Immaculate Conception: Bible & Patristics

I wish to thank any readers who have made it this far through the debate. Thanks for sticking with us, you're almost done!Rebuttals1. Mary Born with SinLet's look at Con's quotes again:Romans 8:3For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh.Luke 1:28And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. Neither of those phrases state that Mary had sinned. It says that Jesus was in the likeness of sinful flesh. And that Mary was full of Grace.As Jesus did not come in the glorified flesh of his resurrection, he came in human flesh - like that which is sinful. However, his flesh was without sin. It does not describe how his flesh came to be without sin. The Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception describes perfectly how he came to have a sinless flesh - he received it from his human mother.As shown in the previous round Con agreed that Mary didn't lack any grace. It was also shown that grace can protect from sin. Thus it is intuitively obvious that that perfect grace would perfectly preserve the person from sin. Thus Mary was not impeccable by her own power, but by her perfect submission through having the fullness of grace granted to her.2. Second/Last/New AdamAs we are both agreeing that there are only 2 Adams - Jesus and Adam. I never referred to Jesus as the second Adam so I am unsure what this argument is about. I did quote 1 Corinthians 15:47 - which states "...the second man is from heaven." Thus in the very same Chapter that Con uses, Paul refers to Adam as the first and Christ as the second.3. New Adam and New EveCon claims that Romans 5:19 disproves my assertion about a new Adam and new Eve making all things new.Romans 5:19For as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners; so also by the obedience of one, many shall be made just. - Douay-Rheims TranslationAnd yet this is an illogical conclusion by Con. Both Adam and Eve sinned and both received punishments for their actions (Genesis 3:16-17): To the woman also he said: I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband's power, and he shall have dominion over thee. And to Adam he said: Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is the earth in thy work; with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life. Thus, yes only one man sinned and only one man was able to make reparation for that sin. That Christ played the primary role because he was God is not in question. However, God relied on Mary's perfect submission to enter the world. On this topic St. Irenaeus (c. 180) stated:....having become disobedient, [Eve] was made the cause of death for herself and for the whole human race; so also Mary, betrothed to a man but nevertheless still a virgin, being obedient, was made the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race....Thus, the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. What the virgin Eve had bound in unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosed through faith. ...But this man [of whom I have been speaking] is Adam, if truth be told, the first-formed man....WE, however, are all FROM him; and as WE are FROM him, WE have INHERITED his title [of sin]. ...Indeed, THROUGH the first Adam, WE offended God by not observing His command. Through the second Adam, however, we are reconciled, and are made obedient even unto death. For we were debtors to none other except to Him, whose commandment WE transgressed at the beginning. (Against Heresies 3:22:4; 3:23:2; 5:16:3) [1] Thus the Church fathers do not accept Con's argument on this. It shows that a Woman was required to succeed where Eve failed and a Man to succeed and pay the price of sin where Adam failed.4. Nowhere did the Fathers or Bible Explicitly Teach that Mary was the new Eve or the Immaculate Birth.Nor did they explicitly deny it. That is why it took centuries to formalize this doctrine. Con goes on to use Luke 1:28 again, which as we noted was the fullness of grace enabling the perfect prevention of sin.Con argues Romans 8:3 stating that her flesh is the flesh of sin. And yet nowhere in the bible is it stated that Mary's flesh was a flesh of sin. Here Con adds Philippians 2:7 - But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man.Once again this says nothing about the debate we are having. That Christ was God who united himself with physically with humanity in our flesh in order to save us is not in question. That he received that flesh from Adam through Mary is not in question. If Mary was prevented from original sin she would still have the same flesh as all the other descendants of Adam. Thus Christ would be in the likeness of sinful flesh without the flesh being sinful.Con claims that Origen claimed that Mary sinned. However, he provides no quote from the author thus this argument is null and void.5. New ArkAs this was Con's argument to begin with I'm not particularly concerned with it in this debate. However, Con continually asserts: 'with God nothing shall be impossible" ( Luke 1:37) and then goes on to say why God cannot have done xyz.Moses is also a prefigurement of Jesus. And yet nobody argues that Jesus cannot be perfect and the second person of the Trinity because Moses wasn't. It is a fallacious argument on the part of Con. The Church fathers went to great lengths to show how Mary was the opposite of her prefigurement Eve.6. New AdamCon is once again getting his britches in a knot over the use of the "New Adam" for Christ. If there were only 2 Adams the first was the old and the second or last was the new. I fail to see any argument here.7. Likeness of Human Flesh - AgainCon assumes that I do not understand his argument, however that is incorrect - I have refuted it. He brings up the same verses again which I am disinclined to rehash again. Please refer to my arguments against them in both this and the previous rounds.Con goes on to once again use arguments from Post-Nicene fathers about sperm, etc... but without quoting or naming them this time. Once again in clear violation of his own rules. He then goes on to attempt to justify their use in that they received the same unbroken line of doctrine. If he truly believed this he shouldn't have limited the debate to the pre-nicene fathers. In fact if I were to use this reasoning I would have argued that the Pope and bishops are their successors who have received this doctrine as well. However, that is not what the rules were and I have kept from using these fathers for my own arguments.8. EnmityEnmity with the devil can only mean to be always opposed because the devil represents sin. Thus if you sin you are not enemies with it, but sometimes combatants.9. Gregory ThaumaturgusCon's argument is essentially, yeah well he doesn't count because original sin wasn't fully defined. Which is true. That doesn't mean that what he taught was in error, only that the doctrine wasn't yet fully formalized. The teachings of the Church Fathers do not deny the Immaculate conception, only not fully define it.Dropped ArgumentsBelow is a list of the arguments dropped by Con.1. GraceCon has fully dropped my argument that Grace can prevent sin and that thus Kecharitomene - full of Grace - would prevent all sin.2. Honour Thy Mother and FatherCon has failed to address the necessity of God to obey his own commandments. If God is God, then it is incumbent on him to honour his mother. As such he would be faulted for not granting her every grace. If she were granted every grace and grace can prevent sin, then it is only logical that she was preserved from original sin by being the only human be granted grace so perfectly.3. WineskinsCon did not rebut my arguement that you need new wineskins for the new wine. Thus to bring about the new wine of the new covenant you needed to remake creation with a new Adam and a new Eve.His only rebuttal was that this verse did not apply with no supporting argument.ConclusionI have conclusively shown that the Church Fathers wrote about Mary as a counter to Eve just as Christ was a counter to Adam. Additionally, I have shown how the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is logical in explaining the hypostatic union that Christ is able to fully receive his humanity from Mary and his divinity from being God creating someone who was both fully God and fully man. If you follow Con's argument you get a Jesus who is fully God and part man and part not humanity as he would only receive part of his humanity from Mary and the other part from a new creation that is like humanity, but not. God did not raise Eve from the earth like Adam, but brought her forth from Adam.I have also clearly shown from the Bible that Grace can prevent sin and that God fully honoured his mother by applying the grace of salvation at the moment of conception preserving her from original sin and granting her every grace. Thus in keeping with the work Kecharitomene meaning: "completely, perfectly, enduringly endowed with grace." [2]As such the bible and the Pre-Nicene fathers are in full accordance with the immaculate conception.I wish to thank Con for a spirited debate, and for any readers who took the time to read through this.[1] http://forums.canadiancontent.net...[2] http://www.philvaz.com...;- same as [8] in round 2.