From: chrisa@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (C. G. Albone)
Subject: Re: Mary
Organization: /etc/organization
Distribution: aus
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 04:55:07 GMT

In article <ricko.723974999@ee.uts.EDU.AU> ricko@ee.uts.edu.au (Rick Jelliffe) writes:
>mlt@gdwb.oz.au (Mee Teng) writes:
>
>>ricko@ee.uts.edu.au (Rick Jelliffe) writes:
>
>>>We don't have to go through Mary!!!!!!!!!!! But Jesus was happy to go through
>>>her to get to us. Catholics do not believe Mary is divine, nor that she
>
>>This is indeed something new to me - I would be most interested to know
>>whereabout in the Bible did it ever mention or imply that Jesus was
>>happy to go through her to get to us ?
>
>He counted it joy to give up his equality with God and assume the 
>form of a man (I may be getting that a bit mangled, I will go home
>and look up "joy" in my Strong's in the epistles and get the reference if
>you need it. He came through Mary, his mother. You arrived through 
>your mother too.
>
>>>in anyway supercedes Jesus and his mission. Mary is interesting to Catholics
>>>only because of her unique, historical, unearned relationship to her child.
>
>>Yes, but the role stopped there. God's grace was upon her, and she was
>>God's instrument just for that purpose only. Period.
>
>Even in the ressurrection, the person who is my mother will still always
>be my mother: history can't be changed. Jesus, as a man, always has 
>Mary as his mother, the role of mother might finish, but the relationship
>doesn't.

Even if it doesn't, how is that important?
>
>>>He was God: through the Incarnation she, a human, became the mother of God.
>>>This is something no christian should have any difficulty with: if you believe
>>>Jesus is God, and that Mary is his mother, you believe that May is the
>>>mother of God.
>
>>This interpretation indeed is flawed. If you care to turn to say Matthew
>>chapter 12: 47-49, you will agree that Mary is just an ordinary
>>person in God's as well as Jesus's sight.
>
>Jesus is God. Mary is the mother of Jesus. Mary is the mother of God.
>It seems a simple thing to me. If she is not the mother of God, then 
>either you are saying Jesus is not God, or that Mary is not the mother
>of Jesus.

assumption 1: Jesus is God. I do not believe this to be the case, by the way,
nor do I believe that Jesus believed it to be the case, but for the sake of 
this argument I will assume it is.

Jesus was wholely divine and wholely human in all things except sin, as I have
been taught from God knows how many yrs of Catholic education. At the same
time tho, John 1:1  says something along the lines of "In the beginning
there was the Word (Logos) and the Word was with God and the Word was God."
Logos here is commonly understood to refer to Jesus. The upshot of this is that
the second person of the Trinity (of which I can see no sign that Jesus 
believed in either) has existed from the beginning of time. Indeed, according
to Isiah or one of the psalms, it says the Lord does not change, which would
seem to imply that God has always been in the form of the Trinity. Hence
the second person of the Trinity has always been, even before it started making
sense to refer to any temporal relations at all.

Now, Mary being Human and things had a distink starting point. This being the
case, it does make sense to say that she is the mother of Jesus: she did 
bear his human component (for the want of a better way of putting it), but 
since she had a starting point, whereas the second person of the trinity didn't
it makes no sense to say that she was the mother of the second person as such:
It existed before she did. To claim that Mary was the mother of God is to 
add confusion to an already complex theology. Actually, I feel that it is an
inaccurate claim, even if I do grant that Jesus was God. 

---
Chris (yes I am back... exams are finished, essays done  yay! ;-)