Catholic apologist Joe Heschmeyer joins Cy Kellett to tackle a common concern among Protestants regarding the significance of Marian dogmas in Catholic teaching.
Transcript:
Caller: Having been a born-again Christian since 2015 and having even done some pulpit fill at our church on apologetics, the biggest hang-up that I have always kind of had is the relevance of the Marian dogmas. I don’t understand why it’s almost made sateriological, meaning you have to believe in these four or you’re not saved. It’s like, why can’t we just call her blessed and move on? It’s almost a turn-off because you tend to see more focus there than you do.
Joe: Sure, I get the idea. Let me suggest a two-part answer, if I may. Part one is going to be not about Mary specifically, but about dogma in general. Because one of the ways to phrase your argument is: even if the stuff you’re saying about Mary is true, why make a dogma out of it? Is that a fair kind of presentation of your concern?
Caller: Yes.
Joe: Okay, great. So this is going to come down to how we understand dogma, closely related to the idea of infallibility. Here’s why. If dogma is just fallible Christians doing the best they can to come up with what we all think Scripture says, then number one, we probably don’t have any right to be dogmatizing things and making other people believe in our reading of Scripture because it’s still kind of majority rule where maybe 90% of us read the Bible this way and so we’re telling the other 10% they’re wrong.
I’m a little skeptical whether we should be doing that if it’s just my reading versus your reading, even if I’ve got more people on my side. So that’s already, I think, a red flag that the whole notion of dogma without infallibility becomes a real problem. And so this results in just this judgmentalism of, “Oh, you read the Bible differently than me, so I think of you as less Christian.” That’s a problem too.
On the other hand, if you don’t have infallibility necessarily, and I think even in a healthy way, you tend towards a dogmatic minimalism—what is the least we can say that you have to believe so that we’re not unnecessarily excluding anybody from Christian communion? The problem, though, is that that is fundamentally unbiblical.
Meaning, in Acts 15, when a theological controversy comes up—the Judaizer heresy: are you required to be circumcised to be saved?—these were two different groups of Christians who were both reading the Bible in opposite ways. You know, the Old Testament clearly describes circumcision as a perpetual covenant. It’s very easy to see why some would say, “Hey, perpetual means perpetual.” They weren’t just coming up with this out of whole cloth. Two different groups of Christians were interpreting the Bible the same way.
So if you take a minimalist view, the church should have said, “We’re not going to touch this. Just respect each other as Christians and do your thing.” But no, the church in Acts 15 comes together at council and says, “It seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us,” and speaks in this definitive, authoritative, infallible way, ensured that it’s protected by the Holy Spirit and speaking on behalf of God.
That kind of vision, if that’s your idea of the visible church, that it can do that, then dogma no longer becomes this burden, but instead becomes this incredible aid. Now, instead of wanting the least dogma imaginable, I want to know more because I want to know more about the truth. And every time I come to a point where it’s like, “Well, maybe it means this, maybe it means that,” here’s this controversial thing. If the church clarifies that, now that’s really good because I understand the message Jesus has given me better than I would have in an unaided sort of way.
So to that first point about dogma, it comes down to what we think dogma’s doing, which is closely tied to whether we take the biblical model of an infallible church that can speak on behalf of God in certain circumstances, or whether we take the modern Protestant notion that it’s just people kind of doing majority rule of, “Here’s what we think it means.” If you take the biblical, historic Christian model, more dogma is good, not bad, as long as it’s coming from God. Then it’s not a burden for me to say, “I better understand the Christian faith now than I would have left to my own devices.”
Second, why is Mary involved in any of this? I would point you back to Genesis 3:15. The spiritual battle described by God is put in these terms. He’s speaking to Satan: “I’ll put enmity, strife, conflict between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.”
So the seed is clearly Jesus. And the reason that the seed is described as the seed of the woman, *zerah*, usually is measured by the man. It’s the man’s contribution to making a baby. That’s not the word used here. It’s not the *zerah* of Adam; it’s the seed of the woman. And you might assume that the woman there is just going to be Eve. But Eve has an offspring named Cain, and that doesn’t go well. Instead, this is referring to Mary and Jesus.
So right there in Genesis 3:15, we’re told that there’s going to be this spiritual conflict between the devil and the woman. And if we understand Genesis 3:15 as foretelling the virgin birth of Christ, which is how the earliest Christians read it, then it’s also foretelling that the spiritual battle is between the devil and Mary.
And so then taking Mary seriously really does become part of the whole spiritual life of Christians. I would then tie that in with Revelation 12, where the mother of Jesus is described as being at war with the dragon, who, in case we missed the connection, is also referred to as the ancient serpent (Revelation 12:9).
So it again presents the battle between the woman and the dragon. And now it tells us the woman is enthroned in heaven. She’s clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars. And she gives birth to the one destined to rule the nations, namely Christ.
So the mother of Jesus is the Woman of Genesis 3:15. Revelation 12 tells us that and is at war with the serpent, who is the dragon. And then in verse 17, Revelation 12:17 says the dragon was angry with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus.
This tells us two things. Number one, if you hold to the testimony of Jesus, you’re a son of Jesus’ mother, so that’s one reason to care about her. Number two, the devil hates her, and a lot of the spiritual battle is against her. That’s another reason to care about her.
So if you understand it in those ways—and by the way, I’m fine in saying Revelation 12 is also telling us something about the church and about Israel—but missing that the part about the mother of Jesus refers to the mother of Jesus seems like a big miss.
And so Genesis 3 and Revelation 12 point us to the fact that we should take Mary’s role seriously, not in a way that replaces Jesus, but is rooted in what he has come to do.
And then, sorry, I know I’m going long on this. But the very last thing, the early Christians were really emphatic on this when they would talk about Mary’s role. You go back to the 100s and you’ve got Christians like St. Justin Martyr and St. Irenaeus of Lyon talking about Mary’s role even in salvation in a way that to Protestant ears probably sounds blasphemous, saying things like, “The same guy who tells us Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the four gospels also tells us that what Eve tied by disobedience, the knot she tied by disobedience, Mary untied by her obedience.”
Those kinds of claims that Mary’s the new Eve as Christ is the new Adam, that’s not some late Catholic invention from 1950. This is all built into how Mary is understood in the story of salvation from as far back as we find Christians talking about it.
Cy: I will have to leave it there because I am late for the break. Right back with more “Why Aren’t You Catholic?” with Joe Heschmeyer on CATHOLIC Answers LIVE.