Fourth was great. Did not go to see fireworks, we stayed in with a few friends and daughter and watched The Apostle. This was the nth time I have watched the movie. My wife and I love it. I can relate to it in a strange way because I was a fundamentalist pentecostal for almost half, if not more, of my life. After a lengthy period of denial and some soul searching, I've come to accept myself as a fundamentalist-pentecostal in Catholic skin. I will say though, I have not and probably will not have anything to do with the Charismatic movement. It seems to work out that way often. When Pentecostals convert, or revert, as in my case, they don't necessarily flock over to the Charismatic movement.


On the fifth, my wife and I watched another one of Kevin Kostner's string of Award winning movie classics, right up there, in the line of classics such as The Postman and Water World, we watched Thirteen Days. I reserve comment because I do not have the energy to mount a tirade. Pathetic is the word that comes to mind, but I shall merely keep that word a thought, for the record.


I had promised to respond to the issue of the theological necessity of Mary being the sole source of Jesus' humanity. In thinking about providing a good and comprehensive response to my claim, I realized that I would almost have to write a paper of significant length. I may just have to do that in the course of time, someday I hope to write about the Blessed Virgin Mary. In talking with a few friends who are theologians, they agreed with me on the issue but not right away, they had to think about it. The reason is that that particular question had not arisen in their minds as such. So I am pondering how to address the question since it may be the case that it is not quite as clearly spelled out in the tradition.


I guess I would say that in the tradition of Christology, one of the key issues has been the idea that God became man so that man can become god. This is what the priest basically utters at mass when he puts a drop of water in the chalice with wine. Human beings are historical creatures and to belong to the human race one must come from human stock. By human race, I mean, be a child of Adam. If God added miraculously, anything to Mary's conceived seed, then we would have a different kind of human, and not one of Adam's children. The importance of Jesus' being human is linked to the Athanasian point that what was not assumed was not redeemed. So for Christ to redeem human, he had to become human, he absolutely could not be anything else. And being human was being born of the Virgn Mary. At least this is how many in the very platonic East saw the issue.


I would recommend a reading of the 8th chapter of the second book of Anselm's Cur Dues Homo, Why The God-Man. He argues that the man who offered satisfaction for the sin of Adam had to be himself of Adam's stock. I also looked though William Jurgen's The Faith of the Early Fathers which has a comprehensive and well indexed list of quotes from the Father's of the Church. In the Doctrinal index #311, there are quotes about XT's humanity and Mary as its source. Many of them make it clear that the Fathers, and thus, the tradition, see Mary as the source of the full humanity of Christ while God is responsible fo the divinity and person of XT.


Another quick point that I should make is that if we take note regarding the wording of the hypostatic union, i.e., the union between the second person of the Trinity, with his divine nature, and his human nature, the language always points to union and not creation. God united himself indissolubly to human nature to become Jesus Christ, he did not create but unite. The question may then come up about the soul of humans, which the Church teaches is created by God at the moment of conception. This would not negate my point, my point is that God did in the case of Mary what he normally does with other human beings, thus the soul of Christ was created as any other would with no special creative supplements. The conception of Christ is miraculous but more credit must be given to the faith of Mary for the miraculous nature of the birth. In this lies her greatness and glory. Her faith made it happen. She believed that God could be born of her and he was indeed born of her.


I also thumbed through a book I have called Early Christian Doctrines by J.N.D. Kelly,a widely regarded historian, whose work on early creeds and early XTian doctrine is considered extremely good. He has a chapter on Christology and in surveying it, the point is there and seems to be the major point that Christ is one divine person, with two distinct and separate natures, the divine nature is from God and the human from the Blessed Virgin Mary.


Finally I looked at the Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraphs #430-507, and I read it to make the same emphatic point that the source of Jesus' complete humanity is Mary and his divinity is God. Other references would be Hebrews 2, Romans 5 and I Cor. 15, about the first and the last Adam. Christ is the last Adam because he is the Son of Man, i.e., the Son of Adam, which is what Luke's genealogy was attemtping to prove. I hope all this is sufficient to back the earlier claim that I had made here and here.