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.
Do you happen to know what the literal translation is?
Even if it said "full of grace" I really don't get how there's a jump from that to Mary being sinless.
Mary was the mother of Christ in His humanity. She was not the "Mother of God". Christ is eternal. Mary is not. Christ existed long before Mary ever came on the scene.
This is elementary logic. Yet it seems to escape some.
Charity is the FORM of God. “God is love.”
Charity is just another name for “sanctifying grace.”
When we have the theological virtue of charity, we participate in the very form of God. I.e., we participate in the divine nature.
Making this possible is the very purpose of the Incarnation.
So, okay. Mary participates in the form of God. She has been “divinized.”
NEWS FLASH: The same is true of EVERY BAPTIZED PERSON.
The Greek word is “kecharitomene,” translated as “full of grace,” (although I admit that I am referencing catholic scholars, and do not know Greek, ancient or otherwise). I am interested to learn that Protestant thought on grace does not include the implication of freedom from original and personal sin.
And yetyou don’t treat every person as you treat the demigod dress... So your post avoided the issue.
The Greek word in NO WAY denotes "full of grace". It means "favored with grace". The Greek word for "full" is pleres and is NOT used for Mary but IS used for Christ and Stephen. If the Holy Spirit meant to refer to Mary as "full of grace" He would have used the same words He used for Stephen and Christ but He DID NOT.
What the article that you posted calls heresy, is what I believe with all my heart as a Catholic. I cherish it and try my best to live my life accordingly. Not every Catholic chooses to follow, but I do. Maybe if they read what the Church teaches in all its fullness, they would follow with joy and love. Maybe those who leave don't understand all the Church has to offer, often those who find it empty, or don't feel they get anything out of it, don't put as much into it as they should. It's a difficult road, but a joyous one if you make it the center of your life. Then God is always with you, and you with Him, and the Fruits of the Holy Spirit begin to fill you.
The article you posted was framed by the author as information for Evangelicals and Fundamentalists to promulgate against Catholicism. Do you promulgate the heresies of the Muslim faith, proselytizing to them? To Wiccans? Atheists? Satanic masses take place in public. Are you there preaching God to them?
I am a Catholic. You will not shake my Faith. I do not choose to impose my Faith on others. I state my truth with, "I believe." And I do, with all my heart.
God bless you!
Actually, you are operating with a false premise: “Christ is eternal.”
Jesus of Nazareth, or Jesus Christ (i.e., Jesus the Anointed), is NOT eternal. Jesus Christ was conceived in the womb of Mary, about 2000 years ago. Jesus of Nazareth, or Jesus Christ, BEGAN TO EXIST at that time.
Jesus of Nazareth is ONE PERSON. That Person is the eternal Word, or Son, of God the Father. He has existed from eternity in his divine nature. He began to exist in a human nature in the womb of Mary.
Is Mary the mother of one person, “the man,” and not the mother of some other person, “God”?
Jesus Christ is ONE PERSON. Thus, Mary cannot be mother of “the man Jesus” without being the mother of God.
Speaking of logic:
Mary is the mother of Jesus.
Jesus is God.
Thus:
Mary is the mother of God.
No one, ever, has propounded the idiotic notion that Mary is or was the mother of the eternal Triune Godhead. The title “Mother of God” has always meant only one thing: Mary is the mother of the Second Person of the Trinity by virtue of conceiving him in her womb so that he could begin to exist in a human nature.
Where did you get that myth from?
You have to be educated in Catholicism to understand. If you choose to interpret the Bible on your own, it won’t make sense.
“her immaculate conception, perpetual virginity, assumption into heaven, her Queenship, and her role in God’s plan of salvation as Co-redemptrix”
I appreciate these posts because I didn’t know Catholics actually believed these extreme things.
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I was raised Roman Catholic (NY) and was taught these very same things. I thought all Catholics believed these things, too, but found out later in life that wasn’t the case. I met Catholics from Northern Illinois who thought those ideas were wacky.
See post #62. Same old “Mary can’t be the mother of God because God is eternal.”
Only God's grace frees us from sin, original and otherwise.
But we all walked under sin and thus needed redemption. Mary being no different. Just because she is spoken of as having experienced favor is no reason to think she never walked in sin. All saints have been favored by God.
So Mary was “favored” with God’s grace, or grace had been “bestowed” on her; however, she was not “full” of grace. How much grace did God grant her, then? One-half of her capacity of grace? Two-thirds? I think you are standing on your head , semantically, to avoid asking yourself how she came by grace at all prior to Redemption without being specially gifted by God. And yes, to the Catholic understanding, being full of grace implies freedom from original and personal sin.
“Angels can’t be multiple places at one time.”
Putting limits on a being which is pure spirit? Of God wills it, it can and will be so.
See post #62. Same old “Mary can’t be the mother of God because God is eternal.”
So Mary was “favored” with God’s grace, or grace had been “bestowed” on her; however, she was not “full” of grace. How much grace did God grant her, then? One-half of her capacity of grace? Two-thirds? I think you are standing on your head , semantically, to avoid asking yourself how she came by grace at all prior to Redemption without being specially gifted by God. And yes, to the Catholic understanding, being full of grace implies freedom from original and personal sin.
So what?
Muslims, Mormons, and many others believe in false religions also. That doesn’t make it correct.
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