Mary Matters (Dr. Walter Martin on disbelief in the Mother of God)

In my new book, Behold Your Mother: A Biblical and Historical Defense of the Marian Doctrines, , I spend most of its pages in classic apologetic defense of Mary as Mother of God, defending her immaculate conception, perpetual virginity, assumption into heaven, her Queenship, and her role in God’s plan of salvation as Co-redemptrix and Mediatrix. But perhaps my most important contributions in the book may well be how I demonstrate each of these doctrines to be crucial for our spiritual lives and even our salvation.

And I should note that this applies to all of the Marian doctrines. Not only Protestants, but many Catholics will be surprised to see how the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, for example, is crucial for all Christians to understand lest they misapprehend the truth concerning the sacred, marriage, sacraments, the consecrated life, and more.

I won’t attempt to re-produce the entire book in this post, but I will choose one example among examples I use to demonstrate why Mary as Mother of God not only matters, but how denying this dogma of the Faith can end in the loss of understanding of “the one true God and Jesus Christ whom [God] has sent” (John 17:3). It doesn’t get any more serious than that!

In my book, I use the teaching of the late, well-known, and beloved Protestant Apologist, Dr. Walter Martin, as one of my examples. In his classic apologetics work, Kingdom of the Cults, Dr. Martin, gives us keen insight into why the dogma of the Theotokos (“God-bearer,” a synonym with “Mother of God”) is such a “big deal.” But first some background information.

It is very easy to state what it is that you don’t believe. That has been the history of Protestantism. Protestantism itself began as a… you guessed it… “protest.” “We are against this, this, this, and this.” It was a “protest” against Catholicism. However, the movement could not continue to exist as a protestant against something. It had to stand for something. And that is when the trouble began. When groups of non-infallible men attempted to agree, the result ended up being the thousands of Protestant sects we see today.

Dr. Walter Martin was a good Protestant. He certainly and boldly proclaimed, “I do not believe Mary is the Mother of God.” That’s fine and good. The hard part came when he had to build a theology congruent with his denial. With Dr. Martin, it is difficult to know for sure whether his bad Christology came before or after his bad Mariology—I argue it was probably bad Christology that came first—but let’s just say for now that in the process of theologizing about both Jesus and Mary, he ended up claiming Mary was “the mother of Jesus’ body,” and not the Mother of God. He claimed Mary “gave Jesus his human nature alone,” so that we cannot say she is the Mother of God; she is the mother of the man, Jesus Christ.

This radical division of humanity and divinity manifests itself in various ways in Dr. Martin’s theology. He claimed, for example, that “sonship” in Christ has nothing at all to do with God in his eternal relations within the Blessed Trinity. In Martin’s Christology, divinity and humanity are so sharply divided that he concluded “eternal sonship” to be an unbiblical Catholic invention. On page 103 of his 1977 edition of The Kingdom of the Cults, he wrote:

[T]here cannot be any such thing as eternal Sonship, for there is a logical contradiction of terminology due to the fact that the word “Son” predicates time and the involvement of creativity. Christ, the Scripture tells us, as the Logos, is timeless, “…the Word was in the beginning” not the Son!

From Martin’s perspective then, Mary as “Mother of God” is a non-starter. If “Son of God” refers to Christ as the eternal son, then there would be no denying that Mary is the mother of the Son of God, who is God; hence, Mother of God would be an inescapable conclusion. But if sonship only applies to “time and creativity,” then references to Mary’s “son” would not refer to divinity at all.

But there is just a little problem here. Beyond the fact that you don’t even need the term “Son” at all to determine Mary is the Mother God because John 1:14 tells us “the Word was made flesh,” and John 1:1 tells us “the Word was God;” thus, Mary is the mother of the Word and so she is the Mother of God anyway, the sad fact is that in the process of Martin’s theologizing he ended up losing the real Jesus. Notice, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity is no longer the Eternal Son! And it gets worse from here, if that is possible! Martin would go on:

The term “Son” itself is a functional term, as is the term “Father” and has no meaning apart from time. The term “Father” incidentally never carries the descriptive adjective “eternal” in Scripture; as a matter of fact, only the Spirit is called eternal (“the eternal Spirit”—Hebrews 9:14), emphasizing the fact that the words Father and Son are purely functional as previously stated.

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of what we are saying here. Jesus revealed to us the essential truth that God exists eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in his inner life. For Martin, God would be father by analogy in relation to the humanity of Christ, but not in the eternal divine relations; hence, he is not the eternal Father. So, not only did Dr. Martin end up losing Jesus, the eternal Son; he lost the Father as well! This compels us to ask the question: Who then is God, the Blessed Trinity, in eternity, according to Dr. Walter Martin and all those who agree with his theology? He is not Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He must be the eternal … Blah… the Word, and the Holy Spirit (Martin did teach Christ to be the Eternal Word, just not the Eternal Son). He would become a father by analogy when he created the universe and again by analogy at the incarnation of the Word and through the adoption of all Christians as “sons of God.” But he would not be the eternal Father. The metaphysical problems begin here and continue to eternity… literally. Let us now summarize Dr. Martin’s teaching and some of the problems it presents:

1. Fatherhood and Sonship would not be intrinsic to God. The Catholic Church understands that an essential aspect of Christ’s mission was to reveal God to us as he is in his inner life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Jews already understood God to be father by analogy, but they had no knowledge of God as eternal Father in relation to the Eternal Son. In Jesus’ great high priestly prayer in John 17, he declared his Father was Father “before the world was made” and thus, to quote CCC 239, in “an unheard-of sense.” In fact, Christ revealed God’s name as Father. Names in Hebrew culture reveal something about the character of the one named. Thus, he reveals God to be Father, not just that he is like a father. God never becomes Father; he is the eternal Father

2. If Sonship applies only to humanity and time, the “the Son” would also be extrinsic, or outside, if you will, of the Second Divine Person of the Blessed Trinity. Thus, as much as he would have denied it, Dr. Martin effectively creates two persons to represent Christ—one divine and one human. This theology leads to the logical conclusion that the person who died on the cross 2,000 years ago would have been merely a man. If that were so, he would have no power to save us. Scripture reveals Christ as the savior, not merely a delegate of God the savior. He was fully man in order to make fitting atonement for us. He was fully God in order to have the power to save us.

3. This theology completely reduces the revelation of God in the New Covenant that separates Christianity from all religions of the world. Jesus revealed God as he is from all eternity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Dr. Martin reduces this to mere function. Thus, “Father” does not tell us who God is, only what God does. Radical feminists do something similar when they refuse to acknowledge God as “Father.” God becomes reduced to that which he does as “Creator, Redeeemer, and Sanctifier” and int he process where is a truly tragic loss of the knowledge of who God is. In the case of Dr. Walter Martin, it was bad theology that lead to a similar loss.

4. There is a basic metaphysical principle found, for example, in Malachi 3:6, that comes into play here as well: “For I the Lord do not change.” In defense of Dr. Martin, he did seem to realize that one cannot posit change in the divine persons. As stated above, “fatherhood” and “sonship” wold not relate to divinity at all in his way of thinking. Thus, he became a proper Nestorian (though he would never have admitted that) that divides Christ into two persons. And that is bad enough. However, one must be very careful here because when one posits the first person of the Blessed Trinity became the Father, and the second person of the Blessed Trinity became the Son, it becomes very easy to slip into another heresy that would admit change into the divine persons. Later in Behold Your Mother, I employ the case of a modern Protestant apologist who regrettably takes that next step. But you’ll have to get the book to read about that one.

The bottom line here is this: It appears Dr. Walter Martin’s bad Christology led to a bad Mariology. But I argue in Behold Your Mother that if he would have understood Mary as Theotokos, it would have been impossible for him to lose his Christological bearings. The moment the thought of sonship as only applying to humanity in Christ would have arisen, a Catholic Dr. Walter Martin would have known that Mary is Mother of God. He would have lost neither the eternal Son nor the eternal Father because Theotokos would have guarded him from error. The prophetic words of Lumen Gentium 65 immediately come to mind: “Mary… unites in her person and re-echoes the most important doctrines of the faith.” A true Mariology serves as a guarantor against bad Christology.

I got more experiences behind the walls than you do. I spent a ton of time on death row at San Quentin. Have you ever done that?

25 years of experience putting hubcaps on Chevrolets does not give you 25 years of automotive engineering skill. I have never been on death row on either side of the bars but 25 years in an adult facility means 25 years of keeping the cell locked and making sure that your clients do no harm to themselves or others.

Those same years spent in a serious Juvenile system (and the kids are just as mean as the adults and have a lot more "attitude". is entirely. It was my job to keep the kids from becoming your customers and actually doing them some good. My guys were in a day room...40 of them and 2 officers. The officers had other duties than babysitting, 1 had to escort any kid to his counselor, chapel, visitation, etc....that left 1 officer in charge of the other 39.

Other than segregation unit, there were no cells, all dayrooms and dormitories at night where we combined 2 units into a sleeping unit...80 badasses in bunkbeds.

Different jobs entirely, you dealt with losers and I dealt with those who still had some hope of success in their lives>

MANY have contacted me after they got out and thanked me for understanding their needs and not holding their crimes against them personally...Our kids were convicted of virtually any crime that you can imagine. They ranged in age from 13 to 19...none older, a very few younger..

death row seems very boring...sitting in a chair watching people vegetate...

You obviously have no concept whatsoever of how the Sacrament of Penance works....and what you described is not it at all.

Really? Tell that to Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, et al! According to the Catholic Church they are all in the state of mortal sin and yet they are still allowed to receive Communion as well as the other sacraments. I guess they cough up enough "penance fines". Unless and until the Catholic church openly rebukes people like this I will have no respect for the church leadership.

Yes, the prophets are definitely spoken of there also, but it is pretty hard to ignore the additional reference to the then-current "teachers" (not prophets) which Peter also spoke about separately from the "prophets" in the sentences immediately following his exhortation telling them to avoid "private interpretation" of scriptural prophecy.

Those "false teachers", by definition, were obviously teaching something completely different from the true teachings of the apostolic Christian Church, (and, therefore, had to be teaching something based on their own personal interpretation of the scriptures and prophecies). Their grotesque mangling of the true teachings of the Church was based on their own interpretation of the scriptures, not based on the Church's interpretation of them (which Peter said he would continue to teach until he died, in opposition to all those false teachers and their erroneous private interpretations).

First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their licentiousness, and because of them the way of truth will be reviled. 2 Peter 1:20 - 2:2

The teachings of those false teachers Peter spoke about, were obviously based on their own private (wrong) interpretation of the scriptures, and they obviously disagreed with the true teachings of the Church, and Peter blasted them for it in that letter (2 Peter), and plainly told his readers to listen rather to the Church's teachers (like himself) instead.

(I suspect that some of the original readers of his letter there also ignored what he plainly said, and chose instead to go their own way, following those teachings based on their own personal "private interpretations" of the prophecies and teachings in the scriptures, but it was not a wise idea to do that back then, nor is it wise now.)

"I'm not betting you, but I'd like to know if this is this another RC trick question"

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boatbums, you have to follow along with the discussion, in order to know why something is pointed out. Here is the flow of that particular discussion in this thread:

An anti-catholic poster said in post #648:   "The apostles weren't with Christ on the cross nor were they 'in my Father's kingdom'. Do Catholics not EVER check with scripture to see if what they are being told is truth?"

In post #903, I replied to that poster:   "Tell me the exact Bible text that says that the apostles were not with Christ on the cross, as you claim in your post."

Then, in response to my post there, another anti-Catholic poster said to me in post #1012:   "You never read it eh??? Have you read any scripture at all??? You're trying to teach us about God and you don't even know what God says...WoW..."

In response to that, I replied to that poster in post #1231:   "In my post to another poster which you were replying to here, I was making the simple point that the Bible does not tell us that the apostles were not at the crucifixion (like that poster had claimed in his post), when Jesus received that wine on His cross.    If you believe I am wrong about that, then I'll be happy to make you a friendly public wager right here and now.   If by the end of the day tomorrow (1/28/15), you can show me a Bible text that says that the apostles were not at the crucifixion, I will immediately donate an additional $100 to Free Republic, and if you can't, you will immediately donate an additional $100 to Free Republic.    Do we have a wager?"

Later, a couple other anti-Catholic posters piped in with comments about that simple wager offer, and so I asked them if they wanted to take that wager.    None of them took me up on it.

There was no trick question, just a pointer to truth, in response to another poster's post with a scripturally unsupported claim.

"A nice neat tidy Jesus hanging on that cross. THAT certainly is not the Jesus of Scripture who was beaten to a pulp before His crucifixion and had His bread ripped out, who was crucified naked before the world."

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metmom, that is just an atist's painting, done for whatever reason the artist decided to paint it, but you are completely missing my point of posting that painting.

Another poster in post #1302, was erroneously trying to claim that people being with "Christ on the cross" could not possibly mean the same thing as people being with "Christ at the cross", but of course view he was expressing is wrong, and demonstrates a misunderstanding about the English language.

The title of that painting is Christ on the Cross with Saints Mary, John the Evangelist and Catherine of Siena (Obviously, that does not mean that those saints are hanging up on the cross with Christ, and a correct understanding of the English language recognizes that those same words might (and often do) mean two entirely different things, depending on context, and that both possible meanings are correct in the English language. That was the only point of sharing that painting and it's title, which clearly, unmistakably illustrates one of the possible correct usages of that terminology, which the other poster obviously did not recognize.)

"The Table of Contents? For real? Is that a good work I have to do? A sacrament I have to follow?"

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Without knowing what the contents of a book is going to be, one cannot make that book.

In other words, in order to make a book, you have to know which writings are going to go into that book, or you cannot make that book.

In order to make the "New Testament", they had to know which of the multitudes of the then-existing "writings", "gospels", "letters", etc., were going to be part of the "contents" of the New Testament, or they could not have made the New Testament. Those contents to be selected were not specified anywhere, in any scriptures. Those specific contents were all selected (out of many more that obviously existed) by men, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (in "Church Councils").

If you don't understand how that was done, I urge you to read the following book:

"Where We Got the Bible... Our Debt to the Catholic Church" by Henry G. Graham

(And if you somehow think the list of writings which belong in the New Testament is contained in the Bible somewhere, tell me the Bible text(s) that list of writings is specified in.)

Do you think the Holy Spirit included a list somewhere in Scriptures which detailed which writings belong in the New Testament, or did God choose to use another means (external to the Scriptures) for having men select exactly which written documents belonged in the New Testament, and which written documents did not belong in the New Testament?

Don't you believe that the "New Testament" and its teachings are "critical for salvation and maturity in Christ"?

"And at the cross is the same as on the cross right? LOL"

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No, you are changing it again, CynicalBear, injecting confusion into the issue.

In the English language, the term "being with Christ on the cross" can mean being "on the cross with Christ" (like the nails were), or it can also mean being "at the location where Christ is on the cross". Both of those meanings are correct and valid usages in the English language, and most English-speaking people will have no problem knowing exactly what you mean when you use that kind of terminiology, based on the reference it is addressing.

That is why I showed you that painting and the title of that painting Christ on the Cross with Saints Mary, John the Evangelist and Catherine of Siena, to show you that that does not mean that those saints were hanging up on the cross with Christ, but they were depicted as being with Christ while He hung on that cross. As the title of that painting clearly shows, that is a correct understanding of that terminology, whether you personally understand that or not.

I've noticed that at my church the people are smiling and socializing before and after Services. Unlike at the Catholic church where they all have the look of "just fulfilling an obligation" and they can't wait to get in their cars and go home. There's Joy at our church and that's missing at the Catholic church.

I have no idea of where you have seen a Catholic Mass but that sure isn't my experience over MANY years.. Our present pariah has hugh youth and teen participation....groups, retreats, missionary trips, singing groups...whatever. I usually attend Mass at 10:00 A.M. and the following Mass, at noon is the Hispanisc Mass.....Now they really have a happy time. They set up musical instruments in the fromt of church and really play up a storm. As is, I guess their method of doing things, their kids are pretty much free to roam the place during Mass and no one seems to care.

We also have a Catholic school included in our parish...The highest rated grade school in the city and also populated with a lot of hispanic kids.

Our teens, students in the local and regional high schools are given the opportunity to join all kinds of interesting groups, clubs etc.

Plenty of VERY happy Catholics here...when you know you're right, you're right!!

You must not have done a very good job then, because I had plenty of customers. I never let criminals call me. If you did, that tells me a lot about you. Now, I have some catholics to go preach to. They need to hear the truth. 😇

Our prison is in Indiana, you were in California...our facility had a very low recidivism rate...not perfect, of course, but nationally respected. I didn't "LET" prisoners call me...they all knew my name and some of them called. My phone is listed in the book. I certainly wasn't ashamed of what I did and if they wanted to call, there was no way on Earth that I could stop them. I NEVER feared my kids....got beat up a few times, but then they got transferred over to one of your adult facilities.

Be very careful when leading peopple away from Christ...He isn't real happy with Luther and He certainly won't be happy with the loss of anyones soul....be VEEEEEEEEEEERY careful.

That's sola scriptura and it is WRONG!!

Yeah, if you had to check with the Bible you would not be able to believe this demonic apparition pretending he is Jesus and talking to Lucia:

Jesus:
I want My whole Church to acknowledge that consecration as a triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary so that it may extend its cult later on and put the devotion of the Immaculate Heart besides the devotion to My Sacred Heart.

At least that "Jesus" recognized the cult nature of all of that.

I imagine you are familiar with this terycarl, so you probably know that baby Jesus talked to Lucia also...

Plus it's also not in the Bible that Jesus can talk to you from his face on a piece of unleavened bread:

Novena in Honor of
the Most Holy Face of Jesus
"I firmly wish that my face reflecting the intimate pains of my soul, the suffering and love of my heart, be more honored! Whoever gazes upon me already consoles me." (Our Lord Jesus Christ to Sister Pierina)

[I have never seen in the Bible where Jesus wants us to console Him, He consoles us!]

MamaB, they actually have a "Holy Face Association"

Who needs the Bible to search like a Berean to stay on the right track? Not Catholics it seems. Sad

The Eastern schism did, indeed, deny the authority of the Pope....that changes nothing....when they return to the fold, and they will, we will all again be under his direct authority. As far as the remainder of Christianity is concerned....they decided to change whatever rules that they didn't like and they did so. Never mind the seven Sacraments, never mind transubstantiation, never mind Penance nor Holy Orders, Infant Baptism, who needs it??...The Eucharist, merely a symbolic meal with no real meaning....and the Popes from Peter on down, oh well we are now all our own Popes and make our own rules...

I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you about the healing-of-the-schism thing with EO. If after a thousand years it hasn't "healed", it won't. Besides, it was the Roman Catholics who split from the Orthodox - the Popes even excommunicating the Orthodox over it and vice versa - because they refused to heed the novel doctrines Rome tried to pass off as the truth. In fact, anyone can look back on the history of the early Christian churches and see that they didn't have any such thing as one "Pope" over all of Christendom, no auricular confession, no infant baptism, no Purgatory, no transubstantiation and so forth. The Roman Catholics decided they COULD make their own rules no matter what the historic faith held, the Apostles taught or what God ensured was written in His sacred word. Talk about a free-for-all. Your guys wrote the book on free-for-alls!

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