I have always found it very curious the rejection that Protestant denominations have of the Catholic doctrines related to the Virgin Mary. The roots of this rejection seem to originate in their disapproval of what they consider an “excess” in Catholic devotion to the mother of the Lord. This rejection, which leads them to distance themselves from everything that seems “Catholic,” makes it difficult for them to accept any argument, however biblical it may be, that results in the veneration of the Virgin. In most cases, especially the sects[1], they distort Catholic doctrine to make it appear heretical[2], going so far as to claim that the Catholic Church teaches the “worship” of Mary and that she is a “goddess.”

Yet this has not always been so. Many Protestants regard the Protestant reformers as great biblical scholars and models to be imitated — and those reformers felt a great appreciation and veneration for the Virgin Mary and even accepted some of the dogmas of the Catholic Church on the matter.

Martin Luther and the Virgin Mary

Today the whole of Protestantism fails to recognize that Mary is the Mother of God; in its eagerness to diminish her, it has denied her the title the Church has always granted her — beginning with Elizabeth, who, inspired by the Holy Spirit, called her “Mother of the Lord”[3] — all the way down to the early Church, which had no hesitation in calling her the Theotókos (Mother of God)[4]. Yet Luther never hesitated to give her this title, which he granted her until the last days of his life:

“Thus God judged His Mother: 1) The law of God condemned her as an adulteress. 2) Her honor was thereby ruined. 3) Her life was in danger and her conjugal honor damaged. Mary was conceived in sin like other men; and, even if she were purified from original sin, this would not have been sufficient for such a birth. Therefore, it is the Holy Spirit who is the protagonist, who purifies her and takes the pure drops of blood from her heart; for everything must be purified.”[5]

“The great things God has accomplished in Mary are summed up in this: she is the Mother of God. By this very many other gifts have been granted to her, which no one will ever be able to comprehend. From this flows all her honor, all her blessedness, and the fact that among the entire human race she is a person altogether singular and incomparable. She has had by the heavenly Father a child, and such a child… All her honor is comprehended when she is called the Mother of God. No one can say anything greater of her, even if he had as many tongues as the grass has blades, the sky has stars, or the seashore has grains of sand. What it means to be the Mother of God must be pondered in the heart.”[6]

The same is true of the dogma of the perpetual virginity of Mary, denied today by almost all Protestants; yet Luther also firmly believed in her virginity before and after the birth.

“And no man, not even the devil, has to know how it can happen that a virgin woman conceives without a man. For there the Three Divine Persons will be present. The work must be accomplished by the three, although that action ends solely in the person of the Son.”[7]

“…he wonders and asks how the Lord Jesus could have had brothers, given that he was the only son of Mary, and the Virgin Mary was mother of no other child. Some then answer that they were children of a previous marriage of Joseph, before he was with Mary; these were afterward called ‘brothers of Christ’; others say that Joseph had another wife alongside Mary, as was permitted among the Jews… I believe that brothers here means cousins, since the Jews and Holy Scripture called all cousins brothers.”[8]

“Mary remained a virgin; for after finding herself to be the Mother of the Son of God, she did not desire to be the mother of any other man, but to remain in this grace.”[9]

“A great honor before God falls to Joseph. The Son of God and His Mother were entrusted to him. Thus Joseph is a carpenter who acts like any ordinary man and works in obscurity. But it was written down for us so that we might know that Christ came and that his mother was a virgin, even though the virgin before and after the birth was concealed under the veil of a wife.”[10]

“The letter to the Hebrews says that Sara asked in faith for the power of conception, so that you might understand that she conceived by Abraham following the normal course of nature, not through a miracle. This miracle did occur in the Virgin Mary, who conceived in her womb, but from her own seed, not from the seed of a man. For this purpose the Holy Spirit overshadowed her.”[11]

John Calvin and the Virgin Mary

Calvin frequently spoke in defense of the virginity of Mary, rejecting — just as Saint Jerome had done more than a millennium earlier — the argument that Matthew 1:25 implies that Joseph had relations with Mary, and also rejecting the view that Mary had more children because He was called “firstborn”[12].

“From Matthew 1:25 Helvidius created great confusion in the Church, because from it he deduced that Mary had remained a virgin only until the first birth and afterward had other children with her husband. The perpetual virginity of Mary was vigorously defended by Jerome. It is enough to say that it is senseless and false to deduce from these words what happened after the birth of Christ. He is called the firstborn for no other reason than so that we might know he was born of the Virgin. In this text it is denied that Joseph had marital intercourse with Mary before the child was born; everything is limited to this time. But nothing is said about what happened afterward.”[13]

“It is beyond doubt that the prophet is speaking of an authentic virgin, who is to conceive not according to the laws of nature, but through the action of the grace of the Holy Spirit. This is the mystery which Paul magnificently extols: ‘God was manifested in the flesh.’”[14]

“When Mary knew that the Son of God would be born of her, she received an unheard-of message, and this was the reason she excluded sexual union with a man. Therefore she exclaimed in bewilderment: ‘How shall this be?’… This was not a question against faith. She asked it moved by wonder, not by distrust.”[15]

“‘Is not this the carpenter’s son?’ (Matthew 13:55) By the admirable design of God, Christ lived until the age of thirty in the obscurity of his parents’ home. This was strangely and unjustly made a stumbling block for the people of Nazareth, instead of recognizing with awe that he was sent from heaven. If they had but discovered that it was God acting in Christ!

But intentionally they thought of Joseph, of Mary, and of all the relatives and their connections with one another, so as to conceal the light that was manifesting itself. It was above all blood relatives who, according to Jewish custom, were designated as ‘brothers’. But from this Helvidius ignorantly deduced that Mary had more children, because there is mention at times of the brothers of Christ.”[16]

H. Zwingli and the Virgin Mary

Zwingli explains that the marriage to Joseph was solely so that Joseph might appear as her husband and protect her from the law, and thus be able to give to the child and to her protection and care.

“When the time appointed by God was fulfilled, He sent His messenger Gabriel to the young Mary (Magd Maria), who was betrothed to the devout Joseph. Divine wisdom shows itself in the fact that the betrothal to Joseph was not intended to establish a marital relationship between them for the purpose of begetting children, but so that the maiden Mary, after finding herself with child, would not be stoned according to Jewish law, which was established for those who conceived without a husband. Joseph’s appearing as her husband protected her from the law. She was also betrothed to him so that she and the child might find in him a protector and guardian.”[17]

He explicitly declares her to be a virgin, before, in, and after the birth:

“One must consider here the honor that the evangelist Luke, and also Matthew, pays to her for her exalted purity; she is a pure and undefiled young woman before the birth, in the birth, and after the birth — that is, always. Among men it is impossible for a mother to be at the same time a virgin; for God all things are possible, because all creatures obey His voice.”[18]

Many Protestants today think that a Catholic believes Mary remained a virgin simply because he has never encountered the biblical passages that speak of the “brothers” of Jesus. Most are unaware that all those arguments were indeed analyzed and rejected by Christians throughout the whole of history, including the Protestant reformers. The matter is not that Catholic doctrines contradict what the Scriptures teach, but rather that they represent an interpretation in harmony with the faith the Church has professed from its very origins — a faith shared, in part, by the fathers of Protestantism.

Notes

  1. One must distinguish between Protestant sects and Protestant ecclesial communities. ↩
  2. Straw man fallacy: it consists in distorting the opponent’s theses in order to weaken his position and attack it with advantage. It differs from the ad hominem fallacy in that the latter evades the arguments in order to concentrate on attacking the person. The straw man fallacy attacks a thesis, but first alters it. To do so, it dresses the opponent’s positions in whatever garb is most convenient, usually the one that gathers their weakest or least popular aspects. ↩
  3. Luke 1,43. The expression “Mother of the Lord” is equivalent to “Mother of God,” since in the New Testament the title Lord (from the Greek Kyrios) is given to Christ, who is Lord and God. In the same way the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Seventy, 2nd century B.C.) translates Yahweh as “Lord” (from the Hebrew Adonai). See, for example, how in the same chapter the angel says to her, “the Lord is with you,” referring to God. ↩
  4. As far as we know, Alexander of Alexandria had already called Mary “the Theotókos” (Cf. “Our Lord Jesus Christ truly received, and not in appearance, a body from the Theotókos”: Alexander of Alexandria. Ep. Ad Alex. Const. n.12 in Theodoret. Ecclesiastical History, I,3: PG 82,908); it also appears in an Egyptian papyrus that records one of the most ancient Marian prayers, the “Sub tuum praesidium” (Cf. G. Giamberardini, Il Sub tuum Praesidium nella tradizione egiziana, in Mar 96 (1969), 324-362). There are also numerous testimonies from Gregory Nazianzen, in his letter to Cledonius (Letter 101: Patrologia Series Graeca 36,181), Cyril of Alexandria, Origen (according to the historian Sozomen (Hist. Eccl. 7,32: EG 866)), St. Ambrose, etc. ↩
  5. Martin Luther, 24 Dezember 1539: Luther Werke 47,860; José C.R. García Paredes, Mariología, BAC, Madrid 2001, p. 232 ↩
  6. Martin Luther, Auslegung des Magnificat, 1522: Luther Werke 7,572. Ibid., p. 249 ↩
  7. Martin Luther, 28 Dezember 1544: Luther Werke 49,646. Ibid., p. 232-233 ↩
  8. Martin Luther, 1537/1538: Luther Werke 46,723. Ibid., p. 241 ↩
  9. Martin Luther, Tischrede n.4435 Ergänzungen, 1539: Luther Werke 48,579. Ibid. ↩
  10. Martin Luther, Predigt 24 Dezember 1540: Luther Werke 49,174. Ibid. ↩
  11. Martin Luther, 1535 bis 1545: Luther Werke 43,22. Ibid., p. 233 ↩
  12. Protestants allege that since Jesus is called the only-begotten of the Father (John 3:16,18) but the firstborn of Mary (Luke 2:7), this implies that Jesus is the first among several children. The argument fails, for “firstborn” does not necessarily imply the existence of other children; it is a term that refers only to the “first-born” or “preeminent son.” Likewise, Christ is called the “firstborn” of the Father in Hebrews 1:6, while also being the only-begotten. ↩
  13. Guilielmus Baum, Eduardus Cunitz, Eduardus Reuss, Ioannis Calvini, Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia (hereafter abbreviated JCO) 45,70; cf. JCO 46,271-272; José C.R. García Paredes, Mariología, BAC, Madrid 2001, p. 240-241 ↩
  14. John Calvin, JCO (Verlag C. A. Schwetschke und Sohn, Braunschweig 1863 ff.), Band 45; Commentarius in Harmoniam evangelicam (“Harmonia evangelica” 1555), Band 46; Sermons sur l’Harmonie évangélique 1558, 1560, 1562. JCO 36,156. Ibid., p. 233 ↩
  15. John Calvin, JCO 45,30. Ibid. ↩
  16. John Calvin, JCO 45,426. Ibid., p. 241 ↩
  17. H. Zwingli, Eine Predigt von der ewig reinen Magd Maria: ZSW 1,391-392. Ibid., p. 242 ↩
  18. Ibid. ↩