>>6678
I appreciate that you're sharing a cogent argument that's directly addressing our topic.
The argument here is that the connotation of the phrase means immaculately conceived (defined as born free from original sin), and the proof is a number of quotations from third to sixth century figures.
That's not a satisfactory reason to see Mary as excepted from the Biblical claim that everyone sinned, and these are my objections:
1: all of these quotations and the very doctrine of immaculate conception presuppose the neoplatonist doctrine of original sin, from which Mary would need to be excluded. I don't accept that doctrine, and we don't have to get into it, but the problem I'm raising is the question of whether or not Mary "has sinned". Supposing original sin is true and Mary was born free of it, we need a reason to conclude that Mary never committed a sin.
2: Jesus's understood exception from the scripture that all have sinned can't be used as a model for concluding that about Mary. These two are apples and oranges, Mary was only human while Jesus is the God man.
Even if we could, the scriptural argument for Mary's sinlessness is implied at best, but Jesus is explicitly stated as being sinless (example: 2 Cor 5:21).
3: These opinions of 3rd - 6th century writers do not prove a uniform understanding of the phrase to imply immaculately conceived, especially considering their chronological detachment from Luke (yes, even if they were very close). I can equally say that the phrase to Luke was devoid of implying immaculate conception because grammatically it doesn't explicitly require that doctrine.
I know you probably don't subscribe to the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture, but I do and this reasoning doesn't meet the standard.
