I don't mean to be disrespectful of Mary, and yes her role was vital, but in terms of contributing to our salvation, couldn't the same thing be said about Judas? If he hadn't betrayed Jesus, then Jesus would never have died on the cross, etc.? (Isn't Easter a greater Holy day than Christmas, even though it was "vital" that Jesus be born?) We could say there were many actors who played a part in the way the life of Jesus played out. Or, we could say that God ordained and orchestrated the whole thing. That's why I don't see how Mary gets special credit for contributing to our salvation.
FK: "Since sin was brought to the whole world through the one MAN, it is inherited through the man. Jesus was the only one whose father was not subject to the original sin of Adam, which is also why He is the only one who could have been (and was) sinless."
Ah, well your answer is in the distinction stripes1776 pointed out in #3758.
I agree with you and I think Stripes said it well.
Man's nature is not at all sinful. His created purpose is to be wholly like God by grace. The post Fall state of Man is not his true nature at all. Adam before the Fall represented Man's true nature and through him we were to have experienced theosis. His sin distorted our true nature so that we could not respond to God's uncreated energies, grace. Christ, through the Incarnation, restored that potential and thus our potential to become wholly like God.
And I would say that man's nature is exactly as God ordained it to be. There was no mistake. Through Adam's sin, all humanity is born with a sinful nature totally incapable of coming to God, much less of even doing good. Christ, through the Incarnation, death, and resurrection, paid for the sins of the elect and made them fit for entrance into heaven. (Granted, that last part is a minority Western view, but I can only speak for myself. :)
"We could say there were many actors who played a part in the way the life of Jesus played out. Or, we could say that God ordained and orchestrated the whole thing. That's why I don't see how Mary gets special credit for contributing to our salvation."
Of course there were many actors, of greater or lesser improtance, but I think perhaps you don't fully appreciate the importance of the Incarnation itself. It is completely bound up with our original created purpose, to be come like God. That is what the Church in the East has always believed and which belif the Church in the West proclaims only softly and not at all among the Reformed so far as I can see. You are correct that it is and always has been the theology of The Church that on account of the Sin of Adam, Man could not fulfill that purpose but rather was a slave to a distortion of his true nature. Because of the Virgin Birth, the True Man, Christ, came into the world to restore our potential for divinization. Innovative Western Protestant theology has quite clearly rejected this in favor of something unknown prior to about 600 years ago. +John Damascene explains it thusly:
"After the assent of the holy Virgin, the Holy Spirit descended on her, according to the word of the Lord which the angel spoke, purifying her, and granting her power to receive the divinity of the Word, and likewise power to bring forth. And then was she overshadowed by the enhypostatic Wisdom and Power of the most high God, the Son of God Who is of like essence with the Father as of Divine seed, and from her holy and most pure blood He formed flesh animated with the spirit of reason and thought, the first-fruits of our compound nature: not by procreation but by creation through the Holy Spirit: not developing the fashion of the body by gradual additions but perfecting it at once, He Himself, the very Word of God, standing to the flesh in the relation of subsistence. For the divine Word was not made one with flesh that had an independent pre-existence, but taking up His abode in the womb of the holy Virgin, He unreservedly in His own subsistence took upon Himself through the pure blood of the eternal Virgin a body of flesh animated with the spirit of reason and thought, thus assuming to Himself the first-fruits of man's compound nature, Himself, the Word, having become a subsistence in the flesh. So that He is at once flesh, and at the same time flesh of God the Word, and likewise flesh animated, possessing both reason and thought. Wherefore we speak not of man as having become God, but of God as having become Man. For being by nature perfect God, He naturally became likewise perfect Man: and did not change His nature nor make the dispensation an empty show, but became, without confusion or change or division, one in subsistence with the flesh, which was conceived of the holy Virgin, and animated with reason and thought, and had found existence in Him, while He did not change the nature of His divinity into the essence of flesh, nor the essence of flesh into the nature of His divinity, and did not make one compound nature out of His divine nature and the human nature He had assumed."
FK to Kolokotronis And I would say that man's nature is exactly as God ordained it to be. There was no mistake. Through Adam's sin, all humanity is born with a sinful nature totally incapable of coming to God, much less of even doing good
Kolokotronis' statement is what Apostolic Church taught from the beginning. All indications are that God desired man to be immortal.
Sin, FK, presupposes reason and free will (by necessity) or else it is not sin. You are saying that God ordained Adam's sin which is to say that He "programmed" Adam to sin.
This is sheer nonsense.
Adam was created with a possibility of being immortal. God planted a choice in the middle of the Garden of Eden, for man to choose. Man chose mortality. God did not make that choice for Adam. And wile you maintain that God ordained Adam's Fall, the real burden is Adam's obedience to God's wish for him to fall.
Again, a choice to be a choice must be free and not an obligation.