The mother of Jesus in the first age and after

Front matter

L'wisioQ T5T&0I Sect! ob , W72

MOTHER OF JESUS

Nihil obstat.

Part I.— In The First Age Chapter

I. EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE .

II. THE RECORD OF THE NATIVITY . . .

III. THE RECORD OF THE LIFE .

IV. THE OMISSIONS OF THE GOSPELS . . .

V. THE OMISSIONS OF THE ACTS AND EPISTLES

VI. THE MOTIVE OF THE OMISSIONS .

VII. CONCLUSIONS .

VIII. MODERN ISSUES .

Part Ii.— After

I. THE GROUND OF DEVELOPMENT . . .

II. ‘DELEGATION OF THE DIVINE DOMINION

III. MARY QUEEN .

IV. MARY QUEEN; SOME OBJECTIONS ANSWERED

V. MARY MOTHER .

VI. MARY ADVOCATE .

VII. MARY IN MYSTICAL THEOLOGY . . .

VIII. MARY CONCEIVED WITHOUT SIN .

PAGE

I b

PART I

IN THE FIRST AGE

Chapter I

The quadrifid Gospel history of the Ministry of our Lord is fairly substantiated as authentic and genuine. If the narratives were not Date and written by the disciples whose names of th°nty they commonly bear, they belong at Gospels* latest to the sub-Apostolic age, and they represent the current traditions of the beginnings of Christianity. For centuries, indeed, the Gospels were acknowledged to be the writings of the four Evangelists, and no question was raised about it. A certain weight must be allowed by the most sceptical, even if it be only a trifling weight, to this constant tradition of centuries. But the fashion of destructive criticism which belonged to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries made a change. Holy Scripture was as unpopular as hereditary monarchy or aristocratic privilege.

B i

Only a few years ago it still needed courage on the part of an apologist to make a positive assertion about authorship, or even date, of the Gospels.

The beginning of the sceptical prevalence is not difficult to trace. The doubts cast upon the origin of the records of our Lord’s life issue out of the general dogmatic degradation of German Protestantism within the last 200 years. The degradation— which some would term elevation instead — is a very natural result of disturbance of the established order, whether religious or civil. Each original thinker finds his ambition in further cavil — saefie trans finem iaculo nobilis exp edit 0 ; 1 the more extreme, the higher purity ; in the phrase of Carlyle, ‘ the revolution devours itself.’ The orthodox Protestantism shaded off into a dogmatic indifference or dissatisfaction that left little unassailed. Thereupon the authen¬ ticity of the Evangelical history appeared to be a vulnerable point, as the writings belonged to a pre-historic age, pre-historic, that is to say, in Christian ecclesiastical record, and there would be no proofs to hand. Moreover, it would inflict a deadly blow upon Christianity if its credentials could thus be proved unsound, and the actuating and antecedent motive of those who started the

1 * Famed for throw of spear beyond the limit.’ Hor. Carm. I. viii. 12.

idea, before they started it, and directing their selection of this or that idea to start, was an unreasoning antipathy to Christianity and a desire to deal it the deadliest blow they could.

The objective of the assault once determined, there was plenty of strength to employ ; but one might have doubted the tactical wisdom of the way in which the attack was developed. The critics were unreasonably severe and niggling. Allusions in ancient writings, which an ordinary man would not have thought twice about, even apparent, glaringly apparent, quotations from our Gospels, as, e.g., in Justin Martyr1 (a.d. 137- 167), were set on one side, were not allowed to be produced. They need not be, they were not, allusions to the record of the Evangelist or quota¬ tions from it, but belonged to some common source (which no one could produce or attempted to identify), the common source to which both the Evangelist and his apparent transcriber were indebted. The explanation was far-fetched and ad hoc , if anything ever was ; but, the doubt once started, it was allowed to pass, it held. The venture was intended to have important and far-reaching results. The strength of the attack¬ ing position always lay in this, that proof of an ancient writing and of an ancient tradition must in the main be constructive proof. Constructive proof, therefore, should at once be ruled out. The assault met with considerable and widely diffused success. The critics had all the talking, and no one else was allowed to say a word. The ordinary man doubtless did not study the argu¬ ments of the critics, but he heard of their conclu¬ sions, and he heard of nothing else. What was the use, said the ordinary man, of arguing from Scripture, when we could not know whether the words ascribed to our Lord were anything but the conjectural suitabilities of centuries after His time ? Bring the documents into court ; but the first step will be that the documents should be authenticated. The documents cannot be authenticated. The case of Christianity is not such as we had believed, and all our regret will not alter the fact. ‘Christianity, shorn of some fictions of superstition and some ecclesias¬ tical accretions, was a noble and sublime pre¬ sentation of God and of our relation to the Supreme Majesty. But what we know as Chris¬ tianity has no necessary relation to any actual events ; it is not the revelation of Christ, but the invention of hundreds of years after Him. Chris¬ tianity is all too hazy for a sensible mind to trouble over ; so much guess-work, so much bibliological and exegetical technicality in the first stages of it, that one must be content to hold dogma altogether at a distance ; submitting to be

E VIDENTIAL VAL UE OF HOL V SCRIPTURE outwardly a Christian of one or other sect, while having one’s own thoughts about the thing.’ With the insidious and covert action of every evil influence, the mischief grew and spread. Christianity ceased to be a real and living faith, not only among educated people, but among large numbers of the population who had heard of the current notions. To the poor the Gospel was preached, and by the poor the Gospel was now let alone. The Church had gone by the wall long ago, and in due time the Bible went as well.

But the very concentration of the sceptical assault led with time to its triumphant repulse, however unlikely and beyond need of serious consideration any such event had at first appeared. The energies, the studies, the researches of apologists were withdrawn from other positions and adversatively concentrated on the defensive side. Success was assisted by archaeological discoveries, which, perhaps, were not altogether gifts of fortune, but connected with that concen¬ tration. Thus the Gospel attributed to St. John had been thought the most certainly discredited of the four. But the Diatessaron of Tatian (circa a.d. 160) begins with the first verses of St. John’s Gospel. The Diatessaron is a 4 Har¬ mony’ of the Gospels, and such a compilation presumes the existence of the originals in familiar use and cognizance for a considerable time before.

The date of composition, then, of the four Gospels, of the last written of the four, is brought within the penumbra of the first age, and the authorship is hardly any longer worth disputing for the critic, as neither perhaps for the apologist worth asserting. When it was denied that the Gospel of St. Mark was written by St. Mark, the impli¬ cation was that it had been written long after him. If it is proved to belong to the first century, the negative loses its application. The Gospel narratives represent the Apostolic tradition ; they record what was taught and accepted in the earliest ages of Christianity ; they express the primitive opinion and belief, the aspect of the Incarnation and Ministry of the Son of God current among those who had been in association with His disciples.

They are an authentic record, our earliest record, of what Christianity is. The record may not be complete — it would be unlikely that it should be ; and it makes no claim or profession of being complete ; it may even be inexplicit, mis¬ leading, and, saving the Divine Inspiration, erroneous. But for all that it is a record. Prima facie , what it states must stand. It is our chief documentary evidence ; in some sense, our only record. In arguing any point of belief or prac¬ tice with reference to primitive Christianity, it would be utterly paradoxical to leave the

Gospels out of account ; it is natural to start with them. There may be other evidence. Our present Christianity comes from the tradi¬ tion of the Apostolic teaching as orally delivered and independently of any written record, and the evidence for the validity of any belief or practice is primarily that the belief or practice is found existing. The Church of the third or fourth century would be the outcome of the original tradition, and the testimony of early writings to what was in use at their date must carry authority. But the earliest writing, and therefore the chief witness, to the Apostolic tradition is the Gospel narrative. The faith rests on Tradition, but it rests on Scripture as well ; each of the two supplements and confirms the other.

There is very little reference made to the Blessed Virgin in the very earliest Christian writings, unless we can hold the works insignifiof St. Ephrem the Syrian to be genuine SvIm. throughout, and not to have been inter- Q0*eels polated in a later age (while the principal tcTprote? or sole ground of suspicion would be tantsjust precisely the inclusion of devotional expres¬ sions and attributions which anticipate, and perhaps exceed, the language of any subsequent expositor of the glories of Mary; it is really a petitio principii , even if it should turn out a true surmise). The earliest Christian writings otherwise that remain to us have nothing quite of this kind.1 There are those who find a similar differ¬ ence in the New Testament, inasmuch as our Lady occupies no prominence in the Gospel narratives. However, if these narratives are now thus established as of pretty nearly the date that tradition assigns to them, and as of corre¬ sponding authenticity and authority, it must certainly be germane to discover what precisely is the account they give of our Lord’s Mother. It may not amount to much, but it is at any rate very solid ground, which criticism will find now difficult to disturb, and which is accepted by all whose Christian faith is based upon the evidence of Holy Scripture. Moreover, if the narratives are of that early date, we may accept their account as representing the tradition and belief then current, so that we are enlightened regarding devotion to the Blessed Virgin, whether it existed or was wholly absent, or to what extent it was carried, in Primitive Christianity.

There is, then, very little reference made to the Blessed Virgin in any one of the Gospels, or in fact in any portion of the New Testament. It is commonly said by Protestants that she appears only twice in the Ministry of our Lord — at the marriage of Cana (John ii. i-ii), and again

1 But St. Epiphanius (a.d. 367) is conclusive and clear, (See below, p. 64 note.)

at Capharnaum, when 4 His mother and His brethren 9 sought to speak with Him (Matt. xii. 46 -fin, etc.), and on both occasions only to meet with rebuff. The Protestant account is not quite accurate (there are other occasions), and the in¬ terpretation of the narrative is unintelligent ; but, broadly, and on the whole, this account depicts the effect of the Gospel record, and the force of the argument is not met by particular exceptions and corrections that could be made. Let anyone reflect upon the position assigned to our Lady in the existing Church, as sole or palmary Channel of Grace, as Immaculate, as Queen of angels and of men, as Gate of Heaven- — and he is possibly struck with surprise that in our Lord’s Ministry she should have apparently so little share, that no Gospel writer should have apparently any notion of the attitude, e.g., of St. Theresa : 4 1 never can think of them [of our Lord and His Mother] apart,’ that the Evangelists should all of them, speaking in general terms, leave her out of the narrative. No better illustration can be found of the failure of the Gospel than the fact that, on the Feast of the Assumption of our Lady, the Church has been driven to select for the proper Gospel of the Feast a passage which has no reference to her whatever, except for the name of Mary occurring in it.

The case is not altered, but immensely strengthened, when we pass on to consider the other writings embraced in the New Testament. The veneration of our Lady, the doctrine regard¬ ing our Lady, seems to be wholly unknown to any Apostolic writer. If it existed in that age, it may well be thought beyond all bounds of probability that St. Paul should leave it out, St. Paul who, in one Epistle or another, not only elaborates an extensive system of Christian doctrine, but who has occasion to allude to the routine of ecclesias¬ tical procedure and practice, over a considerable area, to the Orders of the Ministry, the various spiritual gifts, the status of widows and of virgins, the behaviour and position of women generally in the Church. How is it that he can help re¬ minding his converts, if he believed it himself, that our Lord was born of an immaculate virgin ? Whereas his phrase is merely c born of a woman ’ (Gal. iv. 4). The death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, are themes for him ; but the birth of Christ, except that once, he leaves out altogether. Nor does any other one of the Epistolary writers anywhere allude to it. How is it that St. Paul does not say to the widow and the virgin that their model should be found in her who was both in one ? The name of Mary nowhere occurs in the rest of the New Testament ; after the first chapter of the Acts, there is no mention at all of our Lord’s Mother. The earliest expositors of the glories of Mary, when they would find for them some foundation in Scripture, had nothing better than the obscure allusion of the Apocalypse (xii. i) to the 6 woman clothed with the sun,’ which might be considered, and was alternatively so interpreted, to refer to our Mother the Church and not to our Mother Mary. c Jerusalem which is above,’ exclaims St. Paul (Gal. iv. 26), ‘is free, which is our mother.’ He appears to have no knowledge of the Mother of Christendom !

Perhaps the Protestant case might be given more powerfully, as it often is more coarsely, than here. But there is no intention of burking it. Let the reader supply for himself anything whatever else of which he has cognizance, to make the indictment the strongest that may be. Here is only a coup d'ceil — nothing more intended, and space not admitting more — but a coup Tceil which should give the effect of the whole, easily seized and possibly quite as urgent as detailed description. Let the apparent failure of the New Testament to correspond with the mind and practice of the Church subsequently in our Lady’s regard, stand prominently forward, nothing extenuated, no urgence missed. We have the Gospels, according to the preceding evaluation of their authority as recognised at length in our time, constituting sure ground, constituting our earliest and palmary written record. We have the history of the Acts of the Apostles, and the allusions of Epistolary writers as further evidence of the received opinion and belief of the earliest Christian age. Is it possible within the covers of the New Testament to find any rebutting evidence against the prima facie appearance that has been described — any evidence, however small or scanty, of our Lady occupying at all the position in the Apostolic Church which she held in that of the sixth or thirteenth or nineteenth centuries ? That is the enterprise in hand. Let the Protestant take his look round, and give his judgment at the outset, whether the attempt seems to his apprehension likely to issue in mere jugglery and legerdemain, or in the thinnest of literary identification. Perhaps there may be others besides Protestants who are inclined to shake their heads, who would recommend reliance rather on the doctrine of Development, on the determination otherwise reached of the Church having the truth with her, and thus on the later testimony of established Doctors, a Cyril, a Jerome, a Bernard of Clairvaux, on the existing outcome of Christian doctrine. Still it is hoped to carry the acquiescence of all such cavillers or doubters along with the succeeding argument, in most, if not in all, of its successive steps. For evidence may be overlooked, and the effect

E VIDENTIAL VAL UE OF HOL V SCRIPTURE of evidence fail to be appreciated, without careful study and reflection. Somewhere, the other day, was quoted : 4 A violet beneath a mossy stone.’ It is as easy to read amiss as to recollect amiss. We read what we think is there, not what the writer put there. We read Holy Scripture very little as literature, for its historical sense and connected meaning. 4 Understandest thou what thou readest ? ’ (Acts viii. 30).

Chapter II

Before making particular search in the New Testament for indication of the same honour ^ . that is now allowed to the Mother of our

Omissions

in the New Lord, one might reflect whether reason could be assigned for any omission, and what sort of veneration one expected to find. The veneration and invocation of Saints are generally absent from the New Testament. They were things of later development, and originated, as is well known, in the commemoration of martyrs and preservation of their relics.1 In the first age there was, indeed, the beginning (Matt. xiv. 12 ; Acts viii. 2), but there could be no more ; and a ritual order requires time in which to be formed and to take its mould. A further consideration arises. There is no doubt that SS. Peter and Paul are set before us as extraordinary personages, such as we call, and as were even then called, Saints (Acts xii. 1-9 ;

xxvii. 23-26, etc.), and their aid was not seldom invoked (viii. 24 ; xx. 10, etc.). But SS. Peter and Paul were still alive at the date of the record, so that their veneration and invocation after death, whether fitting or not, is necessarily left without decisive reference. There is something here which may reasonably modify our expecta¬ tions regarding devotion to our Lady also in the Apostolic age. The roll of the saints has scarcely yet begun, and there can be expected no such general practice of devotion and no such deter¬ minate belief as that to which we are accustomed. Because there are no commemorations in the Mass, and no invocations in prayer, so neither is the Mother of God invoked or commemorated.

And yet the case of the Blessed Virgin is hardly covered by that of any lesser personage, and ritual immaturity will not account for all. The Queen of Saints should receive some superior recognition without waiting for her assumption into heaven ; she should be paid a peculiar homage by the early disciples, by the Apostolic Church. And this should appear in the record ; in the history of the Acts of Apostles, in the writings of Apostles, there should be read some¬ thing of her who was their head — Regina Aftostolorum.

Or, again, omission, no doubt, is not to be taken as equivalent to rejection. If Mary’s name is absent, there are other blanks to fill up no less inexplicable. For example, the doctrine o^ Purgatory and the Sacrament of Penance obtain no direct mention. The Sacrifice of the Mass belongs exclusively to St. Paul (i Cor. v. 7), or possibly to the Apocalypse (v. 6) ; it is presumed in the Gospels in the institution of the Eucharist, but not, perhaps, directly expressed,1 and it is nowhere else affirmed or explained in our Lord’s recorded discourse. There are several other things belonging to faith or religious observance which obtain only an occasional reference, or are recognised by inference alone ; as the celibacy of the clergy, the religious state, the baptism of infants, the use of chrism, etc. The Protestant will no doubt say that all these omissions stand on the same ground with that of the dignity and office of the Blessed Virgin, being the whole of them additional to the first institution, and un¬ mentioned by Apostles and Evangelists because unknown to them. In the first place, however, the point argued is no more than that they do rest on the same ground. It is not only for the one but for the others that we should have to account. Either all are to be rejected as not belonging to Christianity, or we must admit, if any of them do so belong, that the witness of

1 Some writers endeavour to give a sacrificial sense to the employment of Troielv and o yd/nvi)<ris, but it is somewhat forced.

Scripture is meagre or incomplete in those par¬ ticular instances.

It must be recollected also that some among Protestants would extend the omissions or ambiguities still further. The doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity is recognised only by infer¬ ence. If the word 4 Transubstantiation 5 is not found in Scripture, neither is 4 Homoousios,5 which, being Greek, would seem to have a better chance of inclusion. Because our Lord promises that the Father will send the Holy Ghost (John xiv. 26), and also that He will Himself send the Paraclete, who is the same as the Holy Ghost (xvi. 7), it is a very wide leap to consider it declared that the Holy Ghost in His essential Being 4 proceeds from the Father and the Son.5 It is not only the subsidiary articles — if such they may be called — of the Christian faith whose omission or scanty mention we may find dis¬ turbing. 4 The dignity of the Blessed Virgin does not belong to the New Testament, not clearly, not in the fulness of the modern assertion. It is not the primitive Christianity ; it must be scored out.5 Shall we, then, also score out the several articles of the Nicene Creed for the same in¬ sufficiency ?

No ; there are certainly these two canons. The observance of the Apostolic age cannot be, is precluded from being, the same in every c particular as the later devotion ; the later devo¬ tion is not therefore condemned for the earlier lack of it. Also the devotion, in its simple primitive shape, may be existent in the Apo¬ stolic age, and need not therefore find men¬ tion in Holy Scripture ; on the contrary, it is the style of Holy Scripture to omit such things. We should be content with suggestion, with constructive evidence, with slight and incidental allusion. It is not only in regard to the dignity of our Lady that this necessity occurs.

At the same time that the absence of the Blessed Virgin’s personality, whether from Gospel But our or Epistle, supposing there is such ‘Mother of absence, and to the extent of such fn°clrna-he absence, would be particularly unextion. pected and surprising. But in fact

the attributes and the place in Redemption which the Church assigns to her, are no less assigned in the record, and it is untrue that the Gospels make such total omission of reference as is supposed. We should observe what and where precisely the omission is. It is in the record of our Lord’s Ministry, or it is in the extant writings of Apostles.

But, to begin with, the Birth of our Lord is recorded by two Evangelists with some fulness, and it cannot be denied that the personality of His Mother Mary is very prominent indeed in this portion of the narrative. St. Matthew describes the Child that was born of her, without any qualification or limitative phrase, as being God — ‘ Immanu-El, God-with-us.’ The Child had no human father ! Nor was this all. The place of the human father is asserted with the same categorical directness to have been taken by the Holy Ghost — 6 that which is begotten in her is of the Holy Ghost.’ The Evangelist gives these stupendous particulars, not as initiating a fresh view, without any special accent or introduction, as recording merely the received account, the current tradition, the general understanding of the Church of that early age. The age is that of the Apostles or immediately succeeding it. The representation is that of the iVpostoiic teaching, lifted intact out of the year of the first Christian Pentecost into whatever year — recent, observe, and not to be postponed to the fifth or sixth century — when it was written. How, we may boldly ask, did the Evangelist, how did the general body of the disciples of Christ, regard a woman about whom they believed this stupendous history ?

Do not let it be said that such a birth is nothing especially strange in its own period, that it be¬ longed to the surrounding paganism as a common¬ place. Christianity does not belong to paganism. It first takes root and germinates in the Jewish people, who are rigid monotheists, who would not dare to image, who would turn with horror from, such a legend. God to the Jew is not a magnified man ; He is formless, He is a Spirit, a Mystery, whose Name none may utter. ‘ Son of God 5 in J ewish phrase meant nothing thus literal and real (John x. 34, 35) ; or it belongs* as in Christian theology, to the arcana of Deity (Dan. iii. 25). Observe that the record of this Gospel is of early date ; the stamp of its J ewish birth is still upon the Church ; it is the tradition received by Jews and from Jews that is re¬ corded.

Or again. What is paganism at the Christian era ? You may assert Julius Caesar to be divine, divus Iulius , and not without reason from your pagan standpoint,1 and may offer incense to his statue. But it is flattery, it is hyperbole, it is theosophy ; it is not belief. Here was a faith for which many suffered death with torment rather than qualify it, the faith that Jesus was God made flesh of the Virgin Mary ; and that faith hung from the record of His birth — c be¬ gotten of the Holy Ghost.’ As a belief— to die for — it has nothing to do with the character of that age, with the easy apotheoses of that age ;

1 J. A. Froude, in his Caesar , draws a profane parallel between his hero and our Lord, as a literary tour de force, perhaps.

it has to do with human nature, we may judge it as the case of you or of me. How should we regard the woman who bore a child and re¬ mained virgin, we believing it ? With uplifted hands, with astonishment, with awe. Add that her Husband is the Creator of the universe, that her Child is the Son of God, that she is bride of the Holy Ghost, let this also be our belief, the current and credited understanding — we should hardly dare to go within ten feet of her, we should enter her presence with abashed gaze, even if we did not kneel before her. Will anyone say that this is not so ? Bride of the Holy Ghost — you may phrase it as you please, but the fact is that, the recorded fact, beyond evasion, the fact of that first age, for Apostles, for Evangelists, for all the first disciples or the later converts. And it is a matter of human nature. As it would be for you or me, it was for them. If they believed her the Mother of God, they had awe, inevitable inward awe. If they did not believe her so, they were not Christians.

So much is reached without going beyond the first chapter of the first of the Gospels. Is it not fairly all there ? Can anyone pretend that any¬ thing has been read into the narrative which it does not contain ? On the contrary, the meaning lies quite on the surface, and it is astonishing that anyone should be able to miss it. But the

Gospel is a familiar book, which we were first acquainted with before we had reached sufficient years to reflect, and as it is familiar now, we read it without reflection. It is a sacred book, which we read as a religious exercise, and its language belongs to our religious phraseology, which we take as matter of course, without re¬ flecting what is its real effect and connected sense. And still less do we commonly think of going beyond the written text to discern the mind of the writer and his attitude towards the events and circumstances of which he writes. The Evangelist is representative of his age, and we ought thus to obtain from him, not only the picture of our Lord’s life, but another picture of the Christian community in the years imme¬ diately succeeding. Thus, to take an illustration from pagan history. In the pages of the historian Livy we have a picturesque account of the early years of Rome ; we have also a picture of the attitude of the Romans in the Augustan age towards their early history. The first account is hardly at all historical and of little importance for us, but the other picture is historically im¬ portant and quite authentic. You grant the facts of the Gospel narrative to be true history, or you may view them critically. But, either way, you should accept St. Matthew’s account with the utmost confidence as depicting the attitude and belief of the time in which he wrote, which is the primitive age of Christianity.