My own approach to the development of Mary’s person has gone in a somewhat different direction from that of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic commission that produced the very influential and stimulating volume, Mary in the New Testament.[45] In this volume the interests were necessarily quite different than mine. A vigorous scholarly attempt was made to read each New Testament author on his own and not to allow later Church doctrines anachronistically to be read back into the original voices of the text. The results of this study were clear, sober, and unassailable. But, the end result of the volume was unsatisfying for me because the implication was that the growth of Marian doctrine was conceived to be a slow and careful outgrowth of what the New Testament had only hinted at. One would not have gathered from this volume that the elaboration of Mary in the Church was just as much an attempt to understand her in light of the Church’s two-part Bible.
But I should concede that the two-testament witness of the Christian Bible is not the whole story. In addition, one must reckon with the influence of the vicissitudes of history. Had Theodore of Mopsuestia not brought to light the fact that the deity seems free to enter and leave the temple as witnessed in Ezekiel 8-11 the wholesale transfer of the temple form to Mary might not have happened. Though texts like the Protevangelium of James were already moving far in that direction, most Patristic writers up to Chalcedon seemed to be most comfortable using the image of the temple as a metaphor for the indwelling of the Godhead within the person of Jesus. In addition, the rising importance of the Marian feasts within the liturgical life of the Church in the wake of Chalcedon should not be underemphasized. These feasts quickened the need for and the development of icons and innumerable homilies. And both the icons and the homilies provided the fertile soil from which the growth of Mary’s temple-like being could flourish. Given the paucity of material about Mary in the New Testament, it can hardly be surprising that the homilies on the Dormition that Brian Daley has collected devote such an extraordinary amount of space to the metaphor of Mary as temple.
In sum, one can see that the doctrine of the incarnation was not understood in Patristic tradition as solely an affair of the New Testament. In some very important ways, the New Testament was thought to defer to the Old. The task of the Catholic reader of the Old Testament is perhaps best illustrated by Michelangelo. In keeping with the historical sense it is absolutely crucial that we allow this Old Testament prophet his own voice. Otherwise, whence will come his surprise? The Old Testament, with complete theological integrity, imagines that all world history points towards God’s rebuilding of Zion. We cannot compromise this perspective. In the New Testament, on the other hand, that hope takes a radical and unexpected turn, but not one that renders null and void the subject matter of Ezekiel’s hopes. As Michelangelo indicates, God has indwelt a virgin and the task of the Christian reader is to explore how Ezekiel’s words and imagery take new shape in light of the mystery of Christ. The Angelus is one such means the tradition has offered for adoring the moment of incarnation. For when Mary responds “fiat mihi,” her body becomes a fit vessel (gratia plena) to contain the uncontainable. Like the Israelites of old who fell on their faces in adoration when they witnessed the descent of God to earth to inhabit his Tabernacle, so for the church (ave maria ”¦ dominus tecum). In this fashion a high doctrine of Mary both ensures and safeguards the doctrine of the incarnation.
I have moved from a Protestant position to coming to wonder at Mary’s womb as being the new ‘holy of holies,’ the earlhly dwelling place of the Living God. I guess the question for me is how can God fully dwell in an unclean vessel? Don’t have an answer to that, just an enhanced appreciation for the Catholic perspective.
Jesus didn’t stay in the womb, neither did he stay on the cross, neither did he stay in the tomb. He moved on.
And many of us consider all births a miracle of God.
All births are indeed ‘miracles’ of God allowing us a part in the creative processes of nature. But the incarnation was a singular event, surpassing the ‘wonder’ of human birth with divine intervention and participation.
George’s [i] Mother of the Church [/i] might be a valid devotional term for Mary, but it is inadequate as a theological foundation stone for ecumenism.
The Council of Chalcedon called Mary [i] Theotokos [/i] (God-bearer) in explaining the union of the Christ’s divine and human natures in one person.
“Mother of the Church” is a pretty typical Protestant appeal to moral qualities (Mary is a good example for us to say “Yes” to God). But “Theotokos” comes closer to [i] Mother of God [/i] and points to greater points of Biblical theology – the Incarnation; the divine and human natures in the person of Jesus Christ; the atoning sacrifice of sinless flesh and blood.
Maybe I’m too stuck on a Lutheran view of Mary, but I do not understand why Mary, who should be highly honored and called blessed, needs to be elevated above that. We are all “unclean” vessels that God has declared righteous. We all are earthly dwelling places of the Living God as we share in Christ’ Body and Blood. God has used unclean vessles for His purposes throughout human history, and the Virgin Mary is one of them. Don’t make her less that she is, but don’t make her greater either – for to God belongs all the glory.
By the way, by Lutheran I mean LCMS, with was not part of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic commission. For an LCMS response to the section on Mary and the Saints, see:
https://www.lcms.org/graphics/assets/media/CTCR/mediate.pdf
P.S. Properly understood, I have no problem with the term “Mother of God”. Jesus Christ is God in human form, Mary is His mother, thus Mary is the Mother of God. This simply is a confession of who Jesus is, and to deny this is to deny Jesus’ divinity.
It’s debatable how far ‘theotokos’ emphasises motherhood. Last year I attended a session of the Durham NT seminar where Andrew Louth (Orthodox priest as well as scholar) discussed the Protoevangelium of James and its influence on the Eastern Church. One of his points was that the Eastern tradition doesn’t really emphasise Mary the Mother. Another thing that seemed to emerge in discussion was that Mary only became really big in Christian thought say about 450. Myself, I think it’s fairly obvious that Mary ‘cult’ is a Christian appropriation of pagan goddesses such as the Great Mother, Isis, etc., and not therefore to be taken very seriously, except in a historical sense.
Mercy, John, I have to say that you are right again. It is good to hear someone put paid to the sheer neon strip Mariolatry. The NT says almost nothing about her and this is, at last, the only source of information we have. The rest, over the centuries, is folk tale made, as John suggests, out of cloth originally made for pagans. Why aren’t the gospels a good enough source for what we know and do not know?
Is Mary the Mother of God? Indeed not. She is the mother of Jesus, because it is from her and her alone that he obtained his fully human nature. She nurtured her son; God raised up His son by His own will. She then went on to have more children, and so she should. WAs she special in some way? Only that God chose her and not some other virgin. Why He chose her and no other, we cannot begin to guess. LM
Larry,
The answer is: Because not everything we need to know is in the Bible. Sure, the Bible is our primary means of revelation, and contains all we need for salvation, but there are events that occurred AFTER the Scripture was completed (such as the death of the Apostles and the dormition of the Virgin Mary — a prominent teaching in both Eastern AND Western Churches and the councils and their decisions), which are important to our faith today.
I’m sure you would agree with this?
AS to why He chose her — she was of the house of David, and bethrothed to another of the House of David. He prepared/predestined her from the beginning to be the Theotokis.
Your other statements are not necessarily as concrete as you make them, but others have brought up the teachings on those issues much more competently that I will even attempt here. 🙂
Oh, the question to which I was referring was:
[i]Why aren’t the gospels a good enough source for what we know and do not know? [/i]
I guess you don’t believe Jesus was/is both FULLY HUMAN [b] FULLY[/b] DIVNE, with no separation of these two natures? That’s the only way Mary could only be mother of the human Jesus, is if there were a separation.
I guess you don’t believe Jesus was/is both FULLY HUMAN [b]AND[/b] FULLY DIVNE, with no separation of these two natures?
libraryjim – events outside of Scripture must be subject to Scripture, including all church councils. Therefore, the Immaculate Conception must be rejected for it is not Scriptural (Rom 3:10-18 for example, there are plenty of others).
But the two natures in one Christ is Scriptural, as are the statements about the two natures in the Athanasian Creed:
[blockquote]Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation
that he also believe faithfully the incarnation
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For the right faith is
that we believe and confess
that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
is God and man;
God of the substance of the Father,
begotten before the worlds;
and man of the substance of his mother,
born in the world;
Perfect God and perfect man,
of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.
Equal to the Father as touching his Godhead,
and inferior to the Father as touching his manhood;
Who, although he is God and man,
yet he is not two but one Christ.
One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh,
but by taking the manhood into God;.
One altogether,
not by confusion of substance,
but by unity of person.
For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man,
so God and man is one Christ;[/blockquote]
Thus calling Mary the Mother of God is a logical deduction supported by Scripture. After all, it is not saying that Mary created God, or was responsible for the conception, etc. She was the one God chose to bear the Savior, and to help raise Him and care for Him in His youth. And after all, He is related to her by birth!
I don’t believe I said anything about the Immaculate Conception. However, the position AS EXPLAINED by the Roman Catholic Church does make sense, in the light of Scripture. However, because it is not spelled out IN Scripture, it should not be made Dogma (core belief), but rather doctrine (teaching), and definately NOT required for salvation.
My point, very carefully chosen, was the dormition/assumption of the Blessed Virgin, which occurred after the completion of the last book of what would become the canon of the NT, but can still be seen as a valid teaching even though Scripture does not mention it (since it happened after the last book was written).
I have no problem with the titles “theotokos” or “Mother of God” (my wife does, however, and after 23 years of discussion, will not change her views).
Mary said “..my spirit rejoiceth in God my SAVIOR.” (Magnificat) this seems to indicate very clearly that she believed she was in as much need of salvation as any of us.
Harvey, Please find me where the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception denies Mary being saved through the merits of Jesus Christ.
I am struck by the contrast between this discussion and those found on other blogs last week when many Anglicans joined the rest of the Church in celebrating the feast of Saint Mary, ([i]Book of Common Prayer[/i]. August 15).
That contrast was most notable between the comment by John Scholasticus, or John the Learned, and one which included the quote below by Saint John Maximovitch or Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco.
If anyone is wondering about the great learning John Scholasticus or John the Learned was flaunting in #7 above, or if anyone is at least wondering about his chronology, [i]The Lost Gospel of Mary[/i] by Frederica Mathewes-Green would be very helpful and very accessible to many of us who do not share his intellectual attainments.
(Incidentally, John of Shanghai and San Francisco actually lived in Shanghai and San Francisco. Yet another contrast.)
Father Dean A. Einerson
Rhinelander, Wisconsin
[b]The more the faith of Christ spread and the Name of the Saviour of the World was glorified on earth, and together with him also She Who was vouchsafed to be the Mother of the God-man,- the more did the hatred of the enemies of Christ increase towards Her. Mary was the mother of Jesus. She manifested a hitherto unheard-of example of purity and righteousness, and furthermore, now departed from this life, She was a mighty support for Christians, even though invisible to bodily eyes. [i]Therefore all who hated Jesus Christ and did not believe in Him, who did not understand His teaching, or to be more precise, did not wish to understand as the Church understood, who wished to replace the preaching of Christ with their human reasonings- all of these transferred their hatred for Christ, for the Gosepel and the Church, to the Most Pure Virgin Mary. [/i][Emphasis added] They wished to belittle the Mother, so as thereby to destroy the faith also in her Son, to create a false picture of Her among men in order to have the oportunity to rebuild the whole Christian teaching on a different foundation. In the womb of Mary, God and man were joined. She was the One Who served as it were as the ladder for the Son of God, Who descended from heaven. To strike a blow at Her veneration means to strike Christianity at the root, to destroy it in its very foundation. [/b]
-From [i]The Orthodox Veneration of Mary the Birthgiver of God[/i] (Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood:Platina, 1978), 25-26.
from the [url=http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p122a3p2.htm]Catechism of the Catholic Church[/url]:
[blockquote]Mary’s predestination
488 “God sent forth his Son”, but to prepare a body for him,125 he wanted the free co-operation of a creature. For this, from all eternity God chose for the mother of his Son a daughter of Israel, a young Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee, “a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary”:126
The Father of mercies willed that the Incarnation should be preceded by assent on the part of the predestined mother, so that just as a woman had a share in the coming of death, so also should a woman contribute to the coming of life.127
489 Throughout the Old Covenant the mission of many holy women prepared for that of Mary. At the very beginning there was Eve; despite her disobedience, she receives the promise of a posterity that will be victorious over the evil one, as well as the promise that she will be the mother of all the living.128 By virtue of this promise, Sarah conceives a son in spite of her old age.129 Against all human expectation God chooses those who were considered powerless and weak to show forth his faithfulness to his promises: Hannah, the mother of Samuel; Deborah; Ruth; Judith and Esther; and many other women.130 Mary “stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently hope for and receive salvation from him. After a long period of waiting the times are fulfilled in her, the exalted Daughter of Sion, and the new plan of salvation is established.”131
The Immaculate Conception
490 To become the mother of the Savior, Mary “was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role.”132 The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as “full of grace”.133 In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God’s grace.
491 Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, “full of grace” through God,134 was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:
[b]The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and [i]by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race,[/i] preserved immune from all stain of original sin.135
492 The “splendor of an entirely unique holiness” by which Mary is “enriched from the first instant of her conception” comes wholly from Christ: she is “redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son”.136 The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” and chose her “in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love”.137 [/b]
493 The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God “the All-Holy” (Panagia), and celebrate her as “free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature”.138 By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long.
“Let it be done to me according to your word. . .”
494 At the announcement that she would give birth to “the Son of the Most High” without knowing man, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Mary responded with the obedience of faith, certain that “with God nothing will be impossible”: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be [done] to me according to your word.”139 Thus, giving her consent to God’s word, Mary becomes the mother of Jesus. Espousing the divine will for salvation wholeheartedly, without a single sin to restrain her, she gave herself entirely to the person and to the work of her Son; she did so in order to serve the mystery of redemption with him and dependent on him, by God’s grace:140
As St. Irenaeus says, “Being obedient she became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race.”141 Hence not a few of the early Fathers gladly assert. . .: “The knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience: what the virgin Eve bound through her disbelief, Mary loosened by her faith.”142 Comparing her with Eve, they call Mary “the Mother of the living” and frequently claim: “Death through Eve, life through Mary.”143
Mary’s divine motherhood
495 Called in the Gospels “the mother of Jesus”, Mary is acclaimed by Elizabeth, at the prompting of the Spirit and even before the birth of her son, as “the mother of my Lord”.144 In fact, the One whom she conceived as man by the Holy Spirit, who truly became her Son according to the flesh, was none other than the Father’s eternal Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity. Hence the Church confesses that Mary is truly “Mother of God” (Theotokos).145 [/blockquote]
***
Notes:
126 Lk 1:26-27.
127 LG 56; cf. LG 61.
128 Cf. Gen 3:15, 20.
129 Cf. Gen 18:10-14; 21:1-2.
130 Cf. 1 Cor 1:17; 1 Sam 1.
131 LG 55.
132 LG 56.
133 Lk 1:28.
134 Lk 1:28.
135 Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus (1854): DS 2803.
136 LG 53, 56.
137 Cf. Eph 1:3-4.
138 LG 56.
137 Cf. Eph 1:3-4.
138 LG 56.
139 Lk 1:28-38; cf. Rom 1:5.
140 Cf. LG 56.
141 St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 3, 22, 4: PG 7/1, 959A.
142 St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 3, 22, 4: PG 7/1, 959A.
143 LG 56; Epiphanius, Haer. 78, 18: PG 42, 728CD-729AB; St. Jerome, Ep. 22, 21: PL 22, 408.
144 Lk 1:43; Jn 2:1; 19:25; cf. Mt 13:55; et al.
145 Council of Ephesus (431): DS 251.
oh, er, yes, emphasis (bold and italics) added by me. 😉
Mary is the mother of Christ God and her uniqueness was very much appreciated by the Apostles and the early church. To understand her full significance, we must tease out the pattern of divine revelation consistently developed in Old and New Testaments. Gary Anderson is right that exclusive focus on the New Testament is insufficient.
ESV Luke 1:28 “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you”. Can someone who knows Greek look at this translation (and most of the others I looked at) versus the traditional RC “full of grace”. Since there is no Scriptural basis for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, so at best it is adiaphora.
LibJim: You and I are in agreement though apparently there is lack of clarity. Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. He does not have two natures, however, because they are fused into a single personality, just the way yours is and mine, a complex fusion, but a fusion, or pehaps I should say a synthesis – although we may say, I suppose that we are looking at two sides of the same coin. We can watch the commensuration in the gospels as Jesus matures. It is Mary’s genes alone that make him human since she is human (and this is why Jesus has a nature capable of sin and why he is able to understand it, contrary to what the 39 articles say.). But she is only Jesus’s mother, not Christ’s, that is, she is the mother of his human nature only. She does not give him divinity, and his learning to assume his divinity seems to have nothing to do with her. He grows into it; the dove doesn’t descend on him until he is old enough to ask John’s baptism. This is why the neighbors are astonished by him, because the mother and father are both normal (if I can put it that way) and he has brothers and sisters of a normal sort.
(I didn’t know that Mary was of the house of David. Where did you read that? What’s dormition? I never saw the word before.)
So, LibJim, it is true that not everything we need to know is in the Bible, but everything we declare is true MUST have its roots in the gospels or it cannot be maintained as essential belief. Your argument appears to be a very dangerous one because it suggests that, short of THE authoritative source, we may posit all manner of things which seem good to us to believe, and this is PRECISELY what TEC is doing now. If we buy your apparent argument, there is no limit to the extent of our speculations nor any reason why these speculations cannot be institutionalized if (a)enough people want to believe them or (b) if big enough authorities say,”We proclaim this dogma.” Either or both of these brings us to TEC and its giddy minions.
John Scholasticus is probablyright – althoughw e can never know. The Divine Feminine is a long complex pagan tradition. As you well know, the RC church absorbed and reassigned all manner of pagan elements, even the date of Christmas. This is probably another case as contact with the East grew with every passing century. But this is of course speculation. Larry
Mary was predestined to bear Jesus? Where did you learn that? I think we can overlook most of what the Catholic catechism says for it is largely wheel spinning, what happens when the intellect is unable to say “I don’t know” and so reaches the nearest conclusion to avoid saying any such thing. Why is “I don’t know” so irrevocably hard for a religieuse to say? Mercym read the catechism again. Mary is without sin? If she is human, as you admit, then she CANNOT be without sin, can she, or she is not fully human. Mary without sin is nonsense, quite literally. And St/ Irenaeus, that she became the cause of salvation for the whole human race? This has to be literal nonsense too, doesn’t it? The cause for salvation is the Christ in Jesus, and she did not give that to him, his Father did.
She merely bore the child and gave him his fully human nature. That’s all. The gospels are very clear.
The catechism is the kind of religious fantasy that makes Christianity look ridiculous. Look at the Immaculate Conception argument. It is cut out of whole cloth without a shred of justification in the text. It is scholastic logic spun out to make wish fulfillment appear intellectually sound. If it isn’t in the gospels, then it doesn’t exist. Period.
Screwed up the last entry. The next to last pargraph is supposed to be the last. Larry
Much of this speculation about Mary is based on Protestant reaction to Rome’s interpretation of Mary. The Latin tradition differs from the Eastern view on images of Mary and Mary’s sanctification. The Immaculate Conception of Mary is another Roman innovation. John Scholasticus misrepresents the Orthodox understanding of the Theotokos. His statement: “that the Eastern tradition doesn’t really emphasise Mary the Mother” is false. Also false is this statement: “Mary only became really big in Christian thought say about 450.” But the most glaring falsehood is this: “I think it’s fairly obvious that Mary ‘cult’ is a Christian appropriation of pagan goddesses such as the Great Mother.” Pure nonsense. If you want to know Mary as spiritual mother, go sit in front of an icon of the Theotokos for just one hour with an open heart.
I don’t know Greek. I am gleaning from people who do.
The Greek starts off “Kaire, kecharitomene”. Kaire is a greeting. “ke” indicates perfect tense, a full effect of a completed action. “charitomene” comes from “charitoo”, usually rendered “grace”. “mene” applies this to the one being addressed.
I’m not saying that “highly favored one” is an impossible rendering, but I would say that “full of grace” is at least as reasonable.
Any Orthodox want to say how they translate kecharitomene?
What about Jesus being in himself the fulfillment of the Temple, something that was brilliantly communicated by Tom Wright once on a trip my husband and I took with him to Israel/Palestine?
My monkey wrench in the machine is in response to the statement that Jesus got his full human nature from his mother Mary: well, where did Jesus get his male chromosomes? The answer may be that Joseph was his father, or it may be a miracle, but a minor one compared to the miracle of the Incarnation.
I love Mary, and say an “Ave” in my morning prayers and at the Eucharist. As a sister of Loretto pointed out to me, while little is said about Mary in the gospels, much is evident when you reflect upon that little. She is a mother so many other mothers (and fathers) can identify with. She knows what it was like to raise her son as a refugee far from home. She suffered the confusion of misunderstanding her child (Luke 2:48f). At one point she thought he was out of his mind (see Mark 3:20), and what loving parent with a mentally ill child does not suffer? She watched her son being judicially murdered in the most cruel fashion, and how many parents have lost their children to violence, intentional or random? But she also experienced the joy of his resurrection. Who of us could not identify with a loving Mother like Mary, whatever title we think she deserves (while I would call her Mother of God, my usual form of address is “Mary, Blessed Mother of my Savior” when I sometimes ask her informally to keep me in her prayers).
Kathleen Norris once wrote a lovely essay on Mary that gave examples of the growing appreciate of Mary among some Protestants. A Lutheran mother whose daughter tragically died young said to her, “I love Mary because she knows what it means to lose a child.” Perhaps her motherhood is the greatest gift she has given the Church, and I mean not only as the Chosen Vessel.
Larry:
[url=http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/documents/chalcedon.html]
THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON (451 AD)[/url]
——————–
[i]Definition concerning the two natures of Christ.[/i]
Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, [b]recognized in two natures[/b], without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us.
(bold emphasis added)
Larry,
I never said to throw out the Bible. It is the standard of all revelation. But the Bible is silent on some issues. In those cases, as Hooker states(1), we then rely on Spirit inspired reason and the teachings of the Church. True teaching will not contradict written revelation, however, that we do agree on.
(1)“What Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after these the voice of the Church succeedeth. That which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason over-rule all other inferior judgments whatsoever†( Laws, Book V, 8:2; Folger Edition 2:39,8-14).
Hey, Larry, I never said anything about essential beliefs being required apart from the Biblical teaching. Look back on my posts, you have mis-quoted and mis-interpreted me!
I think an apology is in order.
Oh, and by the way, I disagree with just about everything you said in post #21. 🙂
pardon for the tone. I just got back in from a 12 hour trip to take my daughter to her dorm 200 miles away.
exhausting, to say the least.
Larry,
here’s a quote from my post #13. That should settle once for all that I never said anything NOT spelled out in Scripture should be a dogmatic (i.e., required) belief:
[i]I don’t believe I said anything about the Immaculate Conception. However, the position AS EXPLAINED by the Roman Catholic Church does make sense, in the light of Scripture. However, because it is not spelled out IN Scripture, it should not be made Dogma (core belief), but rather doctrine (teaching), and definately NOT required for salvation.[/i]
Larry (#8),
It seems to me that you embrace, by your comments, the condemned heresy of Nestorianism (3rd Ecumenical Council, Ephesus 431) by stating that Mary was not the birthgiver of God. If my estimation is correct (I believe it is), please understand that this is not Nicene Christianity. Further, your remarks indicate a significant deficiency in understanding the Church’s long-held beliefs about Jesus Christ and his redemption of mankind, especially as related to Mary, the ever-virgin Theotokos (who was not simply “some virgin” who was a tool cast off after divine use). Additionally, from the beginning, Christians have never believed that Mary had any children apart from Jesus Christ, God-made-man. (Why, for example, would Jesus have entrusted his mother into the household and care of St. John the beloved disciple, if she had other children, who, by Mosaic law would have had to care for her?)
I will not argue with you on this matter; I am stating to you the teaching of the Church. I can, however offer you some good reading on this subject, and, if you are in the Charleston, SC, area, I’d be happy to meet with you to discuss this further.
You might consider reading about the 3rd Ecumenical Council before making further comments on this particular thread. You might also do well to ask what the Church has always believed, rather than asserting (eg. *period*) that you have in-and-of-yourself the fullness of the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. In my own life and ministry, I have found it extremely helpful to take the position that *I* don’t know everything, and since the task of the Christian is to pass along that which has been believed by all Christians from the beginning, it is better to ask that very question and listen, rather than to suggest my opinion.
Fr. John Parker
frjohn-at-ocacharleston-dot-org
I am not so sure any argument either way can be made from ‘full of grace’.
Has anyone considered that Stephen is also said to be ‘full of grace and power’ in Acts 6. Does that mean he is ‘sinless’ or that he is just equipped by God to do His works?
#33: What does the text say, re the ever virgin mary. The scripture is clear; she cannot be held as “ever virgin,. My Greek is poor so I turned the question over to my wife, a classics major, and my son, a Greek minor. This is the summary. It cannot be that Mary remained a virgin if we are to accept the scriptures as definitive. ( I apologize for my typing. Even proofreading isn’t much help.)
Matthew 1:25 in King James says of Joseph: “And he knew her not till she had brought forth her first born son….”
The Greek”knew her not” is ouk egignosken auten.” [I have not distinguished between eta and epsilon. I have used e for both, and I hove no way of writing out the miniscule.] The verb “egignosken” is originally from the Attic verb “gignosko” “to know” here in the obvious sense. Matthew uses the imperfect, literally he “was not knowing her” which by itself does not prove decisively that he did not didn’t know her after the fact. What DOES carry more weight, however, is the use of the pronoum “eos” “up to, until,” which is used to indicate disjunction. If it were the case that Joseph did not know Mary even after Jesus was born, Matthew would not have used this pronoun, as the state of Joseph not knowing Mary would not have been changed by Jesus birth.
Matthew 13:55-56 tells of Jesus’ own people asking him” …. in not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us.”
The words used for “brethren” and “sisters” in the Greek Testament are the well know “adelphoi” and adelphai,” which in older Attic refer almost exlusively to blood brothers and sisters. Wescott’s Scriptural Dictionary also cites familial “brother” and “sister” as its first definition of the words, See John, 1:40 and Luke 10:39, Rom. 16:15; however, he also expands the definition of adelphoi to include “near relation” cf. Luke 8:19. I would point out,however, that the definition of adelphia is not expanded beyond familial sister, and together in context it would indicate that the two do in fact, hold their original meanings.”
Actually, Larry, this will just turn into a case of ‘my scholar trumps your scholar’ debate, as many NT Greek scholars take the opposite view from the one you present, affirming the Greek (and other) Orthodox and Roman catholic position.
It does seem that you are arguing from the ‘Coffee’ definition of Historical theology: “the study of how everyone misinterpreted Scripture until we came along”.1
1. Svigel, Michael J., Th.M.[url=http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=2603] Coffe as a means of Grace[/url] web article, footnote 6.
Well, lLJ, they may, but that isn’t the issue. the issue is, “Is the Greek clear, and is the translation accurate?” If the answer is yes, then the conclusioon is virtually unavoidable. How can the answer be anything but yes? There will be all sorts of excuses for maintaining the RC position re Mary, but at last, the issue must rest on the text we have, mustn’t it? Or is the extra-scriptural capable of trumping scripture?
As to my having a sudden epiphany of the truth overriding all other received opinion, my text above is hardly the first time this textural issue has been raised. It was an flash of light for me, but that’s just me. Many have seen the same thing, haven’t they? And for all thising and thating, the issue is the text and the standard of the scripture. How can it be anything else? Larry
Sorry LJ, forgot to add this. Is the text or the translation is unsound, explain to me its deficiency.
Your last sentence really doesn’t deal with the issue. It is simply a deflection, a crossing of fingers to ward off bad juju. Larry
Larry,
You are ignoring the point that 2/3 of the worlds Chrisitans believe this doctrine. Not just the Roman Catholics, but the Orthodox Churches as well. Why just pick on the RCs? And if 2/3 of the world’s Christians hold and have held this teaching for the majority of their existence, including back to those who spoke Greek as their primary language, and it’s only the few in America who may be influenced by anti-RC sentiment to (yes, I’ll say it) twist their interpretation of Scripture to denigrate the teaching, which will you back?
I think you need to study the issue FROM THE POINT OF VIEW of those Chrisitans who hold the teaching, not from those who are determined to undermine it. which is what I have done, and why I see no conflict in the teaching and the Scripture, but also why I do not hold it as a dogmatic teaching, but rather common doctrinal teaching (which is a redundancy as doctrine is defined as ‘teaching’).
It’s not that the text is unsound, it is the prejudice (not in a bad way) of the translators that is causing the problems. A translator/ commentator will always bring their particular bias to their work. For example, if one holds a liberal view they may translate the last phrase of John 1:1 as “the Word was the same as God” or “what God was the word was” instead of the more conservative (and accurate) “the Word was God”.
From a cultural perspective, too, comes bias. Thus those of us in a society where we have separate words for ‘brother’ and ‘cousin’, “adelphoi” will have a different connotation and often be taken as a literal blood-brother rather than extended family. whereas in a culture where there is no separate word for the two, “adelphoi” would be seen in a totally different context, and could refer to either siblings or extended family without conflict, and thus the idea of Jesus having ‘adelphoi’ not born of Mary and Joseph is not a problem.
Larry,
three studies on the subject and the Greek text from the Greek Orthodox perspective:
[url=http://www.orthodoxonline.com/ever_virginity.htm]Orthodox Online[/url]
and
[url=http://www.eastern-orthodoxy.com/Mary.htm]Eastern Orthodoxy[/url]
and
[url=http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article9174.asp]the Greek Orthodox Diocese of America[/url]
Too much info to cut and paste, it would really lose the impact if I did that.
Peace
Jim Elliott
Jim–thank you for hyperlinking these important articles.
Larry–I’d like to make a point, make a suggestion, offer a few examples, and tell a story.
The point is this: you have not addressed my original concern, which is that your (apparent) view that Mary bore only “Christ” and not “God” is an anathematized belief, which was condemned in Ephesus in 431, at the 3rd Ecumenical Council. To be honest, if this is truly your position, there is little need to debate the meaning of the Scriptures, since, if this is true, you do not accept what is universally considered Nicene Christianity.
The suggestion: I am delighted that you appear to take your faith very seriously, and that you consider the Scriptures so very important. In the end, though, we do not have an argument about what the Scriptures *say* so much as what the Scriptures *mean*. I am glad that your wife was willing to help you with this, but please let me make a suggestion: ask a Greek (as in from Greece) Orthodox priest what it means. Why? Well, your wife and I learned Greek in school. But a Greek Orthodox priest is Greek. The majority of Churches to which St. Paul wrote his Epistles were either Greek or Greek speaking, and the Greek Orthodox priest is *biblically speaking* the brother of those Churches! The matter is one of interpretation. In an ecclesiastical matter, who would I rather trust? The former Episcopal priest who loved and learned Greek at TESM (I am speaking here of myself, and mean no harm to me or TESM) or the Greek Orthodox priest whose Church was actually written to by St. Paul, whose interpretion of these verses has been the same since they were written?
A few examples: You will do better to read the above-linked essays from Jim Forrest. But take these as a few examples to show you that “brothers” and “until” are not so cut and dry as you think.
+On a practical level, just about every Evangelical refers to his Christian male friends as “Brothers”. If he were Greek-speaking, this would be “adelphoi”. St. Paul calls every Roman (since he wrote Romans to them) “Brethren”–brothers, adelphoi.
+’Jesus said to Mary Magdalene, the Holy Myrrhbearer: “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.‒
Then what? “Mary Magdalene went and said to the disciples…”‘
Jesus said, “tell my brothers (adelphoi)” and she went and told the disciples!
+”he-os”–‘until’. Yes, it says that Joseph didn’t know Mary *until*…but this does necessitate that he ever *did know her* in this way. It is, for example, the teaching of the Church from the beginning that Joseph was an older man–perhaps even 80. An even the Evangelicals believe Mary was a teenager. (Please don’t tell me we don’t know Joseph’s age because it is *not in the Bible*. Mary’s age isn’t either, but every Evangelical says she was a teen!)
+At the end of the Great Commission, Jesus says, “Lo, I am with you always, even until (“he-os”) the end of the age. Will Jesus stop being with us in on the Last Day?
A story: In my last year at TESM, a friend of mine invited us to join him and his wife as they went to the Greek Festival in Pittsburgh. There, my wife took the tour of the Orthodox Church. On the drive home she said–“You know, they were asking a lot of questions in there, and one fellow even said, “Do you really believe that Mary was ever-virgin?” “Yes…” replied the priest. My wife said to me, “Can you BELIEVE that they *believe* that?” Then she and I went on to list all of the verses you have already come up with.
Fast forward a few years.
Now I am an Orthodox priest.
My friend, your world will not shatter if you step back for a moment and ask, “What has the Church always believed?” A well-known (now Orthodox priest) Campus-Crusade for Christ leader once said, “Instead of judging history we…invit[ed] history to judge us.” Take a moment to step back and see it for a moment.
Larry, the Bible doesn’t interpret itself, and, in fact, the Bible itself is contra Sola-Scriptura. In the end, you might consider Jesus’ own words, “You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”
What I have shared with you is not *my opinion*. It is the teaching of the Church from the beginning.
Please feel free to contact me directly if you’d like to pursue this privately. frjohn at ocacharleston dot org
Fr. John+
#42: Do you suppose anyone else out there is listening except you and me? LM
I would respoond but I have to get up early and go to work, in this case running a farmers’ market, but I will reply. Larry
The first question: Can Mary be properly called “the Mother of God?”
Answer: She cannot, for to do so generates contradictions and incongruities that cannot be resolved.
If she is the mother of God, then she must precede him in time and space. But an infinite being cannot be preceded in time and space.
If she is the mother of God, then God can have a parent. He is caused and yet He cannot be. This contradiction cannot be resolved.
If she is the mother of God, then God can have a father.
If she is the mother of God, then she cannot be finite, for the finite cannot create the infinite. But she is finite. ergo.
These can be multiplied, obviously. What is clear that Mary as the mother of God cannot be made sense of.
But let us look at what is more important than the above, which is piety playing as games of superiority: I am more pious that you because I assert more impossible pieties. Who did indeed Mary give birth to? We agree that Jesus is both perfectly human and perfectly divine. Where did his perfectly humen element come from. Not from his father, but from his mother alone. Who is this perfectly human being? It is Jesus, not the Christ, who cometh from his Father. It cannot be otherwise, for if it is, he cannot be perfectly human, such humanity having only one source. And this means that he was born with the capability to know sin and to do it, for no fully human being has ever been born otherwise. Indeed, this capability is of the essence of being “fully human.” And he got this from Mary and no other.
Can Mary continue to be a virgin. The text is clear – not perfect, but clear – and you are unwilling to grant this. The case for “brethern” is possible but you cannot make a like case for “adelphia. “Accordingly, in the context under discussion, the definition of “adelphoi” is quite clear because adelphia clearly means sister. You make make an abstract case – this is the comomon practice with the concrete does not please – but in the concrete, the passage is clear that he has both brother and sister.
As to the ages of Joseph and Mary, you explanation is hilarious, begging you pardon. You haven’t the FAINTEST evidence of their ages. But I DO tell you it is not in the gospels and that therefore you have no grounds whatsoever for what is an idle speculation that custom and traddition have turn into a pseudo-fact. What possible difference can the belief of evangelicals make when there is no -read zero – evidence of any sort.
As to the correctnes of the reading, this reading was texted (is there such a word?), not merely by my wife and son, but by my son’s Greek professor. Since she has been doing this sort of thing for a long time and since Colby is a reputable academic institution, we might reasonably grant her some soundness of knowledge.
As to my being outside Nicene Christianity, what in the Creed puts my argument outside the bounds?
Now, I may be a heretic but not for the reason assigned, and it is true tht I worry very little about heresy since most heresies are harmless. If the Church is not strong enough to survive the occasional heresy, it doesn’t deserve to survive. Look at TEC. It is dying and it is a mass of heresies. I grant you that those who refuse to believe in the core doctrine of a church really shouldn;’t be received inside the doors, but this isn’t because of heresy but because such people are strong to destroy but never strong to build. They are in short a pain in the tail and need to be shown the gate.
As to the pronoun of disjunction, look at the context. You cannot make up other translations merely because you do not like the scriptural evidence. Is the evidence absolute? Of course not. But the better question is,”What are the probabilities?” and the probabilities obviously favor my reading of the text. The disjunction in all probability means that she had sex after Jesus was born.
I am sure i have left something out, but my clam chowder in on the table, and I have like my chowder hot and my brewski cold. And I might add, go be condescending and supercilious to someone else. LM
As to the proposition for settling and argument, “It is the teaching of the Church [what church are youreferring to, buy the way] from the beginning is without merit. The church can be wrong from the gitgo. If you are one the wrong road, having the finest authorities on running won’t get ou safely across the line. In short, I give the argument from authority precious little room, and I suspect most people do the same. It is virtually worthless for determining the truth.
Larry,
I thank you for writing me back. If you have found me condescending, I ask your forgiveness. Email is not a good method for showing emotion or intention. I am trying to share with you what the Church has always believed, and this is rather difficult by keyboard, especially with one who insists he correctly interprets the scriptures over the way that they have always been read. Therefore, this will likely be my last email with you, unless you’d like to be inquisitive sometime. There isn’t a whole lot of sense in corresponding where there are few questions being asked.
I would like to leave you, though, with a few thoughts and questions to ponder.
Nicene Christianity is a package deal. It doesn’t end with the Creed. The third council was “brought to you” by the same folks (read “Church”) who established the Creed at 1 and 2 in 325 and 381; the same Church who made clear what you are refusing to accept, in 431; who defined against other heresies the two natures of Christ in 451 at Chalcedon, etc. This is the same Church whom you trust for the canonization of the Scriptures, but whose interpretation of their own writings you do not. Amazingly, you seem to trust your wife, your son, and a professor at a liberal arts college “who has been at this a long time”, (and therefore deserves some credibility?) more than you do Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians who have been ‘doing this’ since the New Testament was written–to them! How does Colby trump all of that? I want to suggest, once again, that you consider reading Church history, starting with the Apostolic Fathers, and then following with Irenaeus–Against the Heresies. And asking an Orthodox Christian, the first-degree relative of the writers of the NT and the subsequent writings.
I don’t understand why you believe that heresies don’t really matter, and why it would be okay if you (or I) were actually a heretic. “Heresy” is listed specifically by St. Paul as one of the “works of the flesh” in contrast to the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. You’ll find it often translated as “party spirit” in v. 20. Party spirit doesn’t me “like to get drunk and chase women” (Those are in the next verse). The word–in Greek–is ‘heresy’. St. Paul paints a grim picture for those who “do these things.” If we find ourselves dividing the church with choice by choice (that is what heresy means), we are in deep kimche.
My friend, I am very sad that your seem to be trapped in logic, and that you seem to reject–as a result–much of the faith that saves. I pray that the Lord open your eyes to see this, and I welcome your emails to me at frjohn at ocacharleston dot org. I take my leave of you with Jesus’ words from St. John’s Gospel, once again,
“You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40).
Pray for me, as I pray for you.
Fr. John+
Let me get this straight. I am trying to understand.
But it seems to me that if Mary remained ever Virgin then
if Mary and Joseph never consummated their relationship as husband and wife, they would not be considered as married in their society. Would it be considered proper in Jewish society in this time for two people who were betrothed but never married to live together? Did they live the rest of their lives together in a platonic relationship which they hid from their fellow townsfolk?
Would God send his only Son to live in a fake family? Or would he send his only Son to live in a good Jewish family? With several kids.
and finally What does this say about the sexual relationship between husband and wife. Is it holy or not? Why is it considered unholy for the two of them to have a holy married relationship while raising Jesus?
From my limited point of view I would prefer to believe that Mary and Joseph had a loving marriage that included marital relationships and more kids. God made families.
DRLina,
Thank you for your post. Please allow me to make an effort at answering this for you. There are several points which must be made clear to start, though. First of all, the perpetual virginity of Mary is a belief of the Church from the beginning (if it matters to you, even Martin Luther and John Calvin held this ancient belief); it is the knowledge of the Church related to her.
Second, the tradition of the Church also teaches that Joseph was significantly older than Mary–80 or so. He was a widower who had children from his first wife. According to the Scriptures, (just to throw out one of these for good measure), it is not recorded that Joseph and Mary ever married! They were betrothed, to be sure. This is the liturgical equivalent of engagement, and certainly didn’t involve cohabitation and sleeping together, as seems to be a prerequisite in our present society. Betrothal is still a part of the marriage process and ceremony of the Orthodox Churches to this day.
Third (and keeping 1 and 2 in mind), Mary, the Theotokos, is a unique person, indeed blessed among women. She is literally the pinnacle of the people of Israel, THE pure virgin chosen to bear God the Word in the flesh. The hymns of the Church are beautifully instructive in this way. Her womb, we sing, became more spacious than the heavens, for example. She herself IS the tabernacle, the place where God dwells. If the Tabernacle and all of the utensils related to it were precious, holy, set apart for sacred use, and to be used for nothing else, how much more so for the Mother of God, in whose actual womb dwelt God-made-man.
If you are an Anglican, you may understand it this way a bit more easily (I hope). No one would ever think of taking the chalice and paten home to fill the one with beer and to make a PB and J on the other. Once consecrated to holy use, the sacred vessels are for that purpose only.
Certainly, we need to take care to think of ourselves and our sexuality in this way as well (St. Paul spends a lot of time speaking about this in various places). Still the more, the Theotokos is the only person ever who carried God-incarnate actually within her human frame. If we treat a chalice with special care, Mary is the chalice of chalices.
So, it is necessary not to ask “was it dirty for Joseph and Mary to have sex?” This is not the question–that stems actually from extrapolations on St. Augustine through the Western Church. Rather, the questions are, what is holiness? What is purity? What is chastity? and What is the relationship between these and what the Church has always known about the most-unique (not really good English, but it makes a good point) woman in the history of the world and her relationship to a much older man?
After that, if there is still a question, one needs to deal with the reality that at the Crucifixion, Jesus put Mary into the care of St. John the Beloved, who was not listed among Jesus’ so-called brothers (relatives). The Jewish law was clear that the blood -family tends to widows. There were no blood relatives in that sense.
Hope that helps. Feel free to write me at frjohn at ocacharleston dot org for further clarification.
To Fr. John
You didn’t answer my question. After Jesus was born was he raised in a real family ie one with a legal mother and father
or was he raised only by Mary and Joseph is discarded as an ancient one? what ever happened to the Holy Family?
2. Are you are telling me that an 80 year old man took Mary to Bethlehem and then on down to Egypt for several years before bringing her home? Working to support her and Jesus all the while.