Theotokos

An edited account of a recent debate I had on Facebook.

Hays 

Because "mother of God" is equivocal, Catholics use that as a wedge issue. They try to get evangelicals to agree on an orthodox sense of the title, swap that out and swap in a different meaning, then use their bait-n-switch to promote their legendary Marian dogmas.

Shane  

We should reject true things because somebody abused them. Got it. 

Hays 

No, we should reject equivocal usage, where the evangelical side means one thing, the Catholic side means something else, and the Catholic side substitutes their meaning for our meaning, as if we made a substantive concession.

This also goes to the tactical blunder of letting your opponent define the terms of debate. That rigs the outcome in his favor.

Shane  

I'm not persuaded in the least that Catholics use "Theotokos" equivocally. Believing related things in addition to the cognitive content of a phrase is not the same as redefining the phrase. 

In any case, instead of abandoning orthodox terms that belong to all Christians in a perpetual defensive retreat, we ought to reassert the true definition and distinguish it from abuses, not abandon the term. One wonders if Steve would argue we abandon the titles "God the Father," and "God the Son" because Mormons equivocate on them.

Hays 

i) It would behoove you to pay attention. Notice that I commented on "mother of God".

ii) The Theotokos is a half-truth. As such, it can be misleading, and Catholic apologists exploit that. There's nothing wrong with avoiding formulations that are half-truths.

Theotokos, while having a grain of truth, is far from strictly accurate. For one thing, the Trinity is God, but Mary isn't the birth-mother of the Trinity.

Likewise, what Mary actually bore was the body of Jesus, which is in union his rational soul, while his body and soul are in union with the Son. But that's two steps removing from giving birth to God. 

To be theologically orthodox requires precision thought and precision formulations, not equivocations and half-truths. 

iii) Likewise, a formulation that's innocent in one context may be imprudent in another. There are perfectly innocent, acceptable theological formulations of the Incarnation or Trinity use with Christians in a popular context that I wouldn't use in philosophical theology or that I wouldn't use when debating a unitarian.

iv) There's no obligation to use invented Marian titles. Sure, we can and should use extrabiblical terminology for various things, but I reserve the right to choose which extrabiblical terms I use. That can't be foisted on me by someone with their own agenda.

v) you're allowing Catholics to frame the debate. And it gets off track, because it becomes a debate over Mary rather than Jesus. A strategic shift in focus. We don't need to start with Mary to expound NT Christology: we can go straight to what-all the NT has to say about Jesus, which is abundant. Any discussion of Mary can and should be secondary to the direct, primary NT evidence regarding the nature of the Incarnation.

vi) Important in this debate is the Reformed communication of attributes, where what is true of each nature can be predicated of the Person (i.e. common property-bearer), but cannot be predicated of the opposing nature.

vii) BTW, a number of commenters just assume that Acts 20:28 should be rendered "the church of God, which he bought with his own blood," but the syntax is ambiguous, and a number of scholars argue that it's better rendered "with the blood of his own".

Mark

Clearly she is the most special human being ever after Christ himself

Hays

I don't grant that claim.

Mark

and end with asking for her prayers (which we are free to do with any fellow believer at any part of the Body of Christ, here or in eternity

Hays

i) Classic equivocation. For starters, we have no reason to think she can hear our prayers, unlike asking a fellow believer to pray for us.

ii) In addition, the theology behind Marian intercession, at least in Catholicism, is that her prayers are more efficacious than any other human because she's so meritorious. 

iii) Then there's the celestial nepotism angle, as if she has extra special clout because she was the human mother of Christ.

iv) Mary is human. She can't process millions of prayers in different languages each day.

Mark

She is in the beatific vision, closest to Christ. Of course she can.

Hays 

i) You're leaning on a very anthropomorphic, essentially pagan concept of God, where the queen mother has special access to her royal son's ear.

ii) The beatific vision is a later theological construct. You keep appealing to assumptions which consistent evangelicals don't share. Biblical revelation is our primary source and standard.

iii) There's no evidence that she's "closest to Christ" in heaven. Mark never gets around to explicating his inference, but  seems to be operating from the general principle that if person A bears a relation with person B, then the greater A is makes B the greater by association. Thus, if Mary is the (human) mother of Christ, due to her relation to the greatest conceivable being. 

If that's the implicit inference, then the principle is unsound. For instance, Judas bore a relation to Jesus, as one of the Twelve. A very exclusive group of Christ's handpicked disciples who were almost constantly with him for 2-3 years. But that association doesn't make Judas greater than the garden-variety Christian. To the contrary, Judas was a traitor. His close association with Christ, as a member of Christ's inner circle, doesn't rub off on Judas. 

Or to take a more mundane example, to be the son of a great man doesn't make the son a great man. 

There's no principle of transference, whereby if A is great, and B is in relation to A, then B is great by association.

Mark 

Regarding "processing millions of prayers": She is in the beatific vision, closest to Christ. She is out of time, in perfect eternity. 

Hays 

There's no evidence that the intermediate state is timeless.

Mark 

Clarify what you mean by "there is no evidence that the intermediate state is timeless." What do you mean by intermediate?

Hays 

The intermediate state is a standard theological category. The disembodied condition of the dead. The soul survives the body. Time and space are separable. Angels are spaceless but temporal beings. Only God is timeless and spaceless.

Mark

regarding the concept of the intermediate state: The Catholic position is this: outside of life, there is timelessness.

Hays

Appealing to the Catholic position when debating Protestants is a fallacious argument from authority inasmuch as we don't concede your authority source. 

Mark

You don't know your theology better than the Church which wrote it.

Hays

Same fallacious argument from authority. Your problem is that you're arguing from your assumptions rather than for your assumptions. But when debating Protestants, it begs the question for you to cite Catholic assumptions if that's the very issue in dispute.

An argument from authority is legitimate when both sides credit the authority. In addition, an argument from authority is legitimate if you make a case for your authority source. But your appeal fails on both counts. 

Mark

Time is a property of the material world, rendering any further discussions of what takes places WHEN after the material world merely hypothetical conversations, and in a sense absurd given the natural limitation of human perspective.

Hays

I don't grant that assumption. For instance, successive mental states involve temporal succession, but unless you're a physicalist, that means time is separable from matter.

Mark

Another part comes from Christ himself, who said: "here is your Mother."

Hays

He entrusted her to the care of John. So what? 

Mark

Of course she can. She wants to.

Hays

Because you can read her mind.

Mark

And Christ wants her to as well.

Hays

I hardly think Jesus wants to divert Christians away from praying to him to praying to his earthly mother. 

Mark

Thomas Aquinas did a nice job of such objections

Hays

Let's consider the job he did in the section of the ST you link to:

"On the contrary, Gregory, commenting on Job 14:21…Further, Gregory says (Dial. ii)"

That's persuasive to a medieval Catholic audience, but an fallacious argument from authority when debating Protestants. 

"But this is the error of Vigilantius, as Jerome asserts in his letter against him."

Same fallacy.

"as Dionysius declares (Coel. Hier. iii)."

Yet another fallacious argument from authority. In fairness, Aquinas didn't know that Pseudo-Dionysius was spurious. We do. 

I take it that Aquinas is grounding his conclusion in his interpretation of the Beatific Vision. But Protestants don't grant that interpretive grid.

"Now, as Gregory says (Moral. v, 30) on this passage"

Fallacious argument from authority.

"According to Dionysius (Eccl. Hier. v)"

Fallacious argument from authority. 

"It is not on account of any defect in God's power that He works by means of second causes."

True, but too general to prove his point. 

"Although the greater saints are more acceptable to God than the lesser"

Why should we assume there's a pecking order of saints in glory? Does that assume a theology of merit? 

"Thirdly, because it is granted to some saints to exercise their patronage in certain special cases, for instance to Saint Anthony against the fire of hell."

Pious legend. This is a good example of building on one false premise after another.

Mark

There's no evidence? Simple human logic aside, Fatima my friend. Fatima. Fatima and a thousand others, but especially Fatima.

Hays 

Regarding Fatima, http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/01/miracle-of-sun.html

Mark

A convoluted and confused article. I'm sorry. And of course the Miracle of the Sun was the final act of this famous ongoing apparition. There is much more here than just this one event.

Hays

you didn't have time to read my post. Try rebutting my arguments.

Mark

My main issues with the post regard the over-reliance on Karl Rahner, who traditional Catholics often see as ultimately a very negative influence on the Church via his modernism…

Hays

Your religious superiors don't share your negative assessment of Rahner, who was a peritus at Vatican II. 

Mark

I also think that the astronomical argument is silly.

Hays

That was Jaki's interpretation, who's defending the phenomenon. So he's not good enough for you either. Your problem isn't in the first instance with Protestants but with your fellow Catholics.

Mark

it is unreasonable to conclude that the lack of written accounts by a crowd of largely simple and presumably illiterate people would be disproof.

Hays

That wasn't my argument.

Mark

Rather what we should look for is a tradition of contrary witness to that of the educated written positive descriptions. Where is it?

Hays

There were conflicting accounts. And there's still the question of how to interpret the phenomenon.

Mark

The article focuses on the presumed miracle of the Sun. But as I already said: there is MUCH more to Fatima than this.

Hays

But the "much more" part is much more dubious because it lacks anything like the number of putative eyewitnesses. 

BTW, Catholic miracles are a nonstarter because even if they happen, Catholicism doesn't have a monopoly on reported miracles. There are many well-documented miracles in Protestant circles. Take collections by Craig Keener and Robert Larmer, among others.

Mark

Christ gave us a Church, not a Bible.

Hays

Christ gave the Holy Spirit, who gave us the NT. By the same token, the Spirit gave us the OT, which preceded the church.

Mark

Where is the real Church if not in Rome?

Hays

The church is wherever the Spirit is.

Mark

Which of the legion of squabbling Christian sects large and small - many disagreeing vehemently on core dogmatic and doctrinal principles - is closer to Christ than Peter?

Hays

Consider all the squabbling cardinals and bishops regarding Pope Francis.

The 21C church of Rome isn't close to Peter, not that proximity to Peter is a relevant criterion. 

Mark 

God asked Mary's permission.

Hays

No, God didn't ask Mary's permission. Gabriel announced to Mary what was going to happen.

Gregory

Mary consented freely to God’s Will.

Hays

She submitted to God's will. That's a psychological attitude about our situation, not the power to veto our situation. 

It's a commonplace of Jewish and Christian experience, both in Scripture and church history, that the faithful are submissive to events which are not contingent on their submission. In many cases, these events are over and done with. Take a personal tragedy. That happens, then it's a question of how a believer will respond. He can't change the tragedy. That lies in the past. And he didn't see it coming. 

The only question is whether he will resign himself to God's will or be bitter and turn away from God as a result of the tragedy. 

Gregory

But if someone is full of grace, I suggest it does not simply mean because she was pregnant physically, but that she was prepared spiritually to receive God completely. Her acquiescence to God’s Will is certainly a sign of humility in the most positive reading of that word.

Hays

Luke doesn't say she was "full of grace". You get that from the Vulgate and the Rosary (Ave Maria), not the Greek text. The passages implies that she was the object of divine favor, not the source. 

Gregory 

Whoah! No Catholic teaching suggests Mary is the source of grace. That is your misrepresentation of the Catholic faith. Grace is by it’s nature, of God. Again, Catholics do not teach that Mary is divine.

Hays 

I didn't say Catholics teach Mary is divine. But regarding my alleged misrepresentation, what about the annual feast day of “Mary Mediatrix of All Graces.” Or take Alphonsus Liguori's statement, "Thou art the dispenser of all graces…and the source of our salvation," The Glories of Mary.

Gregory

If the Ark was so revered as a mere, lifeless container of the old Covenant that no unclean priest should enter its presence, how is the living container, Mary, made to bear Christ, deserving of such little respect and no deference?

Hays 

If you think Jesus rubs off on whatever he touches, think of all the people he healed with a touch.

Aaron

If Mary was not that important, then why does the ANGEL Hail her as Full of Grace? Seems pretty clear that there is something VERY important going on there.

Hays 

Angels appear to lots of folks in Scripture. And he didn't say she was "full of grace". That's from the Latin, not the Greek. This illustrates the blinding effect of traditional conditioning.

Notice how this comment thread derails the train. We don't need to go through Mariology to arrive at Christology. The NT has little to say about Mary but tons to say about Jesus, unsurprisingly. We can get our Christology right from all the many things the NT (and OT messianic prophecy) has to say about Jesus. It doesn't need to be filtered through Mariology. We can still interpret what little the NT has to say about Mary, but that's quite secondary. That's the problem with allowing Catholics to frame the issue.