Interview: Scot Mcknight on Evangelicals and Marian Dogmas

 
May 21st, 2007 by Michael Spencer

UPDATE: I have gotten more mail on this than any recent piece. I just can’t individually answer these letters. So sorry. I need an assistant.
The reason Scot Mcknight is such an amazing gift to the church is that he is humble enough to make his formidable skills as a New Testament scholar available to bloggers like me.
I’ve been doing some study on the subject of Roman Catholic Marian dogmas, and Scot was kind enough to answer some questions for me on very short notice. Since I have many new Roman Catholic friends on this blog, I wanted to share a few of our genuine differences so we can respect and appreciate what we have in common.
Scot, best known for The Jesus Creed book and blog, is a professor of New Testament at North Park University near Chicago. He has written The Real Mary, a book that seeks to recover a thoroughly Biblical view of the real first century mother of Jesus. Mcknight’s work was part of a big year for books on Mary, including Tim Perry’s Mary for Evangelicals. I asked Scot some questions that were on my mind about the inevitable differences between those of us who confess the Apostle’s Creed, but disagree deeply over the continuing role of Mary.
1. You’ve done great scholarly and popular work helping Protestants to recover a Biblical view of Mary. Assuming that all Christians can ride the “Mary Bus” together for some distance, where do you believe evangelical Protestants have to get off?
Different evangelicals will get off at different stops. I encounter some evangelicals who won’t get on a bus with the name “Mary” on it or near it. My own experience with these sorts is that they have reacted, justifiably, to Marian extravagances in their past or in the their family. Others are quite happy to appreciate a Mary who learned, as did Peter, that the vision of Messiah Jesus was revealing was one that required they surrender their political vision for a cross vision. Some high church evangelicals, on the other hand, are quite happy to embrace the historic center of the Church on Mary — including perpetual virginity and immaculate conception. Recently an editor of a magazine said he embraced those things because the Church has always embraced those traditions. Tim Perry’s new book is a potent examination of Mary from an evangelical perspective that both looks these doctrines straight in the face and modifies them in such a way that many evangelicals will embrace the Marian doctrines he employs. I can’t go as far as Perry.
2. What would a “Marian Spirituality” look like for evangelicals?
Well, I’m not one into using anything like “Marian spirituality” too often, but I would embrace a spirituality, a vision of the spiritual life, that took Mary — like Peter and Paul and others — as powerful models. In particular, her spirituality is one that is deeply immersed in the Old Testament and its vision of redemption, obedience to the Lord, and declaration of redemption in her Son.

3. How far can evangelicals go Biblically in emphasizing Mary’s place in redemption?
In my judgment, we can do nothing that diminishes the significance of the work of the Trinitarian God and, in particular, anything that diminishes the saving life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is to be avoided. Mary witnesses to that salvation; she is not part of that redemption. The fact is, God chose Mary; so Mary is part of the redemptive plan of God as the Mother of Jesus, the God-Bearer. But, Mary did nothing for redemption and does nothing now for redemption.

4. In what ways is Mary and intercessor and an advocate? How is she not?
An important question for us evangelicals: Does Mary have an intercessory role in our redemption or spirituality? If she does, I would be the first to say that Mary’s “intercessory” role is the same as your and my intercessory role. She intercedes as you and I intercede for others who ask us to intercede. At least this is what is traditionally thought in Catholicism. But, this dimension of Catholicism has been developed so highly — that is, she becomes the focal point of intercessory prayer — that it is easy to think Catholics believe Mary is THE intercessor. This extravagance in practice is not taught in official dogma by Catholicism, where it is emphasized that Mary’s intercession is exclusively based on the redemptive and intercessory powers of her Son. We must admit this if we are good theologians. I’m the first, however, to say that this element of Marian dogma has been distorted among Catholics.

5. When I read the 4th and 5th Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary, it really discourages me regarding my hard-won place as an evangelical friend of Roman Catholics. What would you say to a Protestant who reacts really negatively to these descriptions of the Assumption and Coronation of Mary?
Yes, I agree: the 4th and 5th mysteries of the Rosary concern me in that they begin to diminish the work of Christ by seemingly permitting Mary to take on a centrality and importance that cannot be supported by the New Testament.
4. As she had nourished the infant Jesus, so she nourishes spiritually the infant Church.
5. Mary dies, not of bodily infirmity, but is wholly ravished in a rapture of divine love.
Mary is seen here as Queen Mother, as the Mother of the Church, and some find support for this in Revelation 12. The evidence, in my judgment, does not support this role for Mary. To be sure, Mary asked her Son to make wine; even though he pushed back at her suggestion, he clearly did what she had hoped would happen. And in John 19 Mary is the “mother” of John, who is a disciple — but I can’t find textual support for thinking this text establishes Mary as Mother of the Church. The record of history — that is from the first two centuries — shows no evidence of this kind of Mary-as-Mother-of-the Church.
The 5th mystery owes to the papal decree of the glorious assumption –that Mary, who had not sinned (since she had herself been immaculately conceived), could not have died a normal death since it is sin that leads to death. Hence, the theory that Mary was “taken” or “assumed.” That is, she seemingly died but really it was her love that ravished her body into the very presence of God. How does one defeat such a doctrine except to contend that we believe in the Bible and until this can be shown in the Bible, we do not need to affirm it as part of our theology.

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