Mary Without Sin
The objection from Protestants is that there is only one without sin, Jesus Christ. They will use the following scripture verse:
All have sinned and fall short to the glory
Romans 3:23
They would argue that all have sinned – this verse allows for no exceptions.
But is that really true? If there are absolutely no exceptions, then that would mean that Jesus was a sinner. So obviously this verse has to allow for Jesus to be an exception, although there is nothing in this passage that says that Jesus was an exception, it is assumed to not include Jesus. So if Jesus is an assumed exception, why cannot Mary be an assumed exception as well?
Actually, there are million exceptions to the verse – newborn infants. Infants have not sinned. So if a baby dies still in his infancy, he has gone through his whole life without ever sinning.
So if Jesus and infants are exceptions, then why cannot Mary? Of course, I still have to prove my case that Mary is an exception, which I plan to do shortly.
And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
For he hath looked upon the low estate of his handmaid
Luke 1:46-48
My Protestant friends would argue that Mary saw herself in need of a Saviour, and saw herself in a low estate in sin.
First, the Catholic Church does teach that Jesus did save her. But He saved her in a much more special way than how He saved us. Christ saved us after we sinned. But Christ saved Mary before she sinned. Suppose a man is walking along and falls into a ditch. Then I came along, saw him in the ditch, and helped him out. One can say that I saved him. But suppose instead that the man walked along, and just before he would have stepped into the ditch, I see him and push him aside so that he does not fall into ditch. One can also say I saved him. In one case, I saved him after he fell into ditch. In the other case, I saved him by preventing him from falling into the ditch. In the same way, God saved Mary from ever sinning. So in that sense, He was her Savior.
Second, Mary did not mean she was a sinner when she referred to her low estate. What she meant by this is that she was a poor peasant girl. She said later “The hungry he hath filled with good things; And the rich he hath sent empty away.” (v 58). She was amazed that God would choose her because of her poverty, not because of her alleged sinfulness.
Now I will present arguments for Mary’s sinlessness.
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
"Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring [a] and hers;
he will crush [b] your head,
and you will strike his heel."
Genesis 3
God promised that he would put enmity between the Devil and woman. By enmity, the idea is that there is a complete wall of separation between the woman and the Devil. Now, as soon as we sin, we are within the domain of Satan. Both traditional Catholics and Protestants agree on this. So it to be completely outside the domain of the Devil, the woman would have to had to never sinned. This cannot be Eve. She ate the forbidden fruit already. So God must mean the New Eve , Mary (see Ireneaus, Justin Martyr). This is clear when the passage refers to her seed will crush Satan’s head, which is obviously Mary’s son.
The next verse consists of the words of Gabriel, when he greeted Mary.
And he came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee.
Luke 1:28
This is a very bad translation. This Greek word for “highly favored” is kekaritomenei, which means literally “one who has been made full of grace”. It is a present perfect passive participle. This means that it is an act that happened in the past that still has present results.
This is what some NT Greek scholars have said about the word:
" 'Highly favoured' (kecharitomene). Perfect passive participle of charitoo and means endowed with grace (charis), enriched with grace as in Ephesians. 1:6, . . . The Vulgate gratiae plena [full of grace] "is right, if it means 'full of grace which thou hast received'; wrong, if it means 'full of grace which thou hast to bestow' " (A.T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, p. 14)
"It is permissible, on Greek grammatical and linguistic grounds, to paraphrase kecharitomene as completely, perfectly, enduringly endowed with grace." (Blass and DeBrunner, Greek Grammar of the New Testament).
So the idea is not that Mary was merely highly favored by God, but that she was perfectly endowed with an internal grace. She was enriched with grace. If she is so full of internal grace, then that would mean that she was without sin.
For a Protestant rebuttal to that interpretation of that verse, go to:
http://www.carm.org/religious-movements/roman-catholicism/mary-full-grace-and-luke-128
This website makes two arguments:
1. “The phrase "full of grace" in Greek is "plaras karitos" and it occurs in only two places in the New Testament; neither one is in reference to Mary.”
No one is saying that the phrase “full of grace” was used in Luke 1:28. It is kekaritomenei. “Full of grace” is a prepositional phrase. “One who has been made full of grace” is a present perfect passive participle. What both words have in common is that they both come from the root word, “charis”. The Greek word, “charis”, is always translated as “grace”. This is where we get the word “charisma”. A person who has charisma is one who has been endowed with a special internal grace, that makes him graceful.
2. “So what do the other translations say about Luke 1:28? Let's find out.”
The website then quotes from all the Bible translations that shows that they translated it as merely being favored by God, and not being full of grace. But he only quoted from Protestant Bibles. He omitted any Catholic Bibles, such as the
This is why I did not argue based on how my own Bible translates it. Instead, I looked at the Greek word itself – kekaritomennei. I then quoted two books by Protestant scholars, saying that the understanding was that Mary is full of grace.
Not only that, but we also have the testimony of the Early Church Fathers.
O purest one
O purest virgin
where the Holy Spirit is, there are all things readily ordered. Where divine grace is present
the soil that, all untilled, bears bounteous fruit
in the life of the flsh, was in possession of the incorruptible citizenship, and walked as such in all manner of virtues, and lived a life more excellent than man's common standard
thou hast put on the vesture of purity
has selected thee as the holy one and the wholly fair;
and through thy holy, and chaste, and pure, and undefiled womb
since of all the race of man thou art by birth the holy one, and the more honourable, and the purer, and the more pious than any other: and thou hast a mind whiter than the snow, and a body made purer than any gold
Gregory Thaumaturgus (205-270 AD)
"In very truth, you and your Mother are alone perfectly beautiful in every respect; for in you, Lord, there is no stain at all, and in your Mother there is no spot. Among my children there is no one like these two beautiful ones." (Ephraem 306-373 AD, Carmina Nisibena, 27)
True, there were some Fathers who saw that Mary was capable of faults, what the Catholic Church calls venial sins. But no Church Father saw Mary as ever being deliberately disobedient to God.
For more, go to http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/ImmaculateConceptionMaryJuniperCarolMariology.htm#EAST
When I realized this doctrine, it made me realized the awesome holiness of God. God cannot stand to be in the presence of sin! He hates sin so much, that He made sure that woman who bore him was without sin. When I read the Old Testament, God gave exact order on what type of
