Yet Jesus walked on the ground, ate food, drank water, wore clothes, all like human men. That didn't detract from His Godliness.
The holy mystery of God lies in the Trinity, not in the peripherals, however blessed they may be.
But can you provide the scriptural reference Rev asked for?
well, I still dont see a Scriptural basis for the position
She was pure from the standpoint of virginity - however, if she was a child of Adam and Eve - she was part and parcel of original sin.
Gen 3:16 To the woman he said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."
17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.
22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."
23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.
24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Was not Mary also born to sinful parents? And their parents? Where would one draw the line?
The greatest effort in typological interpretation by Mr. Madrid comes in his attempt to parallel the Ark of the Covenant and Mary. The first parallel he draws has to do with the fact that God took such great pains to make sure the Ark was properly constructed. He says,
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.
Does this kind of interpretation bear the weight of investigation? While we admit the force such things carry with those who already accept these doctrine, we point out that there is no way to test the interpretation. We can easily point out absurdities to which the parallel can be pushed--for example, must Mary have been stolen by God's enemies for a time, so that she could be brought back to the people of God with great rejoicing? Who was Mary's Uzzah (2 Samuel 6:3-8)? Madrid draws a further parallel between the three months the ark was with Obededom and the three months Mary was with Elizabeth. What, then, is the parallel with David's action of sacrificing a bull and a fattened calf when those who were carrying the ark had taken six steps (2 Samuel 6:13)? See, Mr. Madrid feels free to pick and choose what aspects of Mary's life he wishes to parallel in the ark, and which he does not--there are no rules in this kind of interpretation, and it can lead to just about any conclusion. Pat seems to recognize at least some of this, for he says,
Granted, none of these verses "proves" Mary's 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.
We are left wondering at Mr. Madrid's definition of "biblical evidence," but we are glad to see that he recognizes that all that has come before does not "prove" the Immaculate Conception. One will believe that doctrine only if one believes that the Roman Catholic Church is infallible and has an authority that does not need Scriptural basis. It seems that, sadly, Mr. Madrid accepts Rome's claims.