I agree that both John and Mary had special roles and were equipped to fill them. I see no Biblical evidence that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in John and Mary is different in nature than what is available to believers today. I have no doubt that these two resisted the Holy Spirit to a far lesser degree than almost all believers throughout time but the indwelling process appears to be the same.
I would disagree that the nature of the their indwelling (or that of the OT saints) was different than the indwelling of the Holy Spirit post-Resurrection. I think that they exhibited the indwelling of the Spirit in a way that was not common in believers of the age but was made widely available after the Resurrection. The Holy Spirit indwelt them in the same manner that He has always indwelt His saints.
Longer version (and please don’t feel compelled to reply to this long piece in point-by-point detail, but do feel free to comment on whatever strikes you as significant):
Thanks. I really wasn't going to do a point-by-point response.
So while John is identified as quite special in Luke 1, the chapter ascribes a number of special qualities to Mary that are not ascribed to him.
Protestants don't dispute the fact that Mary was special. It's the extra-biblical excesses of Catholics with which we have problems. I bring up Matthew 11:11 as caution to Catholics to "rein it in" a bit on the Mary adulation. The words of her own son don't seem to put Mary on the same pedestal. Luke 11:27-8 seems to caution balance in the Mary adulation that is frequently lacking in Catholic circles.
and as befitting this role, she is blessed above all women by being made “full of grace” even before she begins carrying Him. What is said about John elsewhere needs to be read consistently with this, however we end up interpreting it.
I strongly disagree with this. While you provided some specific examples of "full of grace", you haven't proven that it is different in nature than an indwelling of the Holy Spirit. I am not obligated to read Scripture through the lens of your speculation. Particularly, when your speculation requires me to explain away an explicit statement of the Lord. That is the problem that I have with Catholic scholarship on this topic (and other uniquely Catholic positions). Far too often the scholarship is an exercise in eisegesis rather than exogesis. I can accept that Mary is blessed among all women because Scripture tells me so just as I can accept that John is the greatest born of woman because Scripture (through the direct statement of our Lord) tells me so. If the statement that John ranks higher on a spiritual scale than Mary offends you, then maybe it is because you have some incorrect preconceptions about Mary. Such an assessment of Mary is not to diminish her status but to correctly view it. Mary is a great saint.
A point I will make first about both of these two verses is that neither of them was originally written in a context of Catholic-Protestant debates about Mariology. Reading them in that context runs the risk of pulling them out of context. I will here focus on what they mean in context before discussing them in the context of Mariological debates.
Matthew 11:11:
The context of this verse is the question John had sent to Jesus from prison via his disciples back in 11:2: “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” This is a puzzling question in light of the fact that John has already seen the Holy Spirit come down like a dove upon Jesus, has already heard heaven declare that “This is my Son”, and has already proclaimed Jesus to be the Lamb of God. So why is John asking a question he should already know the answer to? Early commentators on this passage puzzled over and debated this issue. The answer commentators such as St. Jerome and St. Chrysostom arrived at, after weighing several interpretations others had posed, was along these lines: John, who had been thrown in prison and was about to die soon, was concerned that after he died, others might lead his disciples astray from Jesus (which we know did happen to some of them historically). Some of them were at risk of “falling away” (Matthew 11:6). So he sent them to Jesus to see for themselves what the difference was between him and Christ, that they might believe based on their own experience rather than just his word. Jesus in response, rather than testifying on His own behalf, appealed to them to take report of “what you hear and see”, and cited the evidence of the miracles he was publicly performing and the fact that they were fulfillments of the Messianic prophecies he alludes to in this passage. After appealing to this evidence to reinforce their faith, Jesus exhorts them, “Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.”
At this point, having addressed John’s disciples, Jesus turns his attention from them to the crowds who had overheard the conversation. The crowds have been wondering who Jesus is, we know from other passages, and some of them upon hearing John’s question might have gotten the misimpression that John is doubting whether Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus speaks to correct this misimpression. He appeals to their previous conviction that John was a prophet (“What did you go out to the desert to see?”) to reinforce that, yes, John is a prophet, and not just a prophet, but as he told you, he is the messenger preceding the Messiah that Malachi prophesied--and here Jesus is reinforcing John’s own teaching about who John was. John is therefore not just a prophet, but “more than a prophet”, in fact the last of the prophets to precede the Messiah. This is what makes him great among those “born of women”.
However, John’s message was not to proclaim himself, but to proclaim the one coming after him, whose sandals he was “not worthy to untie”. So, echoing John’s message that one greater than him was coming after him, Jesus goes on to add that the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John. This is not only stressing that Jesus Himself is greater than John, but it’s also indicating that others in the kingdom of heaven are greater than John--by implication, Jesus’ followers are greater than John’s followers. The implicit message is that if his hearers believed John, they should be following Jesus now.
Having said that those in the kingdom of heaven are greater than John, Jesus uses the topic of the kingdom of heaven (“the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing”) to segue back to his point that John is the last of the prophets, the Elijah who was to come. He exhorts those who have ears to hear this to hear it. This brings the topic full circle back from John to the crowd themselves and their reaction to John and Jesus. He chastises His contemporaries for their unbelief and their fickleness, which was pleased neither with John the desert hermit who fasted on locusts and wild honey nor with Jesus who feasts with tax collectors and sinners. “But wisdom is justified by her children [‘by her works’ in some translations]”--John and Jesus’ actions justify their preaching regardless of the unwillingness of their contemporaries to believe.
In this context, the phrase “among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” is placing John among the greatest of the OT prophets who preceded Christ, but below those in the kingdom of heaven, i.e., below those following Christ. We can go deeper into this by considering more closely what the Lord means by the contrast between “born of women” and “in the kingdom of heaven”. Observe that this contrast is using language similar to that Jesus uses to Nicodemus when He contrasts being born of flesh and born of spirit: “I tell you the truth, unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. . .I tell you the truth, unless a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” (John 3:3ff) Now of course there are different ways people interpret these verses, all of which I will not attempt to address here; but briefly I would argue that in the context of John, these verses are part of a running commentary on the difference between John’s baptism of repentance and Jesus’ baptism with the Holy Spirit, following up on a distinction John drew in his own teaching as recorded in various places (“I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”: Matthew 3:11, etc.). I would suggest that the contrast Jesus draws between those born of women and those in the kingdom of heaven is saying something similar, with the gist being that Christian baptism is superior to John’s because John could only baptize in water as a symbol for repentance, but Jesus and his disciples baptized in the Holy Spirit and not just water. (I also see this related to Paul’s distinction between circumcision in the flesh and circumcision of the heart by the Spirit, and a number of related things Paul teaches.) That’s along the lines of what I see Jesus getting at in these verses, in the context of following up on His answer to the question that John’s disciples posed to him. He’s affirming that John is great among the prophets of the Old Covenant under the Law, but he’s also emphasizing the superiority of the New Covenant under the Spirit.
I see this as the meaning of these verses in the broader context of the NT and the more immediate context of Matthew 11. Matthew 11:11 is not answering the question, “Is John the Baptist greater than Mary?” That is a question posed in Catholics-vs.-Protestant polemics, but it is not the question Jesus was answering. Jesus was answering the question, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” His answer was affirming that He was indeed the one who was to come; and beyond affirming this fact, he was exhorting his listeners to take the practical next step to stop doubting and follow him.
Now if we want to export this verse from its original context into the context of Catholic-Protestant debates and ask, does this verse imply that John the Baptist is greater than Mary, the simplest way for a Catholic to answer is, no, because as a follower of Jesus during His earthly lifetime and as a cofounder of the Church after the Resurrection (Acts 1:14), Mary was in the kingdom of heaven--and as the “one full of grace” who is to be called “blessed” by all generations, she is far from the least in the kingdom. (Nor incidentally do I think Jesus was denying that John the Baptist would enter the kingdom of heaven, which some early readers of this verse tried to argue by focusing on the second half of the verse out of context, a position St. Augustine refuted.)
Luke 11:27-28:
The context of this verse is a briefer passage, so it can be addressed more briefly. First let me quote it since it is brief: “As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, ‘Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.’ He replied, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.’”
The contrast here is between being blessed by virtue of giving birth to and nursing Jesus--that is, by virtue of physical relationship--and being blessed by virtue of hearing and obeying God--that is, being blessed spiritually. This is again parallel to the distinctions at play in the other verses previously discussed: between those born of women and those in the kingdom of heaven, between being born of flesh and born of spirit, between John’s baptism in water and Jesus’ baptism in the Holy Spirit, between being circumcised in the flesh and circumcised in the heart by the Spirit, etc.
Again, Jesus’ comment in its original context is not framed in the context of a Catholic-Protestant debate. He is teaching the woman and his audience that being blessed is not merely a matter of physical relationships, but it is a matter of spiritual faith and obedience. This is another way of teaching something He has taught on numerous other occasions, such as the Sermon on the Mount where he contrasts the exterior righteousness of the Pharisees with the interior righteousness demanded of those in the kingdom of heaven, etc.
In no way does this imply that Mary is not blessed. Reading the verse that way would contradict the plain statements in Luke 1 that Mary is blessed. Jesus is correcting the woman in the audience as to *why* Mary or anybody else would be blessed. Mary is blessed because she heard the word of God and obeyed it: “Let it be done unto me according to your word”. Jesus is not denying the blessedness of she of whom the Holy Spirit said, “Blessed art thou among women.”
So I fail to see how these verses are problematic for Catholic exegesis. Rather, I see it as eisegesis to divorce these verses from their original context and read post-Reformation polemics into them, even when this requires reading Luke 11:27-28 as contradicting the multiple affirmations of Luke 1 that Mary is “blessed”. God is truth and does not contradict Himself, so any reading of Scripture that leads to an apparent contradiction is an incorrect reading requiring more thought.
As a final point, I would argue that Catholic Mariology is based on prolonged reflection upon Scripture and the traditions handed down from the Apostles rather than extra-Scriptural excesses. The apostle John took Mary into his care after the Crucifixion, and the traditions about Mary come partly from churches he oversaw. The early Church Fathers prayed and meditated over Scripture in light of what John and the other Apostles taught. It was reflecting on the Old Testament in light of John’s teaching and that of the other Apostles--especially Luke and Paul--that led to some of Mary’s earliest titles, such as the new Eve and the new Ark of the Covenant. It was reflecting on and defending what John taught about the Word made flesh that led the Church Fathers and Councils to insist against the Gnostics that Mary is the Mother of God. It was reflecting on what John taught about the Word made flesh in relation to the first chapter of Luke that led to reciting the Hail Mary and the Angelus. It was praying over the Psalms that led to the Rosary. The issue dividing Catholics and Protestants is not really reliance on Scripture, but what framework and methodology are used to interpret Scripture. And some Protestant groups disagree with Catholics about Mariology more than others, so I would not make a blanket statement about all Protestants on this. And I would add that it’s also important to also take the witness of the Middle Eastern, Greek-speaking, and North African churches into account for a full perspective on Mariology.