Predestination Of The Virgin Mary Analysis

The Predestination of the Virgin Mary

Mariology is a strand of theology that systematically studies the being of the Virgin Mary. It is a topic within theology that the Catholic Church is highly dedicated to due to her exalted status above other saints. This heightened dignity of Mary is due to the Catholic dogma of her ‘Immaculate Conception,’ which teaches she was conceived free of sin due to her predestined nature to be Mother of Jesus Christ. Predestination is a concept accepted in the Catholic Church that suggests an individual’s destiny is determined by God ahead of time without the individual being aware (McNally, P.145). The concept is further explained to be a selection of elect individuals who will achieve eternal salvation. However,

In response to this problem, this essay will discuss how, and if, the Virgin Mary can be predestined whilst retaining her free will, because if she was predestined to be the Mother of Jesus it would suggest that her choice in the mater was limited, if any. This argument will be extended to convey how the predestination of Mary, and its complications, impact the Catholic conceptions of God and Jesus’ nature. In order to achieve a resolution for this question, the four Catholic dogmas of Mariology will be addressed: her perpetual virginity; her title of Mother of God (Theotokos); her immaculate conception and her assumption to Heaven. In relation to this predestination will be discussed in reference to a predetermined life on earth and as a

This is because Jesus is pre-existent to time unlike other beings that are born, he willed to be born of a virgin (Mudler, 2012, p.120), but in order for this to occur Mary needed to be free from original sin to prevent from impacting the pure nature of Jesus. The church believed and continues to believe that all humans inherit the stain of original sin from their parents at the moment of conception: thus we are all born in sin (McNally, 2009, p.101). Thus, Mary is born with sin; “but the woman destined to give birth to Jesus Christ can not have been born in original sin” (McNally, 2009, p.102), as previously stated. For Mary to be born without original sin her predestined life must have extended further than her birth but began at her conception. Pope Pius IX declared this is Innefabilis Deus: “Mary had been preserved from original sin from the first instant of her creation by a special grace in view of the foreseen merits of her son” (1854). So, Mary was immaculately conceived by her parents by the virtue of Jesus, which is one of the dogmas of Catholic Mariology. This is where the co-existence of of free will and predestination fails in relation to Mary: if Mary was conceived free of original sin by the choice of Jesus because he willed her to become the Theotokos, how is it possible that she has the ability to exercise her free will when her life has