Isaiah 9:6 – 7
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the greatness of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the Lord Almighty
will accomplish this.
Luke 1. 39 - 45
39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40 where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43 But why am I so favoured, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfil his promises to her!”
The Roman Catholic Church, as I understand it, gives Mary the Mother of Jesus, six “formal” titles. I thought we'd have a look at them.
Firstly, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
In Luke 1:42 we read of Elizabeth greeting her cousin Mary,
“In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!”
So there is good scriptural reason for calling Mary 'blessed'.
Blessed, from the Greek 'eulogeó', means to speak well of, & in a religious context, to receive God's favour. We are all blessed in some way, but is Mary uniquely blessed?
God does give Mary a special role in His plan for the salvation of humanity. The Holy Spirit works a miracle within her body, and the Son of God then dwells within her as a developing baby. The infinite is confined within her finite flesh and blood.
That is undeniably, cosmically, special.
But let us remember that God calls each of us to play our part in His plan for the salvation of humanity, we are all to be good news to those around us. The truth is to dwell within us, and be brought to the world through us. 1 Corinthians 6:19 says, 'Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?' The blessing Mary received enables us to receive a blessing, and to be a blessing. The blessing Mary receives foreshadows our blessing.
In Luke 11: 27 we hear a woman in the crowd call out to Jesus, “Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.”
Jesus replies, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”
“...those who hear the word of God and obey it,” that's us, or at least it can be if we respond as Mary, “I am the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.”
Next, Virgin.
As there is there is good scriptural reason for calling Mary 'blessed', so there is for calling her a Virgin, she is described as such both in Matthew and Luke. In Luke's account we read that Mary's response to the angel's announcement that she is to have a child is, “How can this be...since I am a virgin?” So a note for those who find the Virgin Birth difficult to believe, so at first did Mary. Some people seem to want their miracles to be wholly plausible, to be unmiraculous, so that they can believe in them, but the way miracles work is to disrupt the normal course of events.
Mary, Luke, and the early Church, all understood that what they were saying about the conception of Jesus was implausible, yet they persisted in saying it. People in the first century weren’t idiots, they knew virgins didn’t have babies. That the account of the Virgin Birth is included in the bible despite the ridicule and disbelief it would bring shows that the disciples must have believed it, and thought it necessary to recount. You don’t start your pitch to a sceptical world with an absurd claim unless you believe it to be true, that is unless you are deluded or dishonest.
Mary is right, the correct initial response to the idea of a virgin Birth is scepticism, but then look at the evidence as Luke did. His stated method was to collate information from various sources, including eyewitness accounts so, as he writes,“...that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” Luke writes a well ordered record of events, these are not delusional ravings, or well-crafted lies. He has looked at the evidence, spoken to the people that were there, read through existing accounts, and is able to write that the beliefs of the first Christians about the life of Jesus are correct. We read in Acts that Mary spent sufficient time with the disciples after the resurrection to pass on her story. Luke could even have met with the aged Mary and said to her, “So tell me, from the beginning, what happened?”
There follows an unbroken paper trail back to Luke, Matthew and the early Church proclaiming the Virgin Birth. In the generation after Luke, Ignatius in his Letter to the Church in Smyrna writes that Jesus, “was truly born of a virgin”. Irenaeus in the next generation refers to the Virgin Birth, as does Clement of Alexandria in the next generation, and Origen shortly after that. Both Church and Scripture have consistently proclaimed the Virgin Birth for 2000 years, you may not believe them, but if you don’t believe them don’t try rewriting history to fit your doubts.
The virgin birth contains in essence the message that God the Son became God our brother. Miracles break the ordinary pattern of things to gain our attention, and having gained our attention they communicate a truth. The Virgin Birth is about who Jesus is. He is Son of Man and Son of God. The Virgin birth reconciles Isaiah 9:6, a the verse that contains the apparent contradiction that the Messiah would be a son born to us, that is human, yet “His name will be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God.”
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that Mary remained a virgin, this despite the mention of brothers and sisters in Mark 6: 3, where we read, “Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?...”
The explanation given by the Roman Catholic Church is that brothers and sisters can mean cousins. They are right in that the language here is ambiguous, but I think the context is clear, and actual brothers and sisters are described in this passage. Only if you believe Mary was a 'Perpetual Virgin' would you take the less likely understanding that these were cousins.
Next, the Mother of God.
This often causes howls of outrage, with Protestants saying it is blasphemy. How can the eternal God have a mother? Does this not raise Mary above the status of God?
However, this is misplaced outrage. That Mary is the Mother of God is Trinitarian logic. Mary is the mother of Jesus, and Jesus is God. So Mary is the Mother of God.
Mary is not the mother of God the Father, or of the Holy Spirit, Mary is the mother of the second person of the Blessed Trinity. Jesus pre-existed Mary, he pre-exists all things, but entered this temporal world as a man through her.
We read in Luke 1:43 that Elizabeth calls Mary 'the mother of my Lord,' which to faithful Jews meant God. So there is a scriptural basis for the title, 'Mother of God.'
Next, Our Lady.
Calling Mary 'Our Lady' is a sign of respect and honour. The term is part of the Roman Catholic Church's veneration of Mary. Roman Catholics do not worship Mary as divine, even if they sometimes seem to, but they do seek to attribute what is in their view the correct esteem and worth to her.
Next, Queen of Heaven.
In the Old Testament, and in Medieval Europe, the mother of a Monarch often had a defined courtly role as a point of access to the King, she was one who interceded for subjects bringing pleas. Jesus is King of Heaven, so the Roman Catholic logic is that Mary as the mother of the monarch is the Queen of Heaven. She is in a place of honour to intercede for the subjects of the Kingdom of Heaven. This is to imagine the throne room of God is like a Medieval court, with a fearsome Monarch, however, Hebrews 4:16 that tells us that we may 'approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.'
Finally, The Immaculate Conception, and Assumption.
The immaculate conception is the Roman Catholic doctrine that Mary was born free from the taint of original sin. The conception of Mary is immaculate in that although she was conceived by the usual procedure, God intervened to prevent sin being passed on to her by her parents. Here's the Roman logic – if Mary was full of Grace, she was without sin, so she must have been born without sin.
However, sin is not a genetically inherited malady. Also, to say Mary was without sin is in direct contradiction with Romans 3:23, '... all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,' and with the whole narrative arc of the bible. The context of Romans 3 makes clear the only exception to 'all have sinned' is Jesus. Mary didn't need to be perfect, she needed to be willing, and to be forgiven. To be full of Grace is a description of how completely God is willing to forgive Mary, and each of us.
I may be willing to accept the immaculate conception if it applies to everyone, not just Mary. No one is born tainted.
The Assumption is the doctrine that at the end of her life Mary was taken up into heaven. It's not in the bible, the first mentions are second or third century, and it only makes sense if you believe Mary was sinless and that it follows from this that she can go bodily straight to heaven.
To conclude. Some Anglicans would accept these six doctrines concerning Mary, some would reject all of them, and many would partially accept them – as I do.
For me the basis of doctrine must be the bible because it is the testimony of the people who were there, especially in the New Testament. As John writes in his 1st Epistle, “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard.” So much Roman Catholic doctrine concerning Mary comes from the second and third generation of Christians, and even later. Christian writings after the bible may inform my understanding of the bible, and I may use such writings to describe my understanding of the bible, but they do not have that authority given by the witness of those first Disciples. Our faith should primarily be Apostolic.
For me, Mary is an inspirational figure, she was the first to say 'yes' to accepting Jesus in her life, the first to proclaim the good news of Jesus, and she was a faithful follower of her son, despite the sword of sorrow that pierced her heart.
Amen.
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