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Joe dissects the argument that the Presentation at the Temple in Luke 2 is proof that Mary sinned, because she had to make a “sin offering.”
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer, and I wanted to respond to an argument. I sometimes see Protestants raise against the Sinlessness of Mary. The argument is very simple. If Mary was sinless, then why does Luke 2 22 to 24 show her offering the required sin purification sacrifice commanded in Leviticus 12 for women after childbirth? And sure enough, Luke two describes Mary offering a sacrifice in the temple according to what is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtle doves are two young pigeons. Now, Luke is quoting Leviticus 12, which in most English translations says it’s about a sin offering to be made after a woman has born a son. So it looks like a slam dunk case Mary must have sent, and you’ll find even well-respected Protestant scholars making this argument. For example, norm Geisler and Ralph McKinsey argue in their book Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, that scripture disproves Mary’s Sinlessness because she even presented an offering to the Jewish priest arising out of her sinful condition, which was required by law.
This would not have been necessary if she were sinless, but if that’s right, what sin did Mary commit that required a sin offering? Leviticus 12 is about the offering women make after giving birth to a son, but hopefully no Christian thinks that this proves it was a sin for Mary to give birth to Jesus. So what is actually going on here as we’re going to see Leviticus 12 is talking about ritual purification after childbirth. It’s not talking about moral guilt. And there’s a fascinating aspect to the passage that the early Christians realized and many people today don’t, that Mary was explicitly exempted from needing to make this sacrifice, and yet she did so anyway. But if Mary didn’t need to make the sacrifice, then why did she? Well, speaking of sacrificial offerings you don’t need to make. I want to thank everyone who does just that over@shamelessjoe.com.
It’s wonderful to not need to take sponsors and you all make that possible. I try to show my gratitude by sharing cool perks like ad free episodes that drop a day early. I’m going to have a longer version of this episode along with things called Joe Notes that have sources used in each episode with a PDF cheat sheet so you can geek out on whatever the topic is, plus weekly live streams in which I answer patron questions. So if you want to join the party, come over to shameless joe.com if you’re already there. Thank you. So the first thing to know is that what Mary is offering in the temple is what’s called a hatta In Hebrew, this is often translated as SAN offering, but it’s actually a purification offering. The Jewish scholar Rabbi Jacob Milgram pointed out decades ago translating the Hebrew here is sin offering is inaccurate on all grounds, contextually morphologically and etymologically.
That is calling it a sin offering doesn’t really capture either what the Hebrew actually says or what the context means or what the sacrifice actually is. Now I’m going to spare you the finer details of the grammatical argument except to say that he points out that the Hebrew conjunction here always means purity or purification and other scholars agree. So there has been a shift among some scholars and some Bible translations to translate this as purification offering instead. But most people, and most Bibles still know it as sin offering. But even if you don’t know Hebrew, you can see that Milgram is right, that the offering is not principally about the forgiveness of sins. It’s about being purified to go before God. Leviticus actually prescribes a different type of sacrifice called the guilt offering for the forgiveness of moral transgressions. But the hatta is offered for instances in which you become ritually impure and couldn’t enter the temple.
Now, to be sure that could be because of some sin you’d committed either intentionally or unintentionally, but it could also happen for reasons having nothing to do with sin. For instance, if a woman menstruated or if a man had a bodily discharge that rendered you ritually unclean, and you needed to offer the hit habitat, likewise, think about the way sick people like lepers were treated. They had to announce that they were unclean. But the Bible isn’t saying that they are morally sinful for being lepers. The problem is that they’re potentially contagious and they’re also richly impure. And so if you were sick and then recovered, the priest would make a huta to render you clean again. Now the same rules applied if you touched a dead body say, now if you remember the parable of the Good Samaritan, this is what’s going on. The priest and Levite are worried about helping this man because he might already be dead and touching a dead body renders you impure and you can’t go into the temple.
You would need a purification offering an attack before you did so. But Jesus is clear that the priests and Levite are wrong in this instance. They shouldn’t be so worried about ritual impurity that they’re unwilling to help their neighbor. In fact, Jesus repeatedly criticizes those like the Pharisees who obsess about ritual impurity rather than about moral purity. Think about the difference like this. If you commit a mortal sin, you need to go to confession before mass. But if you go on a morning run and get all sweaty, you need to take a shower and change clothes before mass. So both of those things are in some way about going before the Lord in the right way, but it would be a mistake to conflate them or to assume that this means running and being sweaty as a sin. I can’t be too careful, but it’s not sinful.
Ancient Jews and early Christians understood this difference. As Rabbi Milgram points out, the ancient rabbinical commentators were very clear that these sacrifices are prescribed for specific physical impurities, whether that’s having given birth suffering from leprosy. In the case of a Nazarite touching a dead body and not one sage claims that the afflicted brings this sacrifice because of his sins. Indeed, this idea is vigorously denied. Milgram actually offers one example that is so clear. I’m not sure how someone would even argue against it in Exodus 29 when it’s talking about the right for the ordination of priests and for the consecration of the altar, a hatta, a purification offering is made for the altar. Now, obviously it makes no sense to say that the altar send and it needed to be forgiven. Rather the altar is being consecrated just as an individual be cleansed from all impurities before entering the temple or embarking on divine service.
Okay, so given all of that, why is Mary making a hatta in the temple 40 days after Christmas? Well, because childbirth makes you richly impure, and Leviticus 12 says that you were to make a purification offering 40 days later. This has nothing to do with sin here and everything to do with the fact that women have come in contact with blood during childbirth. That is why Leviticus 12 explicitly talks about the blood of her purifying. And again, hopefully no Christian is going to argue. This means it was sinful for Mary to give birth to Jesus or that the birth of Christ was a kind of transgression that needed a sin offering as atonement. Instead, the presentation of the temple is about exactly what Luke tells us. It’s about their purification according to the law of Moses. But there’s another dimension as well that I think is just fascinating here.
Leviticus 12 doesn’t just talk about a woman who has a son. It talks about a woman who conceives and bears a male child. On the surface, it might just sound like it’s spelling out the different stages of pregnancy like it does in Isaiah seven where it says that a virgin will conceive and bear a son. But in Isaiah seven, the verb used as hurrah, which just means conceive. But in Leviticus 12 here, the root word is actually coming from Zara, which means seed. The Hebrew here literally seems to be saying that a purification offering is needed when a woman receives seed and bears a male child. This might not seem like an important point. I mean, how else is a woman going to get pregnant? Well, there is one obvious exception, and early Christians like origin noticed remarkably quickly, I might add that Leviticus 12 literally does not apply to Mary because of the virgin birth.
Since Mary never received seed, she was free from the demands of the law, and yet she submits to the law. Anyway, that is, she knew she wasn’t bound by Leviticus 12 here, she could have just stayed home. So why doesn’t she? Well, for starters, it’s probably fair to point out that her neighbors wouldn’t have known the virginal nature of Jesus’s conception and birth. So rather than going around insisting, no, trust me, this was a virgin birth, she avoids scandalizing others by simply submitting to the law. And her son actually does something similar throughout his earthly ministry. For instance, in Matthew 17, Jesus points out that he and Peter are actually exempt from paying the temple tax yet to avoid giving scandal, causing offense, he performs a miracle and pays it for the two of them anyway. Now, this fact, Mary’s voluntary submission to the law would give rise to some beautiful reflections like this one from the venerable bead dearly beloved brothers.
Let us look more carefully at the words of the law which we have set before you, and we will see most clearly how Mary, God’s blessed mother and a perpetual virgin was along with the sun sheor most free from all objection to the law. Since the law says that a woman who had received seed and given birth was to be judged unclean, and that after a long period she, along with the offspring she had born were to be cleansed by victims offered to God. It is evident that the law does not describe as unclean that woman who without receiving man’s seed, gives birth as a virgin, nor does it so describe the son who is born to her, nor does it teach that she had to be cleansed by saving sacrificial offerings. So neither Mary nor Jesus are actually impure here. Neither one is in need of sacrificial offerings to purify them here.
And yet bead says, but as our Lord and Savior, who in his divinity was the one who gave the law when he appeared as a human being willed to be under the law so that he might redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. He’s quoting Galatians four there. So to his blessed mother, who by a singular privilege was above the law, nevertheless did not shun being made subject to the principles of the law for the sake of showing us an example of humility according to that saying of the wise man. And here he quotes, sir, act three. The greater you are, the more you should humble yourself in all things. So where is evangelicals like Geisler and McKinsey? See, and Mary’s purification a proof of her sinfulness. That argument is based on a misunderstanding of the attack and one which frankly treats Christmas as a sin that needs atoning.
The much older and better Christian reading is that Mary’s offering in the temple here points to her incredible humility and offering a purification sacrifice that strictly speaking, she didn’t need to offer. No, Luke two doesn’t show us that Mary was a sinner. But in fairness, Luke two by itself doesn’t show us that Mary wasn’t a sinner. I know many Protestants get very hung up on this Catholic teaching, understandably so, which is why you have people using Luke two as evidence that she did sin. They’re taught that Jesus was the only sinless human who ever lived. And since we’re not explicitly told in scripture that Mary never sinned or that she wasn’t immaculately conceived, therefore, it must not be true. But you may be surprised to find out that many early Christians believe that she was sinless. So if that’s not explicitly spelled out in scripture, why do so many early Christians believe she was without sin? Well, I explore one of those reasons right here. For Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.