The Immaculate Conception - Responding to Common Protestant and non-Christian Objections

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Obj 1: In 1 John 1:8 it states, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Therefore, Mary had sin. 



Reply Obj 1: 1 John 2:2 is the immediate context of 1 John 1:8 due to the lack of chapter divisions in the original scriptures. John makes a distinction between our sins and those of the whole world. Thus, when he says in 1 John 1:8, “If we say we have no sin…” he is not referring to the whole world, but a general group of people who will be confessing their sins (1 John 1:9). For them to say they have no sin, because they are about to confess them, would be a lie. Therefore, this statement is not talking about Mary.

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Obj 2: Romans 3:9-11 says, "... There is no one righteous, not even one; ..." so Mary was not righteous.

Reply Obj 2: This objection is very weak. First, Paul is quoting from Psalms here. This was a section taken from Psalm 14:1-3 which is a lamentation on the sinfulness of mankind. It fails to prove Mary was unrighteous because it's clear that poetic language is being used. For example,  the same verse says, "There is no one who does good", but I'm sure Protestants will agree that there are people who can do good.

Second, we know it's using hyperbolic language because both Lot (2 Peter 2:7) and Job (Job 1:1) are called righteous. This isn't a biblical contradiction, but rather proves that Romans 3:9-11 is not talking about all mankind.

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Obj 3: Romans 5:12 says, "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned." Further, Romans 3:23 says, "... all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Therefore, Mary has sinned.

Reply Obj 3: These are obviously general statements. We know it's talking about personal sin since he uses the phrase, "all sinned" so let's see who else can't commit a personal sin:

1. Babies in the womb can't commit a personal sin (Romans 9:11).
2. Those with severe mental defects, who don't understand what sin is, can't commit a personal sin (James 4:17).
3. Jesus can't commit a personal sin by merit of being God (Hebrews 4:15).

So unless a Protestant is willing to say that those listed above can sin, we must accept that Paul is talking generally about man. Thus, this leaves open the possibility of Mary being sinless as a part of that list. Protestants might say this is clearly an attempt to work around the verse, but if Mary truly is an exception we wouldn't expect her to be explicitly excluded in all these lists.

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Obj 4: At the Presentation, Mary made a sin offering (Luke 2:24 and Leviticus 12:7-9). Therefore, she was a sinner in need of purification. 


Reply Obj 4: As stated on Catholic Answers,

Catholic Answers, Staff, At the Presentation, why did Mary make a sin offering (Lk 2:24, Lv 12:7-9) if she was without sin?

“For the same reason Jesus was baptized by John, though he had no sins to repent. Mary fulfilled the Law. According to Leviticus 12:2-8, a mother was purified forty days after the birth of a son, and she was required to offer a lamb as a burnt offering and a young pigeon or turtledove as a sin offering. A poor woman could substitute another pigeon or turtledove for the lamb, thus offering two of them. The purification had to do with ritual uncleanliness and didn’t imply a moral fault in childbirth. As Jesus would later, Mary fulfilled all the precepts of the Law, which, clearly, wasn’t written to make allowances for a sinless man (the Messiah) or his sinless mother.”

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Obj 5: In Luke 1:46-47 Mary states that the Lord is her Savior. If Mary was sinless she wouldn’t have said she needed a savior.

Reply Obj 5: God saved Mary, but in a different way than He saves us. As Jude states,

Jude 1:24-25

“Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.”

Another way of viewing it is as follows: Imagine you are walking toward a deep pit. You fall in and a person rescues you out of it. They are your savior! Now imagine they walk up to you and prevent you from falling in the first place. They too are your savior! Therefore, Jesus is Mary’s savior in the sense that He prevented her from sinning.

Trent Horn also offers another valid explanation,

Trent Horn, Case for Catholicism, p. 325

"God's description as "savior" can refer to saving people from eternal threats like sin, but it can also refer to temporal threats like famine, plague, infertility, and the sword. Mary may be speaking of salvation from temporal threats because in Luke 1:47-48 Mary says, 'My spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden." Mary then describes how God saves people from temporal threats by exalting the lowly (v. 52) and feeding the hungry (v. 53). God is Mary's savior because he has regarded her lowly state that she has been lifted out of by being called to bring the Messiah into the world. "

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Obj 6: In Psalm 51:5, David states that all people are born into sin. Therefore, Mary was born into sin.

Reply Obj 6: First, David only says that he was sinful at birth. Second, there’s no problem with Old Testament verses saying “everyone has sinned” because Mary didn’t exist and Jesus wasn’t on earth yet. We have to realize these lamentations found all through Psalms are just general poetic statements about the fall of mankind.

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Obj 7: In Luke 11:27-28 it accounts the following, “As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, ‘Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.’ He replied, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.’” Jesus here is clearly putting down Mary as somebody who was not blessed. Therefore, she was a sinner like us.

Reply Obj 7: On the contrary, Mary is called blessed (Luke 1:42 and 1:48). This text is poorly understood due to the choice of translation. As Fr. Mateo points out in his Catholic Answers article on Mary,

Fr. Mateo, Catholic Answers, CRI’s Attack on Mary: Part VI

“Margaret E. Thrall, a Protestant scholar, cannot be accused of bias toward the Catholic position. In her study Greek Particles in the New Testament, suggests the following interpretation of menoun in Luke 11:27-28: ‘What you have said is true as far as it goes. But the blessedness of Mary does not consist simply in the fact of her relationship towards myself, but (menoun) in the fact that she shares in the blessedness of those who hear the word of God and keep it, and it is in this that true blessedness lies.’ I think this is probably the best interpretation of this text, giving the true sense of ‘rather.’”

Therefore, Jesus was not rebuking her for not being blessed, but rather further stating that she is.

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Obj 8: In Acts 6:8 it states that St. Stephen was full of grace, but Catholics don't believe St. Stephen was sinless, let alone immaculately conceived. Thus, Mary being "full of grace" doesn't always denote being sinless.

Reply Obj 8: The Greek word used for Mary being called "full of grace" is κεχαριτωμένη (kecharitōmenē), but the one for Stephen is πλήρης χάριτος (plērēs charitos). πλήρης (plērēs) is an adjective (the whole phrase being a simple adjective), so it's just talking about God filling Stephen with grace in preparation for his martyrdom. This is no way states that he was always in that state.

However, in the case of κεχαριτωμένη (kecharitōmenē), it is in the perfect passive participle form. This form denotes a state that is already completed and ongoing. Thus, Mary was already in a state of grace, or sinlessness, and this state was ongoing for the rest of her life.

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Obj 9: Mary is corrected or rebuked by Jesus in John 2:4, this seems inappropriate considering Mary was supposed to be sinless.

Reply Obj 9: Being sinless is not the same as being omniscient. So there is no issue with Mary not knowing when to involve Jesus in the issues of the wedding.

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Obj 10: "One reason some Roman Catholics believe it is necessary for Mary to be sinless is because they claim nothing unholy can touch Jesus. However, throughout His earthly ministry, Jesus touched many unholy and unclean people. The woman who had been bleeding for twelve years touched Jesus' clothes (Matthew 9:20–22). Jesus touched the hand of a dead girl and raised her from the dead (Matthew 9:25). He not only touched sinners, but He also willingly touched the most unholy thing in Jewish culture, a leper (Matthew 8:1–3; Mark 1:41–42; Luke 5:13). Jesus was known as a 'friend of sinners.' Jesus came to earth unafraid to make contact with the dirty and the unholy. He Himself became sin for us so that we could live with Him in heaven: 'For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God' (2 Corinthians 5:21)."

(This objection is from: https://www.compellingtruth.org/was-Mary-sinless.html)

Reply Obj 10: Roman Catholics do not believe it was necessary for Mary to be sinless, but rather appropriate. Thus, this whole objection falls apart the moment it begins.

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Obj 11: The verb χαριτῶ (charitoó) used in Luke 1:28 can't mean that Mary was sinless because that same verb is applied to all believers in Ephesians 1:6. Thus, unless Catholics affirm that all believers are sinless (a direct contradiction of scripture), their argument fails.

Reply Obj 11: The verb χαριτῶ (charitoó) used in Ephesians 1:6 refers to the act by which God applies the benefits of New Testament redemption to a person, rescuing them from their sins. Thus, this argument backfires because Paul states in Ephesians 1:7, "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace." The angel is identifying that Mary has the effects of this redemption (these effects are described in Ephesians 1:4).

Thus, those who were graced through New Testament redemption, described in Ephesians 1:6, are truly free from the guilt of original sin. The difference is that the word used in Ephesians 1:6 is in the aorist tense. This tense refers to something that happened in the past, but might not continue in the future. However, the word used in Luke 1:28 is in the perfect passive participle tense, which refers to something that happened in the past, but continues into the future. So while those who can experience the redemption described in Ephesians 1:6 fall from grace through mortal sin, Mary never did.

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