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Are Protestants re-examining Mary?

Dappled Things (an excellent blog) pointed to an interesting article today that takes a look at the changing opinions of Protestants concerning the role of Mary. In What about Mary? Protestants and Marian devotion we get an interesting glimpse at the changing view of Mary among protestant scholars and pastors, in particular. The whole article is good (although it does make a few errors in terms of the Catholic position), so I recommend reading it.

He notes specifically that the “protestant aversion to Mary is eroding” and that Mary may end up being a “ecumenical bridge” between Catholics and protestants. One interesting passage:

As the Catholic theologian Lawrence Cunningham puts it, there is an “almost outrageous particularity” about saying that God’s presence in the world is localized in the womb of an unmarried teenage girl from Nazareth. Anyone can claim God as “almighty” or “omnipotent” or “omniscient” or whatever philosophical word we wish to append to him. To claim that God is enfleshed, that God has a birth and death date, that God is Jewish, is the scandal of particularity to which Christian faith is committed. Claims about Mary are ways to keep from smoothing out the scandal. As Luther said, “Mary suckled God, rocked God to sleep, prepared broth and soup for God.” She also taught him the songs, stories and practices of the Jewish people whose messiah he would later claim to be. Similarly, Charles Wesley (as Methodist theologian Geoffrey Wainwright points out) praised God as one “who gave all things to be, what a wonder to see, him born of his creature and nursed on her knee.” In Mary the church ties a string around its finger to remember the particularity of its claims about God. (John Henry Newman argued more than a century ago that the churches that had maintained strong doctrines on Mary are those that had not abandoned strong christological ones.)

As a former protestant, Mary was always one of the main issues that bothered me (even after I had decided I must follow Christ’s Church). It took a lot of trust in the Holy Spirit, who I firmly believed was leading the Church, a lot of prayers, and a massive amount of reading and study to really grasp what the Church was teaching and why. Often for protestant converts to Catholicism, Mary is one issue they barely agree with when entering the Church. So it’s very fascinating to witness this changing notion of the role of Mary within popular protestantism (many of those cited in the article are from well-known larger churches, not just small communities that may have an odd focus).

The author also notes:

A focus on Mary also gives us a fresh approach to scripture. A standard Protestant objection to Catholic Mariology is that she is not as important in scripture as she has become in ecclesial traditions. To a degree this is true. No one can argue for her immaculate conception, her assumption into heaven, or her coronation as heaven’s queen directly from scripture. Yet argument over those points has clouded other scriptural claims about Mary. What she lacks in quantity of appearance in scripture she makes up for in quality. Luke’s telling of the gospel begins with her, and her fiat (“let it be” in Latin) to Gabriel’s announcement of God’s incarnational intent opens the way for a new eruption of grace into the world. She is present at and indeed an instigator of Jesus’ first miracle at Cana in Galilee (John 2: 1-11). She and other women are present at the cross, when the male disciples flee. Depending on how one reads the resurrection narratives, she is present there too (Mark 15:40; 47).
It is striking that Mary is in the upper room at Pentecost—the only woman present there who is named—to receive the outpouring of God’s Spirit at the birth of the church (Acts 1:14). When Paul makes his one oblique mention of Jesus’ mother it is to point to her as a sign that he was indeed born, and so was genuinely human (Gal. 4:4). To cite a more contested passage, her image in Revelation 12:17 as a woman clothed with the sun with a crown of stars in the agony of giving birth to a son who will rule the nations is, at the very least, impressive. Mary’s appearances in scripture are indeed limited, but they are tied to crucial moments in salvation history, without which there would be no church.

Scripture presents Mary as an important agent in her own right, not just as the mother of her son. If her Magnificat is any indication, she is an extraordinary reader of the Bible, lyrically weaving together Jewish scripture into a new song that is perhaps the most frequently sung canticle in church history. We are twice told that she “treasures” the words entrusted to her by angels and shepherds and that she “ponders these things” in her heart (Luke 2:19, 51). Aged Simeon promises her that her child’s destiny to be for the “falling and rising of many in Israel” will cause a “sword to pierce” her own soul too—suggesting that Mary’s importance continues in the saga of salvation long after her child’s birth (Luke 2:34-35).

Mary’s interaction with her son on the cross is striking, since one of his final acts is devoted to naming John as her new son, and her as John’s mother. In this and other scenes she is depicted as an image of the church, the mother of believers, and one to whose care Jesus is devoted to his dying breath. Scripture presents a vision of Mary as one whose importance is not limited to the Annunciation and to Christmas, but extends into the life of the church.

Obviously I would point to passages which contain the “seeds” of the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption and the Queen of Heaven (which is strongly pointed to in Revelation), but other than that I think these are good points. Overall the theme of the article seems to be that “maybe Catholics aren’t all wrong about Mary.” Which is a good start in my mind and moves Catholics and protestants closer to one another in practice. It will be interesting to see if and where this filters down to local protestant churches, where the rubber meets the road in a real sense – frankly, I’m willing to bet most pastors who go down this road will lose church members because of it. In my experience within the Baptist church, a riot may have started if the pastor suggested many of the points this article makes.

He does make some errors. For example, the author suggests that Jesus speaks harshly to Mary at the wedding feast of Cana (calling her “woman”). However, this is incorrect. The word “woman” was not at all a sign of disrespect during Christ’s timeperiod. Christ was also using the term to tie her back to the “Woman” of Genesis and Revelation, who would bear the Christ. His words, rather than being harsh, indicated His obedience and love for her even in a situation where He disagreed with the need for a miracle.

The author goes on . . . and this took my breath away:

Nevertheless, Mary is far more than an eyewitness to key kerygmatic events and a crucial early theologian and church leader. She is “a space for the spaceless one,” to quote an Orthodox prayer. Her womb was the physical site of the enfleshment of God. This leads Robert Jenson to a conclusion that may sting Protestant sensibilities—we ought to ask Mary to pray for us.
Jenson argues that death does not sever the bonds of the body of Christ—as even most Protestant eucharistic prayers makes clear. To ask for a departed saint’s prayer, then, is not in principle different from asking another Christian for her prayers. We hold that the saints are not simply gone but are ever alive to God, and so we ought also consider them to be available as intercessors, and powerful ones at that.

We’ve argued this several times on this blog – without a whole lot of success, mind you – so it is fascinating to see protestants agreeing with our point. Of course, I’m sure many, many protestants may have fallen out of their seat at this one, but a start is a start. Right? He explains thusly:

Jenson insists that “the saints are not our way to Christ; he is our way to them.” Each saint’s particular graces can be seen as reflections of the grace of Christ, whose greatness grows in our eyes as we attend to the saints’ individual stories. The strengthening of the bonds of the body of Christ, stretching as they do across the divide between earthly life and death, should bring tribute to Christ rather than discredit.

Amen, brother. Another Amen when he quotes a protestant saying “Salvation begins with Mary’s yes.” And he concludes:

Perhaps we might even say a Hail Mary or two. Luther objected only to the second half of the Hail Mary, not to the first. To pray “Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus” is merely to cite scripture, he thought. To say “Holy Mary, full of grace, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our deaths” seemed to him to express an extrascriptural accretion. But perhaps asking Mary for her prayers is not in itself un-Protestant. To do so may even guard christological dogma and defend against patriarchy. Who knows? Mary might just be key to the future of ecumenism after all.

I know I quoted quite a few passages, but the whole article is interesting for both protestants and Catholics. I’m interested to hear any thoughts on it – I haven’t heard of The Christian Century magazine before, so I’m not aware of any inherent biases in their choices of articles (or any affiliations). What do you think? Is it possible that protestants will become a little closer to the Catholic position on Mary? I’ll ask her to pray that it will be so!

God bless,
Jay

Posted by Jay at January 3, 2005 04:26 PM | TrackBack