the Evangelical Soul
A Jewish mother knows just what this Bible-believing pastor needs.
The Scenario:
Mike, an Evangelical Protestant pastor, heads into a Catholic bookstore one afternoon, curious to discover what Catholics could possibly say to defend their religion. As he flips through a Catholic liturgical calendar, he notices that the feast day of the "Solemnity of Mary" is celebrated on January 1. Not being familiar with "feast days," and knowing even less about what Catholics believe about Mary, he asks the young woman at the counter what the title "Solemnity of Mary" refers to. She explains that it's the day on which the Church celebrates the fact that Mary is the "Mother of God."
Frowning, he asks the woman to show him any books that could explain and defend that notion in detail. She takes him to a large section of apologetics books and tapes, and after browsing for half an hour, he leaves the store with an armload of books and tape sets.
Two weeks later, Pastor Mike calls Gary, a friend of his who is the pastor of another large Evangelical church in town. He asks if he'd like to get together and help him research some questions he has about the Catholic Church.
"Sure, Mike," Gary says over the phone. "I'd be happy to help out. As it happens, I am preparing a series of teachings on Roman Catholicism for our Sunday service. We need to help our people see the errors of Roman Catholicism, not just to keep them from that heresy, but to equip them to minister to their Catholic friends and family members." The two ministers set a date and time for their meeting.
The Plan:
When they meet over coffee, Pastor Mike explains he's been studying the Catholic teaching on Mary as the Mother of God. "This is starting to make sense to me," he adds hesitantly. "I'd like to know what you think about the Catholic case, Gary."
"Sure, but before we get into that," Gary says earnestly, "Let's keep in mind three basic points. First, the obvious. Nowhere in Scripture do we find the words 'Mother of God' used to describe Mary. If this doctrine were as important as Roman Catholics claim, wouldn't at least one of the biblical writers have used it?
"Two, Luke 1:43 seems to be the only verse of Scripture that Catholics use to support their claim. This is the account of the visitation of Mary to her much older cousin Elizabeth. When Mary enters into her cousin's home, Elizabeth exclaims with a loud cry, 'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?' "
Gary continues. "Notice, the text does not call Mary 'Mother of God,' it calls her 'mother of my Lord.' As we both know, Mike, the New Testament uses the term 'lord' in the context of divinity at times, but it also uses the term in the context of other authority. For example, in 1 Corinthians 8:5, St. Paul writes: 'indeed there are many "gods" and many "lords." ' This is an obvious instance of 'lord' not being used as referring to divinity.
"And the third point to remember," Gary adds, "is that it would be impossible for God to have a Mother! The fact that Catholics claim Mary to be the Mother of God is complete blasphemy! God is Trinity. If Mary is the Mother of God, she is the mother of the Trinity. Therefore, the Trinity is no longer a Trinity, it is a quadrinity! Mary would have to be God herself if she is the source of the life of the Godhead." Gary smiles and sits back confidently.
The Response:
Pastor Mike begins nervously. "Gary, I think we should think about a few things before we proceed."
"Okay, Mike. Like what?"
At this point, Pastor Mike begins to share some interesting material he has discovered in his research. First, he urges Pastor Gary to reconsider his first point. "To say Mary cannot be the Mother of God because sacred Scripture does not use those explicit words is not the way we want to go. We would then have to conclude the Trinity to be false, because that word is not found in Holy Writ either. The question we need to ask is: Is the concept of Mary, Mother of God, taught in Sacred Scripture?"
"As far as your second point is concerned, I think we might want to consider a few things in regard to that, too. The title 'Lord,' is a title of divinity for Jesus in the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 8:5, you were correct in pointing out the fact that the term 'Lord' (Greek: kurios) was not used to refer to divinity. However, the very next verse says: 'Yet to us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.' Notice the connection between Jesus being 'Lord' and His being creator of all things. This unequivocally identifies 'Lord' as referring to Christ's divinity, just as John 1:1-3 connects Jesus as 'God' (Greek: theos) to His being the Creator of all things: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.'
"Genesis 1:1 cannot make it any more clear that it is almighty God who is the creator of all things. The title kurios, applied to Christ as Creator of all things in 1 Corinthians 8:6, is clearly a title of divinity for Christ.
"Another of the many examples the Catholics could cite is Mark 2:28: 'So the Son of man is lord even of the sabbath.' These words were packed for our Lord's first-century Jewish audience. Jesus called Himself the Lord of the Sabbath. In the Old Testament, it is Yahweh alone who is Lord of the Sabbath" (cf. Exodus 16:23, 16:25, 20:10, Deut. 5:14).
Pastor Gary, a little wary now, asks, "What are you saying to me, Mike? Do you believe Mary is the Mother of God?"
Avoiding a direct answer, Pastor Mike continues, "Listen to what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says in paragraph 495: 'Called in the Gospels "the mother of Jesus," Mary is acclaimed by Elizabeth, at the prompting of the Spirit and even before the birth of her Son, as "the mother of my Lord." In fact, the One Whom she conceived as man by the Holy Spirit, Who truly became her Son according to the flesh, was none other than the Father's eternal Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity. Hence the Church confesses that Mary is truly "Mother of God" (Theotokos).'
"Here, the Catholic Church is saying Mary is the Mother of God precisely because Jesus Christ, her Son, is Himself God. I have to admit, Gary, I'm having a hard time disagreeing with that. The Catechism here references the Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431). When I researched the Council of Ephesus, I found a number of very important things. In the first of the many anathemas of St. Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, accepted by the Council, we find: 'If anyone does not confess that God is truly Emmanuel, and that on this account the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God (for according to the flesh she gave birth to the Word of God become flesh by birth), let him be anathema.'
"Far from just referencing one verse, as you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, the Council here refers to the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14. The Messiah was to be born of a woman, and yet would be 'God with us.' And it doesn't stop there. St. Cyril and the fathers of this Council referred to a host of Scriptures. On page 25 of the book The Mother of God, Valentine Long, O.F.M. writes: 'St. Cyril had a wide choice of utterances from our blessed Lord to rely upon. Never once in the Gospels did Christ, who in word and deed revealed his two natures, speak as two persons. It was "Young man, I say to you, arise," and not "the God in me" says so. He did not ask the blind men before their instantaneous cure, "Do you believe my divine omnipotence can do this?" No, it was simply; "Do you believe that I am able to do this?" Dying on the Cross, the Savior did not cry out that his human nature thirsted. His words were, "I thirst." His divinity worked miracles; his humanity needed to eat and drink and sleep, but the "I" of his assertions, which admitted both natures, allowed no duality of person. "The Father and I are one" and "The Father is greater than I" are expressions of the same undivided person.'
"The bottom line is, Gary, we create two persons when we say Mary is the mother of the man Jesus, but not the divine Jesus. Colossians 2:9 says 'in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.' And Colossians 1:16 says 'in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.' These texts do not say 'in Them,' they say 'in Him.' As I'm starting to realize, this is serious business, because we are talking about different Christs. He is either one Person or two."
Pastor Gary is a bit shell-shocked. "But Mike, if the Catholic Church claims Mary is the Mother of God, wouldn't that make her divine? God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If Mary were the Mother of God, she would have to be the mother of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, right?"
"Actually, Gary, remember what the Catechism said in paragraph 495. It said that Mary is only the Mother of the second Person of the Trinity, by virtue of the Incarnation. The Father and the Holy Spirit were not incarnated."
"Okay, I can see your point," Gary admits reluctantly, "but even if she is only the mother of the second Person, He is just as eternal as the other two divine Persons in the Trinity. So Mary would still have to be eternal in order to be Christ's mother."
"As I understand it, Gary, the Catholic Church isn't saying that Mary is the source of the divine nature of the second Person of the Trinity. I listened to some Catholic apologetics tapes by a former Protestant who used the example of a family to show how Mary can be the Mother of God. He explained that when a man and a woman have a child, their child has a body and a soul. They are not the source of its soul God is, because He directly creates the baby's soul and infuses it into the body at the moment of conception. But even though God is the source of the child's immortal soul, nobody would conclude that the child's mother is merely the mother of his body. She is his mother completely, because mothers don't give birth to bodies, they give birth to persons.
"In the same way, while Mary wasn't the source of Christ's divine nature or His human soul, she was still His mother in the fullest sense. Christ's divine nature didn't change at the incarnation. The divine nature can't change, as the Bible says it can't in Malachi 3:6, Numbers 23:19 and James 1:17. Christ's human and divine natures were completely united in the incarnation, and Mary gave birth to this divine Person. Anyway, that's the Catholic position in a nutshell, and as you can tell, I've become rather sympathetic to it."
Pastor Gary struggles for words. "Well, I'm not ready to say that Mary is the Mother of God, but maybe we can move on to another issue. If Mary is indeed the Mother of God, we still have the problem of Catholic excess. They go from calling Mary the Mother of God to calling her their mother, and they tend to worship her as if she were herself divine. That's a problem."
"Let me show you a few things I've discovered in my reading of Catholic books," Mike says. He's more and more comfortable with explaining this Catholic teaching, and he can see that the more he explains it, the more clearly Gary sees it, too. This is obviously making his friend uncomfortable, as his anti-Catholic presuppositions are being shaken, but he feels compelled to press on. "First, the Catholic Church doesn't teach or condone the worship of Mary. Rather, it teaches that she should be honored, in keeping with the commandment, 'Honor your father and mother.' If Mary is the Mother of Jesus, and we are His adopted brothers and sisters, as it says in Romans 8:14-17 and Galatians 4:4-6, wouldn't that naturally imply that she is our mother, too? And if so, shouldn't we all obey Scripture's command to honor her?"
"But Mike!" Gary exclaims. "She's dead! And you know as well as I do that Deuteronomy 18:10-11 condemns necromancy and contact with the dead. And that's exactly what Catholics do when they pray to Mary!"
"That's what I always thought, too. But look at the context of Deuteronomy 18. It's a condemnation of the use of mediums, wizards and witches. In other words, it forbids communication with the spiritually dead. Luke 20:38 says that those who die in Christ are alive in the spirit in Him. There are plenty of biblical examples of living Christians having contact with the saints in heaven. Take a look at Matthew 17:1-3, where Peter, James and John are brought into contact by Christ with Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration."
"Hold on," Gary says. "Let's slow down. I need time to think about all this. Why don't we switch to another topic for now? We can talk about this 'Mother of God' issue more some other time." A wide smile comes over his face. "Say! Why don't we discuss the errors of the Catholic Church on salvation, their 'works righteousness' system of justification, how they don't have an absolute assurance of salvation the way Christians do, and their mistake in teaching that . . ."
Pastor Mike interrupts with his own smile. "Funny you should mention that. It just so happens I've been studying some Catholic books and tapes on that very subject." Mike opens his well-worn Bible to the book of Ephesians. "Here, let me show you what Catholics believe about salvation."
Pastor Gary looks nervously at his watch, and begins to wiggle like the worms in the can he just opened.
Tim Staples can be reached at Catholic Answers
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