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.
In my spare time I looked up your information source...a book by E.R.Chamberlin with a 3.7 rating and available many places on the internet for $1.00 (Kindle version for $.99)
I could locate no information at all on the author to see what his qualifications were. The Popes described were in officw for a total of 71 years and 134 days. The office of the Pope has existed for 2,015 years and 30 days so their average isn't that bad.....71/2015 isn't a real large fraction.
The main problem with the ones who caused the most concern was that they were hand in hand with crooked political figures of their time....their moral failures were just that...men being evil men.
It is aan interesting insight however and I'll read a little more about them
Another fraction of interest is 8/266....that's bad Popes over all Popes, another miniscule fraction....not good of course, but I'd bet that the fraction of bad presidents/all presidents would be worse and this country is only a little over 200 years old.
E.R.Chamberlin also wrote Antichrist and the Millennium....that also sounds like a real winner.
You are right....in the middle ages there were perverted forms of the Bible or renditions of portions of it which the church rightly condemned.
Remember, in those days the church was the ONLY protector of the Christian Bible and they became VERY testy when heretics challenged their authority. They feared that peopple were being led away from Christianity toward pagan or otherwise errant beliefs. This has nothing to do with the reformation, it was well before that and those who opposed the church were in no way Christian.
The 10 hundreds, 11 hundreds and 12 hundreds were when most of this took place.
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You’re thrashing in the deepest of darkness.
Yehova’s Sabbaths have no relationship to his Months.
The Sabbath has run continuously, every seven days, sunset to sunset from the first day of creation, without interruption.
The only eighth day that has significance is The Last Great Day, the eighth day from the beginning of Sukkot, the 23rd day of the seventh month.
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Rome has set the world’s timekeeping..
Scripture has a different calendar. Layered throughout scripture..
The two are not the same..
One is a counterfeit that leads others to counterfeit worship..
We have a choice... sola scriptura or sola Roma..
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Passover, 6015 begins at sundown, April 3, Unleavened Bread begins 24 hours later, which will be a lunar eclipse. Firstfruits, at its conclusion at sundown, April 11.
This will be the first time since the temple was sacked that Orthodox Judaism will celebrate Passover on the Biblically correct day.
I read that if you owned one, they gave you a few days to turn it in or you would be arrested. I don’t understand why people keep denying it.
Now you're just fabricating things! These weren't perverted forms of the Bible.
I was thinking of Christ’s rule as described in Jeremiah31:33”But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34”They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”…
Explain Ezekiel 46 and his detailing three different days..
New moon, six work days and sabbath?
There are three different days..
Do have a concordance?
I would like you to explain how new moons, Sabbaths and feasts are clumped ‘together’ in about ten different verses under ‘moons 2320.
Scripture isolates those days as different..
And Ezekiel confirms this..
What is the new moon if it isn’t one of those six work days or the weekly Sabbath?
The world can’t explain it.. they don’t know how to categorize a new moon day..
He categorized it as an appointed time.. a time for banquets, feasting, special offerings and the markets to be closed..
Sounds a lot like a sabbath.. but He himse
f differentiates them from Sabbaths..
I didn’t.. He did.. I am just taking an inductive view of scripture and not a deductive view
And when the moon phase is 29.5 days on average, His calendar works perfectly through that..
Every one of His months has four Sabbaths.. one new moon day that starts His months.. 24 work days and four Sabbaths..
(A little different in the 7th month but we discuaaed why earlier)
And then a search for the new moon on the 29th day, at sunset of His Sabbath.. there are people who do that in Israel (and around the world) every cycle..
They don’t all see the Kingdom calendar, but they do see how important new moon days are to our Sovereign..
Those feasts that land on a full moon isn’t an accident.. that is what happens 14-15 days from the new moon..
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You’re the main Grace nullifier here.
Grace is solely for those that have a heart for his way. If you don’t love his way, it can only be because you don’t know him. Love is the deciding factor; as he said, those that love him keep his commandments.
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Ezekiel 46 has absolutely nothing to do with timing of the Sabbaths.
The opening of the chapter is explaining which days the east gate will be shut or opened.
It is normally open only on the Sabbath, but the new moon is an exception to that rule.
A little reading comprehension would be helpful! Verse three and six make it clear that new moons and Sabbaths are two separate things.
Very little of your posts make any sense on this.
Study Leviticus to understand the meanings of the offerings.
You have shown yourself to be the world so far.
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(We do know, however, that in his curiosity, Peter had tried once before to "hide in a crowd", but was discovered by someone who recognized him. We also know there was probably some kind of sizeable crowd on the outside edges of the hill where Jesus was crucified, witnessing the crucifixions from a distance, and we know that with the kind of clothing worn in the Holy Land (both then and now), it is relatively easy to "hide in a crowd", if one is more careful than Peter apparently was in the courtyard. John and some of the women were up closer to the cross.)
And who are the"false teachers"?
PROTESTANTS!!!
Yeah, they were...there were NO OTHER CHRISTIANS THERE...the reformation didn't take place for another 300 years...
Baloney. Catholics are the ones who do not go by what the Bible says. I think we have seen that proven on these threads.
Is "prophecy of Scripture" prophecy?
Is "prophecy of Scripture" Scripture?
If the answer to both of those questions is "yes", then "prophecy of Scripture" is "Scripture and prophecies"!
The Bible also says that tombs were opened and many were raised from the dead...I'd kind of like to know what they looked like and where they all went...
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