Could Mary have sinned?

[Anomaly]

So, if God created Mary with free will AND the inability to sin, why wasn't Adam and Eve and the rest of us born that way?    Did God love Mary more or less than Abraham?

[Cam42]

3 minutes ago, Peace said:

No, I speak of the Immaculate Conception as dogma. You read more into the dogma than what it states. What you assert is neither doctrine nor dogma. It is a private interpretation by a random person on the Internet, despite however many degrees you may have.

But thank you for reading me your resume. Perhaps after you obtain 3 or 4 more degrees that will be sufficient for you to understand your error. Here on the forum, it is evidence and arguments that carry the day, and you still have not proven your assertion.

As for your assertion that the Church could not be clearer on that point, you are wrong. If the Church wanted to make a dogmatic statement to that effect She could do so, and She could do so much more clearly than the language that you allege as indicating that Mary could not have sinned.

As for what I need to submit to prayer and assent to, thank you for the suggestion. When making such suggestions in the future, please keep in mind that despite your numerous degrees, to me you remain a random person on the Internet.

As for whether my definition of free-will is correct, again, you have not affirmitavely put forth a definition of your own (despite my two requests for you to do so) so you are not in a position to discuss it. You may say "you are wrong" as many times as you like, but realize that you do not have authority. You must convince using reason, and you have not done so. Lastly, what I wrote stands, regardless of whether you call "the ability to act at one's discretion" "free-will" or whether you call it something else. Whether "the ability to act act at one's discretion" meets the theological definition of free-will (again, which you refuse to define) is quite irrelevant, because my previous statements are not based on that assumption.

So, you want an authoritative definition of free will.  Here ya go.

"The exercise of freedom does not imply a right to say or do everything. It is false to maintain that man, "the subject of this freedom," is "an individual who is fully self-sufficient and whose finality is the satisfaction of his own interests in the enjoyment of earthly goods."  Moreover, the economic, social, political, and cultural conditions that are needed for a just exercise of freedom are too often disregarded or violated. Such situations of blindness and injustice injure the moral life and involve the strong as well as the weak in the temptation to sin against charity. By deviating from the moral law man violates his own freedom, becomes imprisoned within himself, disrupts neighborly fellowship, and rebels against divine truth." (CCC #1740)

"By his glorious Cross Christ has won salvation for all men. He redeemed them from the sin that held them in bondage. "For freedom Christ has set us free." In him we have communion with the "truth that makes us free." The Holy Spirit has been given to us and, as the Apostle teaches, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." Already we glory in the "liberty of the children of God."" (CCC #1741)

"The grace of Christ is not in the slightest way a rival of our freedom when this freedom accords with the sense of the true and the good that God has put in the human heart. On the contrary, as Christian experience attests especially in prayer, the more docile we are to the promptings of grace, the more we grow in inner freedom and confidence during trials, such as those we face in the pressures and constraints of the outer world. By the working of grace the Holy Spirit educates us in spiritual freedom in order to make us free collaborators in his work in the Church and in the world:

Almighty and merciful God, 
in your goodness take away from us all that is harmful, 
so that, made ready both in mind and body, 
we may freely accomplish your will." (CCC #1742)

In short, free will doesn't mean what you think it does.  What free will is, is that we find freedom in the love of God and doing His will, through Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Nihil's statement about liberty is spot on...but this is your definition.  To do anything else, for any other reason, is not free will, but it is being a slave to sin.

As for the rest of your rhetoric, I don't need to respond to it.  Thanks for your treatise on how I am just another dude.  I am, but I am a dude who knows a lot about the Church and how to go about a theological discussion.  You might take a step back and understand that this isn't personal, it's theological.

5 minutes ago, Anomaly said:

So, if God created Mary with free will AND the inability to sin, why wasn't Adam and Eve and the rest of us born that way?    Did God love Mary more or less than Abraham?

Neither Adam nor Eve were born.  They were created.  And they didn't know sin until it was presented to them and they chose it.  God loves all of his creation equally, but Mary had a special role to fulfill.  Insofar as that was the case, he bestowed upon her graces which were unique to her.  Those graces allowed her to live her life without sin, either by choice or birth.

An important thing to understand is the word, can.

Can is defined as:  to know how to.

Did Mary know how to sin?  No.  She did not.  She did not know how to, because she was full of grace.  She did not know how to, because she did not know sin.  So, properly speaking, using the English language, Mary could not sin, by the very definition of the word, can (BTW, could is the past tense of can).

 

[Peace]

Cam42:

That is not a definition. You quoted everything except for the definition. Here is the definition from the very same section of the Catechism:

1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude. 

1732 As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach. 

1733 The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to "the slavery of sin."²⁸

The definition set forth above is substantively the same as the definition that I set forth previously in this thread. The choice to do evil is an abuse of freedom that leads to the "slavery of sin"' but freedom itself is "the power to act or not act on one's own responsibility." I previously defined my use of free-will as "the ability to act at one's own discretion" and that is substantively the same as the Catechism.

As for "rhetoric" I suggest that you not dish it out if you cannot take it. This is a forum for adults, not babies.

 

[Peace]

The only reason that you persist in this semantical nonsense is to avoid a problem with your argument that you cannot answer.

[little2add]

38 minutes ago, Peace said:

The only reason that you persist in this semantical nonsense is to avoid a problem with your argument that you cannot answer.

O ye, of little faith

 

[Peace]

54 minutes ago, little2add said:

O ye, of little faith

 

I believe that Jesus was born of a virgin and that He is truly present in the Eucharist. Is that what you call "little faith"?

Faith does not entail my assent to the private musings of a person on the Internet of who I know nothing.

Don't get it twisted.

[little2add]

1 hour ago, Peace said:

I believe that Jesus was born of a virgin and that He is truly present in the Eucharist. Is that what you call "little faith"?

Faith does not entail my assent to the private musings of a person on the Internet of who I know nothing.

Don't get it twisted.

 I'm sorry, your response earlier suggested  ( to me ) that you may or may not believe that Mary was Sinfree 

  If I miss understood You,  i apologize 

[MarysLittleFlower]

On ‎27‎/‎11‎/‎2015‎ ‎10‎:‎19‎:‎44‎, Peace said:

I hope you had a nice holiday. I don't mean to be rude, but I am not convinced.

The crux of your argument seems to be that "full of grace" = "cannot sin", but I do not think that the Church has ever told us that those words should be interpreted in that manner. The Church has thought deeply about those and the few, other, passages in the Bible concerning Mary. The Church has considered the Tradition and She has made 4 dogmatic statements concerning Mary. "Mary could not have sinned" was not one of them.

But besides my rude appeal to authority (or more precisely, the lack thereof) I still think there are a few problems with your analysis above:

1) Does being the most holy creature lead to the conclusion that one is unable to sin? I do not see why that need be the case. Being the best basketball player on the planet does not mean that one is incapable of missing a shot. Or perhaps put a better way, the fact that one has never missed a shot does not mean that one is incapable of missing a shot.

2) How is it you know that Mary has been given a plenitude of grace that will never be seen again? It seems to me that God can give grace to the people that He chooses and in the amounts that He chooses, and at the times that He chooses.

3) How do you know that Mary's will was perfectly united with God's? It seems to me that the 3 Persons of the Trinity are perfectly united in will. If Mary's was perfectly united to God's before her death, it seems to me that there there are two ways of that happening: 1) She is the 4th person of the Trinity, and we certainly cannot go there. 2) She possessed the beatific vision before her death - but I do not think the Church has ever taught this.

4) It seems to me that God gives us grace, and we are then called to cooperate with that grace. Grace from God and the will of a human are different things. Our will has to cooperate with the grace that God gives us. If you do not leave open the possibility that Mary could have chosen to reject God's grace (as we all do) then it seems to me that you do not have a real human-being (because God created us with the free and ability to accept or reject Him). You seem to have something more akin to one of the free-will lacking robots that Calvinists contemplate.

Honestly, I don't know whether or not Mary could or could not have sinned. I would guess that if someone asserted  that She could have sinned, I would take issue with that too. Until the Church tells us the answer (which I doubt will happen) then I think we are just left in the realm of speculation. . .

Peace, I actually ended up asking my priest about this so I'll let you know what he said. He's very orthodox/traditional.

I think you sort of misunderstood what I was saying I did say that Our Lady had a choice. I'm not saying she didn't have a choice.

What my priest said, is that - Our Lady had a choice, but her sinning is very unlikely because of the graces she was given and that her will was always with  God.

What we discussed is this: Adam and Eve had a test of their trust and obedience and they failed it. But Our Lady always chose God.

I read before in a spiritual book the implications of something like this. If Adam and Eve had chosen God, at the time of their test, that would have strengthened them in a way that would strengthen them to stay with God forever. Our Lady did choose God - that sort of choice has certain implications for the soul and makes future sin even less likely. Add to this the fullness of grace she received at the Immaculate Conception. That makes her unlike any creature that ever lived.

None of this means that she was like a robot or didn't have a choice. She did choose God, but she received great graces for this and her choice made her even stronger in charity for Him.

To answer some of your questions..

1) I think it makes it so unlikely that it just doesn't happen. I mean if someone is immaculately conceived, chosen to be the Mother of God, has fullness of grace, also freely chose to follow God's Will, and said 'fiat' to God when Adam and Eve said no - I think going from all this to sin, would be extremely less possible than Adam and Eve going to sin during their first test. Our Lady was filled with charity and it increased to such an amount that she actually loves God more than all the Saints and Angels *put together*.

2) She is the Mother of God. Even the greatest Saints in the future would not give God His Human Nature. That gives her  a special place that no one else has. We can live like her in certain ways but not in other ways, like being His Mother and Queen.

3) Having our wills united to God's Will is not the same as the Holy Trinity or Hypostatic Union and it can happen before the Beatific vision. We can have this on earth and Our Lady did. We keep our faculty of the human will but it completely submits to the Divine Will and doesn't act independently. Each of its acts is just a submission to God's Will and it's God's Will that leads in every moment. It's actually how Adam and Eve lived before the fall too. The fall was related to self will/pride. The reason it's different from the Holy Trinity is that we are still human, and the difference between this and the hypostatic union is that again we don't become God and have His substance as our own.. we don't become divine persons, we are still human persons, but not self willed. Only one will can reign in us: God's, or ours. One always has to reign and another follow.

4) Again I didn't say that Our Lady lost her ability to choose. She chose, but without any concupiscence, immaculately conceived, and with the aid of an incredible amount of grace, and really she had so much grace that choosing anything but God is pretty much unthinkable when we think of Our Lady. My priest put it as "highly unlikely". It doesn't mean she was a robot who couldn't choose.

[little2add]

The mother of Jesus can do no wrong.  

[Peace]

9 hours ago, little2add said:

 I'm sorry, your response earlier suggested  ( to me ) that you may or may not believe that Mary was Sinfree 

  If I miss understood You,  i apologize 

No worries. I guess I did not communicate clearly. I do not believe that Mary sinned. I believe the Catechism clearly states that she did not sin.

9 hours ago, MarysLittleFlower said:

Peace, I actually ended up asking my priest about this so I'll let you know what he said. He's very orthodox/traditional.

I think you sort of misunderstood what I was saying I did say that Our Lady had a choice. I'm not saying she didn't have a choice.

What my priest said, is that - Our Lady had a choice, but her sinning is very unlikely because of the graces she was given and that her will was always with  God.

What we discussed is this: Adam and Eve had a test of their trust and obedience and they failed it. But Our Lady always chose God.

I read before in a spiritual book the implications of something like this. If Adam and Eve had chosen God, at the time of their test, that would have strengthened them in a way that would strengthen them to stay with God forever. Our Lady did choose God - that sort of choice has certain implications for the soul and makes future sin even less likely. Add to this the fullness of grace she received at the Immaculate Conception. That makes her unlike any creature that ever lived.

None of this means that she was like a robot or didn't have a choice. She did choose God, but she received great graces for this and her choice made her even stronger in charity for Him.

To answer some of your questions..

1) I think it makes it so unlikely that it just doesn't happen. I mean if someone is immaculately conceived, chosen to be the Mother of God, has fullness of grace, also freely chose to follow God's Will, and said 'fiat' to God when Adam and Eve said no - I think going from all this to sin, would be extremely less possible than Adam and Eve going to sin during their first test. Our Lady was filled with charity and it increased to such an amount that she actually loves God more than all the Saints and Angels *put together*.

2) She is the Mother of God. Even the greatest Saints in the future would not give God His Human Nature. That gives her  a special place that no one else has. We can live like her in certain ways but not in other ways, like being His Mother and Queen.

3) Having our wills united to God's Will is not the same as the Holy Trinity or Hypostatic Union and it can happen before the Beatific vision. We can have this on earth and Our Lady did. We keep our faculty of the human will but it completely submits to the Divine Will and doesn't act independently. Each of its acts is just a submission to God's Will and it's God's Will that leads in every moment. It's actually how Adam and Eve lived before the fall too. The fall was related to self will/pride. The reason it's different from the Holy Trinity is that we are still human, and the difference between this and the hypostatic union is that again we don't become God and have His substance as our own.. we don't become divine persons, we are still human persons, but not self willed. Only one will can reign in us: God's, or ours. One always has to reign and another follow.

4) Again I didn't say that Our Lady lost her ability to choose. She chose, but without any concupiscence, immaculately conceived, and with the aid of an incredible amount of grace, and really she had so much grace that choosing anything but God is pretty much unthinkable when we think of Our Lady. My priest put it as "highly unlikely". It doesn't mean she was a robot who couldn't choose.

Thanks for asking your priest.  I think I can agree with a great deal of what you wrote. If the idea is that Mary would have been highly unlikely to sin because of the special graces that she received, and because she chose to accept and cooperate with those graces, then that is something that I can get on board with rather easily I think.

[Era Might]

Wow, epic old school thread lol. I still think, from a Catholic theological perspective, Mary could have sinned. I'm reading Karol Wojtyla's poetry and he has some beautiful reflections on Mary. I think we underestimate what it meant for God to become man, and the extent to which Christianity's appeal is in that humanness. I like his poetical perspective on Mary because he sees her as he sees Christ, as deeply human, with emotions, fears, doubts, etc. I love the story of finding Jesus in the temple, because it shows even his Mother and father failing to understand him. Like the Apostles, Mary's discipleship was gradual and ongoing as she "pondered everything in her heart."

[little2add]

O course Mary could have sinned, all humans have free will

still, I don't believe she did 

 

[Nihil Obstat]

4 hours ago, little2add said:

O course Mary could have sinned, all humans have free will

still, I don't believe she did 

 

Does God have free will?

[little2add]

On November 28, 2015 at 12:53:12 PM, Peace said:

 

1 hour ago, Nihil Obstat said:

Does God have free will?

the baby jesus became man, he had free will

Edited November 30, 2015 by little2add

[MarysLittleFlower]

15 hours ago, Nihil Obstat said:

Does God have free will?

Nihil just to clarify are you saying that Mary could not have sinned, in this thread? I asked my priest on this and it appears that - she had no concupiscence and so much grace that she was prevented from sinning, but at the same time she still had a choice (she wasn't forced to say 'yes'). So how does this work? Was she capable of sin or not? Im getting confused on this.

I think absolutely speaking she had a choice, but with the amount of grace she had, the grace was completely efficacious in her case and the more she cooperated the more she grew in charity... Could she have made another choice even if it was very unlikely? 

 I think my priest was saying that we shouldn't say she was forced. Maybe she was somehow confirmed in grace so much that her will was set on God. Saints in transforming union have something similar. Saints in Heaven are unable to sin though they are free - but they are in Heaven? What was the case with Our Lady?

With God of course He is free but He is unable to sin as that is against His very nature. We only become free from sinning by being united with Him. Anyway I'm kind of confused myself about Our Lady after thinking more. 

13 hours ago, little2add said:

the baby jesus became man, he had free will

But God has free will. He is unable to sin though. Jesus is still a Divine Person, - a Divine Person with a human nature and a divine nature. He continued to be unable to sin after the Incarnation. 

Edited November 30, 2015 by MarysLittleFlower