A Protestant Asks a Catholic Theologian About Mary

hey everybody i'm matt this is the 10 minute bible hour and if you haven't figured it out yet i am your basic run-of-the-mill protestant now i got a buddy named jeremy holmes who's a basic run-of-the-mill catholic i know that's underselling him a little bit he's exceptional brilliant he's a college professor a theology guy a bible guy and he used to be a protestant it's really easy to sit and talk with him and i thought it'd be fun to share my conversations with him over a meal that we barely ever get around to eating with you over the course of several months so this is the third video on i don't know catholicism and protestantism and what it means and what stuff we have in common and what the distinctives are between us and what it would look like to maybe get along a little better than we do sometimes on the internet i think it's a really fun conversation this time around we're picking right up where we left off last time where i expressed optimism about the state of christian unity and the trajectory of christian unity in the last several years and then i bounced it to him and we're gonna find out what he thinks about that from there we're gonna get into some questions about whether or not the reformation was a good idea or if net total more good or more bad came out of that and then we're gonna talk about the mary thing which i think is an oddly hot button topic between catholics and protestants and well i think the conversation's rewarding or useful or i wouldn't be putting it on the internet for you so let's go sit down with jeremy holmes and talk protestantism and catholicism and see where we get today i'm matt is the 10 minute bible hour let's get after it i think it's a testimony to the reality and truth of the gospel that you still have so many people inside the circle of historical christianity who really can't agree on that stuff you were saying at the beginning about who god is who jesus is what happened on the cross and where we fit do you think i'm being too optimistic yeah that's a great question um i guess i'd be fine being optimistic that way so long as we stay in the group of the people who are also just lamenting the the divisions that still that's still there right that is i mean yeah we have the the verse from jesus um about the they'll know they'll be convinced by your unity but you know from the position i'm in where i've got this preset commitment to this visible community i also have to be in a situation of lamenting the frank the visible fragmentation of that community right i can't stop that that would be to i can't stop lamenting that that would be deceased to be catholic yeah but okay but um but to be able to have a robust exchange where i'm not pulling punches on my catholicism you're not pulling punches on your protestantism um but we are physically pulling punches so to speak we're not actually stabbing each other we think different things but we're being nice and that's yeah and that could you say yeah that's that's a very uh that's a good situation to be and it's much better than uh lots of other possible situations we could be in i i cannot disassociate this whole situation from the story of the old testament and the splitting of north northern and southern israel every time i think about the the lack of unity among christians i think of that story again because i teach salvation history to undergraduates and i do it most years i've been doing this for a while and every time i go through the story i'm struck by how the old testament authors chew on and gnaw on that split they can't get over it right that the people of god split and you know so then it's just unthinkable like how does this make any sense in god's plan right so even in the story of joseph you have this um uh if you read it you've got a close comparison of joseph and judah right like judah's story with tamar he doesn't look so great he comes immediately is placed chronologically out of joint in order to be right next to joseph's story with his and it's like the author is saying you see these two one of these looks better than the other doesn't it um well it's joseph it looks better joseph who later because his sons each become a tribe joseph becomes ephraim and the northern kingdom is ephraim the southern kingdom is judah i think that what's going on in that story is he's saying sort of in seed he's thinking about the future and saying the two kingdoms look at that the north was actually the better part how is this going on how are we too uh and of course the prophets are obsessed with this i mean a big part of their their idea of the the what the messiah is going to do is reunite israel and get over the schism within the people of god right ephram and judah will be won again and as a christian i feel the same way about the divisions within the christian community like it's just it remains a mystery like how could this happen in god's plan that christ's body his visible body is so rent and there's a way in which you just can't get over that you keep annoying on it and maybe one of our first questions when we you know enter the kingdom of heaven will be okay so what about that what was going on what was the plan why did you even allow that to go down you think more people are less people are christians because the reformation happened oh gee i do not know a way to play that forward in my head let me make a case for now okay my case for no would be that as protestant as i am the language of one visible church is compelling to me now obviously the churches that i think are structured that way it means that they are much more at the whim of one home office or one individual leader and i am a product of the enlightenment and i do believe in separation of power and checks and balances and all of that so i got to take into account that i am wired to be suspicious of a hierarchy like like like rome historically suspicious of other religions that have that strong singular prophet or home office but done right done under the authority of scripture done with an eye for the gospel and done at a time where history doesn't kind of deal the church the hand of being the surrogate ruler of a bunch of kingdoms in europe which let's be honest probably seemed like a blessing at the time but that was a tough draw for for rome for the catholic church i mean i think it probably would have been more fun if you hadn't been dealt that hand by history nobody's going to get that right and i think the evangelical free church is going to get that rhyming come on nobody's going to get that right you're swimming in dirty water you're going to get dirty i think there's grace for that but despite all of those challenges my case for no that being more people would have been christians if there were no reformation would be that i do think there's power in that unity i do think that done right but you know benevolent dictator is the best thing you could ever have right and i i don't mean that as a pejorative at all toward catholicism but the structure can work if the right people are there and there's great continuity yeah the ups and downs make it harder right so all things being equal i think there's a good case to be made for no it would have been better if there weren't a reformation and more people would have been christians with us moving forward as one monolithic group and i would add to that um no great schism either in this hypothetical yeah and maybe i can sort of backfill what i take to be your intention that is to say when you say no reformation you're including and none of the stuff that led up to the reformation right none of all that occasion that caused that split if we could just make all that better such that there is no break there oh yeah well you can take away all the yuck in the history of the church i mean of course all experiences that'd be amazing you know of course the position that i would be committed to as a catholic is that even with all the junk we shouldn't have done the reformation but i understand your commitment would be different so i started to see just for the sake of of tracking what you're saying you're saying granted it would have been better had the dumpster fire not happened so that the break didn't need to happen so that we could have kept rolling for it as one i am hypothetically throwing out one case for no and i'll make a case for yes in a minute that dumpster fire or no soldiering through that together the greeks the people that eventually went on to become protestants the people who stayed put yeah with rome soldiering through that together i can see an avenue by which more people are christians and the kingdom looks better and is in better shape that route my case for yes i think more people are christians because of the great schism and because of the protestant reformation would be i think it's not a coincidence that the protestant reformation happened at about the same time as colonialism and exploration taken off the gospel is enormously adaptable rome was in a place where it had very much built itself to deal with western and northern european concerns and understandably rome was going to be a product of its time and the centuries that had preceded i mean they had to wield the sword and the scepter that puts them in a tough spot not a very flexible spot not not a spot that's loose and ready to change as the scientific revolution occurs and we start to think about data and knowledge and reason and logic and not so much in medieval way but in this kind of new early enlightenment enlightenment scientific modern era way here comes protestantism and i think some of protestantism's insistence or optimism that it can systematize everything is misguided and i push back on that all the time it still seemed like a very well-built vehicle to take the gospel into an expanding world and put those basic truths we'd agree on about jesus fallenness salvation all of that in front of a larger and different audience yeah and i think if that maybe you could argue that that was going to happen anyway and that's what the jesuits were about i was about to say jesuit okay um not as an ultimate model but just as a as an example of somebody trying to be as adaptable as possible yeah yeah yeah so i guess that would be my case for for yes i think more people are christians as a result of this and the gospel is diverse it seems like certain parts of the world are wired and built and because of their historical story and their ups and downs maybe they are more designed to hear it the way a protestant would put it or more designed to hear it the way a jesuit would put it or hear it more designed whether they're more designed to hear it the way that just straight up roman rite catholicism would put it it's at least possible that either are true and that what we know for sure is that we like the gospel just didn't stop in the mid 16th century and christianity didn't just like break and collapse and fall apart and understandably as the leaving party i'm going to feel a little bit more optimistic about the departure sure and well i would i while i was nodding when you were saying the stuff about grieving it like yeah i have to acknowledge that i think it's a grief that you probably feel more acutely as a catholic than i do as a protestant yeah and maybe you're right and i ought to take it more seriously is it okay if i just throw out some of the questions that i know protestants would want me to ask you sure okay let's pitch this back and forth yeah okay what is it that catholics really honestly believe about mary and and why do you believe that right well let me just say this i think that of the various individual topics one could choose this one is actually more bound up with the 500 assumptions in the background than even than the others the reason i say that is because a number of people who were protestant and then became catholic have shared with me that um mary was the last thing they got comfortable with right that maybe they they they've come to can be convinced that christ is really present in the eucharist and then they've got this irresistible draw they find themselves catholic but there's they're catholics still squirming about mary and then it's only once they're inside the catholic faith and start acquiring sort of the total mindset that one day she snaps into place for them um but i've never talked to anyone who says i became convinced the church was right about mary and that just pulled me in huh right it's yeah okay so i think in fairness uh if if people feel that disconnect that may be just a thing um so yeah what is going on with the mary thing um several layers at once one of which you've already hit on just the the she is the single most interesting female character in the bible um i think that um you know the the earlier christians were happy to refer to her as the mother of god and protestants need to be happy with that too but i really think that another layer goes back to this what i keep referring to as a this fundamental divide between the way protestants are thinking and the way catholics are thinking that is a catholic is thinking of christ founding an individual visible community and in the catholic mind that's kind of what the incarnation is about just like christ has an individual body and you can poke it he has this church that's individual and you can go poke it once you're in that mindset then you're going to read some things differently right and again i'm not arguing i'm not presenting the case to the mindset here i'm just saying once you're there then you say you get into the book of revelation and you see that the new jerusalem is has 12 foundations and the foundations have the names of the apostles on them right and you see oh the whole church is founded on these individual dudes there's an actual concrete structure to the church and they have their place in the structure so the church is not a the new jerusalem is not a free-floating like a gas of christians it's a it's a building with every brick in its individual spot as god has ordained him and the apostles have their spot once you're in that mentality then it makes sense let me just put it as as something that you could see as reasonable that you you begin to see the mother of god as having a concrete place in that totality and you ask then what's her role what does she do at which point i think you're just into a zone of questions that many christians aren't asking themselves because they don't share the mentality that would lead to the questions yeah right um and then you say well let me scan for evidence about what what her role is this is where you get into uh so the presentation of mary sort of in terms of the new eve right which is a a naming that's a way of naming her role as christ as the is adam and just as it was really adam who took us down you know paul refers to it to adam's sin but he had an accomplice right so christ is the new adam he's the one who saves us but he's got this this person with him mary uh who like at the wedding of cana seems to play a kind of adjunct role she doesn't she can't work miracles she's not god but but she has this role in in prompting him to do the miracle and yet and yet later on she and the rest of jesus family which the protestants would be like brothers and sisters and family i think you guys frame that a little differently it looks like she doesn't get what he's doing when he's teaching and it looks like she wants to come and she didn't go in to hear his sermon she's standing outside and it looks like they're here to collect jesus to stop him from whatever he's doing here and jesus doesn't roll along with it so so you kind of got those two places where mary really crops back up and i almost feel like what i'm saying is in support of the catholic position here because if if she's the new eve well what role did eve play a very important one and the whole gigantic story on the positive side and also one that involved just a bit of bumbling you know but but i but there's not room for the bumbling in catholic theology with mary right right right yeah and i think that's one of the places where where again those 500 assumptions for protestants we just look at that and go why why is it a problem she was just normal and again there's an odd thing about about about the conversation that we have to have right this is the way we have to have the conversation but um in the catholic mind it's just it's sort of what you've always thought and then one day somebody asks you why is that true you say oh there must be reasons why it's true right so it's not as though um the the the the presentation of the rationale behind this would be the presentation of um how people came to think it necessarily historically um that it may not have been an argumentative process um but if you say what case but is there a rational structure to these beliefs i think so you because it comes back to the idea of does mary occupy a definite spot does she have a particular role so what does the role require and that gives you leverage to try and answer different questions and so you could say so you could you could ask for example is that role compatible with her sitting or is it just incompatible and there at least you have a you at least have some ground to stand on to start talking about the question um and you know again i said i i can understand that if you don't have a certain conception of her role then maybe even the question of whether she's sinning is not an important one to you like why would i ask that question yeah yeah i think it's very intuitive on your part but once she has the role then it does become a question like okay wait was it is that compatible um for me even if it fits and what doesn't try to grab the opposite 500 assumptions i for me it gets far more interesting and seems far more consistent with the text and with what we see in the other disciples that yeah she was an object of redemption too absolutely flawed sinful in need of redemption and like first in line to receive it and get it and to be intimately close with this thing wow blessed above all women that's really that's really remarkable she was uniquely positioned among women but for my 500 protestant assumptions her being sinless or a perpetual virgin or the assumption of mary none of that is in any way necessary to satisfy even what you're describing in terms of her as being a unique we're not using the word pillar but holding this unique position yeah and i think a lot of catholics would listen to what people like me think and they'd be like you don't value her like are you kidding me but she is the best just the best and she's kind of like abram to me what did abram do to be picked by god nothing he's milling around an ur one day and god was like yeah you this is all gonna start with you oh here's a bunch of promises this is what you get what would i do nothing right you were standing there what did mary do nothing but she's just standing there yeah all of a sudden you know she's she's going to give birth to the redeemer of the world and i have to think based on my reading of luke that she was more ready for it i mean god could have picked somebody who couldn't hack that and her response is unbelievable maybe to me as you have said right i mean are you kidding me yeah i mean i've gone to seminary i'm a you know longtime pastor i'm not some 15 year old girl and i don't say that in case you don't catch it she's like paired with zechariah who has almost the same conversation and blows it you're right that's another one of these you see these two things one of these looks better doesn't it he should get it yeah yeah yeah it's remarkable and so it's another one of those places where even 500 assumptions aside yeah outside looking in with my assumptions what has happened to mary over 2000 years in the catholic tradition in a little different way in the orthodox tradition reminds me of what happened to caesar in his last two or three years everybody got caesar fever it was an enormously popular safe good for the brand thing to be like caesar is also pontifex maximus great caesar now gets to wear purple but only when he's here we also now ascribe to caesar this title and this wealth and this thing because it's just very very safe to heap these crowns upon caesar and there's no i'm not trying to hint that there's like some ides of march 44 bc ending for mary here the analogy breaks down at that point but i know what it looks like to see historical examples of enthusiasm just snowballing into more enthusiasm for a particular character and so i look at most of the theology surrounding mary and it all seems like it's very late to the game you know and relatively speaking it's in the last 10 to 15 of the history of the church that we see you know these teachings about mary really becoming officialized to use the generic protestant term okay and i guess from the outside looking in i kind of scratch my head and i'm like well why i mean if that was always true why are we just getting to that now and and where does it end is there anything we haven't described to mary because it feels like if we ascribe anything else to her she's a deity but i know you don't think she's deity right right but but like i don't i don't know what else we could put on her or i'm sorry that makes it sound like i'm right i don't know what else could be said i don't mind you're thinking you're right by the way that's that's totally fine well sometimes when you think you're right about everything it's real hard to learn and i really do want to learn so why all of this stuff so late to the game can anything else be ascribed to her without without it jumping into idolatry first off let me just say the the the calling mary the new eve and describing her as having a role in man's salvation is way early i mean you've i'm sure you've read these texts but um this is like two hundreds uh within the you know third century stuff um now so um and protestants would say new eve okay yeah roland salvation while they were working out theology in those first few hundred years and that was part of working it out so i'm going to do a couple of steps here one is just to glance briefly at the new testament at least to claim some some sympathy for the the way that a catholic would roll with what the early fathers are doing with the new eve um that is um for example in the gospel of john um there to these two wonderful characters that jesus knew that the evangelist doesn't name and jesus never addresses my name right first there's the disciple whom jesus loves right don we think it's child yeah and and and the disciple whom jesus loves has this sort of symbolic role and he he's next to peter and he's always out doing peter you know there there's all these comparisons like they get to the gate peter can't get in but disciple whom jesus loved he knows a guy and then they get in you know jesus rises they run to the tomb the disciple whom jesus loves gets there first he's young but then he's nice and he waits for peter um and so there's this you know there's this role that that the disciple whom jesus loves can play because he's he's not so particularized he's got this this symbolic name mary is just referred to as um the mother of jesus or jesus refers to her as a woman um okay and um so he's like oh is she a symbol too is does she is she inhabiting some role in this gospel then you get to the the scene of the cross and those two characters are there the disciple whom jesus loved who apparently has this name so i can maybe identify with him maybe maybe jesus loves me and then at the scene of the cross there's the mother of jesus and he says to her a woman with you know not not mother not not married and just a woman behold your son son behold your mother now you have to appreciate from a coming from a catholic world you just that scene is reverberating with meaning like in other words we just had the mother of god symbolically given over to each disciple and i've been placed in a relationship with her not just as some individual in galilee but as somebody who inhabits the role of woman which again i want to i'm calling for sympathy more than more than making an argument would roll with the idea that she's eve he's adam she's eve each of us now has a personal relationship with the new eve or you roll into a chapter like revelation 12 and of course um you've got the the the woman who's giving birth to a son and there's the dragon well the dragon he's satan he's named the child we already all know who that is that's jesus and in a catholic mind you're like oh and i know who the woman is that's mary and she's given wings and taken away to some place where she can be protected you go whoa what is this talking about i've just never thought of connecting it that way and that doesn't mean i think you're crazy it just means i've just never thought of connecting it that way and i guess what i'm saying is that without for trying to present a case for that reading of that passage just to say once you come in with the the mentality that a catholic is bringing to it dots are connecting that wouldn't be connecting otherwise yeah yeah but but but then your question is totally fair um why then did we not have like everything we now say about mary from day one right why why the big deal over time because you're absolutely right that there was a um i don't know i i don't want to sound irreverent here but there was a like a popularity fad that eventually took off right that's how it feels from the outside looking um and um and there i guess i would want to make a distinction between um yeah belief and enthusiasm about the belief right that is i think we've all had the experience of knowing something for a long time and then one day having it hit us okay sure yeah and you could say something held back this thing people thought about mary actually hitting them with full force for a while and i to be honest i think some of it was just lack of clarity about other things like jesus right that is until the whole nestorian thing goes down and we have one hundred percent clarity that um you cannot heap enough honors and graces and so on on jesus to make him a savior unless you say god in which case boom you just went to infinity there right there that you can't keep increasing his grace until the point where it's equal to calling him god um this story is one of those you know was was of a very devout man in a lot of ways just you know thought the world of this man jesus right was willing to keep all kinds of stuff on him and um and the church eventually said yeah but none of that even comes close to calling him god well once jesus is off to infinity um then maybe it feels safer to say oh then nothing stops us from following instincts about mary because there won't be a point where we keep adding compliment to compliment where she's suddenly god or even rivaling god or even a savior or something like that right we we settled that with an astorian controversy so there's almost like again i don't want to sound irreverent there's a vacancy right where we're sort of in the nestorian zone where you can say what about a super duper hyper-graced person who's just beyond what you've ever thought about in terms of all the gifts god has heaped upon her and as a catholic you'd say yeah still infinitely far from jesus and safe forever we can keep talking um and then once you're in that zone or you say okay then it's um well like there's that and then i think there's also a medieval shiva tradition that kicks in right where there's a there's the role of the lady i think so too and then i think a second level of that kicks in when you get into uh views of women particularly in latin american colonization and i think there's just a certain meshing that really makes sense there with a version of mary that might not be intuitive to an outsider from a different part of the world in a different time but yeah i would view those as the two big bumps so as well so there i guess it had to say so um have you made the distinction between what you think and how it's hitting you and whether it's hitting you you say okay so there's a point where it hits people and then that's going to be the point where they actually start to chew over and think more deeply about what they've always thought and perhaps tease out a few more implications which would be as a catholic how i see the sort of further doctrinal statements that come down the road as being all things that either have always been held but never articulated or that were always implied but not said so clearly because mary just wasn't on the brain quite the same way anything i would leave room for for something like you know that chivalric tradition with the lady of the castle and the kind of distant chaste love that the young knight has for the unapproachable and to the way in which that all colors how peop how boots on the ground devotion played out um that may that may be of more or less value you know your mileage may vary on that i mean with you and me today in america and wyoming um some of that stuff doesn't stir the way it would have in another setting um but it would have value to the degree that it's a kind of um in the trenches attempt to say and and pay respect to mary's particular role in the body of christ and say maybe in a different cultural situation we would have used a different set of lenses to say that but if that's what we're saying go okay good i can you know i can i can roll with that well enough i want to invite you to come back for the next part of this conversation because the question about mary and her unique role in the minds of catholics versus mary and her being awesome but maybe not occupying quite as unique a role in the mind of protestants is one that can't really be discussed properly without getting into the question of the catholic versus protestant understanding of christians who have come before us or saints as they get called in general so we're going to get into how that evolved what we make of it what does the saint thing look like within catholicism today how do protestants view these really cool people who came before and what might be the assumptions behind the misunderstandings or even points of well understood disagreement between the two parties so that's next up thank you to my friend jeremy for being awesome and gracious and also honest and telling me what he actually thinks thank you to you for being up for a conversation like this thank you also to all of those of you who said a great pace and a great tone in the comment section i really would like for this to be fruitful and to make things better at a time in human history where we seem to be in the mood to burn things down i really like tracking down people on the internet people in real life who are interested in trying to understand each other better and see what points of commonality we can find figure out where we need to maybe agree to disagree and maybe figure out where we just misunderstood each other and actually agree and get along better than we even thought so thank you for helping to set that pace and that tone i've really enjoyed connecting with you as well because of that all right i'm matt this is the 10 minute bible hour more this coming soon

Channel: The Ten Minute Bible Hour

Views: 163,721

Keywords: Bible, Theology, Study, Matt Whitman, TMBH, No Dumb Questions, Matthew, Jesus, catholic, protestant, jeremy holmes, lander, gannett grill, catholic vs. protestant, debate, worshiping mary, virgin mary, mother of god, new ark, reformation

Id: 6f-1kEcMQFQ

Length: 33min 10sec (1990 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 14 2020

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