I am a dyed-in-the-wool Protestant. I have great appreciation for many aspects of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, but the Protestant Reformation was a necessary renewal movement that called the Church back to herself, back to her beginnings under the apostles. That said, Protestants often don’t know what to do with Mary.
We love the incarnation. We love Christmastime. But because Mary is made so much of in different parts of Christianity, we tend to overcorrect and only mention her during a Christmas pageant or maybe on Mother’s Day. But the holy mother of Christ matters. I don’t want to make converts from Rome uncomfortable, but I also don’t want us to throw the Marian baby out with the papal bathwater.
Mother of Who, Now?
She is the blessed Virgin. If she were not, we would have no salvation through Christ. She is the mother of God. If she were not, we would have no salvation through Christ. And so, we ought to immensely honor our sister in Christ, the mother of our Lord. And all God’s people said? If we do not, we are in danger of slipping into Nestorianism.
This is one of the early heresies about Jesus that the early church had to battle. Nestorius was an elder in the church who did not want to call Mary the Mother of God (theotokos – “God bearer”). He wanted to call her the Christ-bearer (chrisotokos) because he argued that God cannot undergo changes like death or birth. Like many heretics, he started with good intentions and proceeded to overstate things.
Cyril of Alexandria (the defender of Nicene orthodoxy over-against Nestorius) agreed that Jesus suffered in his own physical body, but the Son of God also suffered in his own physical body. This is because both his human and divine natures work together in the divine Person (or hypostasis). Because of the hypostatic union of Christ, we really can speak of God being born or God dying. We can rightly say with Paul, in 1 Cor.2:8, that they “crucified the Lord of glory”. God was crucified because the man Jesus was crucified, and the man Jesus is God.
The Jesus that grew in Mary’s womb was human in nature. A human body and a human soul. Supernaturally, her egg was fertilized under the ministry of the Holy Spirit (Luke’s Gospel says that she was “overshadowed” by the Spirit) in order to for a true human. And that true human was also God the Son. This is what the term Mother of God (theotokos) safeguards. She gave birth to his human nature, not his divine nature. But she birthed, mothered, and raised the Son of God. If she is not the mother of God, then Jesus is not God. As one theologian said, the Son is begotten from the Father before all time, and the Son is begotten of Mary, the mother of God, in time.
Mary, Mary, Not Contrary
I make much of this because in the Western Church calendar (for Protestants and the church of Rome), today is the feast day of St. Mary the Virgin. We know from John 19:26-27 that Jesus entrusted his mother into the care of his friend, the apostle John. We now from Irenaeus of Lyons (the disciple of Polycarp, the disciple of John) that John (and so also, Mary) lived in Ephesus until the reign of the Roman emperor, Trajan. There’s such a strong tradition that Mary lived out the rest of her days in Ephesus that there’s actually a little stone chapel on Mt. Koressos just outside the town to commemorate her home.
Those of us who try to pray the Daily Office get to pray her song, the Magnificat, every day for evening prayer. In the Roman tradition, this day (August 15th) commemorates Mary’s bodily assumption into heaven. Of course, that’s just an assumption (*rimshot). Since 1950, Roman Catholics have been obliged to believe this as dogma. While Rome goes too far in binding consciences to believe this, it might behoove us to remember that the Protestant Reformers reflected often and deeply on the blessed virgin.
The Swiss reformer, Ulrich Zwingli, in his 1530 treatise, A Reckoning of the Faith, said, “I believe and understand that the Son assumed flesh, because he truly assumed of the immaculate and perpetual Virgin Mary the human nature, yea, the entire man, who consists of body and soul.” While they strongly rejected Marian mediation and Rome’s over-emphasis, her immaculate sinlessness and alleged perpetual virginity were assumed and believed by the Reformers.
Protestant Piety, Marian Marvels
The Tetrapolitan Confession (1530), an Augsburg document that was prepared by Martin Bucer and Wolfgang Capito, says, “Mary and the saints are to be held in high esteem, even honored, but appropriate devotion is found not in prayer to them, but in following their holy examples.” The Confession of Basel (1534) by Oswald Myconius states that “we believe that [Christ] was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the pure, undefiled Virgin Mary.” In the second of Basel’s confessions, prepared and produced by Henrich Bullinger, we read, “From the undefiled Virgin Mary by the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, this Lord Christ, the Son of the living, true God, has assumed flesh which is holy through its unity with the Godhead in all things like unto our flesh yet without sin.” Chapter 11 of the Second Helvetic Confession (1566) calls Mary the “Ever-Virgin”, “most chastely conceived by the Holy Spirit.”
Devotion to Mary and the saints, for the Reformers, was all about imitation and galvanizing examples toward holiness. In the Church of England, article 2 of the Thirty-nine Articles declare that Christ “took man’s nature in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, of her substance.” The Westminster Confession of Faith and Shorter Catechism all affirm Mary’s virginity, Christ’s humanity, conception by the Spirit, and her substance being pass onto Jesus. And all the while, these confessional documents guard against idolatry, any other mediation than that of Christ, and placing the saints in their wrongful place in our piety.
John Calvin famously refused to call Mary the mother of God. Many have followed his lead even to his day, alas and alack. But with all the historic confessional language of “Virgin”, it’s most natural to view that as an abbreviation of her title “Ever-Virgin” that we see as early as Hippolytus of Rome, Irenaeus, Augustine, and Athanasius. Tim Perry has an excellent article going over this and I leaned on his work for much of the above citations.
We don’t have to agree with Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli on the perpetual virginity of Mary. In fact, I’m not convinced the dogma is actually necessary. But we can at least follow their admiration and affirmation of the faith and virtue of our sister in Christ, the mother of God and blessed virgin. If we can get past the smell of incense, these titles and adjectives will do us good in affirming the deity and humanity of Jesus, and the exemplary faith of the obedient handmaiden of the Lord who said “yes” to the incarnation that saved us.
O God, you have taken to yourself the blessed Virgin Mary, mother of your incarnate Son: Grant that we, who have been redeemed by his blood, may share with her the glory of your eternal kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. – collect for Saint Mary the Virgin, Book of Common Prayer