VI Coredemptrix and Mediatrix
The Christian Research Institute (CRI) next turns its guns on the titles “coredemptrix” and “mediatrix,” with which Catholics sometimes invoke Mary. “Coredemptrix” implies that Mary cooperated with her Son in redeeming mankind; “mediatrix” means that, in subordination to Christ, she promotes our access to the Father. (As CRI notes, “mediatrix” may include also the title “dispensatrix,” which implies that Mary has a role to play in the distribution of graces of redemption to us, her children.) .
CRI quotes Catholic theologian Ludwig Ott: ” ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word.’ The Incarnation of the Son of God and the redemption of mankind by the vicarious atonement of Christ were dependent on her assent.83
CRI writes, “Nowhere does the Bible teach such an inflated conception of Mary’s role – as though the fate of all humanity was hanging on her choice. God determined before time began that he would redeem the world through the death of his Son…. No human being could have stood in the way of this; to hold otherwise would mean denying the central biblical doctrine of God’s sovereignty” (CRl’s emphasis).84
I fear that the writer has made up his mind and does not wish to be bothered by the facts – in this case, by the fact that Catholics, whose belief is as Ott describes it, nevertheless affirm God’s supreme sovereignty. Another fact which CRI ignores is human freedom, a biblical doctrine as well as a fact of our daily experience. Reconciling God’s supreme dominion with human freedom, while doing violence to neither, is one of theology’s knottiest problems – certainly not one to be solved in this article. Yet the Bible does teach that we are free and that we can throw a wrench into the engine of God’s eternal plans – in fact, we often have. Man cannot ultimately defeat God’s purposes, but by God’s permission and providence man can certainly sabotage them temporarily.
Free Will Has a Long Pedigree
In the Old Testament, God made covenant after covenant with his people, and time after time his people (or certain key individuals among them) upset God’s plans by abusing their freedom. They sinned. Think of Adam and Eve (Gen. 3), Cain (Gen. 4), Noah and his brood (Gen. 9:1827), the sons of Samuel (1 Sam. 8:122), Saul (1 Sam. 15:10-31; 28:15-19). Think of the denunciations of Isaiah (65:12) and Jeremiah (7:13-15). Think, above all, of the terrible recriminations of Jesus in Matthew 21:33-45 and 23:29-38. His words are clear: “I yearned to gather your children together….but you were unwilling! ”
Of course, Mary was free to say “no” to God’s invitation. She was free because she was human, and her value to God, who wanted to become human, was that his prospective Mother was fully human. If he had forced her, or if he had subtracted her freedom from her humanity, she would have been left an un- person, subhuman. Does any Bible Christian really suppose that Jesus was mothered by a zombie? That would surely be unbiblical; it would even be un-Protestant.
Reformers Support Catholic View
Martin Luther said, “The holy Virgin would never have conceived the Son of God if she had not believed the annunciation of the angel.”85 But belief is a free human act, assisted by God’s grace. John Calvin wrote in his Commentary on Luke (1:42, 45), “Now she is called blessed; receiving by faith the blessing which is offered to her, she opened the way for God to accomplish his work” (emphasis mine). The Anglican de Satge writes, “She was chosen, but the dialogue in Luke’s account shows that her own response was not a foregone conclusion. She asked for clarifications and she was given them….Mary exercised her free choice to accept God’s choice of her.”86
Evangeline Cory Booth, the daughter of General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, was no theologian, but she was a good Protestant and a fair thinker. In a lecture, she said, “The free agency of man is a cardinal truth accepted by the whole Church. We are all free to accept or reject God’s plan for us. The whole Bible proves this [emphasis mine]. Mary is no exception to the rule. Mary might have refused….The angel Gabriel was sent, not only to make the annunciation, but to gain Mary’s concurrence or consent to fall in with God’s will.”87
Was Mary Unable to Say No?
CRI refers to Psalm 115:3 to “prove” Mary had no freedom to refuse her calling: “Our God is in heaven; whatever he wills, he does.” It is dangerous to read a Bible verse in isolation. First Timothy 2:4 says, “God…wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth,” but Matthew 25:41 opens up the possibility that some will not be saved.
Is God’s dominion threatened by sinners’ free refusal of his saving grace? Obviously not. The world’s salvation certainly was determined in God’s eternal decree, but Mary’s freedom was budgeted for in that same eternal decree. If Mary had backed down, God would have found some other way to accomplish his designs.
But since she did freely assent, Mary participates in our redemption at its very source. Therefore, in an entirely subordinate, creaturely way, empowered entirely by God’s redeeming grace, she is a “coredeemer.”
“If our attitude towards divine plans is not docile, not even God can act. But in faith Mary consented, and consenting she believed. Nothing could henceforth arrest the efficacy of the divine advances; in Mary, humanity had made an act of saving faith.”88
Christ a Loner?
CRI denies that Mary is in any sense associated with Christ in the distribution of his graces to us, objecting that the eternal Logos (Christ) was not Mary’s to give: “Mary was merely the vehicle the Triune God chose for the Logos’s entry into this world.”89 (Yes, Virginia, the writer actually calls Mary a “vehicle”!).
“In Scripture,” CRI continues, “after this miracle is accomplished, she recedes into the background, and we read little about her.”90 Little, perhaps, but that little is much: Everywhere that Mary appears, she is important; she steadily counterpoints her Son. In her last appearance on earth (Acts 1:14) she is at prayer with the brothers and sisters of her firstborn (Rom. 8:29), who are, in a spiritual sense, her children too, as they wait with her for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Who will dare to say that her prayers and theirs had nothing to do with the Spirit’s coming?
Misconstruing 1 Timothy 2:5
The core of CRI’s rejection of Mary’s subordinate mediation is its interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:5, “For there is one God. There is also one mediator between God and the human race, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as ransom for all.” I might add the words of Peter in Acts 4:12: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.”
CRI lists several texts from Hebrews (2:16-18, 4:14-16; 7:23-28; 8:1, 6, 13; 9:12-14, 24-26; 10:1-22) which illustrate this “major theme of the New Testament.”91 To say Mary is coredeemer and mediatrix, alleges CRI, is to violate this Bible teaching.
What Paul Really Meant
Why does Paul’s affirmation of Jesus as the one mediator come where it does in 1 Timothy? In 2: 1-2 he recommends that Timothy’s church members pray for all men (even rulers in that time of persecution of Christians by the Roman authorities!) In 2:3-4 he reassures Timothy that such prayer is good and pleasing to God our Savior. Why? Because God “wills everyone to be saved.” In the key text, 2:5, Paul gives the reason for his insistence upon prayer for pagans: “For there is one God… one mediator between God and the human race, Christ Jesus…who gave himself as ransom for all.”
The principal point of Paul’s teaching in 2:1-5 is that we must pray for everybody because God is everybody’s God. There is no other. Christ alone is for everyone the only way to the Father. Gentiles, even harsh rulers, are men and women. Christ the God-Man is their Christ too. He is the go-between for them and not just for us.
Paul hammers this teaching home in 2:6-7 by noting that Christ gave himself as a ransom for all, not just for those already Christian. Paul reminds Timothy and his group that he (Paul) was appointed preacher and apostle to the Gentiles (Gentiles yet!).
The fact is that in 1 Timothy 2:1-7 (the whole context, mind you), Paul commands all Christians to be mediators and intercessors for all men because God is God of all and Christ is Christ for all. He concludes by saying that he himself is a mediator too, as preacher and apostle.
The high point of the passage is verse 5, where he enthrones Christ, the mediator par excellence, who by uniting us to himself makes mediators of us all for all. The whole passage, verses 1-7, is a unit and must be read as a unit. Its message is broadly ecumenical, a missionary message, a message of outreach. By a sad irony, CRI misreads the message, shatters it, and uses one shard (verse 5 out of context) as a shibboleth for a narrow brand of “reformist” theology.
Contradicting its own position, CRI oddly concludes, “Believers are called to participate subordinately in Christ’s mediating work (e.g., 1 Pet. 2:9, 2 Cor. 5:20)…. As mediators, believers can represent God to man (through proclaiming his word and man to God (through prayer).”92
CRI Contradicts Itself
At this admission I am ready to quit the field of battle, rejoicing in victory. But CRI illogically goes on: “This is not the issue!” (Isn’t it?) The issue, it seems, is this: “While others beside Christ can play mediating roles between man and God, there is a line of demarcation that separates [my emphasis and shock] the mediation of Christ from that of all others; certain critical attributes and functions that only he can possess and perform.” And here is the nub of the objection: “[I]n certain significant respects, Catholicism places Mary on Christ’s side of the line.”93
Not only is Christ like us in everything, sin alone excepted (Heb. 4:15), but he has joined his members to himself in a union of life and love, in which we are living branches of Christ the vine (John 15:5), members of his body the Church (1 Cor. 12:13, 27). It is this union with Christ which empowers us to produce the fruit of good works. This is faith working through love and not any power originating in us. We share the nature of God (2 Pet. 1:4) through our identity as the Church (Acts 9:4-5).
What We Share with Christ
We also share his priesthood. CRI blows smoke by talking about Mary’s diminishing the “all-sufficiency and glory of Christ’s priesthood,” the “uniqueness of his priestly role,” the “integrity of his high priesthood.”94 Nonsense. It is Christ himself who has given all his members, Mary included, a share in his own priesthood. “He has made us into a kingdom, priests for his God and Father” (Rev. 1:6, 5:10,20:6). We all share in his priesthood, our Mother and ourselves, all his disciples (1 Pet. 2:5, 9).
But what about the priestly function of making expiation for sin? Every Christian including Mary must do this in Christ – that is what taking up our cross daily and following him means. “Christ’s sufferings overflow to us” (2 Cor. 1:5). “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, on behalf of his body, the Church” (Col. 1:24).
That is shared priestly expiation. We are partners and cooperators with Christ in our own salvation and in the redemption of others. We are all coredeemers and mediators with him, Mother and children alike. How? Why? Because that is the way his love has arranged our salvation. The branches live with the life of the vine, and the branches bear the fruit of eternal life (John 15:5-8), because they are united to Christ the vine.
CRI’s Big No-No
Now, about praying to Mary, the saints, and the angels: This is a complete no-no for CRI. “No departed believer is shown in Scripture to be the object of prayer. Biblically, when a man (or woman) prays, he talks to God through the mediation of the God-man, Jesus Christ. No heavenly entities other than the persons of the Trinity figure into the picture.”95
Untrue. Jesus the mediator is the head of a host of subordinate mediators – his members, his branches – who, because of their oneness with him, share in his priestly activity, part of which is intercession.
The vine and the body are metaphors for the Church. The Church is not a collection of isolated individuals, but a family of adopted brothers and sisters of Christ, children of God (2 Cor. 6:18). We are members of one another (Eph. 4:25), and it is God’s will for us to have concern for one another (1 Cor. 12:25). We are the household of God (1 Tim. 3:15), both here and forever in heaven (Rev. 13:6).
No “Dispensation” in Heaven
Our members in heaven are not “dispensed” from having concern for us still on earth. That they are aware of us and concerned for us is the teaching of Hebrews 12:1-2. “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [the saints in heaven, Heb. 11], let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin…and persevere… while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus.” This text means that these heavenly witnesses are a help to us in our efforts, and their help is integrated and finds its goal in Jesus.
In Revelation 4:4, 10; 5:8, twenty-four “elders” engage in worship before the throne of God and of the Lamb. Are these elders saints in heaven, or are they angels? It would seem they are human, because they are distinguished from angels in 5:11. Whoever they are, these heavenly worshipers are involved with us and our concerns, because each of them holds a golden bowl “filled with incense which is the prayers of the holy ones” (5:8). The “holy ones” or “saints” are, in New Testament language, the members of the Church on earth. So the heavenly elders offer our prayers to God as part of their own divine worship.
If Saints Really Love God…
None of this biblical witness has any meaning to one who denies that we on earth can pray to our Mother and to our siblings in heaven, the saints. To be in heaven is to love to perfection (1 Cor. 13:8, 13). Do the saints in heaven love God? Do they love their brothers and sisters still on earth? If they do, then how do they express and manifest this love for us? By praying for us, of course. They have no other way.
Can we, on our part, from down here, get in touch with them, pray to them, ask their prayers? Christians have always done so, with God’s full approval. Our God is the Father of an adopted family. He loves us. He is not a dog-in-the-manger God. He is not insecure, threatened when his children show love for and trust in one another. He is not paranoid nor miserly of his own glory.
He welcomes our prayers to his angels and saints, and he welcomes their intercession on our behalf. There is nothing in the Bible which contradicts Catholic belief and practice here and much in the Bible which teaches and supports the Catholic doctrine of the communion of saints.
A Damaging Admission
CRI objects that Catholics “link Mary in the heavenly chain between Jesus and man” and so “place Mary in a mediating position unoccupied by other believers.” This supposedly “depreciates the all-sufficiency and glory of Christ’s priesthood.”96 (I overlook the “chain” metaphor, which finds no place in the Bible or in Catholic doctrine.) Mary certainly has a special place among us because she is both Mother and first disciple of our Redeemer. She is more exalted and her prayers are more powerful because she is holier than all the other saints and all the angels.
In this regard CRI makes a slippery but very damaging admission: “While some [disciples] may be more effective in prayer because of the moral character of their lives (Jas. 5:16b), they all stand on the same ground, which has nothing to do with their personal holiness.”97 CRI admits, therefore, that Mary’s prayers are effective since she is holy, “full of grace” (Luke 1:28). But what does it meanthat all disciples (Mary included) stand on the same ground?
CRI explains: “The Church portrays the basis for Mary’s mediation as being more like that of Christ than that of other believers. Christ is qualified to serve as mediator between man and God because of his absolute holiness (Heb. 7:26). Believers, on the other hand, all are qualified to pray – for themselves or others – strictly on the basis of Christ’s imputed merits, received through faith (Rom. 3:21-28; Eph. 3:12)…. But Mary serves as mediatrix on the basis of her perfect holiness – the same basis Christ serves on.…Even if we grant that this holiness is the ‘imparted righteousness of Christ,’ as the church teaches [emphasis mine], it is still in a real sense hers. This places her in a similar light as Christ, again diluting the uniqueness of his priestly role.”98
A Horrible Blunder
CRI has blundered badly by confusing the essence of Christ’s mediation with the personal holiness which befits him as mediator. The ground upon which Christ alone can stand, and by virtue of which he exercises perfect mediation, is not his absolute holiness, but his Incarnation, the hypostatic union of the human nature and the divine in the one divine Person of the Word.
CRI is not only confused in this passage of the article, but contradicts another passage in the same article, which, in fact, got the matter right:”This is the significance of the Incarnation: Because he is man, Christ is able to function as our mediator [emphasis mine]; because he is God, we have direct access into the presence of deity and never have to settle for anything less.”99
Of course, Mary does not stand upon the same “ground” as Christ. He alone is the Word made flesh. But on two accounts she is superior to us: in discipleship and in holiness, holiness being closeness of union with Christ and, through him, with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
She directly ministered to the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, when he took flesh from her in her womb, assuming human nature in the hypostatic union (which is theobabble for “she’s his Mom”). Secondly, she has received more grace from him than we and has used it far better than we, being sinless from her creation and through all of her pilgrimage here. Her fullness of grace means far more than her utter freedom from sin. It includes all God’s gifts to her, especially her vocation as Mother of God.
I shall now try to abbreviate the next part of CRI’s attack on our Church and our Mother in a series of statements based – I hope not too loosely – on the text of the article.100
1. If Mary can influence her Son to help us, he must otherwise be less disposed to do so. I answer this objection with words from John 2:1-11: “They have no wine!” “Woman, what’s that to you and me? My hour has not yet come.” “Do whatever he tells you.” “Draw out now and take the wine to the headwaiter.” I would not say Christ showed himself “less disposed” to help the newlyweds here. He simply and freely had given his Mother a role to play in the bestowal of his gift. He still does that – all the time, in all his dealings with us.
2. Apart from Mary’s mediation, Christ himself would not be perfectly reconciled to us. I answer that, from the beginning, God in his work of perfect reconciliation included Mary as Christ’s minister, associate, and disciple in her own salvation and in ours. It is futile to consider Christ “apart from Mary,” because he never is apart from her, by his own free choice. The Second Vatican Council teaches (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, 103), “Holy Church honors the Blessed Mary, Mother of God, with a special love. She is inseparably linked with her Son’s saving work. In her the Church admires and exalts the most excellent fruit of redemption and joyfully contemplates, as in a faultless image, that which she herself desires and hopes wholly to be.”
3. Either Mary’s role is superfluous or Christ’s mediation is inadequate. I answer that Christ mediates between humans (including Mary) and the Father by uniting us to himself in a vital union of members to head, branches to vine. Since he has assumed our human nature from her alone, her role in his plan is unique. Yet it is all his plan. No one, Mary included, has anything except from him. But as we are members of one another, we enj oy one another and we pray for one another. God wills this. We are not “superfluous” for one another.
Do we pray for Mary then? Yes, we pray that her joy may increase as she becomes known and loved by more and more of her children and as she draws them all closer to her Son. With this in mind, I often now pray for the people at the Christian Research Journal, and I invite the reader to join me.
Justification and Salvation
CRI then sketchily notices the problem of justification and salvation, a matter about which Catholics and Protestants tend to disagree. “In the Protestant view, salvation is assured [my emphasis] to the true believer, because it has been received as a gift by grace through faith (Eph. 2:8-9; Rom. 3:21-24). Thus, since the Christian is already saved, etc.”101 This doctrine of assurance of salvation hews closely to the Reformation line and so strays from the Bible.
The Bible teaches that faith in Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation. It nowhere says that faith is sufficient for salvation, and it nowhere says that an individual possesses certainty of his own salvation. Paul was certainly a Christian who believed in “salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15), but he was not self-complacent, so as to say, “I know for a fact I am going to heaven.” He says of himself, “I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes” (1 Cor. 4:4-5). Again, he says, “I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air; but I chastise my body and bring it under subjection, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Cor. 9:27).
He suggests that effort in good works and penance are necessary for salvation, as Christ taught before him (Luke 9:23, 13:3-5, 14:27). Paul says we hold the treasure of God’s grace in earthen vessels (2 Cor. 4:7). This alone should keep us from self- complacency in our faith. “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). He teaches the need for personal examination of conscience, especially before receiving Christ in the Eucharist (1 Cor. 11:28), and he makes this powerful plea against self-complacency: “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12).
A Little more Sobriety, Please…
Peter teaches us the need for sobriety and watchfulness against temptation, and he warns us we have to win our salvation in suffering with Christ (1 Pet. 5:8-10). James is clearest of all in teaching that faith is not sufficient for salvation: “Even the demons believe – and tremble” (Jas. 2:19). His teaching accords with Paul’s: If we are to be saved, good living is required, patience and perseverance in good works (Rom. 2:7, Gal. 6:7-10, 2 Thess. 3:12-13).
We should have faith in Jesus, not faith in faith. Faith is a daily recommitment to him, not a once-for-all thing. It lives and grows as we do. It is Christ-centered, leaving ourselves and our destiny in his hands because we are sure he loves us. Egotism cannot live with authentic Bible-faith, but it easily creeps in to a once-for-all, complacent faith.
Luther’s “Epistle of Straw”
We should reflect that this once-for-all faith was absolutely unknown before Martin Luther, who even wanted to take the epistle of James out of the Bible because James teaches so dearly that faith alone is not sufficient. This Luther-faith is not Bible-faith and should be dropped because it is “another gospel” (Gal. 1:8-9).
CRI also does not like us to say that Mary is the Mother of mercy. Nor does it wish us to think that, because of Mary’s intercession, we have nothing to fear from Jesus, our judge. We are told that this flies in the face of Hebrews 4:15-16 (it doesn’t, as a matter of fact). First John 5:16 tells us to pray for the sinner, and God will give him life.
If, because of Tom’s, Dick’s, and Harry’s intercession, God will give the sinner life so that he has nothing to fear from Jesus the judge, I should think that Mary also qualifies to intercede with her Son. Since Mary is the Mother of the whole Church, indeed of all mankind, her intercession extends to us all. This is the way God has arranged matters with us.
Mary’s intercession with her Son, claims CRI, “makes hollow the Church’s assurance that Mary’s mediation ‘neither takes away anything from nor adds anything to the dignity and efficacy of Christ the one mediator.’”102
I say, if the Church’s assurance seems hollow to the folks at the Christian Research Institute, I regret their reluctance to believe, but Catholics must and will continue to follow the gospel anyway.
Endnotes
83 Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Rockford: TAN Books, 1974),212.
84 Elliott Miller, “The Mary of Roman Catholicism,” Christian Research Journal, Fall 1990, 29. The first part of Miller’s article appeared in the Summer 1990 issue. In these notes the two parts are referred to as Part 1 and Part 2. The articles represent the position of the Christian Research Institute.
85 Luther’s Works, 31:273.
86 John de Satge, Down to Earth: The New Protestant View of the Virgin Mary (Consortium, 1976), 52.
87 Quoted by de Satge, ibid., 62.
88 James O’Mahony, quoted in The Official Handbook of the Legion of Mary (Dublin: Concilium Legionis Mariae, 1969),9.
89 Part 2, 29.
90 Ibid.
91 Ibid., 30.
92 Ibid.
93 Ibid. This notion of a line is a metaphor nowhere used in Scripture or in Catholic theology.
94 Ibid., 30-31.
95 95. Ibid., 30.
96 Ibid.
97 Ibid.
98 Ibid.
99 Ibid.
100 Ibid., 30.
101 101. Ibid.
102 Ibid., quoting Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 62. See also Ambrose, Letters 63, PL 16:1218.