Most of Agustine's views on sexuality is bunk (although I realize you think it's more then just Agustine). If there was any cross he carried I'd say it was his horniness.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, a lot of people over the centuries have adopted Augustine's views.
Interestingly enough Eastern Orthodox that I've talked to believe Christ assumed his humanity from Mary and that any change in Mary's humanity would somehow affect Christ. We don't share this view.
They might have been a little confused. Orthodox Christians don't believe in the Immaculate Conception of Mary because they don't share the Roman Catholic view of original sin. For the Orthodox, original sin doesn't mean you're born guilty or born sinful; it just means you have a propensity to sin. Orthodox, like Catholics, believe that Mary was without sin. I think most Orthodox would agree that
if the Catholic doctrine of original sin were correct, the Immaculate Conception would also be correct.
The dogmatically-defined title of Mary,
Theotokos (Birth-giver of God), by itself, could
possibly be construed as being in agreement with Hope's suggestion that Jesus need not have even inherited any genetic material from Mary. However, (I think) that's plainly not the Orthodox view, and in my view the title
Meter tou Theou (Mother of God) clearly implies that she was Jesus' actual mother, and not merely the portal by which he entered the world.
Of course, the ancients didn't have any understanding of genetics, or even a very accurate idea of reproduction, so who knows what they meant?
On a side note it's important to make clear that Mary needed salvation just like the rest of us..... but ......Mary was saved before she sinned, while we are saved after we have sinned. It is like one person being saved from a disease by an inoculation to prevent it... and another person being saved from the same disease by an operation to cure it...
(Putting on my Orthodox hat.) I would prefer to say that Mary was in need of theosis, in that although she was without sin, she still needed to be united to the divine nature.
What I'm having a problem with is the idea that there's some natural or mechanistic process by which fathers (as opposed to mothers) or sexual intercourse imparts original sin to the offspring. It's not scriptural, it's not -- Augustine and his followers aside -- patristic, and it seems like a fatuous and superstitious idea. I mean, it's one thing to believe in miracles, and another to make up "laws" to explain the miracles, isn't it?
