When I was growing up, in Scottdale, Pennsylvania, the local Church of Christ had two billboards placed on two different roads leading into (and out of) town. The messages on the billboards were not professionally produced–rather, stencils and spray-painting of words alone were utilized.
One message that the Church of Christ posted on one of its billboards for months (perhaps years) during my adolescence was this:
Mary is NOT the mother of God!
It took yet a few more years for me to grasp the intent of this message. Primarily, it was a blatantly anti-Catholic statement.
But the actual subject matter raised by the billboard’s statement has a long history behind it! Since at least the third century, one of the titles of Mary has been the Greek, Θεοτόκος (Theotokos)–the translation of which is “the one who brought God to birth.” Doctrinally, when Jesus, by various Church Councils, was declared to have been “fully God, fully human” and “co-eternal with the Godhead,” then it became a necessary corollary to assert that what issued from Mary’s womb was–both during gestation and upon/after childbirth–God!
Today marks the extra-bibical celebration of the Assumption of Mary. For those not familiar with this feast day (let alone the term “Assumption” in this sense), it marks the raising up of Mary (generally believed to be upon rather than preceding her death) and taking (“assuming”) her to heaven, prior to and in anticipation of those who will be also be taken up, either upon their deaths or at the Rapture (“end times”). Mary’s bodily assumption into heaven, it is asserted, is in light of her very privileged place as…the Θεοτόκος, as one who was born without original sin so that she might provide Jesus with, for lack of a better term, a pure and sinless birth (for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, see my blog post of July 26).
OK, so the Catholics hold a set of beliefs about Mary that are not shared by most Protestants and especially not by the Scottdale members of the Church of Christ (at least back in the 1970s). Part of the reason for the divergence in views is that there is no mention of Mary’s Immaculate Conception or Assumption in the Bible. Part of the reason, though, stems from an outright (and often stated) discomfort with the semi-divine status being accorded to Mary by making her such a special case. Really, to cut to the chase: This Mary-stuff smacks of Goddess worship!!!
But, in all honesty, many Christian doctrinal formulations parallel, and seemingly adopt/adapt even more ancient beliefs about the Goddess–who could be maiden (virgin), mother, or crone (aged wise-woman) as She might choose. There is a distinct three-in-oneness about the (sometimes-labeled) Triple Goddess. Early Christian missionaries, further, did not scruple at absorbing local goddesses and turning them into Christian saints! (A prime example is the Celtic goddess Brigid, who was worshipped well before the dawn of Christianity and who, by the sixth century, the Catholic Church had morphed into “Saint Brigid of Ireland”!)
Protestants in particular have not embraced (and have often railed against) the very idea of “hailing” Mary or seeking her prayers for “us sinners now, and at the hour of our death”–preferring to believe that this is either ineffective or downright offensive to the (all-male) Godhead. However, it is not so simple as saying that Protestants are embracing sexism (after all, there are no female priests in the Roman or Orthodox Catholic communions!). And it would take much more than a blog post to tackle issues as complex as the historical interplay between Christianity and goddess-based religions, alongside historical and contemporary sexism in the Church.
Instead, I would ask one same question, with three difference emphases–all of which I feel are raised by that billboard back in c. 1970s Scottdale:
- Why does it matter what anyone else believes about Mary?
- Why does it matter what anyone else believes about Mary?
- Why does it matter what anyone else believes about Mary?
Whatcha think?