If Mary Was Kept From Sin...

[Selah]

If this is in the wrong section, please move it.

I was thinking about something today. As Catholics, we believe that the Virgin Mary was sinless. If God could keep her from sin, though, could he not have kept Adam and Eve from sin or from eating of the tree?

Just something that confused me. What do you guys think?

[Justin86]

Well, when He made them they were free from all sin exactly like our Lady. As for why God didn't prevent them for sinning later that would be because God won't deny us our free will. God wants to be loved by someone who chooses to love Him, not by some robot that He programmed for the purpose. Does that make sense?

I'll let the phorum members more educated in theology than me go further on. I expect this topic to be moved to Transmundane Lane.

Edited May 11, 2008 by Justin86

[kujo]

[quote name='Selah' post='1524985' date='May 11 2008, 02:45 PM']If this is in the wrong section, please move it.

I was thinking about something today. As Catholics, we believe that the Virgin Mary was sinless. If God could keep her from sin, though, could he not have kept Adam and Eve from sin or from eating of the tree?

Just something that confused me. What do you guys think?[/quote]

Adam and Eve were born free from sin only to find that their choice to disobey God's law made them fall from grace, thereby creating a division between man and his God. That division is what we call concupiscience, or the stain of original sin, and all of us, the decendants of Adam and Eve, have it on our souls. Mary was born free from that stain, thus she had no inclination towards sin throughout her life, just like Adam and Eve didn't have that inclination until they made their choice.

Of course God could've not made the Tree of Knowledge in the first place, and we would all be walking about the Garden of Eden covered in fig-leafs, loving our Lord in Paradise; however, God is not in the business of enforcement, but encouragement.

Make sense?

EDIT: By "enforcement," I mean coercion or making people do something against their will. We all know that God enforces His laws and their punishments, but that is not the meaning of the word that I am using here.

Edited May 11, 2008 by kujo

[picchick]

...I am probably repeating everyone.

God made everyone with free will. Adam and Eve had an inclination towards sin. They didn't have to sin. They could have avoided temptation like we strive to everyday. However, they were weak and thus sinned.

Mary had no stain of sin on her soul and therefore had no inclination towards sin. I kind of think of it as God gave her a special grace to be sinless. And through her humility, unlike Adam and Eve, she also submitted herself to God's Will. Mary still had free will however. We see this at the Announciation. She did not have to say yes. Yet, she did because she submitted herself to God's Will. This is what makes her Fiat so special.


lol...I think I started going off topic.

Edited May 11, 2008 by picchick

[kujo]

[quote name='picchick' post='1525023' date='May 11 2008, 03:23 PM']...I am probably repeating everyone.

God made everyone with free will. Adam and Eve had an inclination towards sin. They didn't have to sin. They could have avoided temptation like we strive to everyday. However, they were weak and thus sinned.

Mary had no stain of sin on her soul and therefore had no inclination towards sin. I kind of think of it as God gave her a special grace to be sinless. And through her humility, unlike Adam and Eve, she also submitted herself to God's Will. Mary still had free will however. We see this at the Announciation. She did not have to say yes. Yet, she did because she submitted herself to God's Will. This is what makes her Fiat so special.

lol...I think I started going off topic.[/quote]

I think it's hard to get upset about "going off topic" when you're talking about how awesome Our Lady is.

Anywhom...I always thought that it was concupiscience that caused us to have the inclination towards sin. If that's true, Adam and Eve were left with their free will, which they misused when they disobeyed God.

I think that's why Mary is sometimes thought of as the new Eve.

[picchick]

[quote name='kujo' post='1525028' date='May 11 2008, 02:27 PM']I think it's hard to get upset about "going off topic" when you're talking about how awesome Our Lady is.

Anywhom...I always thought that it was concupiscience that caused us to have the inclination towards sin. If that's true, Adam and Eve were left with their free will, which they misused when they disobeyed God.

I think that's why Mary is sometimes thought of as the new Eve.[/quote]


Yes...lol...I had to look up that word. I believe you are right.

[kujo]

[quote name='picchick' post='1525031' date='May 11 2008, 03:29 PM']Yes...lol...I had to look up that word. I believe you are right.[/quote]

Yay Jesus!

[Apotheoun]

Adam and Eve were created in the image of God, and with the potential to grow into the divine likeness through the practice of ascetic virtue, but they freely chose to sin, and in doing so they brought death into the world.

From a post I wrote several years ago:

[quote]Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic theologians, and the Byzantine theological tradition in general, would simply deny that there is any "hereditary guilt" or "stain of sin" involved in the fall of Adam from grace in the Garden of Eden, but they would not deny that man's participation in the uncreated divine life was damaged through the ancestral sin.

That being said, Byzantine theologians have a somewhat different understanding of the nature of man as he was created in innocence in the Garden, holding that there is a distinction to be made between the image of God (eikon Theô) and the likeness of God (omoíosis Theô); the former was given to man in full act, while the latter was only in potency to actuality through the practice of ascesis. As a consequence, what was deformed by the fall of Adam was the potentiality for man to assimilate (omoíosis) himself to God, and not the divine image (eikon), which remains intact after the fall.

Thus, at the time of his creation in the garden, Adam was expected to assimilate himself to God by his own ascetic practice of virtue, but he failed in his mission and disfigured the likeness (omoíosis) to God which he had received in potency from the first moment of his existence. In other words, by his act of disobedience Adam was no longer able to participate fully in God's deifying grace (energy).

Now a man's assimilation to God (i.e., divinization) can only be accomplished through the power of the divine energies (grace) in cooperation with his own energies. But because of the ancestral sin, man is no longer able to properly cooperate with the divine energies as he should, and so he is unable to achieve his true end, which is to be assimilated to God (i.e., divinized). All of this explains the reason for the incarnation of the eternal Logos, for He comes, as a man among men, in order to restore iin full the gift of the uncreated energies of God to mankind. To put it another way, the incarnate Logos energizes man (cf. Philippians 2:12-13), allowing him to become divine through a synergistic assimilation of his own energy to the uncreated divine energy; and the fruit of this process is a real participation by man in God's own uncreated life and glory.[/quote]

[XIX]

I think it's worth mentioning (unless it's been mentioned already) that Mary had free will to sin, although she chose not to. freedom from original sin =/= lack of free will.

[djninja2005]

It is because they gave them free will. Just like how we have free will to do something or not.

[TeresaBenedicta]

[quote name='djninja2005' post='1536791' date='May 21 2008, 11:41 PM']It is because they gave them free will. Just like how we have free will to do something or not.[/quote]

Just to clarify: Mary had free will as well. She simply did not choose to sin.

[Veridicus]

Yeah Mary wasn't really any different in her creation than Eve I don't think. I mean she was created free from the effects of Original Sin and as such wasn't burdened by concupiscience. She was [i]not [/i]immutable in her nature and [i]could [/i]have sinned. This is what makes her "Yes" to God so amazingly important. It was by extraordinary grace that she persisted in conformity to God's will...she could have sinned.