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.
He did say in the last knowledge would increase didn't He.
It's filled with lies like I showed here.
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Another lost, raving, antichrist finds the center of the antichrist universe, and writes a book to lead the lost further astray.
Bravo, Satan celebrates!
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That's not what scripture says.
1 Corinthians 15:44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.
Every Catholic should understand the deception in that video. It shows so clearly how Catholicism is built on deception.
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>> “That is, unless protestants have a different Jesus not born on December 25, killed on good Friday and raised on easter like the roman catholic Jesus..” <<
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Unfortunately many so called protestants haven’t the slightest idea who Yeshua, our savior is.
Born during the Feast of Tabernacles, spending his life denouncing the commandments of men, and sacrificed for our redemption on Wednesday afternoon, risen on Saturday at sunset, three days and three nights, as his own words so plainly declared, many protestants cling to their catholicism, and refuse to know him.
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Constantine united the world in traditional paganism, but for a very small remnant, that he and his ‘church’ have persecuted to this day.
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Because He would have been sinning by eating blood and encouraging others to sin also.
Only if you apply man's wisdom and not only twist what the Holy Spirit inspired to be written but put words in that the Holy Spirit did NOT use.
Second guessing the words the Holy Spirit inspired cannot turn out well for those who do it. It cannot be disputed that the Holy Spirit chose words for a reason.
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>> “The Jesus that Rome worships is the exact same the protestants worship.” <<
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Sadly, very true, and our savior’s name is not nor ever was “Jesus,” But Yeshua, Yehova’s Salvation, and as the prophet Joel said, we who call him by name will be gathered up to meet him in the cloud.
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Jesus can no more see God than I or you can see our souls...God is invisible...And here's something else for you...The glorified Jesus IS God...Jesus can not sin because he is God...
We are capable of being tempted because we do not see God as he is, but only by analogy, through our various experiences in this life.
Wrong on 2 counts...We are capable of being tempted and are tempted and we do sin because of our human nature...The Apostle Paul spent some time with the glorified Jesus Christ and yet he sinned...
And 2...We may not see God but we see results of God and God working in our lives...We are indwelt with God and we are in God...
Jesus, in heaven, remains both God and man.
Again, we are made in God's image...He is not made in our image...God does not have a human nature, else he would be susceptable to sin...And when we are ascended to heaven, we will not have a human nature...
The reason we can have a relationship with Jesus is because he is the physical, visible part of the Godhead...We could have a wrestling match with him if he so desired...There is no reason for God to have a human nature...
You seem to be a Manichean or some other form of Gnostic: "Spirit is good, the body is bad," or "Divine is good, human is evil."
I don't know what Manicheus said, but I know what God says...
Rom_6:6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
Eph_4:22 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;
Col_3:9 Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds;
Rom_7:18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
Perhaps that scripture means nothing to you...
Was there some guy named Manicheus or something??? You guys have got a lable for everything...If you learn all the labels and Catholic words, you are an intellectual or an expert???
If your religion would have sent you off to a bible school somewhere instead of a seminary where you needed to learn all that stuff, you'd have been far better off...
Our bodies are junk...We've got bad blood...The minute we are born, our bodies start dying...They hurt, a lot... And some of our bodies are downright ugly...They go into the ground and rot...At this time, God did not chose a perfect vessel to house us in...
Php_3:21 Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.
Mark
I try to be fair but those images are unusual to me
They got to you too, eh??? There is no such thing as muzlim extremism...All there is, is Izlam...
Is Jesus God? I say He is God. What say ye?
So, in some unfathomable way, beyond human understanding, God did die.
Great post.
Check out the claims of Apollo C Quiboloy, if you want more shock.
Christians seek to be aware of the errors of the past in order to recognize them as they persist and arise again.
Thank you for being committed to accuracy, which is commendable. However, that is what i find fault with in new translations, that of too much paraphrasing (and usually without identifying supplied words as the KJV often does), and or relying upon the supposedly better mss, going so far as to exclude the end of Mark as being in the original text based upon about 1% of mss missing it.
But the primary thing is that we heed the basic Truth in any translation.
Editor, I share minor discrepancies..
the Messiah was born a month before the feast of tabernacles..
Revelation 12 tells us this.. a sign in the heavens that points to a specific day.. it is an amazing revelation that I didn’t fully understand but when I saw it in His sky, it clicked.. and it falls on specific day every year, although it has ‘moved’ in 2000 years (an amazing study)
It was a new moon day, the first day of our Heavenly Father’s 6th month when the Messiah was born. The sign in the sky was the woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet.. (it takes a little explanation but that is a sign in the heavens that revolves around what the world calls the constellation virgo) certainly according to Torah, a new moon day is an appointed time of worship even if it isn’t today..
Ezekiel’s template in 46 then explain exactly how He fulfilled those new moons, Sabbaths and feasts Perfectly!
He was circumcised on the 8th day, per Torah.. and the 8th day of every month ( after the new moon day and six work days) is a weekly Sabbath..
So 8 days old, He had been born and circumcised on appointed days!
Then we have the 40 days of purification which blew me away..
He would have been dedicated in the temple 40 days from His birth. That would be the 10th day of the 7th month- The Day of Atonement! Certainly an appointed day.. and He would have been around to tabernacle with His people five days later..
His baptism was a little tougher but we were given a clue that He was 30 and that immediately after He was led into the wilderness for 40 days ( a shadow from the purification His mother was required to do)
Is it out of the realm that He was baptized on His 30th birthday, a new moon day, the first day of our Heavenly Father’s 6th month?
It would be tough to argue against it given His perfect fulfillment of appointed days up till then..
We do know of His death, burial rest and resurrection (HalleluYah!) all falling on feast days/weekly and annual Sabbaths..
Every major life event fulfilled. Literally.. except for trumpets and the final feast of tabernacles!
I disagree with the three days and three nights but I see the sign of Jonah a little differently and I don’t use the roman days for the week that messed me up when I was trying to figure out the sign of Jonah..
We have allowed Rome to dictate our time.. they have with their counterfeit calendar hidden His new moons, Sabbaths and feasts that only fit His calendar that He prepared for us in His sky..
It is sadly why so many have fallen for good Friday and easter.. and Christmas..
And why Jews can’t see the First Fruits when they wait until the day after their pope Appointed Sabbath day to observe it.. instead of what scripture tells us and the Messiah confirmed was the third day.. (16th day, the first day of the week after the 15th day which is not only an annual sabbath but a weekly Sabbath when Ezekiel 46 template is laid out)
Great deception... we should expect nothing less from a thief, a liar and master counterfeiter..
He is the Word that became flesh!
And His bride can know it.
And be ready for His return...and not let Him catch us asleep..
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