Recently, Catholic Answers received a kind and enlightening correspondence from Cristophe Costi, a Lutheran pastor from Germany and the recent author of Mary, Who Are You?: An Astonishing Look Beyond the Protestant Horizon.
When we learned that Cristophe’s book was inspired in part by our own Tim Staples’s Behold Your Mother, we couldn’t help asking if he might be interested in answering a couple of questions from us, ranging in topics from Protestants’ and Catholics’ dialogue on Marian doctrines to the state of Christianity in modern Europe. Below you will find Cristophe’s gracious responses.
Catholic Answers: Can you tell us a little about yourself?
Christophe Costi: I am German and French, born in 1988. I am married, and we have a son.
I was raised in the Lutheran Church in Germany and studied Lutheran theology, but my faith also has, among others, Catholic, Messianic Jewish, and Charismatic elements. I am always in dialogue with other Christian traditions because I believe this to be enormously enriching for my personal faith and for the growing together of Christians toward more unity.
The most important thing to know about me is that I gave my life to Jesus in late October 2005.
CA: Your book’s subtitle mentions “the Protestant horizon.” Can you explain what that means? What is the general Protestant conception of Mary?
CC: I used a German idiom for my subtitle, which literally means “to look beyond the plate’s edge.” The English “thinking outside the box” comes close to it. What I mean is that we Protestants (like all Christians) have to look beyond the borders of our own denominations and to engage in dialogue with what other Christians believe. By thinking beyond what we know and believe now, we can uncover hidden spiritual treasures that widen our horizon and deepen our understanding of the Bible.
Mary is a good example. In general, Protestants wholeheartedly agree that the Mother of Jesus is an example of courageous faith that holds true to Gods promises even in the weirdest and most painful circumstances. But in Protestantism, Mary appears only briefly in the Apostle’s Creed many of us cite on Sunday or in our Nativity plays around Christmas.
I can’t remember having heard a single sermon on Mary, let alone an honest dialogue with the Catholic view on her. In a nutshell, all I heard about Mary in Protestantism is, more or less, “She is the virgin mother of Jesus. Oh, and all the Catholic stuff is wrong, of course.” That is what I would like to change.
CA: How would you rank these Catholic Marian doctrines on a scale of difficulty for Protestants to accept?
- Assumption
- Immaculate Conception
- Perpetual Virginity
- Mother of God
- Virgin Birth
CC: The Virgin Birth (5) is, except in theologically liberal traditions, a basic belief in Protestantism.
Concerning the Mother of God (4), I think this Marian title squares perfectly with our Christology, which affirms Jesus as fully God and fully human, but for many, it might sound too “Catholic.”
Many Protestants will immediately answer the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity (3) with the counter-question “Where is this in the Bible?”, being unaware of biblical hints interpreted by Catholics to support it.
The Immaculate Conception (2) surely raises some Protestants’ blood pressure. They feel that it threatens Jesus’ uniqueness, he being the only human sinless in himself.
Finally, the Assumption (1) is the hardest pill to swallow from these five. From a Protestant point of view, the Catholic Church demands that this doctrine be believed by all Christians without the slightest hint of biblical support, which goes straight against the Protestant grain to ground all doctrine in the Bible alone.
CA: Where can Catholics and Lutherans agree on Mary?
CC: At present, a big part of Catholic Mariology is still, I think, unacceptable to most Protestants. But, as I hope to demonstrate in my book, many positive surprises are waiting to be discovered. We need a sincere and constructive dialogue to identify misunderstandings and prejudices that hinder a real mutual understanding. That, in turn, might help to see that many things we think separate us actually don’t necessarily have to. If we learn to discuss in a loving and respectful way what the Bible says and what it does not say, many “problems” might become less unthinkable.
CA: Where might Catholics have difficulty understanding where Protestants are coming from when it comes to Mary?
CC: Many factors contribute to this, but let me outline the following one. Catholic thinking sees the history of Christian theology as a process of organic growth. God has given the Bible, his written word, once and for all, but its truths are to be unfolded by the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. As a result, Catholic exegesis emphasizes that not all truths of faith pop up right to the surface of Scripture. Instead, many of them are like pieces of a puzzle that have to be joined together by and by to get the whole picture. So, to Catholic theology, it seems natural that not everything the Church believes can or must be traced down to one or two explicit biblical verses, but becomes clearer by joining together biblical insights in the course of Sacred Tradition.
Protestantism agrees in principle. For example, we share the belief in the Trinity even though there is not one single verse in the Bible that says “God is one God but a unity of Father, Son, and Spirit.” This is the picture that forms before our eyes when we combine everything Scripture says about Jesus and the Holy Spirit. So Catholics and Protestants agree that some biblical teachings are explicit, whereas others are implicit and require more prayerful in-depth research to be uncovered.
When it comes to Mary, however, many Protestants claim that Catholic Mariology is neither an explicit nor an implicit part of the Bible, but simply absent. This means that it is seen not as a legitimate unfolding of biblical doctrine, but as postbiblical Catholic legends.
To me, this is an important point to start from if we want to engage in theological dialogue. Where do Catholics see biblical roots of their teachings about Mary? Where we find such, Protestants might still not agree wholeheartedly, but perhaps some can begin to see Catholic views on the Mother of God as not that big an obstacle to more unity.
CA: What would you like to see change in the average Lutheran’s understanding of and relationship with Mary?
CC: When I was diving into the literature for my book, it was a fascinating and game-changing thought that everything taught about Mary actually points to Jesus. All Mary has and is, she has and is only in and through her son. What God has done and continues to do in her life is a reflection of his love, grace and wisdom.
So I came to understand that Catholic Mariology does not want to lift her up so high that she outshines Jesus (which is, sadly, exactly what many Protestants think it does, pointing rightly at some undue forms of veneration of Mary in popular Catholicism). Catholic Mariology wants to proclaim how, when we look at Mary, we are led on into the worship of Jesus.
This is a crucial point to understand, and I am convinced that it can help to open some inner Lutheran barriers. On the other hand, the strong Protestant focus on Jesus can help some Catholics to deepen their understanding of the connection between Jesus and his Mother.
CA: If you imagine Catholics and Protestants coming to a mutual understanding of Mary’s identity and role in the Christian faith, what does that look like?
CC: That is difficult to fathom. I think we will have reached an important milestone if we can value the contribution the other side makes to a fuller, Jesus-focused understanding of Mary, even if we don’t fully embrace it.
In other words, I wish that Catholics and Protestants could look at each other’s approach to Mary without saying, “How can you believe such a nonsense?”, but rather “How good that this is part of our common faith’s doctrinal treasure!” To achieve this milestone, we have to open up our Bibles and learn to understand Scripture’s message through the lenses of our respective Catholic and Protestant brothers and sisters in Jesus. I’m excited to see where the dialogue about our differences, real or alleged, is going to take us from there on.
CA: Americans read a lot of news articles about how Christianity in Europe is dying, and no one cares about Jesus anymore. What should Americans understand about the faith life in Europe?
CC: I can only give an opinion about my own country, Germany, but I think much may be comparable to the situation in other European nations.
First of all, yes, there are serious challenges. Historically, as far as I can see, the Age of Enlightenment has had a far greater impact on Europe than on America. The deconstruction of biblical truth through historical criticism is much more deeply rooted in our academic world, and this de facto monopoly in the mainline denominations far outweighs the presence of Bible-believing conservative theology. These developments have a lasting impact, especially on the traditional churches (Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed), but in recent years, we also notice signs of dissolution in independent evangelical churches. We hear of an increasing number of conflicts over topics like sexual ethics, the underlying problem often being differences in our view of the Bible as the word of God and the influence of the omnipresent ideology of human autonomy.
On the other hand, we have a rich spiritual heritage that continues to fertilize the spiritual soil in Europe. And we witness how God is acting here and now. In England, for example, a “quiet revival” is said to have taken place in recent years: despite all prior surveys that prognosticated further decline, church attendance among young people has multiplied dramatically between 2018 and 2024 (women: 3 to 12 percent, men: 4 to 21 percent). Christian refugees from Iran, where a large-scale awakening seems to take place in the underground church, migrate here and enrich the body of Christ in Europe. In Germany, a great number of prayer houses have been founded all across the country in recent decades, along with—a great personal joy to me—a Messianic Jewish Academy in Berlin.
Those are only a few examples, but they confirm what we’ve always known from the Bible: God continues to send out his Word, and it won’t come back empty (Isa. 55:11).