from http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1991/9112fea1.asp
First, if only God is sinless, Mary couldnt have been sinless or
she would have been God.
Second, if Mary was sinless, why did she say, "My spirit rejoices
in God my savior" (Luke 1:47)? If only sinners need a savior, why
would Mary, if free from sin, include herself in the category of
sinners? If she were sinless, she would have had no need of a
savior, and her statement in Luke 1 would be incoherent.
Third, Paul says in Romans 3:10-12, 23, "There is no one just
[righteous], not one, there is no one who understands, there is no
one who seeks God, all have gone astray; all alike are worthless;
there is not one who does good, not even one. . . . all have sinned
and are deprived [fallen short] of the glory of God." In Romans
5:12 he says, "Therefore, just as through one person sin entered
the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all,
inasmuch as all sinned . . . ." These verses seem to rule out any
possibility that Mary was sinless.
The Immaculate Conception emphasizes four truths: (1) Mary did need
a savior; (2) her savior was Jesus Christ; (3) Marys salvation was
accomplished by Jesus through his work on the Cross; and (4) Mary
was saved from sin, but in a different and more glorious way than
the rest of us are. Lets consider the first and easiest of the
three objections.
The notion that God is the only being without sin is quite
false--and even Protestants think so. Adam and Eve, before the
fall, were free from sin, and they werent gods, the serpents
assertions to the contrary notwithstanding. (One must remember that
Mary was not the first immaculate human being, even if she was the
first to be conceived immaculately.)
The angels in heaven are not gods, but they were created sinless
and have remained so ever since. The saints in heaven are not gods,
although each of them is now completely sinless (Rev. 14:5;
21:27).
The second and third arguments are related. Mary needed Jesus as
her savior. His death on the Cross saved her, as it saves us, but
its saving effects were applied to her (unlike to us) at the moment
of her conception. (Keep in mind that the Crucifixion is an eternal
event and that the appropriation of salvation through Christs
death isnt impeded by time or space.)
Medieval theologians developed an analogy to explain how and why
Mary needed Jesus as her savior. A man (each of us) is walking
along a forest path, unaware of a large pit a few paces directly
ahead of him. He falls headlong into the pit and is immersed in the
mud (original sin) it contains. He cries out for help, and his
rescuer (the Lord Jesus) lowers a rope down to him and hauls him
back up to safety. The man says to his rescuer, "Thank you for
saving me," recalling the words of the psalmist: The Lord "stooped
toward me and heard my cry. He drew me out of the pit of
destruction, out of the mud of the swamp; he set my feet upon a
crag" (Psalm 40:2-4).
A woman (Mary), approaches the same pit, but as she began to fall
into the pit her rescuer reaches out and stops her from falling in.
She cries out, "Thank you for saving me" (Luke 1:47). Like this
woman, Mary was no less "saved" than any other human being has been
saved. She was just saved anticipatorily, before contracting
original sin. Each of us is permitted to become dirtied with
original sin, but she was not. God hates sin, so this was a far
better way.
Pauls statements in Romans chapters 3 and 5 (no one is righteous;
no one seeks God; no one does good; all have sinned) should not be
taken in a crassly literal and universal sense--if they are,
irreconcilable contradictions will arise. Consider Luke 1:6. Common
sense tells us whole groups of people are exempt from Pauls
statement that "all have sinned." Aborted infants cannot sin, nor
can young children or severely retarded people. But Paul didnt
mention such obvious exceptions. He was writing to adults in our
state of life.
If certain groups are exempt from the "all have sinned" rubric,
then these verses cant be used to argue against Marys Immaculate
Conception, since hers would be an exceptional case too, one not
needing mention given the purpose of Pauls discussion and his
intended audience.
Now lets consider what the Bible has to say in favor of the
Catholic position. Its important to recognize that neither the
words "Immaculate Conception" nor the precise formula adopted by
the Church to enunciate this truth are found in the Bible. This
doesnt mean the doctrine isnt biblical, only that the truth of
the Immaculate Conception, like the truths of the Trinity and
Jesus hypostatic union (that Jesus was incarnated as God and man,
possessing completely and simultaneously two natures, divine and
human, in one divine person), is mentioned either in other words or
only indirectly.
Look first at two passages in Luke 1. In verse 28, the angel
Gabriel greets Mary as "kecharitomene" ("full of grace" or "highly
favored"). This is a recognition of her sinless state. In verse 42
Elizabeth greets Mary as "blessed among women." The original import
of this phrase is lost in English translation. Since neither the
Hebrew nor Aramaic languages have superlatives (best, highest,
tallest, holiest), a speaker of those languages would have say,
"You are tall among men" or "You are wealthy among men" to mean
"You are the tallest" or "You are the wealthiest." Elizabeths
words mean Mary was the holiest of all women.
The Church understands Mary to be the fulfillment of three Old
Testament types: the cosmos, Eve, and the ark of the covenant. A
type is a person, event, or thing in the Old Testament which
foreshadows or symbolizes some future reality God brings to pass.
(See these verses for Old Testament types fulfilled in the New
Testament: Col. 2:17, Heb. 1:1, 9:9, 9:24, 10:1; 1 Cor. 15:45-49;
Gal. 4:24-25.)
Some specific examples of types: Adam was a type of Christ (Rom.
5:14); Noahs Ark and the Flood were types of the Church and
baptism (1 Peter 3:19-21); Moses, who delivered Israel from the
bondage of slavery in Egypt, was a type of Christ, who saves us
from the bondage of slavery to sin and death; circumcision
foreshadowed baptism; the slain passover lamb in Exodus 12: 21-28
was a symbol of Jesus, the Lamb of God, being slain on the Cross to
save sinners. The important thing to understand about a type is
that its fulfillment is always more glorious, more profound, more
"real" than the type itself.
Marys Immaculate Conception is foreshadowed in Genesis 1, where
God creates the universe in an immaculate state, free from any
blemish or stain of sin or imperfection. This is borne out by the
repeated mention in Genesis 1 of God beholding his creations and
saying they were "very good." Out of pristine matter the Lord
created Adam, the first immaculately created human being, forming
him from the "womb" of the Earth. The immaculate elements from
which the first Adam received his substance foreshadowed the
immaculate mother from whom the second Adam (Romans 5:14) took his
human substance.
The second foreshadowing of Mary is Eve, the physical mother of our
race, just as Mary is our spiritual mother through our membership
in the Body of Christ (Rev. 12:17). What Eve spoiled through
disobedience and lack of faith (Genesis 3), Mary set aright through
faith and obedience (Luke 1:3
.
We see a crucial statement in Genesis 3:15: "I will put enmity
between you [Satan] and the woman, between your seed and her seed;
he will crush your head, and you will strike at his heel." This
passage is especially significant in that it refers to the "seed of
the woman," a singular usage. The Bible, following normal biology,
otherwise only refers to the seed of the man, the seed of the
father, but never to the seed of the woman. Who is the woman
mentioned here? The only possibility is Mary, the only woman to
give birth to a child without the aid of a human father, a fact
prophesied in Isaiah 7:14.
If Mary were not completely sinless this prophesy becomes
untenable. Why is that? The passage points to Marys Immaculate
Conception because it mentions a complete enmity between the woman
and Satan. Such an enmity would have been impossible if Mary were
tainted by sin, original or actual (see 2 Corinthians 6:14). This
line of thinking rules out Eve as the woman, since she clearly was
under the influence of Satan in Genesis 3.
The third and most compelling type of Marys Immaculate Conception
is the ark of the covenant. In Exodus 20 Moses is given the Ten
Commandments. In chapters 25 through 30 the Lord gives Moses a
detailed plan for the construction of the ark, the special
container which would carry the Commandments. The surprising thing
is that five chapters later, staring in chapter 35 and continuing
to chapter 40, Moses repeats word for word each of the details of
the arks construction.
Why? It was a way of emphasizing how crucial it was for the Lords
exact specifications to be met (Ex. 25:9, 39:42-43). God wanted the
ark to be as perfect and unblemished as humanly possible so it
would be worthy of the honor of bearing the written Word of God.
How much more so would God want Mary, the ark of the new covenant,
to be perfect and unblemished since she would carry within her womb
the Word of God in flesh.
When the ark was completed, "the cloud covered the meeting tent and
the glory of the Lord filled the dwelling. Moses could not enter
the meeting tent, because the cloud settled down upon it and the
glory of the Lord filled the dwelling" (Ex. 40:34-3.
Compare this with the words of Gabriel to Mary in Luke 1:35.
Theres another striking foreshadowing of Mary as the new ark of
the covenant in 2 Samuel 6. The Israelites had lost the ark in a
battle with their enemies, the Philistines, and had recently
recaptured it. King David sees the ark being brought to him and, in
his joy and awe, says "Who am I that the ark of the Lord should
come to me?" (1 Sam. 6:9).
Compare this with Elizabeths nearly identical words in Luke 1:43.
Just as David leapt for joy before the ark when it was brought into
Jerusalem (2 Sam. 6:14-16), so John the Baptist leapt for joy in
Elizabeths womb when Mary, the ark of the new covenant, came into
her presence (Luke 1:44). Johns leap was for precisely the same
reason as Davids--not primarily because of the ark itself, but
because of what the ark contained, the Word of God.
Another parallel may be found in 2 Samuel 6:10-12 where we read
that David ordered the ark diverted up into the hill country of
Judea to remain with the household of Obededom for three months.
This parallels the three-month visit Mary made at Elizabeths home
in the hill country of Judea (Luke 1:39-45, 65). While the ark
remained with Obededom it "blessed his household." This is an Old
Testament way of saying the fertility of women, crops, and
livestock was increased. Notice that God worked this same miracle
for Elizabeth and Zachariah in their old age as a prelude to the
greater miracle he would work in Mary.
The Mary/ark imagery appears again in Revelation 11:19 and 12:1-17,
where she is called the mother of all "those who keep Gods
commandments and bear witness to Jesus" (verse 17). The ark
symbolism found in Luke 1 and Revelation 11 and 12 was not lost on
the early Christians. They could see the parallels between the Old
Testaments description of the ark and the New Testaments
discussion of Marys role.
Granted, none of these verses "proves" Marys Immaculate
Conception, but they all point to it. After all, the Bible nowhere
says Mary committed any sin or languished under original sin. As
far as explicit statements are concerned, the Bible is silent on
most of the issue, yet all the biblical evidence supports the
Catholic teaching.
A last thought. If you could have created your own mother, wouldnt
you have made her the most beautiful, virtuous, perfect woman
possible? Jesus, being God, did create his own mother (Col. 1:16;
Heb. 1:2), and he did just that--he created her immaculate and, in
his mercy and generosity, kept her that way.
