"What about Mary?"

An essay by Jason Byassee at The Christian Century, Dec. 14, 2004:

.... Much of what being Protestant has historically meant has involved a protest against the Catholic devotion to Mary. Nevertheless, the Second Vatican Council declared in Lumen Gentium that Mary is a potential ecumenical bridge, a source of the future unity of all Christians. That suggestion might seem either ridiculous or insulting to Protestants. But recently there has been a flurry of publications by Protestants on Mary, works that suggest she could be an ecumenical bridge — or at least that the Protestant aversion to Marian devotion is eroding.

Beverly Roberts Gaventa, a biblical scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary, has led the charge with Mary: Glimpses of the Mother of Jesus (1995) and with a collection of essays she coedited called Blessed One: Protestant Perspectives on Mary (2002). Meanwhile, Robert Jenson’s monumental two-volume Systematic Theology (1997 and 1999) and another collection of coedited essays, Mary: Mother of God (2004), has given a certain pride of place to the Mother of God.

Church historians of all stripes have long granted that Marian teaching and devotion dates from the earliest days of the church. And they grant that devotion to Mary was not discarded even by the leading Reformation figures Luther, Calvin and Zwingli....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 01/18/05 07:14:54 AM
Categorized as Religious.