Flirting with Mary
Protestants Wonder After Mary
For
hundreds of years the Roman Catholic Church has given honor and adoration
to Mary, which the Scriptures do not. During the past sixty years, one of the
most important trends in the Catholic Church has been an even greater emphasis
being placed upon her sacredness! She is being increasingly referred to as holy,
the Mother of God and is dubbed the Co-Redemptrix, thereby making her an object
of idolatrous worship (e.g., the Rosary has ten prayers to Mary for each two
directed to God).
In 1923,
Pope Pius XI sanctioned Pope Benedict XV's (1914-1922) pronouncement that Mary
suffered with Christ, and that with Him, she redeemed the human race. And Pope
Pius XII officially designated Mary the Queen of Heaven and Queen of the World.
Catholics claim not only that
Mary was perfectly sinless from conception, even as Jesus was (doctrine of the
"Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary," proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1854
–
"Let all the children of the Catholic Church ... continue to venerate,
invoke, and pray to the most blessed Virgin Mary, mother of God,
conceived without original sin."), but that the reason she never sinned at any
time during her life was because she was unable to sin (cf. Lk. 1:46,47;
Rom. 3:10,23; 5:12; Heb. 4:15; 1 Jn. 1:8,10). Catholics also believe that Mary
was a perpetual virgin (cf. Ps. 69:8; Matt. 1:24,25; 13:54-56; Mk. 6:3; Jn.
7:5), and that she was assumed, body and soul, into heaven shortly after her
death (doctrine of the "Assumption of the Virgin Mary," declared by Pope Pius
XII in 1950). Finally, she was given the title "Mother of the Church" in 1965.
The consequence of all this veneration of Mary, in effect, establishes her
authority above Christ's!
There are some Roman Catholic
observers that continue to [naively] believe that Mary has still not
officially been proclaimed "Co-Redemptrix with Christ." In fact, the
premier issue of the Roman Catholic publication Catholic Heritage
displayed a front page with the title: "Mary, Mother of the Church." In a
Question and Answer column the question is asked, "At the foot of the cross,
Mary shared in the mystery of the passion. True or False? Answer: True. Mary
united her sorrows to those of her Son. The sorrowful and immaculate heart of
Mary bled with her Son for all of mankind. For this reason, we invoke her
under the title of Co-Redemptrix."[1]
In 1991
Time magazine cover story on Mary reported, "A grass-roots revival of faith
in Virgin is taking place worldwide. Millions of worshipers are flocking to her
shrines, many of them young people. Even more remarkable are the numbers of
claimed sightings of the Virgin."[2]
Many
Catholic websites publish positive statements allegedly made by
Protestant reformers in support of Mary, attempting to lead modern Protestants
to accept her as a blessed evangelical woman that should no longer be
ignored. Indeed, in the past 30 years a growing number of Protestant leaders
have been speaking out in favor of personifying Marian qualities as spiritual
symbols (Anglicans, Evangelicals, Methodists, Presbyterians and Lutherans). They
are flirting with Mary.[3]
The latest
Protestant appeal came in December of 2003 in Christianity Today:
Vapid Qualifier
"First, we find no biblical
warrant for the kind of devotion to Mary that flourishes among many of the
Catholic faithful. Mary's perpetual virginity (the belief that she had no
children after Jesus and remained a virgin throughout her life), immaculate
conception (that she was born without the stain of original sin), and bodily
assumption (that she was taken body and soul into heaven after she died without
seeing corruption) are extra biblical beliefs that cannot be traced to the
earliest historical memory of the church."
Introducing
Compromise
"Let me
suggest five ways for us to think biblically about the mother of Jesus
–
the Blessed Evangelical Mary.
"Spotless Bride and
Pilgrim Sinner
"Mary stands, along with John the
Baptist, at a unique intersection between the old and new covenants. Mary's role
points backward. In the gospels, she is the culmination of a prophetic lineage
of pious mother's –
Sarah, Rachel, Hannah (and not
forgetting Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth who appear in Matthews genealogy)....
"But Mary's role also points
forward. As the Daughter of Zion, Mary also represents the eschatological and
redeemed people of God....
"Virgin Mother of a Man
"Especially since the
Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy of the 1920s, belief in the virgin birth
has been a test of evangelical orthodoxy; its denial is still likely to get one
fired from most evangelical schools. Despite fervently advocating this doctrine,
however, evangelicals may have missed two important aspects of its meaning.
"First, evangelicals have
defended the miraculous character of the virgin birth because they see it under
girding the deity of Jesus Christ.
"The God-bearer
"Evangelicals can and should join
with other Christians in celebrating the virgin Mary as theotokos: or as
historian Jaroslav Pelikan translated the classic theological word, as the one
who gave birth to the one who is God.
"The purpose of the title was not
so much to exalt Mary as to assert the unity of divinity and humanity in her
son....
"We use God-bearer language to
describe the mother of Jesus, not in order to exalt Mary unduly but to confess
Christ completely, to assert that the beloved Son of the Father was "born of a
woman" –
God manifested in the flesh (1 Tim.
3:16).
"Handmaiden of Faith
The "Reformers recognize Mary as
the one who hears the Word of God and responds in faith, and thus is justified
by faith alone. Mary was a disciple of Christ before she was his mother, for had
she not believed, she would not have conceived. Mary's faith too is not the
achievement of merit, but the gift of divine grace. This means that when we
praise and love Mary, it is God whom we praise for his gracious favor to his
chosen handmaid.
"Pointers to Jesus
"The New Testament portrays Mary
as among the last at the cross, and among the first in the Upper Room. She
bridges not only the Old and New Testaments at Jesus' birth, but also the close
of his earthly ministry and the birth of the church. It is significant that in
Eastern iconography, Mary is never depicted alone, but always with Christ, the
apostles, and the saints.
"At the foot of the cross, Mary
represents the church as a faithful remnant. Already before the Reformation,
Mary was seen as the archetype of the remnant church: her faithfulness alone
kept the church intact during Christ's suffering on the cross.
"When all of the disciples (including Peter!) had fled in fear, Mary remained true to Christ and his word. Her fidelity unto the cross showed that the true faith could be preserved in one sole individual, and thus Mary became the mother of the (true remnant) church. This is why the Reformers honored Mary."[4]
Flirting
with Mary. Teaching falsehood. Did you notice the progressive compromise of
thought? At the end she is an icon–idol.
Where is she declared as the Biblical Mother of the remnant church? The woman
clothed with the sun in Revelation 12:1 crying in childbirth soon to deliver the
Messiah Child has become a misinterpreted icon justifying the reverence and
honor to the earthly mother of Jesus. That smacks at the growing trend among
Protestants viewing prophecy through literalistic eyes. This fatally detracts
from the typological redemptive theme, the covenant completion message that
under girds all of prophecy. Mary does not represent the church as the
faithful remnant! That is a false statement. The remnant keep the commandments
of God and are the embodiment of the Testimony of Jesus (Revelation
Christianity Today
concluded:
"This is
the Mary Protestants can and should embrace. We do not think of the mother of
God, an object of devotion by herself, in isolation from her son. We need not go
through Mary in order to get to Jesus, but we can join with Mary in pointing
others to him [a deceptive statement supporting her intermediary role]. This,
more than anything else, will honor her as she honored him. [Why do we need to
honor her?]"[5] This Protestant magazine is flirting with
the Catholic Mary.
Incrementalism, compromise edging ever closer to claiming supernatural powers in
Mary is this Protestant trend. The most sinister "mystery" of all is the growing
number of apparitions of Mary
–
a nice Catholic word for a séance of
the dead Mary talking with people.
Recently,
"Mary" appeared as the "Mother of the Eucharist" and stated that she will close
history by bringing forth another birth of "Christ."[5]
That would
be one of the most deceptive events in Christian history for the
dispensationalist. Paul warned: "And no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed
into an angel of light" (II Corinthians
Protestants are flirting with Mary.
Soon Mary will ensnare their souls for eternity.
References:
1. www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Cults/Catholicism/mary.htm
2. Time, Dec. 1991.
3. mariology.com/section/modern.htm
4. http://christianitytoday/ct/2003/012/a.34.html
5. users.stargate.net/~ejt/ages12.htm
Franklin S. Fowler
Jr., M.D.; EndTime Issues... of Prophecy Research Initiative
EndTime Issues..., March 2004 -
endtimeIssues.com