Sometimes it really does seem there’s something about Mary.
Last year, Protestant (Episcopalian) influencer Austin Suggs released videos and articles describing his reservations about Catholic Marian doctrines, saying they are effectively the most central concern he has with the Catholic Church. Suggs—who I should note is one of my favorite modern Protestants because he is a true ecumenist and not a controversialist—argues that Marian dogmas seem to lack biblical support, that some forms of Marian devotion seem to risk obscuring Christ’s singular salvific role, and that Catholic dogmas effectively create a “doctrinal maximalism,” whereby acceptance of Marian dogmas becomes a test of communion.
Suggs is not unique in this concern. Reformed thinkers such as Michael Horton, R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur, and James White have all asserted their opposition to Catholic Marian theology on the grounds that it is unbiblical and obscures the unique role Christ plays in the salvific economy. And a lot of former Protestants who are now Catholic, including Scott Hahn, Francis Beckwith, Thomas Howard, Steve Ray, and Marcus Grodi, are on the record saying that the Marian dogmas were a significant obstacle to their own consideration of the Catholic Church. (They also now all unequivocally cite Mary as integral to their faith.)
If you want a point-by-point response to Suggs’ concerns about the biblical (and early Church) warrant for Catholic Marian doctrines, that already exists, thanks to many diligent Catholic apologists, including the always good work of Dave Armstrong. That is not my particular concern here. Rather, I’d like to talk more broadly about the curious phenomenon that is Protestant aversion, if not antipathy, to Marian dogmas.
As a former Presbyterian seminarian, I can relate. When I was a Reformed evangelical, Mariology was perhaps the biggest and easiest target when it came to criticizing the Catholic Church. Go look for verses in the New Testament that explicitly say that Mary was conceived without sin, that she was assumed into heaven, or that she was crowned queen of heaven. You won’t find them. Catholic proof-texting of Marian dogmas are all implicit and inferential—the angel Gabriel said Mary was “full of grace” (Luke 1:28); St. John describes a woman “clothed with the sun” (Revelation 12:1-6). Such verses certainly could point to Catholic doctrines of Mary. But the most persuasive means of doing so is not so much exclusive biblical exegesis as it is wedding them to Patristic sources and the traditions of the post-apostolic Church.
To acknowledge this is not to undercut the Marian dogmas, but to acknowledge a reality about a lot of historic Christian doctrines: Scripture can be cited to support them, but the reason Christians in the twenty-first century believe them has as much to do with extra-biblical factors such as tradition, ecumenical councils, and the hermeneutics and theology of later theologians. The word “Trinity,” for example, never appears in the New Testament; in vain will you look for a verse or collection of verses that explicitly uses the Nicene-Constantinopolitan trinitarian language now accepted by Catholics, Orthodox, and many Protestants.
That doesn’t mean the Trinity is unbiblical, or merely a product of the fanciful imaginations of later Christians. Rather, it illuminates the fact that the formulation of Christian doctrine has been a centuries-long process, involving contentious debates over biblical interpretation, Patristic theologizing, and even rational reflection. We look back at early ecumenical councils as if they were givens, but they were in fact quite controversial, drawing new, unprecedented lines in the sand regarding who was truly Christian and who was heretical. Sorry, Nestorius, Apollinaris of Laodicea, Eutyches, and Arius—Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon say you’re wrong.
Given this, there are a few salient issues per Protestant heartburn over modern Marian dogmas. The first is this: on what grounds does the Protestant reject ecumenical councils that affirm Marian dogmas—not only Ephesus and its celebration as Mary as theotokos (“God-bearer”), but also Constantinople II’s Aeiparthenos (“ever-virgin”), Second Nicaea’s approbation of the veneration of Marian images, and Vatican II’s re-affirmation of Mary’s bodily assumption into heaven? The Protestant requires an explanation for why certain councils are normative and others are not. And if the answer is simply that some councils taught biblical theology and others didn’t, well, that provokes the question of whose biblical theology.
That leads to the next inflection point: as much as Protestants assert that Marian dogmas are unbiblical because they are not explicitly described in the text, if we all acknowledge that we subscribe to beliefs that that are also not explicitly found in the Bible, the crux of the matter is whether we have grounds to argue that Mariology is unbiblical. For if the Marian dogmas are not found to conflict or contradict the teachings of Scripture (especially as understood by the early Church or ecumenical councils), then one must ask, what’s the hang-up?
The oft-cited Protestant argument that Mary in some manner distracts from or obscures the worship of Christ is, I think for any Protestant who actually studies the Catholic Church and its theology and praxis, quite demonstrably proved wrong. The Catholic Church is built upon the sacramental life, and all of the sacraments, all of them, are quite explicitly centered upon Christ and his grace, not Mary. Go to a Mass and tell me Mary is distracting everyone from Jesus. Again, the focus of the rosary is quite obviously to meditate upon the mysteries of the life of Christ and his salvific work. Any attention directed towards venerating Mary is done because of Christ.
Are there somewhere out there Catholics who, poorly catechized, treat Mary as in some sense co-equal to Christ, and worthy of veneration absent his grace? I’m sure—you can find people believing all manner of foolishness. But they do so in explicit opposition to what the Church teaches about Mary. One might as well say Protestantism is erroneous simply because evangelical radio host Harold Camping falsely predicted that the world would end in 2011.
Thus, when a Protestant contemplates the Marian dogmas, he needs to consider: what is their fruit? When you read Scott Hahn or Peter Kreeft, do you come away thinking, “Man, those former Protestants-turned-Catholics really have allowed Mary to obscure their worship of Christ and love of Scripture!”? Do Catholics who pray the rosary daily seem to be more holy or less holy, more or less devoted to obeying and loving Jesus?
I don’t doubt that Mary is a serious obstacle for Protestants. She certainly was for me. But Protestants should take a step back and ask, “Why is this such an obstacle for me?” You may realize that the answer stems from an inherited historic Protestant aversion to Mary that has very little to do with Scripture or the early Church. And if Catholic converts from Protestantism across the world consistently recognize that Mary, far from being a distraction, actually helps Catholics draw deeper to Christ, that might suggest the real origin of that Protestant aversion.