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Veneration of Mary in Luke 11:27-28
August 15, 2013 | Annalex

Posted on 08/15/2013 7:03:11 PM PDT by annalex

Once a woman in the crowd surrounding Christ and His disciples cries out to Him:

Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and the paps that gave thee suck. (Luke 11:27)

What is it? We have, clearly, an act of venerating Mary. Note that the Blessed Virgin is venerated properly: not on her own but as the mother of Christ. Yet the reason for venerating is indeed concerning: it is her physiological and physiologically unique relationship with Jesus that is emphasized. That is not yet paganism with its crude theories of gods giving birth to other gods, but it is lacking proper focus and Jesus corrects it:

Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it. (Luke 11:28)

The Virgin with the Child on her knees and a prophet pointing at the star. Catacomb of Priscilla, late 2nd c. Source
Note that there is no condemnation here, not even asking the woman to stop; the "yea rather" (μενουνγε) is not a negation. It is used other times in the New Testament without a hint of negation. In Philippians 3:8 "αλλα μενουνγε και ηγουμαι παντα ζημιαν ειναι", "Furthermore I count all things to be but loss" (Textus Receptus 1550/1894, Byzantine/Majority Text 2000 has here "αλλα μεν ουν και ηγουμαι…" which is the same word morphology spelled separately and colliding affirmative "γε" with the following "και"). Romans 9:20 "μενουνγε ω ανθρωπε συ τις ει ο ανταποκρινομενος τω θεω" and Romans 10:18 "μενουνγε εις πασαν την γην εξηλθεν ο φθογγος αυτων" use the word reinforcing the subsequent statement. Some translations obscure this linguistic fact: in King James for example, the same word is rendered correctly, "yea rather" in Luke 11:28, wholly incongruously, "nay but" in Romans 9:20, but in Romans 10:18 the translation is again correct, "Yes verily". NRSV has both correct and elegant translations for all three. (See The Holy Mother and the "ΜΕΝΟΥΝΓΕ")

Having gotten past this linguistic hurdle, we can understand clearly what this passage, Luke 11:27-28, does: it establishes veneration of saints based not on their blood relation to Christ but on their obedience to God. It is in that sense that we venerate Our Lady: given that Christ is the Word of God personified, she heard and kept both Him in person as her Child and His teaching, figuratively. In Mary the essence of sainthood is seen in the flesh as well as in the mind. We could say that by the late second century at the latest, when we find evidence of the veneration of both the prophets and the Mother of God in the catacombs, the two reasons to venerate a saint: his martyrdom as in the case of Polycarp, or his obedience to the Word, as in Mary, -- unite into a single practice.


TOPICS: Catholic; History; Orthodox Christian
KEYWORDS: catholic; mary
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To: RobbyS
That Catholic doctrine is Trinitarian and the protests about Mary are a cover for Arianism other doctrines that reject the doctrine of the Incarnation.

That's interesting; but what it to do with what we were talking about?

101 posted on 08/16/2013 8:00:45 PM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: annalex
Secondly, she could have lawfully declined at the Annunciation as any woman may.

Sorry; but there was nothing to 'decline'.

GOD said THIS is what's going to happen; and it did.

102 posted on 08/16/2013 8:02:20 PM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Salvation
Is that how she was addressed from then on? Did Joseph or Jesus or the Disciples call her this? This was an emphasis on the event to take place. The Lord was going to be born!! A joyous occasion. The Good News. And leave it to Catholics to turn it into a blasphemic elevation of mankind into God status. IF Mary was the Queen of Heaven, Jesus would have told her so at His crucifixion. God has no need of a Queen. He is self sufficient.
103 posted on 08/16/2013 8:02:48 PM PDT by BipolarBob
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To: annalex
Yes, honey, we had bad popes and probably will have bad popes some more.

Well; when ya let the cardinals decide...

Ya oughta let the Magisterium decide.

I hear they are INFALLIBLE on certain matters; so picking Pope should be duck soup!

104 posted on 08/16/2013 8:09:06 PM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: BipolarBob
That, with respect, Protestantism has not done honestly.

So says the judgmental papist.

Indeed, while it teaches extra Biblical traditions such as Mary's bodily assumption as infallible truth, while denying , even if not infallibly, such stories as Balaam and the donkey, Jonah and the fish, Joshua's conquests, etc., were literal, which Scripture treats them as.

105 posted on 08/16/2013 8:18:12 PM PDT by daniel1212 (Come to the Lord Jesus as a contrite damned+destitute sinner, trust Him to save you, then live 4 Him)
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To: daniel1212
such stories as Balaam and the donkey, Jonah and the fish, Joshua's conquests, etc., were literal, which Scripture treats them as.

I treat them as such as well. While some stories may be considered allegories, these are not in that category. They are stated as facts.

106 posted on 08/16/2013 8:23:15 PM PDT by BipolarBob
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To: annalex

This is amazing his martyrdom account. What a Christian.


107 posted on 08/16/2013 8:29:23 PM PDT by johngrace (I am a 1 John 4! Christian- declared at every Sunday Mass , Divine Mercy and Rosary prayers!)
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To: BipolarBob

You can rationalize all you wish, but Mary is the mother of God. Jesus is fully God and fully man.

If you deny that you dip into one of the old heresies that argues about Jesus being true God and true man.


108 posted on 08/16/2013 8:30:56 PM PDT by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
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To: johngrace

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0102.htm


109 posted on 08/16/2013 8:32:24 PM PDT by johngrace (I am a 1 John 4! Christian- declared at every Sunday Mass , Divine Mercy and Rosary prayers!)
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To: RobbyS; ctdonath2
It is not by right but by the favor that the Father gave her that we celebrate her.

That simply is not true, as RCs without censure assert she is the most holy of all saints, surpassing them in virtue ("Mary surpasses all the saints in virtue so the grace her Son gives through her is immense enough to save all mankind" - http://www.rosary-center.org/ll61n2.htm) and now in power, and is given more ascriptions and attributes than all others, all of which is far beyond what Scripture says of her, which is little (though significant), esp. as compared with the sacrificial love and abundant labors and sufferings of Paul, who is hardly exalted by Rome in comparison to Mary.

We celebrate her “coronation" AFTER her assumption or exaultation.

Another examples of the disregard Scripture is treated with, as therein we see that the crowning of saints does not occur until after the resurrection, while now or then no one was the object of prayer to Heaven, much less having almost unlimited power ascribed to them, so that there requests are almost like commands to God.

The evangelical anti-Marianism always make me think that they regard the Virgin Birth as a kind of “stunt,”or supersign if you like ,

A charge devoid of examples from established evangelical churches or classic commentators (Henry, Barnes, Clarke, Gill, JFB, etc.) The valid anti-Marianism is against the Mary of Catholicism which is mythical.

Yes, I think that beneath the vague trinitarinism of the evangelical oft lies a vague Arianism.

Rather, historically evangelicals have overall manifested a common front and contention against those that deny the Trinity and other core doctrines, as well as against extra Biblical traditions of Rome, and even in the declension of today evangelicals are overall more conservative than those Rome counts and treats as members, while liberal scholarship abounds in Rome.

110 posted on 08/16/2013 8:46:25 PM PDT by daniel1212 (Come to the Lord Jesus as a contrite damned+destitute sinner, trust Him to save you, then live 4 Him)
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To: Elsie
And today you have the TRC sects and schisms due to Rome's liberal redefining herself in contrast to the past.
111 posted on 08/16/2013 8:50:22 PM PDT by daniel1212 (Come to the Lord Jesus as a contrite damned+destitute sinner, trust Him to save you, then live 4 Him)
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To: Elsie
Such assent was not unique to Mary, nor is she shown excelling in suffering, labors, or love or virtue than all other saints, as holy and virtuous as she was.

For the sake of balance, Paul in conversion was shown by the Lord "how great things he must suffer for My name's sake," (Acts 9:16) and accepted it, and labored more abundantly than the other apostles, by God's grace, and brought forth the word of God more than all others save Moses, nor is any sin assuredly ascribed to him.

See http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/08/51-biblical-proofs-of-pauline-papacy.html for more (spoof).

112 posted on 08/16/2013 8:59:49 PM PDT by daniel1212 (Come to the Lord Jesus as a contrite damned+destitute sinner, trust Him to save you, then live 4 Him)
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To: Salvation; BipolarBob; St_Thomas_Aquinas
You can rationalize all you wish, but Mary is the mother of God. Jesus is fully God and fully man.

Indeed He was, but by that logic Mary's parents were grandparents of God, and which type of attribution can be ascribed to all her ancestors back to Adam.

I see the counsel of Ratzinger regarding title 'Co-redemptrix' is applicable here, as he at least recognized that the title 'Co-redemptrix,'

“departs to too great an extent from the language of Scripture and of the Fathers and therefore gives rise to misunderstandings...” For, “Everything comes from Him [Christ], as the Letter to the Ephesians and the Letter to the Colossians, in particular, tell us; Mary, too, is everything she is through Him. The word 'Co-redemptrix' would obscure this origin. A correct intention being expressed in the wrong way." (God and the world: believing and living in our time, by Pope Benedict XVI, Peter Seewald, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2000, p. 306

For the objection is not that the term cannot be understood in a restricted sense, but to what it most naturally conveys, that of ontologically being the mother of God, as if Mary was the author of the Divinity of Christ, yet Mary provided nothing to what makes the Son of God divine. Instead, she owes to Christ everything she is, while Catholic Mariology emphasizes what Christ owes to Mary.

For it should be understood that my objection is not to Mary being honored as the holy chosen vessel to bring forth Christ, and mothering Him according to the flesh, but to the excess ascriptions, appellations, exaltation, and adoration (and the manner of exegesis behind it), ascribed to the Catholic Mary, whether officially or by Catholics (with implicit sanction of authority), and which uniqueness and exaltation largely parallels that of Christ:

For in the the Catholic quest to almost deify Mary, it is taught by Catholics*,


113 posted on 08/16/2013 9:50:27 PM PDT by daniel1212 (Come to the Lord Jesus as a contrite damned+destitute sinner, trust Him to save you, then live 4 Him)
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To: Elsie
I hear they are INFALLIBLE on certain matters; so picking Pope should be duck soup!

Sometimes you are too correct.


114 posted on 08/17/2013 12:03:17 AM PDT by MarkBsnr (I would not believe in the Gospel, if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.)
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To: daniel1212

I forget that many Protestants seem to think that Catholics believe that Mary gave birth to the eternal Godhead.

We don’t.

Yet Catholics are right in calling her The Mother of God, since Jesus is God and she is His Mother, It’s as simple as that. We are not responsible for Protestant misperceptions of Mary’s titles.

Mary is also the Queen of Heaven, as Scripture clearly indicates.

If you remove the artificially-imposed chapters and verse numbers in Scripture, these verses appear consecutively:

“Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a severe hailstorm. A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.”

This is the woman whose Son (Jesus) would rule with an iron rod.

We see through typology that the Ark AND this crowned woman in heaven is Mary.

The Ark contained Aaron’s staff, representing the priesthood, manna, the “bread from heaven,” and the 10 Commandments, all of which serve as types for Jesus, who is eternal High Priest, the bread of life (John 6), and the Eternal Word. The Ark itself is a type for Mary, since she contained Jesus.

***

The title of Co-Redemptrix is correct, when properly understood, but confusing to the ignorant, for the reasons that the pope specified. What does that prove?


115 posted on 08/17/2013 3:52:23 AM PDT by St_Thomas_Aquinas
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To: johngrace; annalex
Recognition of superior faculty of a saint in heaven (John 10:10, Matthew 22:30, 1 Corinthians 6:3, 1 Corinthians 13:12)
 

John 10:10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

Matthew 22:30 For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.

Corinthians 6:3 Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?

1 Corinthians 13:12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

I've seen Calvinosaurusization of Scripture before; but usually it's the MORMONs doing it!

116 posted on 08/17/2013 4:49:42 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: annalex
Interesting idea that a passage in scripture could be found "condemning" Mary.

Why?

Is not the RCC just FULL of 'interesting ideas'?

117 posted on 08/17/2013 4:51:13 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: annalex
I don't particularly care what you object to or should object to, but to the extent that something like Evangelicalism must exist, yeah, that sounds about right.

Huh?

Go ye into all the world...

118 posted on 08/17/2013 4:52:25 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: johngrace
I am a 1 John 4! Christian

I am a John 6:29 one...

119 posted on 08/17/2013 4:54:04 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: daniel1212
"Mary surpasses all the saints in virtue so the grace her Son gives through her is immense enough to save all mankind"

And the Church Lady replies:


120 posted on 08/17/2013 4:56:33 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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