Posted on 01/24/2015 3:23:43 PM PST by NYer
In my new book, Behold Your Mother: A Biblical and Historical Defense of the Marian Doctrines, , I spend most of its pages in classic apologetic defense of Mary as Mother of God, defending her immaculate conception, perpetual virginity, assumption into heaven, her Queenship, and her role in God’s plan of salvation as Co-redemptrix and Mediatrix. But perhaps my most important contributions in the book may well be how I demonstrate each of these doctrines to be crucial for our spiritual lives and even our salvation.
And I should note that this applies to all of the Marian doctrines. Not only Protestants, but many Catholics will be surprised to see how the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, for example, is crucial for all Christians to understand lest they misapprehend the truth concerning the sacred, marriage, sacraments, the consecrated life, and more.
I won’t attempt to re-produce the entire book in this post, but I will choose one example among examples I use to demonstrate why Mary as Mother of God not only matters, but how denying this dogma of the Faith can end in the loss of understanding of “the one true God and Jesus Christ whom [God] has sent” (John 17:3). It doesn’t get any more serious than that!
In my book, I use the teaching of the late, well-known, and beloved Protestant Apologist, Dr. Walter Martin, as one of my examples. In his classic apologetics work, Kingdom of the Cults, Dr. Martin, gives us keen insight into why the dogma of the Theotokos (“God-bearer,” a synonym with “Mother of God”) is such a “big deal.” But first some background information.
Truth and Consequences
It is very easy to state what it is that you don’t believe. That has been the history of Protestantism. Protestantism itself began as a… you guessed it… “protest.” “We are against this, this, this, and this.” It was a “protest” against Catholicism. However, the movement could not continue to exist as a protestant against something. It had to stand for something. And that is when the trouble began. When groups of non-infallible men attempted to agree, the result ended up being the thousands of Protestant sects we see today.
Dr. Walter Martin was a good Protestant. He certainly and boldly proclaimed, “I do not believe Mary is the Mother of God.” That’s fine and good. The hard part came when he had to build a theology congruent with his denial. With Dr. Martin, it is difficult to know for sure whether his bad Christology came before or after his bad Mariology—I argue it was probably bad Christology that came first—but let’s just say for now that in the process of theologizing about both Jesus and Mary, he ended up claiming Mary was “the mother of Jesus’ body,” and not the Mother of God. He claimed Mary “gave Jesus his human nature alone,” so that we cannot say she is the Mother of God; she is the mother of the man, Jesus Christ.
This radical division of humanity and divinity manifests itself in various ways in Dr. Martin’s theology. He claimed, for example, that “sonship” in Christ has nothing at all to do with God in his eternal relations within the Blessed Trinity. In Martin’s Christology, divinity and humanity are so sharply divided that he concluded “eternal sonship” to be an unbiblical Catholic invention. On page 103 of his 1977 edition of The Kingdom of the Cults, he wrote:
[T]here cannot be any such thing as eternal Sonship, for there is a logical contradiction of terminology due to the fact that the word “Son” predicates time and the involvement of creativity. Christ, the Scripture tells us, as the Logos, is timeless, “…the Word was in the beginning” not the Son!
From Martin’s perspective then, Mary as “Mother of God” is a non-starter. If “Son of God” refers to Christ as the eternal son, then there would be no denying that Mary is the mother of the Son of God, who is God; hence, Mother of God would be an inescapable conclusion. But if sonship only applies to “time and creativity,” then references to Mary’s “son” would not refer to divinity at all.
But there is just a little problem here. Beyond the fact that you don’t even need the term “Son” at all to determine Mary is the Mother God because John 1:14 tells us “the Word was made flesh,” and John 1:1 tells us “the Word was God;” thus, Mary is the mother of the Word and so she is the Mother of God anyway, the sad fact is that in the process of Martin’s theologizing he ended up losing the real Jesus. Notice, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity is no longer the Eternal Son! And it gets worse from here, if that is possible! Martin would go on:
The term “Son” itself is a functional term, as is the term “Father” and has no meaning apart from time. The term “Father” incidentally never carries the descriptive adjective “eternal” in Scripture; as a matter of fact, only the Spirit is called eternal (“the eternal Spirit”—Hebrews 9:14), emphasizing the fact that the words Father and Son are purely functional as previously stated.
It would be difficult to overstate the importance of what we are saying here. Jesus revealed to us the essential truth that God exists eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in his inner life. For Martin, God would be father by analogy in relation to the humanity of Christ, but not in the eternal divine relations; hence, he is not the eternal Father. So, not only did Dr. Martin end up losing Jesus, the eternal Son; he lost the Father as well! This compels us to ask the question: Who then is God, the Blessed Trinity, in eternity, according to Dr. Walter Martin and all those who agree with his theology? He is not Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He must be the eternal … Blah… the Word, and the Holy Spirit (Martin did teach Christ to be the Eternal Word, just not the Eternal Son). He would become a father by analogy when he created the universe and again by analogy at the incarnation of the Word and through the adoption of all Christians as “sons of God.” But he would not be the eternal Father. The metaphysical problems begin here and continue to eternity… literally. Let us now summarize Dr. Martin’s teaching and some of the problems it presents:
1. Fatherhood and Sonship would not be intrinsic to God. The Catholic Church understands that an essential aspect of Christ’s mission was to reveal God to us as he is in his inner life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Jews already understood God to be father by analogy, but they had no knowledge of God as eternal Father in relation to the Eternal Son. In Jesus’ great high priestly prayer in John 17, he declared his Father was Father “before the world was made” and thus, to quote CCC 239, in “an unheard-of sense.” In fact, Christ revealed God’s name as Father. Names in Hebrew culture reveal something about the character of the one named. Thus, he reveals God to be Father, not just that he is like a father. God never becomes Father; he is the eternal Father
2. If Sonship applies only to humanity and time, the “the Son” would also be extrinsic, or outside, if you will, of the Second Divine Person of the Blessed Trinity. Thus, as much as he would have denied it, Dr. Martin effectively creates two persons to represent Christ—one divine and one human. This theology leads to the logical conclusion that the person who died on the cross 2,000 years ago would have been merely a man. If that were so, he would have no power to save us. Scripture reveals Christ as the savior, not merely a delegate of God the savior. He was fully man in order to make fitting atonement for us. He was fully God in order to have the power to save us.
3. This theology completely reduces the revelation of God in the New Covenant that separates Christianity from all religions of the world. Jesus revealed God as he is from all eternity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Dr. Martin reduces this to mere function. Thus, “Father” does not tell us who God is, only what God does. Radical feminists do something similar when they refuse to acknowledge God as “Father.” God becomes reduced to that which he does as “Creator, Redeeemer, and Sanctifier” and int he process where is a truly tragic loss of the knowledge of who God is. In the case of Dr. Walter Martin, it was bad theology that lead to a similar loss.
4. There is a basic metaphysical principle found, for example, in Malachi 3:6, that comes into play here as well: “For I the Lord do not change.” In defense of Dr. Martin, he did seem to realize that one cannot posit change in the divine persons. As stated above, “fatherhood” and “sonship” wold not relate to divinity at all in his way of thinking. Thus, he became a proper Nestorian (though he would never have admitted that) that divides Christ into two persons. And that is bad enough. However, one must be very careful here because when one posits the first person of the Blessed Trinity became the Father, and the second person of the Blessed Trinity became the Son, it becomes very easy to slip into another heresy that would admit change into the divine persons. Later in Behold Your Mother, I employ the case of a modern Protestant apologist who regrettably takes that next step. But you’ll have to get the book to read about that one.
The bottom line here is this: It appears Dr. Walter Martin’s bad Christology led to a bad Mariology. But I argue in Behold Your Mother that if he would have understood Mary as Theotokos, it would have been impossible for him to lose his Christological bearings. The moment the thought of sonship as only applying to humanity in Christ would have arisen, a Catholic Dr. Walter Martin would have known that Mary is Mother of God. He would have lost neither the eternal Son nor the eternal Father because Theotokos would have guarded him from error. The prophetic words of Lumen Gentium 65 immediately come to mind: “Mary… unites in her person and re-echoes the most important doctrines of the faith.” A true Mariology serves as a guarantor against bad Christology.
Yup, days like new years day or July 4th or Halloween, or christamas or easter.. or mothers day r groundhog day.. or or or or..-—
like "THIS IS MY BODY" for example....very difficult to understand!
So the man nature and the God nature of Jesus cannot be separated but the Trinitarian nature of God can be separated is that it?
Wow! I didn't realize the Galatians were celebrating those. Surely you have documentation to show they were right?
For Catholics it surely is!! Do you eat the pages of your Bible as well? You know, like Jeremiah ate the scroll.
Good grief, to be united in the Catholic religion doesn't mean that we all have to agree with everything the Pope says in daily conversation....sheesh
Catholics don't hate protestantiam, they hate the fact that someone is perverting the Christian church which they have guided and protected for 2,015 years....
Christmas and its ‘season’ is older than you think..
And paul didn’t give the names of pagan days, etc.. thy tend to evolve overtime..
Weeping for Tammuz dates back to Babylon.. today, it s called lent..
Names change.. the roots all go back to Babylon..
Esther and Ishtar and easte, the list goes on..
Paul was also quoted to tell at least one of his letters, imploring them to keep the feast of passover...
I think it was to Corinthians but I don’t have it handy..
Was Paul sending mixed messages? There are some that believe that.. I do not
That's what I've heard!
You gotta have faith - in the Pizza Hut billboards? [Atlanta apparition from 1991]
Face of Jesus Christ appears in three-cheese pizza
Every single time, when possible...Why would God write a book of fantasies to give to us??? Why would God hand us a book with over 30,000 chapters in it with most of them not true???
When you see that "Luke 23:46" says
Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last.
while "John 19:30" says
When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished”; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
So what then??? One of the writers of scripture lied???
Jesus job was finished...He knew the end...He knew his spirit and soul would depart...When it says he gave up the ghost, it doesn't necessarily mean that he died right them...It doesn't say he took his last breath as it does in Luke...It may have been his mental state that all had been accomplished and knew there was no more need for his spirit to stay around...It doesn't say the ghost left...It says he gave up the ghost...
Could be and apparently was he had one more thing to say before he took his last breath...And he did as can be seen in the book of John...
(By the way, did you notice how John says there in his Gospel that Jesus had received the "vinegar" (a type of wine back then)?
I certainly hope you are not trying to justify that priest's total blunder of an attempt to put Mat. 26:29 into Calvary...
Mat 26:29 But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.
Apparently then you are suggesting we shouldn't take this verse literally either...
What did your religion ever do before Scott Hahn showed up??? I wasted almost an hour listening to the 'pitch' from Hahn...Sorry, I'll stick with the bible as opposed to Hahn's fantasies...
You never read it eh??? Have you read any scripture at all??? You're trying to teach us about God and you don't even know what God says...WoW...
yeah, the Postal Service misdirects a lot of mail....
Jesus rose with a dead body???
She is a fallen away Catholic who appaarently has no concept of what the church teaches.....or she wouldn't be fallen away!!!
Start with Acts 28:23-24, where Luke explains the gospel of the kingdom that Paul preached.
Acts 28:
[22] But we desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest: for as concerning this sect, we know that every where it is spoken against.
[23] And when they had appointed him a day, there came many to him into his lodging; to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets, from morning till evening.
[24] And some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not.
[25] And when they agreed not among themselves, they departed, after that Paul had spoken one word, Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers,
[26] Saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive:
[27] For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.
Then slip over to 1Corinthians 11:2 where Paul praises them for following the ordinances he taught them, and I'm sure that you will see the conflict that your take on Galatians creates.
1Corinthians 11:
[1] Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.
[2] Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you.
These words, unlike most of what Paul writes, are plain and clear, and direct to the point, leaving no room for twisting nor turning, nor 'dividing.'
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There was no question of Mary's sinlessness...It's a non bible issue...All have sinned...
Are infants sinners? Are the retarded sinners? What sins have they committed? The verse says ALL have sinned.
Why do you even question it??? God said ALL have sinned...Because your humanist philosophy can't figure it out means it's not true???
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>> “Wow! I didn’t realize the Galatians were celebrating those” <<
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The Galatians were being coerced into celebrating the days that christmas and easter represent. The days of the sun god. The days that the virgins were “prepared” by the sun god priests, and the days on which the babies born to those virgins were offered to the idol, in the middle of the bonfire.
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Galatians 4:9 But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? 10 Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. 11 I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.
What bondage?
Galatians 5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
Romans 7:5 For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. 6 But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were bound; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
When the vale was rent at Jesus death all the ceremonial laws were finished and done away with. The Israelites were bound to the ceremonial laws of sacrifice, feast days etc to atone for sins against the moral laws. Christ is the atonement for those sins now. If you insist on those ceremonial laws you negate the death of Christ in your life.
Galatians 5:4 Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.
You want to judge someone who doesn't keep the ceremonial laws?
Colossians 2:16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:
The Israelites were never "under bondage" to pagan festivals and holy days.
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