Mary

The doctrines of Mary are a mess. What led people to imagine that she was sinless from birth? I find no warrant for it in any records of her. And why multiply hypotheses unnecessarily?

With this curious doctrine Mary becomes different from all the rest of us--disconnected from us in a fundamental way--more like Jesus than Eve.

Without it; if Mary was a sinner like the rest of us, Mary becomes the archtypal Christian. As Jesus' life grew in her, she sinned, but God kept working. She fell short, but God kept working. She had no idea what Jesus meant by His dry comments about "my Father's house," and she got annoyed with Jesus, just as we do. Jesus obeyed her, just as He obeyed the laws of nature and of the country He lived in. Neither Herod nor Caesar had a clue as to who they were commanding, but Jesus obeyed their laws. Jesus had John baptize him, even though John said it should be the other way around. Jesus was in a wicked world (not made perfect for his arrival), was subject to its rules, and brought transformation with him for those that would have it. And Mary accepted her role and obeyed when it mattered.

I'm aware that the Catholic Church claims that it has been received wisdom from earliest days that Mary was sinless, but absent any even nearly contemporary evidence for it I have to reject this as a pious fiction. And it is easy to see where it came from--an argument from analogy.

If Mary's womb was a temple for the baby Jesus, obviously it had to be pure, so Mary had to be pure, which implies Mary had to be sinless, right? The problem is that there are other equally good models to argue from. Recall that Jesus touched the (unclean!) dead body of the widow's son. He didn't become unclean; the touch resurrected the son, who was of course now clean. So in the argument about Mary, put "purified" for "pure." It is just as good (or bad) an argument, but the conclusion is different: Mary would have been purified by God's working through her, not in some unique Immaculate Conception.

Is my model true? Maybe. It is as untestable as the Catholic one, but seems more in keeping with other ways God worked (think of Isaiah's unclean lips) and indeed with Mary's own words ("henceforth" as opposed to from her birth). I think I'll keep it as a working hypothesis.