The aim of this arti­cle

We believe that Jesus is true God who became man for us. His moth­er, there­fore, can­not remain unim­por­tant for us. It is our desire to attain an objec­tive image of the moth­er of our Lord on the basis of the only reli­able sources con­cern­ing her per­son, i.e. the Gospels and the Acts of the Apos­tles. In this arti­cle we want to show our respect for the faith of the woman who called her­self “the ser­vant of the Lord” (Luke 1:38), but we also want to express crit­i­cism of the “ven­er­a­tion” of Mary that nei­ther cor­re­sponds to the will of God nor of His ser­vant.

Mariam¹, the Mother of Jesus

A new chap­ter in God’s his­to­ry with mankind opened in the year 7 or 8 BC when a girl called Mari­am from the Galilean vil­lage of Nazareth was unex­pect­ed­ly con­front­ed with God’s call to become the moth­er of the Sav­iour (Luke 1:26–38). Mari­am said “Yes” to this task that God entrust­ed to her. She became the moth­er of the Sav­iour of mankind, Jesus, the eter­nal Logos who became man. In her Son, the infi­nite God unit­ed Him­self with a cre­at­ed being in one per­son.

Mari­am, being the moth­er of the Mes­si­ah, was includ­ed in her Son’s humil­i­a­tion from the very begin­ning. At His birth she had to suf­fer home­less­ness (Luke 2:7). A short time lat­er she had to emi­grate with her hus­band and her child (Matthew 2:13–15). When her Son was twelve years old she saw that she had to sub­mit her mater­nal feel­ings to her Son’s rela­tion­ship with His eter­nal Father (Luke 2:48–49).

In the begin­ning of Jesus’ pub­lic min­istry Mari­am was con­front­ed with a prob­lem. When she asked her Son only indi­rect­ly to solve it, Jesus told her rather direct­ly that God isn’t depen­dent on her inter­ven­tion to ful­fil His plans:

O woman, what have you to do with me? (RSV) Has not my hour already come? (John 2:4)²

Mari­am under­stood this admo­ni­tion and left every­thing else to Jesus. We should under­stand the last word uttered from her mouth which has been record­ed and hand­ed down to us as the prin­ci­ple of her life from that time on:

Do what­ev­er he tells you. (John 2:5)

She had to go through the split of her fam­i­ly caused by the pub­lic appear­ance of Jesus, as Jesus’ broth­ers did not believe in Him (John 7:5). They want­ed to inter­fere in a sit­u­a­tion described in Mark 3:20–35. As the moth­er of the Mes­si­ah, we assume Mary’s trust in Jesus was nev­er shak­en. But in this con­flict Jesus explained clearly—not only to His oth­er rel­a­tives, but also to her—that spir­i­tu­al rela­tion­ships have pri­or­i­ty over bio­log­i­cal ones:

But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my moth­er, and who are my broth­ers?” And stretch­ing out his hand towards his dis­ci­ples, he said, “Here are my moth­er and my broth­ers! For who­ev­er does the will of my Father in heav­en is my broth­er and sis­ter and moth­er.” (Matthew 12:48–50)

From that time on Mari­am remained in the back­ground. Although she often did not under­stand her Son’s behav­iour she remained faith­ful to Him till His death on the cross. In this sit­u­a­tion Jesus chose to entrust her rather to His dis­ci­ple John than to His unbe­liev­ing rel­a­tives (John 19:25–27). After the res­ur­rec­tion and ascen­sion of Jesus we find Mari­am among His dis­ci­ples when they were gath­ered togeth­er in prayer (Acts 1:14). That is the last thing we know about her. We can sup­pose that she remained with John for the rest of her life and died as faith­ful dis­ci­ple. The fact that the remain­ing chap­ters of Acts and all let­ters of the New Tes­ta­ment³ fail to men­tion her again shows that Mari­am did not see her­self in a lead­ing role. Instead she con­tributed to the edi­fi­ca­tion of the church in sub­mis­sion and humil­i­ty.

Veneration of Mary?

Mary her­self said,

For behold, from now on all gen­er­a­tions will call me blessed. (Luke 1:48)

Sure­ly then, it must be right to turn to the Moth­er of Jesus trust­ful­ly in prayer, must­n’t it?

We con­sid­er Mary blessed in the same way as Eliz­a­beth her rel­a­tive expressed it:

And blessed is she who believed that there would be a ful­fil­ment of what was spo­ken to her from the Lord. (Luke 1:45)

In the same way, in agree­ment with the words of Jesus, we con­sid­er every believ­er blessed:

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. (John 20:29)

When Mary said the afore­men­tioned words she was fol­low­ing the exam­ple of Leah who, at the birth of Ash­er, the ances­tor of one of the twelve tribes of Israel, said,

Hap­py am I, for the daugh­ters will call me blessed! (Gen­e­sis 30:13 KJV)

The impor­tance of the birth of Jesus sur­pass­es the impor­tance of the birth of a patri­arch by far. The birth of Jesus has sig­nif­i­cance for all gen­er­a­tions. There­fore all peo­ple of all gen­er­a­tions have enough rea­son to rejoice over Mary’s faith. But Chris­tians do not have any more rea­son to pray to the Moth­er of the Mes­si­ah than the daugh­ters of Israel had to pray to Leah. Only God is wor­thy of receiv­ing our prayers! When Mary expressed her joy and grat­i­tude in a prayer because she had been elect­ed to be the moth­er of the Sav­iour, she was total­ly con­cen­trat­ed on God, whom she called her Sav­iour (Luke 1:47). Nei­ther in the words of Mary nor in any oth­er pas­sage of Holy Scrip­ture do we find the least rea­son to wor­ship Mary in our prayers, or to ask her for her inter­ces­sion. The Bible is full of prayers. But all prayers are direct­ed to God or Jesus. There is not a sin­gle prayer direct­ed to a mere human being, as per­fect as they might have been dur­ing their life­time.

You shall wor­ship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. (Matthew 4:10)

“Ven­er­a­tors” of Mary fre­quent­ly say that they do not wor­ship Mary; they sim­ply ask her for inter­ces­sion on their behalf, sim­i­lar to how we can ask every oth­er Chris­t­ian to pray for us. This rea­son­ing fails not only because of the lack­ing Bib­li­cal base, but also because of the fact that Mary does not live among us any longer but she lives in God’s pres­ence. The lim­its between this per­ish­able world and the eter­nal world of God exist now as before. The fol­low­ing state­ment made by an Old Tes­ta­ment prophet about Abra­ham and Israel (= Jacob), the ances­tors of the peo­ple of Israel is valid for Mary as well:

For you are our Father, though Abra­ham does not know us, and Israel does not acknowl­edge us; you, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name. (Isa­iah 63:16)

Of all the dis­ci­ples, who knew Mary bet­ter than John, who took care of her after the death of Jesus? In all prob­a­bil­i­ty John sur­vived Mary by sev­er­al years and fin­ished all his New Tes­ta­ment scrip­tures only after her death. If John had asked Mary for inter­ces­sion after her death we should find traces of it in his scrip­tures and also in the tra­di­tion of the sec­ond cen­tu­ry. As it is we can­not find any men­tion of this prac­tice. Who are we to think that we know bet­ter than the Apos­tles? Every­one who has real rev­er­ence for Mary will fol­low her exam­ple and mag­ni­fy the Lord and rejoice in God their Sav­iour (Luke 1:46–47).

Mary: Our Mediator?

The Bible makes very clear state­ments on the ques­tion of medi­a­tor­ship:

For there is one God, and there is one medi­a­tor between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. (1 Tim­o­thy 2:5)

Con­se­quent­ly, he is able to save to the utter­most those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make inter­ces­sion for them. (Hebrews 7:25)

“Ven­er­a­tors” of Mary agree for­mal­ly with these state­ments, but they make Mary the “medi­a­trix to the medi­a­tor”, as “Pope” Leo XIII. claimed:

Thus as no man goeth to the Father but by the Son, so no man goeth to Christ but by His Moth­er. (Octo­bri mense, Encycli­cal of Pope Leo XIII on the Rosary (1891))

If, how­ev­er, our access to Jesus is again only via Mary this the­o­ret­i­cal agree­ment turns into a prac­ti­cal denial of the unique medi­a­tor­ship of Jesus.

But did not Jesus, whilst hang­ing on the cross, present His own moth­er to mankind as the moth­er of all men (John 19:25–27)? Is this not rea­son enough to has­ten to Mary full of trust? Who could ever know us bet­ter than our own moth­er?

The fact is that we can­not find any­thing about this in the Bible. Jesus, being a respon­si­ble Son, pre­ferred to entrust His moth­er to His clos­est dis­ci­ple than to His “broth­ers“⁴ who did not yet believe in Him at that time. Even on the cross Jesus showed His respon­si­bil­i­ty for His moth­er whilst at the same demon­strat­ing that spir­i­tu­al rela­tion­ships have pri­or­i­ty over fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships.

But does not Jesus lis­ten espe­cial­ly to His moth­er? How could a Son dis­dain the sup­pli­ant requests of His moth­er? Who­ev­er thinks in this way denies the love of God who turns to all peo­ple with­out respect of per­sons. If I approach God with a pure atti­tude he will lis­ten to me. If I do not have this pure atti­tude not even Mary can help me. It is Jesus who calls us, say­ing,

Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gen­tle and low­ly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my bur­den is light. (Matthew 11:28–30)

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and who­ev­er comes to me I will nev­er cast out. (John 6:37)

Mary: Without Sin?

Accord­ing to the tes­ti­mo­ny of the New Tes­ta­ment Jesus was with­out sin:

Which one of you con­victs me of sin? (John 8:46)

Who­ev­er speaks in such a way must either be a mega­lo­ma­ni­ac or he is jus­ti­fied in what he says. In uni­son with the first Chris­tians we believe that Jesus was the only man who had the right to say this sen­tence.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sym­pa­thize with our weak­ness­es, but one who in every respect has been tempt­ed as we are, yet with­out sin. (Hebrews 4:15)

For it was indeed fit­ting that we should have such a high priest, holy, inno­cent, unstained.… (Hebrews 7:26)

He com­mit­ted no sin, nei­ther was deceit found in his mouth. (1 Peter 2:22)

Con­cern­ing Mary, how­ev­er, no such state­ment can be found any­where in the Bible. That is why the angel’s greet­ing in Luke 1:28 is usu­al­ly quot­ed as Bib­li­cal proof of her sin­less­ness:

Greet­ings, O favoured one, the Lord is with you!

“Ven­er­a­tors” of Mary build the whole doc­trine of Mary’s sin­less­ness on this one expres­sion, “favoured one”, which is incor­rect­ly ren­dered in the Vul­gate⁵ as “gra­tia ple­na”, i.e. “full of grace”. How­ev­er, even mod­ern catholic trans­la­tions do not use the expres­sion “full of grace” any more. Nev­er­the­less Mary is still ven­er­at­ed with these words. The expres­sion “favoured one” is actu­al­ly much more an indi­ca­tion that she her­self is in need of grace, hence it can­not be tak­en as an indi­ca­tion of her sin­less­ness. Con­cern­ing Stephen, how­ev­er, we do find the fol­low­ing state­ment:

And Stephen, full of grace and pow­er, was doing great won­ders and signs among the peo­ple. (Acts 6:8)

In his case nobody draws the con­clu­sions as in the case of Mary. Even in Stephen’s case we can­not speak of sin­less­ness, although we high­ly respect the obe­di­ence and devo­tion of the first mar­tyr.

The eccle­si­as­ti­cal writ­ers of the first cen­turies were also aware that Mary sinned. Let us have a look at John Chrysos­tom’s com­ment on Matthew 12:46–50:

For in fact that which she had essayed to do, was of super­flu­ous van­i­ty; in that she want­ed to show the peo­ple that she hath pow­er and author­i­ty over her Son, imag­in­ing not as yet any­thing great con­cern­ing Him; whence also her unsea­son­able approach. (John Chrysos­tom, Hom­i­lies to Matthew, Homi­ly 44)

Maybe Chrysos­tom over­rat­ed the sit­u­a­tion depict­ed in Matthew 12. Nev­er­the­less his exam­ple shows that even for this 4th cen­tu­ry Catholic “saint” Mary’s sin­less­ness was not dog­ma.

Like­wise, in uni­ty with Clement from Alexan­dria we con­fess:

…where­fore also He alone is judge, because He alone is sin­less. (Clement from Alexan­dria, Paed­a­gogus (The Instruc­tor) I,4,2)

Mary: The Mother of God?

The coun­cil of Eph­esus (431) coined the term “theotokos” (God’s bear­er) for Mary. This expres­sion is cor­rect as far as the one born to her is true God and true man. Of course it is clear that God, the eter­nal Cre­ator of the uni­verse, is with­out any ori­gin. It is impos­si­ble for Him to have father or moth­er.

In the same way as Paul could write,

…they would not have cru­ci­fied the Lord of glo­ry. (1 Corinthi­ans 2:8)

which effec­tive­ly means that they cru­ci­fied God, we too, can say that Mary gave birth to God. This is, how­ev­er, a state­ment about Jesus’ nature and not about Mary. Unfor­tu­nate­ly though basi­cal­ly cor­rect, the wrong­ly accen­tu­at­ed teach­ing of the coun­cil of Eph­esus led to a strong empha­sis on unbib­li­cal Mar­i­o­la­try. At that time mass­es of pagans were inte­grat­ed in the church with the effect that the pagan cult of the Magna Mater—a cult Paul was already con­front­ed with in Eph­esus (Acts 19:23–40)—was final­ly accept­ed into the ranks of Chris­tian­i­ty.

The term “bear­er of God” (or still more sim­pli­fied: “Moth­er of God”) is fre­quent­ly mis­un­der­stood, espe­cial­ly by peo­ple with­out any the­o­log­i­cal edu­ca­tion, in whom the image of a moth­er com­mon­ly evokes cor­re­spond­ing emo­tions. The “Heav­en­ly Father” receives the “Heav­en­ly Moth­er” at His side. Monothe­ism is for­mal­ly retained, but prac­ti­cal­ly poly­the­ism is intro­duced. The major­i­ty of their prayers are direct­ed to the “Queen of Heav­ens” (Com­pare Jere­mi­ah 7:18). The father­ly God is far away. Mary has to restrain the pun­ish­ing hand of her Son.⁶

The Bible, how­ev­er, teach­es us about a dif­fer­ent God. The God the Bible speaks about is not far from us:

…that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way towards him and find him. Yet he is actu­al­ly not far from each one of us, for “In him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:27–28)

The God of the Bible can­not be pressed in the frame­work of man and woman, father-god and moth­er-god­dess. The infi­nite Cre­ator of the uni­verse is above these cat­e­gories. There­fore we find in the Bible not only many pas­sages show­ing us God as Father, but also state­ments com­par­ing Him to a moth­er:

Can a woman for­get her nurs­ing child, that she should have no com­pas­sion on the son of her womb? Even these may for­get, yet I will not for­get you. (Isa­iah 49:15)

As one whom his moth­er com­forts, so I will com­fort you. (Isa­iah 66:13)

We want to serve Him alone, who for us is much more than father and moth­er. We want to serve Him, our sole God and Sav­iour, in the same way Mary did, with­in the fel­low­ship of the dis­ci­ples of Jesus.

MARY

Look what they’ve to Mary done!
Did they make of her just fun?
She’s dis­graced like an idol
By a peo­ple proud and idle.

Once she was a sim­ple maid.
All hon­our to her God she paid.
But now she’s called the Heav­ens’ Queen
Who com­forts us in all our pain.

Our “Great Moth­er” is she called
Like pagan god­dess­es of old.
The Lord’s poor maid from Nazareth
Is wor­shipped just like Ash­toreth⁷.

“Immac­u­late” they call her name,
Though blessed, was sin­ful all the same.
In spite of doubts she found her faith,
Defeat­ed sin through God’s great grace.

As “Medi­a­trix of all grace”
They give her all impu­dent praise,
Though Mary hum­ble was and true:
“Do every­thing He says to you!“⁸

If you believe as Mary did
You’ll throw away your rosary.
Don’t use “blessed” medals—you’re no witch!
Avoid each place of pil­grim­age!

One medi­a­tor is to God:
Jesus, who sal­va­tion brought.
The only way to God is He,
For you, for Mary and for me.

Togeth­er we will praise the Lord,
With Mary with­in one accord.
We’ll serve for all eter­ni­ty
Our God who saved her, you and me.

1. In many pas­sages of the New Tes­ta­ment (e.g. Luke 1:27,30,34…) Jesus’ moth­er is called “Mari­am”. The Hebrew form of her name was “Miri­am”, in her Ara­ma­ic moth­er tongue she was called “Mari­am”. We con­scious­ly chose this (orig­i­nal) ver­sion of her name to take a fresh slant on the moth­er of Jesus as a his­tor­i­cal per­son. ↩
2. The con­text sug­gests the trans­la­tion of this sec­ond sen­tence as ques­tion (unlike all usu­al trans­la­tions). The orig­i­nal text was with­out punc­tu­a­tion marks. The Greek word­ing per­mits this trans­la­tion. ↩
3. Gala­tians 4:4 “born of woman” can­not be under­stood as if Mary is giv­en a spe­cial men­tion. Paul want­ed to under­line the full­ness of the incar­na­tion of the Son of God. ↩
4. “Jesus’ broth­ers” were most prob­a­bly his cousins. To deal more with this ques­tion would go beyond the scope of this arti­cle. ↩
5. Latin trans­la­tion of the Bible by Jerome in the 5th cen­tu­ry. ↩
6. State­ment of “Mary” in La Salette (An “appear­ance” of Mary offi­cial­ly accept­ed by the Roman-Catholic Church. ↩
7. Canaan­ite fer­til­i­ty god­dess. ↩
8. Com­pare: John 2:5. ↩