*EVERY* Objection to Mary Answered 🤯 w/ William Albrecht & Fr. Christiaan Kappas

all right we are live we are live with Father Christian kappas and William Albrecht lovely to have you both on the show thanks for having us thrilled to be here with you I've had both of you on the show before William you're usually virtually here debating so it's great to have you in person and father Christian lovely to have you last minute today we are going to try to respond to every conceivable objection to what the Catholic Church teaches about the Blessed Virgin Mary now that's quite the feat and we probably won't actually do that but we'll do our best and so we'd invite you to help us by maybe writing in objections you have into the live chat and Neil if you would take the especially potent ones and we'll throw them your way but we also want to say this too that if there's someone out there who thinks you know you're not really doing a good job responding to these then we invite you know the most capable opponent of these uh Church teachings to come on the show uh and to debate yourself William yep you know not in a contentious way but just like we we don't want to be attacking Straw Men and uh so that that invitation is there as well we'll just have to wait for a day that I'm free but I'm I'm sure we could we could arrange that with the next few months or whatever but definitely happy feast day by the way yeah happy feast of the Immaculate Conception and for some of our Byzantine Christians in the United States tomorrow will be the Feast of the Immaculate Conception for them indeed what a wonderful day yeah you guys were you raised Catholic I was not no it's not um I converted I was Protestant for many years um reform Protestant became Catholic almost two decades ago now and probably one of my greatest objections was Mary it was a huge stumbling block for me um who would have ever thought that the very first book I would have co-authored would have been on Mary I would have never believed him when I was a anti-catholic and I was an anti-catholic for a long time I think this is important would you do us a favor and and just sort of articulate the emotional and doctrinal obstacle that Mary was for you and the reason I want you to do that is we have a lot of protestant listeners and they'll write in they're like listen I want to be Catholic and I'm not trying to be argumentative yeah I just cannot buy the Mary issue so we're going to get into the doctrinal issues but maybe just like speak in a way that they realize you hear them you know I definitely do Matt it was difficult for me to ever pray to Mary it was hard for me to get on board with Mary being immaculate to get on board with Mary being a Perpetual virgin I couldn't wrap my head around it now when I began looking into the Catholic faith began reading the early church fathers in depth I realized the problem really was with me if all of the early Believers of Christ and when I say all of them I mean all of them believed Mary was a Perpetual virgin every early church father now we don't count the Heretics as Church fathers they all believe that and if I am sticking to something that not even the reformers believed they believed Mary was Perpetual virgin as well Luther Calvin zwingley clearly the problem lay with me and I had to dig in deeper and deeper and digging in deeper eventually led me to become Catholic now I will tell the audience they may know I did discern Orthodoxy for a bit um I did give it a fair look but in the end I chose Catholics I remember William Lane Craig doing an interview about the Blessed Virgin Mary and his podcast he oh maybe it was on Catholicism in general and he did a good job at speaking kindly about his Catholic brothers and sisters pointed out that he recognizes us as fellow Christians and such but he said listen Catholics you have to understand what it's like as a Protestant when you walk into a Catholic Church Say in Europe somewhere because you're visiting and you're seeing and you've got a statue to our Lord a statue to Our Lady and the statute to our lady has a you know blaze of candles in front of it whereas a search to our Lord may not like do not see how this looks yeah and I think that's a that's a good point I mean if only we still had the first temple around or all those cherubim were flying around in the overshadowing cherubim and all those animals the god ordered to be created or we could be equally scandalized by the Jewish first temple yeah well that is a good response to those who say we ought not to have statues isn't it if you have an example of Our Lord commanding the Israelites to create statuary of heavenly beings where instance is being burnt and um God's Most Holy place where he appeared at the mercy seat toward which direction Hezekiah the king Hezekiah explicitly says that he prays to God underneath the Shadows of the two cherubim sounds like he's a Catholic without even knowing it did you father Christian always were you always Catholic did you always have no problem with that one arrest yeah I don't have any uh special story or any sort of uh antagonisms that went on in my life yeah yeah yeah me neither I had a very Catholic Grandma who would always pray the rosary and I kind of came to the faith when I was 17 years old and it was only at that time I started being introduced to kind of protestant arguments and but anyway I'm glad we said that because I just want our Protestant listeners to know like we love you we value you we don't think your objections are silly and and I can even understand that coming from that background to start hearing the Catholic Church talking about marrying the way that she does when you're not familiar with it is bound to be disorientating uh if not to say scandalous so that's fair enough um and then before we get we're going to dive into the Immaculate Conception but y'all have written a book together on the Blessed Virgin Mary it's linked below so we encourage people to check it out but what is it what is it basically about yeah so um I'll tackle that right away uh the book really covers Mary from a very deep biblical perspective now without a doubt we have multiple early church fathers in there but we really dig in look at it from a bible-based perspective how can we approach Mary being Mother of God Mary being ever virgin and Mary being sinless from a Biblical perspective and I gotta tell you Matt people have really people that are not even Catholic have reached out and told us we can get on board with the way you've laid the book out and I think that that is fantastic yeah that's what came about by offering a series of free articles on William's blog which is patristic pillars and basically what we did was as we kept finding more information both in fathers of the church and uh better and better arguments through those fathers to really understand how to read the scriptures um and the original languages as the Greek fathers at least were doing um then we were able to say you know what if we package all the new stuff that we have found into a book instead of just updating the Articles and see if people want to actually have that all in one package and it took off let me offer a more General objection before we look at each of the dogmas and that's something like this why does the church put such emphasis on Mary anyway like why can't Christians be free to believe certain things about the Blessed Mother without in a way being mandated I mean because when you make something a Dogma you're saying that this is not you're not free to deny this you have to accept this um doesn't it just feel like we're putting obstacles in the way and and what's the point and it's all about Jesus it's not about the Blessed Virgin Mary so yeah it's a great question Matt now I would reply to that by noting that in the early church very early on a clear Mark of being part of the true church was having a proper christology believing Christ was fully manned fully God belief in the Holy Trinity funny enough along with that also came various beliefs about Mary Mary S our holy theotokos God bear and Mother of God Mary as Perpetual virgin as well and you find that the only people that denied Mary as being Perpetual virgin or Aryans early on or people that had a very deficient christology so I would answer that by saying that if the Bible clearly lays out what it does about Mary in divine revelation than we have got to believe that and even if you only find it in one passage which you don't you find in many even if only in one paragraph if it is in divine revelation we are bound to believe that okay well yeah I think uh William's first point um of course takes us mainly most people are going to think of as the Council of Ephesus which happened in 431 which uh reflect Saint Cyril's real conviction that the potentially third Century uh but certainly fourth Century a Devotion to Marius theotokos is the one who bore in her physical womb God the word uh was essential for understanding who Christ is and that if we meditate on that both in scripture and in the tradition that we'll understand a lot of things about Christ that are helpful for us to identify with him uh but the second thing is um it reminds me um the very ecumenical Seminary Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary was kind enough to honor Me by inviting me to give a talk and they suggested to me when I gave him a series of options to talk on Mary and um it reminded me of the fact that uh one of the professors who really we had an enjoyable kind of discussion afterwards uh wanted to know about some old Catholic Scholars who claimed that there's a debate that the first chapter of the Gospel Luke is it about Mary or is it about Jesus now the reason why there's a debate is because there's so much Merry talk in that first chapter um and of course some of the individuals who would think that maybe Mary is a detracting feature from Christ are going to be tempted to try to read as much as possible the first chapter of Luke as it needs to be all Christ and really we don't want to have very much focus on Mary whereas the text itself causes the conversation to arise and I think that a lot of the questions that we'll be answering today really are based off of the first chapter of Luke that if uh if it's really all about Jesus in the scripture we really need to figure out what to do with the first chapter of Luke because that seems in many places to be all about Mary hmm all right well let's talk about Mary is the mother of God to me this seems like the most easy thing to accept it's a basic syllogism uh Mary is a mother of Jesus Jesus Is God therefore Mary is the mother of God I suppose the objections I've heard are things like it sounds like you're putting Mary sort of chronologically prior to Christ uh or that you're somehow putting her over him or they might say well uh she was the conduit through which Christ came into the world uh or they might say well even if you're technically right the language is so confusing it leads people to to to have kind of erroneous views of Christ or God or Mary therefore it's since it's so unhelpful just stop using it uh what are your thoughts to those objections and what are some more now I I believe Mary as god-bearer Mother of God is definitely biblical now we can go to the gospel of Matthew 1 chapter one we re-read of the prophecy from Isaiah 7 that um a virgin will give birth and will give birth to Emmanuel which means God With Us now if you break down the Greek there Emmanuel God With Us and to give birth to Bear a child you have the Greek word tick toss there that's exactly what we're saying with Marius theotokos God bear so I believe it is a Biblical very biblical number two if you look in Luke 1 when Elizabeth greets Marion says how is it that the mother of my Lord should come to me the Greek word utilizes now I inocudias is not always used for Yahweh but every time kurias appears in Luke 1 every time it is in reference to Yahweh and without a doubt that is a reference happening in Luke 1. now of course there's a lot more Matt but I I think really the problem would arise with figures like turton a reformer who really had a problem with calling Mary the Mother of God and I think it really does come down to christology are you going to argue that Mary only gave birth to a nature if you do that you have a big problem Mary gave birth to our incarnate Lord the very Greek word may tear from Mother Mary is called the mother of Our Lord she gave birth to our incarnate God not to a nature and I think if you begin to argue that you cannot call Mary Mother of God merely because she only gave the human nature to Christ I think he ran into a lot of problems and problems that no one in the early church other than the Heretics had an issue with they didn't have an issue believing Mary was the mother of God yeah I think uh first uh Williams initial point was is really outstanding if we go to Isaiah 7 14 and we understand that tick toe can mean something like conceive and and Bear uh meaning in the in in the womb and if we see that it is God who is being born there by a virgin it's just uh in Greek it's as simple as taking those two words and making a compound out of two separate words um and we do we do this all the time in English sometimes I mess up my English writing because I think High School is is one word uh or two words and it and I can't even remember now as I say it which one it is but I think it's actually two words and I want to use it as a compound word uh we do this all the time and all that's happening in Isaiah 7 14 is that the prediction of Mary as bearing God With Us is being combined into one word in Greek so it is biblical in that sense of the language right there so that was an excellent point that William made the second is uh of course one that I is in our book on um uh Mary that you had mentioned earlier which I just kind of pull up some of the old notes that I took so that I had my uh verse down exactly right and uh if you see in in Luke 1 40 uh two and 143 blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb and once uh does this come to me the mother of my Lord in so many words um but how does that the mother of my Lord comes to me you'll see various translations of this trying to uh to give a Modern English sense of the Greek what's interesting here is if we compare Luke 1 and we see how many times um the references are made to the Ark of the Covenant from various uh mentions uh of David's experience of the Ark the amount of time that Mary went and stayed with her cousin Elizabeth and the amount of time that the ark was in the house of obedidum both in the Hill Country uh we see that this is just a rearranging by Luke uh in in Greek if indeed Luke is being serious at the beginning of his gospel he says that he's interviewed eyewitnesses and that he's also gathered data meaning uh written documents and that his gospels essentially a compilation of that a lot of biblical Scholars nowadays would like to not take him at his word that he interviewed Witnesses um I guess kind of begs the question why you bother studying scripture if it's just kind of a liar you know but um let's say let's just assume that he he thought he was uh interviewing Real Witnesses so if if that were indeed the case and he did have the ability to interview with or directly or indirectly marry through an interpreter Etc um he's free to take into the Greek language however Mary said what she said and Elizabeth said what she said and to render it uh in a poetical or otherwise uh meaningful way and here what Luke chose to do when he rendered Elizabeth and Mary's discourses into Greek is Elizabeth says unto the Holy Spirit how is it the mother of my Lord comes to me and if you see a mother of uh my Lord how is it that she comes to me your question was what about those who say that you're putting Mary before Jesus whether chronologically or in some other way in dignity and honor this is always a strange one because the context here is is that John the Baptist can recognize the Lord he can we he can leap in the womb because the Lord is in his presence so we have a real sense that there's an emphasis in this last part of Luke's gospel about what children are in the womb are doing there's a lot of mention of womb talk here uh babies in the womb and there's even a baby that's recognizing Jesus and yet when Elizabeth sees the baby Jesus in the spirit present in Mary's womb she doesn't say through the Holy Spirit how is it that the Lord has come to me how is it that the savior of all how is it that God is with us has come to me she says a prayer or an exclamation you might say blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb how is it the mother of my Lord comes to me this is rather significant that in the presence of the Lord uh and after having just been reminded that babies can talk so to speak uh in the womb with John the Baptist she is distracted with Mary and we see that she's not distracted because she's just overwhelmed to see her cousin and she had a little moment but rather it's under the Holy Spirit and so the final result is is we have to come up with an explanation of why it's appropriate when the Lord is in your presence to recognize the mother and the biblical precedent is already there and as you say Lord could mean an Earthly ruler there's curiosis sometimes used in that sense but you just said to me in the first chapter of Luke it's never used in that sense all the time it is it is used for uh referring to almighty God Yahweh so I think those are really really important points the other important point that I would point out would be that you have it very early on the early church believing Mary to be the mother of God you have an incredible Theology and the other important thing that I would lay out Matt that I think is really important and that I have found the more and more I dig into mariology and I've said it a number of times is that if you have a poor and a low mariology you're going to have a very low christology and and vice versa what do I mean by that I mean that the only early figures writers that spoke poorly with Mary for instance tertullian was one in his Montana stage after formally I'd like to add formerly leaving the church um he had very poor statements that he made about uh Holy Mary uh you'll find that those that had a low christology fortunatarian teaching tend to have made poor comments about Mary so you'll find those in figures like tertullian and you'll find them more than ever full-blown met in figures like helvidius figures like eunomius and people that may wonder who are they well they were Aryans and as we know the Aryans denied our Lord was eternal God so there's a big problem there that if people want to look into the early church mat for witnesses that spoke disparagingly of our holy mother you're going to find them yeah but you're going to find them inheritance it reminds me of what Tim Staples said if Mary is not the mother of God then to whom did she give birth yeah and that's the problem you run into you have to now give an explanation that's going to mess up the christology we want to hold I mean in your experience do many thoughtful Protestants take issue with this still or is it just they don't like how it sounds like maybe it's like calling John the Baptist the cousin of God and someone might be like why do you have to do that just call him John the Baptist now people have real doctrinal issues with this still to be honest with you the massive majority of Protestants I dialogue with don't have a problem with it okay they really don't um every now and then you'll find a few people that have problems but by and large they don't more than anything they'll take issue with the Immaculate Conception Perpetual for Judith Mary and of course the dormition and the bodily Assumption of Mary they'll take more issue with those than anything else I've often thought that a good response to don't call her the mother of God it just confuses people you know well there are many confusing doctrines uh the Trinity can be confusing to discuss and often people get the wrong impression of what you're saying but that's not a good reason to drop Talk of the Trinity it might be a reason to explain it better yeah and and really Matt I think that when people talk about them being made dogmas I'm all for it because even before they were made dogmatic Matt they were part of the liturgical life of the church meaning it was built into the faith and here's the incredible thing we've done shows with Eastern Christians our Syriac Brothers as well and sisters and when you talk to them about Mary being Mother of God Perpetual virgin um dormitian assumption they'll tell you oh yeah you know even though we don't have that as a Dogma in reference to the Oriental Orthodox they'll tell you it's built into our faith we believe it fervently and I think that tells you a lot when the apostolic churches whole to these teachings very strongly just so we're clear what is a dogma and how does it differentiate from a Doctrine well um when we take a look at the the use of Dogma as we've been using it just to be clear in the last let's say 75 years and and Technical speak meaning getting better at being consistent with our language and not using old language and just trying to kind of like a stereo instruction kind of world we would be looking at something that has a kind of papal decree or a kind of conciliar decree which tends to be a long drawn out kind of statement okay and within that long drawn out kind of statement you have a pithy statement which is obliging all the faithful to believe it uh is in some sense or another saying that's because Peter or the holy spirit that has got the council is obliging everyone to believe it and then also making sure to double down that this is about our Universal faith and so when you have that kind of combination that the topic is about faith oftentimes divided into faith and morals that is clear that all Christians are being taught and that some form of apostolic Authority by the council or the pope to either working together or the pope working separately is clearly part of that pithy statement then it's considered dogmatic there are some subdivisions to that that we don't need to get into as to whether or not something let's call it is more obviously revealed versus something that is implied in uh like you can't have the resurrection of a body unless you know what a body is so you do need to actually be able to say what a body is for Jesus to have a body resurrected so that kind of what is a body may be able to be uh put on a dogmatic status too because you can't have people just always saying well I believe that he was bodily resurrected but for me a body means not a body you know so that kind of stuff but I would say that we could we could stick there with a Dogma for our purposes today what about Doctrine and how does that differ if uh I don't know um I I don't know that I would uh necessarily uh prefer to to just use the word Doctrine we can use that I mean it's used in the early church and by the fathers churchillion makes this distinction himself when he talks about uh the papal powers between Doctrine and jurisdiction and various other things so um but maybe for our purposes we could say that there are official teachings which are considered to be binding on our consciences because the church has also given the authority to teach us even if the church itself May develop uh these teachings to such an extent that what was true prudentially for a time and place is no longer to bind us because we have more information could that be the case with how say Thomas Aquinas understood the Immaculate Conception as a doctrine that developed into something we realized was actually revealed from the apostles yeah I think that it would be accurate to say this is that there was no dogmatic statement present at the time that would have created a fence around Thomas's thinking to not allow him to use the university textbooks that he was handed we all I think last time I was on here I talked about we all complain about you know the bad catechetical texts well Peter Lombard sentences were bad catechetical texts that everybody was using in University they even got dishonorable mention at an ecumenical council in the Middle Ages so it's not just me saying this yeah um and so uh he uh without I guess those things being cleaned up had like a lot of people in their University the ability to speculate in that area it's when there was a lot of discussion on this that eventually the church started making formal statements on this starting especially in the 15th century but then those 15th century statements which were not Universal in that Dogma sense that we just said eventually it was cleared up to be on that Dogma sense by 1854. is it right to say that something cannot be dogmatic if it wasn't explicitly or implicitly taught by the apostles and believed by the apostles or how else might you formulate that I'll let William go first and then I'll follow up yeah I agree with that Matt for instance if if there would be no hint of Mary's all sinless nature at all in the Bible or in the early church without a doubt this would not have popped up in 1854. I'd like to remind everybody that the belief in Mary being all Immaculate we've traced it to a very early period multiple early now I want to I'm sorry not to cut you off but I wanted to get too immaculately conceived so if this is a tertiary comment that's okay or a peripheral comment that's okay but yeah definitely I'm not gonna hop in too deep but uh the fact that we've been able to look at that find that early on and we believe we can make a very good case for it biblically as well I think it's a really good point that you can look and find teachings of the faith either implicitly or very clearly laid out in the Bible and early church history and if you wouldn't be able to it would never become a Dogma and I suppose that's true if someone's skeptical of what you're saying here um presumably the Apostle Peter had a more primitive view of the Trinity if you were asked to expound it then say somebody today like an orthodox Theologian today right but just because he wasn't able to uh maybe I'm wrong but just because he wasn't able to articulate the trinity in the way the church might today doesn't mean it was invented whole cloth it was still something taught by the apostles this is a good jumping off point because perhaps a good person to turn to that addresses this exact issue that for example that Saint Cyril Methodius Seminary I open up our dogmatic courses with every year as we read Saint Vincent of Laren and his combinatorium which is not a very helpful English title we need to come up with something better in English but anyway St Vincent's writing around 434 and um he was very important for John Henry Newman because some of Newman's early works in the development of Doctrine are have their Point of Departure from Saint Vincent who essentially he got rediscovered in the 16th century as uh really important but to get back to the main point um how would he have understood what Peter had in his mind on Galilee after the fullness of the Holy Spirit had already come upon him would he have articulated things as we would see at Vatican one which was not the most verbose of councils but it was getting a lot more verbose than anything that we see as Peter speeches recorded in the New Testament and I think the Saint Vincent's point would be to use examples instead of to get into the technicalities and hopefully the examples will make it clear we look at a triangle we could probably I mean like IQ tests we can take any child and you know try to have them put the round shapes into the into the round holes in the Triangular shapes into the Triangular holes Etc and we're kind of seeing their intuitions about how shape so triangles um have a definition to them and it's how many degrees all the angles add up how many lines it consists of to have that intuition of a triangle even a child can have because they just understand its Nature by kind of handling it and experiencing it but if you ask that child to articulate uh the number of degrees the Angles and the lines if they get a robust vocabulary or they get a little bit of learning behind their belt they may come up with the exact same Discovery as anybody from Pythagoras to another great geometrician right um the point here is that Saint Vincent is talking about the development of Doctrine is like analyzing a triangle it's what we would call scientific knowledge or definitional knowledge a Genus a species and a specific difference for all the people out there that are in love with porphyry or the categories of Aristotle or these sorts of things and so what we would be saying is that over time this triangle that was just handed to Saint Peter and he's like oh look a triangle I have some sense about what triangles are about the church is looking at it over time they're saying well you know triangles are always consist of lines and they assume uh at this angle that you're looking at a plane uh and part you know is it essential for a triangle to be isosceles or can it be something else and so as the church begins to say what it is not and what it is over time there's a Clarity of the definition and has anything actually changed in triangularity no has there been new words used there have because now we're using the word lines which Saint Peter never used and we're using degrees which Saint Peter never used is the fundamental intuition the same it is in Hebrew speak their geometry probably looked a lot different than euclidean or anybody else's geometry but then over the centuries this kind of precision happens and this is exactly the example that St Vincent is using and I would argue that he's using kind of the rhetorical handbooks that are available in Byzantium and from Cicero at the time I don't know that he was a Greek speaker but in the ciceronian tradition he would have went to definitions in order to make arguments and so when he brings this about we know exactly what he's talking about we're talking about scientific certainty in one's intuitions that you just need to find the right formulation and it's obvious to anyone what the definition is once you present them with this because it's so certain now there's analogy then to the faith that it's something like this after we have the content in the scripture if we do enough analysis we do enough thinking about it and if we get all the right angles on it we go from an intuition to an actual description that is incredible life blew me away wow you should study at seroma 30th seminar oh wow yeah yeah yeah that's really incredible seminary in the world but uh does it not make uh the Catholic belief and let's move on to the Immaculate Conception uh difficult to refute then because now it sounds like you're saying all we have to show is the apostles had some vague intuition about Mary's sinlessness or holiness in order to say yes we were right all along this has always been believed so let's talk about the Immaculate Conception what does that mean sure um because I'm the one that I guess started with the whole uh description of the intuition I might as well take out from there but maybe the easiest thing to say is as we got precise with thinking of Grace this was especially after Saint Augustine uh had to do some battles in North Africa with uh Pelagius not to mention some others uh we started to get a really good sense of what we mean by Grace um and eventually what that ends up meaning for the Latin West in its most crucial period that we were talking about Thomas aquinas's period is um not any sort of material stuff Grace isn't the kind of stuff that you know you put into your tires it's not a Pneumatic in that sense it's uh certainly not something that you can destroy by being a really mean to it and uh aggregate by uh being really sweet to it instead it is a supernatural item in in the Scholastic speak of the Middle Ages that is created by God directly and is meant to be a created uh expression of the Holy Spirit that has a real effect in your soul so it is implanted or infused or poured into the Soul by by a certain manner of speaking and uh either you get this Grace or you don't and it's God who dictates the conditions under which that comes to you you don't get some sort of control over there's no remote where you can get some or not or download so God places the conditions on creating it for you and removing it at whatever happens when you remove Grace I mean that's probably one of those speculative things but nonetheless it comes and it goes because God has decreed that it will come in and it will go and the reason why this is so important to start out the conversation this way is because all we mean by Immaculate Conception is whatever Mary has at her conception is what Adam and Eve were created in that original Grace that original justice is called it's not about their material status it's not about what they did or didn't feel it's not about sickness as a metaphor which is a meaningless metaphor depending on how you take that word sickness but it simply means what was Mary just before the sight of God was she a child of Wrath as I think Ephesians 2 3 says or was she a child of God well she was a child of God why because she possessed at the first moment of her existence uh equal or greater than uh Adam and Eve the same Justice that they had or greater than the justice that they had equal to or better than that Justice and so once we determine that Grace is really about a supernatural gift created by God by attribution created by the holy spirit it's implanted in the soul the question is does Mary have it at her first moment or she graceless at her first moment of her existence so that's what we mean okay by Immaculate Conception William anything you want to add to that part those are great points and I think that to to add to that I would add that Where Do We Begin biblically because a product our Evangelical friends will want to know biblically where do you even get a hint of Mary being without any SIN number one we point to Genesis 3. the very beginning right after the fall you have guided prophecy of a woman having a seed now that is the our Lord the Messiah is a seat we know that the early church fathers were unanimous on that but who was the woman well the woman is the mother of the Messiah we read that the woman and her child will be at enmity with the devil now what do we mean by original sin what do we mean by being under the Dominion of the devil well we mean that when we talk about original sin we mean that one is born under the Dominion of the devil born with a stain that's the book of Psalms tells us so if Mary was at enmity the way the Messiah would be at enmity with the Devil by the way that Greek word utilized in the Greek bible means kind of like a mortal Warfare a barrier the Mary would be at enmity the mother of the Messiah with the devil how could we ever argue that the mother would ever be under the Dominion of the devil if she would be an enemy of the very devil now of course that that in and of itself won't prove everything but we do go when we do arrive at Luke 1 his father was alluding to when the angel Gabriel comes in and does greet Mary he greets her in a very unusual way the way he greets her hell [Music] full of grace and we lay it out very clearly in our book on Mary but the incredible thing Matt that I remember when I was an Evangelical and perhaps due to my ignorance I would reply to my fellow Catholic Friends by telling them well without a doubt Mary was full of grace she had our Lord within her she had to have been the thing is Matt as you know very well where I'm going when the angel greeted her it was before the overshadowing before our Lord was even in her and she's already called Full of Grace she's already in possession as that Greek root word which appears in Ephesians 1 she's already in full possession of a particular kind of Grace and when we go to Ephesians 1 and we examine it and which father I'm sure we'll break it down in a moment he's written an amazing article on that when we look at what kind of Grace Mary is in full possession of it is a kind of seamless all-holy kind of race now not only that meant when we couple that which we'll get to later with a woman of Revelation 12. Mary as new ark of the New Covenant and the incredible early church witness to Mary when we look at it all the conclusion is very obvious Mary was created without any stain of sin and his father pointed out in full possession of justice and I think when we look at all that Matt I want to argue that it goes well above merely implicit I think we have very strong evidence in the Bible and in the early church as early as a pro to evangelium of James now we have there are Catholic apologists I don't want to mention his name because I don't want to speak for him but you might know who I'm talking about who would say listen this is not going to get you to Mary being all holy this is this is something that Catholics use it's very convenient for them but you're not going to get Mary's being past present and future sinless from this verse and it's a stretch have you heard that objection uh yes and we've actually addressed it certainly the Greek fathers uh I think of sephronas of Jerusalem and others would disagree with that okay um the first thing is is that uh in an old article I did with William which is available on his patristic pillars site which didn't make it into the book but um we're probably going to have a Perpetual virginity uh book come up in the future so it'll make it in there eventually among other things and in a macro conception book but anyway um people that use the original King James version um would rightly mention the fact that the Dewey Rams version is not the translation so it is worthwhile you're referring to Luke 1 29 what's what's the difference if you haven't yeah uh in the original King James version meaning the one that was actually published in 1611 and the angel came in unto her and said hail thou that art highly favored the Lord is with thee blessed art thou among women now highly favored here I've seen that this for some reason tends to be something that is a a point of contention she's not full of grace because that's going to in some sense concede more than we're willing to so I just out of curiosity uh went to the oldest English dictionaries that date at the time of the King James interesting now sadly uh to my knowledge the one dictionary that arrives closest to 1611 did not have the word grace in there but we do however get later dictionaries um after this in 1708 and 1730 these are the earliest that I can find I'm very very happy if somebody's in English literature person out there and those more dictionaries to give us but here's what you have the definitions of highly favored one what does favor mean in 18th century English which we hope is semantically or meaning wise very close to the 1611 King James so in a Elizabethan so to speak uh dictionary meaning it's hopefully stripped of anything Catholic um we see that the definition of um favor gracious gracious kind favorable and then in another dictionary which is a little bit older than the 1708 we find favor Goodwill uh and then we see in 1708 an example is given just like in your modern dictionaries you get an example of how the words used here is the sentence that we see favor is opposed to rigor especially in matters of Justice did we not just say that hail full of grace is about original Justice yeah whoever the English translators were by and large there's an inter very we know who the Committees are that put together the King James and they did try to do a professional job by and large they were using previous Bible texts not really from scratch um creation so there's a really interesting history on this but without getting into that there's no reason to suspect these translators are somehow you know doing anything untoward here um but favor is opposed to rigor especially matters of justice so many I would argue is exactly that it is about original justice so on this the King James English and the douay-rams can be an agreement uh that it's it's a matter of original Justice full of grace the next thing that I would argue um is what is the only form of keikari to many that we find other than Luke interestingly enough if we look in to the best scientific search engines we have in Greek which they exist now uh in the scholarly world this word does not exist in Greek literature other than the Greek book is your act yeah and then there I'll provide you hopefully with a quote so in Ciroc 1817 yeah and to my knowledge this is has not been um part of the uncovered fragments of the original language um Hebrew that's been found so we have to go to the Greek my son blemish not thy Good Deeds without blemish neither use comfortable words when thou givest anything shall not the Dew I switch the Heat of course we know that this is where some of the metaphors of Mary being like the Dew that is on the um on the Snow White wool uh come from in addition to a biblical story on that with that was a Gideon so as a word better than a gift Lo it is not it low is not a word better than a gift but both are with a gracious man so this graciousness of a man is a man without blemish and word indeed we're already starting to get closer to what Luke must mean by the word um interesting Full of Grace by the way that translation I gave you is from the 1611 King James Bible without blemish so we're getting closer now when the angel says hail full of grace or health highly favored one meaning person who is not subject to God's rigor of Justice it means for Saint Luke the only thing it can mean which is the only citation that exists in all of Greek language up to 70 or 80 A.D it means someone is without blemish but there's more Luke's uh Master Saint Paul whom we consider to be responsible for Ephesians also mentions the same root word the only other time that the same route for Full of Grace is used is in Ephesians 1 5 6. and hopefully I can pull that up without too much looking here since I've got too many of my articles oh but I'll have to see if I can and it really is mind-blowing yeah why don't if yeah she does look that up uh I I think that when we began looking at all that Matt the one thing that really did blow me away was okay I then realized why in particular Greek writers would cite Luke 1 and utilize that to refer to Mary as being without sin now think well you know as as an Evangelical I never saw it uh you know why what are they seeing that I wasn't seen and when I think of Greek writers I think of figures like uh Romano's the melodist who wrote about Luke one in fact that there's a whole bunch of fathers that interpret Luke 1 in the greeting and then they take that step and say that this is in reference to the one without any stain of sin the one without blemish so the one thing that I would add Matt is that you know I think some of the Greek fathers would know a little bit more than we know today in 2022 interesting and that to me is an important thing and again in a bit when we delve deeper into the Immaculate Conception I think the other point I would add is people will then say Matt it's a very common objection they'll say you know you don't even have fathers using language of conception early on and we can grant that but you do have fathers to talk about her being created so in their limited vocabulary they'll still talk about her being created without sin really and in full possession of justice for instance a protot evangelium uh calls her um the fruit of justice but the way it's breaking it down it's kind of like what the Bible calls somebody the fruit of the womb he was talking about her being the fruit of original Justice that's an incredibly early reference man and by the way uh not heterodox that's I know we're going to get back to the proto-evangelion with James so for those at home what is it so the product evangelium and James is an early document written in the early 100s by an anonymous author now what we do know from scholarship is that it was written by a person that was part of the Christian Community and it's written in a very Pious way about Mary a lot of it is telling you Pious stories about Mary's life when she was young when she was born when she was young talks about Saint Anne Saint Joachim it's an incredible document now one thing I'll also add Matt and I welcome the audience in case there's anybody with an objection that might think because they've heard from their Evangelical friends that the document is heterodox or Gnostic I welcome any objection to that as well because I've looked at it and it definitely is not in fact it was utilized by many early church fathers that were definitely Orthodox and they utilized it in a very positive way okay so from this document from the early 100s says what about the Blessed Virgin Mary so it talks incredible a number of things number one it will present Mary in a strong way as number one being a vowed Perpetual virgin but it will also allude to Mary being born with actually not a lewd but straight out say she's born with original justice so that would make her Immaculate as well okay it's an incredibly great insightful early document did you have that verse below yeah I do um so let's return then back to this K Hari tomeni full of grace or highly favored one I'm perfectly comfortable with the King James 1611 version uh one of uh the objections that we've actually seen in print uh is a double-edged sword because it actually ends up being the strongest argument for keikarito many or full of grace meaning immaculately conceived the same root word as I mentioned to you is used in Ephesians 1 6. so Saint Paul and Saint Luke um credibly um disciple and master relationship so this this would be the master Paul responsible for the disciple Saint Luke's understanding of this word Grace as a as a very peculiar vocabulary word it's the meaning uh that's shared in Luke 1 28 and Ephesians 1 6 could very well be the same Master disciple relationship it's only used twice once in Luke 1 28 the second time this very same root word is used is only in Ephesians 1 6. and then um this kharit or harito is the Greek word you can hear the khar um when you say thank you um Eucharist there's your car good grace good favor um so if we say that this root is shared the next thing that we need to jump to then is hearing the passage let's listen this is uh Ephesians 1 5 and 1 6. he meaning God we could even maybe say father predestine us to adoption as Sons by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will to the praise of the glory of his grace by which he made us accepted in his beloved Son now that that translation he made us accepted could mean he made us engraced it's that same word that was said to Mary now what's interesting here is if you read The Wider Passage we find out that this grace is before the foundation of the world which was for the Saints before the fall this is the grace this one vocabulary word is the word that is used to talk about the grace that God had planned from the beginning of the found or before the foundation of the world meaning before created time to give to all the saints but now has to be given in a different way because we've all sinned and we need Redemption hmm so what is Mary being greeted with she's being greeted with the word whose basic meaning from Luke's Master Paul means the grace that was for the predestined before the fall that's what we call Regional Justice so this is a second very philological or vocabulary based reason or it's very difficult to avoid the implications that whatever this grace is for the Saints is the same thing that the angel Gabriel is greeting Mary with particularly because it's not a common word just thrown around the New Testament for all sorts of things but it gets worse for those who would want to object to this reading we find that he that Saint Paul provides a definition of what this grace is he calls it in Ephesians 1 4. and he calls it in Ephesians 5 27 by the same Greek word that's used for Mary Immaculate amomos without any blemish didn't we just hear blemish and sirach 1817 that the just man who's without blemish who is both good in word indeed uh is full of grace here we see that to have this grace is the same semantic range as far as we can tell uh with the grace of sirach which means someone who is without blemish so when the angel Gabriel says hail full of grace the Lord is with thee what is he saying hail one who is full of Justice without blemish later without blemish in Ephesians is even clarified further to say without retis or retita without any sort of wrinkle so Mary doesn't even have wrinkles good for her so we have these metaphors of wrinkling uh and uh being without blemish as the definition given in Ephesians and those passages that I've just given you for what Grace means the final analysis is that when the angel Gabriel says hail full of grace he's saying your words and your Deeds are without blemish you uh are someone who is blemish less someone who is without wrinkle and who possesses All The Graces that were intended for the Saints before the fall before the foundation of the world sounds just like it there's going to be people listening to this who are thinking this is all very impressive but it's very easy to extrapolate from the exegesis of certain Greek passages to whatever you want it's sort of like typology you know you start with something and then you end up with something that like there's no way you would have arrived at that if it was just you and your Bible which is I guess what we're against that and most Protestants would be too um so someone might say okay that's all very good but look Saint Paul said all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and so by all maybe he meant all and your fancy uh Greek exegetical uh whatever is to be dismissed I'll let William pick it up first and then I'll feel free to make that argument better than I just did because I know I'm being a bit flippant no I think you made it very well yeah they would read Romans 3 and they'll say all of sin and fallen short of the glory of God now uh that is talking about personal sin of course but either which way they'll argue and they'll say I'll have the problem with that man is let's read it again and when we read it and when we examine it St Paul is used to utilizing the Greek word pass for all now does he mean every single person he can't he's utilizing it in a general way now how do we know he doesn't mean every single person because number one he can't mean every single person he would never include our Lord in that number two he's talking about personal sin there how can a child in the womb or a child that is born with perhaps mental defects how can that child commit a personal sin it simply would not fit so if you look at it from that perspective Romans 3 is talking about actual personal sins we know it cannot be every single person in the world just by virtue of the fact that we know our Lord was without sin and we know that children that don't have the mental faculties or perhaps those that are born with any other kind of defect or problem they don't have the ability to commit a personal sin so we know Saint Paul doesn't mean that in a blanket every kind of person okay and I'll add one other thing there's not a single early Church Father that exegeted Romans 3 and said well look Mary must have been included here yeah not a one you know I I find this interesting too because someone might say okay well if Mary really was without sin surely it would be more explicit in the New Testament and yet when I scoured the page of the New Testament I could only find two explicit statements about Christ being without sin maybe there's more and I missed one but I could only find two and so you would think okay so sure by implication him being God you would say well he's without sin but if there's two or let's say let's say five uh explicit statements about him being without sin why would if that wasn't made such a big deal maybe it makes sense that it wasn't explicit about Mary but but do you think that is a reasonable objection that if this is something we're all bound to believe that it should have been more explicit but let me tackle that really really quickly uh I real quickly I do think that you can find it quite clearly laid out and in a bit when we go into the uh into the Assumption which God willing will have time we'll even look at Revelation 12. uh the woman crowned um because that's incredible and and I know the objections that okay well early fathers I believe it was the church we can talk about and I want to invite anyone looking tuning in Matt anyone give us your very best objections anyone anything on the table uh we welcome them all and anybody know you are you putting them aside good job and anybody that would if you if you are a debater and if you want to debate these issues as Matt said we invite you uh reach out to Matt or reach out to me uh you know we'll make it happen we'll look at it and we'll make it happen um I think it is very clearly laid clearly laid out there man the other thing that that I would add would be the one thing that does did blew me away man when I was in the Evangelical when I began to look at the early fathers and how they had that incredible reverence for Mary referred to her as a parthenos of a virgin um Immaculate without stain without blemish it really did blow me away so the one thing that I would add is The Living Faith of the church the living tradition of the church accepted Mary in as a woman humble woman but a woman that was without sin another thing that I would add I'd be very careful about adding that the sinlessness of Our Lord is very different that is by nature the sinlessness of Mary would be not something that Mary merited would be all Grace that was completely Grace nothing that Mary merited on her own accord that would be impossible and I think when we break it down like that when we look at it like that a lot of the times Matt I have realized that our Evangelical friends will say okay well you know maybe I can come to the table now and talk a little bit more about it now and I think that it's a good starting point um I can see why the doctrine of Mary being theotokos safeguards the person of Christ I can't see why Mary being immaculately conceived does that so why are we bound to believe in the Immaculate Conception when it seems not to safeguard the person of Christ because I'm not bound to believe dogmatically that I don't know she had a certain colored hair or it was a certain height or something like that like why why is this something we we must believe I suppose it would be um you could put a whole series the first thing would be a rhetorical response which would be so I can deny the existence of King David and I'm a perfectly fine as a Christian because it doesn't really uh have anything directly to do with Christ or maybe King Solomon since he you know he's not really the ancestor okay which which things that are asserted in scripture do I get the privilege to deny and which ones do I have the ability to affirm um for Christians traditionally because they believe that scripture is materially inerrant if something is asserted by scripture you just don't get options okay now if you're with my biblicist friends oh we get all kinds of options but of course scripture's not inspired it's yeah kind of just a patchwork of some guys that were kind of slobs like you and me fair enough so so you guys are making the claim that scripture asserts that Mary Mary was sinless yeah so it really doesn't matter if we can figure out I mean I'm happy for us to try to figure it out but it really doesn't matter if we have if we in our minds figure out how this does or doesn't complement uh Christ's mission in the world the point is it's asserted by scripture so um this attitude has taken I think in Evangelical circles quite often if scripture asserts it but once and it's clearly being asserted then I'm gonna have to ascend okay because it's the infallible word of God I want to ask you about a different interpretation back in Genesis 3 15 the proto-e no the proto-evangelium that we brought out as well yeah um sometimes it's translated as she will crush your head in the douay rhymes my I've heard that that's a misinterpretation but it's actually he will crush the head yeah is that accurate or yeah I think that uh there's been a lot of work in recent years done on that to show you that basically we've never had a critical addition do you mind speaking into the market we've never had a critical edition of Saint Jerome but for our audience critical editions are when you're having to copy everything by hand for the first 1500 years of since Christ's birth um I don't know I have a hard time reading my own writing and then additionally I was just giving a talk the other day and I was noticing all the ease I left off everything misspellings that was in a prayer that I composed that maybe had about 10 lines what happens when you start multiplying these problems over thousands of years right so you can have a lot of variation in the text so we never had access to an answer of is it he or is it she and Jerome's text until definitively in the 1970s I believe the Jerome's critical Edition came out was where they were able to show where all the different uh errors in in hand and handwriting and various other things had happened uh and basically the end result is it's it's he it's he for Jerome uh which I appreciate the admission especially when you see the kind of work Colby seems to do on the Blessed Virgin Mary based on a Miss uh oh is that right well doesn't he I mean Colby I know let me let me kind of add to that and kind of defend that a little bit now I agree with everything father has said without a doubt we're gonna uh the best reading would would have to be the masculine one but would it be a problem theologically we have images of our holy mother uh stomping the head of the serpent um plenty of them they're beautiful now would it be a problem theologically to say that Saint Mary also plays a role in crushing the head of the serpent it wouldn't be Matt and I've done a deep study in that the issue in the fathers you find Fathers as early as the great uh doctor of the church Saint Ephraim and many others in saying that Mary also played a role in crushing the head of the serpent by virtue of being the mother of the Messiah one of the things one unique donor right that's the thing that we oftentimes forget there's not two biological donors to make the Flesh of Christ Christ's flesh is genetically Mary flesh it's not too don't understand and the other thing I would add Matt is because our Evangelical friends have a big problem with that they really don't like that translation uh but rather than rather than pushing that translation on them as a preferred one why don't we look at it from a theological argument perspective or a theological teaching and when we do that what what's the problem if we look at the book of Acts and we look in the Book of Luke we're told that the Believers will tread on I just pulled this up Romans 16 20 the God of Peace will soon Crush Satan under your feet Yes the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ so you've got it in multiple areas Matt you know exactly where I was going then and if if the Believers can play a role in crushing the head of the serpent well are you going to argue that Holy Mary the very first one to hear the word and say if that word in your heart didn't play a role she played an incredibly important role the most important sure and this would be what we call the doctrine of participation which is asserted quite explicitly in um the Epistle of Peter that we can participate in Divine being and so Mary is simply the principal participant in the attemptive mission of Christ and we are lesser participants because the intensity or the participation in grace that you and I have is uh less less uh medium penetrating less um sanctifying in the sense that we have defects which are healed whereas she started out without any defects that needed to be healed thank you I'm thinking of some basic objections to the Immaculate Conception often people wrongly believe that Catholics are saying in order for Jesus to be sinless Mary had to be sent let's have a comment I'll read that in the form of a listener's comment uh Luke romang says why must Mary be free from sin to carry the Lord in her womb we say God can use sinful people to carry out his will in the world so why capitals must marry be free from sin yeah see there's that misconception there's no must it's just yeah so that's what the Bible says I mean if our interlocutor doesn't believe in the Bible I'm we have people coming in from all different you know perspectives but if all right but to be real quick Christ could have been born of a harlot sure yeah the Dogma does not yeah that's right yeah very good point I think you brought up a great point there man if you ever figure out why God does everything that he does I definitely want your number yeah because the Dogma itself doesn't say Mary had to have been without sin yeah so that's a great point you bring up there Matt and I think really a common misconception it really is it yeah evangelicals will believe that so it's that it was fitting not that it was necessary right yeah I mean um these the setting up and he may just be repeating our interlocutor may just be repeating an argument to make sure that we address it it may not be his own position yeah but this must especially when they put it in caps you know yeah um it's meant to be like aha well we didn't we didn't agree as we began the conversation that there was a must here what was the words used in Ephesians freely chosen by God's Own will yeah so if you didn't listen to Ephesians you didn't hear that it was God in his free choice of his will before all time chose to do this there was no must there it's it's it's God taking his erector set and doing whatever he wants with it and if he don't like it well yeah I've been there I don't like creation sometimes either it doesn't cooperate with me particularly mosquitoes and things like that so yeah I get that but the reality is that's what the text says okay yeah that it's amazing how prevalent that idea is though that their Church thanks Mary had to be sinless Jesus wouldn't have been um I even remember having that question to somebody who gave a talk on the Blessed Virgin Mary shortly after my conversion and they didn't seem to be able to answer it either so I think it's important to kind of make that real clear now there is a patristic basis for this partially okay pop Leo um and other fathers uh there was uh since origen uh I think he's the earliest I found with this simply made the argument based off of Psalm 50 or 51 depending on uh what version of the scriptures you're using that because one is conceived in sin and because one is conceived by male seed and a man has to be part and parcel of that if we were to take Psalm 50 51 literally that's around verse five or six in sin my mother conceived me and I was born in iniquities that if Mary had borne Christ with male seed it would have been the seed of Adam and therefore he would have contracted sin so it is possible there's a confusion there that there is a patristic argument from male seed and this of course brings us to Mary well she wasn't she conceived of male seed what you find is this patristic argument um is confronted by the fathers and they make a distinction Jesus by his Supernatural conception by his supernaturality is sinless by nature Mary by the intervention of the savior is only sinless by Grace so she couldn't do it to herself she couldn't exempt herself she doesn't have her Gizmo that controls grace everything is controlled by Christ so the the distinction that becomes normative in the Greek East is whether it's kataharin or katafisin whether it's according to Grace or nature I had heard in a debate I forget which one the Protestant apologist said that there are certain Church fathers that seem to have indicated that Mary had at least some venial sin have you heard that what are they referring to how do you respond to that yeah go ahead yeah I've looked at that very in-depth man and I know I can probably quote every father that they're thinking of Basil the great Cyril Alexandria Saint John chrysostom what sorts of things are they saying now here's the thing there Matt is that they are and they'll even quote senior Renaissance now I'm glad I've looked at them in depth because there really is not a whole lot of depth to the argument so let me give you one example they will look at basil the great and basil the great will talk about Mary having doubt and fear at the foot of the cross then they will look at irenaeus and talk about Mary being very excited about Christ and the first miracle uh and they will then say that these are instances of when the fathers talk about Mary in this way that they believed Mary was sinful they really are a massive stretch Matt now when we get into the talk of the Immaculate Conception there are many areas to go one thing that some fathers did hold to was something we would call and father can probably break it down much better than I can the debit and picati many fathers did believe that Mary carried the debt of Adam's sin thus she had certain things like doubt maybe um the thing is that these fathers would not have believed to Mary was a sinner because all the while basil may have talked about Mary in that way in other areas you would call him Mary all holy and call Mary holy mother of God holy Perpetual virgin really the only father that I'd be willing to concede would probably probably have to be John chrysostom who has a very unusual view of Mary and I really think that he's probably the only one that has that unusual view but any other father you're not going to find any father Matt that believed Mary was a sinful woman and I know the figures that they'll point to they really don't have a good case there but John chrysostomus father will probably break down has a very unusual um marry one that we would definitely call quite unfortunate yeah um the genetic story here meaning from father to son origin not a father of the church um always given almost honorable mention but not quite um is the origin pun intended nice of uh this Doctrine in his comments about Mary uh having her heart pierced yeah we see that in basil I believe in his Phila Kalia his the compilation of um origin stuff um massages it a little bit so it's not quite as clear that he he's clearly uncomfortable with it so he's actually playing with an author who he who who whom he's claiming to just kind of reproduce we see that even that Saint Cyril Alexandria when he gets this same passage massages it more where it's quite clear that he wants you to not take it in origin sense and then finally after that we just see that it's all just cleaned up after that so basically what we have here is someone who wasn't sainted who had a very powerful intellect had influence on basil but basil wasn't comfortable with the statement so he did tweak it some and everyone knew it was in the name of origin and the same with Saint Cyril of Alexandria with the Chris system uh so so the the conclusion that we have there is yeah you got us somebody didn't clean up as well as they could have origin because they kind of wanted to reproduce the master but they kind of didn't and they didn't do an editing job for one side or the other so whatever that makes you guilty of they're guilty of the second thing is with chrysostom chrysostom has a couple um statements that he makes against Mary and I've always been curious with this because I've been too afraid to read all 900 of the sermons so I know somebody who has read all 900 episodes so I just asked him so uh father Philip roshka and I mean for him to remember every merry comment uh but I did ask him that I was kind of floating the hypothesis so he says two things about Mary one is in one of his sermons he says it's a good thing that the angel I'm putting in Modern English here it's a good thing that the angel uh let um Mary know that she was going to get pregnant and how it was going to happen because if not she would have found herself pregnant and in desperation would have committed suicide sounds kind of like sit Mary could have sinned and then secondly it was um when uh Jesus's family seems to have a problem with him yeah is he implicates Mary that she was kind of proud and and she needed some moral correction yeah just for those at home what scripture you're referring to there is this kind of ways his family thinks he's out he's marked six so if you read Mark chapter three at the beginning and and and actually I think it's a little bit later but in Mark chapter six I believe verses one through six and the question here is um and this is for Chris system Scholars so I'm perfectly fine to be corrected on this I don't I'm this is not a hill for me to die on uh because I haven't read the 900 sermons um I suspect one is that this is actually a tradition because we actually see some of these points come up in the Quran uh uh about Mary um interpreted as potentially committing suicide because of the unusual pregnancy so it seems like there's a Syriac tradition behind this that's that may come from chrysostom but it also just may be part and parcel of a tradition that's in Syria the second thing is um is this being used is Mary in poor taste according to how we think of it being used as a talking point for pastoral problems little girls that don't know how that uh that Having learned about the birds and the bees this is what happens they get pregnant they commit suicide or family issues about Pride I think one of the questions that I've thought about only reading the excerpts to the sermon not having read the entire thing is this could very well be just uh using Mary as an allegory for talking about pastoral challenges of family life okay let me let me add to that because that really doing a lot of work in mariology Matt it really did inspire me to read a lot more in Saint John chrysostom about Mary the one thing that I would add and father is the one that pointed out to me is that when he does talk about Mary in that way they're all hypotheticals number two I did talk to a top chrysostom scholar in the world Dr Howell incredible top one and right now he's working on a massive book on St John chrysostom translating it and I told him about my I said you know I'd like to do a show with you and talk about Mary in John chrysostom but I told him it'll be a little bit uncomfortable I want to talk about all that about Mary well the real neat thing Matt is we looked at that and he did tell him he said look it really is unfortunate language but they are hypotheticals but he was able to pull up one thing Matt that is not available in English yet and it is a writing from Saint John where he does talk about Mary is not having any sin so that is an area where we do need to really look at more because even with those hypotheticals if that is the worst that you can put forth to me it's pretty incredible because we have a lot of early church fathers and with a massive amount that we have that really is probably the worst example that you can use and it's being used in a hypothetical kind of manner everywhere else you look you have an incredibly high level of a high view of Holy Mary what is the earliest quote you might point to from a church father that seems to teach the Catholic position on on Mary being sinless and immaculate that would probably have to be uh the pro right proto-evangelium what about an individual father that we can name individual father um the new Eve for irenaeus would be good and the reason why um is because the Jewish implications here this idea of a new Eve the idea of Virgin and the play on words in Hebrew is is there's a wonderful book that was put out that's available uh to be downloaded by Christophe Rico who re-examines Isaiah 7 14 on the origin of the word virgin in the translation for a virgin shall give birth to a child and does a very good job of showing you how likely um the the Hebrew Alma means virgin but in that he reminds the readers that among the three meanings of Virgin and Hebrew one of them is Virgin Earth the primary meaning is one who is unfamiliar with relations with a man but the second reading which is just considered the semantic range is the Virgin Earth when we read somebody like Josephus who talks about Adam being created he immediately even in the Greek talks about Adam being created from Virgin Earth yeah once you start associating like irenaeus does marry with Eve being made from Virgin Earth this culminates at the Council of Ephesus with uh theodoritus I think of Ankara who who's homily read aloud to the fathers of Ephesus explicitly states that Mary was made out of Virgin Earth the new Paradise yeah yeah it was am I is that a stretch there it's it's no you're right it's it's a hebrewism to signify as Adam and Eve were made so Mary was made but what is the thing that Christians definitively add to this without the full this is what the Christian theology adds to this so I think you already see this here with this recapitulation of Mary as the new Eve with with um they're they're they're the Hebrew implications of that metaphor provided that irenaeus is coming from Apostolic tradition which he does claim uh and he is coming from Asia Minor um and so if we're dealing with the mid second century metaphor this is what it seems to imply the other thing I would say is the implications of molito of Sardis Yeah by calling Jesus the Paschal Lamb but Mary the Paschal you hmm I would add Gregory the wonder worker as well now I do know that there are some pseudonymous works out there but the text that I am particularly referring to is preserved in Armenian and it is an authentic one so we have a number of early fathers we even had a century yeah it's very early on so um is all this laid out in your book we we don't have Olive we do have Gregory though yeah we do we have uh we have a ton of fathers in there and we have I just I know I'm putting you on the spot here so I just want to know the book on the Immaculate Conception is to be written but did haven't you written one that was just on one Greek term as it was used throughout the patristic literature yeah they're gonna keep saying this until I until I die I I I heard somebody say that an academic is somebody who has found something more interesting than sex so I love that you an academic have written a book on the Immaculate Conception but no no that was just on one term good well you have to record the book by the way I put a plug in for that book that father wrote an incredible book it shows you how even the Eastern fathers okay father kappas on the Immaculate Conception put a link to that book below the reason I'm bringing this up now is I know that you're going off memory if people want to do a deeper dive these are some books then people can check out definitely can I ask real briefly um if you could sum up the Orthodox objection to the Immaculate Conception and respond to it and I want to remind people that we have an entire debate between you and father Ramsey thank you on this very topic and it's it's approaching a hundred thousand views right now so for a more in-depth understanding of how the Orthodox view differs from the Catholic view they can check that out but could you sort of sum up the objection and respond to it now really the number one objection Matt would be that they will tell us that Holy Mary died the massive majority of fathers believe that Mary indeed died and if Mary died that is the result of the fall of her having inherited original sin they will say they will also object to the language of stain they believe it's a little bit too Latin as we heard from father Ramsey and father Ramsay's written articles on that very issue but by and large uh to me Matt that really does create a number of issues because okay well when when are you going to argue that Mary received the full possession of original Justice now depending what Orthodox scholar you want to talk to there are some that believed in the womb uh some that believe at the Annunciation so father Ramsey alluded to believing it it was a little bit after Mary was created Because he believes she had to inherit original sin because indeed Mary died and they will point to the two witnesses of the Book of Revelation and they'll say because the Catholic will point to Enoch and Elijah as being examples that well not everybody with original sin dies they had original sin and not everybody that dies has original sin will also point to they will then point to the two witnesses of Revelation and claim well Enoch and Elijah will return to die in the future thus you cannot use that Mary had original sin and Mary died now I would point the Audience by the way for an incredibly in-depth treatment of this from than we've done and work with them before an incredible Catholic by the name of Elijah yasi done an incredible amount of work and in fact he's one of the very best um on the very topic now when we look at that Matt when we look at the early fathers we realize they're not even in close to unanimity and believing that Enoch and Elijah would be the figures to return and die the other point and as I pointed out to Father Ramsey is father Ramsey in order for this argument to work for the Orthodox Enoch and Elijah would have to return and they would have to die a normal death but the the witness in the early church talks about them returning and being martyred now nobody believes that Mary was martyred and them using Enoch and Elijah won't fill that particular issue the other point that I would point to Matt and then I'll let father chime in is when we go to the very famous fathers of the Assumption and the dormition we mean germanus of Constantinople the great John Damascus uh the great Andrew of Crete and multiple others they live in a period where we can dub them dormition fathers because they begin to write a whole lot about Mary's dormition and bodily assumption they talk about the death of Mary we can also add uh modestus of Jerusalem uh Timothy there are many figures that we can add Matt theotechnus oblivious and we've looked at all the texts met here's a big problem for the claim that Mary's death was because of original sin when you examine all of those fathers they tell you Mary's death was very different she did not die because of original sin so that is another particular issue that when we look at those fathers to talk about the death of Mary they don't believe she died because she inherited original sin I think that's an important thing okay yeah I would uh maybe take a um more um what do I want to say I'm going to say episodic but uh stages and let's say from the second century until um just to use a nice time frame until Maximus the Confessor in the 600s who does deal with original sin as a very interesting topic for himself it's not usually discussed that much in the east um he's responsible at latter in 649 for declaring absolute immaculateness of Mary so there's not any discussion of her being without Grace so if that's the case and if Grace is agreed upon to be the thing that makes a person with original Justice or without then I don't see any problems here we're not seeing in sephronius his the spiritual father of Maximus we're not seeing in Maximus in the first seven centuries any tradition in Byzantium other than Mary was at with Grace at any time of her life that you care to look at that would be for Western Christians at that time Immaculate Conception okay if we want to deal then in later times um as Martin shuji's book in French on the Immaculate Conception Chronicles he gives full paragraph and page-long quotes of all the people that discuss this in the Greek East and that is being translated now so we should see that probably out in the next few months I've been asked to write the preface word actually it's a wonderful book what we see is that the first time that we have to worry in the Orthodox East about discussions on the Immaculate Conception is in the 14th century and I actually presented at Oxford at the um at uh I better get it right something for Byzantine studies I can't remember I I forget these things but anyway uh it was alleging the discovery I mean it has to be peer-reviewed and and and people have to agree that this in fact is what I'm claiming is legitimate uh passes the muster of scientific rigor but um the first individual to mention this was quoting Peter Lombard sentences he was a Greek that got a hold of the bad textbook that was being used in the Latin universities he doesn't agree with it he just reports some people are saying that Mary had sin which you find in the 14th century after uh this individual um reports and quoting Lombard's sentences that have been translated into Greek which I have proven to scholarly satisfaction was translated at this time by this time uh is that you see the first preoccupations with this are in palomite writers meaning followers of a fellow by the name of Gregory Palomas anything that they do say about Mary um explicitly falls on the side of her being Immaculate every moment of her life and it culminates in Joseph briennes who I don't expect anyone to know even even the most Pious Orthodox uh would I'd be surprised if they know Joseph branhos but he was a hero of his time against the Latins and he finally explicitly just says look Marriott the moment of reconception was completely filled with grace because he's he knows the Latins are debating this he's watching Dominicans franciscans fighting in Constantinople about this who knows if they're on the streets really yeah um yeah look it up but uh as Gigi notes the first modern Orthodox writer to ever take the position of Thomas Aquinas that was the position that was taken that the only naysayers were taking aquinas's position was in the 16th century and it's from this point that we start seeing Orthodox writers quoting arguments made from Thomas Aquinas against other Orthodox writers who hold either the traditional position before there were any Latin discussions or they hold scotus's position because they know about scotus so really the discussion and orthodoxy's a modern discussion and it was prompted by Thomas aquinas's text um so when we talk with Orthodox nowadays about this question I think one of the things that we oftentimes don't know is what is the definition of original sin for them because if the Council of Jerusalem in 1672 which is called panorthodox has ideas on justification what makes a person just before God we we argued today that the Scholastic culmination of this was whether or not you receive or you don't receive infused Grace a created by and large thought of as a created accident or created gift in in Latin theology even if you are allowed to speculate that maybe it's uncreated um do you have this at your conception or not do you have this during your life or not that's what makes you a child of God versus a child of Wrath if the if if we use the Council of Jerusalem uh as our talking point on its ideas on justification I think that we'll come to the same conclusions which is Mary always had justification which means Immaculate Conception uh there's some people have made a point of quoting a can and actually misquoting the English Canon where they claim that somehow Mary was imputed with sin but actually it's just imitating Trends on discussion of this and if they read it in the way that they want to that this Canon actually implies that Mary had um uh personal fault but I won't go into that but the point is is the Council of Jerusalem is a good point of reference uh for justification now the fortunately the Council of Jerusalem in 1672 a panorthodox council was reaffirmed by the great and holy Council which represents a lot of Orthodox churches so if I were to use the Council of Jerusalem into Creole justification as what original sin means I think we could all agree if I were to use an a different definition which Orthodox by and large like in in your last debate father Ramsey did not feel obliged to the Council of Jerusalem As I understood him now if I've I'm Incorrect and I need to be I need to I need to reverse that after the show and I'm happy to do so but if I've understood him correctly um he feels that to being a good Orthodox you can exempt yourself from portions of the Council of Jerusalem if you identify them as being as I understood him to Latin so and if I am misspeaking then I I'm perfectly fine in correcting myself I don't want to speak for anyone let them speak for themselves but unfortunately he's not here sure but if but that position sounds familiar to me that a Panna Orthodox council is not binding and the great holy Council has no ability to make it further binding so what is the alternative to use a definition which is recent on what original sin is because the patristic definitions Cyril of Alexandria aren't death taken in isolation it's death and the passions uh as well as possibly other implications but at a minimum the passions which are disordered are included so if we were to say Mary had original sin in a patristic world it should be death and passions it shouldn't just be death so Mary should be having pretty bad temptations and and out of whack passions and uh all these sorts of things um but that's not conceited so I think that my own sense is on this debate until we can admit that there's a good point of reference for talking about what original sin and what lack uh and what original Justice is using an orthodox standard which might be a conciliary statement on it instead of a 19th actually probably a definition which I've only seen emphasize since 1959 which is death and death in isolation I don't think that we can have a fruitful discussion okay you had that quote from this founded very good one now let me let me confirm Joseph ranios is a pretty important figure isn't he father uh yeah we we don't want to over emphasize his authority and Orthodoxy though right by the way the translation it does come from father cop it's the second homily in the enunciation another woman was not chosen over her because God for knowing all women Sanctified her in her mother's womb the one who was to be the worthiest of all who were to exist established her beyond all virtues but he rejected all the women Unworthy of this purpose as was reasonable and she possessed a virtue Superior to all other virtues that of being purified by the Holy Spirit and being prepared as a containing receptacle of the inaccessible Divinity and that's from that book that you were kind enough to bring up that I wrote on the Immaculate Conception incredible forgive the ignorant question you can answer and then we're going to go to a break and then get to the next two dogmas and and other things but um if somebody says well Mary couldn't have been immaculate in the way Catholics mean it because she died how did they respond to the fact that Christ died yeah maybe it's uh he got to kind of choose for himself uh just wanted to die and um I think couldn't you say the same about I'm not saying you would but could you say my understanding is I'd have to go back and reread uh the door mission one of the Door Mission sermons of John damascene but I think that he implies that Mary just kind of opted to imitate Christ okay which was The Franciscan position traditionally on this whole question we should also point out too that uh and we'll get to the Assumption of Mary soon but in that official kind of dogmatic statement the Holy Father leaves room for the possibility of her dying right so it's not like what Catholics teach she never died yeah right all right let's take a break and then we'll come back and we'll get to two more dogmas uh namely the Perpetual uh sorry yes Perpetual virginity an assumption I want to talk about the devotional after Mary and we'll see how many objections we can uh pull up in the comments section great hey if you want to uh pray better and you're not great at praying right now you might need the Fantastic number one downloaded Catholic app in existence hello hello.com Matt go check them out over there click the link in the description below because if you sign up over there you'll actually get three you'll get hello for three months free you'll have access to their entire app their sleep stories their novenas their daily gospels their everything Matt on an unrelated note do you I was trying to find somewhere that I could you know hear Jonathan Rooney yes exactly Jonathan remember that I could do that hallow.com yep yep Jason Everett can read a night story to you Bobby Angela does stuff yeah father Mike Schmitz it really is a fantastic app like here's the thing though Matt I don't like uh I don't want to put all this money into it if I don't know if it's great because that's the perfect thing you're very good at throwing up softballs so if you download the app right now I think you can like use a couple of features but not many so you can pay for it and it's a reasonable price a month but if you go to hello.com Matt again click the link in the description below that does two things number one it lets them know that I sent you making them like me more and I like being liked by them second and more importantly for you you'll get a three month free trial so you can try it for what's that 90 days and you can decide whether or not you like it and if you don't cancel by the end of that three month free trial and you won't pay a cent but I use it my wife uses it's really great I think a really great use case for it too just something that I was impressed that it had was uh like morning prayer yeah I think that's really good because it's hard to like read the through the book yeah pieces and things so I think that's yeah way more cheesy next thing I want to talk about is Exodus 90 Exodus 90 is an aesthetical program for men where you and a bunch of fellas get together in a confraternity as it were in a small group and for 90 days really live the spiritual Life Like A Champion I mean you're praying for an hour every day you're not eating in between meals you're not drinking alcohol you're only taking cold showers it's a very grueling 90 days but it's certainly worth it they did independent research on people who completed Exodus 90 and what they found is that most people were using their phones and computers far less than when they started they had better marriages they had better prayer lives it's really terrific and uh they're starting soon in January so Now's the Time to Begin thinking about it so go to exodus90.com Matt and they've also got a fantastic app and you can learn more about it over there Exodus 90.com Matt finally I want to let you guys know about parlor and the fact that I'm over there go to parlor Dot com slash we're on my Matt frad if you want the link is in the description below I'm always posting the latest videos that we put up over here over there and that's a great way to stay in touch with all the work of pints with Aquinas it's nonsensorial um you know they're not gonna Shadow ban you or any stuff like that so parlor.com Matt frad thanks so much [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] okay so I guess you had to cancel the liver King didn't you the king that was crazy you knew it I can't believe that you brought that up do both of you work out we did you both we knew it we'd been laughing for what almost a year we knew it he looks terrific though yeah but you know it looks like a Greek god both natural so we know we know what's achievable and what's not it really isn't it and we're back okay so we have discussed two of the dogmas we're gonna get two more I want to talk about what do I want to talk about I want to talk about devotional practices to Mary Had A grown relationship with Mary we'll also take some objections sir um we're good to keep going yeah all right did you have a final thought on the Immaculate Conception I did it's it's something that's worthwhile it this is not a as direct as the evidence that we saw with um Luke 128 um as the Greek word meaning um to Grace and kekari tomene meaning full of grace but it is important to know that a Protestant Catholic team headed by Reverend Dr Ray Brown God Rest him now um analyzed Mary's Magnificat and um they were very very troubled by what they found there as a as an ecumenical team when Mary at the beginning of her Magnificat says which is and my spirit in the past tense rejoiced in God my savior now to understand how modern Bible says kind of look at this it's well Luke must have screwed up here um this is essentially what they're saying they do it in nice words but the point is Mary is 12 years old we know this uh whether we look at Machinery or the pretty evangelium that Mary's I was never sure how much yeah there's some there's a protege manuscript that also has her at 14 okay um but if you actually I didn't know if that was just Catholic folklore at this point people just throw out the choose we have good grounds for believing this and in fact wow the study that's done by Christopher on the word Alma can actually give you the age ranges for every Hebrew word that's used and they knew this because of uh of music like you know when a girl's voice starts to change at a certain age okay that she doesn't have the ability to be soprano anymore and so you actually have these words that are used at the we'll call them at the titles of Psalms that you're supposed to sing these at virginal ranges interesting it's incredible and which takes you up to about 14 years old but anyway so without getting into it we've got really good reason to think that the Blessed Virgin Mary was between 12 and 14 yeah when she conceived yeah she was 12 to 14 when she was conceived and um not only that uh but uh when she's singing the uh Magnificat she's saying that God did some sort of megala or great things for her uh when she was quite young apparently uh and this is troubling towards to The ecumenical team who's versed in the New Testament because there's not many years that's right before 12. she's recounting her life her very long life in her biography and their solution for this is going to sound unduly complicated to the lay here and I think it's underly complicated even for the specialist which is well what Luke did here is he probably borrowed a hymn that was already being used which I don't have a problem with that Mary would even claim that she was singing A Hymn based off of Anna's him uh which I believe is so one Samuel two and so um but the the hymn that is being sung uh for these fellows is inappropriate because this is all about Mary now should be all about Jesus this is that that point that I was telling you at the very beginning of our talk it's all about Jesus then why is Mary singing about herself she should be singing about having the baby not about what God did to her years and years and years ago we know what happened Luke took a post-resurrectional hymn that Mary was saying about the resurrected Jesus later no he is yes and Luke decided to put it at the front end of the gospel because it seemed to make sense for telling a story about Jesus's um conception but he forgot to put it in the future's hands I see so if only Luke you know took the Greek and put it in the future then everyone everything would be okay the other way you could look at this would just be like a first century Christian is wants to know about Mary's life and Mary claims that when she was a tiny little girl or younger um that God did some sort of great Marvel for her a miracle that is as great as uh the implications are of crossing the Red Sea God intervening with the angels of the Lord what is this great miracle that could be being referred to well if you actually look at the context in which uh this happens it happens where the very beginning of this literary unit this grouping is talking about a child leaping in the womb this literary unit ends with a child being born from the womb so what is Mary talking about in the context of a child being leaping in the womb and a child uh being born from the womb God did great things for me too has something to do with her being in the womb now we can't get more Precision than that we can't say oh this means at the moment of her conception but I'll tell you who does read it that way a second century potentially in some parts first century document called the prod evangelium of James I see and this Protestant who was having problems with that magnification group are they aware of this program in jalim is that how they try to sort it out or do they just suspect theirs was a complicated solution which is Mary can't be talking about Mary all right yeah unfortunately yeah all right can we move on to um we've spent a lot of time on the Immaculate Conception which is called for because I think this is the most the biggest obstacle I think one of them but okay let's talk about Mary um being Perpetual virgin and I'll throw two objections your way if you can think of more you can share them with me uh number one it clearly says that Christ had uh Brothers and so therefore uh you know Mary isn't a virgin uh uh she had children after Christ second of all it says that Joseph didn't know Mary until she gave birth well that word until seems to imply that there was a point that he did have conjugal relations with her third objection is well I thought you Catholics were supposed to say that sex was holy and good and so if you're so hung up on her being a virgin then it seems like you're implying that there's something wrong with sex so there's there's three objections for you to respond to you want to go first William and I can fill in the blanks and by the way that last one I'm gonna have that beer yeah yeah it just feels appropriate oh it looks very cold too it's very cold I'm gonna pull up my Bible just so I can uh be well you do that I'm going to reread everything Matt said in the form of a listener's question um let's see in serious things yeah oh it's Anne Rising Suns her husband did not know her uh until after Jesus's birth and know her in quotations there are biblical references either Jesus's siblings absolutely uh Joseph married her to create his family mm-hmm did you catch that I did okay let me um number one I think it is really important to point out you're right you have the brothers that are named they're named in the gospels and I think the common reply from a Catholic mat would be and I I would utilize it a lot too it would be that adelphos the Greek word for brother and Adolphus for for her sister it's not always utilized for blood siblings we can agree with that not all the time in fact many times utilized for nephews cousins but I think we need to go beyond that because our Evangelical friends will come back Matt and they'll say okay but everything is depending on the context right and then they will go to Mark the gospel of Mark chapter six let me go ahead and read it they will usually begin in verse 3 where it says is this not the carpenter the son of Mary and the brother of James Joseph's Judas from Simon and or not his sisters here with us so they were offended at him and Jesus said to them a prophet is not without honor except in his own country and among his own relatives and in his own house now we have to be fair Matt it just named all the brothers and it tells you the son of Mary brother James Joseph Simon so I know that adelphos doesn't always mean literal blood sibling but what else could the context be right you would think how are they not as blood siblings and I think as we break it down very clearly in the book Matt when you look at it in the Greek you get the clearest indication that they cannot be children of Mary number one when you you read the brother of James Joseph Judas and Simon we then go to verse 4 where our Lord will reply says a prophet is not without honor except in his own country and among his own relatives so he's referring to the relatives and in his own house so two big problems number one there is relatives number two they're in the house how can they not be children of Mary if they live in the same house so we need to tackle both number one when you look at the Greek Matt you get the answer right there because when it says among his own relatives the Greek word utilized here is singing Us in them that can never be utilized for blood siblings so in other words that is utilized for cousins or relatives of the same mother of the same mother yes they cannot be children of Mary by and by the way father has probably done the insane job I have done the insane job of looking at every usage of it it cannot be utilized for children of Mary they cannot be children of Mary we're literally being told okay they're the brothers but how are they related because the Bible calls people brothers and sisters in many ways how were they related to him and were literally told they are his relatives in verse four but it utilizes that particular Greek word to tell you they're related How likely probably cousins but they're not it has that particular Greek word has got to exclude Mary she cannot be the mother of those children and so what we have here is uh let's take a listen um to uh what is going on here which is something like and when the Sabbath had come he began to teach at the synagogue and many hearing him were astonished saying where did this man get these things and what wisdom is this which is given to him that such Mighty Works hey that's familiar that's Mary's own thing you know these Mighty works are performed by his hands is this not the carpenter the son of Mary and brother of James Josie's Judas and Simon and are not his sisters here with us so they were offended at him but Jesus said to them so these are G this is Jesus's response to his enemies list a prophet is not without honor except in his own home in his country and among his own cousins of a different mother that's what that's the word that's the word cousins of a different mother so the first group that is mentioned by his enemies are his brothers there are three of them now four James Josie's Judas and Simon Jesus calls them as a group my relatives of some other womb Brothers of another mother that is exactly what it means and that's the only thing it can mean in Greek Jesus is the reason why we don't believe Jesus had brothers and sisters who were siblings am I right in thinking too that when you look at the crucifixion account you see that these people uh the sons of a different Mary this is a William specialty yeah you definitely do and you find that in the early church as well Matt now the one thing I would add is people will then note how a lot of early church fathers just really don't identify how would they are related to him but you've got Jessica and you have many others that will point to them being cousins a second century church historian yeah and he and I had this his father pointed out he wasn't trying to do an apologetic in that work he was merely recording history church history the other really really important thing and I believe we I think I positive we bring it out in the book The reading we just gave you in Mark in the gospel of Mark was noted by Jerome Saint Jerome caught that very same reading interesting so the incredible thing is Matt is that Catholics very often will reply with well brother doesn't always mean brother and we agree but our Evangelical friends want more they want you to show them how it cannot be literal brother here and their requests are reasonable without a doubt we have got to be we have to realize and with all due respect Matt they love the Bible their Bible loving they're not a lot of them are not trying to be hostile that's right we need to reply faithful to the word of God without a doubt for them and if we can show them from the word of God in fact imagine be shocked that a lot of them have reached out to us and told us we can get on board with that about Mary we've got no problem with Mary being Perpetual virgin we don't believe it takes away we rather we believe it gives even more honor to our Lord and the other thing that I would add Matt is that the belief that Mary remained Perpetual virgin her whole life even though we won't have the time to go through him was held by all of the reformers as well Matt is that true Calvin didn't uh no I I've heard the only argument I have heard Matt it's been from somebody claiming that Martin Luther swayed from it towards the end I've looked at Luther in German at the very end he never ever persuade for me Calvin was very strong Luther Calvin zwingley turritin was and what's interesting about these characters is not only are they affirming the Perpetual virginity of Mary but they're responding to objections that comp like modern day Protestants would offer such as the one I just offered but then also the one where it says Joseph didn't know her until she gave birth yeah before we move to that let's finish out this passage and then we can tackle that um we just said that Jesus responded to his enemies list by saying that the person that they name brother James brother Josie's brother Judas and brother Simon are in Jesus's tit-for-tat response people he says these are my brothers of a different mother but the second group they name are these girls that live in Nazareth in Joseph's house and those are called by his enemies Jesus's sisters so we've taken care of the brother issue but what about these sisters couldn't those be his biological siblings uh fully full siblings and of course the answer is yes I think it Demands a response they could be until Jesus also includes them in his list of responses he says that a prophet is without honor not only among his own relatives Brothers of a different mother he says but also of his own household now to you me that sounds like normal language but the divisions that Jesus is using here between Brothers of a different mother and household Jerome directs us that this is Jesus quoting from the book of numbers and the divisions of the families in Israel this is a family division that is mandated by Moses to divide people according to whether or not they are brothers of a different mother or whether they're not they are even different kinds of relatives that could be uh more distant and those are called household relatives so these divisions are Jesus quoting numbers as the response to who these individuals correspond to in his family structure so what we have here is not only the certitude that Jesus is just listing off his family members but the source for Jesus using the division of his family to identify with these individual named people and that is the book of numbers and the way that you take uh what we call those a census of the people of Israel thank you I I heard it's funny as I was talking as you were talking I looked up Jesus Brothers Catholic answers enter and I pulled up an article and it's mine I don't even remember writing it but here's what I said and you tell me if I'm right James and Joseph also called Josie's who are called Jesus Brothers in Mark 6 3 are indeed the children of Mary just not Mary the mother of Jesus after sir Matthew's account of the crucifixion and the death of Jesus he writes quote there were also many women there looking on from afar who had followed Jesus From Galilee ministering to him among who were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee so that seems to very clearly indicate that these women looking on were not the Mary who was by the foot of the cross you're correct yeah and another argument that you hear about will be that um in the Gospel of John they will try unfortunately they'll try to connect the figure titled the other Mary as being Mary the mother of Christ but clearly it is not Mary is never ever called the other Mary in the Bible and I've looked at a ton of early church fathers and not a one of them ever identified that Mary as Mary the Mother of Our Lord more so Matt if you look at it in the Greek to call Mary the other Mary would have been very odd because Mary the Mother of Our Lord had already been identified why would you need to then later on identify her as the other Mary yeah doesn't make any sense the article is great by the way oh thank you I don't know if you've read it have you I have yeah well this is where I used to work at Catholic answers back in 2012. many things came pouring out I can't keep track of them all but also we have the consensus of the early church uh the pro-evangelium of James and here I want to bring up an interesting point it seems like we're trying to ReDiscover Saint Joseph these days and uh we're trying to perhaps Salvage him from the rosy red cheek uh man and kind of say no he was a warrior you know but um whereas you have certain Catholic modern authors and even I think Fulton Sheen wanting to say that Joseph was a young strapping lad because of look at the different kind of Journeys he had to take on foot am I right in saying that the pretty evangelium of James says that he was a widower and perhaps older yeah so then what view are we to take what seems most likely I have a dogmatic point of view the the church is not taking a historical stance on this it's certainly for uh in modern magisterial documents has favored the virginal hypothesis which is sustainable biblically it's just more complicated and as you know things as things get more complicated they're less likely to be justified but there is no contradiction so what what is the more complicated story look like this would not be the one that you're talking about that you might see in a fold machine but it it would be using the historical sources that we have to still come to the same conclusion about a virginal Joseph okay so it's a more complicated way to marry the historical sources to the post-reformation images of Joseph and that would basically be that uh Joseph was indeed marrying a widow before he married Mary and the children were of a previous Widow this was just would just be the way in which you could reconcile all the sources that makes it a bit more complicated um and you of course are trying to fit together pieces which you don't have more evidence for so you can't say that it's wrong but at a certain point as the complications continue it becomes for historian less likely I see okay uh anything else you want to say about the brothers of Christ I mean a Calvin addresses this but I don't think we've addressed specifically the idea that he didn't know her until yeah well I'll let father begin with that one in a moment let me touch upon uh in particular the reformers the comment that I made earlier I I want to emphasize that when the reformers talked about Mary being Perpetual virgin thing that we need to realize Matt is if they were coming at the Bible from a Bible only perspective remember they thought the word tradition was terrible they didn't want to hear about it they did not rely on sacred tradition to make Dogma now I know an Evangelical will come back and say well you know they didn't call it Dogma no but they believed that it was part of the faith they believed you could not deny Mary as Perpetual virgin in fact in a letter from Luther later in his life he writes a sermon and he says there are some people who slandering me claiming that I have denied that Mary remained Perpetual virgin so clearly the reformers held to the belief as Mary as Perpetual virgin and they did it from a Bible only perspective okay great oh shall we turn to the did you have something you want to bring up oh um well there was something from way earlier which was I mean as you look for that my objection which I've heard sometimes is like well what's so bad about sex you know and why is this something that even needs to be dogmatically defined we don't have a dogmatic definition on whether or not Joseph was a virgin why do we have to have this about Mary it seems to it seems to sort of uh what do you say like raise the bar and it makes it more difficult for sincere Christians to accept Catholicism if we're being asked told you must believe this if you want to join our church suppose if you're framing uh celibacy and virginity from the get-go is sex is bad you have a point the issue is whether or not there's any value to virginity in a religious context certainly um in our popular culture today we have an appreciation for it in Buddhism with their monks um maybe some other religious groups and that's secular people being able to appreciate it but it's interesting that many of those secular appreciations for it within foreign contexts are not now any longer applied to our own post-christian world so I would just say that the framing of the question is already um presuming that you can't have a positive view of um human sexuality if you have people that are dedicated to either celibacy or virginity and I simply deny the premise anything you'd like to say there William yeah no I totally agree with him and in fact I think that when you look at what the early fathers had to say when you look at Saint Paul there was an incredible level of respect for virginity you find that in the great Saint Jerome in the great Saint Ambrose you find it all throughout the early fathers but I think the other thing Matt and I've heard it brought up very often and I want to really point out that the church has never ever taken this position I have heard the objection that the Catholic Church look believes that sexual apps and marriage are are you know sinful in some kind of way and that it couldn't be further from the truth Matt uh that kind of an objection which I have heard from um prominent apologists by the way I think it's a very poor one and and I I want to be very clear the Catholic church does not have a defective or poor view when it comes to that I should add that Saint John damascene and his on the Orthodox faith likes to draw our attention to the fact that if we have this attitude towards celibacy and virginity as being negative as biblical people we really need to throw Elijah in a negative light we also need uh to throw Alicia into a negative light because the scriptures seem in every way to only be interpreted as meaning that they did not marry during the course of their lives Jesus perhaps an imitation of them as His types clearly did not marry and beget children during his life and so what we're really saying is the paradigmatic activity of Jesus had one defect and that one defect was Jesus should have been married and he should have had children and we're so much better for having Dan Brown give us the truth of it all so that the defective Jesus is now a thing of the past I would recommend that people type into Google you know Protestant reformers on the Perpetual virginity of Mary if you want to see these quotations for yourself but he is just one from Luther she that is the blessed religion brought forth without sin actually that's not the one I wanna that's not the one I want to look at because that has to do with her macroconception yeah so here's another and you lie about me is being circulated it says Luther I am supposed to have preached and written that Mary the Mother of God was not a virgin either before or after the birth of Christ but she was conceived that but that she conceived Christ through Joseph and had more children after that when Matthew 1 25 says that Joseph did not know Mary Connolly until she had brought forth her son it does not follow that he knew her subsequently on the contrary it means that he never did uh he never did know her and that's not to say that all Protestants hold everything that Luther said is true but if they have any kind of recognition of what the past I suppose it would just kind of give Protestants uh an off-ramp you know so it's like fair enough you know you don't hold Calvin zwingly Luther as infallible you're not bound to believe everything that they say but you are bound to the Sacred Scriptures well you could you as a Protestant can disagree with me as a Catholic on the Immaculate Conception say but you don't have to disagree with me on this because these Protestant revolters didn't and so you could remain a Protestant and agree with Catholics that Mary is Perpetual virgin what I need to investigate further I was just brought to my attention actually by Dr Robert festigi um is the fact that there has been some work done on this question in modern protestantism that only after higher criticism came about and the a tendency to call into question the very inspiration of the gospels do we actually start seeing people from a Protestant culture who are no longer Christians who believe in the inspiration of scripture are the ones that begin to press the Jesus brother and sister meaning uh siblings from the same mother arguments and that this really was resisted by the the children of the reform until you get to basically uh the late 19th and the early 20th century and then you start seeing some resistance breakdown to it and it to actually be absorbed into Christians who are antithetical to the higher critical movement so the question here isn't um anything else then it's not protestantism per se which is wed to this it's modern Christians who tend to come from an Evangelical background who are unaware that they're simply embracing the Enlightenment and they need to be maybe more critical of it all right yeah let me add to that real briefly Matt um and and to Neil's point which is a very good point um you can quote Luther all the time Evangelical will reply quite true they'll say we don't believe everything Luther believed we don't believe everything Calvin believed or swingly or turton the point of quoting all of them is not to say well you know you have to believe this no the point is to show there was a continuity that even after the Revolt they held to this and they believed it to be Apostolic and notice how I read a number of reformers even when we get to Wesley really the main issue Matt would be when did the break happen if we can trace a belief to the beginning go all the way to the reformers it's not a matter of believing what Luther believed it's a matter of well when did it the break occur it's a great question what was the answer and the break occurred very late and Dr festigia's father pointed out has been doing work and showing that this has happened very late and like very likely in a liberal leaning movement that led to the break because Matt today you walk into an Evangelical Church it is almost dogmatic to deny Mary remain Perpetual virgin so the issue would then become if there were foreigners held to it yet this teaching was eventually shed and abandoned well what other teaching is going to be shed and abandoned in 100 years in protestantism and it really does show a problem do we know who first sort of popularized the idea that's the reason why I won't state it as a fact is because I want to see the paper trail yeah but it but I do trust inherently Dr Robert festichi but he himself told me that it was merely work that someone else did it's not his his personal research and he was just commending it to me to read so I don't want to put too many um too much effort uh into what a very good scholar told me that another scholar whom I don't know had written all right so yeah before we leave the topic I have a question that I've I still don't fully understand I think the answer to which is that it seems to me that the Catholic view of marriage is that the physical um relational aspect of it is very important like consummation of the sacrament things like that so in what way could we say that Mary and Joseph were a great question if there wasn't this element if if the con if the conjugal Act is necessary to solidify my my rhetorical and meant to be amusing responsibility I didn't realize they were baptized yes it's a very smart ass response yes because that we can't hold the Old Testament to the same standards we're bound to in there because we we know from uh Jewish law that those who are um um engaged have to get a divorce and are treated as if they are married and this is a Jewish convention for non-baptized Jewish persons so we don't have categories like this for us you're engaged you're not married for them you're engaged and in certain activities you're treated as a married person but in other activities you're not treated as a married person so for us we were like it's neither fish nor foul it's got to be one of the other and they're sort of like well Moses doesn't think so so why should we think so so I think it's it's it's a different world that we're living in there Luke got uh the marriage right for um Jesus and Mary and Matthew too that Joseph needed to get a divorce from a fiancee this is quoting uh two different parts of the Old Law forgive me saying it was a smart-ass response that was me trying to be funny no no another another thing to add is and we will definitely for people that may be wondering included an art book on Marrying the Perpetual virginity we have found a number of early Jewish references that talk about married celibate couples and that really is incredible and this this is um we have found in uh in uh well I mean even yeah Philo and multiple others go ahead sorry even the Evangeline of James even if you you don't want to take that as being basically accurate it still shows evidence of people consecrating themselves as virgins in the very early document 10th Century yeah yeah barrier very early document as well Matt a document that was valued by the early church was utilized by the early church so even if people will come out and say well Matt it has Fantastical elements within it sure but the idea was to present a theology about Holy Mary that was believed by the early church and I think it did a very good job of that all right so so far we've looked at Mary as theotokos Marius mcalee conceived Mary's Perpetual virgin we're about to move on to the Assumption of Mary I don't know if you want to do Matthew 20 120 to 25. Father uh could touch upon Matthew 125 until until sure we haven't done that yet all right please so let's read the passage which is basically Matthew chapter 1 verses 20 on but while he thought about these things behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream I think we all know this is Joseph saying Joseph son of David do not be afraid to take to you marry your wife for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit and she will bear the son and you shall name him Jesus for he will save his people from their sins that ends at verse 21 that's a literary unit so there's several pieces here the angel of the Lord is mentioned the second part Joseph is mentioned the third part Mary as wife is mentioned the fourth part what is conceived of her as the Holy Spirit and the fifth part she will bear a son and finally the sixth part um you'll call Jesus each one of these parts is in a artistic way uh reflecting all the parts of the ancient prophecy of Isaiah if you were to go to Isaiah 7 14 you would see all those same Parts the angel just repeated in substance what Isaiah 7 14 said so let's see what that says so this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet saying behold the Virgin shall conceive with the child and birth a son this is exactly what he we just heard it's like deja vu and they shall call his name Emmanuel which is translated God is with us what what are we hearing now so far is that the angel is concerned about a temporal period a period of time from the moment of conception until the moment of giving birth she's going to be a virgin why isn't the Angels talking about afterwards or because that's not the prophecy the prophecy in Isaiah is about a very strict period where the child has to fulfill this period and this period only in order to be the child of Prophecy from the moment that the Virgin has conceived to the moment that she has physically given birth that is the moment where she has to remain a virgin in order for the prophecy to be fulfilled doesn't matter if she was magically a virgin not a virgin before she was a virgin doesn't matter if she is naturally not a virgin after she gives birth the only thing that fulfills the prophecy is that in those two periods of time that she's a virgin so then what is the last part of this then Joseph being aroused from sleep as the angel of the Lord commanded him we're seeing a repetition of those six parts again and took to him his wife exactly repeating what the angel said and was not knowing her or was accustomed to not know her was continuously not knowing her might be another possible translation but then we have that magical until she had had birthed her firstborn son and he called his name Jesus now the first thing that we should already be prepped for with my dramatic reading is that until she had birthed is talking about what she completed the prophecy period the prophecy period began at conception and the prophecy period ended at the giving of birth so what this literary piece is meant to emphasize this is not the only argument but this is the solid literary argument all the that that Matthew wants to talk about are two periods from conception to birth now basil the great gets this right as we mentioned in our book thanks to uh William finding this based on the great hears all these people yelling about is she a virgin afterwards isn't she a virgin afterwards all the faithful are speculating and his whole point is that's not what this passage is about as a as a Greek rhetorician he knows that it's about the prophecy that's the only thing that Matthew is concerned with we need to demonstrate that Jesus is the Messiah and you don't demonstrate that Jesus is the Messiah because Mary remained a virgin after she gave birth there's nothing in that in Isaiah 7 14. but what we do find what we do find is that there are some parallels um that are very very strange the first thing is that Saint John chrysostom which I'll let you talk a little bit more about which is repeated by uh St John damaskeen would say is there's tons of places where until it means that the action continues afterwards three examples if you'd like me to read them unless you have them feel free yeah so this comes from Tim Staples this is a phrase like this until is used to emphasize what is being described before the until is fulfilled it is not intended to say anything about the future beyond that point here are three examples and that is it precisely what we just said about prophecy right this is only about prophecy and nothing but prophecy go ahead second Samuel 6 23 and Micah the daughter of Saul had no child until the day of her death yeah but then she had children afterwards that's right or first Timothy 4 13 until I come attend to the public reading of scripture to preaching to teaching this doesn't mean that Timothy should stop teaching after Paul comes and then thirdly and finally First Corinthians 15 25 for Christ must Reign until he has put all enemies under his feet I love that one the rest this doesn't mean that Christ's reign will end we could give more examples and the last uh I believe is used by chrysostom and John damascene an imitation of chrysostom yeah but what's oftentimes missed is the entire Matthew chapter 24 and this is in an article that we have on the picturesque pillars blog notice that Matthew chapter 1 in Matthew chapter 24 are all using the same vocabulary it's all about being pregnant and birthing you're like who's giving birth in Matthew 24. well it's the end times Jesus coming at the end times is like a woman giving birth so here's what he says for for nation will rise against nation and King against Kingdom and there will be famines all these from the beginning with birth pangs that's exactly what verse 21 used as the right word as the concept in words and then Jesus says therefore when you see the abomination of desolation Etc then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains Etc but woe to those who conceive those exact that exact phrase is used in Matthew 1 23. yep maybe there's a connection well if we keep seeing connections uh and then he says um for then there will be great tribulations such as has not been from the beginning of the world until this time no nor ever shall be that is the exact words used in Matthew 1. what is the until that time mean here and it never shall be so now we see parallels conceiving in the womb conceiving in the womb we see uh the idea of birth pangs and bearing bearing a son and birth pangs it's the same language you have this idea of from one time until another those exact that exact construct is used in both Matthew one and in Matthew 24 but it doesn't stop there that's what this episode should be called but there's more there's more in chapter one we heard Joseph was supposed to take you Mary as wife and we also see that Joseph took to himself his wife well in 24 guess what Jesus talks about the end of the world for in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking and continuously marrying and giving in marriage the exact same Concepts then we see until the day that Noah entered the Ark well that's oh my gosh he took his wife until she bore a son he did not have relations with her this is an exact parallel but what but but what is the response well after no after they entered the Ark everything disappeared and you know they they know if you actually read the Old Testament after they entered the Ark they were still marrying and giving to marriage it continued after the action uh it was many days later that the world got destroyed so now we actually have vocabulary parallels conceptual parallels birthing parallels and even grammatical parallels from until but what does each instance of from until mean in Matthew 24 as Matthew's brain works until always means that the action is continuing afterwards and there's even yet a third example he says in the very same chapter he says they were eating and drinking marrying and giving into marriage until the day that no under the ark and the and they did not know ooh that sounds familiar they did not know until the flood came and took them all away what does that mean they did not know until they died is what he's saying did they all of a sudden know that they're dead or did they all of a sudden know the day and the hour in the midst of the flood like they have to Revelation oh this is going to destroy the entire world or was it just a flood what it means here is they didn't never know they did not know anything and that's the reason why they died so what does using parallel grammar parallel vocabulary and parallel Concepts where Luke I'm sorry Matthew self-plagiarizes in Matthew 1 and Matthew 24 mean that as they did not know the day or the hour until the day they died Joseph did not have relations until she gave birth what's the parallel never that's what the parallel is I think it's pretty yeah and what's funny is all of this stuff is is interesting I think the the exegesis is accurate and convincing but in a way it's like unnecessary because when you've got the unanimous consent of the fathers and this is such a novel interpretation it's like this is just sort of icing on the cake as it were which is exactly the words actually of Trent when all the fathers are agreed on a particular piece of of scripture uh just be quiet you're not necessing anything anymore that that really is the one thing that I point out often Matt and and I pointed it out multiple times in debate that in the early church it was a mark of Orthodoxy to believe that Mary remained Perpetual virgin now if you denied that you were like helvidius or eunomius or sentius you were out side of the of the fold you were not in the church you don't find any early Church Father you don't find an athanasius a great group of nauseous uh a Jerome you don't find any of them denying that Mary remained Perpetual virgin and with that I believe there's an incredibly powerful biblical point to be made that Mary did remain a Perpetual virgin all right like we're going to move on to the Assumption of Mary but I want to ask everybody who's watching right now you know just to consider sharing this because and not just so you know my channel does better I mean that is one reason I want you to share it but there are a lot of Protestants who are just wonderful folks who love our Lord who love the scriptures and if you ask them they would say this is their biggest hang-up and I think you'll agree we've covered a lot of a lot a lot of ground tonight and I think that many Protestants would find this very compelling so please help us out by sharing this show on Facebook uh leave a comment subscribe like that helps the algorithm and that sort of thing especially if you know a Protestant who's looking in or you know somebody else who's looking into the claims of of Catholicism to check this out Mary uh the church also teaches was assumed bodily into heaven okay yeah is that it does that sum it up at the end of her Earthly life she was assumed Body and Soul into heaven now when I first when I first think about that maybe from a strictly kind of materialist point of view it sounds silly I'm not saying it does but someone might say this they might say well where did she go like did you did you could you look up and see the bottom of her feet just ascending into the void like into the you know what's your basic response to that sort of incredulous objection I mean that would apply both to Christ's Ascension and Mary's assumptions I I really did not like the bodily assumption when I was Evangelical I had a big problem with it so you know where do you find it in the Bible not only that where do you find it in early church history in my opinion you found it incredibly late now I believe differently now I believe you can clearly find a very powerful allusion to Mary's bodily assumption in Revelation 12. okay now I believe it's very clear Mary is the woman clothed with his son with a crown on her head represented as the mother of the church portrayed in Beauty beautiful now there are an incredible amount of parallels that are met earlier we talked about Genesis 3 which is greater we've come full circle what a great show we talked about Genesis 3 where the woman would be at War enmity remember with the devil well the woman in Revelation 12 is at war with the devil that Serpent of old we're told in the Greek that old serpent is after the woman trying to devour her and her child true that enmity is a reality biblically now I know the argument that there are early fathers that believed Mary that believed the woman in Revelation 12 was the church I know that from a Catholic perspective we have no problem with dual imagery there well none at all or three-way imagery right in Israel the church there's no problem in fact Matt multiple fathers believed there were multiple images there they believed it we have many fathers that recognized in fact there are Fathers as father as even talked about and written about that would talk about it being the church would say hey their fathers before us I believed it was Mary it was a Del Tacos primarily we have it has got to be Mary primarily met because the woman of Revelation 12 is the mother of the child that will rule the nations with a rod of iron now that is a Messianic psalm the child that will rule the Nations quoting from the Old Testament well biblically who is the mother Mary Revelation 12 has got to be mariological primarily I would argue I would also add we have a number of early fathers that interpreted it as being Mary but even outside of that Matt even if we don't interpret that even if we leave Revelation 12 out we have early testimony early fathers that believed Mary was bodily assumed into heaven you find it in Ephraim the great Ephraim the Syrian you find it in Jacob of suru great Syriac early Church Father and multiple other fathers that wrote about marrying being Body and Soul taken into heaven and the other incredible thing is that the bodily Assumption of Mary was part of the liturgical life of the church from a very early period now by the recommendation of Father Here many months ago I got in touch with Father Brian Daly the Reverend Dr Daly who has done a lot of work on the door Mission and I asked Dr Daly is it father by your estimation what are the earliest documents to the bodily Assumption of Mary maybe if we don't have them all translated what are the earliest he told me in the liturgical life second century catching by liturgical life what does that mean that would be in the Liturgy of the church the father could probably break that down way way better father I don't know if you want to sure this would just be anything from Gatherings to sing uh a formal um get a collection of hymns mixed with scripture uh we can call these Divine praises the Liturgy of the Hours is probably a very popular way to say this I I'm not claiming that the second century the Liturgy of the Hours is organized when I there is a recommendations that we do have in church orders for private prayer to be done at very fixed times and some of these prayers are prescribed but we do have Gatherings for singing hymns and things like this we do have a sense as early as origin that there was a reading cycle of of readings that was being used that was appointed by Bishops um and uh we have uh evidence that um there were Christian hymns being composed as early as maybe the late second early third Century well uh on the Assumption not on this assumption per se but when we say liturgy we mean this mixture of him in scripture yeah in ritual and ceremony and it's within this context of the living and believing community that this Marian stuff this Mary is in heaven Body and Soul kind of stuff arises and when did your friends say that he thinks that first appears second century I have also talked to a number of Scholars on it that have looked at the documents and they would say second centuries well now I want to also be very careful because there is a claim that the very earliest tests on the Assumption of Mary are heterodox I want to be very clear they are not I've examined them in fact I'd recommend people go look at the debate I did here in pines with Aquinas in the very topic we talk about that they they're they definitely are not and we even have multiple early fathers that talked about Mary being bodily assumed into heaven how does the Orthodox opinion of the translation of our Lady differ there's a more of a standardized tradition in their patristic homilies in liturgical implications like how hymns are are designed um that we want to that they they want to emphasize that there was a separation of body and soul that took place and then a reuniting of it in heaven okay and um would any faithful Orthodox person say that the bones of Mary could show up somewhere Someday I'm not aware of anyone who would be welcomed by either their bishop or any sort of Synod so there's a lot of agreement here yeah okay yeah I would I would even add that we have um same epiphanius as well Saint epiphania said also talks about the bodily Assumption of Mary so there are multiple figures I would also add that there is also an incredible illusion in scripture Psalm 132 I believe is the Greek rendering of it where uh you have a number of fathers reading that where it talks about arise oh Lord you and the Ark of thy holiness and as we talked about earlier if Mary is viewed as a new ark and if Psalm 132 is already applied in the New Testament because it already is read and applied do you have a present you might want to read there let me let me pull that up uh because and if you don't have it all I think I have it ready yeah let me let could you read that let me talk a little bit more when you pull it up sure um let me add that really important Point Psalm 132 is already applied in a Messianic sense in the New Testament so if we look at Mary and we realize Mary is a new ark of the New Covenant we realize why the earliest of early fathers such as ezekius of Jerusalem interpreted that in a myriological manner and here's uh the Hebrew Psalm 132 8-10 which still gets us where we want to be up God or arise is the um is the uh Greek translation and it has a resurrection resonance to it almost arise or up God enjoy the new place of quiet Repose you and your Mighty Covenant Ark get your priest all dressed up in Justice prompt your worshipers to sing this prayer honor your servant David don't disdain your anointed one and you see that in the depictions of Mary's own burial is that you have the procession of the Apostles that are oftentimes um displayed as part of what happened at Mary's as funeral if we want to call it it's usually left in very ambiguous language for falling asleep which is a obviously euphemism which it seems to imply death but they don't want to go that that next step and say death because that would commit over commit them to something that's beyond the tradition they've received who's they um the liturgical documents that are the earliest and then the the fathers who quote these liturgical documents they don't tend to want to step beyond the words of the tradition out of fear of making an implication which though logical is not necessarily what the original authors meant it's a really good point because the majority of the Door Mission fathers do just that out of incredible reverence for Mary they will talk about it as a holy falling asleep and in fact you'll find fathers like germainus that'll say indeed Mary fell asleep and went into eternal life they have incredible reverence for Mary Matt and and rightly so it shows you the mind of the early church and it shows you that when they begin to talk about Mary and her dormition and bodily assumption they talk almost an incredible unanimity where you've got different fathers in various different parts of the world and they're talking about this about Mary almost as if it was already an accepted belief and it was hmm well uh the reason why it's so significant that William brings up Psalm 132 arise or go up Lord you in the ark of your strength using more of a Septuagint spin on it is because in chapter 11 of Revelation just before mentioning the woman who was clothed with the Sun uh the ark of the covenant is the first thing that John's Vision brings him to and then it immediately switches like or presented with the Ark of the Covenant and its contents as we just heard in the psalm and all of a sudden we're switched to Mary almost styled uh as Joseph was seen styled as himself the shadow of Christ right that the suit the Sun and the Moon they're all bowing down into him the Stars uh and an act of what appears to be worship and now Mary is in some sort of vague sense being given Honors that normally we only associate with Christ and we say well what is our evidence that the father of the church understood this well William did a lot of digging on the revelation uh any presented uh to my eyes uh ecumenius which is one of the it is it is the earliest X Stand or existing um commentary where he admits that he's looked at previous commentaries which are no longer accessible to us uh and that he finds that uh Mary is indeed a focal point of this chapter we also see that Methodius of Olympus who is writing probably in the early 300s but himself as a third Century Saint by and large uh is admitting to us that the majority I believe is the one that he says if not as vice versa the majority of the early discussions of this text point to Mary and that he is actually going to he seems to imply that he's actually going to be a little Innovative and make it more typological the church and less Marian so now we're starting to see that the ark that is supposed to disappear from this world and arise into the heavens is taken by uh Revelation chapter 11 that image of the Ark up in heaven it's already Arisen it's up in Heavens where it's supposed to be exactly a Psalm 132 says and then it switches to an image of Mary and one of the things that is often neglected is exactly where we started this conversation today which was Genesis 3 15 that marries seed will conquer the world Eve's seed will conquer the world of Satan right what is this woman called in Revelation 12. woman she's called woman and then it says and her children are all those who are her children but it says I think they think it uses the genitive which is to spermatosoftis yeah that are of her seed the only other time in the Old Testament or the New Testament than Genesis 3 15 that her seed is used and it's used because she gives birth to all the children of the church who die in sanctity and it may be martyrs here that maybe the inference I think those who are suffering for the faith so what we start seeing then is the double the the double in typology Mary is the ark she is the place where Jesus the Covenant was held she gives birth but then there's that strange message she was in pain John's giving you his vision he's saying okay here's what and I'm seeing the actual I'm in the hospital room and I'm seeing the live birth well how can that be a historical description of the actual birthing of Mary it's already happened he's seeing an eschatological Vision even though he sees it as Mary it's not Mary in the past he's using Mary's past life just as it shared in Matthew that the child was born they had to go and flee to Egypt here the child goes out into the desert to escape from Satan Etc so yeah the baby life of Jesus and Mary is being referenced here as the vision but the actual vision is not of the past but it's of the Heavenly Mary who's giving birth to Martyrs so her pain is no longer the historical pain that she did not suffer according to our dogmas in the giving of in the birthing of Jesus but this pain which is a standard woman's pain in the images that we're given it has a reason because all these children are going to die and we've seen so it expresses Mary's concern for Christians is that who are suffering and being martyred and the the final seal that this must be an individual woman as far as the Christian interpreters are is that the seed of Eve is an individual who has an individual child yeah the seed here is of an individual woman who has individual children here their typological children who are the martyrs or the ones that are born by Mary which can also serve as the church so it serves a double role but you can see now why the fathers consider this in the earliest text Mary because it's the only other place where Genesis 3 15 is fulfilled and that is the new Eve that we see as early as irenaeus and so what we see is a consistency here it's a double fulfillment that Mary as as the mother of Jesus Jesus is the begetter of the church so to speak by his appointment of the Apostles Mary is mother of the church here she is mother of the church because she's mother of Christ but also the church is the mother of these children because we're all baptized into the maternal womb not of Mary physically but spiritually of the Immaculate without staying Church of Ephesians 1 5 and 1 6 that is without wrinkle and it is entering our mother's womb a second time in which we are made holy so you see all these images work very very well together and so it's very difficult to escape from how that Ark got up into heaven and why Mary is immediately imaged afterwards and then called the the uh fulfillment of Genesis 3 15. um you know some people say that children naturally believe in God and they have to be talked out of belief in God right and I think there's something similar with the Catholic teachings on Mary I think if you just didn't know much about Christianity and you picked up Revelation chapter 12 you're like oh yeah this is this is obviously Mary but then maybe when you start to engage with Protestants and those who would be critical of you like oh okay well maybe it's not you know I remember thinking that with uh our Lord uh teaching about the Eucharist I had just become a Christian at the age of 17 and I thought the only text we had from scripture had to do with the Last Supper narrative and I remember one day walk around my room and I opened up to John 6 and I thought oh my gosh like it's saying it right here uh maybe this isn't in their Bible that kind of thing um and then maybe you get into conversation but it seems like prima facie is what I'm getting at yeah in Revelation 12 I was like why have a problem that this is Mary what's what's the issue and the fact that it can be thought of as is Israel the church and Mary is no problem no objection there really is no problem with multiple imagery Matt I think the main problem that our Evangelical friends would have is the incredibly beautiful imagery it portrays Mary as the mother of the church crowned bodily in heaven and I think that that at times can bother them if they are against Catholic teaching the other thing that I would add is that Mary as new ark of the New Covenant is very early you find it in multiple early fathers well we'd argue it's biblical without a doubt you find it in multiple early fathers and the connection of Mary as Ark of the New Covenant in Revelation 12 as Mary being the woman is also in pascasius ratbertus I would like to so we do have a um a patristic witness in that as well okay yeah and I just want to kind of read that for the folks at home so if you just kind of accept what we're saying here about Luke very clearly and very clearly demonstrating Mary as the new ark of the covenant and you don't have to take our word for it you can look it up yourself but just trust us it's very clear all right and so why once you see that and then you go to the end of chapter 11 and I know we've been talking about this but that there are some who may not have even seen this these chapters obviously the Bible wasn't written with chapter and verse official they were even the person that put the chapters together what didn't even know Greek okay so they're interesting the reason why we haven't gotten rid of these is mainly because we've gotten so used to them since the 16th century with the verses I should say the verses since the 16th century the chapter since the 13th century okay is because it's hard to get rid of something that everybody's already using absolutely yeah but the I mean the consequence of this is you read a particular chapter and you naturally think okay breaking chapter on to the next story next yeah but suppose we didn't do that well here's what you might read at the end of chapter 11 in Revelation then God's temple in heaven was opened and the Ark of his Covenant now just context the Ark of the Covenant was the holiest thing in Israel it was brought into that present where yahweh's presence was beneath the two wings of the cherubim when's the last time we hear of the Ark in scripture father like is it 500 years I believe it's uh I I'm gonna either one or two Maccabees either one or two Maccabees right but if you're a Protestant you don't even have one or two macros it's been a long time it's been it's been hundreds of years this is the holiest thing on the face of the Earth and now we hear about it and as I've heard some Catholic apologists Point here in Ethiopia all right I don't get that reference they have uh they have the Ark of the Covenant one of their churches oh very good to have it amazing all right so but if you're a first century Jew surely you're picking up okay we're seeing the Ark of the Covenant this is pretty important so let's read it then God's temple in heaven was open the Ark of Covenant of his Covenant was seen within his Temple they were flashes of lightning Rumblings pills of Thunder an earthquake and heavy hail end of chapter of course that's a reference by the way to Mana following from Heaven which is another story from a different book on transubstantiation but go ahead ah well you know what's funny is like that that feels like as as anti-climactic if it was to end there as say an episode of lost or 24 if you get that reference it doesn't end there yeah it says earthquake and heavy hail on a great sign appeared in heaven a woman clothed with the sun Etc so it seems to be like continually saying that the ark is the woman without a doubt it's continuous there is a sign in the heavens and we're told that that sign is the woman now here's the other the mother of my Lord came to me how was it the Ark of my Lord should come to me there we go David himself uses that phrase the same same Hill Country Walk apart remember father you know this the sign of Isaiah 7 the sign in heaven the woman clothed with the sun directly connected to Isaiah 7 the virgin Mary without a doubt Revelation 12 has got to be mariological there is no doubt okay so what do you think about this I've heard Catholics argue uh you know if if Mary didn't die oh sorry if Mary wasn't assumed then we should expect the first and earliest Christians to venerate her relics but there's no account of her relics to me that's never struck me as a terribly powerful argument because I would presume that Joseph's relics would also be something important to have with John the Baptist and yet I'm not aware of those being uh reverence those relics are you yeah the I for me because I'm kind of hitting on stuff that I feel very very um like I have a Mastery over one of the things I haven't done is a documented history of relics it would be something worthwhile doing for the purposes of William's series but I'd be very interested to know in what archeology can get us back to when interested in relics was in Christians uh shrines of relics we do have some from the late second century now that have been archaeological so we are seeing that relics have an A Very Old Shrine system which starts to to give us the sense that if we have for example the Sherlock the relics I think it was on St Phillips feast day that I talked about the um The Shrine in turkey that has been recently uncovered it potentially has second century Roots Etc so if we're seeing that relics go back this far uh there is something to be said from archeology and fake stories of the lives of saints and apostles and things like this that that were being multiplied during this time that we we should expect the best Relic you can get is a merry Relic fair enough and I suppose someone could say William Joseph and John the Baptist died prior to the kind of Christian explosion yeah and I would I would say that you would think there would be an automatic interest in Joseph but we don't we do see relatively early interest in Joseph but liturgically it's we're talking about uh maybe sixth seventh century maybe even late at 8th Century yeah so uh which is a puzzle I mean that doesn't mean that there wasn't a cultist to him somewhere beforehand I just haven't seen the literature that's been updated on this is why I hesitate to say too much because I'm not a specialist That's What I Love About academics they don't talk about what they don't know there's people like me talk about everything we've done right I will give yeah what do you think just to kind of sum this up what do you think of that objection that if if Mary died and was buried we should expect evidence of people um I have to give them a little credit that is a good argument okay the only reason why I will admit that Matt because I've looked at a number of early fathers that claim to be Relic Hunters that claim to have gathered relics new places to go new places where there were shrines of great Saints and you never hear about bones of Mary so because of that I do think they have a very good point man all right so someone's listening to all of this we've covered these four different dogmas and no doubt we could spend 10 hours on each of these things or more uh but someone might be listening and I've heard Protestants say this many people who follow the channel and say I want to become Catholic but like I feel very uncomfortable praying to Mary I mean the four things we've talked about today don't directly indicate that we should pray to her we don't have to get into that right now so let me just ask you a very um uh point pointed question can one convert to Catholicism except what the Catholic Church teaches about these four dogmas we've discussed today and not directly and intentionally pray to Mary go ahead William yeah I think they can Matt and I'm going to tell you why when I became Catholic Matt it took me maybe two years to feel comfortable to pray to Mary now when I became Catholic I was fully convicted of the Catholic faith but I still felt a little bit you know a little bit wary of that so you know what I'm not I'm still not a little bit comfortable with that today I have no problem try to stop me yeah try to stop me I have no problem calling on the intercession of our holy mother Mary but I would tell those that maybe are on the fence mat to look at the Book of Revelation Revelation 5 where there are Saints in heaven and they are receiving prayers presenting them to the lamb as bowls of incense now that would anyway you could look at it any way you cut it that is intercession no matter no matter how you look at it then you look everywhere else in the Bible 1 Timothy 2. multiple areas the Book of James where we read that the prayer prayers of holy people Avail much we are told to ask for holy people to pray for us to intercede for us now how much more important and Powerful would the prayer be of the mother of our God we know that those that are physically dead in heaven with our Lord we're told in the gospel of Matthew Mark Luke they are alive in heaven utilizing the Greek word Zao they're more alive than we are they're living in a way this is the opposite of necromancy it is the opposite necromancy I'm seeking information from the dead in praying to the Saints I'm giving information to the living namely please pray for this for that reason that is the exact point they are living in our Lord and I've got to be honest Matt uh I would rather have our Immaculate mother Mary intercede and pray for me today my friend yeah yeah no offense even though I love you as a brother even though I love you brother I think you'd say the same about it of course of course we love our mother Mary and let me add this point man if everything that we have said about Mary is true then Mary is an incredibly holy woman beautiful woman all holy Perpetual virgin but we recognize Mary was a creature we recognize that we don't worship Mary we venerate Mary but of everything we have said about Mary is true then our Lord truly is an Incredible God and he is an Incredible God he did great things for his mother some would say that the Catholic emphasis on Mary detracts from the glory of of God that if he would have focused solely on Christ then surely this would give more honor uh to Christ um what's your response to that well in addition to condemning Elizabeth in the Holy Spirit who ignored Christ in utero and to talk talk talk about Mary we should also remember is that the Ark of the Covenant uh is undoubtedly styled as Mary in Luke's gospel we've just talked about it in Revelation and one of the things that we have to remember is if you track in the uh various books of Kings depending on which version you know you're using the um there's four Kings or just just one two Samuel uh and one two kings um you'll find that there's something very puzzling happens with the Ark in the Old Testament it goes to cities and you can choose to bring gifts out and leave them on the ark or not and there's people that don't leave gifts on the ark and they get smitten with plagues and they're like oh we should have left gifts on the art what you start seeing is there's some very uncomfortable devotion going on to this Arc thing like why are you leaving gifts for the ark that's not said gifts for God it's not said they're offered to God God's angry that the ark's not getting gifts that's where the smiting is taking place so we have to understand that um even if we don't know why God does some of the things that he does provided that we've started as interlocutors with what God does isn't wrong we have to ask ourselves what Luke where does the analogy end with Luke that if Mary is in every other way the ark that all of a sudden we're not supposed to leave offerings or in some way invocations or give gifts in some sense to her secondly uh with Revelation the Saints are clearly interceding with God in heaven in order to do things on earth they want revenge in the language of Revelation to happen on Earth yeah You could argue that their prayers were in vain but I don't think any Christian would do that they say they maybe they aren't only going to get eschatologically fulfilled to the final judgment some of these so we have the second thing is whatever prayers of the saints that are happening there for Earthly intercession the words that are used are the same words that are used for Saint Paul to commend individuals to offer prayers and hymns and spiritual songs and then finally people forget that Jesus like to tell stories about people praying to Saints uh here's what Jesus says the time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side the rich man also died and was buried in Hades where he was in torment he looked up and he saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side and he called out to Him Father Abraham have pity on me and sent Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue because I am in agony in this fire and they proceed to have a conversation would Jesus be using heretical theological Concepts in order to bring about truth my answer would be if you show me him doing that I will be happy to concede that his argument with the Pharisees was typically actually you guys have just read the law wrongly I can heal on the Sabbath you say that it's illegal to do so interesting uh here whatever concept that he's conveying is clearly that somebody can have a conversation with someone that is in the bosom of Abraham and ask for intercession Abraham's problem is is he's in hell I can't do anything for you when you're in Hell sorry I can't dip my finger Jesus doesn't reprimand the image in fact Jesus is the creator of the image here and is it an image that Jews are familiar with or unfamiliar with is it they're going to be offended by and they're not going to be able to listen or get anything paralleled from the story they're going to get something this is a teaching instrument the point is Jesus was already affirming a Jewish intercession to Abraham which we have seen from inter-testamental literature he's using this as a common place something everyone understands and does and he's affirming it and so what we have is if I can pray to Abraham why not marry yeah I just just make sure that you're not in hell when you try it okay all right so here's what I want to do I see the Super Chat there we have so many questions it's ridiculous and we haven't even begun to get them and we're almost at the three hour mark So what I would propose is a lightning round all right so even though you guys could answer these questions for an hour each would it be okay if we just how many seconds you're gonna give us um well I won't be that cruel but if you could just try to answer it as succinctly as possible all right so Lyndon thanks for the Super Chat says can father cappers comment briefly on his response to Eastern Catholics who deny the Marion dogma's citing Vatican II as their Authority for doing so yes all their Bishops took an oath the Fidelity 2 Vatican II at Vatican II and therefore all their Bishops said that there were all the previous ecumenical councils that they believed in thank you Dr festigi for that information it's part of the magisterium and unless they were crossing their fingers which I don't think really counts in ecumenical counts as you usually get killed for that then they're obliged like everybody else rut gadam says if Christ came to Earth through Mary does it follow that we must always go to Jesus Through Mary is there a point where one can pray to marry in excess now I think that it would be one could definitely pray to anyone uh too much if they neglect brain they neglect trinitarian prayers if they neglect every other aspect of the faith but to be very honest with you Matt and to answer the the the the concern I don't know any Catholics to do that the ones that I do know honor Mary well but all the while honoring marrying they recognize Christ as true God and they have great Devotion to our Holy Trinity Anthony Skinner says this is a problem through all of Christianity for me but if Mary was given such an abundant amount of Grace to preserve her from sin why does God not give such Grace to everyone this is an excellent question it does it it does work on the presumption that Grace is quantitative in other words it's kind of some stuff we get in material terms whereas again Grace is really something where God works on the will he works on the intellect he either makes the will stronger in doing what it does or the intellect somehow more Adept at doing what it does the thinking and the choosing and so uh and could you repeat then the once we once we've clarified that it's not a quantity which is which I understand the question yes why does God not give such Grace to everyone this in other words if God could have just saved her from somebody just do it all to all of us this question comes to why do artists have to put the sun here well I think that the sun would be much better there there's nothing wrong with him thinking that this world doesn't make sense I plenty of times don't think this the problem that you're dealing with here is either God is a platonic machine that has to pump out necessary uh products and he doesn't get choices or God is a free agent he's a free agent he's the Supreme artist sadly what comes with that for us is that he gets to choose to do with us according to a plan that only he chose and it sometimes really does not feel like he likes us very much interior Castle once as I'm preparing to consecrate myself to Jesus Through Mary and have read about our lady of Lord saying I am the Immaculate Conception I still understand how and why this is different to saying she was immaculately conceived please can you help you do anything on that yeah it is not different at all now let me be very clear there are a number of different Marian consecrations right there are different ones that you can find in Latin America different ones you can find in Europe all of them point to Christ ultimately there's nothing wrong with either of them and all of them are right in line with the dogma of the Immaculate Conception I would point out too that myself and father Gregory Pine uh put together a nine-day preparation for total entrustment to marry based on the teachings of Thomas Aquinas incredible um so people can check that out especially if you're more of a Sprint guy like me nine days I can do that my understanding correct me if I'm wrong is that Colby's interpretation of this is um uh when she says I am the Immaculate Conception as opposed to automatically conceived she's using the name of her spouse the Holy Spirit who is in a way the Immaculate Conception of the father and the son that that is his interpretation you're correct always really interesting I I when I read him I love him he makes a lot of sense to me my concern and I'm sure it's my problem not call-based problem I want to make that very clear is he seems to base a lot of his mariology and pneumatology on both Genesis and misinterpretation because we've now discovered that Jerome didn't say you know in genes 315 she shall Crush her head but it's he and then and then a private interpretation of Lords but I'll work through that feel free to give me to comment on that you find a lot of people are also a little bit uncomfortable with Gary Google LaGrange um not Gary gulagrange forgive me um what's his name uh I forgot the name yeah demand for yeah I want to add that even though they have an incredible Marian devotion great Mary and devotion they have incredible incredibly good christology and great trinitarian christology great trinitarian Orthodoxy as well so even though their language about Mary is very flowery yeah I can totally get how an Evangelical might feel a little bit uncomfortable yeah but I'd recommend they read them in totality and they'll realize you know what I'm very Orthodox yeah and I'd want to kind of give people some peace of mind too like you don't have to immediately resonate with the writings of every saint right like it's okay if you don't find Louis de montfort's writing as inspiring as everybody around you yeah just like Jerome pretty much didn't like anything that Agustin wrote yeah yeah they wanted to uh sycamore tree says if the blessed mother passed down her maternal DNA to Jesus who contributed to Jesus's paternal DNA here's Y chromosome if we assume that Jesus did have a white chromosome as a fully human male yes uh basically you're not going to get a patristic response out of this but you have kind of two uh Horseshoes and Hand Grenades ways of responding to this yeah Horseshoes and Hand Grenades are either God had to make ex-nihilo that means from nothing uh what was necessary to be male or uh he reformatted uh what Mary's donation was in such a way and the and then the objection is well how can he do that well how can there be nothing and then there'd be something this is Saint John chrysostom's response so if there can be nothing and then there'd be something or if in evolutionary terms there can just be dirt and elements and all of a sudden there can be living things with DNA and I don't think if it's if it's if it's not impossible from an evolutionary perspective for all of a sudden there to be a y chromosome where there was only dirt then all the more can there than God make Y chromosomes from dirt fair enough right uh tell me what you think about this um I'd love you to critique this or offer something to kind of help me flesh this idea out because I've often thought okay people have trouble sometimes with the way Catholics speak about Mary so I thought to myself then what's the strongest most over-the-top thing I can say about Mary that I still think is true and can I defend it because if I can then everything that's like sounds lesser than this can also be justified right and here's I think I don't know what you could say stronger than this if it were not for Mary I would be damned Mary has saved me I think I can justify those claims I'm sure you do too yeah but you see the point if I can justify those claims that sound outrageous to Protestant sensibilities then anything else is a walk in the park and here's what I would say those very things I just said about Mary people say of the Cross if it were not for the cross I would be damned I've been saved by the cross and we know what they mean by those things uh Thomas Aquinas makes the point that God could have saved us even without the Incarnation he said it was most fitting that he would die on the cross but he could have saved us in any number of ways uh and yet I say still nevertheless I've been saved by the cross and we all know what I mean by that the cross is an inanimate object it had no choice in the matter Mary had a choice in the matter right and so how much more can I say of her because of her Fiat that I have been saved because of Mary if you can understand what I mean about the cross surely you can understand what I mean about Mary uh flesh that out correct it criticize it sounds to me like moral causality which is in The Franciscan tradition and basically culminates and Maximilian Colby yeah it was not sad if that was your your stab at it you're in with good company I was gonna say for Sansbury Franciscan yeah I loved it yeah I thought it was great now the objection will get from the evangelicals will be what do you mean by Marius saved you and I think as a Catholic we can break that down very clearly and show them what we mean we don't mean Mary died on the cross for their sins we don't mean Mary as the savior of the world yeah or the immediate efficient cause right salvation but everything we've said can be utilized and we can show them it is very biblically based and very patristic as well yeah I want you cataloged and I wish I had it on me the number there's about two or three times in the Old Testament where people fall down in front of the king and uh worship him and say save us so if you can do that for for somebody that you know kills his um best soldier to marry his uh his wife I guess you could do it for people that are nicer than that fair enough okay so we addressed this when we talked about Mary earlier but um let's take another stab at it this comes from Daniel Freese he says did the gospel writers know that Mary was immaculately conceived or at least sinless why do you think they did not explicitly speak of it and then he said big fan of Williams much loved brother awesome uh I do believe they did know that now uh I don't think there was a point of the Gospel of Saint Mark or this gets back to your excellent analogy of the train yeah which may not have been yours originally yeah he stole it from Saint Vincent let's call it mine for the purposes of this show it's so good that's a good one yeah I definitely think that uh the gospel writers knew it uh and I think it's very clearly brought out by Saint Luke now I don't think it was the point of every gospel writer or every writer or the New Testament to lay that out I think we have it sufficiently laid out the very point of everything that the gospel of Saint Luke was trying to lay out Mary as Perpetual virgin which of course we can lay out in another show there's so much more material but I think Luke was very clear in presenting Mary as an all sinless incredibly humble woman and with that being said I think it's very clear he knew what he was saying and I do believe let me add one other thing I wanted to talk about it earlier I do believe Luke definitely did interview people because the early church fathers believe that very strongly all right final question has to do with devotions and apparitions to marry because I think what happens right is people find an apparition that resonates with them or a particular devotion and it means so much to them that they then begin very often it seems to me to speak about those apparitions or devotions in a way that same really non-negotiable like this has to be as important to you as it is to me and I don't like that I think we shouldn't demand uniformity where the church allows diversity of opinion or custom so I don't like it when people say in order to be a good Catholic you have to pray the rosary daily and I don't like that because the Catholic Church doesn't say that um talk into that because I sometimes fear that this these things that I'm addressing now are obstacles to those looking let me give you the last story I'll give father the last word on that sure um I agree with you Matt number one I think we have a little bit of a problem today where people um look at a private revelation and they will then raise that to a very high level to the point where let me give you an example let me say that today I would have come in here you would have told me William I have a Devotion to the nine steps of Mary from Germany when I say well ahead of it that's cool yeah yeah so I see Matthew well I have a different one you tell me what are you talking about you have to have the one that I have or you're not part of the church the problem is Matt we encounter a lot of people today that follow that very mindset and I think that's very problematic Pro um I'm just kind of struck that we uh have a tendency we don't really have kind of a um apocalypticist movement that's very successful in Catholicism like um uh left behind so I guess we kind of make a lot of the Revelation stuff uh private Revelation stuff kind of substitute for that uh maybe it's just a facet of of psychology I mean maybe there's a real need for things to be eminent and it's an emergency and we've got to do it now or all we're going to get fried and and those sorts of things um I mean certainly with nuclear weapons and everything I mean whether or not you believe or or not the scientific basis for things like uh the change in the climate is is primarily human driven or those sorts of things there's a lot of apocalyptism apocalyptism out there um I maybe this is just a sociological phenomenon um and that doesn't really address the Theology of it the theology is quite clear um all public Revelation ended after the death of the last Apostle that's already taught in the formal magisterium you can find it in Robert pastige's excellent translation of denzinger which has all the papal statements on that and and a story so therefore if we're discussing this what we should be discussing is whether or not um it is um prudently helpful to this person or that person's personal Journey To Love Jesus Mary the Saints their neighbor better or if they find that something else is more effective in overcoming sin and embracing uh truth yeah and none of this of course and it's so sad you even have to offer this as a qualifier is to downplay the beauty and importance of these devotions that have been held in high regard by the church but it is to say that we have to make distinctions between what the church mandates what she encourages what she permits uh what she forbids and I think very often we don't make those distinctions and thereby we kind of Heap burdens up on people it seems to me that when you look at these Western devotions I'm not sure what it's like in the East right there's there's a cornucopia of devotions that you could choose from and most of them allege some Supernatural origin like I'm sure that there are promises associated with every colored scapula out there and every man middle and Chaplet and great but the idea that you have to take all of them on or the idea that well because so there are promises associated with a particular devotion that everyone is now obliged to do them if you were to follow that logic it would seem like okay well you're now you've got about 8 000 uh chaplets to pray today and you need to be wearing every colored scapular and it I'm passionate about this because it nearly drove me insane as someone who was struggling a great deal with scrupulosity so I recognize the importance of devotions the beauty of devotions but I think as Jose Maria eskriver said there are many devotions within the church's treasury choose only a few and remain faithful to them if any any thoughts on this one who's very very passionate about that that is incredible advice because Matt I have encountered people that have been hesitant to come to the church because of the massive amount of devotions and misinformation burn themselves out because they come into the church they see the beauty of these different devotions they get super into it and they have people say them unless you're doing it you're not part of the team you're not part of it it's a major problem when people begin to use that line of reasoning and I think father broker done great when did public revelation end the death of the last Apostle and that is Catholic dogma and that should be enough yeah this has been bloody terrific thank you for sticking with me for over three hours now I had a great time Matt all right everybody subscribe like share tell people about this show uh you can learn more about William at patristicpillars.com link is in the description below father kappas's book is in the description below the book they wrote together is in the description below please check it out read it anything else you should like to point people to let me see one thing I'll give father the final word um we just came out with a book in the papacy people have really really been enjoying it if they want to check it out they can find a link to what it's about on my blog I really hope people enjoy it we both co-authored that together yeah and it's it's the same theme it's it's 75 percent every people passage how it was understood in its own first century world and um how it contributes to our understanding of the papacy now including many of the problems that we encounter which is can popes make mistakes is there such a thing in the scripture as a as a so-called papal correction um what do those Corrections entail what's some of the collateral damage that can come for those we kind of look through all that that uh that is present in the first century church and and try to come up with a Biblical model for the constitution of the church just based off of the biblical text and then as those are filtered through uh in the last 25 percent of the um of the book Through The Eyes of the fathers up until uh Constantinople 3 and 680. we said at the beginning of the show that we're going to try to answer every conceivable projection to the teachings of the church on the Blessed Virgin Mary um if you're watching today maybe you're a Protestant minister or scholar and you think look you really did a terrible job we invite you to come on this show to debate William in good faith and friendship if you are interested please write to my assistant Melanie at assistant matfred.com recognize too that we're not going to take every person up on this like if you're just somebody who's got some interest in it we want to take the best uh Protestant apologists and Scholars uh up against William so that's really who we're after I don't want to be setting up somebody who who William can just debate in his sleep so um when no the invitation that we're extending isn't going to apply to somebody let's say who's got like five YouTube followers and is in their senior year of high school and and if you are that person maybe wherever you you heard your argument from maybe Point them to to debate William yeah absolutely yeah yeah all right God bless everyone thank you very much let us know what you thought about the uh episode in today's uh of today's episode in the comments below God bless

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 442,754

Keywords: aquinas, catholicism, catholic, pints with aquinas, matt fradd, theology, debate, religion, st. thomas aquinas, thomas aquinas, philosophy

Id: 0wzjAEHyizk

Length: 197min 22sec (11842 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 08 2022