"Solus Christus Sola Fide Sola Scriptura"
This is one of Luther's lapidary phrases, whose intention was to deny the value of tradition, valuing only the faith of the individual without the community, and the Bible as the word of God. This statement is a misconception and is totally false: first, it is hypocritical, because Luther himself, in his writings, accepted all the dogmas that tradition had defined, the identity of Christ as true man and true God, the Trinity in which God is one and triune, as well as all the Marian dogmas. The dogmas or definitions of faith are the result of centuries of reflection by the Church, that is, they have their origin in tradition.
But even the Bible is a child of tradition. First there was the Church, and only later the Bible, as far as the New Testament is concerned. Christ wrote nothing apart from what he wrote in the sand when a woman caught in the act of adultery was brought to him; about him during his lifetime, only Pilate wrote the cause of his condemnation on the sign placed on top of his cross. The 12 apostles, none of them wrote anything, they dedicated themselves solely to preaching after Christ’s Resurrection. It was the Church, when it was already well established, in the second generation after the apostolic one, that gave birth to the scriptures.
First, there were Paul’s letters, which were truly letters because on the envelope, so to speak, they had Paul as the sender and, in fact, he began each letter by introducing himself. In the place of the address was the Christian community of a particular city, the one of Rome in the letter to the Romans, the one of Philippi in the letter to the Philippians, the one of Thessalonica in the letter to the Thessalonians, the one of Ephesus in the letters to the Ephesians, or specific individuals like Titus and Timothy, or even other communities, like the anonymous letter to the Hebrews, etc.
The Gospels appeared later, each written by a different author in order to present the facts about Jesus of Nazareth to a different group of people. Mark, the first author, wrote his Gospel in Rome for the Romans; to this end, he was inspired by Peter's preaching. Matthew, a Jew who used the name of the apostle Matthew, perhaps because he was inspired by his preaching, wrote for the Jews. Luke, a Greek medical doctor and a disciple of Paul, was inspired by his preaching to write for the Greeks. John’s Gospel is more of a historical reflection than a narration of facts, and he had no particular group of people in mind.
Even the expression "Solus Christus" is a fallacy because we do not have a pure Christ without tradition. We have a Christ of John, another of Mark, another of Luke and still another of Matthew. The true Christ is the sum of all of them, but even on the figure of Christ we cannot set aside the tradition of the Church. Tradition and Bible in the Catholic Church intertwine like the two spirals of DNA. Tradition gives birth to the Bible, but the Bible then inspires the subsequent tradition throughout history, because tradition is modifiable, the Bible is not.
The Bible, once the canon was closed, is the essence; the tradition is the accidents. The Bible is fixed, the tradition is changeable. Tradition is an updating of the Bible over time.
Similarity to the amendments of US Constitution – Many countries, in finding that their Constitution has become outdated, revise it or write a new one. This does not happen in the United States, a country with an unchanging Constitution, as if it were a Gospel, which cannot be rewritten or modified, causing serious problems, such as the authorization to carry firearms.
But even in the United States the reality is changing, there are amendments to the Constitution that, in order to be valid, must be drafted in light of the Constitution, but are an interpretation or update of it, or an adaptation of the Constitution to modern times.
Similarity to the dinosaur – No one has ever seen a live dinosaur, for while they walked on earth, the human race did not yet exist. However, we know of their existence because here and there bones of these huge reptiles have been found. We started putting these bones together to tentatively reconstruct these extinct animals and, like a puzzle, we arrived at the final result; then it was a matter of covering the bones with flesh and skin to obtain an almost exact image of how they looked alive.
Never have all the bones that make up the body of one of these animals been found in one place. In the spaces that were left empty in the puzzle, artificial bones were fabricated to complete the puzzle. Granted that the added bones are not real, just as tradition is not scripture, but tradition follows in the sequence of the scriptures, and it agrees and harmonizes with it. The dogmas of the identity of Christ, of Mary, of the one and triune God are like the missing bones in the skeleton of the dinosaur, but which can be logically deduced from the real bones present.
Immaculate Conception of Mary
“It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus, from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin.” (Martin Luther, Sermon on the Day of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, 1527)
All the great Protestant reformers like Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, accepted all of the Marian dogmas. The indifference, contempt and almost hatred of Mary that certain Protestants manifest today do not come from these reformers but from fanatics after them.
The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, a solemnity that the Church celebrates on December 8th, close to the Lord's Christmas, is another way of beginning anew. It is the replacement of the flood that destroyed the sins of the old to begin anew. In Mary, God relinquishes the destruction of the world. That is why Mary is a "non-destructive flood" because, little by little, with the Kingdom of her son, she will flood the world with the divine Grace that kills sin. Mary is, therefore, the new ark of Noah that saves humanity from sin because she contains the Saviour who is Christ, her son.
Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son. Hebrews 1:1-2
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman... Galatians 4:4
Mary is not the beginning of the salvation history: this began with Abraham and was continued from generation to generation by the prophets, judges, kings, and other leaders of the chosen people. Mary is the culmination of this history, she is, as the author of the letter to the Hebrews points out above, the last days or, as St. Paul says, the fullness of time.
The history of salvation deals with people who pass from generation to generation the germ of Good, in the midst of a world that lives the history of Evil. However, this germ of Good coexists in the same person with Evil. Those who carried the germ of Good or the testimony of Good in this relay race, were not perfect people, as we know from the Bible, where their flaws and sins are well documented, from Abraham, Moses, David to so many others who were, as St. Augustine would later say in defining man, "simul justus et peccator”, at the same time righteous and sinful.
Mary is the last link in this chain of Good. Through Mary, God put the final touches to eliminate every trace of evil in preparation for the Incarnation of His Son. It stands to reason that if God was going to take on human nature to speak to men, he was not going to take on a fallen human nature, he was not going to take on the decaying sinful human nature of our fathers, but rather the human nature that He had created in the beginning. That is, he was going to take on the nature of Adam and Eve before the Fall. This is why it is said that Mary is the new Eve and Christ the new Adam.
The moment the genetic material from the half-cell of Joaquim joined the genetic material from the half-cell of Anne to form a new genetic code, Mary's DNA, God intervened in genetic engineering and replaced the genes spoiled or corrupted by sin that had been passed down from generation to generation since Adam and Eve, with the new genes, the ones that Adam and Eve themselves possessed before they ruined human nature by sinning. In other words, He replaced the damaged pieces with the original pieces.
When the Angel Gabriel visited Mary, he recognized in her the new Eve by pronouncing this very name backwards as a greeting (Eva/Ave), Mary is the work of God's genetic engineering; Mary is God’s re-creation by virtue of his direct and intentional intervention in human history. Because Mary, in communion with the same God, will generate, produce the vaccine against sin, that is Christ His Son. Mary is not only the beginning of salvation for the world but in her Immaculate Conception, as a preparation for the coming of Jesus, she is also the first to be saved.
Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. John 3:14-15
The son of Mary is the one who will replace the serpent raised up in the desert by Moses, the saviour of the Jewish people, to heal everyone from the bite of the ancient serpent that poisoned Eve, Adam, and their descendants from generation to generation.
Conclusion
If Christ is like us in everything except sin, he must be the son of a woman who, by special privilege, was also like us in everything except sin, that is, she must be created in the image and likeness of God. Mary is the second Eve, the Eve who did not sin and who never lost her resemblance to God.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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