople an official teaching of the Church, but rather a private (and possibly heretical) opinion introduced by St. Basil and shared by some of the Church's most eminent theologians, since the Creed of Nicaea specifically condemns the proposition that the Son is of another hypostasis or ousia, and also since, to my knowledge, neither the Nicene Creed, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, nor the Chalcedonian Definition specifically teach that God is trihypostatic. But this argument is flawed because the Christological use of the term hypostasis already presupposes that God is a triad of hypostases. To deny this would be to make the Chalcedonian Definition and the teaching of the hypostatic union to be meaningless utterances.

If so many respectable Roman Catholic theologians expound upon the Mariology of the Roman Catholic Church by teaching that the Virgin is made impeccable by a unique grace of God bestowed upon her (one bestowed from her very conception), what reason do we have to believe that they are only expressing a private opinion? It is unfair, I think, to decontextualize the Immaculate Conception in an attempt to make it orthodox. Should we not evaluate the belief on the terms that the Roman Catholics understand it, rather than evaluating what we think it should mean? If the Roman Catholics understand it in an orthodox manner, then we should rejoice in knowing that it presents no barrier to reestablishing communion, and if they understand it in a heterodox manner, then we should reject the teaching as an error, but let us not out of a good desire for peace and unity fool ourselves by robbing the teaching of its meaning, or reading our own meanings into it, when a perfectly viable hermeneutic tradition for understanding the teaching already exists.

It can be understood only in a heretical manner.

Christ existed as a hypostasis before His Incarnation.  His divine will could and did freely will to unite with human nature.  That human nature and its will (and other faculties) never existed apart from the incarnated divine hypostasis and its will (if it ever did, Nestorius would have been right).  Human nature, and ancestral sin that clings to it, is not transmitted by the will, and hence the human will is not involved in it: no one man can will to beget anything but a human (as Father Adam, the First Adam did: Genesis 5:1-3)-he can't beget a sheep, for instance-and no woman can will to bear a sheep rather than a man, as Mother Eve, the First Eve-exclaimed (Genesis 4:1).  Hence the human nature and its will that the divine hypostasis of the Son was not violated when it conformed to the divine will to which it was united from the first moment of its existence, which had freely chosen the Incarnation into fallen human nature and its mission, and born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God, although born in blood and flesh and with the will of a man.

Despite what the good Fr. Kolbe said (and the writings of this "Doctor of the Church" as the Vatican calls him shows that the IC is understood in the terms the Vatican believe in a heretical manner, hence why we should reject it as error), the Holy Theotokos had no pre-existence.  No will to freely choose human nature (pre)existed.  The IC would have to be chosen for her. And thus depriving her of the exercise of her free will, she would be separated from human nature inherited from Father Adam and Mother Eve, rendering her useless as a vessel for the Second Adam to chose her to chose Him as the Second Eve. The First Eve freely chose to obey the serpent's words, the Second Eve freely chose to obey the angel's words.  The Second Adam could come in no other way to free the First Adam.

[ialmisry]

I always like how a few posters focus on the fact that I quoted Fr. Hardon, while ignoring the more than twenty other Catholic theologians who affirmed Mary's impeccability.

Click the link to download a pdf document containing all the quotations I supplied in an earlier thread:

Quotations from Various Catholic Theologians on the Doctrine of Mary's Impeccability

Even if it were a hundred theologians it wouldn't change a thing. St. Mary's impeccability isn't a teaching of the RCC.

This argument I find problematic. This would be like saying that St. Basil's appropriation of the term hypostasis to describe the threeness (for lack of a better term) of God was not until the Second Council of Constantinople an official teaching of the Church, but rather a private (and possibly heretical) opinion introduced by St. Basil and shared by some of the Church's most eminent theologians, since the Creed of Nicaea specifically condemns the proposition that the Son is of another hypostasis or ousia, and also since, to my knowledge, neither the Nicene Creed, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, nor the Chalcedonian Definition specifically teach that God is trihypostatic. But this argument is flawed because the Christological use of the term hypostasis already presupposes that God is a triad of hypostases. To deny this would be to make the Chalcedonian Definition and the teaching of the hypostatic union to be meaningless utterances.

If so many respectable Roman Catholic theologians expound upon the Mariology of the Roman Catholic Church by teaching that the Virgin is made impeccable by a unique grace of God bestowed upon her (one bestowed from her very conception), what reason do we have to believe that they are only expressing a private opinion? It is unfair, I think, to decontextualize the Immaculate Conception in an attempt to make it orthodox. Should we not evaluate the belief on the terms that the Roman Catholics understand it, rather than evaluating what we think it should mean? If the Roman Catholics understand it in an orthodox manner, then we should rejoice in knowing that it presents no barrier to reestablishing communion, and if they understand it in a heterodox manner, then we should reject the teaching as an error, but let us not out of a good desire for peace and unity fool ourselves by robbing the teaching of its meaning, or reading our own meanings into it, when a perfectly viable hermeneutic tradition for understanding the teaching already exists.

It can be understood only in a heretical manner.

Christ existed as a hypostasis before His Incarnation.  His divine will could and did freely will to unite with human nature.  That human nature and its will (and other faculties) never existed apart from the incarnated divine hypostasis and its will (if it ever did, Nestorius would have been right).  Human nature, and ancestral sin that clings to it, is not transmitted by the will, and hence the human will is not involved in it: no one man can will to beget anything but a human (as Father Adam, the First Adam did: Genesis 5:1-3)-he can't beget a sheep, for instance-and no woman can will to bear a sheep rather than a man, as Mother Eve, the First Eve-exclaimed (Genesis 4:1).  Hence the human nature and its will that the divine hypostasis of the Son was not violated when it conformed to the divine will to which it was united from the first moment of its existence, which had freely chosen the Incarnation into fallen human nature and its mission, and born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God, although born in blood and flesh and with the will of a man.

Despite what the good Fr. Kolbe said (and the writings of this "Doctor of the Church" as the Vatican calls him shows that the IC is understood in the terms the Vatican believe in a heretical manner, hence why we should reject it as error), the Holy Theotokos had no pre-existence.  No will to freely choose human nature (pre)existed.  The IC would have to be chosen for her. And thus depriving her of the exercise of her free will, she would be separated from human nature inherited from Father Adam and Mother Eve, rendering her useless as a vessel for the Second Adam to chose her to chose Him as the Second Eve. The First Eve freely chose to obey the serpent's words, the Second Eve freely chose to obey the angel's words.  The Second Adam could come in no other way to free the First Adam.

I couldn't find this thread before
http://www.orthodoxchristianity.net/forum/index.php/topic,30017.0.html
where this post should have been.