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.
Iscool; don-o
“”First Adam did not become something other than a man. We are not given a very much description about what First Adam was like; but, dare we to say that Second Adam discarded His Manhood? Would that not mean that God has despised the work of His own hands?
You’re right...We do not know much about the 1st Adam...We do know he had no sin, no pain, no death and perfect weather, before the fall...God was not too happy with the work of his own hands after the fall of Adam and Eve...
Gen_6:6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. “”
Jesus is exactly like Adam. That is why He can be called the second Adam and God can compare Him with Adam as He does in Romans 5.
God could not punish Adam, and or us, for not living a sinless life if He could not prove His creation, man, could live a sinless life. Jesus is that proof.
May God our Father lead us to His truth, BVB
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.using the kind of flimsy logic displayed in your post about the literal words contained in those two Bible texts, you would have to say that either Luke or John were lying about the last earthly words of Jesus Christ on the cross. However, the truth is way beyond that kind of simplistic, faulty reasoning. You have to go beyond that erroneous "literal" obsession, in order to get to the truth.
Now if you want to get farther and more deeply into the truth which Fr. Mitch briefly explained in his answer to that caller, I urge you (and all interested lurkers) to listen to the complete fuller explanation given by Scott Hahn in the audio at the following link:
(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)?
Tell me the exact Bible text that says that the apostles were not with Christ on the cross, as you claim in your post.
(Please don't appeal to "tradition" - just give me the Bible text which clearly states that the apostles were not there.)
(And you have the audacity to talk about "pathetic distortion of scripture"!)
If you really want to understand more fully what Fr. Mitch Pacwa was referring to in that short video clip, instead of spewing baseless and bitterly vitriolic verbal assaults on true and honorable men of God, then go to the link shown in "post #902", and listen to the whole audio there.
Matthew 1:25
And he knew her not till she brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.
It is not normal marital relations for newlyweds to not have sex during an entire pregnancy. Why would Joseph abstain all that time? It must have been unusual, or it wouldn't have been mentioned.
Love
O2
There are a number of different ways to interpret those Bible texts (as the many differing English translations strongly attest), and I think it is obvious that you've chosen the wrong interpretation, and that is the reason why you did not really want to use the Greek like you said you were going to use, but wanted instead to use the NIVUK version that added some words to the Greek that were obviously not there already, changing the meaning of the text so that it more closely matched your own preconceived misconceptions.
(Like I said in post #587, it is always a good idea to stick to the truth.)
Is there a disconnect here on the concept of Trinity? I was under the impression that Trinity was not one of the contested doctrines for non-Catholics, but I could be mistaken. For any that don’t believe in ‘Three Persons in One God’, this is never going to be worked out.
For those who do believe in the concept of Trinity, I don’t think there is as much disagreement here as it appears. Catholics do not believe that Mary gave birth to the entire Trinity, but that she gave birth to God Incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ.
The Trinity as a concept is a mystery and beyond logical explanation. That is why it requires faith to believe it. One God who is 3 individual Persons but still only one Being is not logical or comprehensible to the human brain. Jesus is one part of the Trinity yet joined completely with the Father and the Spirit into one Being. “The Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
I have never in any encounter with Catholic education/educators/literature/etc., heard anyone say that Mary existed before God the Trinity. I have no idea why anyone would think we believe that. But she was the mother of Jesus, who is God Incarnate, and was fully human and fully God at the same time, so she was the mother of God. So when we say ‘Mother of God’, we of course mean ‘Mother of Jesus’. And it is because of this role that we adore her, just as we adore our own mothers, because she is our mother. Jesus gave her to us and us to her.
Jesus was God before He was conceived, before He was born, when He was born, and He was God when He died, otherwise, why did God send his Son to die for us, if a purely human death would suffice?
Of course we don’t believe that God the Trinity was born or died, but we know those things happened to Jesus, who was fully God. God in the form of Jesus died on the cross, but He is not dead because He overcame death and rose again. That was the whole point. I don’t understand it, but I believe it.
Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. Those are active verbs. His body was not brought back to life, He rose. He ascended of His own power into heaven. He never lost His divinity, it wouldn’t have been possible, as He was God Incarnate, and God can’t stop being God.
We cannot fully comprehend this. We just have to take it on faith, and I think is one of the things we will finally understand once we get to Heaven.
Love,
O2
p.s.
Catholic belief is that Mary was assumed, she was brought up to heaven by God because she is not God and couldn’t do it herself.
p.p.s.
Mary could have said ‘no’. Just because God knew she wouldn’t doesn’t mean she didn’t have the free will to refuse.
Also, CynicalBear, just to make it plainer and clearer, here is "2 Peter 1:20" from your post #298 - linked here (which you said was your own Greek translation, declaring "Now let's look at it from the Greek."):
------------------------------------------------------------and here is the New International Version - UK (NIVUK) of 2 Peter 1:20-21 - linked here:Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.------------------------------------------------------------
2 Peter 1:20-21 - "CynicalBear's personal Greek translation provided in post #298"
------------------------------------------------------------Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.------------------------------------------------------------
2 Peter 1:20-21 - "New International Version - UK (NIVUK)"
This is a quote from the article at the beginning of this post:
"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. "
Perhaps the Catholic Church does not define Mary in this way, but the author, who is identified as the "Director of Apologetics and Evangelization here at Catholic Answers" certainly defines her in that manner.
How is it contrary to Scripture to say that Mary was conceived without sin, and committed no personal sin?
"For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)
In Luke Chapter 1, Mary refers to "God my savior". Someone without sin has no need of a savior.
There are many more scriptures we can throw out on the subject, but it is late and I'm tired. And the ones listed here are sufficient to make the point.
With regard to her being conceived without sin, there is no scripture to even suggest such a thing. That is a concept created out of whole cloth. The ONLY time the Bible mentions a virgin giving birth is in reference to Christ himself. Since Mary had a human mother and human father, she also was heir to the same sin nature we all have.
Do you have any evidence that this sentence was written in order to resolve the question of whether Mary was sinless? Is Paul discussing Mary's alleged sinlessness at this point in Romans?
Is Jesus a sinner? The verse says ALL have sinned.
Are infants sinners? Are the retarded sinners? What sins have they committed? The verse says ALL have sinned.
In Luke Chapter 1, Mary refers to "God my savior". Someone without sin has no need of a savior.
The statement, "Someone without sin has no need of a savior" is a gratuitous assumption.
The Catholic Church teaches that Mary was preserved from Original Sin by the grace of Christ's death and resurrection. I.e., Mary was saved by Jesus Christ. Thus, there is no contradiction between Mary's sinlessness and her having "a savior."
No matter how many times you explain that “God” in “Mother of God” refers to Jesus, who is God, metmom will always insist that “God” in “Mother of God” refers to the eternal Triune Godhead.
That’s right. The Fathers of the Church, all Popes, all councils, all theologians, all Catholics, are low-grade morons who believe that a human woman existed before the Creator of the universe.
metmom KNOWS that all Catholics are this stupid. metmom KNOWS that when they say a human woman could not have pre-existed the eternal, infinite, Triune God, they are just lying about what they really believe.
metmom is smarter than Augustine, Albert, Aquinas, etc. And besides, they were all liars, because metmom knows what they REALLY believed.
How DARE you claim that that nasty Joseph had his way with her!
LOL, I know I am. It's a tough job, but someone has to be the one. 😄 I go round and round with my brother in law about it. He is beginning to think maybe I have some idea what I am talking about, which I do, of course. Joseph and Mary had nice kids, among them James and Jude. Where have we heard those names before? Like maybe they wrote New Testament books, just maybe ? I thnk it was this James who was the leader of the Jerusalem church, not Peter. Am I on a roll? 😄😃😀
Catholics do not hold that Mary was born of a virgin. We hold that she was conceived by the usual method, but without original sin because God gave her the gift of salvation out of time so that she could be the perfect vessel for Him. She did need a savior. She just got one before anyone else did. Because God can do that. The time thing.
I don’t know exactly where it comes from, you are right that there is no scripture explaining it, but it is beautiful. This one I choose to accept without analysis. Sola scriptura people won’t, and I find that sad.
Love,
O2
I know, and I only post in these threads when I am in a very good mood, because I know that many here will never really listen and I don’t want to fight.
Question? always. Argue? sometimes. Fight? no (well I try).
I post as much for the lurkers (which I am usually) so they can see a reasonable, logical response to how Catholics are described and perhaps be inspired to look at things differently.
Love,
O2
Mary is not sinless because Scripture tells us that ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and that grace is for sinners. Where sin abounds, grace much more abounds. Therefore is Mary were sinless, she would not need God's grace.
Additionally, she acknowledged her need of a savior with her own words, calling God her Savior.
She was not perpetually virgin as she had other children, who are referred to with the Greek word adelphos, meaning *Brother* (not cousin) and are named by name in Scripture.
Psalm69:8 I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother's sons.
Matthew 1:24-25 When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.
Matthew 12:46-47 “While He was still speaking to the multitudes, behold, His mother “and brothers” were standing outside, seeking to speak to Him. And someone said to Him, “Behold, Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside seeking to speak to You.”
Matthew 13:55 “Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not His mother called Mary, and ‘His brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?”
Mark 6:2-3 “And when the Sabbath had come, He began to teach in the synagogue; and the many listeners were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things, and what is this wisdom given to Him, and such miracles as these performed by His hands?... “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and ‘brother of James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon? Are not ‘His sisters’ here with us?”
John 2:12 “After this He went down to Capernaum, He and His mother, and ‘His brothers’, and His disciples; and there they stayed a few days.”
Acts 1:14 “These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, ‘and with His brothers’.”
1 Corinthians 9:4-5 “Do we not have a right to eat and drink? Do we not have a right to take along a believing wife, even as the rest of the apostles, ‘and’ the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas?”
Galatians 1:19 But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, ‘the Lord’s brother’..
Strong's Concordance
adelphos: a brother
Original Word: ἀδελφός, οῦ, ὁ
Part of Speech: Noun, Masculine
Transliteration: adelphos
Phonetic Spelling: (ad-el-fos')
Short Definition: a brother
Definition: a brother, member of the same religious community, especially a fellow-Christian.
Strong's Concordance
http://biblehub.com/greek/80.htm
adelphos: a brother
Original Word: ἀδελφός, οῦ, ὁ
Part of Speech: Noun, Masculine
Transliteration: adelphos
Phonetic Spelling: (ad-el-fos')
Short Definition: a brother
Definition: a brother, member of the same religious community, especially a fellow-Christian.
Here is a link to the occurrences of the Greek word *adelphos*.
http://biblehub.com/greek/80.htm
The word *sister* (adelphe) in the Greek is the same.
http://biblehub.com/greek/79.htm
The word used is *brother* not *cousin*.
It can't mean a member of the same religious community in the context in which they occur, because then that would mean every man in Israel could be identified as Jesus' brother. So that would not identify Jesus as anyone in particular's brother.
It's not going to mean *brother in Christ* as that concept was not yet in place and the Jews, who knew Jesus as a Jew and knew His brothers as Jews, would not even begin to understand the new birth and what being in Christ meant.
They didn't even understand who JESUS was, much less being a *brother in Christ*.
The only definition left then, is to mean physical brother.
And it would not be *cousin*.
The word for *relative* that is used for Elizabeth is *suggenes*, not *adelphe*.
http://biblehub.com/greek/4773.htm
Strong's Concordance
suggenes: akin, a relative
Original Word: συγγενής, ές
Part of Speech: Adjective
Transliteration: suggenes
Phonetic Spelling: (soong-ghen-ace')
Short Definition: akin, a relative
Definition: akin to, related; subst: fellow countryman, kinsman.
Now, it's your turn.
Tell us WHY it's necessary for Mary to be sinless and perpetually virgin, and how that was decided when there's no Scriptural support for it.
And what difference does that make?
Sinless is sinless.
Sure we do.
See, that's where Catholic's ignorance of Scripture is so prominently displayed.
There are accounts in the Bible of glorified people.
Moses and Elijah on the Mt of Transfiguration, and the descriptions of Jesus in Revelation.
My *crazy* ideas are based on the Bible that you claim the world should thank Catholicism for.
Try reading it for yourself some time.
Then that puts Mary above God having given birth to Him.
And included the DAMNING words about it's seven churches in Asia.
Silly gooses!
Yet you do NOT believe the words from Jesus own lips when He said, "You vipers!" that those guys turned into SNAKES!
Catholics are really low when it comes to consistency.
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