Virgin Birth
From: golden3000997
Date: Thu Mar 4, 2004 5:14 am
Subject: Virgin Birth
Hi Frank,
Yes, Catholics have had Mary's physical virginity
"drummed into their heads" but that is not the actual
dogma (dogma defined as actual church doctine of the "Immaculate
Conception". The physical Virginity and "Virgin Birth"
is an assumption based on "The dogma which teaches that
the Blessed Mother of Jesus Christ was a virgin before, during,
and after the conception and birth of her Divine Son." see
second entry below.
In either case, her assumed physical virginity
is directly contradicted by the Gospel passages which state her
to have had more children (presumably in the normal way). This
of course, also assumes by the church that there was only one
Mary, Mother of God.
It is this kind of contradiction of New Testament
"facts" and the kinds of expressions like the ones
listed below about "contrary doctrines" that contribute
to (in my opinion) ANY deeply thinking person to dismiss church
doctrine as irrational. Whether or not a person "chooses
to believe" it all anyway, as an act of faith is an individual
decision that many writers have directly stated they make "in
spite of" these unexplained contradiction.
For me, Rudolf Steiner has been so far the
only teacher who could illuminate situations in the bible such
as these by
1. pointing out "facts" in the Bible
that lead to different a priori assumptions such as the possibility
of there being more than one Mary and therefore, more than one
birth experience and
2. adding a different point of view about
the make up of the human being altogether and the differential
between body and "soul" or "spiritual" experiences
and postulating (more than postulating, actually) that a person
such as Mary could retain the quality of Virgin in her soul whether
or not she had a sexual physical experience.
Whether or not any individual accepts Steiner's
indications about matters such as these, my point to Dottie,
Paulina and everyone is simply that his work creates a bridge
between the strictly logical aspect of Christian church teachings,
which leave gaping gulfs of reason that many people can't cross
and the emotional insistence on belief in teachings which must
be taken on "faith" alone as their measure of truth.
At least, through Steiner's approach, I think there can be dialogue
which has a more rationally accepted basis as long as the basic
premise of the existence of a "spiritual world" "God"
and "soul" can be agreed upon by the individuals doing
the discussing.
How Paulina interpreted what I said as being
offensive to Jews, I still don't understand, but I hope that
I have been able to make my point of view more clear.
: ) Christine
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07674d.htm
Immaculate Conception
THE DOCTRINE
In the Constitution Ineffabilis
Deus of 8 December, 1854, Pius IX pronounced and defined that
the Blessed Virgin Mary "in the first instance of her conception,
by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of
the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was
preserved exempt from all stain of original sin."
"The Blessed Virgin Mary
. . ." The subject of this immunity from original sin is
the person of Mary at the moment of the creation of her soul
and its infusion into her body.
". . .in the first instance
of her conception . . ." The term conception does not mean
the active or generative conception by her parents. Her body
was formed in the womb of the mother, and the father had the
usual share in its formation. The question does not concern the
immaculateness of the generative activity of her parents. Neither
does it concern the passive conception absolutely and simply
(conceptio seminis carnis, inchoata), which, according to the
order of nature, precedes the infusion of the rational soul.
The person is truly conceived when the soul is created and infused
into the body. Mary was preserved exempt from all stain of original
sin at the first moment of her animation, and sanctifying grace
was given to her before sin could have taken effect in her soul.
". . .was preserved exempt
from all stain of original sin. . ." The formal active essence
of original sin was not removed from her soul, as it is removed
from others by baptism; it was excluded, it never was in her
soul. Simultaneously with the exclusion of sin. The state of
original sanctity, innocence, and justice, as opposed to original
sin, was conferred upon her, by which gift every stain and fault,
all depraved emotions, passions, and debilities, essentially
pertaining to original sin, were excluded. But she was not made
exempt from the temporal penalties of Adam -- from sorrow, bodily
infirmities, and death.
". . .by a singular privilege
and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ,
the Saviour of the human race." The immunity from original
sin was given to Mary by a singular exemption from a universal
law through the same merits of Christ, by which other men are
cleansed from sin by baptism. Mary needed the redeeming Saviour
to obtain this exemption, and to be delivered from the universal
necessity and debt (debitum) of being subject to original sin.
The person of Mary, in consequence of her origin from Adam, should
have been subject to sin, but, being the new Eve who was to be
the mother of the new Adam, she was, by the eternal counsel of
God and by the merits of Christ, withdrawn from the general law
of original sin. Her redemption was the very masterpiece of Christ's
redeeming wisdom. He is a greater redeemer who pays the debt
that it may not be incurred than he who pays after it has fallen
on the debtor.
Such is the meaning of the
term "Immaculate Conception."
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15448a.htm
Virgin Birth of Christ
The dogma which teaches that
the Blessed Mother of Jesus Christ was a virgin before, during,
and after the conception and birth of her Divine Son.
I. THE VIRGIN BIRTH IN CATHOLIC
THEOLOGY
Councils and Creeds
The virginity of our Blessed
Lady was defined under anathema in the third canon of the Lateran
Council held in the time of Pope Martin I, A.D. 649. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan
Creed, as recited in the Mass, expresses belief in Christ "incarnate
by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary"; the Apostles' Creed
professes that Jesus Christ "was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
born of the Virgin
Mary"; the older form
of the same creed uses the expression: "born of the Holy
Ghost and of the Virgin Mary". These professions show:
That the body of Jesus Christ
was not sent down from Heaven, nor taken from earth as was that
of Adam, but that its matter was supplied by Mary; that Mary
co-operated in the formation of Christ's body as every other
mother co-operates in the formation of the body of her child,
since otherwise Christ could not be said to be born of Mary just
as Eve cannot be said to be born of Adam; that the germ in whose
development and growth into the Infant Jesus, Mary co-operated,
was fecundated not by any human action, but by the Divine power
attributed to the Holy Ghost; that the supernatural influence
of the Holy Ghost extended to the birth of Jesus Christ, not
merely preserving Mary's integrity, but also causing Christ's
birth or external generation to reflect his eternal birth from
the Father in this, that "the Light from Light" proceeded
from his mother's womb as a light shed on the world; that the
"power of the Most High" passed through the barriers
of nature without injuring them; that "the body of the Word"
formed by the Holy Ghost penetrated another body after the manner
of spirits.
Church Fathers
The perpetual virginity of
our Blessed Lady was taught and proposed to our belief not merely
by the councils and creeds, but also by the early Fathers. The
words of the prophet Isaias (vii, 14) are understood in this
sense by
St. Irenaeus (III, 21; see
Eusebius, H.E., V, viii),
Origen (Adv. Cels., I, 35),
Tertullian (Adv. Marcion., III, 13; Adv. Judæos, IX),
St. Justin (Dial. con. Tryph., 84),
St. John Chrysostom (Hom. v in Matth., n. 3; in Isa., VII, n.
5);
St. Epiphanius (Hær., xxviii, n. 7),
Eusebius (Demonstrat. ev., VIII, i),
Rufinus (Lib. fid., 43),
St. Basil (in Isa., vii, 14; Hom. in S. Generat. Christi, n.
4, if St. Basil
be the author of these two passages),
St. Jerome and Theodoretus (in Isa., vii, 14),
St. Isidore (Adv. Judæos, I, x, n. 3),
St. Ildefonsus (De perpetua virginit. s. Mariæ, iii).
St. Jerome devotes his entire treatise against Helvidius to the
perpetual virginity of Our Blessed Lady (see especially nos.
4, 13, 18).
The contrary doctrine is called:
"madness and blasphemy"
by Gennadius (De dogm. eccl., lxix),
"madness" by Origen (in Luc., h, vii),
"sacrilege" by St. Ambrose (De instit. virg., V, xxxv),
"impiety and smacking of atheism" by Philostorgius
(VI, 2),
"perfidy" by St. Bede (hom. v, and xxii),
"full of blasphemies" by the author of Prædestin.
(i, 84),
"perfidy of the Jews" by Pope Siricius (ep. ix, 3),
"heresy" by St. Augustine (De Hær. h., lvi).
St. Epiphanius probably excels all others in his invectives against
the opponents of Our Lady's virginity (Hær., lxxviii, 1,
11, 23).
Sacred Scripture
There can be no doubt as to
the Church's teaching and as to the existence of an early Christian
tradition maintaining the perpetual virginity of our Blessed
Lady and consequently the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. The mystery
of the virginal conception is furthermore taught by the third
Gospel and confirmed by the first. According to St. Luke (1:34-35),
"Mary said to the angel: How shall this be done, because
I know not man? And the angel answering, said to her: The Holy
Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the most High shall
overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born
of thee shall be called the Son of God." The intercourse
of man is excluded in the conception of Our Blessed Lord. According
to St. Matthew, St. Joseph, when perplexed by the pregnancy of
Mary, is told by the angel: "Fear not to take unto thee
Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her, is of the
Holy Ghost" (1:20).
II. SOURCES OF THIS DOCTRINE
Whence did the Evangelists
derive their information? As far as we know, only two created
beings were witnesses of the annunciation, the angel and the
Blessed Virgin. Later on the angel informed St. Joseph concerning
the mystery. We do not know whether Elizabeth, though "filled
with the Holy Ghost", learned the full truth supernaturally,
but we may suppose that Mary confided the secret both to her
friend and her spouse, thus completing the partial revelation
received by both.
Between these data and the
story of the Evangelists there is a gap which cannot be filled
from any express clue furnished by either Scripture or tradition.
If we compare the narrative of the first Evangelist with that
of the third, we find that St. Matthew may have drawn his information
from the knowledge of St. Joseph independently of any information
furnished by Mary. The first Gospel merely states (1:18): "When
as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together,
she was found with child, of the Holy Ghost." St. Joseph
could supply these facts either from personal knowledge or from
the words of the angel: "That which is conceived in her,
is of the Holy Ghost." The narrative of St. Luke, on the
other hand, must ultimately be traced back to the testimony of
Our Blessed Lady, unless we are prepared to admit unnecessarily
another independent revelation. The evangelist himself points
to Mary as the source of his account of the infancy of Jesus,
when he says that Mary kept all these words in her heart (2:19,
51). Zahn [1] does not hesitate to say that Mary is pointed out
by these expressions as the bearer of the traditions in Luke
1 and 2.
A. How did St. Luke derive
his account from the Blessed Virgin? It has been supposed by
some that he received his information from Mary herself. In the
Middle Ages he is at times called the "chaplain" of
Mary [2]; J. Nirsch [3] calls St. Luke the Evangelist of the
Mother of God, believing that he wrote the history of the infancy
from her mouth and heart. Besides, there is the implied testimony
of the Evangelist, who assures us twice that Mary had kept all
these words in her heart. But this does not necessitate an immediate
oral communication of the history of the infancy on the part
of Mary; it merely shows that Mary is the ultimate source of
the account. If St. Luke had received the history of the infancy
from the Blessed Virgin by way of oral communication, its presentation
in the third Gospel naturally would show the form and style of
its Greek author. In point of fact the history of the infancy
as found in the third Gospel (1:5 to 2:52) betrays in its contents,
its language, and style a Jewish-Christian source. The whole
passage reads like a chapter from the First Book of Machabees;
Jewish customs, and laws, and peculiarities are introduced without
any further explanation; the "Magnificat", the "Benedictus",
and the "Nunc dimittis" are filled with national Jewish
ideas. As to the style and language of the history of the infancy,
both are so thoroughly Semitic that the passage must be retranslated
into Hebrew or Aramaic in order to be properly appreciated. We
must conclude, then, that St. Luke's immediate source for the
history of the infancy was not an oral, but a written one.
B. It is hardly probable that
Mary herself wrote the history of the infancy as was supposed
by A. Plummer [4]; it is more credible that the Evangelist used
a memoir written by a Jewish Christian, possibly a convert Jewish
priest (cf. Acts 6:7), perhaps even a member or friend of Zachary's
family [5]. But, whatever may be the immediate source of St.
Luke's account, the Evangelist knows that he has "diligently
attained to all things from the beginning", according to
the testimony of those "who from the beginning were eyewitnesses
and ministers of the word" (Luke 1:2).
As to the original language
of St. Luke's source, we may agree with the judgment of Lagarde
[6] that the first two chapters of St. Luke present a Hebrew
rather than a Greek or an Aramaic colouring. Writers have not
been wanting who have tried to prove that St. Luke's written
source for his first two chapters was composed in Hebrew [7].
But these proofs are not cogent; St. Luke's Hebraisms may have
their origin in an Aramaic source, or even in a Greek original
composed in the language of the Septuagint. Still, considering
the fact that Aramaic was the language commonly spoken in Palestine
at that time, we must conclude that Our Blessed Lady's secret
was originally written in Aramaic, though it must have been translated
into Greek before St. Luke utilized it [8]. As the Greek of Luke
2:41-52 is more idiomatic than the language of Luke 1:4-2:40,
it has been inferred that the Evangelist's written source reached
only to 2:40; but as in 2:51, expressions are repeated which
occur in 2:19, it may be safely inferred that both passages were
taken from the same source.
The Evangelist recast the
source of the history of the infancy before incorporating it
into his Gospel; for the use of words and expressions in Luke
1 and 2 agrees with the language in the following chapters [9].
Harnack [10] and Dalman [11] suggest that St. Luke may be the
original author of his first two chapters, adopting the language
and style of the Septuagint; but Vogel [12] and Zahn [13] maintain
that such a literary feat would be impossible for a Greek-speaking
writer. What has been said explains why it is quite impossible
to reconstruct St. Luke's original source; the attempt of Resch
[14] to reconstruct the original Gospel of the infancy or the
source of the first two chapters of the first and third Gospel
and the basis of the prologue to the fourth, is a failure, in
spite of its ingenuity. Conrady [15] believed that he had found
the common source of the canonical history of the infancy in
the so-called "Protevangelium Jacobi", which, according
to him, was written in Hebrew by an Egyptian Jew about A.D. 120,
and was soon after translated into Greek; it should be kept in
mind, however, that the Greek text is not a translation, but
the original, and a mere compilation from the canonical Gospels.
All we can say therefore, concerning St. Luke's source for his
history of the infancy of Jesus is reduced to the scanty information
that it must have been a Greek translation of an Aramaic document
based, in the last instance, on the testimony of Our Blessed
Lady.
...................................................................................................................................
From: holderlin66
Date: Thu Mar 4, 2004 7:45 am
Subject: Re: Virgin Birth
golden3000997 wrote:
Whether or not any individual accepts Steiner's
indications about matters such as these, my point to Dottie,
Paulina and everyone is simply that his work creates a bridge
between the strictly logical aspect of Christian church teachings,
which leave gaping gulfs of reason that many people can't cross
and the emotional insistence on belief in teachings which must
be taken on "faith" alone as their measure of truth.
At least, through Steiner's approach, I think there can be dialogue
which has a more rationally accepted basis as long as the basic
premise of the existence of a "spiritual world" "God"
and "soul" can be agreed upon by the individuals doing
the discussing.
Bradford applauds;
Here, to my taste, is a really brilliant insight.
There is hardly any doubt that the gaps of faith and insight
are complaisance and have pressed addiction to RC faith, and
crippled and lamed a great portion of the thinking portions of
souls. This failed and lamed area is where Steiner went to work
on rebuilding a numbed and deadened organ. What this means is
exactly as Christine has described. By putting a logical linkage
to the gaps, Steiner could reveal that the edifice was shabby,
had become shabby and unkempt, but it also had been set on a
REAL foundation.
This Foundations is one of Steiner's deepest
missions. The Foundation of the I AM.
There is no doubt that the edifice had become
shabby and had outlived its terms by the time of Martin Luther.
So the gamble, and the capacity to see through the chinks in
the timber and rebuild the entire structure using the foundation
offered, revealed a solid foundation of Initiation History and
a solid Temple underneath.
It wasn't just a matter of darkened faith,
but of opening the vista to the Temple out of which the I AM
was built. It was all there but by encountering this ruin, this
charred edifice, this collapsing, decayed and overgrown gateway
we had forgotten and left unanswered what the vast edifice rested
on.
Steiner went in and re-pieced the bricks and
mixed new mortor and restored the entire edifice, just enough
to carry Intelligence to a point that could pollinate the latent
heat left in the coals of faith, embers still barely alive. That
by reading and thinking into the structure the I AM could be
pollinated. These are the things we bring to the table when we
understand Steiner. These are the very things that divide thinking
individuals from individuals stuck in the mortar of ancient dogma.
That Steiner is on solid ground and is such a remarkable rennovation
project in the slums, that people cannot get their habits and
soul conditions around it.
Now this begs us to see the damage done by
such a blind, dressed in morbid black, woe is me, abuse of truth
that millions, upon millions hypnotically marched forward in
a masse, via magnetic pull, to ye and nay, yet unable to see
how it all fits together as a whole. ("Someone left the
Cake out in the Rain") This was one of the stunning ways
Steiner worked and Christine has hit directly on it. Anyone who
says differently fails, where I have failed as well, to make
clear the strength Steiner is offering to make firm the foundations
of the human I AM. Christine and Tarjei have brought amazing
mutual insights to turn the eye back to the re-construction and
renewal that Steiner engaged in rebuilding a run down neighborhood.
It is the nature of Steiner to come forward
to meet the human soul and scratch and pull up the carpet to
reveal a blackened wooden floor and if the floor is fully polished
and the moldy carpets removed, you have a stunning, not a simple,
but a stunning stone Celt Temple underneath that was the real
deeper structure of the very meaning behind the Christ Events.
One of the most inspiring aspects of Steiner
is to feel, even on the passage of time, to feel the potent realities
that he was intelligently working with. That is also how I feel
about catching glimpses of how Steiner felt, in his heart, about
having to Shoulder the mission of Germany that the German people
did the same thing to their Thinking and I AM capacity, as the
Jews did to Christ. They yelled down their own mission, at the
11th hour, at the very edge of the I AM capacity that Steiner
had come to unite, "Give us Barabbas". That is why,
we can hardly not feel the full impact of Paul in Steiner. That
is why we look at such a statement by Soloviev, when he mentions
a certain "Professor Pauli with 'nun and ya' in his "Anti-
Christ. It is again a distinctly Pauline nightmare that Steiner
had the skill to face and the Tragedy to see coming.
There can be no more depressing moment as
when Steiner reads from his own work, when he says, "Shrug
our Shoulders"...all of us on this list understand what
it means when people have shrugged their shoulders and return
back to wailing and moaning at a rotted out Church or educational
system and resort to their old habits of thinking because they
are afraid to go out and meet the work in our own hearts to reconstruct
and build our own Celtic I AM temples from the ruins. This is
also directly focused on Anthros as well.
Christtine and Tarjei...Tarjei for reminding
us once again about Mary and Joseph and Christine for looking
at this little critical angle on how reconstruction actually
works and how it only creates addiction and dysfunction to continue
falsely yea-ing and nay-ing in pews resting on rotting foundations.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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