Marian Musings, Part VII

An iconostasis in a Greek Orthodox cathedral in Florida has a small adornment symbolizing the Trinity. It consists of a front-profile dove in flight (signifying the Holy Spirit) with suffering Jesus over its left wing and a downward-reaching hand (signifying the Father) over its right. The hand's index finger is extended to touch the head of the dove.

A more-common representation shows a dove (again, Holy Spirit) in the lower right corner and lamb (Jesus) in the lower left with a hand raised in benediction (Father) centered above them. Often, as in the linked example, this triangular arrangement is accentuated by an upside-down triangle in the background to evoke the Star of David.

I am not aware of any representation of the Trinity that contains a figure of human womanhood. Some may wave that off by observing that God is neither man nor woman and thus there is no reason for us to focus on imagery, or by pointing out that there is something suggestively feminine about a dove, but let's be honest: Such hand-waving falls a bit short when contemplating the creator of all.

God crafted humanity in his "likeness" (Genesis 5:1), and in so doing created "male and female" (5:2) to complement one another. Broadly speaking, just as humanity cannot biologically survive without male and female acting reciprocally, so it cannot flourish when the masculine and feminine regard themselves as separate wholes rather than complementary halves. So, with God having chosen to take human form as "the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5, emphasis added) it is reasonable to wonder what gives... and this is where the significance of Mother Mary comes to the fore.

Describing "a magnificent statue of Our Lady" in this D.C. cathedral, Catholic author Carrie Gress writes: "She is not standing serenely; instead, her posture is one of action frozen in time - it captures the very act of her bridging the gap between heaven and earth. She is bending down, her right hand extended as if she is reaching for humanity, while her left hand is reaching up to heaven...it concretizes what Mary wants to do for us every second of the day - connect us with God, whether it is through our prayers, our sacrifices, or even our brokenness."

Her participatory role in salvation should not be underestimated by those of us who hail from Protestant or non-denominational precincts. Like I already detailed in the first four posts of this series, Scripture itself presents Jesus and Mary as a kind of package deal without blurring the line between his divinity and her lack of it, thus the early Church was right to emphasize her venerability, and I believe we children of the Reformation are wrong to de-emphasize it.

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Many of Christianity's modern critics accuse it of denigrating or suppressing women, although, to the contrary, it does the exact opposite. That so-called feminists refuse to acknowledge this is, shall we say, curious.

From the dawn of time, around the globe and across cultures, women were for all practical purposes treated as subordinate and/or inferior to men. Even in the small number of matrilineal societies that based clan membership on the mother's lineage, men were the chiefs and rulers; and pantheistic faiths, which believed in actual goddesses, viewed them as creatures replete with human flaws, not creators replete with true love.

When Jesus arrived on the dusty road between Galilee and Jerusalem, he overturned the apple cart by accepting women as disciples and treating them no differently that he treated men. He engaged with the woman at the well, intervened for the adulteress, and publicly praised the faith of the woman with the hemorrhage. After the Resurrection he chose to appear to women before he appeared to men, and after the Ascension women were present when the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost - including Mary, who is mentioned by name in Acts 1:14, as depicted in this painting:

The elevation of respect for women occurred only in the wake of Mary being revered by Christians and their faith proliferating. This is no small thing, and, given how intricately God understands humanity, it is not kookiness to suggest that her having this effect was part of God's plan.

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As stated by William Lecky, the great historian from Dublin, in his 1865 book History of Rationalism: "No longer the slave or toy of man, no longer associated only with ideas of degradation and of sensuality, woman rose, in the person of the Virgin Mother, into a new sphere, and became the object of reverential homage, of which antiquity has no conception...a new kind of admiration was fostered."

Since I already quoted Carrie Gress in the first section of this post, I might as well quote her again: "If one were to ask where the radical notion that women are equal to men came from, where do you suppose we would find our answer? It didn't come from the Greeks: Aristotle and others called us 'deformed males.' It didn't come from Judaism: though given some status, a broad movement to promote the dignity of women never materialized, and the practice of polygamy remained. Asian religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, didn't start it. And it certainly hasn't come from Islam."

To which I would add: It also certainly hasn't come from the inherently cold shoulder of atheism.

Now, back to Gress: "It might seem that equality among women and men is obvious, a simple intuition any thinking person would have. But if so, why didn't any other religious movement see it? Because it was Mary who turned the sins of Eve upside down and allowed this now-commonplace notion to take root. Christianity, though largely abandoned by secular culture, remains the source for this profound insight."

This overall arc of history is so clear that, once it is pointed out, even devout atheists cannot deny it. What they do deny, however, is that there was any divine hand or divine will behind it. Instead they chalk it up to human superstition and gullibility having accidentally produced a good result.

Perhaps it would be easy to accept that contention if there were not so many credible, well-attested instances of Mary herself engaging with humanity and interceding on its behalf down through the centuries, but there are many such instances. There are so many that they're practically innumerable, and for the atheist contention to be true, literally every single one of them must be either a hoax, hallucination, or colossal misunderstanding. It takes only one being true to disprove the entire opposition.

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Forget atheism, however: More relevant to this series is that it takes only one instance of Marian intervention to wash away the foundation of Protestant arguments against Mariology, and since we children of the Reformation are supposed to be Christians first, not Protestants first, we should keep this in mind and take it very seriously.

To reject the Catholic (and Orthodox) view of Mary's role in salvation history is to:

Assert that every inexplicable healing involving water from Lourdes over the past 167 years has a purely material explanation that all of humanity is too dumb to figure out.

Deny that anything remarkable occurred in Fatima in 1917, Pontmain in 1871, Zeitoun in 1968... or in any of the other places where visions of Mary and wonders associated with her have been affirmed.

Claim that every individual who has ever reported an intercessory prayer to Mary being answered is either a loon or liar.

Irrationally deny that God could or would use Mary to draw people to him... even when a feminine figure is precisely what the task calls for.

See Donald Calloway's Christian testimony, one of the best ever, and pronounce him a fraud.

Look at the string of bewilderingly improbable events that have happened adjacent to the Black Madonna, and claim that crazy coincidence is the only non-crazy explanation.

Cite the warning in 1 John 4:1 as a reason to automatically believe appearances of Mary are actually demons pretending to be her... while simultaneously ignoring the instructions in 1 John 4:2 that tell us how to discern if an appearance is true.

Ignore that there has never, in all of history, been a single report of a Marian event having a less than stellar outcome - an already extraordinary fact that would be exponentially more extraordinary if any of those Marys were, as the "1 John 4:1 Onlyists" claim, demons in drag.

There is only so much denying that can happen before you have to ask yourself if the denying is being done by reflex rather than because of reflection.

Note #1: The prior posts in this series are as follows:
    Part I: Introduction
    Part II: The New Eve
    Part III: Genesis to Revelation
    Part III-b: The Ark of the New Covenant
    Part IV: Historical Perspective
    Part V: Perpetual Virginity
    Part VI: Prayer
    Part VI-b: Worship  

Note #2: The photo at the beginning of this post, and the one in the middle, were taken at St. Mary & St. Mina Coptic Orthdox Church in Clearwater, Florida.

V-J Day

80 years ago today, the bloodiest war in human history came to an end when Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. The announcement of Japan's surrender set off celebrations around the globe, including the one in Times Square during which this iconic picture was taken.

After six years, during which more than 60 million people from 27 different countries were killed, World War II was finally over. In the United States, August 15th came to be known as V-J Day, for Victory in Japan Day, since our European enemies had surrendered three months earlier.

Despite the fact that America was brought into the war when it was bombed by Japan, and despite the fact that atomic weapons were used to hasten its end, and despite enormous cultural differences, the two countries became strong and lasting friends whose alliance is now one of the more dependable on Earth.

That is a direct result of the respectful and helping way America dealt with Japan after the war ended: One of the reasons we are unique in world history is that as conflicts conclude, we always seek to befriend our antagonists and better their lot as well as our own. That fact needs to be burned into the hearts and minds of those who believe America is always the aggressor.

In my younger days, V-J Day was noted on calendars. Today it is not. This is not how it should be.

The Greatest Generation is rapidly passing to the other side of eternity's veil. It has now been more than a year since the last remaining survivor of the USS Arizona was laid to rest. Before its members are gone, may the rest of us thank them for the freedom they transmitted to us. And may we resolve that their sacrifice shall never be forgotten, and that it shall not have been made in vain.

Marian Musings, Part VI-b

My prior post in this series dove into the topic of praying to Mary. I took that dive with a bit of trepidation not because I was afraid of it, but because it's the kind of water that can sweep you off course when you're trying to keep the focus on her.

Once you start commenting both about her as a person and about prayer as a practice - especially if, like me, you're a "cradle Protestant" with an assumed audience of other cradle Protestants - you'll need to spend time delving into questions like what it means to "pray to" somebody and why we should talk to Mary when the Bible never says to. In other words, your eye gets taken off the ball.

Anyway, 14 days ago I cut myself off after handling the two questions I just mentioned, and now I'm back because of a nettlesome feeling I need to do more. Where those questions came from are others that are of sincere concern to Christians acting in good faith from Protestant and non-denominational settings, and good faith concerns deserve a good faith response.

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Last time around, in addition to explaining that the very way we Protestants tend to define "pray" deviates from how it has always been defined by Catholics and Orthodox - and even by the dictionary! - I wrote: "I understand the frequently voiced Protestant concern that some individuals might take Marian prayer too far and start treating her as being on par with or even higher than God. That concern is valid. However, any individual who does such a thing would be in clear violation of church teaching, so I do not share the frequently voiced Protestant opinion that Marian prayer is wrong."

Adjacent to the misunderstanding about the definition of "pray" is a misunderstanding about the definition of "worship," for the standard Protestant conception is more straitjacketed than the historical Catholic and Orthodox one. Having touched briefly on that in another post four years ago, I might as well just quote myself:

If you consult Catholic doctrine itself and hop a little further back in linguistic history, you will find that it explicitly defines how it regards Mary (versus other figures) using a Latin term plus two late middle English terms rooted in Greek.

Specifically, the highest honor is called latria and is "given to God alone" because he is "infinite" and "obviously He is our just judge." (emphasis mine, and please note that "judge" is singular)

Below latria is dulia, which is "honor given to all the good angels and to all the saints," while Mary is granted hyperdulia because she "is so highly blessed and endowed by God that she stands alone in her class." Although hyperdulia outranks dulia, it is indisputably less than latria. 

Fyi, those definitions came from here.

What I did not know then, but am unsurprised to have learned since, is that the Orthodox churches also have an explicit delineation between how they regard God and how they regard Mary. As with Catholics, the highest honor given by Orthodox is reserved for God alone and goes by the almost identical term latreia, which comes from Greek rather than Latin. Beneath that is lesser honor called proskynesis, which applies to both Mary and the other saints.

The former is more akin to interior adoration and the latter to outward presentation such as kneeling, and if you want definitions that are more clinical and crystal clear, you are bound for disappointment because Orthodoxy is esoteric to its core. You'll have to trust me when I say those clinical definitions don't exist, and we both have to trust the Orthodox when they say latreia is superior to proskynesis. As stated with delicious candor in a 2024 article on the web site of Saint John the Evangelist Orthodox Church in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania: "In English, the two might seem identical; however, the language of the Church clearly differentiates them. And we must politely insist that those who critique Orthodoxy do the same."

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Seeing as how I have previously explained what I believe are sound reasons for, yes, venerating Mary, part of me feels like I'm in danger of being repetitive with this post. Nevertheless, I am keenly aware that lots of well-meaning Christians get hung up on the idea of worship being divisible, and that many of them, particularly among those raised in charismatic and evangelical settings, intend to extol God when they react skeptically to academic-sounding words from unfamiliar traditions. I know they desire to experience the fullness of Christ, and because I've come to believe that minimizing Mary serves as an impediment to that experience whereas embracing her serves as an aid, I think it's important for them to know what thoughts Catholic and Orthodox believers have voiced outside of tossing around terms like latria, latreia, dulia, hyperdulia, and proskynesis.

Though all Christians agree that the church (note the lower case "c") is the body of Christ, most many would fumble for words if asked to explain what that means. Not so for Catholic apologist Karlo Broussard, who in this 78-page pamphlet writes that "the saints participate in Christ's unique mediation because they're members of the mystical body of Christ...Christians are united with each other in the body by virtue of their union with the head, Jesus. This union with Christ enables the intercessory prayer of Christians to bring about effects in the lives of other members in the body. Viewed this way, we see that intercessory prayer of one member of Christ's mystical body for another no more takes away from Christ's unique mediation than my nervous system aiding my fingers to type takes away from the life that is uniquely mine."

Broussard continues: "The saints in heaven are still members of Christ's mystical body. We know this because Paul teaches in Romans 8:35 and 8:38 that death is among his list of things that cannot separate us from 'the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.' And the saints are not just average members of Christ's body; they are 'the spirits of just men made perfect' (Heb. 12:23). This matters because St. James tells us that 'the prayer of a righteous man avails much' (James 5:16). Since the saints in heaven are perfected in righteousness, their prayers will bear much fruit."

Later in the pamphlet he circles back: "Since the saints in heaven are still members of the body of Christ (death doesn't separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus - see Rom. 8:35, 38), we can infer that we ought not reject their help that's offered through their intercessory prayer. We should employ it."

In The Faith Explained, Leo Trese illustrates: "When we pray to our Blessed Mother and to the saints in heaven (as we should) and beg their help, we know that whatever they may do for us will not be done of their own power, as though they were divine. Whatever they may do for us will be done for us by God, through their intercession. If we value the prayers of our friends here upon earth and feel that their prayers will help us, then surely we have the right to feel that the prayers of our friends in heaven will be even more powerful. The saints are God's chosen friends, heroes in the spiritual combat. It pleases God to encourage our imitation of them and to show his own love for them by dispensing his graces through their hands. Nor does the honor we show to the saints detract one whit from the honor that is due to God. The saints are God's masterpieces of grace. When we praise them, it is God - who made them what they are - whom we honor most. The highest honor that can be paid to an artist is to praise the work of his hands."

The web site of St. Mary & St. Moses Abbey, a monastery of the Coptic Orthodox Church located in southern Texas, sums things up by saying: "For two thousand years the Church has preserved the memory of the Virgin Mary as the prototype of all Christians...St. Mary is also our model because she was the first person to receive Jesus Christ...In obedience to God's clear intention, our Church honors St. Mary through icons, hymns, and special feast days. We entreat her as the human being who was most intimate to Christ on earth, to intercede with her Son on our behalf. We ask her, as the first believer and the mother of the Church, for guidance and protection. We venerate her, but do not worship her."

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Before I sign off, allow me to close by quoting Peter Kreeft from his 2017 book Catholics and Protestants: "Each of the Catholic teachings about Mary is centered on Christ, not on Mary. During her life on earth she was wholly relative to Him. She is His mother. When the servants at the wedding at Cana wondered what to do, she pointed to Him...That is precisely what makes her the greatest saint: she points most completely beyond herself to him. She is like the moon, reflecting only the sun's light (the Son's light). Her total subordination to Christ is her glory, and her glory is her total subordination to Christ."

Here's hoping that Part VII will see me back on track, focusing more on her.

Note #1: The prior posts in this series are as follows:
    Part I: Introduction
    Part II: The New Eve
    Part III: Genesis to Revelation
    Part III-b: The Ark of the New Covenant
    Part IV: Historical Perspective
    Part V: Perpetual Virginity
    Part VI: Prayer          

Note #2: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church in Land O Lakes, Florida.

Marian Musings, Part VI

There is no way to do a series about Mary without addressing the topic of praying to her, so we might as well do that now.

Based on my own experiences interacting with fellow Protestants and non-denominationals (and fyi, for the rest of today's post, the word "Protestant" will be used to include both groups) I think it is crucially important to clear the air of pre-conceived notions. A major one involves what is even meant by the word "pray."

Most of us from Protestant circles are conditioned to think that prayer automatically means asking a deity for something. But we are mistaken. Historically it merely means to ask. Even today, after eons of word evolution and devolution, Merriam-Webster gives two definitions for the intransitive verb "pray" and mentions God in the second one:

1:  to make a request in a humble manner
2: to address God or a god with adoration, confession, supplication, or thanksgiving

It is a simple fact that Catholics and Orthodox have always used the word according to its original - and as I just pointed out, still existing - definition. Protestants use it differently, and act as if their approach should be the default even though they are: 1] the new Christians on the block, 2] a minority of Christians, and 3] a minuscule minority if you group us according to our specific denominations and churches rather than lumping us all together. 

In light of this, it seems that the main question is whether humans in Heaven are tuned in to what we do on Earth. Before wading into those waters, however, I need to stress that:

1] Both Catholics and Orthodox allow, but do not require, prayers to Mary - and always have.

2] Neither Catholics nor Orthodox believe Mary can provide salvation, or that she can act independently of God's perfect will.

3] Their petitions to her are intercessory, meaning they revolve around asking her to pray for them. It's notable that the only thing Catholics ask of Mary in the most famous Marian prayer of all, the Hail Mary, is that she "pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death."

4] Christianity is not a modern faith - like our Orthodox brothers and sisters are fond of saying, it's an ancient one - and therefore modern conceptions must meet an enormous burden of proof before they can be considered to trump ancient ones.

5] And finally: Since all Christians worth their salt believe God is unchanging, it stands to reason that the Christian faith should also be unchanging, or at least largely so, despite the inevitability of some superficial variations in how it is approached.

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So, now let's wade into the question of whether human souls in the supernatural world are able to see and hear what is happening here in the material world.

For the record, I instinctively believe they can, and I suspect most people's instincts align with mine where this is concerned. That doesn't prove the instinct is correct, of course, but instinct and intuition cannot be dismissed simply because they're not tangible.

Consider a corollary: Some Christians believe animals lack souls and thus pets don't go to Heaven, and they base their belief on the fact the Bible doesn't say animals have souls... Meanwhile, other Christians have a powerful intuition that animals do have souls and pets do go to Heaven, and they are entirely correct to point out that the Bible does not tell us animals don't have souls... And if we are being honest with ourselves, we should admit that we don't know which group is right. The Bible is silent about this subject, and silence about a subject does not make an argument either for it or against it.

But that corollary, while valid, barely holds a candle to the matter at hand because the Bible does serve up evidence that humans in the supernatural world can see and hear beyond it. It does this not least when the Book of Hebrews says "we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses" (12:1) who were previously martyred (11:37). That those witnesses are martyrs means they are humans who were killed while living on Earth, and are, thus, no longer on Earth.

In Luke 16, when Jesus tells of the rich man asking Abraham (deceased) to send Lazarus (also deceased) to warn his relatives what will happen if they don't change their ways, Jesus says Abraham declined not because Lazarus was unable to deliver the warning but because he knew the relatives wouldn't believe the warning.

Plus, we know it's possible to communicate with the deceased because Saul does precisely that when he goes to Endor (1 Samuel 28:7-20).

So the real question is not whether it can be done, but whether it should be done; and if it can, what are the guardrails?

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I have seen plenty of Catholics say that asking Mary (or anyone else in Heaven) to pray for you is, at worst, no different than asking your friends to pray for you... and at best, much better than having your friends pray for you, as the holiness of those up there exceeds that of anyone down here.

In response, I have seen many Protestants insist it's not that simple and accuse said Catholics of concocting an excuse to justify their priors.

In response to which, said Catholics retort that it is that simple and accuse said Protestants of ignoring Scripture as well as tradition in order to justify their priors.

And any Orthodox who happen to be watching usually just shake their heads at how much energy is being wasted by quarreling. Occasionally, however, they do weigh in and make it clear that they think said Protestants are wrong.

As is usually the case, and as you can tell from my earlier remark about what I "instinctively believe," I strongly suspect Catholics and Orthodox are correct about this topic. I think it is as simple as said Catholics make it out to be: If people in Heaven are able to hear us pray to them (remember, it simply means ask) and are able to in turn appeal to God on our behalf, then we may say such prayers if we choose.

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I understand the frequently voiced Protestant concern that some individuals might take Marian prayer too far and start treating her as being on par with or even higher than God. That concern is valid. However, any individual who does such a thing would be in clear violation of church teaching, so I do not share the frequently voiced Protestant opinion that Marian prayer is wrong.

The Protestant impulse to defer to what Scripture affirms is admirable in most respects but flawed in others - and becomes critically flawed when people cross the line by citing it as a reason to reject anything they don't see unambiguously affirmed in Scripture.

Many of my fellow Protestants correctly observe that the Bible does not show people on Earth praying to Mary, then they incorrectly assume that this in and of itself stands as a testament against the practice. Mary was by all appearances still living when the New Testament was written, so of course its authors didn't talk about sending heavenward prayers to her.

The same holds true for prayers to other believers who were martyred for their faith or died after experiencing persecution. Those people (whom Catholics and Orthodox refer to as the communion of saints) would all need to die before they could be prayed to, and a large number of them would need to have been dead for a long time before we could expect prayers to them to become widely attested in print.

Yet even still, the New Testament does touch on the topic:

In several places Revelation refers to "elders" in Heaven and it is widely accepted that this refers to humans, not angels, since the Greek word translated as elders (presbuteroi) is never known to have been applied to non-humans. Revelation 5:8 says these elders "fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints" - which certainly seems to show heavenly humans bringing petitions to God on behalf of others, especially when you consider that in the New Testament "saints" generally refers to all believers.

Further, Revelation 6:9-11 depicts humans in Heaven being acutely aware of what is happening on Earth and appealing to God about it.

Part of me feels like I should continue, but a bigger part of me knows I have already gone on long enough for today. Until next time, take care. 

Note #1: The prior posts in this series are as follows:
    Part I: Introduction
    Part II: The New Eve
    Part III: Genesis to Revelation
    Part III-b: The Ark of the New Covenant
    Part IV: Historical Perspective
    Part V: Perpetual Virginity            

Note #2: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church in Land O Lakes, Florida.

Mankind's Greatest Hour

Today, as we fire up our grills and crack open our beverages, let us remember why we even have a July 4th holiday: To commemorate the greatest act of shared, selfless courage the world has ever seen.

Everybody should know that Thomas Jefferson authored the Declaration of Independence. Most people know the names of a handful of the 56 men who signed it, such as John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, and of course Jefferson himself. But few people seem to realize that when those men signed their names, they were committing what was considered an act of treason against the British crown, punishable by death.

Those men were property owners who were successful in their lives and businesses. Their lives were comfortable and they stood to lose everything they had on Earth, incuding their lives, by signing the Declaration. Yet they chose to sign it anyway, because they knew that casting off the crown and forming a new government based on individual liberty was the correct course of action to take at their moment in time. They knew it was the correct course of action not only for themselves and their own descendants, but for all of humanity. And here is what happened to some of those men after they signed the Declaration:

Five of them became prisoners of war.

Nearly one-sixth of them died before the war ended.

British forces burned, and/or looted, the homes and properties of nearly one-third of them.

When the British did that to the property of William Floyd, he and his family fled and spent the next seven years living as refugees without income. His wife died two years before the war ended.

After being forced into the wilderness by British forces, John Hart struggled to make his way home. When he finally got there, he found that his wife was dead and his 13 children were missing. He died without ever seeing them again.

Richard Stockton was dragged from his bed and sent to prison while his property was ravaged. From the day of his release from prison until the day he died, he had to rely on charity from others to feed his family.

Francis Lewis’s wife was imprisoned and beaten. Meanwhile, his wealth was plundered. His last years were spent as a widower living in poverty.

Thomas Nelson Jr.’s home was captured and occupied by British General Cornwallis, who used it as what we would now call an operations center. Therefore, Nelson ordered his troops to destroy his own home with cannon fire during the Battle of Yorktown. To assist in funding the war, he used his own credit to borrow two million dollars, which would equal nearly 74 million in today's dollars. Repaying that debt bankrupted him, and when he died he was buried in an unmarked grave.

It is a safe bet that fewer than one percent of our citizens have ever heard of these people, much less know anything about the devastating sacrifices they made so that future generations could have the freedom necessary to build the kind of upward, progressing, opportunity-rich society we would come to take for granted.

It is also a safe bet that most people today fail to see what should be obvious: That nobody takes the kind of peril-fraught step America's Founders took unless they know they are serving something much greater than themselves by taking it. The Founding Fathers saw liberty as being necessary not so that people could act with libertine abandon, but so that people could be free to do what is right. This is abundantly clear to anybody who has taken the time to study their words and actions in context.

Some people overstate the case that the Founders were uniformly Christian, seeing as how only one (John Witherspoon) was a clergyman and at least one (Thomas Paine) was openly Deist and some (Benjamin Franklin comes immediately to mind) expressed uncertainty about the divinity of Jesus. What is not an overstatement, however, is that none of them were atheist, all of them affirmed the existence of a single God, and it was through this lens --  and this lens alone -- that they viewed freedom as being an "inalienable" right belonging to all human beings. This is a lesson which people in the twenty-first century must relearn in order for freedom to survive.

The Founding Fathers bequeathed to us a wonderful gift called America, and we owe it to our children to make sure we don’t allow that gift to be destroyed. We should never hear the words “Fourth of July” without feeling a skip in our heart and a tear in our eye.

Much thanks to Jeff Jacoby, the late Paul Harvey, and all the others who have written and spoken about the fates of the signers, to keep their story alive. 

Marian Musings, Part V

Some people are caught off guard to learn that not only does devotion to Mary go back to before there was any separation in the Christian Church, but so too does belief that she remained virgin throughout her life.

In his 2007 book The Real Mary, Scot McKnight (a Protestant) observes that "with very few exceptions, all Christians from the second or third century onward believed that Mary was perpetually virginal...This surprises many of us. What may surprise us even more is that three of the most significant Protestant leaders - Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Wesley - who in their own way were also very critical of what Catholics believed about Mary, each believed in Mary's perpetual virginity."

It's noteworthy that we don't see opposition to that until recent centuries.

When it comes to the early Church, we know which beliefs were contested and what heresies arose precisely because they generated debate. That was documented through letters and councils as the Church hammered them out and ultimately took a position on what was true, versus what was false, versus what was unknowable. When it comes to the perpetual virginity of Christ's mother, we see none of that.

People back then were far from prude, expected husbands and wives to have lots of kids, and knew Mary was married... so it seems worthwhile to ask why the belief in her remaining forever virgin became so ubiquitous, does it not?

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When the angel Gabriel visited Mary to inform her of God's plan for virginal conception, she and Joseph were already betrothed. Many today take that to mean they were engaged, but it actually means more: Betrothal effectively meant a couple was married, albeit with the woman still residing in her father's house while the man finished building/establishing their own.

There was no ending a betrothal the way we might break off an engagement if we get cold feet. Ending a betrothal required a divorce, which was scandalous and hard to come by. This explains why, upon hearing Mary was "with child," Joseph "resolved to divorce her" and needed his own visit from an angel to change his mind by assuring him "that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 1:18-20).

Mary's reaction is even more telling than Joseph's. When a young woman who is already essentially married is told "you have found favor with God" and "will conceive in your womb and bear a son," it seems odd for her to respond by asking "how" rather than "when," yet that is exactly what Mary did. According to Luke 1:34 she "said to the angel, 'How will this be, since I am a virgin?'" That statement makes no sense unless she was planning to always be one.

Modern Westerners are inclined to wonder why two humans would marry while planning to forego sex, and men are particularly curious why Joseph would take a bride under circumstances that would, at least ostensibly, consign him to an entire lifetime without sex. But Mary and Joseph obviously weren't your normal couple - seeing as how they were both addressed by angels, and she was chosen to bear and nurture God in human form, and he was charged with protecting God in human form along with God's mother - so should we really be surprised by the thought of them looking at things from different perspectives than us?

In any event, chastity vows, including among spouses, were not unheard of. The Torah itself uses the phrases "afflict yourselves" (Leviticus 16:29) and "afflict herself" (Numbers 30:13) in ways that are widely acknowledged as referring to adults voluntarily vowing to abstain from sex. In On the Contemplative Life, Philo of Alexandria (circa 20 B.C. to 50 A.D.) wrote of a contemporaneous sect called the Therapeutae whose members swore themselves to celibacy. These kinds of arrangements were not normal, but neither were they absent.

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The argument given most often and most persuasively for rejecting the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity is the fact that the Bible makes reference to Jesus having brothers and sisters. Matthew 13:55 even names said brothers: James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas.

While that seems compelling at first glance, let's face it: If it actually was compelling, it would not have sat there for more than 15 centuries with nobody bothering to use it as an argument against the doctrine. Nevertheless, sit there it did. Unused. And that long, enduring silence ought to make today's critics think twice.

Though we automatically think of the words "brothers" and "sisters" as meaning biological siblings, ancient Hebrews did not, for they also used those words to identify relatives who were not siblings. This was especially true for relatives you and I would call cousins, as their language and culture had no word for cousin.

We know Jesus and John the Baptist were cousins not because the Bible calls them that, but because we connect the dots when Gabriel refers to Elizabeth (John's mother) as Mary's "relative." From that, we intuit that Jesus and John must have been cousins to one degree or another.

Likewise, we know Abram and Lot were uncle and nephew because Genesis 14:12 says Lot was "the son of Abram's brother." However, two verses later, when Abram gets news of Lot's capture in Genesis 14:14, the Hebrew word for brother (ach) is used to describe their relationship to one another. Many modern English translations tidy the verse up for us by substituting other words - e.g., the NLT uses "nephew" and the ESV "kinsman" - but it cannot be stressed enough that the translators made that decision not because of what 14:14 says, but because of the context clue provided in 14:12.

There are plenty other examples of this sort of thing in the Bible. Including some in which there is no blood whatsoever between between the people (e.g., David called Jonathan "my brother") and some in which the familial titles are something other than sibling (e.g., your grandfather, great-grandfather, etc. would each be called your "father," and collectively called your "fathers," since there was no designated word for paternal predecessors more than a generation removed).

But I digress, for what I alluded to five paragraphs above is strong enough on its own. Church leaders down through history were no fools, and many of them were intellectual and philosophical titans. They all saw the words "brothers" and "sisters" in print, describing peoples' linkage to Jesus, yet they all believed his mother was perpetually virgin and never bore another child. None of them cited the words "brothers" and "sisters" as a reason to second-guess her perpetual virginity. The only explanation for this is that they knew those words were not referring to biological siblings - just like you and I know the singers Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield weren't siblings even though everyone calls them the Righteous Brothers.

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The doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity has been around as far back as we can tell, whereas opposition to it did not begin until more than three-fourths of the way into Christian history.

The doctrine survived intact on both sides of a schism in the fifth century, and intact again on both sides of another schism in the eleventh, and, as I showed in Part IV of this series, it remained a core belief of some Protestant Reformers even into the eighteenth century - which, if you're counting, was eighty-five percent of the way into Christian history.

Her perpetual virginity is the official belief of all Catholics, all Orthodox, and some Protestants. If it was good enough for Wesley, it ought to be good enough for all non-Cartholic, non-Orthodox Christians to consider without rejecting it out of hand.

And frankly, when the full and combined weight of history, logic, and Scripture are taken into account, the arguments against it are genuinely weak.

Note #1: The prior posts in this series are as follows:
    Part I: Introduction
    Part II: The New Eve
    Part III: Genesis to Revelation
    Part III-b: The Ark of the New Covenant
    Part IV: Historical Perspective              

Note #2: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken at Notre-Dame de la Garde in Marseilles, France. Courtesy of Diane Kelly.

Marian Musings, Part IV

So far I think this series has done a decent job spelling out why Mary deserves to be regarded with prestige by all Christians... and how that is grounded in Scripture... and why she does not deserve the kind of nonchalance and even dismissiveness I often see from Protestants and non-denominationals.

It's inevitable that a series like this will address specific "Catholic teachings" with which some Protestants have problems. Before I venture deeper into those trenches, however, I want to pause and use this post purely to highlight how far back devotion to Mary goes.

I placed quotation marks around the phrase Catholic teachings because: 1) it is crucially important to realize Marian devotion dates to long before there were any divisions in the church; and 2) most many of my fellow Protestants, at least here in the US of A, need reminding that Christianity includes not just Protestants, Catholics, and non-denoms, but also Orthodox.

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Regardless of how you want to look at it, history shows the Church dates back either to Christ's ascension or to Pentecost - which means it goes back to some point between the years 30 and 38, most likely in the earlier part of that range. For centuries there was simply the Church, singular, not a bunch of different ones, and certainly not the endlessly fragmenting mishmash we see today.

The early Church covered a wide scope of geography, encompassing broad swaths of northern Africa and Europe in addition to the Near and Middle East. Within the first generation of apostles Christianity made it as far away from Jerusalem as India, where Thomas was martyred in the year 72, and archaeology shows it already existing in Britain, complete with bishops, as early as the 200's, so yes, geography meant there were lots of what modern American Protestants would call congregations. Nevertheless, it was one deliberately designed organization with a structure for ensuring doctrinal consistency and rooting out heresies. This is why the New Testament contains all those letters penned by apostles (to the church/believers "in Corinth," "at Colossae," etc.) and colossal disputes were settled at councils with leaders from the different regions all gathered in one place (Nicaea, Constantinople, etc.).

It is impressive to say the least - and evidence of divine blessing, to say the most - that the Church succeeded, flourished, and expanded in this manner back when there was no modern media to communicate and no dependable transportation to travel across distances.

There were two official separations in the Church long before the Protestant Reformation. The first was in the fifth century, when five particular churches we now call Oriental Orthodox - specifically the Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Syriac, and Indian - chose to stop recognizing subsequent councils that were demanded by the Vatican, while continuing to affirm the first three.

The second, commonly called the Great Schism, became a done deal in the year 1054. It consisted of churches we now call Eastern Orthodox refusing to recognize the full authority of the Vatican, while continuing to affirm the first seven councils that came before then... At the time, they were not considered separate churches per se, but four geographical Patriarchates with their respective headquarters in Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. As later centuries unfolded, names were changed and additional geographic churches were added to the Eastern Orthodox fold, so that we now see some having names that sound more familiar to us: Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Romanian Orthodox, Orthodox Church in America, etc.

What matters for the purposes of this series is that all of these, regardless of whether they fall under the Catholic or Orthodox umbrella, share essentially identical teachings about Mary and always have. Their devotion to Mary pre-dates their separation, survived their separation, and remains as strong as ever. They all pray to her for intercession and all refer to her as the Theotokos, Mother of God.

It was not until much later, after Protestants appeared on the scene, that Mary-minimizing took place, and it was confined only to Protestant circles and not even all Protestant circles. To this day, the Marian beliefs of many churches in the Protestant Anglican Communion are more similar to Catholic and Orthodox beliefs than to anything you'll find in your local Southern Baptist, Global Methodist, or Calvary Chapel gathering.

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My prior posts already talked of how the Bible presents Jesus and Mary as a kind of package deal in which he is the savior but she plays an indispensable role. Some critics claim this is a suspect interpretation that came about late and was imposed by apostates, spiritual weaklings, and pagan-clingers. Those critics are wrong, for it is their claim which lacks evidence and is refuted by what we know from history.

In the interest of illustrating this, here comes a sampling of things from the early Church. This may not be as interesting as my previous posts and will definitely run afoul of my vow to be succinct, but it's striking that...

Ignatius of Antioch (50-117) was a disciple of John himself and wrote the following in his Letter to the Ephesians: "The virginity of Mary, her giving birth, and also the death of the Lord, were hidden from the prince of this world - three mysteries loudly proclaimed, but wrought in the silence of God." Note that of the three things he mentioned, the first two were specific to Mary. She was not incidental to, nor separable from, the salvation story, as borne out by the fact Jesus and her were both repeatedly mentioned when early Christians discussed the salvation and redemption of humanity.

Justin Martyr (100-165), in his Dialogue with Trypho, noted that "Eve, who was a virgin and undefiled, having conceived the word of the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death. But...(Jesus) became man by the Virgin, in order that the disobedience which proceeded from the serpent might receive its destruction in the same manner in which it derived its origin."

Melito of Sardis (100-177) is the author of the world's oldest extant Easter sermon, in which he proclaimed that Jesus "is the one who became human in a virgin...who was born of Mary, that beautiful ewe."

Irenaeus of Lyons (125-202), already quoted in Part II of this series, also wrote that "Mary, having the predestined man, and being yet a Virgin, being obedient, became both to herself and to the whole human race the cause of salvation." And that "the knot of Eve's disobedience received its unloosing through the obedience of Mary; for what Eve, a virgin, bound by incredulity, that Mary, a virgin, unloosed by faith."

In Instructor, Clement of Alexandria (150-213) wrote: "The Father of all is indeed one, one also is the universal Word, and the Holy Spirit is one and the same everywhere; and one is the Virgin Mother. I love to call her the Church."

Tertullian (155-225), already quoted in Part II, also had this to say in On the Flesh of Christ: "God recovered His image and likeness, which the devil had seized, by a rival operation. For into Eve, as yet a virgin, had crept the word which was the framer of death, equally into a virgin was to be introduced the Word of God which was the builder-up of life; that, what by that sex had gone into perdition, by that same sex might be brought back to salvation."

At least one fresco of Mary (this one) is in the catacombs beneath Rome and is dated to between 150 and 175.

Hippolytus of Rome (170-236) wrote in Treatise on Christ and Antichrist that "whereas the Word of God was without flesh, He took upon Himself the holy flesh by the Holy Virgin," and in Commentary on Psalm 22: "The Lord was sinless, because, in His humanity, He was fashioned out of incorruptible wood, that is, out of the Virgin and the Holy Ghost, lined within and without as with the purest gold of the Word of God."

In Church History, Book VII, Socrates Scholasticus said a then-extant writing of Origen (185-253) "gives an ample exposition of the sense in which the term Theotokos is used."

One of Christianity's oldest known hymns, Sub tuum praesidium (actually a Coptic prayer sung as a hymn), states "Beneath thy protection, We take refuge, O Theotokos; do not despise our petitions in our necessities; but rescue us from dangers, only pure one, only blessed one." The earliest found papyrus of Sub tuum praesidium has been dated to the 200's, and although that dating is not definitive, Sub tuum praesidium is known to have been in liturgical use by the 400's because it was recorded in the Jerusalem Chantbook - which, in my opinion, makes the 200's dating credible at worst and likely at best.

Early icons of Saint Nicholas (270-343) often depicted Jesus and Mary being with him. This is due to him having been visited by them in two central moments of his life, and contemporaries of his having been visited by them about him.

In his Letter 59 (aka Epistle to Epictetus), Athanasius (297-373) successfully inveighed against novel ideas that threatened to de-emphasize Christology through their downgrading of Mariology. 

In Syriac Works, Third Volume, Ephrem Syrus (306-373) affirmed: "In the beginning, by the sin of our first parents, death passed upon all men; today, through Mary we are translated from death unto life."

In Catechetical Lecture 12, Cyril of Jerusalem (313-386) affirmed: "Since through Eve, a virgin, came death, it behooved, that through a Virgin, or rather from a Virgin, should life appear..."

In Panarion, Epiphanius of Salamis (315-403) asserted that "in reality it is from Mary the Life was truly born to the world. So that by giving birth to the Living One, Mary became the mother of all living." It was also in Panarion that he took the Church's lead in opposing a fledgling movement for honoring Mary too much - describing it as "awful and blasphemous" and stressing "it is not right to honor the saints beyond their due," he helped ensure that the movement, known as Collyridianism, was stopped in its tracks.

Saint Basil (329-379) encouraged believers to "be not discouraged, but have recourse to Mary in all your necessities," and declared: "As the sun surpasses all the stars in lustre, so the sorrows of Mary surpass all the tortures of the martyrs."

The relics of Moses the Strong (330-405) are housed in the Paromeos Monastery in Egypt, which was established in 335 and is both named after and dedicated to Mary. The monastery's oldest standing church is itself dedicated to Mary. 

Don't ask me why the works of John Chrysostom (347-407) are numbered the way they are, but a stunning abundance of them are preserved and his Homily on Matthew 5,5 affirms Mary's perpetual virginity with this passage: "The Virgin was untouched by man before the birth. He (Matthew) leaves for you to perceive the obvious and necessary conclusion; namely, that not even after her having become a mother, and having been counted worthy of a new sort of travail, and a childbearing so extraordinary, could that righteous man (Joesph) ever have endured to know her." ("know" is universally acknowledged as biblical slang for "have sex with").

Every cantankerous Protestant's favorite Church Father is Jerome of Stridon, who lived from 347-420. Even he declared "death came through Eve, but life has come through Mary" as well as this: "The closed gate, by which alone the Lord God of Israel enters, is the Virgin Mary."

In On Holy Virginity, Saint Augustine (354-430) said: "His (Christ's) mother is the whole Church, because she herself assuredly gives birth to His members, that is, His faithful ones."... And in Sermon 186,1 he declared: "A virgin conceives, yet remains a virgin; a virgin is heavy with child; a virgin brings forth her child, yet she is always a virgin. Why are you amazed at this, O man? It was fitting for God to be born thus when He deigned to become a man."

Peter Chyrsologus (400-450) in Sermon 140 stressed: "Heaven feels awe of God, Angels tremble at Him, the creature sustains Him not, nature sufficeth not; and yet one maiden so takes, receives, entertains Him, as a guest within her breast, that, for the very hire of her home, and as the price of her womb, she asks, she obtains peace for the earth, glory for the heavens, salvation for the lost, life for the dead, a heavenly parentage for the earthly, the union of God Himself with human flesh."

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Everything above happened before the first church separation. That occurred after the Council of Chalcedon, which was held in the autumn of 451.

The Protestant Reformation is considered to have begun when Martin Luther completed his Ninety-five Theses in 1517. Five years later, in a sermon delivered on September 1, 1522, he said "the veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart." In his personal prayer book that year he wrote: "She is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin - something exceedingly great. For God's grace fills her with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil."

In a sermon on March 11, 1523 he said: "Whoever possesses a good faith, says the Hail Mary without danger!"

In his Christmas sermon in 1529, Luther rhapsodized that "Mary is the Mother of Jesus and the Mother of all of us even though it was Christ alone who reposed on her knees."

In his Christmas sermon in 1531 he described her as the "highest woman and the noblest gem in Christianity after Christ," and stressed "we can never honor her enough."

And in On the Councils and the Church, a treatise against church authority that he wrote in 1539, he said "she is the true mother of God and bearer of God...Mary suckled God, rocked God to sleep, prepared broth and soup for God, etc. For God and man are one person, one Christ, one Son, one Jesus, not two Christs...just as your son is not two sons...even though he has two natures, body and soul, the body from you, the soul from God alone."

210 years after that, John Wesley, founder of Methodism and one of the most influential theologians of the entire Protestant Era, affirmed Mary's perpetual virginity. In his famous Letter to a Roman Catholic (written July 18, 1749), Wesley stated flatly that "the blessed Virgin Mary...both after as well as before she gave birth to Him continued as a pure and unspotted virgin."

I think it's safe to say that if we take Christianity seriously and aim to have the fullest possibile experience Christ offers us on earth, we would be wise to ponder his mother much more than most of us do. He did not create her simply to appear in the Nativity scenes we set up and Hallmark cards we send out when December rolls around.

Note #1: The prior posts in this series are as follows:
    Part I: Introduction
    Part II: The New Eve
    Part III: Genesis to Revelation
    Part III-b: The Ark of the New Covenant                 

Note #2: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken at Saint Raphael Catholic Church in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Marian Musings, Part III-b

Succinctness is a quality I wish came naturally to me, but, burdened by a desire to cover every base and to address every objection before it even gets raised, I have a tendency to be long-winded.

I'm always wrestling with it, and that's a big part of the reason I'm approaching the subject of Mary with a series: Were I to sit down and write a single post called, say, "A Protestant Looks At Mary," I'd  publish something longer than a novella and nobody would ever read it. I don't know how successful I have been, but I do count it as a victory that this post is "III-b" rater than "IV." 

Part III delved into the Book of Revelation's depiction of the "woman clothed with the sun" (commonly interpreted as Mary) and noted that it transitions to said woman immediately after saying "God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple." Although I had read the passage before, it was not until excerpting it for my blog that I read those words "ark of his covenant" - and the reason they leapt off the page is I knew many Catholics and Orthodox liken Mary to the Ark the Covenant.

Part of me cried out to start pontificating on that immediately because, you know, there it is! Fortunately, a wiser part knew that would mean walking into a rabbit hole and making the post way longer than intended. I decided to let it be, circle back later, and slip this stand-alone Part III-b into the series before moving on to whatever Part IV will be.

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So to repeat: Yes, prior to three days ago I was already aware of Catholics and Orthodox comparing Mary to the Ark of the Covenant. Sometimes they switch up the appellation by referring to her as "the Ark of the New Covenant," kinda like they often refer to her as the New Eve. Prior to three days ago I even found the ark symbolism valid and the concept interesting; I just didn't find it fascinating.

Regarding the symbolism: As everyone who's watched Raiders of the Lost Ark knows, the Ark of the Covenant contained within it the Ten Commandments, those words of God that were transmitted to mankind via stone tablets. Non-fledgling Christians should know the ark also contained an urn of manna, that bread-like substance God fed the Israelites in the desert, along with the staff of Aaron, Israel's first high priest... Well, eons later, Mary's womb contained God himself in the person of Jesus - aka the Word of God, the Bread of Life, and the High Priest all wrapped up in one supernatural gift of salvation brought to all who choose to truly accept it. Neat and tidy.

Maybe too neat and tidy for my brain to think of as "fascinating," or too symbolic for me to spend much time thinking at all. Until, that is, I noticed the Bible talking about the ark being seen in God's temple right before it talks about the devil commencing an epic war against the woman: That grabbed my attention and got me digging to see if there's anything more to this Mary-as-ark narrative. Turns out there is.

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The Gospel of Luke says that when Elizabeth was visited by pregnant Mary, she "was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, 'Blessed are you...'" Here we come to one of those brain-tingling translation impasses where English is brimming with tons of words that function as synonyms, yet is hamstrung by the fact that words in one language often do not have an exact match in another. That can raise a dilemma.

In this instance, the Greek word we see rendered as "exclaimed" in our English Bible translations is anaphoneo. Starting around the twelve-minute mark of this video, Curtis Mitch points out that: 1] the visitation scene from Luke is the only place in the New Testament that the word anaphoneo gets used, while 2] in every place it gets used in the Old Testament, anaphoneo is in conjunction with the Ark of the Covenant. I place that in the category of things that make you go hmm.

More than a few commentators correctly point out that Elizabeth lived in the hill country of Judah, and Mary remained with her for "about three months" before returning home (Luke 1:56)... which fits snugly with the Old Testament telling us that, also in the hill country of Judah, David had the ark remain with Obed-edom the Gittite for "three months" before bringing it to its proper home in Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6:11).

They also point out that before leaving the ark with Obed-edom, David asked, "How can the ark of the Lord come to me?" (2 Samuel 6:9)... which fits snugly with Elizabeth asking Mary, upon her arrival, "why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (Luke 1:43)

Plus, there's this: The virginal conception of incarnate Jesus is explained, in Luke 1:35, as happening by virtue of God "overshadowing" Mary... which fits at least somewhat snugly with Hebrews 9:5 telling us that the the ark's mercy seat, dwelling place of the pre-incarnate God, was "overshadowed" by the gold cherubim.

And this: According to 1 Samuel 5, after the ark was brought into the temple of the Phillistine god Dagon, Dagon's statue fell "face downward" with its hands "cut off"... while Genesis 3 and Revelation 11-12 show the devil opposing the woman and being doomed to fail. This too makes for a snug fit.

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I'm not certain how many coincidences need to be strung together before you have a pattern that cannot be denied, but I am certain that patterns are never random and thus are almost always deliberate.

Do I now find the concept of Mary being the Ark of the New Covenant to be fascinating? Yes.

Do I find it to be more compelling now than a few days ago? Yes.

Do I know exactly what the concept means? Nope. However, I'm positive it does not mean Christians should be Mary-minimizers in our thinking.

Is the concept ancient, or did it come around late in the game? It is ancient - as evidenced by Gregory of Neocaesarea (213-270) having noted in homily that "the holy Virgin is in truth an ark, wrought with gold both within and without, that has received the whole treasury of the sanctuary."

Would I, who am neither Catholic nor Orthodox, deny or oppose the teachings of those churches where this concept is concerned? No.

Note #1: The prior posts in this series are as follows: Part I, Part II, and Part III.

Note #2: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken at Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

Marian Musings, Part III

The first post in this series ended by commenting about a passage from Genesis that refers forward to Mary, and the second one began by elaborating on that passage. Today, let's turn all the way to the back of the Bible to consider one that refers backwards to her.

When most people hear "Book of Revelation," they immediately think of a prophetic work about the end times, but that's not necessarily what it is. Much of it seems to be referring to contemporaneous events, and parts of it are about things that had already happened. The most famous of the latter is Revelation 12's depiction of an epic showdown between a woman often interpreted as Mary and a dragon explicitly identified as Satan.

As is often the case when perusing the Bible, we would do well to remember that its books were not divided into chapters and verses when they were written. That came much later, and while it has been a great help for quickly locating specific things, an unfortunate side effect is that it often leads people to isolate those things and fail to read them in their proper context. In the case of Revelation, many folks open right to Chapter 12 because they've heard of "the woman in Revelation 12" and are eager to see what that's all about; in their haste, they never see what's happening in Chapter 11 and don't quite grasp that the one is a seamless continuation of the other.

Chapter 11 closes by declaring "God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumbling, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail." That flows directly into the first sentence of Chapter 12, which opens with the capitalized word "And" - which is of course a conjunction, signifying it is mid-thought and connected to what came before, yet too many people look right at it without glancing back to see what came before.

In any event, Revelation 12 states: And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems... And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God... And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, and his angels were thrown down with him... And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child... The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman, and swallowed the river... Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. (verses 1-6, 9, 13, 15-17)

As with Genesis 3:15, which I discussed in the previous posts, it requires very adventurous reading to fail to perceive the figures of Jesus and Mary in Revelation 12. And Satan is right there too, in each excerpt.

One needn't be a million dollar exegete to see two and two coming together and equaling four. On the one hand, the Bible's first book says enmity will pit the woman and her offspring against the serpent and his offspring. On the other, its final book says a dragon hated the woman, hunted her and her offspring, and plotted to devour a particular one of those offspring at birth. It's not going out on a limb to conclude that the woman is Mary; that her offspring consist of Jesus and his followers; that the dragon and serpent are one and the same, aka Satan; and that Satan's offspring consist of his human followers in addition to the demons who joined him in rebelling against God.

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There are other ways of looking at Revelation 12, of course. Many see the woman symbolizing Israel, not Mary, with the twelve stars representing the tribes rather than the apostles... Almost everyone agrees the male child is Jesus - but those who don't want the woman to be Mary are quick to digress that Jesus "came from Israel" in the sense that his genealogy traces back to Abraham... Some scholars intriguingly point out, as Michael Heiser does here, that when you consider constellations known to ancient Hebrews (who, don't forget, were very much into astrology) the imagery in Revelation 12:1-4 accurately describes what was visible in the sky for about 80 minutes on one particular night in 3 B.C. - which, so the thinking goes, must have been the window of time in which Jesus was born.

Personally, I think all these are correct. It's not like they're mutually exclusive, and it strikes me as silly to look at them as a collectively self-competing either/or proposition, rather than a both/and/all premise. Doesn't the latter seem more like what we should expect from the word of God?

Some Christians accuse other Christians of subtracting from their honor of God by the mere fact that they honor Mary. I think that's rubbish, if you don't mind me borrowing a word from our British friends, for it depends on the same kind of either/or fallacy that would drive one to insist the woman in Revelation 12 can't represent Mary if she also nods to the fact that Virgo appeared in a certain alignment with other constellations that one night 2,028 years ago.

As noted in this post and my prior one, Genesis and Revelation present major, beginning-and-end referents to Mary that are beyond obvious. They weren't put there for the audience to ignore or de-emphasize.

Mary-minimizers tend to speak of her as what John Henry Newman called "merely...the physical instrument of our Lord's taking flesh." While they may concede she was somehow blessed or honored by being that instrument, they quickly retreat to their comfort zones by refusing neglecting to reflect on how much that implies.

I've seen them disparage the views of fellow Christians by reflexively referring to Mary as "no better than any other woman," or as "just a woman," or "a dead woman," or "an earthly woman." I've witnessed this not only in the sewers of Internet comments sections, but also in a few face-to-face conversations. It bothers me not only because it's unbecoming, but because it at best prances on the line of insulting Christ's chosen mother, and sometimes charges across that line and does insult her. And to insult her is to insult him who created and chose her, is it not?

*     *     *     *     *

One of the Mary-minimizers' favorite comfort zones is a belief that she vanished from the record after the crucifixion. That belief is unbiblical. Scripture shows her not only post-crucifixion, and not only post-resurrection, but even post-ascension, for she was present at Pentecost.

According to Acts 1:14, Mary was in the upper room when the decision was made for Matthias to become the twelfth apostle (seeing as how Judas had, you know, lost that position some time before), and the very next scene is the coming down "from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind" which "filled the entire house where they were sitting...And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Acts 2:2,4).

No other woman is confirmed by name as having been there. In fact, no other person is confirmed by name as having been there except for the eleven apostles that needed to know who'd be joining them. I daresay this makes Mary apostolic.

I also daresay that her co-work with God far exceeds anyone else's in history: The implication of Luke 1:38 is that she assented to be Jesus' mother, which means she freely agreed to the assignment rather than being forced to accept it... Then she nurtured Jesus when he was dependent and provided him paternal guidance to which he "was submissive" - and all the while she paid studied attention as Jesus "increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God," and she "treasured up all these things in her heart" (Luke 2:51-52)... Then, at the cross, as Father John Waiss notes, "She stands. She watches. She fulfills Jesus' command: watch and pray (Matt. 24:42, 26:41, etc.). She listens to Jesus, and she receives his beloved disciple, given to her as a son."... Then, like I observed above, she stood firmly ensconced at the center of the church when the apostolic age sprang forth.

It is because of things like these that Jon Sweeney said of Mary: "She believed, and in so believing, became the first true disciple of her as yet unborn son...Mary is the chief disciple because she shows us how to wait on God, expect God, have awe for God, and hope for God, but not with an easy credulity. Hers was not an unquestioning belief; these qualities are, instead, the qualities of a mature disciple."

And with that, I'll sign off for now. Until next time, take care.

Note: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken at Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Tarpon Springs, Florida.