MARIOLATRY AND MARIOLOGY

Hugo McCord

According to Webster, Mariolatry (Gr. Maria, Mary, and latreia, worship) is the “worship of the Virgin Mary, regarded as carried to an idolatrous extreme: opprobrious term.” Mariology (Gr. Maria, Mary, and logos, word) is a word about Mary.

I. MARIOLATRY

Something is worse than the “worship of the Virgin Mary,” namely, infidelity. A Christian (?) university professor writes that Mary was a “sexually questionable woman.” The professor can not be called a Christian; he is an infidel.

To insinuate that she [Mary] was morally loose is insulting not only to this godly woman, but to the very act of the incarnation. What Scripture describes in terms of tender beauty is transformed into a scandal of the gutter. A miracle of untold wonder is explained away as a tale of common filth (Gregory Alan Tidwell, GOSPEL ADVOCATE, April 1993).

If Jesus was born of two earthly parents, he was wholly human, and no more divine than the rest of us. If Jesus was wholly human, he was not raised from the grave, nor can he raise anyone else. Christianity without the virgin birth is reduced simply to a social gospel for this life only.

However, as infidels destroy the beautiful history of Jesus’ virgin birth, the Catholic Church (both Roman and Orthodox) exalts Mary above all other women, above all the angels, even to the status of deity:

1. Because the Catholic Church holds to the false doctrine that all babies are sin-infested even before birth, which would include Mary’s baby Jesus, their theologians were forced to invent the “Immaculate Conception” doctrine that Mary herself was the one exception in all history to be born sinless. If Mary was born sinless, she would have no sin to hand down to her baby. Accordingly, Pope Pius IX in 1854 issued the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus. But biblically, all babies are born free of sin (Ezekiel 18:20; Matthew 19:14).

2. The Catholic Church, asserting that Mary as a three year old made a vow in the temple to live in “perpetual virginity,” not only is asserting an impossibility of a three year old child knowing anything about sex, but also falsely makes virginity a perpetual virtue. Biblically, virginity is a virtue before marriage (1 Corinthians 6:9; 7:2), but not after marriage (1 Corinthians 7:3-5). “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed is unstained” (Hebrews 13:4).

3. The Catholic Church teaches that Mary, like Jesus, was sinless. Biblically, only Jesus lived entirely without sin (Romans 3:23; Hebrews 4:15). Mary sinned in not searching for her 12 year old son for a full day (Luke 2:44).

4. Despite the fact that two tombs are shown to tourists where Mary’s body lies, one in Jerusalem near the garden of Gethsemane, and one in Ephesus, where she lived in John’s house, “her bodily assumption into heaven after death became an article of faith in 1870” (David Anderson, RELIGIOUS NEWS SERVICE, in THE OREGONIAN 5-22-93), for Roman Catholics, and in 1950 was proclaimed by Pope Pius XII in a papal bull Munificentissimus Deus. Accordingly, Roman Catholics celebrate August 15 as “The Feast of the Assumption.”

5. The Catholic Church teaches its members to pray to Mary as their intercessor, but biblically prayers are directed only to God and to Jesus (Ephesians 5:20; Acts 7:59).

On July 27, 1975, Scott Little, Lois McCord, and I were in Florence, Italy. A tourist guide took us to the Catholic Cathedral. In the auditorium the guide related this unbelievable incident: she said a lady came in alone one morning to kneel and pray. High above, near the ceiling some painters were working. They looked down and saw her, but she did not see them. As she was quiet in prayer, a painter spoke loudly, “I am Jesus,” and kept saying it. Suddenly the lady looked up and said, “You shut up; I am talking to your mother!”

6. In more exaltation of Mary, she is called Dei Genetrix, the “Mother of God.” True, Jesus is God (John 1:1; 20:28), but Scripture never calls Mary the “Mother of God,” a title elevates her to the status of deity. Simply to call her the “mother of Jesus” (John 2:1, 3) leaves her entirely human.

Many other titles that put her above the human level are heaped upon Mary: “Mother of the Church,” “Mary the Mediatrix,” “Mary the Protectress,” “Helper of All Mankind,” “Mary the Mother of All Believers,” and “Our Lady Queen of Martyrs.”

But Jesus did not exalt his mother above other women: “Whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:50; Mark 3:35). When a woman exclaimed, “Blessed is the womb that carried you, and the breasts that you sucked,” Jesus replied, “Blessed are they who hear and keep God’s word” (Luke 11:27-28).

7. People all over the world have reported appearances of Mary. The Vatican has not approved of all of them, but has approved “the events at Guadalupe, Lourdes, and Fatima” (James D. Davis, Knight-Ridder News Service, THE OREGONIAN, 5-22-93). With each sighting, some say, has come a miracle ... She reassures the visionary that she is the Virgin Mary, ... then relays a message-- ... pray, fast, say the rosary, do good deeds,” and the “sightings of Mary are on the increase,” while many priests reject the “purported apparitions,” while one says, “We need some maternal nagging” (James D. Davis, Ibid).

II. MARIOLOGY

In God’s eyes, motherhood is to be exalted. God could have sent Jesus into the world as a full-grown man. Instead, by way of the womb of a “woman” (Galatians 4:4) Jesus “became flesh” (John 1:14). If the Creator has thus chosen to honor motherhood, human beings should do no less!

Normally, women will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith and love and dedication with good sense (1 Timothy 2:15). I want the younger women to marry, to bear children, to manage the household, and to give no occasion for criticism (1 Timothy 5:14).

But a woman does not have to become a mother. If she chooses to remain single, yet putting the Lord first, the Scripture blesses her:

The unmarried woman and the virgin care about the Lord’s things, that they may be dedicated, both in body and spirit (1 Corinthians 7:34).

However, God’s plan for Jesus was for him to be formed in Mary’s womb, protected by a water bag, and in her ninth month to ride on a donkey’s back some 60 miles, Nazareth to Bethlehem. God could have planned for Jesus to be born in a palace. Instead Joseph and Mary were turned down at the inn. Mary said to Joseph,

“Take me down from the ass, for that which is in me presses to come forth.” ... Joseph took her down, and he found there a cave, and let her into it (THE PROTOEVANGELIUM OF JAMES XII, 10-14, a 2nd century apocryphal book).

In the cave was a stable, and

While they were there, the time came for her to give birth, and she delivered her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a feeding trough (Luke 2:6-7).

There, “God in the flesh was God in the straw.” Moving little arms, hungrily sucking a fist, he was like any other newborn baby.

After eight days Joseph and Mary took Jesus from Bethlehem to the temple in Jerusalem (Luke 2:21-24). There Simeon, a “righteous man,” led by “the Holy Spirit,” took [Jesus] in his arms and praised God” (Luke 2:28-25), but he also warned Mary that “a sword will pierce your soul” (Luke 2:35). Thus Mary knew that a tragedy was in store.

As time went on, Joseph and Mary became the parents of four more sons (James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon) and of at least two daughters (Mark 6:3). The last time that Jesus’ stepfather is mentioned was about a year (29 A.D.) before the crucifixion, when people asked, “Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?” (John 6:42).

Joseph, being an “honorable man” (Matthew 1:19), would have stood by Mary’s side at the cross if he had been alive. Mary, then, must have been a widow less than a year on crucifixion day (Friday. April 7, A.D. 30), “standing by the cross” (John 19:25), with “a sword,” as Simeon had predicted (Luke 2:35), figuratively piercing her “soul.”

Since Jesus was naked, or nearly naked (five garments having been taken off of him by the four soldiers of the crucifixion detail, John 19:23-24), likely Jesus’ mother could see Jesus’ bloody feet and some of the “blood and water” coming from his spear-pierced side (John 19:34). Many other people have been nailed to crosses, but has any other mother in all history watched as her son was being crucified?

Thank God, three people stood at the cross by Mary’s side: (1) her sister, Jesus’ aunt, also named “Mary”; (2) Mary Magdalene; (3) and John, a son of Zebedee, whom Jesus specially loved (John 13:23; 19:25-26; 20:2; 21:7, 20).

But where were Mary’s other six (or more) children (Mark 6:3)? Though Jesus’ “brothers did not believe in him” (John 7:5), why did they not stand by the cross to support their mother? Even if Jesus’ sisters did not believe in him, why did they not stand by the cross to support their heart-pierced mother?

The dying Jesus looked down from the cross and noticed that not one of Mary’s other children, his brothers and sisters, were there to support their widowed mother. Since none of Jesus’ blood-kin was standing by Mary’s side, Jesus was forced to turn to someone not in his family to take care of his widowed mother, his beloved John, saying to her, “Woman, behold! Your son,” and saying to John, “Behold! Your mother” (John 19:26-27). From “that hour” John “took her into his own home” (John 19:27).

Likely Jesus’ brothers and sisters were watching from a distance, and saw how their brother was cruelly treated, and perhaps heard him pray for his murderers, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Likely, on that Friday afternoon, they all became believers, because 43 days later (Matthew 12:40; Acts 1:3), on the day of Jesus’ ascension (Thursday, May 18, A.D. 30), when Jesus’ eleven apostles and some disciples (about one hundred and twenty) went to an “upstairs room” in Jerusalem to pray, in the group were “Mary, the mother of Jesus” and “his brothers” (Acts 1:14). Surely Luke’s word “brothers” is generic, including Jesus’ sisters.

Jesus’ brothers (and sisters?), now praying believers, likely were baptized on Pentecost Day (May 28, A.D. 30), being among the “about three thousand souls” baptized (Acts 2:41).

Later two of Jesus’ brothers, James and Judas (Jude) God used to write two of the New Testament books. Thus the sadness of their neglect of their mother on crucifixion day turned into gladness in the rejoicing that God had forgiven them and used them the rest of their lives as vessels of honor.

We happen to know that the after life of “James (the Lord’s brother, Galatians 1:19) points to a humble Christian man doing everything he could to please the Lord:

Hegesippus (140-175 A.D.), quoted in THE EPISTLES OF JAMES AND JOHN by Alexander Ross, reported that James spent so much time in the temple on his knees that they became as “horny” as the knees of a camel. Josephus (ANTIQUITIES, 20, 9, 1) reported that in 62 A.D. James was sentenced by the Sanhedrin (Ananus presiding) to death.

Clement of Alexandria (150-220 A.D. quoted by Robertson) wrote that James was flung from a temple gable. On the ground, continued Hegesippus (quoted by Eusebius, 311 A.D., Book II, 1, 2-5), James got on his knees and prayed, “I beg you, O Lord God, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Then he was stoned, and clubbed to death.

We do not know about the after life of Jesus’ brother Judas (Jude), but we believe he too was a faithful Christian and proud that he was a “brother of James” (Jude 1).

The last biblical word we have about Mary is that she was present in a prayer meeting of about 120 disciples after Jesus had gone back to heaven (Acts 1:14), but there is no reason to doubt her continued faithfulness to the one who not only was her son but also her Lord and Savior (John 14:6; Acts 4:12).

5-11-99