It
is common for Catholic apologists to point to alleged parallels between the Old
Testament Ark of the Covenant and Mary, the Mother of Jesus, in an attempt to
prove, via typological interpretation of certain New Testament texts, that
Mary, as the New Ark of the Covenant/antitype of the OT Ark of the Covenant,
was free from sin, both original and personal. To read a popular example of
this, see Patrick Madrid, Mark,
Ark of the New Covenant: A Biblical look at the Immaculate Conception of the
Blessed Virgin Mary (Cf. John Salza, Biblical
Q&A about the Blessed Virgin Mary, p. 4)
In
their book, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences
(Baker: 1995), Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie wrote the following in
response to Patrick Madrid's article on pp. 314 n. 55 which was rather spot-on:
One Catholic apologist calls this the “most compelling type of
Mary’s Immaculate Conception” (see Madrid, “Ark of the New Covenant,” p. 12).
It is only compelling if one makes the unbiblical and unjustified assumption
that it is a valid analogy. One can note certain similarities between many
things that prove nothing (e.g., there are many strong similarities between
good counterfeit currency and genuine bills). Thus, even proponents of this
view have to admit that none of this “proves” the immaculate conception
(ibid.). The ineptness of these kinds of analogies surface in Madrid’s
question: “If you could have created your own mother [as God did in Mary],
wouldn’t you have made her the most beautiful, virtuous, perfect woman
possible?” (ibid.). Sure, I would have done a lot of things differently than
God did. If I were God and could have created the most beautiful place for my
Son to be born it would not have been a stinky, dirty animal stable! God,
however, chose otherwise.
Furthermore,
Eric Svendsen, in his excellent book
on New Testament Mariology, wrote the following in response to John McHugh’s
attempt to appeal to alleged Ark of the Covenant imagery in the Gospel of Luke:
Many of McHugh’s points made in support
of viewing Mark as Ark/Tabernacle are badly in need of nuance. The word επισκιασειν (along with its variants σκιαζειν
and συσκιαζειν, “overshadow”) is used in
many other OT contexts beside the one McHugh selectively cites. It is used, for
instance, of Mount Zion (Isa 4:50; cf. Wis 19:7), of the Israelites (Num
10:34[36]), of God’s chosen ones (Deut 33:12; Ps 91[90]:4; 140[139]:7), and
even of the plant that grew over Jonah’s head (Jonah 4:6). Moreover, the parallelism
demanded by this view is inconsistent. We are told sometimes that Mary is paralleled
with David (both “arise” and “set out”), while other times that Mary is
paralleled with the Ark. Moreover, the statement of David in 2 Sam 6:9, “How
can the ark of the Lord ever come to me?,” changes the parallelism from
Mary/David to David/Elizabeth.
Yet even if we were to allow for this
inconsistency, there are still other incongruities. First, the Ark did not immediately come to David (as
Mary does to Elizabeth) but was taken to the house of Obed-Edom for three
months. Second, David’s words are said in frustration, whereas in the case of
Elizabeth, the words are stated in humility. Third, Mary did stay with Elizabeth for three months, as opposed to David who
complains that the Ark can never come to him—again changing the parallelism,
this time from Elizabeth/David to Elizabeth/Obed-Edom. There is a difference
not only in the intent of the saying, but also in just where the “Ark” stayed
in relation to the speaker. The fluctuation of the parallelism from Mary/Ark to
Mary/David to David/Elizabeth to Elizabeth/Obed-Edom seems too capricious to be
valid, and is for that reason alone rightly rejected by most scholars. Mary’s
three-month stay with Elizabeth is more naturally explained on the basis that
Elizabeth is six months pregnant when Mary arrives. After the baby is born
(three months later), Mary would naturally return home to take care of her own
advancing pregnancy.
At the end of the day, if McHugh’s
parallel between Mary and the Ark is to be maintained (“like the Ark of the
Covenant, [Mary] became the Dwelling-place of the Most High”), then it must be
nuanced—the value of the Ark law in its Dweller and not in the Ark itself
which, apart from the Dweller, had no intrinsic value of its own. If Mary is to
be seen as the Ark, it must have been a temporary status lasting only the
duration of her pregnancy. Once the dweller leaves, so also the value of the
Ark diminishes. (Eric D. Svendsen, Who is
My Mother? The Role and Status of the Mother of Jesus in the New Testament and
Roman Catholicism [Amityville, N.Y.: Calvary Press, 2001], 167-68)
