“Evangelicals and the Mother of God”

Timothy George, a Southern Baptist theologian, writes at First Things; Eric Svendsen comments.

George says,

It is time for evangelicals to recover a fully biblical appreciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her role in the history of salvation-and to do so precisely as evangelicals.

I think evangelicals do have a “fully biblical appreciation” of Mary–I wonder if he’s really asking evangelicals to be more sympathetic to extra-Biblical Catholic teachings.

Can we, without forsaking any of the evangelical essentials, including the great solas of the Reformation, echo Elizabeth’s acclamation, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” (Luke 1:42), or resonate with the Spirit-filled maid of the Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on, all generations will call me blessed” (Luke 1:46-48)?

I’ve never known any Evangelicals who had a problem with either. They are Gospel texts, after all.

It seems to many evangelicals that Catholic preoccupation with Mary obscures the preeminence and sole salvific sufficiency of Jesus Christ and thus leads many people away from rather than to the Savior himself.

Yes, it does. A key example is seen at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, where Jesus is seen as a stern visaged figure ready to pop you upside the head, but Mary, Immaculately Conceived, stands atop the baldachino, mercifully coming between you and him. Catholics are exhorted to go “to Jesus, through Mary.”

Mary has a pivotal and irreducible place in the Bible, and evangelicals must reclaim this aspect of biblical teaching if we are to be faithful to the whole counsel of God. When it comes to the gospel, Mary cannot be shunted aside or relegated to the affectionate obscurity of the annual Christmas pageant.

Mary does have a pivotal role–she says “yes” to the angel and gives birth to Jesus. She and Joseph raise him. After that, she pops into the story a couple of times and then disappears, with neither Acts nor the epistles concerned with her after Pentecost.

Is Mary the “new Eve”? That’s not a Biblical image. Jesus is the second Adam–it was his obedience that overcame the disobedience of Adam. Mary did agree to the incarnation–but the Bible doesn’t separate her in any other way.

Was she a virgin mother? Yes, the Bible is clear that a virgin conceived. That’s all it says–it has none of the legends about her remaining a virgin in the act of giving birth, without pain; nothing about her remaining a virgin in her relationship with Joseph.  George notes:

More difficult is the claim for the inviolate virginity of Mary in partu: the virgin birth in a precise sense. Not only does this belief stem from a post-canonical writing, the Protoevangelium of James, but it also seems to undermine the anti-docetic emphasis of the doctrine. This is especially true when it is said that Mary gave birth to Jesus without pain. If indeed the virgin mother of God is the link that unites Christ and humanity, it is hard to see why the virginal conception of Jesus, attested by Scripture, should entail an anesthetized delivery. While Cardinal Newman was surely right to say that God could have spared the mother of the messiah the pains of child-bearing, there is no sound biblical reason for assuming God did so. Indeed, if the woman of the apocalypse in Revelation 12 harks back to Mary, then the opposite seems to be the case, for there we are told that this woman “was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth” (Revelation 12:2).

I think this a critical point–the separation of Mary from normal aches and pains of womanhood seems to be heading in the direction of docetism. We saw this issue raised by some Catholic critics of “The Nativity Story,” who were aghast that Mary should be shown having discomfort. We see it in articles like that of a young Bryce Sibley wondering whether Mary had a period. According to Scripture, Jesus was like us in all things except that he didn’t surrender to temptation. Scripture doesn’t make even that exception for Mary.

Can Evangelicals call her “Mother of God”? Certainly, for the child in her womb was indeed her creator.

What about Mary in prayer? George says,

Evangelicals do not pray to Mary, but we can learn to pray like Mary and with Mary-with Mary and all the saints.

I’d say we can pray like Mary and the saints–we can pray as they did. Now they await the resurrection of Christ. We’ll join together one day in praising God together.

OJ

We see once again how OJ goes nuts if he thinks someone is messing with something that he thinks is his possession. Maybe this time he’ll go to jail.

Can a Christian Call Art “Degenerate”?

Not in Germany, it seems. Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne made a theological observation about art, about how art is debased and “degenerates” when divorced from a Christian worldview, and all hell broke loose. He was preaching at a mass opening a new diocesan art museum.

His exact words:

Let us not forget that there is an indisputable connection between culture and religion. Where culture is uncoupled from … the worship of God, religion becomes moribund in rituals and culture degenerates….

Another translation:

“When culture is disconnected from divine reverence, the cult descends into ritualism and culture degenerates. It loses its center.”

The original German:

Dort, wo die Kultur vom Kultus, von der Gottesverehrung abgekoppelt wird, erstarrt der Kultus im Ritualismus und die Kultur entartet. Sie verliert ihre Mitte.

(More context; see also the Archdiocesan webpage; full text of sermon).

Why did some get upset? Well, it seems that the Nazis had coupled the adjectival form of that verb with the word art to brand art that they didn’t like as “Entarte Kunst.” So some are accusing him of being a Nazi.

A Jewish organization branded him a “spiritual arsonist” (hmmm … who is using inflammatory speech?).

But the Nazi label is a smokescreen. The critics are speaking from a secularist standpoint that rejects any religious critique.

Theodor Lemper, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats and responsible for culture in Cologne, said use of the word “entartete” should be taboo.

“In addition, culture does not grow only out of the worship of God,” Lemper was quoted as saying by the Cologne daily Express. “The absolutism preached by Cardinal Meisner is false and inappropriate.”

The critics reject the idea that one’s view of God is related to one’s view of culture. They brand this as “absolutism.” In so doing, they’ve imposed a secularist absolutism. The summary of criticisms in Der Spiegel makes this clear:

German media commentators have weighed in by saying that even ignoring his use of the word ‘degenerate’, Meisner’s statement that art must worship God reflects a medieval and fundamentalist view of the world which the Taliban would have no trouble agreeing with.

Center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

“Doesn’t the man sitting on Germany’s most important bishop’s throne realize what he’s doing with his crude comparions which all somehow seem to end up in the Nazi era?”

“Even without the word ‘degenerate’ the cardinal’s thesis that art is only art if it serves the worship of God is unacceptable. Yes, western European culture wouldn’t be feasible without Christendom, and the Christian faith would be a dry affair without the expressive power of art.”

“But art can’t be limited to religion, and it thrives on breaking rules, even church rules.”

“Art as servant of the church — Cardinal Meisner is betraying a medieval understanding of art and a sad perception of the world. It is narrow and frightened and limited” ….

Left-wing Die Tageszeitung writes:

“It’s not about a bad word. Meisner’s sermon is an expression of religious fundamentalism.” …

“If one took his sermon seriously just for a second one could immediately detect that it had nothing to do with the notion of a modern and liberal society. So it doesn’t help if Cardinal Meisner complains about the ‘misinterpretation of a single word.’ The whole spirit of his sermon exuded religious fundamentalism. Meisner said that art must worship God to be true art. A member of the Taliban wouldn’t put it any differently.”

Conservative Die Welt writes that Meisner made a “cardinal error:” “The most recent comments of Cardinal Meisner aren’t of any use even if one discounts his reference to the word ‘degenerate.’”

I guess they wouldn’t have liked Francis Schaeffer either.