Romans 3:23 and the Immaculate Conception

You wrote on Jul 6, 2007 at 6:46 AM.
You replied to Jaren's post on Jun 17, 2007 at 1:27 PM
Jaren,

Speaking of hyperliterally...

You are taking Paul's words in Romans 6:23 hyperliterally. For one thing, the Greek word used for "all" is "pantes" and it does not always mean absolutely every single one. So focusing on the english word "all" doesn't help your argument.

Additionally, Romans 6:23 is not even TALKING about original sin. It's talking about actual sin. And according to the Bible, all DON'T actually sin. I don't have the reference on me right now, but Scripture says that when Jacob and Esau were in the womb, they had not done any sin. While they would sin later in life, what this means is that fetuses don't sin. The extremely mentally handicapped, they don't sin either. Paul's statement in Romans 6:23 doesn't even have a universal application for ACTUAL sin - to say nothing of original sin.

What you are doing is taking Paul's statement "all have sinned" as if it was a precise statement of systematic theology - something that is not found in NT literature, at least, not very often.

The genre of Scripture is rather hyperbolic. Jesus said, "Call no man father" but He was not speaking literally. Paul went on to refer to himself as a spiritual father many times.

Paul's argument in Romans is that both Jews and Gentiles sin, that Jews ultimately have no benefit over Gentiles since both have original sin, and both sin. So Paul says, "All have sinned" as a hyperbolic statement to indicate there is no true difference between Jews and Gentiles in terms of sin.

Now, we already know there are exceptions to "all have sinned." The real question that you simply bypassed is whether or not Paul can say, "all have sinned" and still ALLOW FOR EXCEPTIONS.

Jesus, He's an obvious exception. What in Paul's statement means that Mary cannot be as well?

Many a Catholic priest or apologist has said this before: "EVERYONE is born with original sin."

Why do we say this, IF we believe in the Immaculate Conception? Because we aren't trying to make a precise formula statement like 2 + 2 = 4. We are stressing the universality of original sin. Do you expect Catholics to include the add-on "except Mary" EVERY time we say, "EVERYONE is born with original sin"??? That gets redundant and it is not necessary.

We aren't saying that Paul was wrong. We are saying that he was a Catholic. He would then have absolutely no problem saying, "All have sinned" without literally meaning all, no problem stressing the NEAR-universality of sin while still believing in an exception such as Mary.

Because of Luke 1:28 and the constant Church Tradition, the Church views Mary as being an exception to the universality of original sin. Your argument presented here against the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception does not stand, because it is based on the very hyperliteralism that you found in Mitchell's interpretation of Romans 5:12. Touche.

If you have any other arguments against the IC, please present them. But I think that your arguments based on Romans 5 depend on hyperliteralism and involve eisegesis rather than exegesis. Thus I do not see how they are admissable in this argument.

Oftentimes, people read too much back into the Scriptures because they WANT THEM to say more than they actually do.

- Sean