Stauron

Let It Be

Jim Nance

"And it happened, as He spoke these things, that a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, 'Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!' But He said, 'More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it' " (Luke 11:27-28).

he Eastern Orthodox Church claims to maintain and preserve the beliefs of the Christian church from the time of Jesus and the apostles. But in so many ways they maintain not the truths of the ancient church but rather its errors. One of the most glaring is their unscriptural veneration of Mary, the mother of Christ. They claim to honor Mary in a variety of ways: proclaiming her the most blessed of all creatures; identifying her as the first and greatest example of receiving Christ; insisting she be addressed as the Mother of God; interpreting the prophets as teaching her royalty and perpetual virginity; and relying on her intercession, along with the other departed saints, as an essential element of salvation -- all in the context of corporate worship.

In his booklet Facing Up To Mary , Peter Gillquist claims that, concerning Mary, we evangelical Christians "have allowed our preconceptions to color our understanding even of the Scriptural passages concerning her. We have not let the facts speak for themselves." So let us here examine the veneration of Mary, compare it to the Scripture, and let the facts speak.

Honoring Mary

First, is Mary rightly honored as the most blessed of all creatures, "more honorable than the cherubim and incomparably more glorious than the seraphim"?[1] We see both the angel Gabriel and John's mother Elizabeth declaring to her, "Blessed are you among women" (Luke 1:28, 42), as well as Mary herself recognizing that "henceforth all generations will call me blessed" (Luke 1:48). Mary was indeed blessed as the one who bore and nursed Christ, but following the example of Jesus in the passage quoted above, we recognize a greater blessing is bestowed on all Christians as they hear and obey the word of God. Mary is blessed, but so is Peter, David, Abraham, Enoch, and every obedient believer. To go beyond this is not to let the scriptures "speak for themselves."

Next, should Mary be lifted up as the one who has "set the pace for all of us to personally give our lives over fully to Jesus Christ"? [2] In reference to Mary's submissive response to Gabriel, "Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word" (Luke 1:38), it is claimed that she "by her total obedience, restores something absolutely essential in the order of creation." [3] In essence, Eastern Orthodoxy teaches that the world was in Mary, submitting itself to God. "She becomes the new Eve as Christ is the new Adam, lifting by her obedience the curse that the first Eve brought upon the human race by her disobedience." [4] Now we admit wholeheartedly that Mary's humble submission to the will of God at the annunciation is clearly an example for every believer to follow (as is Abraham's in Romans 4:3, and Christ's in 1 Peter 2:21). But it is equally clear that Mary faltered at times in her submission to the will of God for her Son, even to the point of doubting His sanity. For once when Jesus was teaching in a house which was so crowded with people that He could not even eat, his family "went to lay hold of Him, for they said, 'He is out of His mind'. . . And they said to Him, 'Look, Your mother and Your brothers are outside seeking You.' But He answered them, saying, 'Who is My mother, or My brothers?' And He looked around in a circle at those who sat about Him, and said, 'Here are My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of God is My brother and My sister and mother' " (Mark 3:21, 32-35). Jesus grants Mary no special status as an example of obedience to God's will. On the contrary, He grants the status of motherho od and brotherhood to believers who obey Him without wavering. To the extent that Mary did submit to God's will we should follow her example. But to go beyond this, which the Eastern Orthodox manifestly do, is to go beyond the Scriptures.

We should briefly mention that the Eastern Orthodox look to Mary's submission to God to redefine salvation as "no longer the operation of rescuing an ontologically inferior and passive being. It is revealed as a synergeia , a cooperation between man and God." [5] In so doing they ignore Jesus' words concerning this: "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him" (John 6:44). Mary submitted to God, not because she was exercising her autonomous will, but because God "works all things according to the counsel of His will" (Eph. 1:11).

Third, must the church in corporate worship address Mary as Theotokos , the Mother of God? The Eastern Orthodox insist that we must, but then hasten to declare: "This title, of course, does not mean mother of the holy Trinity . . . Neither does it mean she originated the Person Who is God the Son," but rather that it simply means "that for the nine months she carried Him in His humanity He was at every moment fully God as well." [6] Now certainly the scriptures teach the full deity and full humanity of Christ from the moment of His conception, which is the doctrine the Eastern Orthodox say that they wish to protect by the use of this title. So what is the problem?

Regardless of the stated intent, this title does imply more than the fact that Mary carried in her womb One Who was and is God, simply because a mother is not only "one who bears" but also "one who generates or produces." This is clear, for example, in the proverb, "Necessity is the mother of invention." Mary in no way was active in producing or generating God. If the Eastern Orthodox truly wish to protect the doctrine of Christ's deity, they should do so in a way which does not mislead.

Next, as Christians we recognize that the New Testament is the only infallible interpreter of Old Testament prophecy. This is one of the fundamental rules of interpreting Old Testament prophecy, and one which the Eastern Orthodox regularly ignore as they consider Mary.

For example, Psalm 45 is recognized in the New Testament as a prophecy of Christ as King (Hebrews 1:8-9, quoting Psalm 45:6-7). But does verse 9,"At Your right hand stands the queen in gold from Ophir" refer to Mary as the queen, as the Eastern Orthodox insist? No hint of this interpretation can be found in the Bible. Indeed, a consistent interpretation would then require that Jesus the King take Mary, His mother , as His bride (Psalm 45:10-15). This is dubious exegesis, but upon it rests the Orthodox interpretation of the special royalty of Mary. A more reasonable interpretation is that this refers to the Christian church as the bride of Christ, as the New Testament does clearly teach (cf. Eph. 5:22-33).

Does the Bible teach that Mary was always a virgin, never having sexual relations with her husband Joseph? The Eastern Orthodox defend this view from Ezekiel 44:1-2, interpreting Mary as the temple whose "gate shall be shut; it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter by it, because the Lord God of Israel has entered by it." This may be creative, though biblically groundless, especially in light of Matthew 1:25, which teaches that Joseph "did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn Son." Unless the scriptures clearly teach otherwise, and they do not, we should assume that Joseph, as a godly husband, fulfilled his marital duties to his wife (cf. 1 Cor. 7:5), as Matthew implies.

However, for all this, the most fundamental problem in honoring Mary in public worship is that worship is a positive command of God to His people. God alone sets the terms by which we are to worship Him, and nowhere does He command that we are to thus honor Mary. To go beyond what God expressly commands in worship is arrogant and presumptive. Such was the sin of Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu: "Each took his censer and put fire in it, put incense on it, and offered profane fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them " (Lev. 10:1). As a result, fire from the Lord consumed them, for, as Moses told Aaron, "This is what the Lord spoke, saying: 'By those who come near Me I must be regarded as holy; and before all the people I must be glorified' " (Lev. 10:3). Presumptive honor of Mary dishonors God.

To be sure, modern evangelicals are often equally guilty of worshipping God according to their own desires rather than His. On any Sunday in many American churches you may see jazz dancers performing, or preachers emphasizing a point in their sermon with a twang from their electric guitars. "Worship of God should be spontaneous," we are told, but the Lord warns us all, as He did the Pharisees, "This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men" (Mark 7:6-7, cf. Isaiah 29:3).

Praying to Mary

Perhaps the most distressing of all is the Eastern Orthodox practice of addressing prayer to Mary and other departed saints. They teach "that holy Mary (along with all the saints who have passed from death to life and continually stand in the presence of Christ) intercedes before her Son on behalf of all men." [7] Indeed, the Eastern Orthodox church "never prays to God without at the same time addressing honor to Mary." [8]

In their writings, the Eastern Orthodox give lip-service to Jesus as the one Mediator, quoting 1 Timothy 2:5, "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." They insist that they pray to Mary and the saints, not as mediators, but as intercessors. Thus when the officiant in the church leads them in the Vespers prayer, "O holy Mother of God, save us," they explain this away as merely asking Mary to pray for them and for their salvation, even as we ask living believers to pray for us. So again, what's the problem?

First, to attempt communication with the dead is an abomination in God's sight (Deut. 18:11), though this is what the Orthodox do, believing that "We live in the earthly, they in the heavenly half; but we can converse with them, and they with us." [9] We may ask for the prayers of living saints and pray for them, as God instructs us through Paul (1 Tim. 2:1), but may not go beyond the scriptures in asking the same from the dead.

Second, though we can be confident that God hears our prayers, knowing that he is both everywhere and all-knowing (see Psalm 139), we can have no such confidence concerning the dead. To assume Mary is even able to hear everyone who prays to her is to tacitly grant her the omniscience or omnipresence of God. The dead may be aware of the activities on earth, but this is a far cry from each departed saint being fully aware of each living one.

Third, even if they could hear our prayers to them, to turn to them in prayer rather than turning directly to the Father in Christ's name is to go beyond the scriptures, treating them as mediators between us and God. For a mediator is one who goes between man and God, presenting the requests of man to God and the words of God to man. The Eastern Orthodox may deny that they call Mary a mediator, but they certainly act as if she is, for they turn to her "as protector and intercessor," as one who "is identified with all suffering, with human life in this world as tragedy and suffering." [10] In so doing they ignore Christ as our Mediator, "in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted" (Heb. 2:18). This is indeed the fundamental problem with Eastern Orthodox worship -- the prayers and honor they give to Mary and the saints necessarily detracts from the honor we are to give to God alone.