Are we all the "offspring" of Mary? How do Protestants interpret this verse?

[Good_Fella]

The Church is never referred to as a woman; the bride of Christ is the Holy City that comes down from Heaven-please read Rev 21:9-10. The false church is referred to as a woman-Rev 17. So-no we are not the offspring of Mary, but of Abraham.

The bride and the wife of the Lamb is the Church, the new Jerusalem (cf. Rev 21: 2,10).

But the Jerusalem above is freeborn, and she is our mother.
Galatians 4, 26

For I am jealous of you with the jealousy of God, since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
2 Corinthians 11, 2

“Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her.”
Ephesians 5, 22-25

Then the dragon became angry with the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring, those who keep God’s commandments and bear witness to Jesus.
Revelation 12, 17

The Jews rejected the Messiah. So the woman cannot only represent Israel. We also have allusions to both the Church and Mary in the symbol of the woman, who gave birth to the male child (v13). Like Israel, Mary gave birth to the savior, but the rest of her offspring are those who bear witness to Jesus and comprise the Church.

You say Catholics are of one mind. But the fact is there has been a debate going on for hundreds of years if Mary died or not.

The question of Mary’s end in this life hasn’t yet been defined as an article of faith by the Magisterium. So there is no disunity of faith in this regard. Peter and Paul debated whether the converted Gentiles ought to be circumcised and follow the Jewish dietary laws, but their common faith in the resurrection of Christ was unaffected just as our common faith in the Assumption holds in spite of the question of whether Mary had died and our differing opinions in a low-keyed private sphere. We actually don’t give this question that much thought to the point of debate. Pope Pius Xll left this question open in his Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus.

ST. Bernard says Mary was not Immaculate only Jesus was and he is canonized as a saint. Father Pacwa says he was wrong. That is not unity!

St. Bernard was piously expressing a personal theological opinion long before belief in the Immaculate Conception was universally celebrated in the western Church in the 15th century and became dogma in 1854. In Mediaeval time, this doctrine was not yet an established article of faith. Once the Feast of the Immaculate Conception was instituted in the West, all religious clerics had to take an oath to defend this doctrine pending a dogmatic definition. Again, it isn’t a question of a disunity of faith. For theological reasons of his own, Aquinas had his doubts, but he said he would give his full assent to this doctrine if it were declared a dogma of the Church. He was humbly aware of his own fallibilty in his theological speculations.

Jesus alone Mediates. He brought God and Man back to full fellowship, by being the perfect sacrifice, dying and raising from the dead. We don’t or can’t do it. Read all of Hebrews. Jesus is the High Priest.

Jesus is the one Mediator, but he doesn’t wish to mediate alone. Our participation in the mediation of Christ completes what our Lord alone has accomplished for the redemption of humankind. It is in and through Christ that many souls are saved by the grace of God through our intercessory prayers and self-sacrifices in his name. (cf. 1 Tim 2:1-4; Col 1:24).

Pax Christu :harp: