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.
Can you think of any other way to ask a question to evade the issue that the Holy Spirit did NOT refer to Mary as “mother of God”? You’re starting to sound like “did God really say”.
Nobody ever denied that Mary played a unique role in history of salvation.
Only one woman could ever bear the Messiah.
HOWEVER, that does in no way justify all the extraneous teachings and doctrines and characteristics that have been attributed to her over the centuries.
It's always best to stick with what's found in Scripture and not go beyond that into speculation and rationalization. That will surely lead into error, as it has in all the stuff added to Mary that has NO basis more than wishful thinking.
I’m not certain I follow you here. Are you saying that Mary was never pregnant by God the Father and that Jesus wasn’t born the normal, natural human way from womb to cervix to vaginal canal, umbilical cord, placenta, etc.?
Hebrews 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
Deserves repeating.....
Are you a modalist?
When Mary gave birth to God, becoming His mother, where was He?
Was He still in heaven?
What part of Please show where scripture uses the words “mother of God” are you having trouble with?
It doesn't say "pray on to another".
God doesn't waste his time and fool with human logic...God says to stay away from it...
Thank you for that.
...”At what point did Jesus cease to be the man who was born in Bethlehem”...
He rose from the dead....that changes everything!
Might be a good idea to revisit the resurrection and what that means.
Sorry, it has a basis in the Sacred Tradition of the Church, from the time of the apostles to today. We doubtless will never agree on this or any other Catholic teaching not spelled out literally in the bible. However, I will pray that the Blessed Virgin will lead you to her and through her to a better understanding of her Son.
You were ascribing motives to that activity outside of consideration for how those things which she brought from the CCC (catechism-Catholic-Church) would compare to your own assertions as to what the [Roman] Catholic Church teaches.
God bless you!
Grateful
You call Mary the Mother of God a sinner, so logically Jesus would be conceived in sin. Why wouldn’t God give a special grace to Mary so that she was not conceived in sin so that sin would not affect Jesus? Why would The angel Gabriel said, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). The phrase “full of grace” is a translation of the Greek word kecharitomene. It therefore expresses a characteristic quality of Mary.
We also know of another very prominent exception to the rule: Jesus (Heb. 4:15). So if Paul’s statement in Romans 3 includes an exception for the New Adam (Jesus), one may argue that an exception for the New Eve (Mary) can also be made.
The objection is also raised that if Mary were without sin, she would be equal to God. In the beginning, God created Adam, Eve, and the angels without sin, but none were equal to God. Most of the angels never sinned, and all souls in heaven are without sin. This does not detract from the glory of God, but manifests it by the work he has done in sanctifying his creation. Sinning does not make one human. On the contrary, it is when man is without sin that he is most fully what God intends him to be.
I say it’s the most dangerous because it is a perversion of true scripture having added beliefs not contained in scripture and including paganism condemned in scripture. Yet it purports to be the only true religion with just enough truth to deceive.
If you were speaking of the dogma referred to as "Immaculate Conception" then you are simply incorrect in that having come "from the time of the Apostles".
Those of the RCC who are more in-the-know do confess that the teaching as it is now --- is nowhere to be found among the "Sacred Tradition" as that can be discerned to have been at the time of the Apostles, but instead have developed myriad ways of explaining how what came to be by way of "development" --- was [allegedly] there all along --- even though for many centuries it was not recognized, which by implication results in the earliest centuries Christians being uniformly ignorant in comparison to latter-day Know-it-Alls among the later centuries RCC -- on a host of issues.
Thank you Boatbums.
You mentioned they have a blindness they cannot see regarding their devotion to their mary. ...and for that a hyper sensitivity which we see consistantly on these threads.....which interesting we never see regarding Jesus, only because she is ‘central’ to their beliefs..
I agree.... that only the Lord can remove their blindess as it is so entrenched in their very beings... IF.... they have a desire to know what is true. I do think you have to ‘want to know’ the truth as God would have us, many simply are willing to settle for whatever they are told to believe.
I have a dear friend in CA. who many years ago I shared the Gospel message with ...and with this many questions she had having been raised in catholicism. One of the things which was so striking was how often, frequently with tears, she expressed how she was told many things about catholicism but not about Jesus....and that as she sought the Lord herself and His word on these matters she discovered these were not true....and harder for her was ‘all those years’ she never heard the gospel presented to her from the nuns nor the Priests...they only talked about Him but never about a relationship with Him.
Today she has bible studies in her home reaching other catholics who like her never came to know Christ while in their church...she is a mighty instrument in the hand of God and a passion for Him and the truth.
So there are those who HE does prepare to hear the truth and want to know it....moreso... they want Him over and above all else. This was what brought her to ask questions when we negaged about the things of God.
Your logic is lacking.
The Blessed Mother is either both the Mother of Jesus and the Mother of God or not. You can’t have it both ways. Jesus was and is both God and man. Isn’t it amazing that He did this for us so that we may join Him in Heaven. Isn’t it amazing that He (God) humbled himself to experience first hand as a new born. a child and as an adult life as a human being.
Why do you feel the need to reject God’s Word and the Mother of Jesus? Why do you argue and dismiss the honor and love that we all feel for the Mother of God?
Don’t bother.
I appreciate your intention, but I am NOT going THROUGH Mary to Jesus.
Jesus calls us directly to Him to follow HIM.
I don’t need a mediator to get to Jesus. HE is my mediator to get to God.
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