Posted on 08/24/2014 4:45:06 PM PDT by NKP_Vet
Let's see what the Father of Protestantism thought about the Blessed Mother.....
Despite the radicalism of early Protestantism toward many ancient Catholic "distinctives," such as the Communion of the Saints, Penance, Purgatory, Infused Justification, the Papacy, the priesthood, sacramental marriage, etc., it may surprise many to discover that Martin Luther was rather conservative in some of his doctrinal views, such as on baptismal regeneration, the Eucharist, and particularly the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Luther indeed was quite devoted to Our Lady, and retained most of the traditional Marian doctrines which were held then and now by the Catholic Church. This is often not well-documented in Protestant biographies of Luther and histories of the 16th century, yet it is undeniably true. It seems to be a natural human tendency for latter-day followers to project back onto the founder of a movement their own prevailing viewpoints.
Since Lutheranism today does not possess a very robust Mariology, it is usually assumed that Luther himself had similar opinions. We shall see, upon consulting the primary sources (i.e., Luther's own writings), that the historical facts are very different. We shall consider, in turn, Luther's position on the various aspects of Marian doctrine.
Along with virtually all important Protestant Founders (e.g., Calvin, Zwingli, Cranmer), Luther accepted the traditional belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary (Jesus had no blood brothers), and her status as the Theotokos (Mother of God):
Christ, ..was the only Son of Mary, and the Virgin Mary bore no children besides Him... "brothers" really means "cousins" here, for Holy Writ and the Jews always call cousins brothers. (Sermons on John, chapters 1-4.1537-39).
He, Christ, our Savior, was the real and natural fruit of Mary's virginal womb.. .This was without the cooperation of a man, and she remained a virgin after that. (Ibid.)
God says... "Mary's Son is My only Son." Thus Mary is the Mother of God. (Ibid.).
God did not derive his divinity from Mary; but it does not follow that it is therefore wrong to say that God was born of Mary, that God is Mary's Son, and that Mary is God's mother...She is the true mother of God and bearer of God...Mary suckled God, rocked God to sleep, prepared broth and soup for God, etc. For God and man are one person, one Christ, one Son, one Jesus. not two Christs. . .just as your son is not two sons...even though he has two natures, body and soul, the body from you, the soul from God alone. (On the Councils and the Church, 1539).
Probably the most astonishing Marian belief of Luther is his acceptance of Mary's Immaculate Conception, which wasn't even definitively proclaimed as dogma by the Catholic Church until 1854. Concerning this question there is some dispute, over the technical aspects of medieval theories of conception and the soul, and whether or not Luther later changed his mind. Even some eminent Lutheran scholars, however, such as Arthur Carl Piepkorn (1907-73) of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, maintain his unswerving acceptance of the doctrine. Luther's words follow:
It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary's soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God's gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin" (Sermon: "On the Day of the Conception of the Mother of God," 1527).
She is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin—something exceedingly great. For God's grace fills her with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil. (Personal {"Little"} Prayer Book, 1522).
Later references to the Immaculate Conception appear in his House sermon for Christmas (1533) and Against the Papacy of Rome (1545). In later life (he died in 1546), Luther did not believe that this doctrine should be imposed on all believers, since he felt that the Bible didn't explicitly and formally teach it. Such a view is consistent with his notion of sola Scriptura and is similar to his opinion on the bodily Assumption of the Virgin, which he never denied—although he was highly critical of what he felt were excesses in the celebration of this Feast. In his sermon of August 15, 1522, the last time he preached on the Feast of the Assumption, he stated:
There can he no doubt that the Virgin Mary is in heaven. How it happened we do not know. And since the Holy Spirit has told us nothing about it, we can make of it no article of faith... It is enough to know that she lives in Christ.
Luther held to the idea and devotional practice of the veneration of Mary and expressed this on innumerable occasions with the most effusive language:
The veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart. (Sermon, September 1, 1522).
[She is the] highest woman and the noblest gem in Christianity after Christ. ..She is nobility, wisdom, and holiness personified. We can never honor her enough. Still honor and praise must be given to her in such a way as to injure neither Christ nor the Scriptures. (Sermon, Christmas, 1531).
No woman is like you. You are more than Eve or Sarah, blessed above all nobility, wisdom, and sanctity. (Sermon, Feast of the Visitation. 1537).
One should honor Mary as she herself wished and as she expressed it in the Magnificat. She praised God for his deeds. How then can we praise her? The true honor of Mary is the honor of God, the praise of God's grace.. .Mary is nothing for the sake of herself, but for the sake of Christ...Mary does not wish that we come to her, but through her to God. (Explanation of the Magnificat, 1521).
Luther goes even further, and gives the Blessed Virgin the exalted position of "Spiritual Mother" for Christians, much the same as in Catholic piety:
It is the consolation and the superabundant goodness of God, that man is able to exult in such a treasure. Mary is his true Mother, Christ is his brother. God is his father. (Sermon. Christmas, 1522)
Mary is the Mother of Jesus and the Mother of all of us even though it was Christ alone who reposed on her knees...If he is ours, we ought to be in his situation; there where he is, we ought also to be and all that he has ought to be ours, and his mother is also our mother. (Sermon, Christmas, 1529).
Luther did strongly condemn any devotional practices which implied that Mary was in any way equal to our Lord or that she took anything away from His sole sufficiency as our Savior. This is, and always has been, the official teaching of the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, Luther often "threw out the baby with the bath water," when it came to criticizing erroneous emphases and opinions which were prevalent in his time—falsely equating them with Church doctrine. His attitude towards the use of the "Hail Mary" prayer (the first portion of the Rosary) is illustrative. In certain polemical utterances he appears to condemn its recitation altogether, but he is only forbidding a use of Marian devotions apart from heartfelt faith, as the following two citations make clear:
Whoever possesses a good (firm) faith, says the Hail Mary without danger! Whoever is weak in faith can utter no Hail Mary without danger to his salvation. (Sermon, March 11, 1523).
Our prayer should include the Mother of God.. .What the Hail Mary says is that all glory should be given to God, using these words: "Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus Christ. Amen!" You see that these words are not concerned with prayer but purely with giving praise and honor.. .We can use the Hail Mary as a meditation in which we recite what grace God has given her. Second, we should add a wish that everyone may know and respect her...He who has no faith is advised to refrain from saying the Hail Mary. (Personal Prayer Book, 1522).
To summarize, it is apparent that Luther was extraordinarily devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, which is notable in light of his aversion to so many other "Papist" or "Romish" doctrines, as he was wont to describe them. His major departure occurs with regard to the intercession and invocation of the saints, which he denied, in accord with the earliest systematic Lutheran creed, the Augsburg Confession of 1530 (Article 21).
His views of Mary as Mother of God and as ever-Virgin were identical to those in Catholicism, and his opinions on the Immaculate Conception, Mary's "Spiritual Motherhood" and the use of the "Hail Mary" were substantially the same. He didn't deny the Assumption (he certainly didn't hesitate to rail against doctrines he opposed!), and venerated Mary in a very touching fashion which, as far as it goes, is not at all contrary to Catholic piety.
Therefore, it can be stated without fear of contradiction that Luther's Mariology is very close to that of the Catholic Church today, far more than it is to the theology of modern-day Lutheranism. To the extent that this fact is dealt with at all by Protestants, it is usually explained as a "holdover" from the early Luther's late medieval Augustinian Catholic views ("everyone has their blind spots," etc.). But this will not do for those who are serious about consulting Luther in order to arrive at the true "Reformation heritage" and the roots of an authentic Protestantism. For if Luther's views here can be so easily rationalized away, how can the Protestant know whether he is trustworthy relative to his other innovative doctrines such as extrinsic justification by faith alone and sola Scriptura?
It appears, once again, that the truth about important historical figures is almost invariably more complex than the "legends" and overly-simplistic generalizations which men often at the remove of centuries—create and accept uncritically.
I don't remember a list of "inspired documents" compiled by the Apostles that includes any of the contested books.
Do you have such a list by an Apostle? To be clear, they are listed here:
Matthew 10:1-4 “And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction. The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.”
Since Judas was removed, please include Matthias, who was chosen based on this criteria:
Acts 1:21-22; “So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.”
Please also include the final Apostle chosen by Christ - The Apostle Paul.
Please show us the list of inspired Scriptures that an Apostle compiled.
Obviously, there is no such list.
It was not only right to remove books that were not part of the Hebrew Scriptures and were uninspired, over the past few hundred years that decision has been revisited many times with the same result. The Holy Spirit has indeed accomplished His work of preserving His Word.
One final question...
What important doctrine is included in those books alone that is important to you personally?
” if you don’t get the entire truth that John mentions — Holy Tradition. The things that there was no room to write down.”
Please post an Official List of Inspired Traditions. Surely there is such an Official List. Please share it and demonstrate each tradition was in practice during before 100 AD.
“My whole life and His Word are joined. And to go back to something you said, I was not interested in fellowship *instead* of Christ but because of Christ. I believed in Jesus since I was young but without more mature Christians to help me along, even just to point me to the Bible, I didn’t know where to turn or what to do, and tried out so much that just came along.”
Thank you for sharing your life story here and praise to God for His faithfulness and love for you!
“The Bible Itself declares that it doesn’t contain everything.”
God’s sovereign choice NOT to include what was not needed by the Church and by Christians.
Like Cracker Jacks?
You haven’t said anything about how Catholic Communion is personal to you, just that it is. For evangelicals what Communion means is the Gospel. It’s us being brought into the Last Supper, with the understanding the apostles didn’t fully have, but we do, that it was necessary for God to sacrifice His Son, who did so of His own choice, for us to be saved. Jesus shedding His blood and having His body broken for us demonstrates a divine love that we now can share in. It’s the beauty of the Lord that has been revealed to those who have a relationship with Him. And spiritually, we feed off Him in what He did for us in order to have life.
Nobody ever said that the Bible contains everything.
Show me ONE post from a non-Catholic that states that the Bible tells us EVERYTHING.
Scripture does, however, contain everything we need so that the man of God is .
2 Timothy 3:14-17 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
And all that is really needed to learn for salvation is found in the book of John.
John 20:30-31 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Additionally, that does not give anyone the right to make up stuff as they go and claim it's true simply because the Bible doesn't say it didn't happen.
That is not the phrase *mother of God with us*.
She is NEVER referred to by that title.
The only reference to her is *Mary, (the) mother of Jesus*.
Got a link to that post? Got a link to that anywhere?
Or can we just chalk it up to desperation in trying to deny the obvious, that Luther not only didn't throw anything out, but rather included a translation of the books of the Apocrypha?
I wonder which is worse...calling Jesus a liar or lying about people calling Jesus a liar???
God doesn't make the stupid mistakes that are found in the Apocryphal books (i.e., The book of Judith incorrectly says that Nebuchadnezzar was the king of the Assyrians when he was the king of the Babylonians; Baruch 6:2 says the Jews would serve in Babylon for seven generations where Jer. 25:11 says it was for 70 years.) He also doesn't contradict other Scripture by condoning using magic (Tobit 6:5-7, smoke from a fish's heart, when burned, drives away evil spirits), that the giving of alms saves us (Tobit 4:11, "For alms deliver from all sin, and from death, and will not suffer the soul to go into darkness."; Tobit 12:9, "For alms delivereth from death, and the same is that which purgeth away sins.) or money as an offering for the sins of the dead (2 Maccabbees 12:43, "And making a gathering, he sent twelve thousand drachmas of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection.)
But, like I have said to you before, you can treasure those extra books to your heart's content, but you cannot pass judgment on the souls of people who can tell the difference between the words of God and those of fallible men.
**Show me ONE post from a non-Catholic that states that the Bible tells us EVERYTHING.**
LOL!
There are many.
I have my Bible.
Bible Alone
Just a couple of examples.
None of them ever did which means either Jesus Christ was just joshin' when He promised that the Holy Spirit would lead them to all Truth or that the Holy Spirit did not lead the Apostles to all Truth and therefor is imperfect and cannot be a part of the Holy Trinity.
Anyone who insists that the anti-Christ Pharisee Approved Luther Subset of Scripture is the complete Bible has to believe one of those two things, that Christ was just joshin' or that there is no Holy Trinity since the Holy Spirit is imperfect and cannot be part of the Holy Trinity.
But, at least we agree that Scripture Alone contradicts Scripture and Faith Alone contradicts Scripture.
Where do any of the Apostles say ANYTHING about those Apocryphal books? Where did Jesus quote any of them? Seeing as they WERE Jews, themselves, and unto the Jews were given the "oracles of God", why would they have ever accepted extraneous Greek writings on the same level as the accepted-by-everyone-from-the-start sacred Scriptures? Do these seven books getting tacked onto a Greek translation inter-testamental section of the Bible somehow magically MAKE them God-breathed Scripture? If you think so, you are the one questioning the Holy Spirit, not me.
None of them ever did which means either Jesus Christ was just joshin' when He promised that the Holy Spirit would lead them to all Truth or that the Holy Spirit did not lead the Apostles to all Truth and therefor is imperfect and cannot be a part of the Holy Trinity.
None of them ever quoted from the Apocrypha, they never prefaced a quote with "it is written..." or "thus sayeth the Lord..." and, seeing as these extra books do not come anywhere near the caliber of what God-breathed Scripture looks like, we can be assured that they DIDN'T come from the Holy Spirit but the minds of men. So, the Holy Spirit IS leading us AND them into all truth because they never received these books as from God in the first place! Why isn't this getting through to you?
Anyone who insists that the anti-Christ Pharisee Approved Luther Subset of Scripture is the complete Bible has to believe one of those two things, that Christ was just joshin' or that there is no Holy Trinity since the Holy Spirit is imperfect and cannot be part of the Holy Trinity.
Ridiculous conclusion! I supposed you would say Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Origen and Jerome are guilty of the same thing then? They rejected those books as inspired by God. Do you even know that the Septuagint contained 15 extra books, and not just the disputed 7??? If their presence in the Septuagint was somehow proof that they WERE canonical, then why weren't ALL fifteen included in the Catholic bible? Why doesn't it also contain 1 and 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Mannaseh, for example?
I guess you could accuse Jesus of denying the Holy Trinity and saying the Holy Spirit was imperfect since even He spoke of the sacred Scriptures in Luke 11:51 and Matthew 23:55 when he refers to the “the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah” affirming the first book of the Hebrew scripture as Genesis, and the last book as II Chronicles. This affirmation demonstrates the Hebrew “Canon” was closed by the time of Malachi in 425 B.C. Not to mention, there is no evidence that the Septuagint of the first century contained the Apocrypha. The earliest Greek manuscripts, which contain them, date from the 4th Century and not every copy matches the list of books within other copies. (Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Vaticanus)http://www.truthnet.org/Bible-Origins/6_The_Apocrypha_The_Septugint/index.htm
Where do you find Jesus or any of the Apostles teaching that the Apocryphal books are the inspired word of God??? Making such a big deal over seven books that have been disputed over their place as sacred Scripture is far more about the authority of the Roman Catholic church than it is about the authority of God's word. Nobody is fooled by this joshing you are dishing out!
I think it is worse to falsely accuse someone of calling Jesus a liar when that person has done no such thing. Jesus did not misspeak and the Holy Spirit DOES lead us into all truth. That includes knowing that the seven extra books Catholics tacked onto the Bible and officially declared "inspired" is NOT proof that those books ARE from God.
But, at least we agree that Scripture Alone contradicts Scripture and Faith Alone contradicts Scripture.
Except that we don't and it doesn't!
I’d guess being deceived enough to make EITHER of those statements.
That's the OTHER cereal.
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