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Mariology and Prayer to the Saints

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Theotokos Praying for the People, Vladimir Church (Vologda)

Theotokos Praying for the People, Vladimir Church (Vologda)

Prayer to the saints is one of the areas where most Protestants  differ with the Catholic Church. Actually, this is not fully accurate; as it turns out, non-Protestant Christians — whether Roman Catholic, Eastern Rite Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Coptic Christians — all have no problem praying to the saints, of whom the blessed Virgin Mary is the paradigmatic example, being the greatest of all the saints.

Perhaps the most clear argument against prayer to Mary, to the saints, and to angels is found in the Smalcald Articles, part of the Lutheran’s Book of Concord. Here Martin Luther draws from and expands upon Philip Melanchthon’s arguments from the Augsburg Confession, and from the Apology to the Augsburg Confession.

The invocation of saints is also one of the abuses of Antichrist conflicting with the chief article, and destroys the knowledge of Christ. Neither is it commanded nor counseled, nor has it any example [or testimony] in Scripture, and even though it were a precious thing, as it is not [while, on the contrary, it is a most harmful thing], in Christ we have everything a thousandfold better [and surer, so that we are not in need of calling upon the saints]. And although the angels in heaven pray for us (as Christ Himself also does), as also do the saints on earth, and perhaps also in heaven, yet it does not follow thence that we should invoke and adore the angels and saints, and fast, hold festivals, celebrate Mass in their honor, make offerings, and establish churches, altars, divine worship, and in still other ways serve them, and regard them as helpers in need [as patrons and intercessors], and divide among them all kinds of help, and ascribe to each one a particular form of assistance, as the Papists teach and do. For this is idolatry, and such honor belongs alone to God. For as a Christian and saint upon earth you can pray for me, not only in one, but in many necessities. But for this reason I am not obliged to adore and invoke you, and celebrate festivals, fast, make oblations, hold masses for your honor [and worship], and put my faith in you for my salvation. I can in other ways indeed honor, love, and thank you in Christ. If now such idolatrous honor were withdrawn from angels and departed saints, the remaining honor would be without harm and would quickly be forgotten. For when advantage and assistance, both bodily and spiritual, are no more to be expected, the saints will not be troubled [the worship of the saints will soon vanish], neither in their graves nor in heaven. For without a reward or out of pure love no one will much remember, or esteem, or honor them [bestow on them divine honor]. (Dau and Bente 1921, SA II, 26-28)

In the passage, Martin Luther argues not from scripture. Instead, his argument is that prayer to the saints is against the chief article of faith — Justification, as defined by Lutheran dogma. This is a highly curious stance, as it can be argued that prayer to the saints and to angels is supported in scripture, even in the Protestant’s truncated canon.

The Scriptural Witness

The book of Zechariah is important for a number of reasons, but for our purposes we will focus on the importance of Zechariah for its development in the theology of angels. In particular, God communicates to Zechariah through angels, and Zechariah questions them as to the meaning of the visions he has been seeing. In the first chapter of Zechariah receives a series of visions, after which is recorded an extensive conversation with an angel, beginning as follows:

Then said I, O my lord, what are these? And the angel that talked with me said unto me, I will shew thee what these be. … And the LORD answered the angel that talked with me with good words and comfortable words.  So the angel that communed with me said unto me, Cry thou, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy. … Then lifted I up mine eyes, and saw, and behold four horns. And I said unto the angel that talked with me, What be these? And he answered me, These are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem (Zec 1:9, 13-14, 18-19).

The careful reader will notice that Zechariah inquired of the angel what these things meant; the angel asked the Lord, the Lord replied to the angel, and the angel told Zechariah. For our purposes, this demonstrates that prayer (which may be described as a conversation) may be made to angels. In Zechariah there seems to be little difference between asking an angel for an interpretation, and asking the Lord himself. Moreover, Zechariah treats the  answer from the angel as though it came directly from the Lord. This same back and forth between the Zechariah and the angel continues throughout the book. This idea is also found in the book of Daniel, where Daniel prays to God for the interpretation of his vision, and then discusses the interpretation with an angel. And of course Mary herself had a conversation with an angel, a non-corporeal, spiritual being, a conversation we know of as the Annunciation, and which is discussed more fully in Part V: Mariology in Sacred Scripture (from my book, “Why Mary Matters”). Not only did Mary converse with the angel, but treated the angel’s words as being those of God Himself.

Another Old Testament passage from 2nd Maccabees clearly indicates that prayer to the saints is not only heard, but answered.

And this was his vision: That Onias, who had been high priest, a virtuous and a good man, reverend in conversation, gentle in condition, well spoken also, and exercised from a child in all points of virtue, holding up his hands prayed for the whole body of the Jews. This done, in like manner there appeared a man with gray hairs, and exceeding glorious, who was of a wonderful and excellent majesty. Then Onias answered, saying, This is a lover of the brethren, who prayeth much for the people, and for the holy city, to wit, Jeremias the prophet of God. Whereupon Jeremias holding forth his right hand gave to Judas a sword of gold, and in giving it spake thus, Take this holy sword, a gift from God, with the which thou shalt wound the adversaries (2 Mac 15:12-15).

You may argue that 2 Maccabees is not in the Protestant canon of Scripture, and you would be correct. It is, however, in the scriptural canon used by every other Christian body (not just the Roman Catholics). Moreover, 2 Maccabees was in Martin Luther’s German translation of the Holy Bible, and in the original 1611 King James Bible (although in both were separated from those books that make up the current canon of the Hebrew Scriptures.) This is not the place to discuss canonical issues, other than to state that there are good and valid arguments to make for its being part of the Christian canon. But what we can say is that it is clear that the Jews of the diaspora 1) believed the saints were alive, 2) believed the saints were able to hear their prayers, and 3) believed the saints were able to respond. Therefore, it is not much of a stretch to understand how the early Christian church, being comprised mainly of Jews, did not have a problem with intercessory prayer to the saints.

Historical Witness

A belief in prayer to the Virgin Mary appears to be a quite early development. The John Rylands Papyrus 470 is a fragment dated to around 250 A.D., and containing the following prayer to the Theotokos:

Under your
mercy
we take refuge,
Mother of God! Our
prayers, do not despise
in necessities,
but from the danger
deliver us,
only pure,
only blessed. (Tribe and Villiers 2011)

Notice, if you will, the dating of this fragment — well before the time of the edict of Milan in 313 A.D.; this papyrus dates to the time of Emperor Decius, under whose reign there was a persecution of Christian laity across the empire. This prayer, dating from a time of great persecution, is still contained in the Greek Orthodox “Book of Hours”, where it is one of the concluding prayers of the evening services; also, the Orthodox sing this hymn as the last dismissal hymn of daily Vespers during Great Lent. (Orthodox Metropolitanate of Hong Kong and Southeast Asia 2011) The prayer is also used in the Roman Catholic Church, where it is known as the Sub tuum praesidium. (Mathewes-Green 2007, 85-86)

Shawn Tribe and Henri de Villiers provide us with the following theological analysis of this prayer.

Three fundamental theological truths are admirably synthesized:

  1. The special election of Mary by God (“only blessed”).
  2. The perpetual Virginity of Mary (“only pure”).
  3. The Divine Motherhood (“Mother of God”; “Mother” may be considered as a poor translation of Genitrix). (Tribe and Villiers 2011)

We should also add the idea that Mary hears our prayers and, in some sense, answers them. Thus prayer to the Theotokos, along with a belief in her remaining ever-virgin, is an expression of ante-Nicene Christianity, rather than (as some suggest) a syncretic grafting of paganism onto Christianity by a post-Constantine, apostate church.

Witness of the Fathers (and others)

St. John of Kronstadt waxes lyrical on this topic.

Pray, my brethren, to the Mother of God when the storm of enmity and malice bursts forth in your house. She, Who is all-merciful and all-powerful, can easily pacify the hearts of men. Peace and love proceed from the one God, as from their Source, and Our Lady–in God, as the Mother of Christ the Peace, is zealous, and prays for the peace of the whole world, and above all–of all Christians. She has the all-merciful power of driving away from us at Her sign the sub-celestial spirits of evil — those ever-vigilant and ardent sowers of enmity and malice amongst men, whilst to all who have recourse with faith and love to Her powerful protection, She soon speedily gives both peace and love. Be zealous yourselves also in preserving faith and love in your hearts; for if you do not care for this, then you will be unworthy of the intercession for you–of the Mother of God; be also most fervent and most reverent worshippers[i] of the Mother of the Almighty Lord; for it is truly meet to bless Her–the ever-blessed; the entirely spotless Mother of our God, the highest of all creatures, the Mediatrix for the whole race of mankind. Strive to train yourself in the spirit of humility, for She Herself was more humble than any mortal, and only looks lovingly upon the humble.” He hath regarded the low estate of His handmaiden” (said She to Elisabeth), of “God, Her Saviour.” (St John of Kronstadt 2010, Kindle Locations 3050-3059)

I must admit that this troubled me for some time. Even as I write this, after being chrismated into the Orthodox Church, I am still not entirely comfortable with prayer to the saints. Yet I consider this more a matter of my sloppy prayer habits rather than conviction, for I have become convinced that prayer to the saints is the most natural thing in the world.

One of the best places to start is with the words of Jesus: “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Mat 22:32). The context of this passage has to do with the Sadducees and their disbelief in the resurrection from the dead. Jesus responded not with a defense of resurrection per se, but instead with the statement that the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob was the God of the living. In other words, the mortal bodies of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob may have died, but they were still very much alive. Jesus made much the same claim in his story of Lazarus and the rich man. This is likely not a parable, because Lazarus is named in the story; therefore he is a real person, despite his having suffered bodily death. Even after death, the rich man recognizes both Abraham and Lazarus, and actually converses with father Abraham (Luke 16:19-31).

St. John of Krondstat writes:

The saints of God live even after their death. Thus, I often hear in church the Mother of God singing her wonderful, heart-penetrating song which she said in the house of her cousin Elizabeth, after the Annunciation of the Archangel. At times, I hear the song of Moses; the song of Zacharias–the father of the Forerunner; that of Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel; that of the three children; and that of Miriam. And how many holy singers of the New Testament delight until now the ear of the whole Church of God! And the Divine service itself–the sacraments, the rites? Whose spirit is there, moving and touching our hearts? That of God and of His saints. Here is a proof for you of the immortality of men’s souls. How is it that all these men have died, and yet are governing our lives after their death–they are dead and they still speak, instruct and touch us? (St John of Kronstadt 2010, Location 63-68)

Thus the souls of those asleep in Jesus, while disembodied, are kept conscious and alive, awaiting the resurrection of their bodies (1 Thes 4:13-18). Jesus describes one conversation in particular, a conversation in which the rich man seems aware of the spiritual condition of his brothers. This would seem to allow for the possibility that those asleep in Jesus are aware of us. Moreover, at the Transfiguration, Jesus spoke with Moses and Elijah, both of whom seemed aware of Jesus’ upcoming death (Mat 17:1-9).

Peter Gillquist writes:

If Saint Paul instructs us as a holy priesthood to pray “always …for all the saints” (Ephesians 6:18), is it so outrageous to confess with the Church that holy Mary (along with all the saints who have passed from death to life and continually stand in the presence of Christ) intercedes before her Son on behalf of all men? For Mary is the prototype of what we are all called to be. (Gillquist 2009, 101)

It is with all this in mind that we read the roll call of faith in Hebrews chapter 11. Despite the Lutheran confessions arguing against intercessory prayer to the saints, Lutheran theologian Gustaf Aulén notes:

The koinonia of the church is not limited to the church as it exists now in the present. Death does not constitute a boundary. The fellowship of the church includes the witnesses to the faith in all ages. When the Letter to the Hebrews in the eleventh chapter has enumerated a long line of witnesses from the time of the old covenant, it continues in chapter twelve to stress the significance of the fact that “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,” and especially that we look “to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:1-2). In these words the author of the letter has disclosed the true perspective of the relationship between the many and the one. Just as the old covenant has its heroes of faith, so the new has “so great a cloud of witnesses.” (Aulén 1960, 310)

Lutheran pastor Berthold Von Schenk writes in “The Presence” regarding the presence of our dear departed, worshiping with us around the altar:

As we seek and find our Risen Lord, we shall find our dear departed. They are with Him, and we find the reality of their continued life through Him. The saints are a part of the Church. We worship with them. They worship the Risen Christ face to face, while we worship the same Risen Christ under the veil of bread and wine at the Altar. At the Communion we are linked with heaven, with the Communion of Saints, with our loved ones. Here at the Altar, focused to a point, we find our communion with the dead; for the Altar is the closest meeting place between us and our Lord. That place must be the place of closest meeting with our dead who are in His keeping; The Altar is the trysting place where we meet our beloved Lord. It therefore, must also be the trysting place where we meet our loved ones, for they are with, the Lord. 

How pathetic it is to see ‘men and women going out to the cemetery, kneeling at the mound, placing little sprays’ of flowers and wiping their tears from their eyes, and knowing nothing else. How hopeless they look! Oh, that we could take them by the hand, away from the grave, out through the cemetery gate, in through the door of the church, and up the nave to the very Altar itself; and there put them in touch, not with the dead body of their loved one, but with the living soul who is with Christ at the Altar!

Oh, God the King of Saints, we praise and magnify Thy holy Name for all Thy servants, who have finished their course in Thy faith and fear, for the Blessed Virgin Mary, for the Holy Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, and Martyrs, for all Thy other righteous servants; and we beseech Thee that, encouraged by their example and strengthened by their fellowship, we may attain to everlasting life, through the merits of Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Von Schenk 1945)

The saints are living, are aware of us (as seen in the conversations between Moses, Elijah, and the transfigured Christ), fellowship with us, worship with us at the heavenly altar (of which the earthly altar is but a shadow), and are able to speak with Jesus. The author of Hebrews charges us to keep in mind the saints in heaven, the great cloud of witnesses (Heb 12:1) — of whom constant mindfulness in some way helps us avoid sin and keep us on the path towards salvation.

Many Protestant churches are aware of the saint’s perpetual involvement in the life of the church, even if they do not fully comprehend it. Why is it that many Protestant churches have graveyards on the church grounds? If you ask some of them, the more theologically sophisticated will say that the departed are still members of the church. Some sacramental Protestants (such as Lutherans) will go so far as to say that every time they celebrate the Lord’s Supper, the departed dead are celebrating it with them in heaven.[ii] If this is true, then why would we not ask the saints to intercede for us, just as we might ask the pastor or a trusted friend?

Bibliography

Aulén, Gustaf. The Faith of the Christian Church. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1960.

Dau, William H. T., and Gerhard F. Bente, . Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Ev. Lutheran Church. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921.

Gillquist, Peter. Becoming Orthodox: A Journy to the Ancient Christian Faith. Third. Ben Lomond: Conciliar Press, 2009.

Mathewes-Green, Frederica. The Lost Gospel of Mary: The Theotokos in Three Ancient Texts. Brewster: Paraclete Press, 2007.

Orthodox Metropolitanate of Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. “The Oldest Hymn to the Theotokos.” OMHKSEA. August 10, 2011. http://www.omhksea.org/2011/08/the-oldest-hymn-to-the-theotokos/ (accessed February 12, 2012).

St John of Kronstadt. My Life in Christ, or Moments of Spiritual Serenity and Contemplation, of Reverent Feeling, of Earnest SelfAmendment, and of Peace in God. Edited by John Iliytch Sergieff. Translated by E. E. Goulaeff. Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2010.

Tribe, Shawn, and Henri de Villiers. “The Sub Tuum Praesidium.” New Liturgical Movement. February 3, 2011. http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2011/02/sub-tuum-praesidium.html (accessed February 12, 2012).

Von Schenk, Berthold. The Presence: An Approach to the Holy Communion. New York: E. Kaufmann, Incorporated, 1945.


[i] This is an excerpt from the diary of St. John of Kronstadt. As such it lacks the theological precision one might otherwise expect. Theologically, we honor or venerate Mary and the saints, but reserve worship for God alone.

[ii] Scandinavian Lutheran churches often have a semi-circular altar rail; the other half of the circle is in heaven, and reserved for the departed saints who celebrate their heavenly liturgy with us.

Clothed with the Glory of God

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Painting of a man, hands raised , all aflame.

Clothed with the Glory of God

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, ‘Abba as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?’ then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, ‘If you will, you can become all flame.’

In the communion of persons, first evidenced in the persons of Adam and Eve, we are presented with a sign[i] and symbol of the communion the trinity has with itself. This helps us to understand what the scriptures mean when they speak of Adam and Even being naked, and not ashamed (Ge 2:25). (John Paul II 2006, 163) By nature the man and the woman were in full communion with each other, and full communion with God (Ge 2:8). The fathers of the church believed Adam and Eve were thereby clothed with the glory of God.

The obvious question is whether the idea of the original and prototypical humanity being clothed with the glory of God has any scriptural foundation. In the introduction to Robert Alter’s translation of Psalms, he notes the way the language of Psalms presents the idea of light’s being a mythological property of deity, of God wearing light as a garment, and of God stretching out the heavens as a garment.

God, as we noted in a verse quoted from Psalm 27[ii], is associated with light — in that instance, because light, archetypically, means safety and rescue to those plunged in fearful darkness, but also because radiance is a mythological property of deities and monarchs. Psalm 104 is a magnificent celebration of God as king of the vast panorama of creation. It begins by imagining God in the act of putting on royal raiment: “Grandeur and glory you don” (hod wehadar lavashta). The psalmist then goes on: “Wrapped in light like a cloak, / stretching out the heavens like a tentcloth” (verse 2). What makes the familiar figure of light for the divinity so effective is its fusion with the metaphor of clothing. The poet, having represented God donning regalia, envisages Him wrapping Himself in a garment of pure light (the Hebrew verb used here is actually in the active mode, “wrapping”). Then, associatively continuing the metaphor of fabrics, he has God “stretching out the heavens like a tent-cloth,” the bright sky above becoming an extension of the radiance that envelopes God. (Alter 2007, xxviii)

The association of God with light is the source for the phrase describing Jesus Christ as “light from light” in the Nicene Creed. Since Sacred Scripture speaks of God being clothed in light, and of spreading out the heavens like a tentcloth, it is only natural to extend that idea to original and prototypical humanity. Ephrem the Syrian writes: “God clothed Adam in glory”; and again: “It was because of the glory with which they were clothed that they were not ashamed. It was when this glory was stripped from them after they had transgressed the commandment that they were ashamed because they were naked” (St Ephrem the Syrian n.d., 99, 106) In like manner, Chrysostom writes: “[W]hile sin and disobedience had not yet come on the scene, they were clad in that glory from above which caused them no shame. But after the breaking of the law, then entered the scene both shame and awareness of their nakedness.” (Louth, Conti and Oden, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament I, Genesis 1-11 2001, 72)

The 17th century mystic Jacom Böhme remarks:

Man should have walked naked upon the earth, for the heavenly [part] penetrated the outward, and was his clothing. He stood in great beauty, glory, joy and delight, in a child­like mind; he should have eaten and drunk in a magical manner; not into the body, as now, but in the mouth there was the separation; for so likewise was the fruit of Paradise. (Böhme 2009)

Such was the state of humanity in Paradise. Yet once Adam had sinned and the glory of God had departed from him, it was immediately clear to him that he no longer belonged in Paradise. St. Ephrem the Syrian, explains this in the seventh verse of his second Hymn on Paradise,:

At its boundary I saw
figs, growing in a sheltered place,
from which crowns were made that adorned
the brows of the guilty pair,
while there leaves blushed, as it were,
for him who was stripped naked:
there leaves were required for those two
who had lost their garments;
although they covered Adam,
still they made him blush with shame and repent,
because, in a place of such splendor,
a man who is naked is filled with shame. (St Ephrem the Syrian 1989, 87)

There are striking parallels between this hymn and the account of the Philistines capturing the ark — how the pregnant wife of Phineas, upon hearing this, gave birth. “And she named the child Ichabod, saying, The glory is departed from Israel” (I Sam 4:21). It is only after the fall, after the glory has departed, and after full communion of persons has been lost, that the man and the woman objectified each other as individuals rather than persons partaking of the same nature; in their fallen state they saw themselves as naked before each other and before God. (Lossky, The Creation 1989, 77)

The reader will no doubt be reminded of how the ark of the covenant was shrouded in the “thick darkness” of the Holy of Holies (I Kings 8:12); and of how in Ezekiel chapters 8-10, the prophet is given a vision of the glory of God, the defilement of the temple, and how the glory of God departed from the temple as a consequence for Israel’s sin. In this manner we come to the understanding that the glory with which Adam and Eve were clothed, or overshadowed, is natural to mankind in the state of original righteousness, a state of communion with God. We also understand that the glory of God, with which they were clothed, would quite rightly depart as a consequence of Adam’s sin. In this context, we note that after the Babylonian captivity and the rebuilding of the temple, Ezra makes no mention of the glory of God returning, filling the temple, and overshadowing the ark. Instead, the return of the Shekinah glory came at the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel informed the blessed virgin that the Holy Ghost would come upon her and the power of the highest would overshadow her. What we see at the annunciation (and in Revelation 12), is the blessed virgin clothed with the glory of God, as was Eve in the garden — which points to the incarnation as the inauguration of God’s plan for reconciliation and recreation, for the reestablishment of that perfect communion between God and man, and between each human person.

Bibliography

Alter, Robert. The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007.

Böhme, Jacom. “Mysterium Magnum (part one).” Gnosis research. October 9, 2009. http://meuser.awardspace.com/Boehme/Jacob-Boehme-Mysterium-Magnum-part-one-free-electronic-text.pdf (accessed November 15, 2010).

John Paul II. Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body. Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006.

Lossky, Vladimir. “The Creation.” In Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, by Vladimir Lossky, edited by Ian Kesarcodi-Watson, & Ihita Kesarcodi-Watson, 51-78. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1989.

Louth, Andrew, Marco Conti, and Thomas C. Oden. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament I, Genesis 1-11. Vol. 1. 28 vols. Westmont: InterVarsity Press, 2001.

St Ephrem the Syrian. “Commentary on Genesis.” Scribd.com. n.d. http://www.scribd.com/doc/56174298/St-Ephraim-the-Syrian-Commentary-on-Genesis (accessed June 9, 2013).

—. Hymns on Paradise. Translated by Sebastion Brock. Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1989.

 

[i] On the nature of the sign and the thing signified, Karl Barth notes: “Sign and thing signified, the outward and the inward, are, as a rule, strictly distinguished in the Bible, and certainly in other connexions we cannot lay sufficient stress upon the distinction. But they are never separated in such a (“liberal”) way that according to preference the one may be easily retained without the other.” (Barth 1956, 179) In other words, the sign always points to the thing signified. However, if we believe in the thing signified, we have to accept the sign as well—as, for example, with the virgin birth being the sign of the incarnation (Isa 7:14).

[ii] The Lord is my light and my rescue.

Whom should I fear?

The Lord is my life’s stronghold.

Of whom should I be afraid?

Ps 27:1, Robert Alter’s translation (Alter 2007, xxv-xxvi; 91)

Catechesis and the Virgin Mary

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One Protestant objection is that we do not see a well-developed Mariology in Sacred Scripture or in the writings of the earliest church fathers. To answer this objection, we need to examine the concept of catechesis — of instruction in the faith. For a number of reasons, catechesis in the early church was primarily oral.

  • First, because there was no New Testament canon in the ante-Nicene church. For nearly thirty years there were no epistles; for nearly forty years there were no gospels; for many years different bishops promulgated different canons, and the canon as we know it today wasn’t standardized until the late 4th century.
  • Second, there were no books as we know them today, only scrolls; different churches had different collections of scrolls.[i]
  • Third, scrolls were hand-copied, and therefore expensive.
  • Fourth, literacy was not widespread, especially among the lower classes that formed the bulk of the Christian Church.[ii]
  • Fifth, because scrolls were hand-copied and errors were frequent, the written word was not considered to be as trustworthy as the oral word passed on from teacher to student.
  • And finally, because the Christian Church was an underground movement. As Christianity was technically an illegal religion in the Roman Empire, and also so as not to cast pearls before swine, the mysteries of the faith were kept hidden from non-believers. It is perhaps for these reasons that we do not see well-defined theology on a great many subjects within the writings of the earliest church fathers.
Fresco of Virgin and Child, Catacomb of Priscilla

Fresco of Virgin and Child, Catacomb of Priscilla

As evidence, let us examine some of the works preserving the church order of the early church. The Didache (a.k.a. the Teachings of the Apostles), is a very early work, perhaps written as early as 50 AD (but certainly before 70 AD), which was accepted as scripture by many church fathers and within several jurisdictions, and was not officially excluded from the canon until the 4th century. (O’Loughlin 2010, 26) [iii] The Didache contains very little doctrine, but is mostly concerned with matters of church order, church practices, and holy living. (P. Schaff, ANF07. Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries: Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, Homily, and Liturgies 2004) In the third century, Hippolytus (c. 170-c. 236) wrote his Apostolic Traditions, preserving the church order and practices in use in Alexandria, but containing none of what we today would call doctrine. (Hippolytus 1997) The  Didascalia Apostolorum, probably from the early third century, preserves the early church order and practices in use in Syria, likely close to Antioch. The so-called Constitutions of the Holy Apostles appears to be a second or third century work (with fourth or fifth century interpolations), which preserves the church order and practices of the churches in Asia Minor, and appears to be “a revised and enlarged edition of the Didascalia.” (Chapman 1913) This work consists of eight books, most of which are solely concerned with church order and holy living. Only the sixth book, “Against Heresies”, contains any doctrine — and apart from a creedal portion in Section III entitled An Exposition of the Preaching of the Apostles, most of the work consists of a description of various errors or of the prescriptions of the apostles. What we would term the doctrinal portion of this work is surprisingly brief. (P. Schaff, ANF07. Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries: Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, Homily, and Liturgies 2004)

Fresco of the Adoration of the Magi in the catacomb of Marcellinus and Peter

Fresco of the Adoration of the Magi, Catacomb of Marcellinus and Peter

Given this, it is likely that Marian doctrine was considered to be a mystery, preserved orally and passed on to catechumens only after their baptism. It is also possible that Marian doctrine, along with Christology, was not especially well developed in the primitive church; but when heretics such as Arius began to attack the nature of Christ, Christology became increasingly important and well-defined. In this view, Marian doctrine developed as an outgrowth of and in support of Christology. In any case, it seems the primitive church had no need of a written dogmatic tradition, being content with the apostolic witness passed on orally to the catechumens. And if some hold that Mariology was a creation of the later Ecumenical Councils, what are they to make of the 2nd century fresco entitled “Virgin and Child with Balaam the Prophet”, preserved in the Catacomb of St Priscilla? (Fletcher n.d., Beckett 2009, 30-31) What are they to make of the early 4th century Fresco of the Adoration of the Magi in the catacomb of Marcellinus and Peter? (Beckett 2009, 31-32) What are they to make of the 4th century marble sarcophagus with its image of the Adoration of the Magi? (Beckett 2009, 31-33) Or of another similar mid-4th century sarcophagus with its image of the Adoration of the Magi, including one of the figures carrying a gold wreath which was a gift “offered only to the emperor”? (Beckett 2009, 33-34)

4th century marble sarcophagus with its image of the Adoration of the Magi

Adoration of the Magi, 4th century marble sarcophagus

Mid-4th century sarcophagus with its image of the Adoration of the Magi, including one of the figures carrying a gold wreath which was a gift "offered only to the emperor

Adoration of the Magi, mid-4th century marble sarcophagus

Bibliography

Beckett, Wendy. Encounters With God: In Quest of the Ancient Icons of Mary. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2009.

Fletcher, Elizabeth. Bible Archaeology:Tombs and Catacombs:tomb where Jesus called Lazarus back from the dead,catacombs of St.Priscilla,St.Callixtus for the early Christians. n.d. http://www.bible-archaeology.info/tombs_catacombs.htm (accessed May 25, 2009).

Hippolytus. “The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus of Rome.” Kevin P. Edgecomb. July 8, 1997. http://www.bombaxo.com/hippolytus.html (accessed May 25, 2009).

O’Loughlin, Thomas. The Didache: A Window on the Earliest Christians. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010.

Schaff, Philip. ANF07. Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries: Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, Homily, and Liturgies. Edited by Philip Schaff. Vol. 7. Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2004.

 

[i] It was Christians who first began cutting scrolls into pages, sewing the four gospels together to form a Codex, the predecessor of our modern books. Even so, the Bible was still known as a collection of scrolls and codices—a library, and not a single book.

[ii] A study by William Harris indicates “literacy rates were rarely higher than 10-15 percent of the population.” (Ehrman 2005, 37)

[iii] Clement of Alexandria, writing in the 2nd century, quotes directly from the Didache as though it were scripture. In the Stromata, or Miscellanies, Book 1, chapter 20, he says: “he who appropriates what belongs to the barbarians, and vaunts it is his own, does wrong, increasing his own glory, and falsifying the truth. It is such an one that is by Scripture called a ‘thief.’ It is therefore said, ‘Son, be not a liar; for falsehood leads to theft.’ (P. Schaff, ANF02. Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire) 2004, 529) This is a direct quote from the Didache 3:5, also known as The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles: “My child, be not a liar, since a lie leadeth the way to theft”. (P. Schaff, ANF07. Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries: Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, Homily, and Liturgies 2004, 561) Irenaeus, also writing in the 2nd century, may mention the Didache in fragment 37, as discussed by Henry Wace: “In one of the fragments, published by Pfaff, as from Irenaeus, we read: ‘Those who have followed the Second Ordinances of the Apostles (οι ταις δευτεραις των αποστολων διαταξεσι παρηκολουθηκοτες) know that our Lord instituted a new offering in the New Covenant according to the saying of Malachi the prophet, ‘From the rising of the sun to the going down, my name has been glorified in the Gentiles; and in every place incense is offered to my name and a pure offering.” This passage is quoted in the Didaché with reference to the Eucharist [Didache XIV:3-4]; not, however, textually, as in the fragment, but very loosely. We can only say then that it is possible the Didaché may be the Second Ordinances of the Apostles referred to here.” (Wace 2001)

Mariology as a Defense Against Heresy

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 The following text is from my book “Why Mary Matters”.

 

Definition of Chalcedon, opposed by Nestorianism, Docetism, Arianism, and Monophysitism

Definition of Chalcedon

The earliest Gnostic heresy was Docetism, which taught that Jesus had only appeared to be a man, but did not take on a real human body. The first mention of Mary by a father of the Church appears in the works of Ignatius of Antioch, and is a defense of the full humanity of Christ by means of His birth of the Virgin Mary. In Chapter VII or his Epistle to the Ephesians, titled “Beware of False Teachers”, Ignatius provides the following formulation of the Christ, being both true God and true man.

For some are in the habit of carrying about the name [of Jesus Christ] in wicked guile, while yet they practise things unworthy of God, whom ye must flee as ye would wild beasts. For they are ravening dogs, who bite secretly, against whom ye must be on your guard, inasmuch as they are men who can scarcely be cured. There is one Physician who is possessed both of flesh and spirit; both made and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death; both of Mary and of God; first passible and then impassible, even Jesus Christ our Lord. (P. Schaff, ANF01. The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus 1884, 86)

From there we begin to see references to the Virgin Mary pop up in early Gnostic writings. These writings provide us with evidence of what the Church was trying to avoid — the syncretic identification of the Mother Goddess with the Virgin Mary. Hilda Graef mentions two works — the Ascension of Isaiah and Odes to Solomon — both of which describe the birth of Jesus as something other than a true birth. In fact, these are the earliest literary sources (if perhaps not the theological sources) for the doctrine that Mary maintained her virginity in partu, in the birth, and that this was something other than an ordinary vaginal delivery. (Graef 2009, 27-28)

I note in passing the relative impossibility of keeping secrets. The “disciplina arcani: the secret, inner life of the Church” was bound to slip out. Witness for example the description of Christianity by Pliny the Younger in his letter to the Emperor Trajan where he seeks council on how to deal with Christians (Epistulae X.96). This letter, written early in the second century, provides the earliest literary description of the Eucharist, something that was hidden from the catechumenate, and which the Church forbade discussion of to those outside the Church. Even today we pray (in the pre-Communion prayer of St. John Chrysostom): “Of thy Mystical Supper, O Son of God, accept me today as a communicant; for I will not speak of thy Mystery to thine enemies, neither like Judas will I give thee a kiss; but like the thief will I confess thee: Remember me, O Lord, in thy Kingdom.”

Having discussed the existence of the Virgin Mary as part of the secret, inner life of the Church, we must also state that the veneration of the Blessed Virgin is indeed to be found in Sacred Scripture.  We will follow the example of Archimandrite[i] Lev Gillett in using only the Gospels and the book of Acts for this; the more symbolic witness of the Old Testament and the book of Revelation cannot be understood without a proper evaluation of the more straightforward evidence. (Gillett 1949, 76) Lev Gillett writes:

The Gospel itself ascribes to Mary a privileged place among the creatures. The angel Gabriel said to her: ‘Hail, thou that are highly favoured, the Lord is with thee’ (Luke i:28). The place occupied by Mary in the divine scheme of our salvation is not only privileged, but unique. Therefore, Elisabeth said to Mary: ‘Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb’ (Luke i. 42). The Gospel observes that Elisabeth, when she saluted Mary in this manner, was ‘filled with the Holy Ghost’ (Luke i. 41). Every ‘evangelical’ (in the Protestant sense) Christian will acknowledge as true and inspired these words of the angel Gabriel and Elisabeth. The same words form the greatest part of the text of the Latin Ave Maria, which many ‘evangelical’ Christians mistrust, and the whole text of the corresponding Byzantine prayer. Could ‘evangelicals’ object to our addressing the glorified Virgin Mary in the same words with which she, on earth, was greeted by an angel and by a woman filled with the Holy Ghost? Could they object to our repeating such words, as recorded in the Gospel? If they did, would they still be ‘evangelical’? (Gillett 1949, 76)

A standard evangelical argument against the veneration of Mary is that Jesus himself did not honor her. The argument is that when a woman tried to honor Mary for having given birth, Jesus instead rejected her. This argument is faulty, as Lev Gillet explains.

Jesus himself explained in what is the blessing of God which rests on Mary. When a certain woman out of the multitude lifted up her voice and said to our Lord: ‘Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked’, he answered: ‘Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it’ (Luke xi. 27-38). These words are part of the lesson from the Gospel which the Orthodox Church reads at the liturgy on every feast of the Virgin; this shows that the Orthodox Church considers them as the most perfect expression of her own mind concerning Mary’s holiness. The words of Jesus must certainly not be interpreted as a disavowal of the praising of his mother by the woman or as an underestimation of Mary’s excellence; but they emphasize the real point and show where lies the merit of Mary. (Gillett 1949, 77)

St. Nikolai Velimirovich, in his Prayer number XXII, explores this idea. “O my Majestic Lord! You dance on Your Mother’s lap, quickened by the All-Holy Spirit … You fill the whole soul of Your Mother, all Her virgin breast; and there is nothing in Your Mother’s soul except You. You are Her radiance and Her voice, truly Her eye and Her song.” (Velimirovich 2010, 40) Herein we see the connection between the witness of the Sacred Scriptures and that of the inner life of the Church. The meaning of Jesus’ words regarding His mother are unclear, and could be interpreted any number of ways. Historically, Christianity has interpreted these words of Christ as expressing the true measure of Mary’s greatness, and the reason why she is to be specially honored today. This is in line with the Lukan account of how “Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19; see also 2:51).


[i] The term “Archimandrite” can refer to a superior abbot who is given authority over several ordinary abbots and monasteries. However, it is more commonly used as an honorific, bestowed upon certain clergy out of respect, often out of gratitude for a special service to the church. This term is applied only to celibate clergy; married clergy receive the honorific of “archpriest”.

The Secret Inner Life of the Church

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The following is slightly modified from my book “Why Mary Matters”.

 

Icon of Christ Pantocrator St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai

Icon of Christ Pantocrator
St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai

A proper and catholic[i] Mariology is inextricably bound to Christology, and is therefore a necessary component of the true faith. St. Ignatius of Antioch, disciple of the apostle John, calls the virginity of Mary a mystery hidden from the prince of this world, a mystery wrought in silence by God: “Now the virginity of Mary was hidden from the prince of this world, as was also her offspring, and the death of the Lord; three mysteries of renown, which were wrought in silence by God.” (P. Schaff, ANF01. The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus 1884, 87, 95-96) Now as we know, the term mystery is also the source of the term sacrament; sacrament and mystery have the same scriptural meaning. Protestants, including Lutherans, jettisoned much of the spiritual heritage bequeathed them from the church catholic — specifically that church whose bishop resides in Rome.[ii] Of course they would not consider this as an abandonment, but rather a recovery of a primitive Christianity uncorrupted by nearly fifteen centuries of hierarchal and heretical development within the Roman Catholic church. However, the loss of one of the Ignatius’ “three mysteries of renown” raises the question of whether Protestantism has recovered primitive Christianity, or rather whether in jettisoning Roman Catholicism they also jettisoned something essential to Christianity.

Peter Gillquist writes:

The highly charged emotional atmosphere which surrounds this subject serves to blunt our objectivity in facing up to Mary. Many of us were brought up to question or reject honor paid to Mary in Christian worship and art. Therefore, we often have our minds made up in advance. We have allowed our preconceptions to color our understanding even of the Scripture passages concerning her. We have not let the facts speak for themselves. (Gillquist 2009, 97)

To be fair, whether one sees the veneration of the Virgin Mary in Sacred Scripture depends in part upon one’s theological background and interpretive framework. Scot McKnight, the Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University and author of the book “The Real Mary”, states: “[T]he story about the real Mary has never been told. The Mary of the Bible has been hijacked by theological controversies whereby she has become a Rorschach inkblot in which theologians find whatever they wish to find.” (McKnight 2007, 3) So far, so good. However, McKnight then attempts to find a version of Mary palatable to Evangelicals, ignoring the witness of history and the church, and creates version of Mary befitting his thesis. McKnight’s great mistake is his hubris — his dismissal of what historic Christianity believed, taught, proclaimed, and even died regarding the theology surrounding Christ and the Virgin Mary.

To be fair to those from a “Scripture Alone” background, we must admit that the overt scriptural evidence for the veneration of Mary seems rather sparse. Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky notes: “If we desired to consider biblical evidence apart from the Church’s devotion to the Mother of God, we should be obliged to limit ourselves to the few New Testament passages relating to Mary and the one Old Testament passage cited in the New Testament with reference to her (the prophecy of the Virgin-Birth of the Messiah in Isaiah).” (Lossky, Panagia 1949, 25) Therefore, the starting place for an understanding of the veneration of Mary must begin with a proper understanding of Christology, and of its dogmatic development as a defense against Christological heresy. Vladimir Lossky notes that even here, the evidence for a Mariological connection is sparse.

If we were to limit ourselves to the dogmatic data, in the strict sense of the word, and were dealing only with dogmas affirmed by the Councils, we should find nothing except the name Theotokos, whereby the Church has solemnly confirmed the divine maternity of the Holy Virgin. The dogmatic subject of the Theotokos, as the name was affirmed against the Nestorians, is Christological before it is anything else; that which is thereby defended against the gainsayers of the divine maternity is the hypostatic unity of the Son of God, when he had become the Son of Man. It is Christology which is directly envisaged here; it is indirectly that at the same time there is a dogmatic confirmation of the Church’s devotion to her who bore God according to the flesh. It is said that all those who rise up against the appellation Theotokos, all who refuse to admit that Mary has this quality given to her, are not truly Christians, for they oppose the true doctrine of the Incarnation of the word. This should demonstrate the close connection between dogma and devotion, which are inseparable in the Church. (Lossky, Panagia 1949, 24)

John Breck notes: “The mystery of the Holy Virgin Mary belongs, as much as any other in Christian experience, to the disciplina arcani: the secret, inner life of the Church.”[iii] Thus we cannot truly understand the place of the Holy Virgin Mary in the economy of salvation apart from the church — for, as Breck notes: “[T]he person of Mary and her place within God’s work of salvation is in the broadest sense ecclesial, and not merely scriptural.” (Breck, Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and Its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church 2001, 143) While the biblical evidence for Mariology exists, the interpretation of the evidence is informed by the church’s dogma and devotion (which, as we have shown, is Christological in its orientation).

Still, the question deserves an answer: If the veneration of Mary is truly part of Christianity, why is it not more widely and clearly proclaimed in Sacred Scripture? Hilda Graef provides the following information.

The paganism of the Byzantine world round the shores of the Mediterranean was no longer the comparatively sober affair of the Greco-Roman Olympus, of Jupiter and Juno, of Minerva and Mars. It had become a syncretistic religion with very disturbing elements of ecstatic frenzy and sexual promiscuity, and one of its most prominent figures was the Mother Goddess, worshipped under many names, as the Magna Mater, the Phrygian Kybele, the Palestinian Ash-taroth, the Egyptian Isis and the Diana of the Ephesians whose devotees so violently opposed St. Paul (Acts 19). …When Christianity began to spread, not only among the Jewish communities of the Roman Empire but, under the leadership of St. Paul, also among the pagan population, its teachers had to make it clear that there was only one God, incarnate in Jesus Christ, who could tolerate no rivals, whether male or female, and who was both the creator and the redeemer of the world. A strong [public] emphasis on his virgin mother would have led to unfortunate comparisons and, possibly, identifications. (Graef 2009, 25-26)

And so we see why the veneration of the Virgin Mary might be part of the “disciplina arcani: the secret, inner life of the Church”. Whereas Alexander Hislop presumes that the veneration of Mary is evidence of the early apostasy of the church, I propose an alternate point of view: the early church knew that the open veneration of the Blessed Virgin would invite ill-informed comparisons to the mystery religions of the Mediterranean region, and so kept her veiled from view, hidden in plain sight.


[i] The word “catholic” with a little “c” is a reference to that which has been believed everywhere, in every place, and by all, or what is sometimes called the church catholic. With a capital “C”, Catholic is a shorthand reference to the Roman Catholic church.

[ii] Lutherans retained a semblance of sacramental theology, but redefine them and limit them in a manner unacceptable to non-Protestant Christians. With the Catholics, they number the sacraments; unlike the Catholics, they only accept two sacraments—baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

[iii] St. Basil the Great writes: “Of the dogmas and proclamations [kerygma] that are guarded in the Church, we hold some from the teaching of the Scriptures, and others we have received in mystery as the teachings of the tradition of the apostles.” (St Basil the Great 2011, Kindle Location 1657) Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev notes that St. Basil the Great is speaking “chiefly of traditions of a liturgical or ceremonial character, passed down by word of mouth and thereby entering into church practice.” (Alfeyev, Orthodox Christianity: Doctrine and Teaching of the Orthodox Church 2012, 16)

Why Humans Matter

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An image of the cover for "The Lost World of Genesis One"

The Lost World of Genesis One

Embedded in the book “Why Mary Matters” is a long section on theological anthropology, or what it means to be human (Part III: Cosmology and Anthropology). Shortly after releasing the book I came across the book “The Lost World of Genesis One” by John H. Walton, professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College. This book is unique in that it looks at Genesis using the figurative literal, grammatical/historical hermeneutic so beloved by fundamentalists and evangelicals, and comes up with conclusions that are remarkably similar to those taught by the church fathers.

Of particular interest, because it fits so well with “Why Mary Matters”, is John Walton’s description of the creation of humans on the sixth day. He has already spent a great deal of time developing the idea that the Creation accounts in Genesis are functional rather than material, based on his understanding of ancient near eastern cosmology and world view. Regarding humanity, he writes:

“The difference when we get to the creation of people is that even as they function to populate the world (like fish, birds and animals), they also have a function relative to the rest of God’s creatures, to subdue and rule. Not only that, but they have a function relative to God as they are in his image. They also have a function relative to each other as they are designated male and female. All these show the functional orientation with no reference to the material at all. …All of the rest of creation functions in relationship to humankind, and humankind serves the rest of creation and God’s vice regent.”

What John Walton misses is that humans were created to be the priests of creation, to offer it up to God. This is likely because he, like most Protestants, is not sacramental himself, and so misses the sacramental elements in Sacred Scripture. Still, Walton does notice that the Genesis accounts are functional, in that they describe the building of God’s temple; when His temple was complete, he rested. However, resting doesn’t mean lazing about, but it means that God took up His rightful place  in His temple, and began His rightful work of engaging with His creation. Walton describes humans being God’s “vice-regents”, when it would better suit his thesis if humanity were the priests of God’s temple.

I highly recommend John Walton’s book to anyone interesting in the origins debate. Walton provides a way to understand the creation accounts that should be palatable to the evangelical, and perhaps the fundamentalist, as it does not violate any of their principles of interpretation. Yet this way does not dictate any particular view regarding the creation of the material world, as that is not what the author of the text is concerned with.

Why do humans matter? Because they were created in the image and likeness of God to serve as priests in God’s temple. Why does Mary matter? Because she was the one through whom the Son of God was born after the flesh, so that He might conquer sin, death, and the devil, restoring us to our position as priests of His creation.

Islam and the Virgin Mary

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Maryam (The Blessed Saint Mary)

Maryam (The Blessed Saint Mary)

The discovery that Islam maintains a special place for the Virgin Mary may come as a surprise. Sally Cunneen describes the Pope’s use of the Virgin Mary to lead the crusades as a “tragic misunderstanding”, for Mary “is deeply honored in the Qu’ran, in Islamic exegesis, and in Muslim Piety. She is the only female identified by name in the Qu’ran; her name appears there (thirty-four times) far more often than in the whole New Testament. (Cunneen 1996, 155-156) Following Cunneen’s lead reveals a wealth of information on the subject. Of Mary’s role in Islam, Juan Galvin writes:

An authentic Haddith states that the Prophet said, “The superiority of ‘Aisha to other ladies is like the superiority of Tharid (i.e. meat and bread dish) to other meals. Many men reached the level of perfection, but no woman reached such a level except Mary, the daughter of Imran and Asia, the wife of Pharaoh.” (Bukhari 4.643). Indeed, both Mary and Pharaoh’s wife are an example (Quran 66:11-12). The Virgin Mary plays a very significant role in Islam. She is an example and a sign for all people. (Galvan n.d.)

There is a possibility that Juan Galvin is overstating the importance of Mary in Islam. Timothy J. Winter (a.k.a. Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad, a Cambridge lecturer and British Muslim researcher, writer and columnist) notes that there are at least four women who are similarly honored in Islam, and there are legitimate questions as to which of these four women is the ideal model of perfection for women.

For Christians, Mary is unrivalled as the model of female perfection. Islam, however, has debated the merits of several women. A hadīth which has come down to us in more than one version suggests that there have been four ‘Perfect Women’ in history. One is Āsiya, the wife of the Pharoah who challenged Moses, revered by the Muslim chroniclers as a saint who endured the rages of her husband. A hadīth tells us that a woman who suffers maltreatment from her husband will be rewarded as was Āsiya; and she hence becomes a model and a source of hope for women caught [in] abusive relationships. Another ‘Perfect Women’ is Khadīja, the first to believe in the message of the Prophet, and who, as a successful businesswoman who took the prophet into her employ, provides a traditional model for Muslim women who have sought a living in the world. Thirdly, there is Mary. And fourthly, there is the Prophet’s daughter Fātima. …

But although Mary is a spiritual inspiration, it is Fātima who has more usually supplied the role model for Muslim women in their search for practical perfection. Mary’s virginity is revered as her greatest miracle, but Islam’s positive view of sexuality, and the value Muslim piety has traditionally attached to the married state as the preferred matrix for spiritual life, have rendered a true imitatio mariae impossible. Fātima’s spiritual exaltation, proclaimed by the Prophet himself, far from appearing compromised by her biological fulfillment, was sustained and vindicated by it. She is, in the Muslim memory, the fountainhead of the Prophet’s descendants, the ancestress of saints, the mother of tragic heroes. Through her non-virginal but no less immaculate example, Muslim women have found their assurance that the approach to God can be enhanced rather than impeded by the normal functions of womanhood. (Schleifer 2008, 12)

While there appear to be legitimate and long-standing discussions within Islam regarding the position of the Virgin Mary, as evidenced by the disparity between Juan Galvin, who quotes Haddiths; and Timothy J. Winter, who describes Islamic tradition. However, we would do well to listen to voice of the Sufi mystic and Waliullah (or intimate friend of Allah, as Islamic saints are known), Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak Al-Jerrahi. Sheik Mazaffer Oxak begins his book “Blessed Virgin Mary” in this manner:

The Virgin Mary, blessed Mother of Jesus, may peace be upon them both, is described in the Glorious Quran, and therefore in all Islamic teaching, as the most sanctified of women. In the following verses, the Holy Quran proclaims her as the paragon of virtue and purity, surpassed by none before her as the supreme expression of womanhood. “And the angels said: ‘O Mary, Allah has selected you and purified you. He has chosen you above all womankind. O Mary, be devoted to your Lord. Prostrate yourself and bow with those who bow in worship.’ (Q.3:42-43)

Allah offers the blessed Mary as an example for all those who believe: ‘Mary, Imrān’s daughter, guarded her virginity, so We breathed Our Holy Spirit into her, and she confirmed the truth of the words of her Lord, and she was one of those who are devoted.’ (Q.66:12) (Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak Al-Jerrahi 1991, 1)

With these quotations from the Quran, and his commentary on them, Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak makes it clear that calling Mary “the most sanctified of women” does not mean that she is an example for women alone, but a model for all. It is not for me, as a Christian, to comment upon which takes precedence: the Holy Quran, the Haddith, or Islamic tradition. It is important to note, however, that all of them support the sanctity of the Virgin Mary; all of them support the veneration of the Virgin Mary; and all of describe the importance of the Virgin Mary as an example for those who believe.

There are important similarities between the way Islam and (non-Protestant) Christianity treats the Virgin Mary, but there are important differences. One interesting difference is the manner in which Islam and Christianity use typology. One of the earliest and most important typologies of the Virgin Mary in Christianity is the Eve/Mary typology. Where Eve was deceived, Mary was not; where Eve was disobedient, Mary was not; where Eve is the mother of all sinners, Mary is the mother of all who believe. Juroslav Pelikan notes that for Islam, it is Hagar, the mother of Ishmael (rather than Eve), who is typologically related to the Virgin Mary.

Hagar went “to a distant place,” the first time when her pregnancy aroused the jealousy of Sarah and the second time after the birth of Isaac. Her despairing cry was answered by a miraculous intervention of God. Because the Qur’ān was, by definition, a new revelation that came all at once in a blinding series of moments of divine authority, we can only speculate about the earlier stages of this typology between Hagar and Mary. But it does not seem to stretch historical and literary probability to dray an analogy with the typology between Eve and Mary discussed earlier. For Hagar, too, was a founding mother, as Eve was; and Ishmael was the eponymous beginning of the people known as Ishmaelites. This entire construct, therefore, may be seen to have been an Islamic way of celebrating the special place of the Virgin Mary in the history of the dealings of “allah, most benevolent, ever-merciful,” with the world. (Pelikan, Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture 1996, 73)

Islamic and Historic Christian Understandings of the Virgin Mary

In his forward to Dr. Aliah Schleifer’s book “Mary the Blessed Virgin of Islam”, Timothy J. Winter writes: “[T]he Qur’ān has somewhat more to say about her than has the Bible, and credits her with an active and even prophetic role.” (Schleifer 2008, 9) As to the active and even prophetic role, both Islam and (non-Protestant) Christian understandings of the Virgin Mary agree. But while there are similarities, there are distinct differences. Islam, being strictly monotheist, cannot acknowledge the triune mystery: “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Trinity one in essence and undivided.” Thus while Islam confesses the sinlessness of both Jesus and Mary, Islam cannot confess Jesus to be the Son of God. Therefore, Islam does not acknowledge Mary to be the Theotokos, the Mother of God.  Timothy J. Winter writes: “For most Christians, Mary is the Mother of God, yet for Muslims, although she is a perfected saint and a focus of intercessory hopes, she exercises no indispensable role in the economy of salvation. For while Islam and Christianity concur in affirming a perfect Creator God, they differ, as their rival Marys show, on how that God touches individual souls and brings them to perfection.” (Schleifer 2008, 10-11)

The Jesus of Islam has more in common with “revisionist New Testament scholarship” than with the historic Christian understanding of Jesus; yet Islam shows both Jesus and Mary more honor than a revisionist New Testament scholar would be comfortable with. (Schleifer 2008, 10) The basis for this honor would be familiar to the Eastern Orthodox (along with the Oriental Orthodox, Coptic Christians, and others) than it would be for both Roman Catholics and Protestants. Timothy J. Winter writes:

Christians discern liberation in a God who descended into history out of infinite love, and gave himself to ransom us from sin. Muslims, whose narrative of the Fall excludes any understanding of original sin, must respectfully dissent from this view. The divine love, duly conjoined with justice, ensures that a full and liberative forgiveness is available to all who freely turn to God in penitence, in the way that has been so amply witnessed by great saints today and in the Muslim past. For Muslims, the Blessed Virgin is not theotokos, the woman that bore God Himself and gazed in love upon Him as He lay in straw. Instead, she bears witness to the presence of the God who need not ‘come’ into the world, because He has never been ‘absent’ from it. (Schleifer 2008, 11)

Interestingly, both the Islamic and Eastern Orthodox view of the Fall exclude the idea of original sin, the idea that the guilt of Adam is passed from parents to their children. Thus neither faith has any need for the idea of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. And both the Eastern Orthodox and Islam do not conceive of a God who needed to come down from heaven to be with us; both faiths accept the transcendence and immanence of God; that God is entirely different and wholly other than we are, and yet is, in the words of the Quran, “nearer to us than the jugular vein.” (Schleifer 2008, 11)

Islamic and Protestant Understandings of the Virgin Mary

Herein is a curios truth: Islam and the churches of the Reformation may differ as to their belief in the incarnation, but they are alike in their view of Mary as an example and sign. Juan Galvin, in an essay entitled “Jesus and The Virgin Mary in Islam”, writes:

An authentic Haddith states that the Prophet said, “The superiority of ‘Aisha to other ladies is like the superiority of Tharid (i.e. meat and bread dish) to other meals. Many men reached the level of perfection, but no woman reached such a level except Mary, the daughter of Imran and Asia, the wife of Pharaoh.” (Bukhari 4.643). Indeed, both Mary and Pharoah’s wife are an example (Quran 66:11-12). The Virgin Mary plays a very significant role in Islam. She is an example and a sign for all people. (Galvin n.d.)

Kreitzer points out that in the preaching of the 2nd generation of Lutheran pastors, Mary was an example and sign for all Christians to follow; she was used as a means of moral instruction, but most especially as a model for women. (Kreitzer 2004, 138-140)

In order to preserve her reputation and her chastity, a girl should attend only pious functions such as church services, but otherwise remain safely at home. When the angel came to Mary to tell her of the incarnation, she was found at home, probably praying, according to many sermons. Mary also regularly serves as a special model for females. …The image of Mary most popular among Lutheran preachers seems to be of the pious and chaste girl, happy to serve her relatives, but otherwise gladly remaining and working at home. Mary did not leave her family to join a convent, but instead shows all girls how they should be happy in their domestic and familial vocations. The domesticating ideology often found in these sermons gains particular weight when it is declared that Mary, the blessed Mother of God, acted in just these recommended ways. (Kreitzer 2004, 140)

There is a fascinating distinction to make between these two positions. While both Protestants and Muslims believe in the virgin birth, Muslims actually assign God’s choice of Mary to the perfection of her character. In other words, the Muslims have a higher view of Mary than do the Protestants. However, because of what Juroslav Pelikan calls the “single-minded concentration of the religion of the Qūran on the unequivocal oneness of God”, Jesus was simply the “good son” of Mary, and not the Son of God. (Pelikan, Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture 1996, 71) In other words, by denying Mary the title of Mother of God, Muslims deny the incarnation. Protestants who deny Mary the same title are ultimately denying the doctrine of the person of Christ having two natures and two wills — the one divine, the other human.

Islam and the Immaculate Conception

Certain general similarities exist between the Protestant and the Islamic view of Mary, but there are important differences. In particular, the both Catholics and Muslims hold to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. This peculiarity is found as we dig deeper into what the Koran and the Hadith (or the sayings of Mohammed) have to say about the Virgin Mary. For this purpose I chose to use Giancarlo Finazzo’s 1978 article for L’Osservatore Romano, entitled “The Virgin Mary in the Koran”.

Among the persons of Sacred History mentioned in the Koran, the Virgin Mary occupies an important position on the historical and dogmatic plane. In addition to being the object of as many as thirty-four direct or indirect references, Mary also gives Sura XIX its name and is its central figure as the mother of Jesus. The characteristic note of references to the Virgin in the Koran and, to an even greater extent, in Islamic tradition, can be seen both in the information about her genealogy and her childhood — a part of which is more detailed than in the four Gospels — and in the language and way of narration which are seen to be particularly significant. Without going deeply into the question of the validity of the information and of the vast Islamic exegetics or “Mariology” to which it has given rise, we will limit ourself here to recalling that the sources of Moslem tradition are, in this connection, the Arab Gospel of Childhood, the Protogospel of James, the Gospel of Pseudo Matthew, the traditions of judaizing Christians and the Hadith.

To confirm the extraordinary value of the person of Mary, the fact that to her, alone among creatures, and to her Son, is attributed a nature exempt from all sin, is sufficient. We know that the Islamic religion ignores the concept of original sin; it attributes to man, however, a natural defectibility which makes him impure and imperfect from birth. Nevertheless, in a famous Hadith attributed to the Prophet, it is affirmed that: “Every child is touched by the devil as soon as he is born and this contact makes him cry. Excepted are Mary and her Son”. From this Hadith and from verses 35-37 of Sura III, Moslem commentators have deduced and affirmed the principle of Mary’s original purity. God, in fact, according to the Koranic text, granted the wish of Anna who consecrated to him Mary, about to be born, and the One to whom she would give birth (III, 37). God predestined Mary and purified her, raising her above all women (III, 45).

After this premise it is not surprising that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, though only implicitly contained in verses III, 31, 37, is univocally recognized by the Islamic religion. The recognition arises without difficulty also from the repeated and always unanimous evaluation of the extraordinary person of Mary and of her pure life (III, 42; XXI 91; LXVI, 12) which set her, with her Son, above every other created being.

Mary’s childhood, as seen through the Koran narration and Islamic tradition, is entirely a miracle. Mary grows under direct divine protection, she is nourished daily by angels (III, 32) and has visions of God every day. Everything contributes to making her and her Son a signum for mankind (V, 79; XXI, 91; XXIII, 50). But if the detailed narration of Mary’s childhood confirms the exceptional value of her person, it is necessary to stress that the greatness of Mary is completely related to the extraordinary event constituted by the birth of her son Jesus. The fearful and sweet vicissitudes that precede and accompany the birth and the childhood of her whom God chose above all women, are, in fact; nothing but the prelude to the coming of the Messiah (III, 40). Therefore, in the intentions of Mahomet and the whole Islamic tradition, the advent of the Man generated by the Word (III, 45) finds in the history of the little Mary the mysterious preceding fact that prepares the believer, even more than the Gospels themselves do, for an expectation full of awe and hope. (Finazzo 1978)

For Roman Catholicism, with its dogma of Original Sin, the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary is necessary if Jesus is to be born without bearing the guilt of Adam’s sin. But the rationale for the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary in Islam is much different. The Islamic understanding of the Immaculate Conception seems more as a sign and symbol of the “extraordinary person of Mary and of her pure life”, whose person and life served as “the prelude to the coming of the Messiah.” Therefore in the Islamic understanding, the Immaculate Conception was a miracle demonstrating both the power of the God who predestined her for such great things, and the power of Mary as the preparation for the coming of the Messiah.

Islam and the New Testament Apocryphal Writings

Finazzo notes that there is more information about Mary’s genealogy and childhood than exists in the four Gospels. The apparent source for this information is the apocrypha, the traditions of Judaizing Christians, and the Hadith. While the early church rejected the Protogospel (or Protoevangelium) of James, Mohammed seems to have had at least a passing familiarity with it. It was only later that the Roman Catholic church appears to have made use of the Protogospel of James as a source for the development of its own Marian cult.

Summary of Islamic Views Compared to Various Christian Communions

Islam, like the majority of Christian confessions, accepts the purity or sinlessness of the Virgin Mary. It should be noted that like the Eastern Orthodox, Islam has no doctrine of original sin. Therefore, there is no need in Islam, or in Eastern Orthodoxy, for the idea of the Immaculate Conception as an explanation for her sinlessness. Thus it is curious that Islam should appear to have held this view long before it became Roman Catholic dogma.

The Holy Koran’s description of Mary’s childhood is remarkably similar to that portrayed in the apocryphal Protogospel (Protoevangelium) of James, especially in its description of the angel’s feeding Mary. The supernatural angelic provision for her is a sign of the advent, of the coming of the Messiah. This is quite different from the four Gospels, which make no mention Mary’s childhood, nor of any special preparation or provision for her task. Indeed, the Gospels focus little on Jesus’ own childhood. For the gospel writers, the proof of Jesus’ messiahship is the Virgin Birth itself, along with Jesus’ own ministry — culminating in his death, burial, and resurrection.

Finazzo rightly notes that the Koranic account of the Annunciation does not contain a mention of Mary’s fiat (or choice), which is “her responsible acceptance of the divine will.” (Finazzo 1978) Mary’s fiat — “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” — plays a major part in both Orthodox and Catholic Christian theology, a part that has no part in the theology of Islam. Thus, according to Finazzo, the absence of Mary’s voluntary and necessary acceptance “confirms the typically Islamic sense of the absolute authority and power of God, and the complete submission of man to his will.” (Finazzo 1978) It is altogether remarkable that Protestant commentators lessen the impact of Mary’s fiat, reducing it also to a simple act of submission to God’s will (as mentioned in Part I).  In this manner the Calvinist insistence on the Sovereignty of God bears a remarkable resemblance to Islamic doctrine and practice.

Bibliography

Cunneen, Sally. In Search of Mary: The Woman and the Symbol. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996.

Finazzo, Giancarlo. “The Virgin Mary in the Koran.” Eternal Word Television Network, Global Catholic Network. April 13, 1978. http://www.ewtn.com/library/mary/marykran.htm (accessed April 24, 2010).

Galvin, Juan. “Jesus and The Virgin Mary in Islam.” Islam for Today. n.d. http://www.islamfortoday.com/galvan03.htm (accessed August 18, 2011).

Kreitzer, Beth. Reforming Mary: Changing Images of the Virgin Mary in Lutheran Sermons of the Sixteengh Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Pelikan, Jaroslav. Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Schleifer, Aliah. Mary the Blessed Virgin of Islam. 3rd Edition. Louisville: Fons Vitae, 2008.

Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak Al-Jerrahi. Blessed Virgin Mary. Translated by Muhtar Holland. Westpory: Pir Publications, 1991.

 

 

The Virgin Mary and the Creeds

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The three Ecumenical Christian Creeds are a witness to the universal faith of all Christians. The three Ecumenical Christian Creeds serve to define content and boundaries of the Christian faith. Therefore any teaching that is at variance with the three Ecumenical Creeds is by definition outside the boundaries of Orthodox Christianity.

The Nicene and the Apostles Creed

The Apostles Creed

The Apostles Creed

It is common liturgical practice to confess the Creeds in the Divine Service. It is both curious and little noticed that only two persons besides Jesus himself are mentioned in the Creed: the Virgin Mary and Pontius Pilate. Both the Nicene and the Apostles Creed place these two persons back to back, in opposition as it were:

Nicene Creed

I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God, …
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.

Apostles Creed

And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord:
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried.

 

The creeds clearly place the conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit and the birth of our Lord of the Virgin Mary over against the suffering and death of Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord, at the hands of the fifth Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate. The only woman mentioned is honored in her obedience; the only man mentioned is dishonored for rejecting the truth and putting to death the Son of God. Thus we see the fulfillment of the Protoevangelium: for of the seed of the woman our Lord was born for the purpose of being delivered for our offenses, but raised for our justification. Thus Pilate was Satan’s instrument by which Christ’s heel was bruised; the Virgin Mary’s was God’s instrument through whose obedience the serpent’s head was crushed beneath Christ’s heel.

The creedal title “Virgin Mary” is quite interesting. In Part II we discussed the prophecy of Isaiah that a virgin would conceive, and a virgin would bear a son. The Son of God was became incarnate of the Holy Spirit by the Virgin Mary, without impacting her virginity. In like fashion the incarnate Word was born of the virgin Mary without affecting her virginity. Thus in using the title of Virgin Mary, we confess Mary to be virgin still. Every time we use the title Virgin Mary we are making a statement about the perpetual virginity of Mary, for no one is called a virgin once they cease to be a virgin.

The Athanasian Creed

The Athanasian Creed expresses the seriousness with which the church fathers treated doctrinal matters. The Athanasian Creed begins by stating: “Whoever wishes to be saved must, above all else, hold the true catholic faith. Whoever does not keep it whole and undefiled will without doubt perish for eternity.” The Trinitarian half of the Athanasian Creed ends with this statement: “Whoever whishes to be saved must think thus about the Trinity.” Then the Christological half of the Athanasian Creed begins as follows: “It is also necessary for eternal salvation that one faithfully believe that our Lord Jesus Christ became man.” The Athanasian Creed ends as it began: “This is the true Christian [in the Latin, “catholic”] faith. Unless a man believe this firmly and faithfully, he cannot be saved.” With these words, known as the “damnatory clauses”, the error of those who believe doctrine does not matter is laid bare.

The Athanasian Creed stands firmly over and against those who would separate the Word from doctrine; those who make experience the arbiter of faith; and those for whom faith is a matter of good works instead of an orthodox doctrinal confession. The Athanasian Creed clearly states that one’s salvation depends upon holding to the Christian faith, whole and undefiled. Those who fail to hold firmly and faithfully to the Christian faith, as confessed in the Creed, cannot be saved and will without doubt perish for eternity. Therefore the stakes are high. Eternal destiny is at stake, and it is therefore imperative for us to understand what the Creeds have to say.

The Athanasian Creed stands firmly over and against those who would separate the Word from doctrine; those who make experience the arbiter of faith; and those for whom faith is a matter of good works instead of an orthodox doctrinal confession. The Athanasian Creed clearly states that one’s salvation depends upon holding to the Christian faith, whole and undefiled. Those who fail to hold firmly and faithfully to the Christian faith, as confessed in the Creed, cannot be saved and will without doubt perish for eternity. Therefore the stakes are high. Our eternal destiny is at stake, and it is imperative for us to understand what exactly is confessed in the Creeds.

The Athanasian Creed was not written by Athanasius, but was instead composed around 500 AD. It seems reasonable that the use of Athanasius’ name was to honor the man who saved Christianity from the Arian heresy and maintained the faith against Julian the Apostate. The Athanasian Creed is a confession of the orthodox faith over and against Arianism[ii], Nestorianism[iii], Monophysitism[iv], and Macedonianism[v]. As previously discussed, the opening and closing lines of the Athanasian Creed proclaim its purpose: to proclaim the true Christian faith, without which a man cannot be saved. As the Athanasian Creed is primarily concerned with the proper definition of the triune God, it’s description of Christian doctrine is not as well rounded as that of the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds.

 

[i] The texts of the Three Ecumenical Christian Creeds are included at the end of this article.

[ii] Arianism: Jesus was a created being, and not God from God — a demigod, if you will.

[iii] Nestorianism: Jesus exists as two persons: the Son of God, and the Son of Man.

[iv] Monophysitism: The belief that Christ had only one nature, as opposed to the Chalcedonian position that Christ has both a divine and a human nature.

[v] Macedonianism: the denial of the full divinity and personhood of the Holy Spirit.

The Book of Concord on Mariology

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Book The Book of Concord, German Edition

The Book of Concord, German Edition

What does the Lutheran Book of Concord (aka The Lutheran Confessions) teach regarding the Virgin Mary?

Our churches teach that the Word, that is the Son of God, assumed the human nature in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. (AC III, 1-2)

“The Son became man in this manner: He was conceived, without the cooperation of man, by the Holy Spirit, and was born of the pure, holy Virgin Mary. …Concerning these articles, there is no argument or dispute. Both sides confess them. Therefore, it is not necessary now to discuss them further. (SA Preface, The First Part 4)

Granted, the blessed Mary prays for the Church. Does she receive souls in death? Does she conquer death? Does she make alive? What does Christ do if the blessed Mary does these things? Although she is most worthy of the most plentiful honors, yet she does not want to be made equal to Christ. Instead she wants us to consider and follow her example. (AP XXI 27)

These citations set the limits of Lutheran Mariology. Although Lutherans may respect and venerate Mary, as did the fathers, including the Lutheran confessors; and although they believe, teach, and confess that Mary prays for the church; yet they do not believe that Mary usurps any of the prerogatives that properly belong to Christ. Therefore Lutherans reject the concept of the Virgin Mary as a mediatrix interposed between us and her Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. The merits of Mary (and they are many) are not offered on our behalf, nor if they were would they be effective. “Each will receive his wages according to his labor” (I Cor 3:8). Thus, as the Apology says, “[The saints] cannot mutually give their own merits, one to another.” (AP XXI, 29)

The citation from the Smalcald Articles is fascinating passage, for it expands the boundaries of Mariology beyond what Protestants and modern Lutherans generally accept. The Smalcald Articles define as a matter of faith that Lutherans believe, teach and confess exactly what the Catholic church (prior to the Council of Trent) confessed concerning Mariology. This is true with the exceptions delimited in the Apology, Article XXI. When Lutherans confess Mary as pure & holy, it is a reference to the chastity and sinlessness of Mary. When Lutherans confess Mary as Virgin, it is meant that Mary is virgin, not that she was virgin. The Blessed Mother of our Lord is as virgin today as she was when the angel Gabriel appeared to her some 2,000 years ago. When we talk of the Virgin Mary, that is itself a confessions of her perpetual virginity, for no one having lost their virginity is described as virgin.

The preface to the Smalcald Articles explains why the Book of Concord contains no articles on Mariology, for in the main it was not an issue between Lutherans and Catholics. What the papacy professed, the Lutheran fathers believed, pausing only to correct errors and abuses (points where they believed the papacy had departed from the deposit of the faith.) Thus where the Lutheran fathers believed the papacy to be in error, they wrote extensively on the subject. But where the Lutheran fathers agreed with the Catholic Church, they said little or nothing. This is a profound doctrinal principle for Lutherans, for it presupposes a third norm[i] besides Sacred Scriptures and the Book of Concord: the writings of the church fathers and the teaching of the church (explained by Vincent of Lerins as antiquity and consent; for more information, see the post entitled “Mariology and the Vincentian Canon“.)

Since some question the idea that the doctrine of the confessions are limited to the areas of controversy, let me quote from the Preface to the Book of Concord, primarily composed by Jacob Andrea and Martin Chemnitz. “Subsequently many churches and schools committed themselves to this confession as the contemporary symbol of their faith in the chief articles of controversy over against both the papacy and all sorts of factions.” (Tappert, et al. 1959, 3) [Emphasis added] The Preface contains many such references, most specifically relating to the development of the Formula of Concord.

“Mindful of the office which God has committed to us and which we bear, we have not ceased to apply our diligence to the end that the false and misleading doctrines which have been introduced into our lands and territories and which are insinuating themselves increasingly into them might be checked and that our subjects might be preserved from straying from the right course of divine truth which they had once acknowledged and confessed. (ibid, 4)

Once again, we see that the confessions are delimited over against error, meaning that the content of the confessions are limited to the areas of controversy and doctrinal error. Thus, an article of faith that was not at issue is not discussed in the Book of Concord.

We …unanimously subscribed this Christian confession, based as it is on the witness of the unalterable truth of the divine Word, in order thereby to warn and, as far as we might, to secure out posterity in the future against doctrine that is impure, false, and contrary to the Word of God.(Tappert, et al. 1959, 6)

This last quote is remarkable, as it demonstrates not only that the content of the confessions were delimited to the areas of theological controversy between the papacy and other factions, but that it is the intent of the confessors to create a doctrinal standard that will stand the test of time. This means that for Lutherans, the interpretation of the confessors is binding upon all who call themselves Lutherans. This does not mean that those who disagree with the Lutheran Confessions are not Christian, but that they cannot properly style themselves as Lutheran who do not believe as Lutherans believe concerning the content of the Sacred Scriptures.

[T]here was no better way to counteract the mendacious calumnies and the religious controversies that were expanding with each passing day then, on the basis of God’s Word, carefully and accurately to explain and decide the differences that had arisen with reference to all the articles in controversy, to expose and reject false doctrine, and clearly to confess the divine truth….[T]he said theologians clearly and correctly described to one another, in extensive writings based on God’s Word, how the aforementioned offensive differences might be settled and brought to a conclusion without violation of divine truth, and in his way the pretext and basis for slander that the adversaries were looking for could be abolished and taken away. Finally they took to hand the controverted articles, examined, evaluated, and explained them in the fear of God, and produced a document in which they set forth how the differences that had occurred were to be decided in a Christian way. (Tappert, et al. 1959, ibid, 6)

This quote is clearly states that the confessions are based on God’s Word, and are meant 1) to “counteract the mendacious calumnies [a deliberately untrue defamatory statement, a.k.a. slander] and religious controversies”; 2) to explain the differences in doctrine that has arisen; 3) to decide upon the correct interpretation of the controverted articles in a Christian way without violation of divine truth; and 4) to abolish the basis for slander. Through all this, it is clear that the confessions are not a dogmatics treatise, in that they do not systematically treat all of Christian doctrine, but are delimited over and against controversy and error.

In my book “Why Mary Matters”, I discussed the Marian title of Mother of God as a confession of Chalcedonian Christology concerning the two natures in Christ, over against the Nestorian heresy. Here I briefly discuss this topic as it is expressed in the Epitome of the Formula of Concord.

So we believe, teach, and confess that Mary conceived and bore not merely a man and no more, but God’s true Son. Therefore, she also is rightly called and truly is “the mother of God”.(Ep VIII, 12)

The title of Mother of God is properly a Christological title, not a Marian title. It was adopted as a reaction against the Nestorian heresy by the Third Ecumenical Council in Ephesus. Nestorius held that Mary should be properly titled the “Mother of Christ”, since no one can give birth to that which is antecedent in time. The Council of Ephesus held that Nestorius was falsely dividing the two natures in Christ and creating two persons: one who was the Son of Mary, and the divine nature which was not. Thus the title “Mother of God is a Christological confession that the two natures were united in one person, such that Mary was truly the mother of God. The opposite Monophysite heresy soon developed which stated that the Christ had only one nature, that the human was subsumed into the divine leaving only a single nature, one that was not fully human. This heresy was dealt with by the Council of Chalcedon, which gave rise to the Christological doctrines expressed in the Athanasian Creed.

Christ Jesus is now in one person at the same time true, eternal God, born of the Father from eternity, and a true man, born of the most blessed Virgin Mary.(SD VIII, 6)

The descriptive title of “most blessed Virgin Mary” is, of course, a reference to the Annunciation, where the angel Gabriel said “blessed art thou among women” (Luke 1:28). It is also a reference to the Visitation, where Elizabeth shouted in the Spirit: “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. …And blessed is she that believed” (Luke 1:42, 45). And finally, it is a reference to the Magnificat, where Mary says: “From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed” (Luke 1:48).

On account of this personal union and communion of the natures, Mary, the most blessed Virgin, did not bear a mere man. But as the angel testifies, she bore a man who is truly the Son of the most high God. He showed His divine majesty even in His mother’s womb, because He was born of a virgin, without violating her virginity. Therefore, she is truly the mother of God and yet has remained a virgin. ( SD, VIII 24)

It may take a careful reader to understand what the Solid Declaration is saying. First, the Solid Declaration uses the Mariological titles “Blessed Mother” and “Mother of God”, making them wholly Lutheran. Second, this passage teaches the perpetual virginity of Mary by stating that she is “the mother of God and yet has remained a virgin”. The point here is twofold: first, that the passage of an infant through the birth canal would destroy itself destroy the evidence of virginity, should it still exist; and second, that Mary was and remains perpetually virgin. Regarding the first point, the Solid declaration states that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, “without violating her virginity”. This is known as the “painless parturition”.

Luther himself taught this position, as in this “Sermon on Christmas”:

Some people dispute about exactly how this birth [of Christ] happened, whether she [Mary] was delivered of the child in the bed, in great joy, whether she was without all pain as this was happening. I do not reproach people for their devotion, but we should stay with the Gospel, which says, “she bore him,” and by the article of faith that we recite: “who is born of the virgin Mary.” There is no deceit here, but, as the words state, a true birth. We certainly know what birth is, and how it proceeds. It happens to her as it does to other women, with good spirits and with the actions of her limbs as is appropriate in a birth, so that she is his right and natural mother and he is her right and natural son. But her body did not allow the natural operations that pertain to birth, and she gave birth without sin, without shame, without pain, and without injury, just as she also conceived without sin. The curse of Eve does not apply to her, which says that “in pain shall you bring forth children” [Gen. 3:16], but otherwise it happened to her exactly as it does with any other woman giving birth. For grace did not promise anything, and did not hinder nature or the works of nature, but improved and helped them. In the same way she fed him naturally with milk from her breasts; without a doubt she did not give him any stranger’s milk or feed him with any other body part than the breast. (Karant-Nunn and Wiesner-Hanks 2003, 50)

Bibliography

Karant-Nunn, Susan C., and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, . Luther on Women. Translated by Susan C. Karant-Nunn and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Preus, Robert. Getting Into the Theology of Concord: A Study of the Book of Concord. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1977.

Tappert, Theodore G., Jaroslav Pelikan, Robert H. Fischer, and Arthur C. Piepkorn, . The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959.

[i]Lutherans accept the Book of Concord as normative for doctrine, in the sense of the norma normata: the normed norm, or secondary norm. The sacred scriptures, on the other hand, are normative in the sense of the norma normans: the norming norm, the primary norm, or the source. The Preface to the Book of Concord proposes three norms: Scripture, confessions, and the “ancient consensus”. (Tappert, et al. 1959, 3) Preus describes this three-fold tier of authority as scripture, confessions, and other good Christian literature. (Preus 1977, 22)

 

Theological Traditions and their Effect on Mariology

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The Third Law of Theology - For every theologian there is an equal and opposite theologian.

The Third Law of Theology

We often forget our theological traditions have an important function; they serve to guide us in our hermeneutics, which affect our doctrine. Regarding the effect of tradition upon late Protestant doctrine, Peter Gillquist writes:

Saddled even more with late tradition is the Protestant movement. Whereas Rome generally has added to the faith, Protestantism has subtracted from it. In an effort to shake off Roman excesses, modern Protestants have sorely over-corrected their course. The reductionism that results cripples Protestant Christians in their quest for full maturity in Christ and in steering a steady course in doctrine and worship.

Mary has become a non-name; Holy Communion, a quarterly memorial; authority and discipline in the Church, a memory; doctrine, a matter of personal interpretation, constantly up for renegotiation. Name one Protestant denomination that has held on fully to the faith of its own founders — to say nothing of its adherence to the apostolic faith. (Gillquist 2009, 63)

Lutherans (and from them, the Protestants in general) assert two primary principles of interpretation. The first principle is the absolute oneness (or unicity) of the literal sense (sensus literalis unis est), by which they mean that each passage has only one literal meaning, as intended by the original author; the second principle is the internal consistency of Scripture (scriptura scripturam interpretatur). (Piepkorn, I Believe 2007, 290-291) The interpretive problem comes when we try to determine the literal sense of Scripture, and attempt to discover which passages of scripture should be used to interpret other passages. What is often missed, as Piepkorn reminds us, is that the principles of interpretation are secular, not theological, and apply equally to scripture as well as other critical enterprises. (Piepkorn, I Believe 2007, 291)

Piepkorn describes a problem that is often missed — that the conclusions of your scriptural interpretation depend to a great extent upon the place you start from. An Orthodox, a Catholic, a Lutheran, a Presbyterian, and a Baptist may well look at the same passages of scripture, apply the same rules of interpretation, and come to different conclusions about what the scriptures say. Each theological tradition would look at the conclusions of the others as “prima facie evidence of malice, blindness, or ignorance. …[I]n applying the principle that “Scripture interprets Scripture” (scriptura scripturam interpretatur) we discover which scripture is in the nominative (scriptura) and which scripture is in the accusative (scripturam) not from the bible immediately, but from our theological tradition.” (Piepkorn, The Sacred Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions 2007, xxx)

The fact that the principles of scriptural interpretation are products of human reason does not mean we should discard them, but it does mean that we should use them with care. It is not always clear exactly how these tools should be used. The famous principle, scripture interprets scripture, functions differently in different hands. We often think of the principles of scriptural interpretation as a roadmap that guides us to our proper destination. Yet a great many theological traditions claim that scripture interprets scripture, and each of them arrives at a different theological destination. The problem, as Piepkorn defines it, is that “scripture interprets scripture” leaves open the question of how to identify which passage of scripture is being used to interpret another passage. In other words, the principle itself tells us that one passage of scripture should be used to interpret another passage, but knowing that does nothing to tell us which is which.

The theological argument from the sufficiency and the perspicuity of the Sacred Scriptures was fortified with the basic principle of classic Lutheran hermeneutics: Scriptura scripturam interpretatur. Although it still left open the serious question of how one identified the nominative Scriptura interpretans [the Scripture passage that is doing the interpretation] and differentiated it from the accusative scriptura interpretanda [the Scripture passage to be interpreted], the implication was that every sober student of the Sacred Scriptures would finally have to come out at the same place theologically, regardless of his epoch and the other aspects of his Sitz im Leben [setting in life]. (Piepkorn, The Sacred Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions 2007, xxix)

Piepkorn’s argument is based on Luther’s concept of the perspicuity (clearness) of Scripture, which formed a major part of Luther’s argument in his “The Bondage of the Will” — his answer to the Diatribe of Erasmus. The basic thrust of this argument is expressed in Luther’s famous answer at the Diet of Worms:

 I cannot think myself bound to believe either the Pope or his councils; for it is very clear, not only that they have often erred, but often contradicted themselves. Therefore, unless I am convinced by Scripture or clear reasons, my belief is so confirmed by the scriptural passages I have produced, and my conscience so determined to abide by the word of God, that I neither can nor will retract any thing; for it is neither safe nor innocent to act against any man’s conscience. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. May God help me. Amen. (Luther, The Bondage of the Will 1823, xvii)

Luther’s principles of scriptural interpretation are based upon the idea that scripture is clear and open to individual interpretation. His famous (and perhaps apocryphal) statement expresses the primacy of the individual conscience over and against the Catholic church, in this specific instance. Yet once Luther opened this door, it was difficult to close it again. Even though the Lutheran Book of Concord is perhaps the largest and most comprehensive confessional statements in all of Christendom, it does not suffice to create doctrinal unity. In fact, the Lutherans have become increasingly sectarian even amongst themselves, and continue to split over issues of conscience to this day.

The fact is that the scriptures are not always clear, and are often confusing. Professor Peter Bouteneff quotes a number of ancient Christian authors on this subject, beginning with Tertullian. “Scripture, writes Tertullian, is complex by design, containing material that God knew would be wrongly understood, because ‘there must be heresies’.”[i] (P. C. Bouteneff 2008, 90) Boutenoff goes on to explain that the complexity of Scripture requires a variety of methodologies be used to get at the meaning. “Indeed, Scripture is designed by God in such a way that multiple methods would need to be used in order to read in terms of the regula. [Regula fidei, or rule of faith.] As T. P. O’Malley has shown, biblical language has a certain “otherness” or “strangeness to it, wherein terms do not always mean what people think they do.” (P. C. Bouteneff 2008, 91)

It is because of their complexity and otherness that the conclusions we draw from Sacred Scriptures are not determined by the proper or improper application of our hermeneutic, but are in fact determined by our starting place, our theological tradition. This then points out the importance of theological tradition in the life of the church, for it provides a common starting point for our scriptural interpretation. An individual or a church body that jettisons theological tradition altogether does so on the basis of suppositions that determines the final outcome of their scriptural interpretation. Thus a church body that begins by jettisoning their theological traditions is really exchanging one set of theological traditions for another; and, being guided by a different set of traditions, the church body inevitably comes to different theological conclusions. Therefore scripture is not self-authenticating, as some like to say, for the dogmatic content of scripture, and indeed the canon of scripture itself, is determined to a great extent by ones initial suppositions.

It is impossible to jettison tradition; instead, we trade one set of traditions for another. What we see among theological Liberals is the interpretation of scripture by means of a rationalistic, enlightenment tradition. What we see among conservative Protestants is a tradition that tries to reject the rationalistic, enlightenment tradition. The United States has developed its own peculiar theological traditions as well, derived from a romantic notion of lawlessness, of every man for himself, of a frontier ethos; these theological traditions include a rejection of the communal aspects of Christianity in favor of an individualist Christianity, aptly summarized in the country song “Me and Jesus” by Tom T. Hall:

Me and Jesus, got our own thing goin’.
Me and Jesus, got it all worked out.
Me and Jesus, got our own thing goin’.
We don’t need anybody to tell us what it’s all about.

Many older Protestant hymnals contain the song “In The Garden” (by C. Austin Miles), which expresses much the same sentiment.

I come to the garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses,
And the voice I hear falling on my ear,
The Son of God discloses.

Refrain

And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

The literary critic Harold Bloom makes a similar statement in the opening paragraph of his book The American Religion.

Freedom, in the context of the American Religion, means being alone with God or with Jesus, the American God or the American Christ. In social reality, this translates as solitude, at least in the inmost sense. The soul stands apart, and something deeper than the soul, the Real Me or self or spark, thus is made free to be utterly alone with a God who is also quite separate and solitary, that is, a free God or God of freedom. …No American pragmatically feels free if she is not alone, and no American ultimately concedes that she is part of nature. (Bloom 1992, 15)

The morphology or shape of one’s theology can often be derived simply by determining their theological traditions; in a similar fashion, if we determine a person’s theological traditions, we can often guess at their theology. For an example of how this works in practice, let us return to a contentious issue in modern Lutheran circles, one alluded to in the introduction to this paper — the question of the perpetual virginity of Mary. Two different Lutheran scholars, looking at the same scriptures and Lutheran confessions, and reviewing the same arguments, will come to very different conclusions — one wholeheartedly accepting the perpetual virginity of Mary, the other adamantly rejecting it. This does not indicate that one or the other of them has acted in bad faith, or in ignorance, or is simply blind to the truth. Instead, it indicates that each scholar began from a different theological starting point, one based on different theological traditions.

Basically, you can tell what theological traditions a person comes from by the different conclusions they draw from the identical arguments and passages of scripture, or by which passage of scripture they use to determine the meaning of other passages. Therefore, despite what Protestants are often told, tradition is important in the life of the church, for the starting point of theology generally determines its morphology. This is amply illustrated by the manner in which different faith traditions approach the Annunciation, and specifically the initial greeting by the angel Gabriel. Unfortunately, it was not possible to find a wide assortment of modern, Protestant, & authoritative sources who dealt specifically with the meaning and import of the Annunciation—more’s the pity.

Presbyterian/Reformed

Matthew J. Slick, writing from a Presbyterian and Reformed background,[ii] says the Catholics derive their translation “full of grace” from the Vulgate, a Latin mistranslation of the bible, rather than from the original Greek. “What does the Greek say here for ‘highly favored one?’ It is the single Greek word kecharitomene and means highly favored, make accepted, make graceful, etc. It does not mean ‘full of grace’ which is ‘plaras karitos’ (plaras = full and karitos = Grace) in the Greek.” (Slick 2002)

Slick then provides two word definitions — one from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible and one from the Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek, both of which give a definition for charitoo (caritow) instead of kecharitomene (kecaritwmenh). Now it is true that kecharitomene is the perfect passive participle form of charitoo, but that does not mean that one can substitute the definition of charitoo for that of kecharitomene. In fact, as Fr. Manelli reminds us, the Greek expression kecharitomene is not easily translatable. (Manelli 2005, 162)  And it is at this point, having conflated the definitions of two Greek words, that Slick then switches to English to find places where Protestant translators use the phrase “full of grace”. In other words, he accuses the Latins of basing their theology upon a translation, then uses a translation as a means of arguing against the Latins.

The phrase “full of grace” in Greek is “plaras karitos” and it occurs in only two places in the New Testament, neither one is in reference to Mary.

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

“And Stephen, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and signs among the people” (Acts 6:8).

The first citation refers to Jesus who is obviously full of grace. Jesus is God in flesh, the crucified and risen Lord, who cleanses us from our sins. In the second citation it is Stephen who is full of grace. We can certainly affirm that Jesus was conceived without sin and remained sinless, but can we conclude this about Stephen as well? Certainly not. The phrase “full of grace” does not necessitate sinlessness by virtue of its use. In Stephen’s case it signifies that he was “full of the Spirit and of wisdom,” along with faith and the Holy Spirit (Acts 6:3,5). But Stephen was a sinner. (Slick 2002)

So what Slick is saying is that we should be careful in reading too much into the statement of Gabriel. “[Mary] was graced with the privilege of being able to bear the Son of God.” (Slick 2002) In fact, although Slick doesn’t put it as crassly this, we might not be too far off if we accuse Slick of saying that God was doing Mary a favor by using her as an incubator.

Dispensationalist & Reformed

John MacArthur is a pastor and prolific author, writing from a Dispensationalist & Reformed perspective (which is a curious combination, neither fish nor fowl). The John MacArthur Collection, hosted on the Bible Bulletin Board, contains an alphabetized list of questions and answers, none of which concern Mary. It is almost as if Mary is an inconsequential figure. But in a two part article, MacArthur does provide information on what he calls the “Idolatry of Mary Worship” in Catholic Dogma. Unfortunately, MacArthur does not deal with Luke 1:28, which a key verse for any discussion of the topic. Instead, he begins by discussing peripheral matters, things that are merely derivative from an orthodox understanding of the angelic greeting: “Hail, full of grace”. He quotes from 1 Tim 1:3, where the apostle warns against certain men who teach strange doctrines, and not to pay attention to myths. (MacArthur, Exposing the Idolatry of Mary Worship: Catholic Dogma, Pt. 1 n.d.) Interestingly, he fails to notice that it is the concept of Mary as just another woman that is the aberration in the history of the church. MacArthur deals almost entirely with secondary and tertiary sources, and that in a most superficial way. He mentions a book by St. Alphonsus Delaguarie entitled The Glories of Mary, a history of devotion to Mary which seems to form the basis of his argument. What he fails to do is deal in any substantive way with any authoritative document — not the Catechism of the Catholic Church, not the papal bulls, nor the papal encyclicals. He does quote from Vatican II, and from some of the Catholic Saints, but fails to quote from the Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. He quotes from the Ineffabilis Deus of Pope Pius IX, which established the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, but only to establish the specific content of the doctrine. (MacArthur, Exposing the Idolatry of Mary Worship: Catholic Dogma, Pt. 2 n.d.) MacArthur never asks the question of why the Catholics (and to some extent, the Orthodox) believe as they do, nor how they exegete the passages in question — he assumes it the entire edifice is idolatrous devil-worship, and that is that. (MacArthur, Exposing the Idolatry of Mary Worship: Catholic Dogma, Pt. 2 n.d.) Based on his writings, you would think the Catholics do no analysis at all. Interestingly enough, although MacArthur speaks of himself as an exegete, he does precious little exegesis in this area. (MacArthur, Nothing But the Truth 2007) It is as though someone tried to deal with Lutheran doctrine without dealing with the Lutheran Confessions, or tried to deal with Reformed doctrine without dealing with Calvin, Zwingli, and the Synod of Dort. MacArthur seems unwilling to admit that Catholics might have an exegetical basis for their dogma, whether he agrees with their analysis or not. In his 26 pages of anti-Catholic invective, MacArthur is clearly coming from a theological tradition that is actively hostile to any form of Mariology, to any indication that Mary might be special, and to any sense that Mary might have a unique place in the plan of God. Moreover, it is evident that the reason for the denial of Mariology is solely its association with Catholicism.

A Lutheran Response to Mariology

Abbé Lucien Dhalenne was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1945, and later was converted and served the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church of France. In his Lutheran response to the conclusion of the 1954 “Marian Year” by Pope Pius XII, he made the following comment:

Where do we find the Scriptural basis for the mariology of the Roman Church? Some believe that they find it in Gen. 3:15, where God says to the serpent, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Isa. 7:14 is also cited: “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” — In the interpretation of these passages we agree with Rome to this extent, that we see in them prophecy of the birth of the Savior, His conception by a virgin, and the victory of man over Satan in and through Christ. But to derive the theses for mariolatry from them seems like a bold stroke, in which we have to deal with anything but theology. For in Gen. 3:15 the term woman (האשׁה) designates Eve, and not Mary, as the mariologists insist, cf. vv. 12, 13, and 16. The woman’s Seed, Christ, in the protevangelium is the descendant of Eve, the first woman, who introduced transgression. He (Hebrew: הוא), not Eve (Vulgate: ipsa), shall bruise the head of the serpent. The seed of Jacob, in whom all the families of the earth shall be blessed, Gen. 28:14, was not his immediate descendant, but a distant descendant, Christ. Isaiah 7:14 does not support Roman mariology either, although here the miraculous birth of Christ by a virgin is prophesied most distinctly. Here the prophet is giving the dynasty of David the sign of divine judgment, that not it, but the untouched, unknown virgin shall bear the Messiah. By a miracle of God the prophecy of judgment is changed into a prophecy of grace. The emphasis shifts plainly also from the virgin, who is only God’s maid, to Immanuel, the God-with- us, cf. Isaiah 8:8, 10. The Roman theologians also appeal to Luke 1:28, which reads: “And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee,” in order to justify at least the Roman doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary. But with the best of good intentions we cannot find any support for that doctrine here. In that case we should have to attribute to Stephen also an immaculate conception, for of him it is said Acts 6:8: “And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people.” (Dhalenne 1954)

In my opinion this statement says more about Dhalenne than it says about Mary. He indicates the Protoevangelium applies to Eve and Jesus, not to Mary, even though the angel Gabriel stated Mary would conceive in her womb of the Holy Ghost, and that she would bring forth a son who would be called the Son of God — a clear fulfillment of the protoevangelium. Dhalenne’s position turns Mary into an incubator, and the Holy Spirit into an incubus. Dhalenne also rejects the importance of Mary in Isa 7:14, changing the sign from the Virgin who conceives and bears a son who is to be called Immanuel, to an Immanuel who is his own sign apart from the virgin birth. In fact, by reinterpreting Isa 7:14 in this manner, Dhalenne has made the virgin birth unnecessary and superfluous. It is clear that Dhalenne has rejected Roman Catholicism, and in rejecting Roman Catholicism, he has also rejected an entire theological history, including the theological history the Lutherans inherited from the Roman Catholics. It is this rejection of the theological tradition, whole and entire, that fueled enthusiasts (Schwärmerei) and radicals like Karlstadt, against whom Luther fought for the last half of his career.

Bibliography

Bloom, Harold. The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Bouteneff, Peter C. Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008.

Dhalenne, Abbé Lucien. “Antichristian Mariology.” Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary Essay File. 1954. http://www.wlsessays.net/files/DhalenneMary.pdf (accessed October 14, 2008).

Gillquist, Peter. Becoming Orthodox: A Journy to the Ancient Christian Faith. Third. Ben Lomond: Conciliar Press, 2009.

Luther, Martin. The Bondage of the Will. Translated by Edward Thomas Vaughan. London: Forgotten Books, 1823.

MacArthur, John F. “Exposing the Idolatry of Mary Worship: Catholic Dogma, Pt. 1.” Bible Bulletin Board. n.d. http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/90-315.htm (accessed January 19, 2009).

—. “Exposing the Idolatry of Mary Worship: Catholic Dogma, Pt. 2.” Bible Bulletin Board. n.d. http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/90-316.htm (accessed January 19, 2009).

—. “Nothing But the Truth.” Bible Bulletin Board. 2007. http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/jm-233971.htm (accessed January 20, 2009).

Manelli, Stefano. All Generations Shall Call Me Blessed. New Bedford: Academy of the Immaculate, 2005.

Piepkorn, Arthur Carl. “I Believe.” In The Sacred Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions, by Arthur Carl Piepkorn, 282-295. Mansfield: CEC Press, 2007.

—. The Sacred Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions. Edited by Phillip J Secker and Robert Kolb. Vol. 2. Mansfield: CEC Press, 2007.

Slick, Matthew J. “Mary, full of grace, and Luke 1:28.” CARM Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry. Jan 2002. http://www.carm.org/catholic/fullofgrace.htm (accessed January 17, 2009).

[i] The Orthodox church disagrees with Tertullian on this; the scriptures are complex because God is speaking to us about things that are too high for us to understand — God is speaking to us in baby talk. It should also be noted that Tertullian ended his life as a heretic, which is why he is not a Saint in the Orthodox church.

[ii] Matthew J. Slick received a Bachelors in Social Science from Concordia Irvine before receiving his M.Div from Westminster Theological Seminary.