The Suspicious Early Silence About Later Marian Dogmas

In a recent post, I discussed some of the evidence against concepts like Mary's perpetual virginity, sinlessness, and assumption. Something to keep in mind when issues like those come up is that the lack of reference to those beliefs among the earliest sources carries some evidential weight against them. Think of the writings of Luke, for example. He wrote the longest gospel we have, said the most about Mary among the earliest Christians, and gave us our earliest church history. That church history doesn't end until the early 60s. Not only does he say nothing of concepts like Mary's perpetual virginity, sinlessness, assumption, praying to individuals like Mary, venerating images of such people, etc., but he even repeatedly uses language that most naturally suggests that he opposed some of those concepts. See here for a discussion of some examples. Or see here for many other examples of early opposition to later Marian beliefs and practices. My main point here, though, is that we should keep in mind that there's a double problem for the advocate of something like a modern Roman Catholic or modern Eastern Orthodox view of Mary. There's a suspicious lack of reference to their view, a view they claim to be so important, accompanied by so many apparent contradictions of it. And that's in a context in which they claim to belong to the one true church founded by Jesus, passing on all apostolic teaching in unbroken succession throughout church history, providing unity, providing doctrinal clarity, etc.

Baptismal real presence?

We're frequently told that we should hold a highly efficacious view of baptism or the eucharist because the church fathers and other pre-Reformation sources often expressed such a view. As I've mentioned before, we also find other views among the pre-Reformation sources, so we need to take those other views into account as well. Another problem with appeals to highly efficacious language in these sources is that they also used such language in many other contexts, including contexts in which modern proponents of a highly efficacious view of baptism or the eucharist don't hold such an efficacious view of those other things. See the many examples discussed in my post here on pre-Reformation views of initiatory rites. That post cites a book by G.W.H. Lampe, and here are some other comments he made in that same book:

He [Melito of Sardis] strongly emphasizes the theory of the Spirit's presence in the [baptismal] water, which, though quite unscriptural, becomes a commonplace in the Fathers and is developed by some ancient authors into a doctrine approximating to that of a 'Real Presence' of the Spirit in the font....

Again, on the other hand, the doctrine of a sort of 'Real Presence' of the Spirit in the water of Baptism is clearly expressed in the Homily on the Blessing of Jacob [attributed to Hippolytus]...

Zeno of Verona describes the baptismal water as 'aqua viva Spiritu sancto et igne dulcissimo temperata', and Gaudentius connects the miracle of Cana with the presence of the Spirit in the water and its reception by the baptized. These are, no doubt, expressions of pious rhetoric, but Cyril has a genuine doctrine of the Spirit's 'real presence' in the water, a theory amounting almost to a conception of the transubstantiation of water into Spirit, John of Damascus explains that the Spirit comes upon the water through epiclesis, and we must not ignore the significance of the common practice of dipping torches into the font

(The Seal Of The Spirit [Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2004], 115, 144, 211-12)

An Easy Way To Date Opposition To Mary's Perpetual Virginity Before Helvidius

Advocates of the perpetual virginity of Mary sometimes acknowledge that there was opposition to the concept before Helvidius. They'll sometimes acknowledge that Tertullian didn't think Mary was a perpetual virgin, for example. However, some of them claim that Helvidius was the first source we know of who held that view. What I want to do in this post is discuss a line of evidence that can be brought up against that claim, some evidence that they'll likely accept more easily than they'd accept an argument that somebody like Luke or Irenaeus denied Mary's perpetual virginity.

Are Protestants underestimating Mary?

Ben Merritt of Cleave to Antiquity recently produced a video in which he interviewed an eyewitness of the Zeitoun Marian apparitions and concluded that he accepts the apparitions as appearances of Mary. In the comments section, Sean Luke of Anglican Aesthetics said that he holds a similar view. Other commenters also said that they're Protestant and accept the apparitions as appearances of Mary. In another recent video, Myles Christian of Canon & Creed provided "a historical survey of giants in Protestant history who held Mary in high esteem". He cites their belief in concepts like Mary's perpetual virginity, her becoming sinless after conception, and her assumption. Elsewhere in the video, he refers to a problem with Protestants "overcorrecting" errors about Mary. He asks at another point, "Are we possibly missing something that they [earlier Protestants] saw from scripture?" One portion of the video refers to an argument for Mary's assumption based on fetal microchimerism, but doesn't explain how it allegedly leads to the conclusion that Mary was assumed. He ends the video by commenting, "But if men like the reformers, who were radically committed to sola scriptura, sola fide, and the purity of the gospel, if they could hold Mary in high esteem without compromising their convictions, then maybe we can too."

Consider The Birds

"For, when the dawn brings forth the breaking day, do we not see the smallest birds in the tiny bedchambers of their nests first proceed to sound forth with manifold loveliness and to do this assiduously, so that they may delight their Creator with sweetness, since they are unable to do so with language?...For the innocent bird charms its shepherd with sweetness since it cannot do so with words. For the birds also have their shepherd, as the Lord says: Consider the birds of heaven, that they neither spin nor reap, and your Father, who is in heaven, feeds them. [Matthew 6:26] But with what food are the birds fed? With the meanest and most earthly. The birds, therefore, give thanks for mean food, but you are fed with the costliest dishes and are ungrateful. What human being, then, would not blush to end the day without praying the Psalms, when the birds themselves burst out with the sweetness of the Psalter in order to give pleasure, and who would not, with the loveliness of verses, sound forth the glory of Him whose praise the birds pronounce in delightful song? Imitate, then, the smallest birds, brother, by giving thanks to the Creator morning and evening." (Maximus of Turin, Sermon 73:4-5, Boniface Ramsey, trans., The Sermons Of St. Maximus Of Turin [Mahwah, New Jersey: Newman Press, 1989], 179-80)

The Importance Of The Wind In John 3

There are a lot of problems with using John 3:5 to support baptismal regeneration. I've written about those problems in many posts over the years. I'll briefly summarize some of the points I've made before, then move on to what I want to focus on in this post, verse 8.

Jesus' rebuke of Nicodemus for not understanding what he's saying (3:10) makes more sense if he's referring to something that can be more easily derived from the Old Testament than baptismal regeneration can be. He goes on to refer to justification through faith a few times (verses 15-18), without any reference to baptism, which also makes more sense if baptismal regeneration isn't involved. The other New Testament passage that uses the born again language, 1 Peter 1:23-25, associates that language with a response to preaching, which is a prebaptismal context. See my discussion of justification apart from baptism in 1 Peter here. For a discussion of how the preaching context of justification is problematic for baptismal regeneration, see my post on Galatians 3 here. In the timeframe after Jesus spoke to Nicodemus, the fourth gospel and the other gospels give us several examples of people being justified apart from baptism, including in contexts that seem to be normative rather than exceptional, and there aren't any examples of people being justified at the time of baptism. See my post here on the double healing phenomenon, for example. The evidence for justification apart from baptism in the gospels is such that advocates of baptismal regeneration frequently concede the point and claim that baptismal regeneration didn't go into effect until after the crucifixion or at some other later stage. That creates problems for their view of John 3:5, which uses the present tense and makes no suggestion that what Jesus is discussing wouldn't go into effect until later. There's also the fact that the evidence suggests continuity in how people were justified throughout history, not the sort of discontinuity baptismal regeneration involves. For more about that subject, go here. And contrary to what advocates of baptismal regeneration often claim, there wasn't universal or nearly universal agreement about their interpretation of John 3:5 prior to the Reformation. For discussions of the many interpretations of the passage that circulated before the Reformation, including some that are inconsistent with each other, see here, here, and here, among other relevant posts in our archives.

Most likely, what Jesus is doing in John 3 is drawing from some material in Ezekiel 36-37. Those chapters in Ezekiel refer to water, wind, and the work of the Holy Spirit in contexts that involve the bringing about of new life (being born again, as Jesus puts it; being made a new creature, as Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 5:17; etc.). Ezekiel uses a lot of eschatological language and refers to a new covenant. In contrast to how baptism was typically practiced at the time when Jesus spoke to Nicodemus, Ezekiel refers to sprinkling with water (36:25). And he goes on to discuss wind in chapter 37, which Jesus discusses in John 3:8 (in the same order as Ezekiel: water, then wind). Most likely, then, the water of John 3:5 is summarizing one aspect of the Spirit's work, namely his cleansing, while the wind of 3:8 is summarizing another aspect of his work, its unpredictability. In addition to the close association of the water and the wind in both Ezekiel and John, the two are closely associated conceptually. They're both commonly experienced elements of nature. The wind obviously isn't literal in John 3. It would make more sense for the accompanying water to not be literal either. Furthermore, the unpredictability of the wind doesn't sit well with a highly visible ceremony that's anticipated ahead of time, like baptism. That's reminiscent of what we see elsewhere in scripture about the immediacy of justification, how it can happen at any moment (2 Corinthians 6:2) and by a means we have immediate access to (Romans 10:8-10). Baptism violates both of those kinds of immediacy, and it makes less sense of John 3:8.

The Leaves Of High Trees Shake With Every Blast Of Wind

"The leaves of high trees shake with every blast of wind, and in the same way every breath, every evil word, will disquiet an arrogant man….Contention that comes from pride leads a person into a thousand inconveniences that those of a meek and lowly temperament seldom encounter." (Henry Scougal, in Robin Taylor, ed., The Life Of God In The Soul Of Man [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2022], approximate Kindle location 562)

Holding Skeptics Accountable For Their Claims

One of the implications of what I discussed in my last post is that critics have to pay a price for something like assigning a late date to a gospel. For example, though I've argued elsewhere that Luke and Acts were written no later than the mid 60s, it's possible that a companion of Paul, like Luke, lived until later and published his work later than the mid 60s. If a skeptic assigns Luke/Acts to the 80s, let's say, he still has to allow for the possibility of Lukan authorship (or authorship by some other companion of Paul), and pushing the documents a couple of decades later pushes them that much closer to the later sources who comment on authorship in one way or another. That closer chronology adds credibility to those later sources. (And that's also true for other matters, like genre and historicity, not just authorship.) Skeptics are often schizophrenic about this kind of thing. They'll disregard the implications of what they said in a particular context when acknowledging the implications would be unfavorable to their conclusions in another context. I've written elsewhere about how they sometimes do that with certain Christmas issues, for instance, like the virgin birth and the Bethlehem birthplace.

Eyewitnesses Of Acts' Events Living Into The Second Century

We're accustomed to framing timing issues in early Christianity around Jesus' life. He died in the 30s, so we think of a document written in the 60s as postdating Jesus' life by about three decades, for example.

But we need to keep in mind that many significant events, like the ones narrated in Acts, occurred after Jesus' life on earth. Acts closes with events in Rome in the 60s. Some people who were in Rome at the time surely lived into the second century, probably multiple decades into the second century in some cases. That diminishes the popular skeptical suggestion that individuals in the second century wouldn't have had firsthand knowledge about issues like the dating and authorship of documents, were just speculating about such issues without much to go by, etc.

I've cited Acts as an example here, and something else that's significant about Acts is its connection to the third gospel. The fact that people with firsthand knowledge of Acts' authorship and the circumstances surrounding it could so easily have lived well into the second century, and that some probably did, adds weight to the universal testimony from the second century onward that the third gospel was written by Luke. (And there are multiple sources who partially or fully corroborate that authorship attribution prior to Irenaeus, as discussed here.)

This distinction between the timing of Jesus' life and the timing of later events is also relevant in many other contexts: the suffering of the apostles, their martyrdom, apostolic miracles, etc. Always ask yourself what timeframe is relevant to the issue under consideration. Be careful not to assume the timeframe of Jesus' life in contexts that involve a different timeframe instead.

How Close, And Yet How Far Apart, Were The Worlds Of The Familiar And The Extraordinary

Guy Playfair wrote about an occasion when he was inside the Hodgsons' house while investigating the Enfield Poltergeist. He's contrasting the paranormal events inside the house to what was going on with the people walking by outside, who were focused on other things:

"It was late afternoon, and commuters were going home from the station, snatches of their conversation drifting through the window. Once again I was reminded of how close, and yet how far apart, were the worlds of the familiar and the extraordinary." (This House Is Haunted [United States: White Crow Books, 2011], 50)

Jesus And The Apostles Emphasized Maturity

For example:

"The seed which fell among the thorns, these are the ones who have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to maturity." (Luke 8:14)

"Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature." (1 Corinthians 14:20)

"For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food....let us press on to maturity" (Hebrews 5:12, 6:1)

"your deeds of late are greater than at first" (Revelation 2:19)

What does that suggest about how so many individuals, churches, parachurch ministries, and others operate in modern contexts like the United States, where there's so much focus on introductory material and not much concern about growing up? When you look at YouTube or Twitter comment threads or listen to callers on radio programs or conversations in church, do the people involved seem to have put much effort into maturing the way they should? Are they taking on more responsibilities and doing more of the work that needs done instead of being overly dependent on other people?

"You wicked, lazy slave, you knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I scattered no seed." (Matthew 25:26)

Was Tertullian the only early opponent of infant baptism?

I often see advocates of infant baptism referring to the history of credobaptism as if Tertullian is the only credobaptist source or the only source we know of who was somewhat close to credobaptism in the earliest centuries, the only prominent source early on, or some such thing. Sometimes they won't even mention Tertullian, as if nobody opposed infant baptism before the Reformation. But the evidence suggests that credobaptism was the only or dominant view during the earliest generations of church history. Many church fathers and other individuals other than Tertullian seem to have been closer to credopaptism than paedobaptism. For an overview, including patristic and medieval sources before and after Tertullian, see here. And here's one on Aristides, a pre-Tertullian source. They give a variety of reasons for waiting until after infancy for baptism, such as waiting until the person baptized has an understanding of and has professed the faith and the importance of having the person baptized choose to participate in baptism. The notion that everybody who delayed baptism did so only or primarily to have his baptism cover more sins later in life is demonstrably false.

This heaven!

"This heaven! who knows what it is? (Matt 22:23) This glory! who knows what it is? It is called God's throne, God's house (John 14:2), God's habitation; paradise (2 Cor 12:4), the kingdom of God, the high and holy place (Isa 57:15). Abraham's bosom (Luke 16:22), and the place of heavenly pleasures (Psa 16:11); in this heaven is to be found, the face of God for ever (Psa 41:12): Immortality, the person of Christ, the prophets, the angels, the revelation of all mysteries, the knowledge of all the elect, ETERNITY. Of this heaven, as was said afore, we are possessed already, we are in it, we are set down in it, and partake already of the benefits thereof, but all by our head and undertaker; and 'tis fit that we should believe this, rejoice in this, talk of this, tell one another of this, and live in the expectation of our own personal enjoyment of it. And as we should do all this, so we should bless and praise the name of God who has put over this house, this kingdom, and inheritance into the hand of so faithful a friend. Yea, a brother, a Saviour and blessed undertaker for us." (John Bunyan)

Did the earliest information about Christianity circulate entirely in oral form?

A post I wrote last week about Josephus was partly about the likelihood that the earliest Jewish opponents of Christianity communicated about the religion in writing. Elsewhere in Tom Schmidt's book that I cited, he discussed a line of evidence I've brought up before. "For the same reason during the 30s CE it is probable that Saul of Tarsus received letters from none other than a high priestly son of Ananus I instructing him to arrest followers of Jesus." (Josephus And Jesus [New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2025], 185) In a footnote, Schmidt cites Acts 9:1-2 and 22:5. There are other examples of actual or potential references to Christianity in written sources that are no longer extant, among both non-Christians and Christians. See my post here that discusses the example in Acts mentioned above and others. See, also, my discussion here regarding how the genealogy of Jesus in the gospel of Luke likely came from the brothers of Jesus, most likely James, and probably in written form.

What Justin Martyr said about early Jewish responses to Christianity, which I discussed in my last post, probably involved written material as well, not just oral sources.

People often speak of the earliest history of Christianity as if it involved only oral communication about the religion or as if any written sources that existed at the time had little or no significance. But that doesn't make much sense in the abstract, it's inconsistent with the large amount of documents we have from Christians from the middle of the first century onward, and it's contradicted by the references we have to early written sources that are no longer extant (the likely presence of written documents other than the canonical gospels in the "many" sources of Luke 1:1-3; Acts 9:1-2, 15:23-29; etc.). The nature of life is such that communicating orally makes more sense in some contexts, and communicating in writing makes more sense in other contexts. Both would have been present from the start of Christianity, not just later on. And that start of Christianity includes Jesus' life before his public ministry.