I have been thinking about Mary lately. Quite a bit, actually. In December I preached a sermon about Mary and a sermon about Joseph. No longer preaching weekly, I also had the opportunity to listen to a sermon at our local CRC congregation about Mary. Mary has got me thinking… and there is definitely something about Mary.
Among the things I have been thinking about Mary is how many inadequate sermons I have heard about her. It seems that it is almost a Protestant Christmas tradition to either preach or hear (depending on ones station) a sermon filled with faint praise for the Mother of God.
You have heard the sermon I am talking about? Maybe you have preached it? Maybe I have? The sum is something like this.. ”well, Mary was a fine young girl, and God blessed her, BUT… blah, blah, blah, humbug” sermon. Or the, Mary was a nice girl but…. fill in a long list of anti-Marian mutterings followed by a handful of egalitarian platitudes all justified as a warning for folks without the faintest notion of engaging in any form of Marian devotion from committing idolatry. Why? The Bible says that all generations will call her blessed. Why not embrace the biblical duty?
I am not saying Protestants should go out and buy rosary beads and start praying to Mary. But, even if Roman zeal for Marian devotion does justify some Protestant response, what Protestants have to say about Mary must be more than a negative reaction to Rome. Our relationship to Mary must not be defined by our controversies but by our understanding of the Scripture and by our unity with Christ. What happens when we apply our biblical theology to the place of Mary in Scripture?
Can we really deny a biblical theological connection between Eve and Mary? Why should Protestants deny that Mary is the second Eve? Is Mary not THE woman whose seed crushed the head of the serpent? Was she not the mother of Christ? As we are Christ’s brothers and sisters, must she not be, in some way, our mother as well? The New Creation, of which we are a part, burst forth into this age through her blessed womb. In that sense, we are all her children.
As I consider this humble Hebrew girl, and consider that God chose her to be the Mother of Jesus Christ, I am awed. This woman bore the Creator of the universe in her womb. He clutched to her breasts as a babe. She soothed his infant fears giving him the joy and comfort that a mother provides to her children. The Second Person of the GodHead, the Eternal Son of God, owed (owes) to her all of the duties of the 5th Commandment, the Creator bound to honor His creature. Mind-blowing. And Blessed indeed.
The icon of the Church, and the second Eve.
Given the tendency of your thoughts, why not join the ACNA?
I don’t know, Bill. Sounds like a straw man to me. Personally, I’ve preached a sermon that sounds a lot like what you’re outlining above. It’s easy to get all bloggy-critical of the reformed church, but can you cite enough examples to warrant your nearly-blanket condemnation of the protestant attitude toward Mary?
PS No sarcasm meant; I agree with you about Mary.
No sarcasm taken John. I have considered the ACNA but still wonder, why no peace between Mary and Geneva?
What happens to our Biblical Theology when it comes to Jesus’ mom?
Good point Jared. You have made me so happy to hear that you have been saying these things in a Covenanter pulpit that I will eat my words with relish.
I preached them also… all along. The problem was the response. There is plenty of Anti-Marian-ism among Protestants… but you have encouraged me!
Keep up the good work.
Have you read St Irenaeus On the Apostolic Preaching? I think you’d enjoy it.
Bill, I have never preached on Mary, but I have only been preaching for a year. (And when I do, I will consider your woe to Protestant pulpits.)
I do have two thoughts though:
What amazes me about Mary’s faith is her meditative contemplation on what God was doing in her and with her life. How many of us would ‘ponder these things in our hearts’. Luke 2 has two separate occasions where she proves to be quite contemplative and faithful in God’s use of her. She is definitely a woman of God with a very powerful faith. I think that if I were in her shoes (and I realize all the problems with that statement); I would not quietly ponder.
On the other hand, we need to remember Luke 11:27-28 where a woman cries out to Jesus, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed!’
Jesus turns her attention away from Mary’s feminine functions and responds, “Blessed RATHER are those who hear the Word of God and keep it.”
This is a humble warning to keep Christ the center of even our high view of his mother. It’s what she would want too.
Thanks Nathan, I am with you 100%. Mary always points us to Christ- like at the Wedding Feast, reminding us, what ever He say’s, do it.
We named our first daughter Mary, in part to counter the dearth of Mary-named girls in the Protestant church. Mary is arguably the best human example of Godly obedience in the scriptures, outside of Jesus himself. I’ve always been struck by her example. She had to listen to an angel, then tell her fiancee she was expecting and he wasn’t the daddy, endure the derision of more than one neighbor, I’m sure, and then give birth to a son that she knew would become the constant source of wonder and heartbreak.
But no veneration, please. Honor, yes, but for Christ’s sake alone.
Hi Bill:
Mary is the Mother of God. I preach it and believe it. I feel funny saying it, but I know what it means, at least in an apophatic sense. Kataphatically, of course, we know that God personally dwelt in, and was born of, the virgin Mary.
Did you know that Calvin held to the perpetual virginity of Mary? How bout that! I think that is really sad and dumb, but that’s what I heard.
I hope I’m wrong. And, I’ll go look it up, but the source seemed reliable and he showed me something supporting it. See, Calvin can be wrong. But, don’t think Calvin had a low view of Mary.
Of course, I would have a low view of Mary if she did NOT sleep with Joseph. And, the bible said she did not know Joseph until she had given birth to the Son of God.
Okay – Wikipedia backs me up…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_virginity_of_Mary
Protestant Reformation
From the fifth century on no opposition whatever to the doctrine was expressed in either East or West until modern times. Several leaders of the Protestant Reformation believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary. Martin Luther believed that Mary did not have other children, and did not have any marital relations with Joseph,[25] maintaining, that the brothers mentioned were cousins.[26] This is consistent with his lifelong acceptance of the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary. Jaroslav Pelikan noted that the perpetual virginity of Mary was Luther’s lifelong belief,[27] and Hartmann Grisar, a Roman Catholic biographer of Luther, concurs that “Luther always believed in the virginity of Mary, even after his excommunication, though afterwards he denied her power of intercession, as well as that of the saints in general, … and combated, as extreme and pagan, the extraordinary veneration which the [Roman] Catholic Church showed towards Mary.”[28] For this reason even a rigorously conservative Lutheran scholar like Franz Pieper (1852-1931) refuses to follow the tendency among Protestants to insist that Mary and Joseph had marital relations and children after the birth of Jesus. It is implicit in his Christian Dogmatics that belief in Mary’s perpetual virginity is the older and traditional view among Lutherans.[29]
Franz Pieper, June 27, 1852 – June 3, 1931He stated, that “we should simply hold that (Mary) remained a virgin after the birth of Christ because Scripture does not state or indicate that she later lost her virginity”.[30] He taught that “Christ, our Saviour, 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”; and that ” Christ . . . was the only Son of Mary, and the Virgin Mary bore no children besides Him . . . I am inclined to agree with those who declare that ‘brothers’ really mean ‘cousins’ here, for Holy Writ and the Jews always call cousins brothers”.[31] In fact Luther held throughout his career that, “in childbirth and after childbirth, as she was a virgin before childbirth, so she remained”.[32]
Huldrych Zwingli wrote: “I firmly believe that [Mary], according to the words of the gospel as a pure Virgin brought forth for us the Son of God and in childbirth and after childbirth forever remained a pure, intact Virgin.” [33] John Calvin rejected arguments, based on the mention in Scripture of brothers of Jesus, that Mary had other children.[34] John Wesley wrote to a Roman Catholic, as regarding what a Protestant may declare: “I believe that He was made man, joining the human nature with the divine in one person; being conceived by the singular operation of the Holy Ghost, and born of the blessed Virgin Mary, who, as well after as before she brought Him forth, continued a pure and unspotted virgin.”[35]
Diarmaid MacCulloch, a historian of the Reformation, wrote that the reason why the magisterial reformers upheld Mary’s perpetual virginity, and why they had a “genuinely deep reverence and affection” toward Mary, was that she was “the guarantee of the Incarnation of Christ”, a teaching that was being denied by the same radicals that were denying Mary’s perpetual virginity.[36] However, the absence of clear Biblical statements expressing the doctrine, in combination with the principle of sola scriptura, kept references to the doctrine out of the Reformation creeds and, together with the tendency to associate veneration of Mary with idolatry[37] and the rejection of clerical celibacy[38] led to the eventual denial of this doctrine among Protestants, who, thus uncommitted to a doctrine the perpetual virginity, take the “brothers” (ἀδελφοί) οf Jesus mentioned in the New Testament most naturally (but not certainly) to be children of Mary and thus Jesus’ half brothers, rather than his cousins or stepbrothers from a postulated previous marriage of Joseph.[39]
EOQ
Tony,
You can add Luther, John Wesley, and (as I remember) even a number of others held to the perpetual virginity of Mary. Calvin, prince of expositors, dealt with your objection under the form “the bible said” ect. ect.
I would far rather believe a doctrine based on long standing ancient tradition than reject it based on “scientific” yet suspiciously subjective exegesis.
I would far rather believe a doctrine based on long standing ancient tradition than reject it based on “scientific” yet suspiciously subjective exegesis.
I personally believe it. Not as a doctrine in the full sense, but rather as a pious opinion.
John- that is exactly where I would come out.
Hi Bill:
Why did the early reformers, like Calvin and Luther and Wesley (later) hold to Mary’s perpetual virginity?
I don’t think we’re talking Scientific exegesis or any special pleading. What is the cash value of the perptual virginity of Mary? What honor does this give either Jesus or Mary? How does this proclaim the marriage bed undefiled? What about this is “suspiciously subjective” exegesis?
The special pleading is against the natural reading of Jesus’ brothers and the plain reading of Joseph not knowing her “until” she had brought forth the Christ Child. After Christ was born, normal marriage ensued. This includes sexual relations. Is this special pleading?
You don’t need perpetual virginity to have Theotokos, or a high view of Mary. What you need is a healthy view of sex in marriage to not think it somehow might defile her if she and Joseph had normal relations. Was Joseph deformed? Was he allowed in the temple? Did he have no libido because Mary bore the Son of God?
Right away the classical Roman thoughts spring to mind – that if the womb of Mary had been the temple of Jesus the Christ, would not normal human sexual relations defile that temple? But, perhaps we are in danger the other way – of seeing the marriage bed as inherently defiled.
Jesus was born, he was immaculate. Mary was not. She was righteous. Christ was her Son and Savior. He died for her sins. I don’t think one of the sins he had to die for in her case was the unchastity of denying herself and her husband the loving expression of marital relations. Like all of us, every act of a totally depraived saved sinner, or saint, is still tained by sin. Jesus is immaculate, not Mary. She was not immaculately conceived, and didn’t need to be. Do you go there too?
What am I missing here?
I wonder if you believe the doctrine of non-instrumentalism based on exegesis, or long-standing tradition?
If the latter, do you buy the actual reasonings of the fathers who say many things that are quite offensive about the spirituality of the Jews?
I’ve put out version of the THE VOICE OF THE AGES AGAINST INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC IN PUBLIC WORSHIP myself. And, I know that the fact of a tradition to which such a tract attests does not mean that you have to buy the rationale involved by all those in the tradition. Same with infant baptism! We have early attestation, wide tradition in favor of it. But, that does not justify the bad exegesis or theology that all too often creeps into a good traditionary chain of evidence. If they don’t point back to the source, ad fontes, as they say, then they are so much wind.
I’ve mention two traditions by way of comparison with that of the perpetual virginity doctrine: acapella worship and infant baptism. Even the strongest proponent of acapella worship who thinks that organs are the devil’s entrails, will admit that the exegetical basis of their prohibition is an attenuated theological historical case, and that a number of other factors must be in place to make it work. I could go there. I could go back there happily. But, if there were one plain New Testament statement of instruments in public worship, I’d have very serious doubts about denying the import of that passage. Shoving aside evidence that we don’t like is not what the Regulative Principle means!
If there were one clear passage in the Scriptures that forbade baptizing the children of believers, we’d have to let it speak.
I believe that Tradition is to be respected, and deferred to, unless the Scripture gives clear evidence to the contrary. When it does, we respectfully turn from mommy and listen to daddy.
Okay – this is just to show you what a protestant case, based on tradition, might look like. What is good, bad and ugly here? I tried to make nice about the ‘offensive’ quotes – not too far from what Harry Reid said about our much adored president, Barak Hussein Obama.
You can’t talk about these things without stepping in something…
Instruments in Worship. Good reason to go Eastern Orthodox rather than Roman Catholic. Better sticking to the Holy Tradition. But, still wrong on Filioque, theologically (not historically).
Hugs,
TOny
Bill, Please allow this citation:
http://aafairmount.xanga.com/568209750/voice-of-the-ages-against-instruments-in-worship/
Thank you.
TOny
Tony-
I do not know whether Mary was perpetually a virgin, but long standing tradition says so… a tradition honored by the Reformers. Humility alone makes me fear to tread in areas that are disputable. Roman Catholics believe it, and I respect it. I am not impressed by the arguments that Jesus had siblings from Mary. His behavior on the cross, placing her in John’s care, seems to flatly deny it. Again, I do not know.
Paul says some very positive things about virginity. So does Jesus. In the Kingdom marriage is no more. Is it possible that Mary’s womb, so sanctified by the Divine presence, might have been set apart in a way that was unique and that made the marital relationship Mary and Joseph unique? Most certainly.
No one wants to think about their mom having sex. If you want to go around talking about Jesus’ mom that way… go ahead. I will remain silent on the issue (as, I think, is proper).
Well, that’s something – Jesus placing Mary in John’s care. Then again, his brothers did not yet believe at that point.
Not a big deal for me, but if we are to follow a tradition, are we to do so uncritically? (Hence the non-instrumental tradition analogy).
I go back and forth on how Christ’s presence in the womb of the Virgin Mary sanctified her womb. Tough question.
Whose tradition is the Tradition?
Do you like Mathieson’s treatment of Tradition in Sola Scriptura, or do you find it inadequate?