Bible Alive Jesus Christ 005: “The Beginning of the Gospel”

Bible Alive: Jesus Christ
Class Five: The Beginning of the Gospel

The following presentation would be impossible without these
resources

And most of all…

By Father Roch A. Kereszty o. cist.

Thank you Father Roch!

Setting the Tone
• The shortest distance between the truth and
a human being is a story.
—Anthony D. Mello, S.J.

Setting the Tone
• About scandalizing little ones … I spoke to a priest
about it and the thing he said to me was, “You
don’t have to write for fifteen year old girls.” Of
course, the mind of a fifteen year old girl lurks in
many a head that is seventy-five and every day
people are being scandalized not only by what is
scandalous of its nature but what is not.
The fact is that in order not to be
scandalized, one has to have a whole view of
things, which not many of us have.

—Flannery O’Connor

Setting the Tone
• Abandonment ensnareth God:
But the Abandonment supreme,
Which few there be can comprehend,
Is to abandon even Him.
—Angelus Silesius

Let us Pray
Good Father
By your Word Jesus
Give us in the Spirit ears that hear and hearts that
wonder in humble awe
Help us by the Light of Easter to see the Truth of
Christmas
And grant us eyes of faith
Make us, we pray, like your handmaid Mary, who in her
“fiat” became our mother though our sister.
For your Glory.
Amen.

Summarizing Last Class
• We learned seven key points about the death and
resurrection of Jesus.
• We saw the theories that deny the resurrection.
• We explored other interpretations of the
Resurrection—we saw the extremes of reducing
it to being entirely subjective or an event entirely
objective.
• We learned about the credibility of the
Resurrection and the three ways it changed the
nature of the universe.

The Virginal Conception
• How does the New Testament present the
virginal conception of Jesus—is it as a public
spectacle, or something else?

• Jesus’ conception is a hidden event. It needs God’s
revelation to be discovered and understood.
• Just as the Risen Christ is only shown to a number of
foreordained witnesses, so also the mystery of his
virginal conception is disclosed to only a few people.

Resurrection Connection
• There is an analogy between the mystery of
Jesus’ virginal conception and the mystery of
his resurrection.

• There is a certain profound continuity between the
virginal conception and resurrection.
• Whereas the virginal conception marks the beginning
of the creation of the New Man, Resurrection marks
the consummation of the New Man.
• Both demonstrate God’s direct and CREATIVE
intervention in human history.

Is the virginal conception a fact?
• According to Rudolf Bultmann, the virginal conception
should not be accepted as a fact, but rather as part of what
he calls “the New Testament mythology” which is in need
of reinterpretation.
• It is the Hellenistic religions that gave rise to the story of
the Virgin Birth—where gods descend to the earth,
impregnate beautiful virgins, who bear half-human, half-
god sons.
• This mythological form is adopted by the New Testament in
order to STRESS THE IMPORTANCE and SIGNIFICANCE of
the birth of the Messiah, Jesus.
• According to Bultmann, to take the story FACTUALLY is to
miss the point of the mythological language AND
WORSE!—create an unnecessary difficulty for modern
believers who CANNOT accept a god performing physical
miracles.

Recent Catholic Scholarship
• Kereszty tells us that some contemporary
Catholic theologians have adopted positions
similar to Bultmann’s.
• They accept the “Christological meaning” of the
virginal conception: Jesus is God’s gift to
humankind—this they hold as a “doctrine of
faith.”
• But as for the virginal conception, referred to by
them as “a biological fact,” they call a doubtful
theologoumenon (a theological opinion).

Perseus

Herakles

Theseus

How much can we know?
• Is it possible to show
that the tradition of the
virginal conception of
Jesus does not derive
from the Hellenistic
religions?

Rooted in Hellenism?
• The “Pre-Gospel” Tradition reports that the virginal conception has
roots in the milieu of Palestinian Jewish Christianity rather than
Hellenism. This makes a Greek myth model doubtful. Beware of
superficial comparisons.

• Lk 1:35—And the angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon
you,
and the power of the Most High will overshadow you;
therefore the child to be born will be called holy,
the Son of God…”

• In Pagan mythology like that of Herakles, Perseus, and Theseus,
the gods father their human offspring by satiating their desire to
engage in sexual relations with human virgins. There is no hint at
sexual relations in Luke’s account; the language is that of creation
and consecration.

Semitic, not Greek
• Lk 1:35—And the angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will
come upon you,

• Gen 1:1-3—In the beginning created God the heavens
and the earth.
The earth was tohu wubohu, and darkness was upon
the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving
over the face of the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

Semitic, not Greek
• Lk 1:35—And the angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon
you,

• Ex 34:34-38—Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the
glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.
And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting, because the
cloud abode upon it, and the glory of the LORD filled the
tabernacle.
Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up
from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would go onward;
but if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not go onward till
the day that it was taken up.
For throughout all their journeys the cloud of the LORD was upon
the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all
the house of Israel.

Semitic, not Greek
• Lk 1:35—And the angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you,

• 2 Chron 7:1-5—When Solomon had ended his prayer, fire came down
from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the
glory of the LORD filled the temple.
And the priests could not enter the house of the LORD, because the glory
of the LORD filled the LORD's house.
When all the children of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of
the LORD upon the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the earth
on the pavement, and worshiped and gave thanks to the LORD, saying,
“For he is good,
for his steadfast love endures for ever.”
Then the king and all the people offered sacrifice before the LORD.
King Solomon offered as a sacrifice twenty-two thousand oxen and a
hundred and twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the people
dedicated the house of God.

Semitic, not Greek
• In the Hellenic myths the human mother gives birth to “the
Hero,” a reality neither fully human nor fully divine.
• In the New Testament, the virginal conception results in
the full humanity of Jesus and does not diminish his divine
Sonship, nor does his divine dignity make him less human.

A Certain Affinity if not a STRICT
PARALLEL
• There are NO strict parallels with the Old Testament or
extra-biblical accounts, but there IS also a certain degree of
affinity with the “barren woman” stories of the Old
Testament, such as Sarah, Manoah, and Hannah.
• These women cannot bear children. By the power of their
husbands and by their own power of fertility, they cannot
conceive a child. God alone removes “their shame,” their
bitterness.
• Even though the child from each “barren woman” is
derived from both parents, he will be called a gift from
God. He will be dedicated to God and have a special part to
play in God’s Plan of Salvation.
• This background helps us understand the virginal
conception and its irreducible newness. It is completely
God’s surprise and initiative.

Theological Meaning
• Lk 3:23, 38—Jesus, when he began his ministry,
was about thirty years of age, being the son (as
was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli, … the
son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam,
the son of God.

• According to Luke’s theology, the purpose
behind God’s “surprise” and initiative is to bring
about a New Adam, the beginning of a New
Creation. Mary’s womb resembles the tohu
wubohu at the beginning of Creation.

Different Theology in Matthew
• Mt 1:21—
…and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will
save his people from their sins.

• In Matthew’s theology the creativity of the
Holy Spirit aims at bringing forth the Savior
who will free his people from their sins.

Common to Both
• What is common to both Matthew and Luke?

Answer: Matthew and Luke seek to describe the virginal conception
in such a way to show that humanity left to its own cannot produce
a new humanity (Luke) or obtain forgiveness for sins (Matthew).

Jesus the savior, the holy offspring, cannot be produced by human
initiative, but only by the power and initiative and creativity of
God’s Holy Spirit.

The man Jesus is not the fruit of human love; rather he is the fruit
of God’s love for humankind. The man Jesus is purely and entirely a
gift that cannot be obtained by human efforts.

Two Things in Luke’s Understanding
• For Luke, two things are revealed in the Virginal Conception:

1. The radically gratuitous character of God’s gift in the man Jesus.
2. Jesus’ divine Sonship.

Read Lk 1:34-35—And Mary said to the angel, “How shall this be, since I
have no husband?”
And the angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
the Son of God.

• It becomes clear that Jesus is to be called Son of God precisely because
he is going to be conceived virginally by the Power of the Holy Spirit.
• “Son of God” then in Luke’s theology clearly means more than a
Messianic or Davidic expectation. The man Jesus is entirely the creation
of the Holy Spirit—as such he belongs to God in a radical way that
excludes all human fatherhood.
• The man Jesus belongs to God ALONE

Jesus Revealed…
• What then does the virginal conception
reveal about the man Jesus?

Answer: It shows that the whole being and
life of the man Jesus—without any
“remainder”—expresses his filial relationship
to his heavenly Father. All that the man Jesus
is REVEALS his Father in heaven.

Understanding Jesus as Son
• How can we better understand this divine Sonship of Jesus?
• Kereszty asks us: Let us compare our situation to his.
• Each of us is the child to an earthly father first, and throughout our
lives we are what we are to a large extent because of our
relationship to him.
• Yet in this natural relationship and all the relationships of our life
God offers his grace to us and we become, through grace, children
of God, which is the only perfection we can have and the only
reality that can satisfy us.
• Therefore, Kereszty argues, all that we are and all that we do
cannot “speak” of our heavenly Father. Much of our life simply
reflects our earthly father. Jesus is however the complete and
unsurpassable revelation of the Father because his whole being and
life reveal him.

Virginal Conception in History
• Having outlined its meaning, what can be shown historically about
the truth of the virginal conception?

Historical acts on the virginal conception:

1. Matthew and Luke not only suppose this but affirm this as part of the
Good News.
2. Kereszty—A variant reading of John 1:13 proclaims the virginal
conception; this was probably changed in the 2nd Century to the
commonly accepted plural form to avoid Gnostic misinterpretation.
3. The tradition that these three sources draw from is Pre-Gospel (Part
of the kerygma).
4. It is highly probable that Mary was known to be pregnant before she
and Joseph came to live together. Jn 8:41 might have been based on
the fact of Mary’s early pregnancy.

Virginal Conception in History
5. It is neither a datum historically verifiable nor a biological fact, for it
transcends biological processes. It is God’s creative act, similar to the
resurrection where Jesus’ dead body is raised to New Life in the
Spirit. We can accept it only in faith in response to the affirmation of
the Evangelists and the teaching of the ordinary magisterium of the
Church.
6. However, this leap is not AGAINST REASON—historical evidence does
not contradict this affirmation of faith; as Raymond Brown says, “It is
easier to explain the New Testament evidence by positing historical
basis than by positing pure theological creation.”
7. How is the virginal conception similar to the reports of the empty
tomb? Mary’s early pregnancy and the empty tomb are historically
verifiable data. The Church understands in both cases the
transcendent cause and meaning of these events: God himself
created the New Man in Mary’s Womb and he raised from the tomb
the dead body of the New Man to immortal life.
8. And what if you have no “eyes of faith”? How then can you escape
misinterpreting these events? Without occulata fides here is the
interpretation—Jesus is born of adultery and the disciples stole the
corpse of Jesus from the tomb.

“The Brothers and Sisters of Jesus”
• From the 4th century onward, the Church has unanimously
taught the perpetual virginity of Mary before (ante partum),
during (in partu), and after (post partum) Jesus birth.
• The New Testament is silent about Mary’s virginity in partu
and whether she was a virgin post partum. In fact, it speaks
about “brothers and sisters” of Jesus.
• The Reformation—Protestant Churches from the 16th century
maintained belief in the virginal conception of Jesus but
rejected the perpetual virginity of Mary based on contrary
evidence from Scripture.
• They affirmed that the Catholic belief on Mary’s virginity after
Jesus’ birth was contradicted by the “brothers and sisters” of
Jesus mentioned in the Gospels and elsewhere in the New
Testament.
• Not every Protestant did this—figures like John Wesley
believed in the perpetual virginity.

The New Testament Evidence
• Mk 3:31-35, 6:3—
And his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside
they sent to him and called him.
And a crowd was sitting about him; and they said to him, “Your
mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.”
And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”
And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, “Here are
my mother and my brothers!
Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and
mother.”
…
Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and
Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?quot;
And they took offense at him.

• Jn 2:12, 7:3-9—
After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother and
his brothers and his disciples; and there they stayed for a few
days…
So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your
disciples may see the works you are doing.
For no man works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you
do these things, show yourself to the world.”
For even his brothers did not believe in him.
Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is
always here.
The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it
that its works are evil.
Go to the feast yourselves; I am not going up to this feast, for my
time has not yet fully come.”
So saying, he remained in Galilee.

• Gal 1:19—
But I saw none of the other apostles except James the
Lord’s brother.

• 1 Cor 9:5—
Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a wife, as
the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Kephas?

SO… What CAN and CANNOT be proved from
the New Testament concerning these “brothers
and sisters of Jesus”?

Three Historical Views
• It was not until the fourth century that theologians argued seriously
whether or not Mary gave birth to siblings of Jesus. Three views
developed:

1. The Helvidian View (Helvidius) was that Mary had other children,
namely the brothers and sisters of Jesus mentioned in the gospels.
(developed AD 370s)
2. The Hieronymian View (St. Jerome) held that the “brothers” and
“sisters” of Jesus are Jesus’ cousins, children of a sister of Mary.
(developed AD 382)
3. The Epiphanian View (Epiphanius) was that the “brothers” and
“sisters” are children of Joseph by a previous marriage.
(developed AD 377)

• To this day there are adherents to each view. It must be admitted
that the Protestant consensus and the standard scholarly view
agrees with the Helvidian View.

The Evidence and the Exegetes
• John P. Meier, Catholic priest and author of the
critically-acclaimed series “A Marginal Jew:
Rethinking the Historical Jesus,” comes very
close to the Protestant consensus for the
Helvidian view.
• He holds that if you prescind from faith and
later Church teaching, the most probable
conclusion of the historian could not be
anything else but “the brothers and sisters of
Jesus were in fact true siblings.”

The Evidence and the Exegetes
• But Fr. Meier’s position has been effectively
challenged by Protestant scholar Richard Bauckham
in his essay “The Brothers and Sisters of Jesus: An
Epiphanian Response to John P. Meier.”
• Even though Bauckham stresses his disbelief in the
Catholic dogma of the perpetual virginity of Mary, he
bolsters his arguments from the fourth century
Epiphanius who held that “the brothers and sisters of
Jesus” come from a first marriage of Joseph, and
thus, Jesus is the only son of Mary.
• This is all the more noteworthy considering that after
giving birth to Jesus, Bauckham rejects the perpetual
virginity of Mary—he considers that Mary and Joseph
had normal sexual relations, just no other children.

Bauckham’s major arguments
• Contra Meier and the scholarly consensus:
1. The brothers and sisters appear older than Jesus in all
Gospel traditions (Mk 3:21, 31; Jn 7:3-5). Younger
brothers could not have assumed authority over the
firstborn son in this society are honor and shame are
the core cultural values.
Mk 3:21—And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for
people were saying, “He is beside himself.” …
3:31—And his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside they
sent to him and called him… (They want to stop him in his ministry by
force!)

Jn 7:3-5—So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your
disciples may see the works you are doing.
For no man works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these
things, show yourself to the world.”
For even his brothers did not believe in him. (They advise him!)

2. Second century apocryphal documents such as the
Protoevangellium of James, the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas, and the Gospel of Peter (all literally
independent from one another), all take for granted
Joseph’s previous marriage as if readers already
knew this fact to be the case.
– While admitting that these apocryphal documents are the
conflation of tradition and creative imagination, Bauckham
insists that Joseph’s prior marriage could not have been
produced out of imagination being that each document was
independent of the other and yet relates the same story, a
common tradition in Syrian Christianity of the Second Century,
which would therefore belong to the oral gospel of the church of
Antioch—how could they have created the same story
independently of each other?

3. The Gospel of Mark (the earliest) NEVER refers
to Jesus as the son of Joseph. Jesus is “son of
Mary.”

» This is a tremendous DIVERGENCE with Jewish tradition and
custom, and up till now no one has been able to come up
with an entirely plausible solution for it; in this ancient
culture one identifies the son by his father’s name.
» Bauckham gives an answer: he says, at home in Nazareth,
Jesus would have been known as “son of Mary” to
distinguish him from Joseph’s children by his first wife.

Conclusions from Bauckham
• Bauckham has effectively demonstrated that Meier’s
method is quite questionable and that he neglected
evidence in favor of the Epiphanian view. The matter is far
more open than many scholars let on.
• When considering the Helvidian and Epiphanian views, the
historical evidence is insufficient to solidly decide, one way
or the other.
• But REMEMBER—for Bauckham, the whole thing is just a
question about the historical method and a tidbit of
historical trivia; he sees no theological significance.
• Opportunities—Yet for Catholic scholars it helps to explain
why the Church was able to maintain the tradition about
“Jesus’ brothers and sisters” while simultaneously
developing the tradition about Mary’s perpetual virginity.

“Brothers and Sisters” of Jesus
– From the Second century
we have explicit
testimonies to the belief in
Mary’s perpetual virginity.
– But a consensus on this
point among the Fathers
develops only after the
Council of Ephesus (AD
431), and gradually it
becomes Church teaching
and a part of the liturgical
titles of Mary; she becomes
“ever-virgin Mary.”

Accepting it means…
 Obviously, the biblical data and early Christian
tradition do not constitute sufficient evidence
for Mary’s perpetual virginity.
 Why accept it? Among Christians, the Catholic
accepts it because the shepherding authority
teaches it in the ordinary magisterium.
 Nevertheless the ordinary magisterium does
NOT contradict the New Testament; in fact,
some biblical data are more easily explained if
we accept this truth—Raymond Brown.
 Moreover, Kereszty explains, we cannot fully
accept the mystery of the Church and the
importance of virginity in the life of individual
Christians, unless we understand these
mysteries in the light of the perpetual
virginity of Mary.

Ecclesiology and Mariology
 Even before the explicit claims were made, belief in the
perpetual virginity had already been implied in the analogy
and mutual inclusion that the New Testament and Patristic
writers discovered between the Mystery of the Church and
Mary.
 The Church is called to be and remain a pure virgin, in the
sense that her faith in Christ and her love for Christ should
always remain one and undisturbed.
 How then could Mary, the anticipated realization of the
Church in her final perfection, not have always remained a
virgin?

See Ezek 44:1-3
Then he brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary, which faces east;
and it was shut.
And he said to me, “This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened, and
no one shall enter by it; for the LORD, the God of Israel, has entered by it;
therefore it shall remain shut. Only the prince may sit in it to eat bread before
the LORD; he shall enter by way of the vestibule of the gate, and shall go out
by the same way.”

Kereszty—That the Church is interpreted as a perpetual virgin and yet fruitful
mother finds its basis in mystical Ezekiel 44:1-3. It is nothing else but a further
development of the Old Testament’s perspective on cultic holiness—the High
Priest serving the sanctuary, as well as any soldier fighting on behalf of
Yahweh, had to abstain from sexual intercourse. Later Judaism develops
legends where Moses abstained from sexual relations with his wife after his
encounter with God at the burning bush—the underlying conviction is NOT
THAT SEX IS EVIL but rather that it involves one in THIS world. (See
footnote, p. 80)

Virginity means Undivided Yes
• Mary’s virginity is not based on Gnostic doctrine, but on the
understanding of virginity as a total consecration to God in
pure and undivided love.
• The Gnostic documents also testify to Mary’s perpetual
virginity, but for a distorted, anti-sexual reason: matter is
evil, and its increase is evil.
• To be honest, such anti-sexual tendencies have influenced
to some extent the monastic movement in the Church, and
perhaps even some theological views such as the
Hieronymian View.
• But the patristic argument for the perpetual virginity of
Mary is not founded on Gnostic doctrine, nor contaminated
by an anti-sexual tendency, but rather is founded on the
understanding of virginity as a total consecration to God in
pure faith and undivided love.

Patristic “Eyes of Faith”
 Lk 1:34—And Mary said to the angel, “How shall this be, since I have no
husband?”
Ss. Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine, and other fathers and mothers of the
Church, see in these words via faith the total, irrevocable vow of Mary. They
interpret Luke 1:34 as Mary expressing her full intention to completely
dedicate herself to God and remain a virgin. This act must be total and
irrevocable.

• These Fathers see Mary asking how will this Plan unfold—she is not
questioning the abilities of God.
• When Mary says “since I have no husband” (lit. in Greek, “I do not know
man”), this refers to her status as a virgin, not her marital status. Her
concern is that she is at present a virgin and she intends to remain one in
the future—not that she is “unmarried.” In fact, her betrothal to Joseph
(see Lk 1:27) was already a legally binding marriage. Thus the
announcement of a miraculous conception (Lk 1:31) makes Mary wonder
at how she will be blessed with a son and yet preserved a virgin—
otherwise her exclamation is inexplicable. Nothing in the annunciation
should have perplexed her IF she intended on having normal sexual
relations as a married woman.

Uncompromised
Devotion
• It was unthinkable for the
Church after the fourth
century that Mary, totally
consecrated to God by
Christ whom she conceived
through faith before she
conceived him in her womb
would compromise this
consecration by sexual
relations.

A Virgin, but Mother to Many
Yet, Mary’s perpetual virginity does not RESTRICT her motherhood to
only Jesus! Her undivided giving of herself to God in virginity has resulted
in a universal motherhood.

Jn 19:25-27—So the soldiers did this. But standing by the cross of Jesus
were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and
Mary Magdalene.
When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing
near, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!”
Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that
hour the disciple took her to his own home.

Through her faith and love, Mary cooperates in the birth of believers.
The Beloved Disciple stands for all believers. All disciples are embraced
by their sister made their mother at the foot of the Cross. The
motherhood of Mary is as universal as the Church: it extends to all
people throughout the entire course of history.

Excursus: What About Mary??
• Christological connection—understanding Mary more
means understanding Christ more and what he did.
• Ecclesiological connection—Mary and the Church are
inseparable. The Church is “Marian.”
• Protestant Max Thurian—“Neither the Gospel nor past
Christian tradition have been able to separate Mary
and the Church. To speak of Mary is to speak of the
Church. The two are united in one fundamental
vocation—maternity” (Mary, Mother of the
Lord, Figure of the Church, p. 9).

More to Ecclesiology than
Motherhood, but…
• Certainly foundational to the relationship
between Church and Mary is motherhood.
• Richard McBrien—The Church is a mother in
several senses.
1. It brings forth new creatures in Christ out of the womb of
the baptismal font.
2. It nourishes the Christian family at the table of the
Eucharist.
3. It is the source of encouragement, of forgiveness, of order,
of healing, of love.

McBrien—Each of the maternal activities is linked with one or
another of the Church’s seven sacraments.

Mary, Mother of Christians
• Insofar as Mary is first of all the mother of
Jesus Christ, she too is mother of all
Christians.
• HOW??
1. She gives birth to Jesus and so makes it possible for Jesus to
give birth to us anew in the Holy Spirit.
2. As a model, or type, or figure, or image of the Church, Mary
is preeminently a person of faith, of hope, of love, of
obedience to the Word of God.
3. She is disciple par excellence in a community of disciples.

Mary in Catholic Theology
1. She is perfectly saved—conceived without sin and in
the fullness of grace, as the Church was.
2. She is a faithful and undefiled virgin, as the Church is
called to be.
3. She is redeemed by Christ, as the Church is.
4. She is the sign of God’s presence among us, as the
Church is.
5. She is transformed and renewed by the presence of
God within her, as the Church is.
6. She shared fully in the resurrection of Christ, body
and soul, as the Church is destined to share in it.
7. And she intercedes for us before the throne of God, as
the Church does.

Marian Devotion among Christians
• Richard McBrien—Devotion to Mary is a
characteristically Catholic phenomenon in
that it expresses three fundamental
principles of Catholic theology and practice:
the principle of mediation, the principle of
sacramentality, and the principle of
communion.

Mary & Mediation
Richard McBrien—The universe of grace is a
mediated reality: mediated principally by
Christ, and secondarily by the Church and,
then, other signs and instruments of salvation
beyond the Church.
• The Catholic understands the role of Mary in salvation
and accepts it because the Catholic already
understands and accepts the principle of mediation as
applied in the Incarnation and in the life and mission of
the Church (a points made so effectively by Yves Congar
in his Christ, Our Lady, and the Church, 1957).

Mary & Sacramentality
Richard McBrien—The Catholic also understands
that the invisible, spiritual God is present and
available to us through the visible and the
material, and that these, in turn, are made holy
by reason of that divine presence.
• The Catholic therefore, readily engages in the veneration of
Mary, not because Mary is confused with some ancient
goddess or super-creature or rival of the Lord himself, but
because Mary is herself a symbol or icon of God.
• It is the God who is present within her and who fills her
whole being that the Catholic grasps in the act of venerating
yet another “sacrament” of the divine.

Mary & Communion
Richard McBrien—Finally, the Catholic perceives
the Church as itself a communion of saints, in its
visible as well as invisible dimensions.
• It is an institutionalized, structured reality in which and
through which the grace of the Holy Spirit is disclosed,
celebrated, and released for the renewal and reconciliation
of the whole world.
• Our relationship with God and with Christ is not only
bilateral but multilateral, which is to say communal.
• The Church as Church enters directly into that place where
one hears the Word of God and testifies to her or his faith in
the Word.
• The Church is itself the very Body of Christ. To be in the
Church is to be in Christ and one with Christ.

Mary FOLLOWS Christ
Richard McBrien—So, too, devotion to Mary is
consequent upon the fact that we are united
with her, as with one another, in and with
Christ.
• Mary is the preeminent member of the community of
saints by reason of her unique relationship with
Christ, but she is a member nonetheless, and the most
exalted one at that.
• Our unity with her is an expression of our unity in and
with Christ.

Mary & Church in Christ
Otto Semmelroth—
“In Mary, the Church affirms her own holy, co-
redemptive and redeemed essence… Thus,
the veneration of Mary is the Church’s
testimony to herself… [to her] own essence
and to her task of imparting salvation.”
(Mary, Archetype of the Church, p. 174).

Theological Criteria for Marian
Devotion
• There are two extremes to be avoided in
one’s attitude toward devotion to Mary:
1. Marian minimalism, also called “mariophobia.”
2. Marian maximalism, otherwise called
“mariocentricism.”

Marian minimalism
We are tempted (ala an EXTREME Descending
Christology) to so exaggerate the divine role in
salvation that the value and importance of
human cooperation is lost.
• In this view, human cooperation plays no role at all in
our salvation.
• Therefore, no fellow creature, Mary included, is ever
worthy of veneration, because such attention inevitably
detracts from the glory owed to God alone and to Jesus
Christ in whom and through whom God acted on our
behalf for the forgiveness of sins.

The Problems with “mariophobia.”
1. Marian minimalism in effect denies (or at least narrowly
applies) the principle of secondary instrumental causality,
i.e., that God works through finite agents to achieve
infinite ends.
2. It also denies (or narrowly applies) the principle of
sacramentality, i.e., that God is present to us, is disclosed,
and works on our behalf in and through visible, material
realities: persons, events, nature, objects, the cosmos. (It
is not always clear if the Marian minimalist understands
that the humanity of Jesus Christ is also an instrumental
cause and sacrament of salvation.)
3. And it denies, finally, that the Church is a communion of
saints, i.e., that our relationship with God and with Christ
is both vertical and horizontal, and that our relationship is
always mediated—McBrien.

Marian maximalism
The second temptation is to exaggerate the human role in
salvation at the expense of the divine and
correspondingly to deemphasize the effectiveness of the
mediating work of Christ, who is perceived as more
divine than human. And if Jesus is more divine than
human, he is not so much our bridge to God as he is the
God from whom we have been alienated by sin. We need
access, therefore, not only to the Father but the Son as
well.
• According to this view, we need other ways of reaching God, and
these ways must be adapted to our own limited human condition.
Consequently, we turn to our fellow human beings who have already
won the crown of glory and who have obviously found much favor in
the sight of God.
• But in that regard Mary is in a spiritual class by herself, for she alone
is “full of grace” and she alone is Theotokos. Therefore, there is no
limit to the help she can give us, nor is there any limit to the
veneration we can show her in virtue of her standing before God.

The Problems with Mariocentricism
1. Marian maximalism in effect exaggerates the secondary
or instrumental causality of Mary and the other saints and
demeans the instrumental causality of the humanity of
Christ.
2. It also misunderstands the sacramental principle.
Sacramentality means that God works in and through
some visible, material reality. It is always the inner
transforming presence of God that ultimately counts, and
not the sign and instruments of that presence. Therefore,
it is not because Mary and the saints have the power of
influence with God that they are objects of veneration
and devotion. Rather it is because the grace of God has
triumphed in them. Mary and the saints have been
transformed by, and have become effective images of,
Christ (Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on
the Church, or as it is called “Lumen Gentium,” n. 50). It is
Christ’s, not Mary’s, achievement that we celebrate.

The Problems with Mariocentricism
3. Finally, Marian maximalism misunderstands the nature of
the communion of the saints. The Church is not just an
institution of salvation, with Mary and the saints as
“successful graduates” who have some measure of
influence with “the administration.” It is not comparable
to a filling station, where automobiles replenish their
supply of fuel. The Church is the People of God, the Body
of Christ, and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. It is, first and
foremost, a community (communio, koinonia), but not just
any community. It is a community of those who have been
transformed by Christ and the Holy Spirit and who have
explicitly and thankfully acknowledged the source of that
transformation. Since transformation is a process, to be
completed when the Kingdom of God is fully realized at
the end of history, our bond in Christ and the Spirit is not
broken by death—McBrien.

Marian Preeminence

• McBrien—Mary is the preeminent
member of this communion of saints.
Our link with her is an expression of
our link with the whole Church. It is a
bond, however, not just of advocates
and supplicants, but of brothers and
sisters in the Lord, the very Body of
Christ on the way to achieving “the
fullness of God” (Eph 3:19).

Judging Marian Devotions
• Between the two extremes of Marian minimalism
and Marian maximalism there is a wide spectrum
of legitimate devotional options.
• One should be careful not to categorize
pejoratively those forms of spirituality with which
one is not personally comfortable or from which
one feels culturally alienated.
• The following theological criteria from Richard
McBrien might be helpful in evaluating various
expressions of Marian devotion:

McBrien’s Criteria for Judgment
1. Devotion to Mary, and to all of the saints, is ultimately devotion to
Christ, whose grace has triumphed in Mary and the saints.
2. Jesus Christ in his humanity and divinity alike is the one Mediator
between God and humankind. In him we are forgiven our sins, for
he is full of mercy and compassion toward us.
3. On the other hand, just as God worked through the instrumentality
of Jesus’ humanity for our salvation, so divine grace is symbolized
and mediated through other visible, material, bodily realities,
including those fellow creatures who have shown themselves
striking examples of the transforming power of this grace.
4. Since God saves us not just as individuals but as members of a
people, we are joined one with another in a communion of saints,
i.e., of “holy ones” sharing in the holiness *the life+ of God. “You
shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev 19:2).

5. Mary is, by reason of her faith and obedience to the Word of
God, a model of the Church and is its preeminent member, She is
a disciple par excellence.
6. Insofar as Mary is truly the mother of Jesus Christ, she can be
called the “God-bearer.” Again, she is a model for the Church in
that the Church, too, is a “reality imbued with the hidden
presence of God” (Pope Paul VI). Just as the hidden presence of
God is the basis of all that we believe about the Church in faith, so
it is also the basis of all that we believe about Mary in faith.
7. Yet, just as the Church is not itself the Kingdom of God, even
though the Church can be called “the initial budding forth” of the
Kingdom (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, n. 5), so Mary is
not herself the mediator or redeemer, even though she is the
mother of Jesus and bears the incarnate Word within her.
8. Before all else, Mary is, one of the redeemed. Exception from
Original Sin does not mean that she was herself in no need of the
redemptive work of Christ. She was full of grace from the
beginning precisely because of the redemptive work of Christ on
her behalf.

9. While a Catholic will normally accept the Marian dogmas without
reservation, it is less important that one affirms or denies them than
why one affirms it or denies them. Thus, on a relative scale at least, one
is actually more “orthodox” in denying the Immaculate Conception
because it might detract from the universality of the redemption (as St
Thomas Aquinas feared) than in affirming the Immaculate Conception on
the grounds that Mary’s closeness to God made the redemptive work of
Christ unnecessary in her own unique case.
10. Apparitions, visions, and other unusual occurrences attributed directly
or indirectly to Mary may or may not be believed. None of them can ever
be regarded as essential to Christian faith, whether they are approved by
the official Church or not. If these phenomena do have any final
authority, they are authoritative only for those who directly and
immediately experience them. No one but the recipient(s) can be bound
in conscience by whatever is communicated.
11. In any case, the “contents” (messages, directives, etc.) of such events
can NEVER be placed on par with the Gospel itself, neither in terms of
their authority nor in terms of the attention they elicit and/or demand.
Those “contents,” in turn, must always be measured against the totality
of the Christian faith and must not contradict or contravene any
essential component of that faith.

• The preceding materials
(slides 51-71) can be
found in Catholicism, pp.
107.7-1109

Bible Alive Jesus Christ 005: “The Beginning of the Gospel”

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