Protestant teaching of Mary

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AugustTherese said:
Are you sure, brother?
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I was answering the question to the best of my ability from the teaching and experience of being an American Evangelical.

As for your question to me. I haven’t seen anything (Biblical or historical) that would make me think any different.
 
Some people think that they are asleep until the resurrection of the body. There might be other variants.
 
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SeriousQuestion said:
What does favor mean in this context? Is favor used more or is it grace?
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It is my understanding that grace generally means favor. What we typically mean is that Mary was given special status because she was chosen by God.
 
Southern Baptists are very anti-alcohol so I probably heard the least about the Wedding at Cana compared to all miracles and what I did here was mostly concerned with making sure we knew it wasn’t real alcohol.
 
lanman87 said:
As for your question to me. I haven’t seen anything (Biblical or historical) that would make me think any different.
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“Let those, therefore, who deny that the Son is by nature from the Father and proper to his essence deny also that he took true human flesh from the ever-virgin Mary" - Saint Athanasius(Discourses Against the Arians 2:70 [A.D. 360]).

“Heretics called Antidicomarites are those who contradict the perpetual virginity of Mary and affirm that after Christ was born she was joined as one with her husband" -Saint Augustine(Heresies 56 [A.D. 428]).

“[T]he Word himself, coming into the Blessed Virgin herself, assumed for himself his own temple from the substance of the Virgin and came forth from her a man in all that could be externally discerned, while interiorly he was true God. Therefore he kept his Mother a virgin even after her childbearing” - Saint Cyril of Alexandria (Against Those Who Do Not Wish to Confess That the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God 4 [A.D. 430]).

“Christ, our Savior, was the real and natural fruit of Mary’s virginal womb . . . This was without the cooperation of a man, and she remained a virgin after that.” -Martin Luther
{Luther’s Works, eds. Jaroslav Pelikan (vols. 1-30) & Helmut T. Lehmann (vols. 31-55), St. Louis: Concordia Pub. House (vols. 1-30); Philadelphia: Fortress Press (vols. 31-55), 1955, v.22:23 / Sermons on John, chaps. 1-4 (1539)}

That took me 10 minutes on Google.
 
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From its pure origins, it has descended to the level of vituperative accusation since the reformation.
 
I mean, I get what you’re saying as a Catholic, I’m just trying to answer from a Protestant perspective. A lot of that stuff comes from sources that Protestants reject anyway, so it’s not likely to be persuasive to them.
 
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AugustTherese said:
There is no Saint in Heaven that was not piously devoted to Our Blessed Mother.
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I’m sure there are saints who didn’t have a particularly strong Marian devotion.

I’m sure there are many people in Heaven (not formally canonized Saints) who had no Marian devotion at all, unless you believe every non-Catholic is in hell.
 
BoomBoomMancini said:
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AugustTherese:
There is no Saint in Heaven that was not piously devoted to Our Blessed Mother.
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I’m sure there are saints who didn’t have a particularly strong Marian devotion.

I’m sure there are many people in Heaven (not formally canonized Saints) who had no Marian devotion at all, unless you believe every non-Catholic is in hell.
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I didn’t say there weren’t saints who placed a very heavy emphasis on Mary. Certainly, you can find plenty of examples.
 
Yeah some of us are orthodox Catholics who assent to the Marian dogmas but just have no emotional connection to her at all.
 
BoomBoomMancini said:
I didn’t say there weren’t saints who placed a very heavy emphasis on Mary. Certainly, you can find plenty of examples.
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There is not one Saint, that we know of, that was not piously devoted to Our Blessed Mother.
 
catholic1seeks said:
I believe all the original Protestant Reformers – Luther, Calvin, etc. – accepted Mary’s perpetual virginity.
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My understanding (not an expert) is that Calvin was ambivalent about it, but other Reformed theologians like Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger did believe in it.
 
First, most Protestants do not have any dogmatic statements about Mary, particularly de fide requirements to believe in the Marian dogmas that were infallibly defined at Trent or beyond. You have two camps, those who believe in the Marian traditions that cropped up in the 2nd Century and beyond, and those that adhere to the apostolic teaching of Mary in the gospels. In other words it varies because there is no solid scriptural evidence for the Marian dogmas, which is why we are not dogmatic about it.

What we can affirm, Mary is the mother of God, in the sense that Jesus who is the Son of God is the second person of the Trinity.

We agree that Mary was graced with the honor and task of raising Jesus.

We believe that Mary and Joseph were married, I have never heard a protestant question that so I will be honest, that kind of confuses me. I wasn’t even aware that was a controversy in the Roman Catholic church.

We believe that Mary was a virgin, and that Christ became incarnate through Mary by the Holy Spirt, just as the creeds declare. Most Protestants do not believe that Mary remained a virgin as there is no biblical evidence to suggest that she was, and evidence to suggest that she and Joseph did have children together. Some however believe she remained a virgin and that Jesus brothers and sisters were from another relationship.

Generally we don’t even mess with the question that Joseph was a widower. The Bible doesn’t speak to it and we don’t particularly place much emphasis in it or in the apocryphal and gnostic works that suggest he was.

Hope that addresses your questions.
 
ltwin said:
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catholic1seeks:
I believe all the original Protestant Reformers – Luther, Calvin, etc. – accepted Mary’s perpetual virginity.
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My understanding (not an expert) is that Calvin was ambivalent about it, but other Reformed theologians like Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger did believe in it.
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“He turns, in September 1522, to a lyrical defense of the perpetual virginity of the mother of Christ . . . To deny that Mary remained ‘inviolata’ before, during and after the birth of her Son, was to doubt the omnipotence of God . . . and it was right and profitable to repeat the angelic greeting - not prayer - ‘Hail Mary’ . . . God esteemed Mary above all creatures, including the saints and angels - it was her purity, innocence and invincible faith that mankind must follow. Prayer, however, must be . . . to God alone . . .
‘Fidei expositio,’ the last pamphlet from his pen . . . There is a special insistence upon the perpetual virginity of Mary.” - Zwingli

{G. R. Potter, Zwingli, London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976, pp.88-9,395 / The Perpetual Virginity of Mary . . ., Sep. 17, 1522}

‘The Virgin Mary . . . completely sanctified by the grace and blood of her only Son and abundantly endowed by the gift of the Holy Spirit and preferred to all . . . now lives happily with Christ in heaven and is called and remains ever-Virgin and Mother of God.’ - Bullinger
{In Hilda Graef, Mary: A history of Doctrine and Devotion, combined ed. of vols. 1 & 2, London: Sheed & Ward, 1965, vol.2, pp.14-5}
 
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