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graceandglory
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Perhaps we could go read the documents from the general council of Ephesus, and see if there is evidence of that.
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graceandglory
Guest
History and the study of languages and literature does in fact reveal the opposite.
Your understanding is incorrect, and you don’t have to be a Catholic to recognize that.
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placido
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No need to waste our time. Such evidence does not exist. Publisher was simply mistaken in believing that the council was concerned with creating a goddess for pagan converts to Christianity.
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Alexander_Roman
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What you’ve said is, in my view, perfectly legitimate and sociologically true.
There is also a “feminine presence” in the Hebrew Scriptures, such as in Psalm 45:9 “At your right hand stands the queen in gold from Ophir etc.” King Solomon’s mother was likewise seated on a throne equal to his and was crowned at his right hand etc.
At the great Marian Shrine(s) of Chartres, there is an actual festival of a seated Virgin with Child which became the prototype of the image of Our Lady of Chartres.
Early Christians honoured that image (and there is an ancient icon of it in the crypt of the Cathedral. They believed God revealed to the pagan Druids about a Virgin that would give birth to a Child which the Druids venerated even before Christ. The date of this feast-day is given as “100 BC.”
I see nothing wrong with supposing that the Mother of Jesus Christ fulfills a spiritual longing in the human soul and heart and that pre-Christian peoples celebrated this longing with such images. Christian missionaries would convert entire tribes and peoples by relating Christianity to a pagan image/story already existing among the unbaptized. The Egyptian Ankh Cross, for example, was compared to the Cross of our Lord by Greek missionaries and this helped convert the Egyptians quickly. Did not St Paul do the same with his reference in Athens to the pagan altar to the “Unknown God?”
Later, the Church’s Fathers would go so far as to compare the writings of pagan philosophers to a kind of “Old Testament” whereby pagan peoples were prepared for the message of the Gospel.
There are Orthodox churches that depict, in iconographic form, the philosophers Plato, Aristotle and Socrates et al. And St Augustine did say that the pagan Greeks “knew about the true religion” and so on.
Your comment is very erudite and very insightful!
Alex
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Alexander_Roman
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Well, John Calvin certainly believed not only in the Virgin Birth, but also that the Mother of Christ our God was a virgin throughout her life. He also called her “Mother of God” which is not in Scripture.
Do these also contradict Scripture? Not at all - simply because they are not directly mentioned in Scripture does not mean they contradict the Bible. They do, however, go beyond it.
Martin Luther also believed that Mary was sanctified by the Holy Spirit from her Conception and was taken up bodily to Heaven. (Yes, when it comes to this, I’m a Lutheran!
).John de Satge is an Evangelical Anglican theologian who has written extensively on the Marian doctrines and their relation to the Scriptures. I would recommend him as he explicates the entire subject much more lucidly and within the Evangelical Christian framework than I ever could. For example, there are issues for Evangelicals that just don’t come up for me as an Eastern Catholic. John de Satge affirms that the Immaculate Conception et al. goes beyond Scripture, but serves to underscore the “Evangelical pulse” issues.
Alex
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KathleenGee
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I also believe the pagans were being prepared for Christ in their own traditions.
The Aztec Montezuma had a dream of ships that had sails with a large cross laden with white men. Mary first appeared next to the site of Aztec goddess of peace. And you take that placement in context of the daily human sacrifice the Conquistadors witnessed. It was horrifying and many neighboring Indian tribes had their teenagers kidnapped and had their hearts torn out, all to appease the night god so the sun would return the next day.
Mary’s tilma used the Aztec form of communication – the pictograph to reach the pagan Indians and was responsible for their great conversion to Christianity and the prayers of saintly Bishop Zumarraga answered. In turn, with these massive conversions, he was able to have local Indians developed, they themselves became professors and then the bishop established local universities for the Indian professors and the people. He also gave women and girls the right to an education hundreds of years before the Anglos gave us ours in America.
St. Paul says in Romans that all people are given faculties to recognize the presence of God in their own souls, in nature around them, and the use of reason.
The Aztec Montezuma had a dream of ships that had sails with a large cross laden with white men. Mary first appeared next to the site of Aztec goddess of peace. And you take that placement in context of the daily human sacrifice the Conquistadors witnessed. It was horrifying and many neighboring Indian tribes had their teenagers kidnapped and had their hearts torn out, all to appease the night god so the sun would return the next day.
Mary’s tilma used the Aztec form of communication – the pictograph to reach the pagan Indians and was responsible for their great conversion to Christianity and the prayers of saintly Bishop Zumarraga answered. In turn, with these massive conversions, he was able to have local Indians developed, they themselves became professors and then the bishop established local universities for the Indian professors and the people. He also gave women and girls the right to an education hundreds of years before the Anglos gave us ours in America.
St. Paul says in Romans that all people are given faculties to recognize the presence of God in their own souls, in nature around them, and the use of reason.
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Alexander_Roman
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Actually, St John the Evangelist was an actual relative of Christ. The point is that John Calvin himself affirmed that the Virgin Mary was a virgin throughout her life, despite the reference to the brothers and sisters of Christ.
Why would Calvin make such an “unbiblical” statement?
He also, as someone knowing Koine Greek, realized not only the tradition of the Church in this respect, but that the words for “brother and sister” could mean any number of relatives.In the Eastern Church (which the Reformers were familiar with as well), Saint Joseph had six children by another wife who had died earlier of course. All six became disciples of Christ and the four sons became church leaders and bishops. They were, of course, “brothers and sisters of Christ” - but are NEVER called “children of the Virgin Mary.”
The deuterocanonical books of the New Testament were read widely by the early Christians in the first centuries and while they did not figure in the canon of the New Testament, the “data” they contained were never questioned as anything but true. Those books figured prominently in the liturgical feasts of the Entrance into the Temple of the Virgin Mary, for example, and for the Assumption of the Virgin on August 15 (which the Reformers kept in their calendars).
In any event, it was only in the 19th century that certain Protestants questioned this whole issue. It certainly doesn’t come from John Calvin or the other Reformers who, among other things, continued to say the Hail Mary, even liturgically (e.g. Oecolampadius - who said that a lack of veneration for the Virgin Mary is a “proximate sign of eternal damnation in a soul”).
I think any good Scriptural study would include the Christian faith milieu and ecclesial context in which the Scriptures were formed, written and codified.
I would also venture to guess that the idea that the Holy Spirit somehow became dormant in the Church after the Scriptures were canonized probably led to the 19th century views of some sects, such as the Mormonsm, the Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses concerning an apostasy in the Church. The Church Fathers continued to write and teach the Scriptures and the theology it espoused for years after, and the Church herself defended orthodox doctrine in her Ecumenical and Local Councils.
That process, unbroken from the start, continues today.
Ultimately, the Scriptures were written as the core of the Apostolic tradiition within such a tradition/ecclesial milieu. It cannot be divorced from that. The view that when we read the Scriptures we will all have the same understanding of theology etc. is simply untenable and Evangelical Protestants themselves are living proof of the falseness of this perspective - something anyone, even unbelievers, can readly see for themselves.
Alex
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jlhargus
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JL: And that IS the Churches TEACHING, God ALONE possesses OMNIPOTENCE. All Catholics agree including Liguori.
JL: No, the ACT OF CLAIMING those attributes in and of oneself. When Peter walked on water or raised a dead child, that was an attribute of God. Peter did those things not in and of himself, but thru God’s GRACE, sharing, giving that attribute to Peter.
JL: The rest of the story; " From the omnipotent Son the Mother **was made **omnipotent The Son is omnipotent by nature, the Mother of grace, inasmuch as she obtains from God whatsoever she asks. …[St. Alphonsus De Liguori, Dignity and Duties of the Priest. II, pg414, bold and enlarged print added by me]“She is omnipotent, for the queen, according to all laws, enjoys the same privileges as the king; and since the son’s power also belongs to the mother, this Mother is made omnipotent by an omnipotent Son.”-Saint Alphonsus Liguori (September 27, 1696 – August 1, 1787) was an Italian Catholic Bishop, spiritual writer, theologian, and founder of the Redemptorists, an influential religious order. He was canonized in 1839 by Pope Gregory XVI and declared a Doctor of the Church.
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KathleenGee
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Alexander,…thanks for the information on Calvin…and providing more context.
Many fundamentalists would do well to consider that as the Jews have their history, so do the Christians.
Many fundamentalists would do well to consider that as the Jews have their history, so do the Christians.
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jpaul1953
Guest
Dear Publisher,
FYI… Mary is called the Queen Mother because her son is king. Recall if you will the queen in the Jewish faith. The most prominent was Queen Bathsheba, her son was king, Solomon, and the mother is queen. Why,you might ask? Because the kings had many concubines and sometimes many wives through the conquering of tribes amd such always made the king’s mother the Queen Mother…it’s biblical
Jesus is King of Heaven and Earth. Mary is the Queen Mother of Heaven and Earth since her son is king. Also the Queen Mother had the people bring their request to her as not to bother the King. So the Queen Mother would intercede in behalf of the people just as the Chruch teaches today. \
I hope this helps a little
Joe
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Publisher
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Friend,
I understand the “Catholic version” of Marian dogma…there is a long history involved in Marian beliefs and development…the influences which attributed to it’s development was fostered by the pagan “need” of a “goddess”…Mary filled that void as the “Mother of God”…“Queen of Heaven”…titles and positions many of the pagan goddesses…especially Isis…held in Roman belief.
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KathleenGee
Guest
Well, I just met a pagan woman who is practicing in the Celtic practices, and said what she likes about Catholicism is its recognition of Mary as the Mother of God…that is how she sees it…and that we have a place for women in our church. (She also says they are gentle people against all forms of violence.)
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jlhargus
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JL: Yes I do believe, if Mary asks Jesus, it will be done, because Mary’s will and command is that God’s will be done, not her will, as do all the saints in heaven. I recognize Liguori’s remarks as HYPERBOLLY (exaggeration), to make a point. Do I, or Liguori believe that Mary is omnipotent and commands God in and of herself? No, only thur the GRACE of God, knowing his will, being perfectly united to God in love.
JL: And that IS the Churches TEACHING, God ALONE possesses OMNIPOTENCE. All Catholics agree including Liguori.
JL: No, the ACT OF CLAIMING those attributes in and of oneself is blasphemy. When Peter walked on water or raised a dead child, Acts9:32-43, that was an attribute of God. Peter did those things not in and of himself, but thru God’s GRACE, sharing His attributes, with Peter. Just as he shares His life, thru GRACE, with us in giving us ETERNAL LIFE, an ATTRIBUTE of God, thru the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
JL: The rest of the story; " From the omnipotent Son the Mother **was made **omnipotent The Son is omnipotent by nature, the Mother of grace, inasmuch as she obtains from God whatsoever she asks. …[St. Alphonsus De Liguori, Dignity and Duties of the Priest. II, pg414, bold and enlarged print added by me]“She is omnipotent, for the queen, according to all laws, enjoys the same privileges as the king; and since the son’s power also belongs to the mother, this Mother is made omnipotent by an omnipotent Son.”-Saint Alphonsus Liguori (September 27, 1696 – August 1, 1787) was an Italian Catholic Bishop, spiritual writer, theologian, and founder of the Redemptorists, an influential religious order. He was canonized in 1839 by Pope Gregory XVI and declared a Doctor of the Church.
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Brendan
Guest
That word is used in other contexts as well, for close relatives, or even friends.
For example, St. Paul used it in his letter to the Galacians.
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placido
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Simply because you say so, or did the council fathers argue that the title “Mother of God” was fostered by the pagan need of a goddess? Where did you get this false information from?
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Alexander_Roman
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Alexander_Roman
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pablope
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Well said…Actually, St John the Evangelist was an actual relative of Christ. The point is that John Calvin himself affirmed that the Virgin Mary was a virgin throughout her life, despite the reference to the brothers and sisters of Christ.
Why would Calvin make such an “unbiblical” statement?
**
Alex
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Calvin_95
Guest
How can it when it contradicts what God has said; is your authority greater than He?
I accept the Word of God over the precepts of men. If you can show how your Mary dogmas and bull coincide with Scripture, then you have something to debate. Scripture leaves no room for debate; that is how clear it is. The only reason this thread exists is do to the precpts of men over the authority and plain word of God in my opinion.
What? What intentions are you referring to? When Jesus could not care for His biological mother; it was Jewish tradition that the next oldest brother take on the responsibility. According to Matthew, Mark and Luke; Jesus well defined who was His mother, brother and sisters are and His biological brothers were not qualified as they were not BELIEVERS, so Jesus commanded His “spiritual brother” John to assume the responsibility. Jesus biological brothers were not converted till after the resurrection. I can assure you that all of them took good care of Mary until her physical death because they were Christians.
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Calvin_95
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If God were born in the sense that you use it, then He is not eternal. Since God is eternal, always existed, then how can He be born? God came into the world in human flesh through the birth canal of a woman identified in Scripture as Mary. Think about this; was God everywhere when God-man, Jesus, was in the womb? Is God omnipresent or not?
Glad you admit your error in the indirect route and did not care for the way you try to twist what I said to distract from your own error.
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