Marian Debates
James White has observed that Catholic apologists have been less willing to engage him in debate over Marian dogmas then they have over other issues. That seems like it is probably true. In general Catholic apologetics has focused on 2 main issues. Those would be authority and the Eucharist. Authority because it is at the very center of the protestant heresy. It is the error that makes all other errors 1000 times worse because now they result in schism. Dissent can be resolved over time. Schisms are almost impossible to fix.
The other issue we do talk about quite a bit is the Eucharist. Part of that is because it is the fount and the summit of our faith. The other reason is because the biblical evidence is so clear. I don’t think there is any passage of scripture more clear than John 6. Jesus knows He is teaching an important and difficult truth so He makes Himself as clear as He can. He repeats Himself. He uses strong language. He confronts the obvious objections. It is very hard for a bible Christians to ignore such a powerful passage but they must ignore it. So you can see why Catholic apologists go there a lot.
But what about Mary? Mary is seen as an objection that needs to be dealt with rather than a positive argument for becoming Catholic. So we want to talk about Mary but it is not the first topic we want to deal with. We want to gain ground on the other topics and try not to lose any when we talk about Mary. There is just such a strong emotional aversion to Marian devotion. Most Marian devotion is optional. So the strategy is just to deal with the few dogmas that must be accepted and leave the rest.
Catholics answer many questions about Mary but not from guys like James White who are more interested in taking cheap shots than getting at the source of somebody’s aversion. Part of this is about not throwing pearls before swine. Mary is holy. She is pure. She is our spiritual mother. She is the mother of God. You don’t want to get into a debate where somebody is going to throw mud at her. So many of these guys claim to love Jesus yet they have nothing good to say about His mother. They would not insult their worst enemy by speculating about the sex life of their mother but they do with the mother of the person they call Lord and Saviour. It is strange but true.
The other big reason why Marian dogmas are not debated is because they are dependant on other Catholic truths. It is a development of doctrine. So it depends on accepting the doctrines that it is derived from. That means accepting them based on the authority of the church. Those doctrines involve the veneration of saints. They involve the notion of holiness and the importance of virginity. So you have to build an argument out of many premises that a protestants won’t accept. It ends up being too much for one debate.
One of the things that discourages converts is the size of the gap between protestant and Catholic traditions. It is not even one thing that seems impossible. It is the combination of many things. Taken individually the Catholic positions don’t seem that hard to accept. Taken together it seems like a huge mountain. Part of it is wonder if you, and every teacher you have had, could be so wrong about so many things. I know I was serious about my faith for many years. I didn’t think I was perfect but I did think I was a lot closer to the truth than I was to the Catholic faith. Having a debate about Mary can leave protestants feeling like the Tiber river is the 1000 miles wide. To deal with fewer questions and let them ponder them and see how solid the Catholic position is, that tends to bear more fruit.
So should we debate Marian dogmas with the likes of James White? I am not sure. In some ways you want to do it just so you can say you did it. I do think it is useful to interact with protestants about Mary. The biggest problem for her is she get ignored by them entirely. So any interaction at all might start to break that down. They can start to see the strangeness of their position. That a virgin conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and gave birth to a child who was fully God. Yet, somehow, that virgin is to be feared as an idol rather than honored as a model of faith and obedience.
” . . . sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who defame your good conduct in Christ may themselves be put to shame.” I Peter 3.15-16
June 30th, 2009 at 8:37 pmNot sure what else to say other than I will pray for you and if you catch me being uncharitable please call me on it. I don’t have anything against protestants. I had a very positive experience serving God as a protestant for many years. I have nothing negative to say about them. The protestants I meet on the net are another story.
June 30th, 2009 at 9:45 pm[...] I’m not catholic but that’s a debate I’d enter. [...]
July 1st, 2009 at 8:47 amNice post—hope you don’t mind if I add my ‘two-cents”…
Concerning James White, I have observed two tendencies on his part that, IMHO, reduce the impact and level of his “ministry”: first, his constant use of double-standards—James is quick to criticize the perceived flaws/inconsistencies/errors/etc. of others, while ignoring his own; and second, his seeming unwillingness to interact with the cutting-edge scholars/scholarship of the groups he criticizes (especially Catholic and Mormon scholars/scholarship).
Moving on, I thought the following you wrote is spot-on:
>>The other big reason why Marian dogmas are not debated is because they are dependant on other Catholic truths. It is a development of doctrine. So it depends on accepting the doctrines that it is derived from. That means accepting them based on the authority of the church. Those doctrines involve the veneration of saints. They involve the notion of holiness and the importance of virginity. So you have to build an argument out of many premises that a protestants won’t accept. It ends up being too much for one debate.>>
IMHO, even doctrines such as the Trinity “are dependant on other Catholic truths” and the “development of doctrine”. Though there is certainly more raw material (i.e. Scriptural passages) to work with, as Dr. Raymond Brown pointed out, this raw material could easily have taken a different “line of development”—note the following:
“Three different figures, Father, Son, and Spirit, are brought into conjunction in the NT. Some NT formulas join the three; other references unite the Father and the Son; and still other references relate the Spirit to the Father and/or Son. Nevertheless, in no NT passage, not even in Matt. 28:19, is there precision about three divine Persons, co-equal but distinct, and one divine Nature—the core of the dogma of the Trintiy. Greek philosophy, sharpened by continuing theological disputes in the church from the 2nd to the 5th centuries, contributed to the classical formulation of the dogma. On the one hand one may say, the, that the precise Trinitarian dogma is not detectable in the literal sense of the NT, i.e., was not observably understood by first-century authors and audiences. On the other hand, reflection on NT texts played a crucial role in leading the church to the dogma to the dogma of three divine Persons and one divine Nature, a dogma that employed new terminology and embodied new insights as a response to new questions. There is no need to posit new revelation to account for the truth ultimately phrased in the trinitarian dogma, since that truth was already revealed when God sent Jesus Christ and when the risen Christ communicated his Spirit. Yet the development was not simply a matter of logic. In faith, one can claim that the Spirit guided the church as it moved from the NT triadic passages to perceiving and proclaiming the trinitarian dogma. Christians should not be embarrassed to affirm that they depend upon the Spirit’s guidance in such an essential dogma., for that guidance is really an application of Christ’s promise to be with his community and to send the Paraclete to guide them along the way of all truth…If ‘tradition’ implies that first-century Christianity already understood three coequal but distinct divine Persons and one divine Nature but had not developed the precise terminology, I would dissent. Neither the terminology nor the basic ideas had reached clarity in the first century; problems and disputes were required before the clarity came…Precisely because the ‘trinitarian’ line of development was not the only line of thought detectable in the NT, one must posit the guidance of the Spirit and intuition of faith as the church came to its decision.” (Raymond E. Brown, Biblical Exegesis & Church Doctrine, 1985, pp. 31-33.)
Grace and peace,
David
July 1st, 2009 at 10:55 amI responded to your trinity comments in a separate post.
As for James White, I don’t think he adds much except that he is out there. Protestants see him and wonder why Catholics don’t respond. When he actually interacts with an intelligent and charitable Catholic he ends up making a fool of himself. Think of the short exchange he had with Francis Beckwith a few months ago. So he seems to be effective only when he can drive off the serious challengers and interact solely with Catholics who are doctrinally below his weight class. Then he looks strong and I find that sad because many protestants see that and believe what he says about Catholics.
July 1st, 2009 at 12:58 pmI just stumbled upon A BOOK that I think you may find quite interesting.
Grace and peace,
David
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:45 amDo you have a link to that short exchange between Beckwith and White?
Following up on this post, two thoughts:
1. One Catholic apologist (maybe Sungenis?) debated James White about the Assumption of Mary some years back–it is one of the “tougher” Marian doctrines to defend, but the Catholic apologist did an admirable job at it.
2. I have found that the first Marian doctrine to discuss is her title, Mother of God. Protestants usually have no idea that this was defined at the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD (a pretty early date), nor do they usually realize that Elizabeth confirms this title when Mary comes to visit her (”filled with the Holy Spirit…the mother of my Lord should visit me…”).
Further, when they reject this doctrine and call Mary things like “Jesus’ flesh-mother” or some other thing, they fall into a Nestorian or Monophysite heresy and this can be shown to them.
July 4th, 2009 at 8:36 pmThe reasons you gave why RCs avoid debating about Mary is probably mostly true; that is, they know they don’t have much Scriptural material for those issues; so they start and focus on Sola Scriptura and authority, and if that can be damaged in the Evangelical mind; then that can open them up to the Papacy, and development of Doctrine; so the strategy of the RC apologetics is one of order, it seems. The extra-biblical doctrines, dogmas and practices regarding Mary are more palatable, once Sola Scriptura is abandoned and the need for an infallible authority is lodged in the sensitive Evangelicals mind; and then the authority for that Magisterium to be able to develop things beyond what Scripture teaches becomes more acceptable.
All the former Protestants I have read have admitted this, that the Marian practices and dogmas were the last ones that they had to deal with.
Because they (the Marian dogmas and practices) are so weak from Scripture, you are forced to begin with creating doubt about Scripture as the final infallible authority, and then the development of Doctrine and Magisterium and Papacy is put forth.
Also, Dr. White’s recent discussion of the Papacy and Matthew 16:13-19 with Matthew Bellisario on the DL; and the compilation of articles and videos, that Turretinfan put together
http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=3360
http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=3357
on these same issues show that we are stronger exegetical and historical grounds that show the chasm of massive difference between the exegetical and theological and historical grounds for the Deity of Christ and the Trinity
vs. the alleged Biblical and sparse and late historical grounds for the Papacy.
July 13th, 2009 at 7:21 amthe chasm of massive difference between the exegetical and theological and historical grounds for the Deity of Christ and the Trinity
vs. the alleged Biblical and sparse and late historical grounds for the Papacy
The chasm is only in your mind. You disagree with the papacy so it is in a massively different category for you. But a JW arguing against the trinity sounds exaactly like a protestant arguing against the papacy. They claim that such an important doctrine would be more clearly taught in scripture if it were true. The say you are putting to much weight on a few texts that are not that clear. They point out that all those great Christians that accepted this doctrine are sinners and they make mistakes.
July 13th, 2009 at 8:42 am