Mary

Jellies · Aug 6, 2021

I have been studying church history, and from what ive seen, there is an upward Trend through the ages on the praise and honoring of Mary. I’ve seen fathers like st chrysostom talk about Mary’s sin, and yet apparently near the same time st Ambrose said Mary was without sin. The latter view seems to have won out through the ages until the Protestant reformation. My question is, why? The Bible hardly talks about Mary at all. You’d think it would say more but it doesn’t. Why did people start making all these theories about her and start mentioning her at every liturgy? It seems to me so alien from scripture, for a woman who is hardly talked about. No doubt Mary was the greatest woman alive, but I feel as though throughout church history Marian pieties have gotten a bit out of hand, and I can’t understand why, where this sentiment came from.

Invictus · Aug 6, 2021

Jellies said: ↑

I have been studying church history, and from what ive seen, there is an upward Trend through the ages on the praise and honoring of Mary. I’ve seen fathers like st chrysostom talk about Mary’s sin, and yet apparently near the same time st Ambrose said Mary was without sin. The latter view seems to have won out through the ages until the Protestant reformation. My question is, why? The Bible hardly talks about Mary at all. You’d think it would say more but it doesn’t. Why did people start making all these theories about her and start mentioning her at every liturgy? It seems to me so alien from scripture, for a woman who is hardly talked about. No doubt Mary was the greatest woman alive, but I feel as though throughout church history Marian pieties have gotten a bit out of hand, and I can’t understand why, where this sentiment came from.
Click to expand...

John Henry Newman suggested it was a development from the doctrinal clarifications of the 4th century. Basically, his thesis is that in the early centuries much of the emphasis was on Christ's mediatorial role rather than on his eternal Being, and that as the emphasis shifted toward the latter in the aftermath of the Arian controversy, other figures - such as his Mother - began to fill the gap. In his own words:

First then, that the language of the Ante-nicene Fathers, on the subject of our Lord's Divinity, may be far more easily accommodated to the Arian hypothesis than can the language of the Post-nicene, is agreed on all hands. Thus St. Justin speaks of the Son as subservient to the Father in the creation of the world, as seen by Abraham, as speaking to Moses from the bush, as appearing to Joshua before the fall of Jericho, as Minister and Angel, and as numerically distinct from the Father. Clement, again, speaks of the Word as the "Instrument of God," "close to the Sole Almighty;" "ministering to the Omnipotent Father's will;" "an energy, so to say, or operation of the Father," and "constituted by His will as the cause of all good." Again, the Council of Antioch, which condemned Paul of Samosata, says that He "appears to the Patriarchs and converses with them, being testified sometimes to be an Angel, at other times Lord, at others God;" that, while "it is impious to think that the God of all is called an Angel, the son is the Angel of the Father." Formal proof, however, is unnecessary; had not the fact been as I have stated it, neither Sandius would have professed to differ from the Post-nicene Fathers, nor would Bull have had to defend the Ante-nicene.

One principal change which took place, as time went on, was the following: the Ante-nicene Fathers, as in some of the foregoing extracts, speak of the Angelic visions in the Old Testament as if they were appearances of the Son; but St. Augustine introduced the explicit doctrine, which has been received since his date, that they were simply Angels, through whom the Omnipresent Son manifested Himself. This indeed is the only interpretation which the Ante-nicene statements admitted, as soon as reason began to examine what they did mean. They could not mean that the Eternal God could really be seen by bodily eyes; if anything was seen, that must have been some created glory or other symbol, by which it pleased the Almighty to signify His Presence. What was heard was a sound, as external to His Essence, and as distinct from His Nature, as the thunder or the voice of the trumpet, which pealed along Mount Sinai; what it was had not come under discussion till St. Augustine; both question and answer were alike undeveloped. The earlier Fathers spoke as if there were no medium interposed between the Creator and the creature, and so they seemed to make the Eternal Son the medium; what it really was, they had not determined. St. Augustine ruled, and his ruling has been accepted in later times, that it was not a mere atmospheric phenomenon, or an impression on the senses, but the material form proper to an Angelic presence, or the presence of an Angel in that material garb in which blessed Spirits do ordinarily appear to men. Henceforth the Angel in the bush, the voice which spoke with Abraham, and the man who wrestled with Jacob, were not regarded as the Son of God, but as Angelic ministers, whom He employed, and through whom He signified His presence and His will. Thus the tendency of the controversy with the Arians was to raise our view of our Lord's Mediatorial acts, to impress them on us in their divine rather than their human aspect, and to associate them more intimately with the ineffable glories which surround the Throne of God. The Mediatorship was no longer regarded in itself, in that prominently subordinate place which it had once occupied in the thoughts of Christians, but as an office assumed by One, who though having become man in order to bear it, was still God. Works and attributes, which had hitherto been assigned to the Economy or to the Sonship, were now simply assigned to the Manhood. A tendency was also elicited, as the controversy proceeded, to contemplate our Lord more distinctly in His absolute perfections, than in His relation to the First Person of the Blessed Trinity. Thus, whereas the Nicene Creed speaks of the "Father Almighty," and "His Only-begotten Son, our Lord, God from God, Light from Light, Very God from Very God," and of the Holy Ghost, "the Lord and Giver of Life," we are told in the Athanasian of "the Father Eternal, the Son Eternal, and the Holy Ghost Eternal," and that "none is afore or after other, none is greater or less than another."

And coincident with these changes, a most remarkable result is discovered. The Catholic polemic, in view of the Arian and Monophysite errors, being of this character, became the natural introduction to the cultus Sanctorum, for in proportion as texts descriptive of created mediation ceased to belong to our Lord, so was a room opened for created mediators. Nay, as regards the instance of Angelic appearances itself, as St. Augustine explained them, if those appearances were creatures, certainly creatures were worshipped by the Patriarchs, not indeed in themselves, but as the token of a Presence greater than themselves. When "Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God," he hid his face before a creature; when Jacob said, "I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved," the Son of God was there, but what he saw, what he wrestled with, was an Angel. When "Joshua fell on his face to the earth and did worship before the captain of the Lord's host, and said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant?" what was seen and heard was a {139} glorified creature, if St. Augustine is to be followed; and the Son of God was in him.

I have said that there was in the first ages no public and ecclesiastical recognition of the place which St. Mary holds in the Economy of grace; this was reserved for the fifth century, as the definition of our Lord's proper Divinity had been the work of the fourth. There was a controversy contemporary with those already mentioned, I mean the Nestorian, which brought out the complement of the development, to which they had been subservient; and which, if I may so speak, supplied the subject of that august proposition of which Arianism had provided the predicate. In order to do honour to Christ, in order to defend the true doctrine of the Incarnation, in order to secure a right faith in the manhood of the Eternal Son, the Council of Ephesus determined the Blessed Virgin to be the Mother of God. Thus all heresies of that day, though opposite to each other, tended in a most wonderful way to her exaltation; and the School of Antioch, the fountain of primitive rationalism, led the Church to determine first the conceivable greatness of a creature, and then the incommunicable dignity of the Blessed Virgin.
https://newmanreader.org/works/development/chapter4.html#section2
Click to expand...

I don't know if this is correct or not, but it was Newman's explanation, viz., clarifications in doctrine caused changes to the liturgy which in turn opened up new space in devotional practice for created mediators to fill. I'm not sure if I agree with it or not myself, but there it is. And this is all part of Newman's larger argument in the Development of Christian Doctrine, which anyone interested in the history of Anglicanism and English Catholicism should read, just because of the massive influence it subsequently had.

Log in or Sign up

Mary

Jellies Active Member

Invictus Well-Known Member