9 Books I Read While Discerning Catholicism: #5 Jesus and The Jewish Roots of Mary by Brant Pitre
9 Books I Read While Discerning Catholicism: #5 Jesus and The Jewish Roots of Mary by Brant Pitre
Pulling an Audible
This is not a reference to the audio streaming service from Amazon. Those following this series will notice that the list has changed. The article originally planned was about Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain Their Turn to Catholicism by Brian Besong and Jonathan Fiqua. But after writing a few of these posts, I realized that this would just rehash the same idea: that Catholicism seems to be able to make individual protestants better Christians without them losing their unique way of looking at the world. So I decided to go with a book that helped confirm my decision, Jesus and The Jewish Roots of Mary.
Was Mary an Issue for Me?
As a Baptist, Mariology was definitely a barrier for me. But once I became Anglican, I discovered very early on that there were Anglican Christians who, though discouraged by their parish priests, did in fact have devotions to Mary. At the time, I was excited for liturgy and reverent worship, and meeting Christians who also believed that philosophers and theologians had an important job in the church.
Later I saw an interview on Pints w/ Aquinas with the truth-slinging-Anglican deacon, now priest,
. He was the first true blooded “Anglo-Catholic” I had seen. He mentioned that he prayed the Rosary every day. When Matt Fradd asked him why, Fr. Calvin responded, “Because our Lady told us to.” So by the time I had started investigating the Catholic church, the Marian dogmas had become less of an obstacle for me. Furthermore, once you understand the concept about “Mary as the Mother of God”, the prayers you pray make a lot more sense.Lastly, on a more practical level, I have become convinced that there is a correlation with Christianity’s acceptance of feminism and its lack of understanding of Mary’s role in salvation history. As women begin to fulfill roles in the Church reserved for men, they are returning to Eve’s ways, which Mary corrected with her graceful obedience. Mary is the greatest woman to ever walk the earth, and she is an antidote to feminism. When a woman submits to Jesus, she will be more like Mary and less like Eve.
Cultural and Political Roadblocks
Dr. Pitre has a great opening in Chapter 4 :
“As an American, I can safely say that I have no firsthand experience of what it means to belong to a ‘kingdom’”
— Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary. Ch. 4., “The Queen Mother”.
This means there are a couple strikes against us as American Christians when we study Mariology. Firstly, it’s difficult for Americans to relate to Christ’s words when he uses the word “kingdom.” After all, we specifically rejected the idea of a monarchy.
Secondly, it’s especially difficult because the Jewish Kingdom is the starting point for Jesus, and most of us aren’t Jewish. So we lack the cultural background as well as the political one to grasp the importance of Mary in the Catholic faith. One might think we are stuck, but we’re not.
A Path Forward
Typologies are a path forward on this discussion. A typology is basically foreshadowing. In the same way we recognize foreshadowing in movies, a hint at what is to come, but only confirmed after the fact, we can also recognize the same kind of thing in the Bible. It’s also Biblical to study the Bible this way, as St. Paul does it explicitly when talking about Adam in Romans 5:13-14.
Just as Christ is the new Adam, there are other shadows in the Old Covenant that are seen when the light of the New Covenant shines on those vessels God chose for his plan to redeem the world. For example, the Twelve Tribes of Israel are a foreshadow of the Twelve Disciples. In the same way the Old Testament prefigures the New Testament, so the Old Adam prefigures the New Adam, Jesus Christ. Similarly, Mary being an essential part of the salvation history means we should expect similar typologies for her.
A Word on Typologies
Know that typologies aren’t just making stuff up, but there are a lot of them. Some are explicit like Romans 5, others are a bit more subtle. For example, the typologies of Jesus seem much more overt, which makes sense because he’s the Messiah and no one else is. Now, I don’t intend to cover all the Marian typologies, the most obvious one being Sara’s laugh and doubt finding its fulfillment in Mary’s “generous yes.” Additionally, do not think that you have to reject these typologies because you’re not Catholic. The typology is not doctrine anymore than an empty tomb is. Typologies, like the empty tomb, serve as the reason for the truth of a doctrine, but they are not the doctrine itself. The events are factual but it’s the doctrine that illuminates the event’s meaningfulness or significance.
Typologies are interesting, but they do not force one to convert. One must convert based on faith in the truth, not because they observed a few patterns. That said, these patterns in the text are profound and worthy of consideration or meditation depending on your tradition.
The Perfect Disciple
For Catholics, Mary is the proto-disciple. By definition, Jesus was not a disciple, he had disciples. We also know that some of them did a better job than others. So the question becomes, “What does the perfect disciple look like?” For Catholics, Mary is the example a believer is supposed to follow. In the same way she says yes to God, we also must say yes to God.
To those uncomfortable with this analysis, we must remember that Jesus himself had favorites. He had a disciple whom he loved, and he obviously privileged Peter, James, and John to see him transfigured. Catholics believe that the ideal disciple is Mary, she is what is possible if we fully submit to God as she did:
“I am the Lord’s servant…May your word to me be fulfilled.” — Luke 1:38
The Ark of the New Covenant and The Assumption
Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a severe hailstorm. A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.
Revelation 11:19-12:1
Coming back to the idea of typology/foreshadowing, the Ark of The Covenant is one of the reasons Catholics affirm the Assumption of Mary as a truth. So, what are the parallels?
Based on Hebrews 9:4 we know what the contents of the Ark were:
The Ten Commandments aka Word of God.
Golden Urn of Manna aka Bread of Life.
Aaron’s (priestly) Staff.
These foreshadow God’s plan for the Virgin who will birth a son and call his name “God with us.” Thus, Mary being the Blessed Virgin, contained in her womb Jesus Christ, God himself, the creator of the universe, who also goes by:
The Word of God made flesh. — John 1.
The Manna from Heaven — John 6.
High Priest of Heaven — Hebrews 4
Now, the Protestant view is that Mary was a sinner. However, she and Jesus shared the same blood, so Protestants say it is a miracle that Jesus was preserved from the sinful nature of Mary. They do this to avoid the logical regress that Mary’s mom would have had to be sinless as well. However, this argument also can be used against Protestants.
First, there’s no logical impossibility that God can’t create sinless creatures in a universe where sin already exists. Adam and Eve were without sin, but Satan had already sinned. So if God can prevent Jesus from being sinless, he can prevent Mary from being sinless as well. Again, these propositions are accepted by faith, not because God could not logically do one or the other, as both ultimately appeal to the miraculous as the mechanism by which God preserved either subject from sin.
The idea that Mary was sinless became clear to me earlier this Advent season, when our priest discussed 2 Samuel 7. David intended to use the finest woods and gold to prepare a place for the Lord’s Ark of the Covenant. The Prophet Nathan tells David to go for it. But God tells Nathan that night:
Go tell my servant David, ‘This is what the Lord says:
“Are you going to build a house for me to inhabit?” The Lord also announces to you: “The Lord will himself build a house for you. When your life is complete and you go to join your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who will come forth from your body, and I will fortify his kingdom.
— 2 Samuel 7:5;11-12
Keep in mind, these are typological interpretations, not literal interpretations. As with all prophecy, it must be true at the time (historical) it was spoken as well as for the future. We know that God saying he will be Solomon’s father doesn’t diminish what it means when Jesus says “I and my Father are one”, if anything, it only strengthens the typological relationship that Jesus is also the New Solomon.
God is telling David, “I will decide where I will dwell and who gets to do it.” Fast forward to the New Testament, God doesn’t choose gold or silver, he chooses the pinnacle of non-divine creation, his Crowned Jewel (Revelation 12), a fully human, Virgin without a trace of divinity in her own nature. In doing so, God demonstrates what a person can become if they let Him work in their life.
At this point we can go two ways, we can interpret this as God humbling himself because he took the womb of a sinner (Protestant view), or we can take the Catholic view that he created and preserved Mary as the true Ark of the Covenant, a dwelling place better than anything man could create. The same God worked two different miracles, one for Mary’s immaculate conception, and for Christ’s reception into her womb by virtue of the shadow of the Holy Spirit. God prepared her to be a vessel suitable for the King of the Universe; the same King that is depicted in revelation.
Finally, Jesus as the New David, is how Pitre concludes that she must have been assumed into heaven. It should be noted, there are other historical arguments that I don’t recall Pitre getting into, but his aim is more of a Biblical case for these dogmas, not a purely historical one.
Pitre, discussing the Assumption, says:
As we will see in Chapter 4, the New Testament depicts Jesus as the new Davidic king — a kind of “new David” (cf. Matthew 1:1). Now, if Mary is the new Ark of the Covenant, then it makes sense that Jesus, the new David, would bring her up into heaven to be with him forever in the heavenly Temple. In other words, the New Testament revelation of Mary as the new Ark is essential for understanding the belief in her bodily assumption into heaven…
…She is the one who, through God’s grace, has been made completely holy. She is the one whose body has been preserved from corruption and taken up into the heavenly Holy of Holies to be with the risen Jesus for all eternity.
As the new Moses, Jesus ascends “into heaven” in his body to show us that the early promised land is not the ultimate destination of his “exodus” (Luke 9:31). The true exodus begins in this world and ends in the heavenly world to come. In a similar way, Mary’s identity as the new Ark, who is made holy by God’s grace, preserved from bodily corruption, and assumed into heaven, sheds light on the destiny of our bodies and souls. Jesus dies and rises again so that the body of every person can be transformed by grace into a “temple of the holy spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19).
— Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary. Ch. 3., “The New Ark”
Queen Mother
One last element is the honor to Christ and his Queen Mother. In the Jewish Kingdom, the Queen was, according to Pitre, the mother of the King. She was not his spouse. We see this with Solomon, when he offers Bathsheba a throne at his right hand.
When Bathsheba went to King Solomon to speak to him for Adonijah, the king stood up to meet her, bowed down to her and sat down on his throne. He had a throne brought for the king’s mother, and she sat down at his right hand.
— 1 Kings 2:19-20
Brant Pitre comments:
Equally important, the mother of the king was not merely honored with the title of queen mother. She also held an “official position in the kingdom,” second in rank only to the king himself. In other words, the queen mother reigned alongside the king.
— Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary. Ch. 4., “The Queen Mother”
Conclusion
I know that most of the readers here will not agree with these interpretations, but it’s important to know that Catholics are not just making stuff up when they make their claims, any more than any other denomination. We can stack up tons and tons of information back and forth, but God never says that the smartest guys are the ones that get to heaven. He says it’s those who have faith and obey his commands. They honor what he honors, and do what he wants them to do. Mary can provide Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant, an example of what perfect submission to his will looks like. For those wondering what Mary would say to those seeking to honor Christ, I think we can assume she would say what she said at the Wedding of Cana:
His mother said to the servers, “Do whatever he tells you.”
— John 2:5
Coming up next…
For those that just want the list, here it is. I attempted to put them in the order I purchased and read them, not necessarily by order of significance. If you decide to purchase them, please use my affiliate links here below 👇 . That way I get a kick back 😇.
Rome Sweet Home by Scott Hahn
40 Reasons Why I’m Catholic by Peter Kreeft
The Obscurity of Scripture: Disputing Sola Scriptura and the Protestant Notion of Biblical Perspicuity by Casey Chalk
Jesus and The Jewish Roots of Mary by Brant Pitre
The Lamb’s Supper by Scott Hahn
This is My Body by Bishop Barron
Persecuted from Within by Joshua Charles and Alec Torres
Saint Maximilian Kolbe: A Hero of The Holocaust by Fiorella De Maria
Honorable Mention:
The Case for Catholicism by Trent Horn
Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain Their Turn to Catholicism by Brian Besong and Jonathan Fiqua