maryletter

Cork Free Presbyterian Church, 10 Briarscourt (Annex) Shanakiel, Cork, Ireland
Pastor: Colin Maxwell. Email: colin.maxwell@fpcmission.org

I take issue with your comment that the RC Church stretches the "Hail Mary,"scene in Luke 1:28. If you read that entire scene along with the Magnificat in your paper, you would have to come away with the distinct impression that Mary is special in a very special way.

Thank you for your note. I appreciate any feedback, even if it is largely of a negative nature. I trust we can discuss this matter in a friendly way. Please do not think that we read to offend anyone, even if this is the end result. We write solely to defend the truth of God as revealed in the Bible. Our real aim is to instruct people, whom we perceive to be in great error, in the truth of the gospel. We have no other motives than this.

Remember that it is not a human being who declares Mary "Full of Grace," but the angel Gabriel, sent from God. We can never know if a human is sent from God, but we know that an angel must be. The only places in the entire gospels of an angel appearing is the time of the Annunciation and the Resurrection. What fitting bookends to the story of Jesus.

I think you err here as regards the appearances of angels in the gospel. Simple use of a concordance shows that an angel appeared unto Zacharias in the previous chapter, ministered unto Christ after His temptation, strengthened Him in Gethsemane and appeared at certain seasons to stir the waters at the pool of Siloam. A small error, no doubt, on your part, but part of the overall problem.

Not even Paul was that close to God on earth. Some will say that the scene is poetic license, but even if it were, Luke had intended to give Mary a special place in the Body of Christ, because she would bear his very body. Read on: "Hail Mary, Full of Grace, The Lord is With You." Later Elizabeth says "Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb." She is blessed among women BECAUSE of the fruit of her womb, Jesus, not because she is Mary. Catholics know that, because they are not pagans. You should know that too.

A couple of things here. If we wanted to play off Paul against Mary, then we could show how that Paul was caught up into the third heavens (2 Corinthians 12:1-5) or how we know far more about Paul than we do about Mary, or how he wrote around a dozen books of the New Testament and died (if tradition is correct) a martyr's death while Mary lays claim to none of these things.

I do not believe that Luke 1 is poetic license at all but is a literal, historical account of the life of Christ, as claimed by its author. I believe that Mary had a special role to play in the life of Christ i.e. she alone had the privilege and joy of bearing the man Christ Jesus in her womb. That cannot be denied, but to make it the foundation for all that the RC Church builds upon it has absolutely no warrant from Scripture.

Getting back to what Gabriel says: "Hail Mary Full of Grace (Gratia Plena). The Lord is with You." Where else in the entire Bible does an angel of the Lord ever call a human being "Full of Grace" in the same sentence with the concept of the "Lord Being With Her." There is no other place. Put the two together and you have the Immaculate Conception. Full of Grace means full of Grace. Remember the gospels were written after the epistles of Paul, so the term grace applies to that salvation fluid that came from the side of Jesus on the cross. "Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with you. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus." Read that, no pray that ten times and tell me that you do not accept the Immaculate Conception and then ask who is the pagan for not accepting the doctrine. Read the Magnificat and you will see that the Immaculate Conception or any doctrine about Mary, infallible or not, is not Mary centered, but Christ centered.

Personally, I prefer the translation which the RC Jerusalem Bible gives (tallying with the Authorised Version and the footnote in the RSV Catholic Edition) that Mary was highly favoured. While she is said to be blessed among women, Jael was said to be blessed above women (Judges 5:24) Furthermore, every child of God is blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 1:3) and so it is wrong to elevate Mary to any spiritual height because of her physical role in bringing Christ into the world. It is a huge quantum leap to bring the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception out of what was said to Mary. When I read the Magnificat, which is wisely drawn from Scripture, I see that Mary confesses her spirit rejoicing in God her Saviour (Luke 1:47) Mary needed a Saviour because she sinned. The Bible tells us that all have sinned, naming the only exception as Christ Himself, and that on a number of occasions. Mary sinned in Adam (Romans 5:12-19) and she sinned in practice also as the above article which you refer to points out.

To accept the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception because I have "prayed" the "Hail Mary" ten times is more akin to brain washing than being convinced of the truth of Scripture through reasonable and Bible based research. What if I repeat, nay pray constantly, that there is no God but Allah and that Mohammed is his prophet or fall in with the Mormon's "feel good" exercises also? If this method is supposed to produce converts, why didn't the Apostle not get the various Christ deniers and other fundamental truth deniers in the New Testament to go down that road also? "Repeat, nay pray, ten times: There is a bodily resurrection based on the fact that Christ is risen from the dead."

I think what you miss about the Immaculate Conception and what many Catholics also miss, is that while it is doctrine of the RC church that Mary was born without original sin, she was so born without original sin not for anything that she did, but for what was required of her through the grace of God in order for her to be the bearer of the God-Child. So, how can that be pagan? God ordered that she be without original sin. All those other quotations do not have Mary in mind for a very obvious reason. It is like a famous manager in American baseball being asked to rattle off the greatest hitters in baseball of all time and the questioner asks: "What about Ted Williams?" The manager's reply was this: "Well, of course, Ted Williams! You asked for the greatest hitters. Not the greatest hitter. I thought you would know that without my having said so."

Clever little illustration or not, you have absolutely no Scripture for your conclusions. The one Scripture you turn to is weighed against your conclusions. Every major Bible truth is repeated again and again in the Bible. You can do that with your doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, simply because it is not there and not true.

You should read carefully the wedding scene at Cana. What is Jesus' reaction to his mother, who confronts him with the fact that the groom has no more wine. Jesus, now an adult, reacts like a spoiled child to his mother, as if to say, "What does that have to do with me. It is not my time." The scene gives no reaction from Mary, but if you were in the shoes of Jesus and someone owed you a favor whereby that person could produce wine for the occasion, and your mother asked you to cash it in (because she knew your real power), and you gave a similar answer, imagine your mother's reaction. Mary would only need to look at him askance, as if to say: "Get off your high horse and do what you have to do for these poor people." Because in the very next sentence, Jesus does exactly what his mother asks of him. In no place in the gospels is Jesus so malleable and so human as he is in that scene with his mother, because it is very human to respond the way Jesus responded to Mary. At first, truculent and then submissive. For God to allow himself to be obedient to his human mother showed the respect He had for the woman whom the Holy Spirit chose to be his mother. What it all shows is that the story of Jesus was a real story, because if it were made up, it would not have the Cana scene in it! Think about it. If you were writing the story of God becoming man in order to save us, would you have Mary taking Jesus to task, as it is evident there at Cana, if you read in between the lines? Of course, you wouldn't because you would be writing a story of fiction, whereas the actual story of Jesus is THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD because it actually happened and the gospel writers have the details to prove it.

I must be honest here and say that I am surprised that you have written these things. You have actually accused Jesus Christ of sinning. A spoiled child in the Scripture is to be punished. Truculence is a sin. Getting off His high horse denotes the sin of pride. I have never experienced any other RC apologist alleging this when discussing the passage at hand. However, you are correct to recognise that both Mary and Christ cannot be right on this issue, yet you run with the notion that Mary never sinned and this forces you to indict the Lord Jesus. At a stroke, you destroy the whole work of redemption which is based on the Just dying for the unjust in order that He might bring us to God. (1 Peter 3:18)

What I find so egregious about Protestants' attitude towards Mary is that she was a mere vessel, a conduit for the God Man to enter the world, to be thrown away as soon as her usefulness was over. That God would exploit a little Jewish girl like this for any design He might have for man regardless of its loftiness is simply not God like. God loved Mary, as He loves all of us.

It is very noticeable that you supply absolutely no proof for your remarks about Protestants. I, for one, certainly don't believe that God used her and dumped her as you allege. She was not a mere vessel at all, but the one entrusted with the birth of the Lord Jesus and the one who also reared Him until that time when He would leave her care. But this is still a million miles away from the position that Rome has exalted her to. You hold to one extreme yourself and you try to paint the Protestants into another extreme. The truth lies in the middle of both extremes (both real and imaginary) and this is the Protestant position. I agree with you that God loved Mary as He loves us all.

Mary too had to be saved like the rest of us, but only in a different way. She was saved by both delivering Jesus at birth and having Jesus delivered into her hands at death. "Behold Your Mother; Behold Your Son." How can anyone stretch these words? Do you honestly believe that Jesus, the God-Man would waste His words at the hour of his death if he meant only for John to take care of Mary? Of course, not. Jesus meant something else, because he would not have also added, "Mother Behold Your Son."

Again, you supply no Scriptural proof for your statement that Mary needed to be saved but only in a different way. Why did Mary need to be saved? If it was because she was in Adam (as the Bible distinctly says) then she carried Adam's guilt and therefore the Immaculate conception cannot be true. Mary was truly saved, but in the exact same way as the rest of those who are saved. Yes, I honestly believe that Mary was given into the care of John. The God-Man did not waste his breath in giving Mary into John's care. There are several considerations to this act, not least that He fulfilled the commandment that bids us honour our father and our mother.

What Jesus created through the salvation acts of his death and resurrection was the historical means of that salvation, His Body, in the Church and in the Eucharist. The former is the way and the latter is the food for the journey. We are saved as individuals ONLY by belonging to the Body of Christ, His Church, the Communion of Saints, the People of God, the Bride of Christ. As a result of this institution, we are bonded together throughout time and eternity.

You are attributing to the Church (and that of Rome) what the Bible attributes solely to Christ Himself i.e. the name wherein salvation is found (Acts 4:12/Proverbs 18:10/John 14:6 etc.,) This essentially makes your church Antichrist (I speak not to offend, but to inform) You are effectively claiming that all those outside the RC Church are lost. Yet, I have placed my faith in Jesus Christ alone to be my Saviour. My faith and trust is in His finished work upon the Cross - you are telling me that this is not sufficient to save me. I must strongly disagree.

We pray to the saints, not because we adore them, but because we want their intercession, which is what Jesus asks of us. "Behold Your Son." Do you think that Jesus is jealous that we pray to the saints or to the one special saint, his mother? Do you believe that Jesus requires that petitions go only to him and not through his saints as well, who have lived and died for him and are now in everlasting peace with him? Of course, I am not saying that we don't pray to Jesus, but only to Mary and the saints! But the concept of the church includes the communion of saints and that Jesus would want us to feel connected with them here on earth, because they made it and they bear testimony to a loving God and they will intercede with Him in heaven on our behalf, because that is what one member does for another member in the BODY OF CHRIST. That is his plan for us. His grace falls on each of us because it falls on all of us,who have been baptized into His Body, both now, in the past and in the future, forever.

Again, the complete absence of Scriptural proof shows just how bankrupt your views really are. You make reference above to the entire gospels, but you cannot show me any precept or example of any one praying to or through Mary or any of the saints. The whole treasure of the New Testament lies at your fingertips, including those epistles written by Peter (whom you claim was the first Pope) and of John himself whose name is central in this part of our discussion, and none, repeat none, of them make any mention or allusion to what you are telling me.

The word pagan is for pagans. Not your fellow Christians. No wonder the Irish are so screwed up. And that is from an Irish American, whose parents were born in Ireland. Protestants and Catholics live famously together here, for the most part. A very good friend of mine is a Lutheran theologian and we have discussions with a pint into the wee hours. We don't try to convince each other of our beliefs but only try to elucidate them and show each other where the other comes up short. But never, never do we even think of calling one another pagan. And neither should you and you know better, if Ireland is ever to get up from under her troubles. DPD

Two things. In Ireland (and especially in Northern Ireland where I come from) we like people who call a spade a spade. We might stray into blunt speaking at times, but our antagonists generally know that we do not mean anything personal. We are dealing with principles and not personalities. I have had debates/discussions with many RC's over the years. I have had to say those things which faithfulness to God demands that I say, but we have not fallen out. We respect each other, even if we radically disagree with each others views.

The word "Christian" has become so weakened over two thousand years as to be nearly worthless in real terms. But if we restore it to its NT usage, then I cannot accept that those RC's who are being consistent with their creed are Christians at all. Again, a Christian veneer is not acceptable to God. Salvation is found in Christ alone...not in Christ plus Mary or Christ plus the Church (Roman or Reformed) or in Christ plus anything else that takes our fancy. Again, it is not my intention to offend, but I must be faithful to what God has explicitly declared in His word.

As I say, thanks again for writing. All I ask is that you examine what I have said here by the sole arbiter of truth i.e. the Bible itself. I think you will see that I am being consistent with the message of the Apostolic Church. Have a look around our Protestant Index page and you will discover many other helpful pieces to consider.