HOW DOES BIBLE SAYING DENYING JESUS CAME IN FLESH IS ANTICHRIST AFFECT CATHOLICISM?
Four places in the New Testament refer to antichrist. We will look at some of them.
In John 2:18 it is warned that there are so many antichrists that people should know we are living in the last time.
It goes on to explain that whoever says Jesus is not the Christ is opposing God and Jesus and is a liar and antichrist.
In John 4:3 it say that any spirit that will not confess that Jesus came in the flesh is of the spirit of antichrist.
The latter makes some hold that it is antichrist to say Jesus had a sinless mother. Catholic doctrine is that Jesus' mother did not have original sin like the rest of us and lived a sinless life. Flesh in the Bible refers not only to the body but its tendency to vice and sin. Galatians 5:19 lists the works of the flesh as adultery, fornication, witchcraft, wrath, heresies and so on, Romans 8:3 says that Jesus came as a man who seemed to be sinful like the rest of us. Romans 8:10 says if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. Jesus would have prayed the Psalm. Psalm 51:5 goes, Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Catholicism says that Jesus' mother needed a saviour too and it was Jesus' saving action that prevented her being born a sinner. She was protected from inherited sin at her conception. If she did not need a saviour and Jesus took his nature from her it is said it would fall foul of scripture which says Jesus came in the likeness of sinful flesh.
Original sin is the notion that we inherit opposition to God in our soul and body. It is like an infection that comes to all new members of the human race as a result of the descent from Adam and Eve who sinned against God in our name as our representatives.
Now does God preserving Mary from original sin mean that he was using the work of Jesus to do it? Not necessarily. If Adam and Eve sinned for us God could have decreed that this representation of theirs did not apply to Mary. And preserving her did not give him the right to refuse to give her the opportunity to choose if she was going to let them represent her or not. And how powerful is he that he had to act at her conception instead of offering her cleansing later? Why not let her choose? It looks like he could not do it very well so had to take advantage of how a person can be conditioned in childhood.
The argument that Jesus then did not come from a properly human mother has weight. It undermines his full humanity.
Adam and Eve supposedly committed a mortal sin, a sin that kills the presence of God and the work of God, in your soul.
If this sin involves us then we are born with something like mortal sin on our souls. Original sin is in effect a mortal sin that we did not personally commit.
The Church holds that mortal sin is a sin that is serious enough to eject sanctifying grace completely from you and thus if you die unreconciled to God you will be damned for all eternity. We must not confuse mortal sin which is the break from God and ejection of him from your soul with its punishment. The rule that you must reconcile or be damned is part of its punishment. It is a consequence. Mortal sin is pictured as a soul being killed not merely weakened. A soul that is really itself has God in it and is united to him.
Here are the conditions for a mortal sin.
It must be about something grave and seriously wrong.
It must be committed with full knowledge, both of the sin and of the gravity of the offense
It must be committed with deliberate and complete consent, enough for it to have been a personal decision to commit the sin.
Full knowledge and consent mean enough knowledge and consent for we don't have full knowledge of anything.
A question arises if somebody can be deemed to be ignorant of the moral law. The Church holds that something called invincible ignorance exists. This only applies in extreme cases if somebody is very uneducated or has a mental defect or is on a desert island.
What people forget about reading this is that it is contradicted by original sin. Original sin is like a mortal sin that is exempt from the rules.
If Mary did not have sin like this in some form or another then her Jesus was not truly a man who came in the flesh properly speaking. It robs the Mass where the Church says it eats and gets spiritual nourishment from the body of Jesus of any power and meaning.
APPENDIX,
FROM
THE CASE AGAINST MIRACLES BY JOHN W LOFTUS
THE NOTE ABOUT THE GOSPELS AND JESUS
Joseph’s dream is used in Gospel of Matthew’s narrative to help explain why Mary was not put to death for dishonoring him because of adultery. There are five other dreams in this gospel account which were all intended to save someone’s life. So, Joseph’s dream was probably meant to save Mary’s life too (Matthew 1:19-23; 2:12; 2:19-23; & 27:19). Matthew J. Marohl shows in Joseph’s Dilemma: “Honor Killing” in the Birth Narrative of Matthew (Wipf & Stock Publisher, 2008), that “Joseph’s dilemma involves the possibility of an honor killing. If Joseph reveals that Mary is pregnant, she will be killed. If Joseph conceals Mary’s pregnancy, he will be opposing the law of the Lord. What is a ‘righteous’ man to do?” “Early Christ-followers understood Joseph’s dilemma to involve an assumption of adultery and the subsequent possibility of the killing of Mary.” This was part of their culture. Honor killings were justified in both the Old and New Testaments. Jesus even agreed with the Mosaic Law (Exodus 21:17; Leviticus 20:9) against his opponents on behalf of honor killings of children who dishonored their parents (Mark 7:8-13). The tale of the woman caught in adultery, where Jesus exposes the hypocrisy of her accusers, doesn’t change what Jesus thinks of the law either (John 8; Matthew 5:18).
