In a recent issue of Reason and Theology, Steve Ray (alongside William Albrecht and Michael Lofton) repeated the bogus claim that the Catholic dogmas of Mary have always been believed throughout Christian history:
Interestingly,
Lofton tried to defend the Marian dogmas through typology—his reasoning is that
the NT authors had no issue with using typology, so it is proper for Catholics
to appeal to such. Problem is (1) there is no historical evidence that such
beliefs were part of the theology of the NT authors; (2) there is no historical
evidence from the earliest centuries that beliefs such as the Bodily Assumption
and Immaculate Conception were believed and (3) such is an exercise in special
pleading—how does one determine if one is using typology properly? (Lofton’s
answer will be “the Church is infallible, ergo, it is allowable, if not proper,
to use typology in such a way!" in other words, assuming Rome is the true Church to prove Rome
is the true Church—a circular argument).
For the NT authors,
even when they used typology and other forms of interpretations that are not
based on the historical-grammatical method, they based such on a historical
reality; for instance, Matt 2:15’s use of Hosea 11:1 is based on the historical
reality of the Holy Family returning from Egypt; there is no historical reality
behind Rome’s Mariology. Note what one Evangelical apologist wrote on the use
of Hos 11:1 in the Gospel of Matthew:
When Matthew narrates the flight to Egypt, he
says (Matt. 2.15) that this event “fulfilled” Hosea 11.1, “Out of Egypt have I
called my son.” You may certainly puzzle over Matthew’s application of Hosea
11.1. You can worry about double fulfillment. You can ask what Matthew means by
“fulfillment” in this passage. You can wonder about what sort of parallel he is
drawing between the events in Jesus’ life and the events in Israel’s history.
But what you cannot doubt, if you are a reasonable person at all, is that
Matthew is saying to his readers that
the flight to Egypt and the return from Egypt really happened in the life of
the infant Jesus, and that this event fulfilled
something written in the Old Testament.
Douglas Moo comments trenchantly concerning
Matthew and the Christian worldview:
[Matthew] writes from the conviction that the
decisive revelation of God had recently been manifested in the historical
actualities of Jesus’ life and teaching. To say . . . that “’Jesus said’ or ‘Jesus
did’ need not always mean that in history Jesus said or did what follows” . . .
attributes to Matthew an unconcern with history that seems to me at odds with
one of the most distinctive features of the Christian message . . .I am
suggesting that concern for historical actualities, which is the essential
byproduct of the incarnation, kept [Matthew] from combining history and
nonhistory . . . (Douglas J. Moo, “Matthew and Midrash,” JETS 26 [1983], pp. 38-39)
For Mathew, as for John, theological
significance and literal events are inextricably woven together. Fake points
don’t make points. (Lydia McGrew, The
Mirror and the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices [Tampa,
Fla: DeWard Publishing Company Limited, 2019], 249-50)
