Mary Matters (Dr. Walter Martin on disbelief in the Mother of God)

Catholic Exchange ^ | JULY 26, 2014 | Tim Staples

[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.

[rwa265]

The angel Gabriel told Mary that the holy Child that she would conceive in her womb, give birth to, and name Jesus, was the Son of God. Given that the Son of God is God, this makes Mary the mother of God.

[terycarl]

.

[boatbums]

'If by the end of the day tomorrow (1/28/15), you can show me a Bible text that says that the apostles were not at the crucifixion, I will immediately donate an additional $100 to Free Republic...'"

It'd be a GREAT idea to just donate $100 to Free Republic anyway, right?!

I'm not betting you, but I'd like to know if this is this another RC trick question like, "Show me in the Bible where I can find the word "Trinity"".? Or, "show me where the the Bible says sola Scriptura" or "Bible alone"? Well, we don't have any specific verse that says, "none of the Apostles were at the crucifixion of Jesus". What we DO have, however, are passages from all four gospel accounts that indicate ONLY the women were present at the actual crucifixion and only the Gospel of John that mentions John was there beneath the cross as Jesus finally died. There's nothing that says the eleven WERE there, either. Here are the passages (note: Jesus tells the Apostles that they will ALL fall away and desert him):

Then Jesus told them, “This very night you will all fall away on account of me, for it is written: ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’ But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.” Peter replied, “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.” “Truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.” But Peter declared, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.” And all the other disciples said the same. (Matt. 26:31-35)

“You will all fall away,” Jesus told them, “for it is written: ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.” Peter declared, “Even if all fall away, I will not.” “Truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “today—yes, tonight—before the rooster crows twicee you yourself will disown me three times.” But Peter insisted emphatically, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.” And all the others said the same. (Mark 14:27-31)

“Am I leading a rebellion,” said Jesus, “that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I was with you, teaching in the temple courts, and you did not arrest me. But the Scriptures must be fulfilled.” Then everyone deserted him and fled. (Mark 14:48-50)

The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man.” When all the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away. But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things. (Luke 23:47-49)

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. (John 19:25-27)

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. (John 20:19-20)

[terycarl]

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the post above was the United States tax code.

[terycarl]

Lol. Some on here are really funny.

You're right...I love threads like this...I learn a lot and NEVER feel animosity toward anyone...it is a lot of fun and VERY entertaining!!!!! (I think God likes it too)...

[terycarl]

Nobody knows where she lived, where she died, or where she was buried. Even the apostles themselves never again even mentioned her.

she was probably assumed into Heaven by then...after all, would the Apostles have been so crass as to ignore her if she was there????....

[terycarl]

They have bet their lives on it. They have bet their eternity on it.

The really big bucks would say 2,015 years of history and truth beats about 60 years of what's happening now....

[terycarl]

All Christians at that time were Catholic. Why do you keep spreading that lie? And this lie: but from day one of Christianity, Catholics began to write the Bible

if they weren't Catholic, which "denomination" were they???

If, from day one the Catholic Christians hadn't started to write and save the Bible, they would have been derelict in their duties....they weren't!....say thanks!

[terycarl]

Another falsehood.

you are Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my CHURCH....

it was so nice of you protestants to come along one thousand six hundred years AFTER the fact to set us straight....THANKS!!!

[terycarl]

they were the only ones there What happened to the Jews, the Egyptians, etc????

Well I looked and looked and looked and sure enough, there were no Jewish versions of the new testament and I doubt very much whether or not the Egyptians would have compiled the old and new testament books into a Bible....Nope, must have been those pesky Catholics......there was no one else there to do it....God has His ways you know!

[Alamo-Girl]

Jesus was a Jew. The Apostles were all Jews...

[terycarl]

Let's see - Matthew was Jewish; Mark was Jewish; Luke was Gentile; John was Jewish; Paul was Jewish; James was Jewish; Peter was Jewish; Jude was Jewish... What were saying again about the Jews not writing the Bible? By my count, I can only see 2 books in the New Testament that were NOT written by Jews (Luke and Acts, both written by Luke).

So that means that you are still a Jew....NO, well once they became followers of Christ, they were Christians....that's what it means.

Christ was a Jew also, but I think that we can be fairly confident in now calling Him a Christian.......THINK.

[Mark17]

The really big bucks would say 2,015 years of history and truth beats about 60 years of what's happening now....

LOL. Go ahead, bet eternity on it. Maybe at the pearly gates, if you and St. Peter have mercy on me, you might have the power to let me in. 😇🆒

[Mark17]

The really big bucks would say 2,015 years of history and truth beats about 60 years of what's happening now....

LOL. Go ahead, bet eternity on it. Maybe at the pearly gates, if you and St. Peter have mercy on me, you might have the power to let me in. 😇🆒

[terycarl]

I guess what you're saying is ""It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Do they worship our God before they worship a God who doesn't exist or just do it in a poor way. My goodness, talk about a convoluted sentence.

Not convoluted at all...NO, they don't worship the God that we do, however, that makes them no less responsible to Him than we are. They will have a hard time explaining their goofy religion to Him when its time to do so and I don't think that their 21 virgins are going to help a lot. There is only one God....we are all accountable to Him....we are going about it the right way....they are REALLY taking the long way around.....maybe they'll make it, we are not to be the judge of that. I have trouble enough with my own salvation and have no time to worry about theirs!!!

[terycarl]

as written by who?? Mostly Jews were the writers of the Bible. Moses wrote the 1st 5 books sometime before 1400 BC. Was Moses Catholic? That refutes the falsehood that you keep posting that Catholics wrote the Bible.

everybody agrees that the old testament existed......I need to think of a word that you understand here.....transcribed, formulated, editors of, compiled....O.K., Lets go with that....The Catholics took the old testament from the Jews, wrote down EVERYTHING in the new testament and formulated...compiled the book that we all know today as THE BIBLE.....TA DA!!!!!!see how easy it is???

[CA Conservative]

Christ was a Jew also, but I think that we can be fairly confident in now calling Him a Christian.......THINK.

You are being willfully ignorant (or just ignorant). Being a Jew is both a religious and ethnic identity. My wife is Jewish, but also a Christian. The apostles did not stop being Jews when they were saved - they were just no longer under the Mosaic law (Old Testament) but under grace (New Testament).

And since "Christian" means "follower of Christ", Jesus couldn't actually be called a Christian, could He? He doesn't follow Himself, after all...

[CA Conservative]

It comes right after the one where you show that she sinned...

"For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God..."

Your turn!

[Mark17]

The really big bucks would say 2,015 years of history and truth beats about 60 years of what's happening now....

LOL. Go ahead, bet eternity on it. Maybe at the pearly gates, if you and St. Peter have mercy on me, you might have the power to let me in. 😇🆒

[terycarl]

Have a nice day, it is now 12 noon where I am, and it's hot, like near 90. 🆒

I could recommend that you get used to the heat....but that wouldn't be prudent, would it..?????:):)