HE INCREASES AND SHE DECREASES [Mary, Mother of God]

The Rock ^ | May 1994 | Mark Shea

[Salvation]

HE INCREASES AND SHE DECREASES

By MARK P. SHEA

 

Some friends are always good for a cheery disagreement--like my pal Bill. Here he is, a guy who modestly describes himself as "The Last Bastion of the Reformation," a guy who sings "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" in the shower, a guy who keeps ribbing me about being Catholic when he knows that I can scarcely resist the challenge to respond. Consider the letter I got the other day, written with Bill's usual joie de vivre, in which he urged me to get a recent book devoted to "critiquing" Marian devotion from an Evangelical perspective.

As a former Evangelical, I know anti-Marian arguments. But, having been a Catholic for nearly six years, I've been surprised to discover how much larger Mary looms in many Protestant minds than in Catholic ones. Maybe I'm languishing in a papally-induced spiritual blindness, but Jesus seems as big to me as ever. Only Mary has changed sizes since I "poped." She got a lot smaller and less threatening.

Since I became a Catholic she often, after directing me to her Son, has seemed to slip out of the room for long stretches, leaving me to talk with him while she busies herself with quietly praying for me or doing some other motherly task. She has been a most unobtrusive presence--endlessly loving and interceding, but not nearly as noisy about it as my Protestant upbringing would have led me to believe.

Yet how can this be? Books have "proven" that Catholics are obsessively fixated on our Lady to the exclusion of faith in Christ. They have shown that all we think about is the way in which Mary can save us from sin. They have demonstrated that I spend day and night obsequiously seeking to have her declared a fourth member of the Trinity.

Of course, there are benighted souls in my communion (Mother Teresa, say) whose summary of Marian devotion is: Love Jesus as Mary loves Jesus, love Mary as Jesus loves Mary. Such people seem to think that Mary is not a goddess but that she has a significant place in the drama of redemption. They regard her as remarkable in that her choice to love and obey the as-yet-unseen and unincarnate Messiah was the very key to the Incarnation.

They find a subtle difference between such faith (unbuttressed and unrehearsed) and the wobbly performance of Peter and Thomas. They attach some quirky meaning to the fact she was the first disciple to say "yes" to the incarnate God and that it was this "yes" and the love it expressed which was the basis of the first and deepest love relationship the Son of God ever experienced as man.

Such cultists seem to have this notion that her role in the life of the Church might extend beyond the physical fact of providing a uterine environment and three square meals a day to the Second Person of the Trinity--that she is something more than a disposable first stage in the Incarnation.

For some reason they hold the belief that Jesus, who obeyed the law perfectly, obeyed the command to love his mother in a way unique in human history and that imitating him might involve us in that love relationship too. They are bewitched with the fact the dying Jesus commanded the disciple he loved (that is, you and me) to have Mary as mother and that she was commanded to have the beloved disciple (that is, you and me) as her son.

These people suspect that as the risen Christ remains human forever, so he remains his mother's son forever. If she loves him, she just might love those who are in him as her own and pray they will love her son with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. Likewise, if Jesus loves her in a unique way and we are to be like him . . . well, you can work that one out.

 

 

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Amen.

[papertyger]

It only makes sense...recognition of Mary before Christ is Biblical.

[GoLightly]

A FReeper (I won't name names) shared the URL to a site awhile ago & I've been listening to the weekly sermons there ever since. The sermons are around an hour long.

It seems to me not at all contrary to Scripture but rather a result of really carefully and engagedly reading the Bible to develop at least a profound admiration for the Mother of our Lord, and to doubt her sanctity seems to me to be to question what the Love of God can do for and in us as we are drawn into Him and He (by His gracious act) into us.

Most of us (Protestants) don't recognize a Mary that seems to be far removed from us, which is why it may seem to you that we're constantly trying to drag her off of the pedestal that some seem to be trying to place under her feet. I thought this week's sermon was fitting for this thread...

Click "This Weeks Message"

[BlessedBeGod]

Fra Angelico's Madonna with Angels

[Mad Dawg]

Thanks for the URL.

which is why it may seem to you that we're constantly trying to drag her off of the pedestal that some seem to be trying to place under her feet.

Help with me "far removed" please. I don't get how the "theotokos","Ephesus and Chalcedon were right" side is saying that either about Mary or about Jesus. Both are as close as my heart and closer to my heart than I am.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

doubt her sanctity

I've never met a Protestant who doubts Mary's "sanctity."

Most Protestants deny Mary's divinity which seems to be the RC position. After all, it's no great leap to assume wrongly that the "mother of God" is a god herself, given that so many RCs kneel to her and pray to her and view her as a "Co-Redemptrix" and "Mother Mediatrix" and "Dispensatrix of all graces" and, as Quix pointed out, name churches after her.

[papertyger]

On Earth, we can ask others to pray for us, but that doesn't make them mediators between God and us.

Well whatever you wish to call such intercession, that's what we're doing.

There is also no place in the Bible where living believers are directed to pray to dead believers to intercede for them with God.

Conversely, it is illogical to interpret silence as prohibition.

Even so, believers are directed to "act" in such a way as to be mindful of dead believers.

Praying to Mary is not something the earliest Christians did or else it would have been recorded in the Bible.

You have absolutely zero authority to say what would and would not, nor why, something would be included in the Bible.

[papertyger]

I believe the dead can not pray for us because the Bible doesn’t say that they can.

The Bible does not say of itself that it is the only rule of faith and practice. Do you hold it so?

[GoLightly]

Help with me "far removed" please. I don't get how the "theotokos","Ephesus and Chalcedon were right" side is saying that either about Mary or about Jesus.

Recently, someone here (I can't remember who anymore or I'd ping them) told me Mary was given the gift of prophecy. She knew Jesus would die on the cross before He was born, so carrying Him in her womb was a blessing mixed with great sorrow. She was acting on her foreknowledge about His work on earth at the wedding at Cana.

That is a Mary I can't even begin to recognize or identify with, as she is not a mother, but instead she's at the very least a high priestess.

[Mad Dawg]

SOMEbody’s praying — Virginia just went 96 yards for a touchdown against tech! WaHOO!

[papertyger]

That contradicts Scripture.

Only Jesus is mentioned in Scripture as our Mediator.

Sola Scriptura has not, and can not be proven, so any reasoning predicated on it is fallacious.

[1000 silverlings]

Look deeper, Mary is now the Holy Spirit Himself having been “married” to Him. No one gets to Jesus except through her — gosh where have I heard this lately? Oh I know, Mormons and Joseph Smith

[papertyger]

What's more, Jesus never called her Mother, or Mom...He called her woman...Doesn't sound like a very unique love to me...

That is absurd. Are you saying if Scripture doesn't record it, it didn't happen?

[GoLightly]

The Lutheran church teaches that she is the “Mother of God”, in that Jesus was all God, yet all man. That doesn’t give her any kind of divinity. It speaks to Emmanuel (God with us) as fully human.

[papertyger]

The authors of the scriptures wrote from Divine Inspiration...It obviously was very important for us to know that Jesus did NOT want us to focus on His mother...

Not without the Sola Scriptura presumption it isn't. Even with the SS presumption, the inference is far from "obvious."

[fwdude]

HE INCREASES AND SHE DECREASES

That's putting it mildly. She decreased, according to the scriptures, to the point of being completely eclipsed by the knowledge of the SON OF GOD. Eclipsed means being blocked out to the point on no longer being visible as a significant character on the scene. Scripture bears this out, as she is no longer mentioned after the Gospels as anything approaching a point of doctrine, and only in Acts as an incidental presence at a gathering.

[Iscool]

I suppose, but let me ask you a question. Why are you so threatened by her?

No, I'm not threatened at all...I do however see the issue as a false doctrine and I have a great concern for anyone who gets taken in by a false doctrine...

Joh 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

[Mad Dawg]

thnx. I see.

First I'd heard of it, myself, but there's no end to my ignorance. Sure, Simeon and Anna gave her a clue, but I don't know anything about her foreseeing the crucifixion.

But suppose she had the gift of prophecy, is Isaiah or Ezekiel similarly untouchable? Or is this more and more a "vibe" thing?

We read a lot of I Jo during the Octave of XPmas. So I was thinking this: John's Gospel is luminous and meticulously crafted, IMHO. His letters are similarly lambent. He is "the disciple whom IHS loved" and he lay his head on our Lord's bosom.

So, not in any sense wanting to convey a pre-empting of the originating and predestined act of God, yet it is not so unthinkable to me (and, my pastor with whom I shared this thought tells me, to the fathers) that the intimate closeness John had with our Lord, followed by years of presumably holy and devout living, would be the way he became a glowing, THE glowing figure among the writers in the NT.

So, is we allow that Mary is "the most blessed of women" and "full of Grace" to start with, and then we have years of the most intimate contact as I mentioned above, well then I guess I'd expect, well, the unexpected.

Now here's another thought which is frightening for me to express. And that is that holiness is certainly not confined to the great ones or angels. We ourselves are called holy ones. (I'm avoiding the word "saint" because since I was taken to task for calling a holy angel, "Saint Michael" I've seen that the word is confusing.)

But how many of us pray not only to do as God wishes but also to be granted a share of holiness? I don't see why we shouldn't ask for that and seek it in our lives, and yet I think maybe we don't expect or think about what holiness might mean to us. And so when, encrusted as they no doubt are with legend, the stories of Mary or of other great ones come to us, we find the whole thing somewhat alien.

This is just a speculation made with the naive boldness of someone for whom holiness is a recently adopted line of thought. I hope it is not offensive.

[Iscool]

"When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son. After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own." John 19:26-27 (emphasis added for your much needed edification)

You need to look again...Jesus didn't call Mary 'His' mother...He called Mary John's mother...

Jesus called her 'Woman'...

"But there are also many other things which Jesus did; which, if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written." John 21:25

And so He did...But He didn't reveal those words to you, nor to me...So they obviously were not for 'our' edification...

You may do well to pay attention to the words Jesus did reveal to US, not the words you think he may have said to other people...

Joh 20:31 But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.

[papertyger]

I do however see the issue as a false doctrine and I have a great concern for anyone who gets taken in by a false doctrine...

Exactly what do you see as the falsity that you need to concern yourself with?