Cronos wrote in response to Gamecock:
“7. The only conclusion is that somehow before His work on the Cross, Christ already saved his created being, His mother, mary.”
Cronos, there is another conclusion possible. It is that the Roman Catholic Church’s understanding of the content and purpose of the Old Testament and how it is related to the New is simply, profoundly wrong.
Just so we are not talking past each other, what I am asserting is that Rome’s understanding of the Old Testament is colored by its understanding of the Judaism of the first century A.D., specifically, Pharisaical Judaism, which is the Judaism that has survived to this day. What they fail to grasp is that that Judaism is not the faith of the Old Testament fathers, not at all.
This was, of course, the very foundation of the Pharisees’ (or as John says, “the Jews,” for that is chiefly who he means) rejection of Jesus. Many of the Jewish people themselves noted this right from the beginning: “And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” (Matthew 7:29) In other words, the Beatitudes, and the whole of the Sermon on the Mount that follows them, is not a New Law (which is really what Rome means when it says “Gospel”) but Old Testament doctrine, Law and Gospel, now being fulfilled in and by the Christ, in whom all who are in heaven or ever will be in heaven have trusted, both those of the Old and those of the New Testament. The faith is one. The doctrine is one. The Lord is one. Not one jot or tittle of the Law (the Torah, the teaching, the doctrine, i.e. the content of the OT) would pass away until all of it was - not contravened! - fulfilled. Here the word “until” is to be understood as it is in Matthew 1:25. Just as there it cannot be said to mean that Mary for sure would know a man thereafter, so here it cannot be said to mean that the Old Testament’s truth would be abolished and done away with by the new and different truth of the New. On this point you don’t have a grammatical leg to stand on.
Thereafter the truth of the Old Testament Scriptures would continue to stand, side by side with that of the New Testament, neither contradicting the other, with the former distinguished from the latter only by the incarnation itself. This is the foundation of the apostles and prophets, of which Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone. The prophets believed in Him who was to come and ransom Israel (simply another word for the church) from his sins. The apostles believed in Him who had come in fulfillment of those same prophecies and their promises. That is why the church of the New Testament is grafted into the olive tree that is Israel, i.e., the Messiah believing and for His sake justified church of the Old Testament.
In other words, again, the faith of Mary, expressed in the Magnificat, is the saving faith grounded in Him who now was about to come into the world. This faith she shared with Elizabeth and Zechariah, with Simeon and Anna, and with Eve, and all the faithful in between.
On these points, Rome is, as I said above, simply and profoundly wrong. This is not even another possible conclusion in addition to your point number seven. It is truly the only conclusion. Dear, Cronos, if offered a choice of fellowship with the church of Rome or the church of the Old Testament, I choose the latter, for it is the faith once handed down to the saints. Israel, Jerusalem, Zion, the holy mountain of the Lord, His chosen people, all expressions used many times in the Old Testament to mean the same thing, and the church of the New Testament are one. What God Himself has put together, let no one put asunder.