Saturday, January 1, 2022

Frederick Dale Bruner on the Perpetual Virginity of Mary

  

What does Mary lose if she relates intimately to Joseph? Her virginity, to be sure, but does she then lose her purity, her worthiness, her dignity? Something close to affirming these questions seems to lie behind some defenses of Mary’s perpetual virginity. We are given the impression by some teaching that should Mary have later become a wife to Joseph physically she would have lost something spiritually. I believe that this persuasion is dangerous doctrinally and morally and that it is allied to other errors in the field of sexual ethics—from priestly celibacy and resisting women’s ordination to scientific contraception and annulment. Today, Catholic sexual teaching is in a veritable shambles. The rehabilitation of a fully married Mary will be a step toward reconstruction. Matthew’s subsequent record of Jesus’ honoring but not requiring single life (19:10–12) will be another step toward the wholeness of NT sexual teaching.

 

The theological intention of wanting Mary to be a perpetual virgin seems to damage the doctrine of marriage as seriously as it seems sometimes to contribute to a near deification of Mary. The most grave traditional Protestant argument against the Roman dogma of the virgin Mary is that Mary became, not only in popular piety but in formal definition, an invoked intercessor, an almost divine figure, and so a near idol. The titles mediatrix, auxiliarix, and the like, all place Mary dangerously close to the Godhead. Devotions are addressed to her. Prayers are at least mediated through her. And although Marian minimalists won the important contest at Vatican II, I do not believe that the most recent definitions have been fortunate—though they do seem somewhat less fulsome than earlier ones.

 

Mary has tended to replace the tender, compassionate side of Jesus in some popular Catholic piety: Jesus is judge, Mary is mediator. But Protestants have not found the Roman elevation of Mary in the apostolic accounts. We believe the Marian honors are dubious at best and pernicious at worst. We believe that a thorough demythologizing of Mary is required if church teaching is to be wholesome, not least in the ethical field. And we believe that this normalization is required for three reasons: (1) textually, the biblical records will not bear the weight of the Marian dogma; (2) morally, the dignity of sexual relations can be undermined by a veneration of Mary’s perpetual virginity; and (3) theologically, the integrity of the sole mediation of Jesus Christ is threatened by Marian devotion.

 

Christians should give Mary her deserved respect. G. K. Chesterton justifiably lamented that some Protestant “Christians hate her whom God kissed in Galilee.” Mary is, properly understood, “the mother of God” in that she is the mother of Jesus Christ, who is not only a man with us—he is that—but also God’s great personal act of condescension. (Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary: The Christbook, Matthew 1–12 (vol. 1, rev ed.; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2007], 49-50)

 

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