John Markum

Tag: Mary

A Biblical View of Mary

Posted on by johnmarkum

If you’d like to find the articles I’ve written on Marian dogma in the Roman Catholic Church, you can find them here.

The four core dogmas of RCC Mariology include:

  • Perpetual Virginity. This is the notion that Mary remained a virgin after giving birth to Jesus, and was never sexually intimate with her husband, Joseph.
  • Immaculate Conception. The idea behind this doctrine is that in order for Mary to have been the vessel for bringing God’s Son into the world, she too must have been sinless.
  • Mary as “The Mother of God”. This doctrine is based on the Greek title theotokos meaning “God Bearer” or “Mother of God”. Protestants generally reject this title, and I discuss why at the link.
  • The Assumption of Mary. This doctrine asserts that Mary ascended into Heaven – or, God “assumed” her into Heaven – like Christ, Elijah, and Enoch are described as having experienced.

So how should Christians view Mary in light of the Bible and early church history?

Mary is rarely mentioned again after the birth of Christ. So rare in fact, that we could briefly list all of them…

  1. When Jesus was 12 and Mary and Joseph accidentally left Him in in the temple in Jerusalem (Luke 2:41-52).
  2. The folks of Nazareth mention Mary alongside Jesus’ brothers and sisters (Matthew 13:55).
  3. While Jesus was teaching, Mary came looking for Jesus alongside His brothers and sisters (Mark 3:53-56).
  4. The wedding of Cana, where Jesus turns water into wine (John 2:1-5).
  5. At the cross with the apostle John (John 19:25-27)
  6. Likely at the empty tomb. (Luke 24:8-11).
  7. At the ascension of Jesus, and waiting in the Upper Room for the Holy Spirit. (Acts 1:12-14)

In every single one of these examples, Mary is a participant, and often hardly more than a footnote. Furthermore, if she had some divinely appointed role in God’s work of redemption or the function of the church, why does she not appear one single time in any of the epistles? Peter, James (also Mary’s child), Paul, John, etc. never mention Mary even once in any of their letters to the churches. But the death and resurrection of Christ is mentioned dozens of times, and heavily elaborated on over hundreds – maybe thousands – of verses. Prayer, singing worship, communion, baptism, sexual purity are each given far more attention than Mary. If Mary were important for the church to admire, “venerate”, etc. there would be clear evidence of this in the NT.

The best advice given by Mary was to do whatever Jesus said.

At the wedding in Cana mentioned in John 2, Mary tells a group of servants, “Whatever He tells you, do it.” I would humbly submit that this is still excellent advice. Later in the same Gospel account, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one gets to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6). Praying to Mary or any other saint is an exercise in futility. Jesus alone sits at the right hand of the Father and ever lives to make intercession for us. Mary is never referred to as a distributor of God’s grace in Scripture. She is described as “full of grace” in Luke 1, but this is best translated as “favored one.” Regardless, “full of grace” or “favored one” in no way implies some divine office in administering Christ’s salvation to repentant believers.

What most Roman Catholics don’t seem to understand, is that suggesting Mary is a necessary entity in the distribution of grace, makes Jesus insufficient by default. And if He is insufficient to distribute the very grace He purchased upon the cross, then He is not omnipotent God. No matter how you slice it, insisting on a Marian dogma as part of critical Christian theology creates far more problems than it supposedly answers. And all the “answers” from the RCC regarding Mary is either an argument from silence, a negative inference fallacy, or utterly dependent on early church history with mixed reports of Mary’s death and assumption, at best. And I could live with her being assumed, as she is neither the first, second, or third person in Scripture to be ascended in some fashion.

As far as the beliefs of early church fathers about Mary are concerned, this is where Bible Christians and Roman Catholics most clearly diverge, and not only regarding Mary. Roman Catholics interpret the Bible through the lens of church history, while Bible Christians interpret church history through the lens of the Bible. Yes, many early church fathers had a high view of Mary, honoring her – often in appropriate ways, and often in ways that made her more than the vessel of God bringing Christ’s corporeal form into the world. But they, like us, were flawed human beings.

This in no one is intended to minimize what Mary did do. If we will accept Mary as the Bible would portray her to us, then we must objectively hold her in high regard – blessed among women, yet not above women. She is the second Eve, flawed and in need of redemption (Luke 1:47), and yet chosen by God for a purpose and a promise. Eve received her name, meaning “mother of all the living,” after she fell into temptation. She was not named “mother of all the dying,” which in context would have made a lot more sense, shameful of a name as that might have been. And as Eve was promised that her offspring would crush the head of the Serpent (Satan), Mary was the descendant of Eve by whom this promise was fulfilled, bringing the Offspring of the woman who would crush the Serpent’s head, and defeat sin and death.

Jesus is the Savior of the world. And Mary is His mother – an obedient vessel who humbled herself to the purpose of God. She is also the result of God’s promise through Eve, prophetically bookending the “first Adam” and “last Adam” i.e., Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:45; Romans 5:14-21). Mary is worthy of honor, respect, and credit due her as the mother of our Savior. But we should never bow to an image of her (idolatry), pray to her, or create unreasonable and unnecessary beliefs and superstitions about her, for which Scripture clearly suggests otherwise. The best thing we can do regarding Mary is to take the advice she gave to the servants in John 2: “His mother said to the servants, ‘Whatever He [Jesus] tells you, do it.’” (John 2:5).

Blessings,
Pastor John

Was Mary Ascended into Heaven?

Posted on by johnmarkum

Here on my blog, I have been addressing the doctrines of Catholicism that revolve around their belief that Mary was something more than Protestant Christians claim her to be. You can read more on each below. The four core dogmas of RCC Mariology include:

  • Perpetual Virginity. This is the notion that Mary remained a virgin after giving birth to Jesus, and was never sexually intimate with her husband Joseph, and gave him no children aside from Jesus (who was not biologically Joseph’s son).
  • Immaculate Conception. The idea behind this doctrine is that in order for Mary to have been the vessel for bringing God’s Son into the world, she too must have been sinless.
  • Mary as “The Mother of God”. This doctrine is based on the Greek title theotokos meaning “God Bearer” or “Mother of God”. Protestants generally reject this title, and I discuss why at the link.
  • The Assumption of Mary. This doctrine insists that Mary ascended into Heaven – or, God “assumed” her into Heaven – like Christ, Elijah, and Enoch are described as having experienced.

Let’s address the Assumption of Mary…

For starters, it is important to understand that God has in fact raised people to Heaven either before death as in the case of Enoch (Genesis 5:21-24) and Elijah (2 Kings 2:9-11), or afterward in the case of Christ (Acts 1:9-11). So there is ample precedence to suggest God could have done so with Mary. But did He, and is there any evidence of this?

According to church history, Mary did in fact die, though the details are a very thin, which has convinced some (but not all) Catholics to believe she did not die at all. The historical account of her death from natural causes is referred to as the “Dormition of Mary”. Best as we can tell she seems to have died in Jerusalem, and in the company of a few of the apostles including John. This places the time of her death and/or ascension somewhere before 70 AD when Jerusalem fell to the Roman siege of the city. Yet there is no recorded mentioning of Mary’s death and assumption… with one, possible, exception…

Revelation 12:1-6,

“A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; and she was with child; and she cried out, being in labor and in pain to give birth… And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up to God and to His throne. Then the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God, so that there she would be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.”

Catholics will assert that these verses are a “clear reference” to Mary in the Heavens, clothed with the sun, and in a position of honor and glory, “proving” the Bible supports the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary. Here are the flaws in their “proof”…

  • Mary’s supposed ascension is never mentioned or even implied. It begins with a “great sign in heaven”, but does not indicate how the “woman” got there. We believe Heaven is full of people who were not “assumed” into the spiritual dimension. Furthermore, Mary is not even named! The imagery could just as easily be referring to the nation of Israel as a whole, and God’s protection of “her” in the wilderness for 3.5 years in the future would strongly suggest that is a better interpretation.
  • Revelation is written in the Biblical apocalyptic genre. As such, it is flush with figurative imagery which is almost impossible to interpret literally in every instance that does not give us clear indicators. If this passage even is referring to Mary, she does not “literally” wear the sun as a garment, nor does she have a literal crown of 12 literal stars… again, this strongly suggests a reference to Israel, not Mary.
  • The rules of interpretation cannot bend that far. The only way to interpret this passage as a “clear” reference to Mary’s assumption is if you decided it meant that and tried to make it fit, also known as eisegesis. By contrast, honest interpretation of Scripture requires exegesis, or extracting meaning from a given text within the intended contextual settings.

Again, I am not against the idea that God did something miraculous for the woman who brought God the Son’s incarnation into the world. As mentioned earlier, He’s done so for a small handful of others. But there is zero proof of this. In fact, we have zero historical records of any dormition traditions regarding Mary until 450-600 AD – a whopping four centuries after her lifetime! That’s a lot of time for Christian superstitions to emerge, especially in an era that was very susceptible to such infiltrations of false beliefs.

I will write one final piece concerning Mary, how Protestants generally view her, and what I think is appropriate to the mother of our Jesus.

Blessings,
Pastor John

Did Mary Ever Sin?

Posted on by johnmarkum

I recently began addressing the doctrines of Catholicism that revolve around their belief that Mary was something more than Protestants Christians claim her to be. The four core dogmas of RCC Mariology include:

  • Perpetual Virginity. This is the notion that Mary remained a virgin after giving birth to Jesus, and was never sexually intimate with her husband Joseph, and gave him no children aside from Jesus (who was not biologically Joseph’s son).
  • Immaculate Conception. The idea behind this doctrine is that in order for Mary to have been the vessel for bringing God’s Son into the world, she too must have been sinless. Catholics will argue that Mary still needed Jesus as a Savior, but that she was saved from sinning, not saved from sin she committed like everyone else.
  • Mary as “The Mother of God”. This doctrine is based on the Greek title theotokos meaning “God Bearer” or “Mother of God”. Protestants generally reject this title, and I’ll discuss why in a later post.
  • The Assumption of Mary. This doctrine insists that Mary did not physically die like most people, but that she ascended into Heaven – or, God “assumed” her into Heaven – like Christ, Elijah, and Enoch are described as having experienced.

For today, let’s address Immaculate Conception…

First of all, it is worth mentioning that among a very small, select group of people in the Bible, Mary is not mentioned as having ever sinned. Noah got drunk, Abraham lied, David committed adultery and murder, Peter denied Christ, and on we could go. And yet, Mary is an exception to this norm.

The origin of this dogma begins in the 5th century, around the idea of Mary as the Christotokos or “Christ-bearer,” and culminates in the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD, where she was labeled the Theotokos, or “God-bearer,” which I’ll address in a later post. But some of the language around Mary’s innocence dates back earlier. Patristic fathers such as Irenaeus, used words such as “innocent” to describe Mary, in the mid-to-late 2nd century, And others such as Ambrose of Milan and Augustine more directly asserted that she was free from original sin.

While I hold high regard to the earliest church fathers, it is important to recognize that they were fallible also. Even the apostles were not free from mistakes! The perfect inspired words of Scripture they wrote in no way indicates that everything they thought or said was without error. We see this illustrated in Acts 15 at the Council of Jerusalem, where Peter, Paul, and James had robust debates about Gentiles coming to Christ!

Furthermore, we see from the letters of Paul that there were already a wide range of bizarre thoughts and heresies that were trying to seep into the early church. While Paul and the other apostles worked diligently to defend the Gospel against all perversions, their parting words foretold that heresy would continue to pry into the church (2 Timothy 4:1-4).

Catholics are quick to suggest that this means she never sinned. The problem is that she is not the only person in Scripture who is not directly charged with a recorded sin. Most of the apostles are not specifically recorded as sinning. Joseph, Mary’s husband, is not recorded as sinning. Timothy, Phoebe, Priscilla, Stephen, Phillip, and probably hundreds more are named, and yet never mentioned sinning. That’s because the Bible is an indictment on the sin of all humanity, not every individual human, with a log of their transgressions. And the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

One could just as easily say that the New Testament makes no mention of Mary being sinless, either! There is no veneration of Mary in the NT, no prayers offered to her, recognition of her outside the angel Gabriel who announced to her. So let’s look at what Gabriel says…

Luke 1:28, “And coming in, he said to her, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” Yes, you likely remember the verse saying “Hail Mary full of grace…” and that is how it is recited in the Catholic rosery. While the root word in the Greek is the root word for “grace” the original word is more often translated as “favored”. The semantics hardly matter, as both are an expression of God’s grace and favor over someone. The RCC will use this as one of very few verses about Mary’s spiritual character, however, to assert that she was sinless. But there’s a lot of problems with that interpretation.

The Greek word is used elsewhere in the NT. Ephesians 1:6-8, “to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight…”

In these verses “freely bestowed” or “favored” is the same Greek word as “favored” or “full of grace” back in Luke. And it applies to all believers in Christ – who have definitely sinned. Furthermore, after the announcement of her pregnancy, Mary wrote a song that found its way into Luke – which I find beautiful. Luke 1:46-47, “My soul exalts the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” In her outburst, Mary declares her own need for a Savior, and worships God for providing such a Savior for her!

Catholics have been careful to try to clarify that yes, Jesus is Mary’s Savior. But! Just as He saved us from our sin, He saved Mary from sinning at all. Thus, Jesus is still her Savior, but she also never sinned… It sounds nice, there is just no Biblical support for that! Romans 3:23 tells us plainly, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Jesus is the only human who walked the earth which the Bible clearly identifies as having never sinned. Hebrews 4:15 tells us that Jesus experienced temptation like the rest of humanity, “Yet without sin”. Luke records about 6 times at Jesus trials and crucifixion that He was innocent, blameless, and had done nothing wrong. Such is never said about Mary.

Conclusion: The doctrine of Immaculate Conception arose from the logic that Mary had to be sinless in order to give birth to the sinless Son of God. She did not need to be sinless, she just needed to be a virgin. Romans 5 makes it clear that we inherit our sin nature – sometimes called “original sin” – from our first father, Adam (Genesis 3). And as such, Jesus came from our Heavenly Father, rather than an earthly father who would pass on Adam’s curse. Romans 5:12, “Therefore, just as through one man [Adam] sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned…” verse 19, “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One [Jesus] the many will be made righteous.”

Christ skipped over the fallen nature of man by coming from His Heavenly Father, yet born of an earthly mother. As such He was fully God Himself, and free from sin – and yet fully human, able to take on the punishment of sin on behalf of the rest of humanity.

Takeaways:

  • The Doctrine of Immaculate Conception is based in human reasoning, not Scripture.
  • When we take the Bible at face value without asserting our opinions into it, there is no room for Mary to be sinless.
  • Mary is certainly worthy of our acknowledgment, as she brought our Savior into the world.
  • She is blessed among women – not above women. (Luke 1:42).

Next post in this series on Mary, we will address the Theotokos, the title ascribed to Mary by Catholics and Eastern Orthodox alike, meaning “Mother of God.”

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