Pints With Aquinas - *EVERY* Objection to Mary Answered 🤯 w/ William Albrecht & Fr. Christiaan Kappas

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

In this episode we're going to try to answer EVERY objection to four dogmas on Mary: The Mother of God; the immaculate conception; perpetual virginity, and the bodily assumption. Sponsors: Hallow (FREE TRIAL): https://hallow.com/matt Exodus90: https://exodus90.com/matt-home/ Parler: https://parler.com/mattfradd Get William and Fr Kappas' book on the Theotokos here: https://www.amazon.com/Definitive-Guide-Solving-Biblical-Questions/dp/B08KQ86STG/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=the+definitive+guide+to+solving+biblical+questions+about+mary&qid=1670526151&sprefix=the+definitive+guide+to+solv%2Caps%2C108&sr=8-1-fkmr0 Fr. Kappas on the Immaculate Conception: https://academyoftheimmaculate.com/products/immaculate-conception-kappes

All right, we are live. We are live with Father Christian Kappas and William Albrecht. Lovely to have you both on the show. Thanks for having us. We're thrilled to be here with you. I've had both of you on the show before. William, you're usually virtually here debating, so it's great to have you in person. And Father Christian, lovely to have you.

Last minute. Today we are going to try to respond to every conceivable objection to what the Catholic Church teaches about the Blessed Virgin Mary. Now that's quite the feat and we probably won't actually do that, but we'll do our best and so we invite you to help us by maybe writing in objections you have into the live chat and Neil if you would take the especially potent ones and we'll throw them your way. But we also want to say this too, that if there's someone out there who thinks, you

know, you're not really doing a good job responding to these, then we invite, you know, the most capable opponent of these church teachings to come on the show and to debate yourself, William. Yep. You know, not in a contentious way, but just like we don't want to be attacking straw men. And so that invitation is there as well. We'll just have to wait for a day that I'm free, but I'm sure we could arrange that with the next few months or whatever. Definitely.

Happy feast day, by the way. Yeah, happy feast of the Immaculate Conception. And for some of our Byzantine Christians in the United States, tomorrow will be the feast of the Immaculate Conception for them. Indeed. What a for them. Indeed. What a wonderful day. Yeah. You guys, were you raised Catholic? I was not.

No, I was not. I didn't know that. I converted. I was Protestant for many years. Reformed Protestant, became Catholic almost two decades ago now, and probably one of my greatest objections was Mary. It was a huge stumbling block for me. Who would have ever thought that the very first book I would have co-authored would have been on Mary?

I would have never believed it when I was an anti-Catholic, and I wasn't an anti-Catholic for a long time. I think this is important. Would you do us a favor and just sort of articulate the emotional and doctrinal obstacle that Mary was for you? And the reason I want you to do that is we have a lot of Protestant listeners and they'll write in, they're like, listen, I wanna be Catholic and I'm not trying to be argumentative. I just cannot buy the Mary issue. So we're gonna get into the doctrinal issues,

but maybe just like speak in a way that they realize you hear them. Yeah. I definitely do Matt. It was difficult for me to ever pray to Mary. It was hard for me to get on board with Mary being immaculate, to get on board with Mary being a perpetual virgin. I couldn't wrap my head around it. Now, when I began looking into the Catholic faith, began reading the early Church Fathers in depth, I realized the problem really was with me. If all of the early believers of Christ, and when I say all of them, I mean all of them believed Mary was a perpetual Virgin, every early Church Father. Now, we

don't count the heretics as Church Fathers. They all believe that, and if I am sticking to something that not even the Reformers believed, they believed Mary was perpetual virgin as well. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli. Clearly the problem lay with me, and I had to dig in deeper and deeper, and digging in deeper eventually led me to become Catholic. Now, I will tell the audience, I did discern orthodoxy for a bit. I did give it a fair look, but in the end I chose Catholicism. Matthew 16 I remember William Lane Craig doing an interview about the Blessed Virgin Mary on his podcast.

He maybe was on Catholicism in general, and he did a good job at speaking kindly about his Catholic brothers and sisters, pointed out that he recognizes us as fellow Christians and such. But he said, listen Catholics, you have to understand what it's like as a Protestant when you walk into a Catholic church, say in Europe somewhere, because you're visiting and you've got a statue to our Lord, a statue to our lady, and the statue to our lady has a blaze of candles in front of it, whereas the statue to our Lord may not. Do you not see how this looks? And I think that's a good point.

What do you think? Yeah, I mean, if only we still had the first temple around where all those cherubim were flying around and the overshadowing cherubim and all those animals that God ordered to be created, we could be equally scandalized by the Jewish first temple. Yeah, well, that is a good response to those who say we ought not to have statues, isn't it? If you have an example of our Lord commanding the Israelites to create statuary of heavenly beings. Where incense is being burnt and God's most holy place where he appeared at the

mercy seat toward which direction as a chaos or the King has a Kaiah explicitly says that he prays to God underneath the shadows of the two cherubim. Sounds like he's a Catholic without even knowing it. Did you father Christian always, were you always Catholic? Did you always have no problem with our blessing? Born and raised, yeah, I don't have any special story or any sort of antagonisms that went on in my life. Yeah.

Yeah, me neither. I had a very Catholic grandma who would always pray the rosary and I kind of came to the faith when I was 17 years old and it was only at that time I started being introduced to kind of Protestant arguments. And anyway, I'm glad we said that because I just want our Protestant listeners to know like we love you, we value you, we don't think your objections are silly. And I can even understand that coming from that background to start hearing the Catholic church talking about Mary and the way that she does,

when you're not familiar with it is bound to be disorientating. Uh, if not to say scandalous. So that's fair enough. Um, and then before we get, we're going to dive into the Immaculate Conception, but y'all have written a book together on the Blessed Virgin Mary. It's linked below, so we encourage people to check it out, but what is it basically about? Yeah. So, I'll tackle that right away.

The book really covers Mary from a very deep biblical perspective. Now, without a doubt, we have multiple early Church Fathers in there, but we really dig in, look at it from a Bible-based perspective. Now without a doubt we have multiple early church fathers in there, but we really dig in, look at it from a Bible based perspective. How can we approach Mary being Mother of God, Mary being ever-virgin, and Mary being sinless from a biblical perspective? And I gotta tell you Matt, people have really, people that are not even Catholic have reached out and told us, we can get on board with the way you've laid the book out. And I think that that is fantastic. Yeah, what came about by offering a series of free articles on William's blog, which is

Patristic Pillars. And basically what we did was as we kept finding more information, both in fathers of the church and better and better arguments through those fathers to really understand how to read the scriptures and the original languages, as the Greek fathers at least were doing, then we were able to say, you know what, what if we package all the new stuff that we have found into a book

instead of just updating the articles and see if people want to actually have that all in one package and it took off. Let me offer a more general objection before we look at each of the dogmas and that's something like this. Why does the church put such emphasis on Mary anyway? Like why can't Christians be free to believe certain things about the Blessed Mother without in a way being mandated. I mean, because when you make something a dogma, you're saying that this is not, you're not free to deny this. You have to accept this. Doesn't it just feel like we're putting obstacles in the way? And what's the point? It's all about Jesus. It's not about the Blessed Virgin Mary. So, yeah.

It's a great question, Matt. Now, I would reply to that by noting that in the early church, very early on, a clear mark of being part of the true church was having a proper Christology, believing Christ was fully man, fully God, belief in the Holy Trinity. Funny enough, along with that also came various beliefs about Mary. Mary as our holy Theotokos, God-bearing, Mother of God. Mary as perpetual Virgin as well. And you find that the only people that denied Mary as being perpetual Virgin were Arians early on, or people that had a very deficient Christology. I would answer that by saying that if the Bible clearly lays out what it does about Mary in divine revelation, then we have got to believe that.

And even if you only find it in one passage, which you don't, you find it in many, even if only in one paragraph, if it is in divine revelation, we are bound to believe that. Okay, Paula? Yeah, I think William's first point, of course, takes us mainly, most people are going to think of as the Council of Ephesus, which happened in 431, which reflect Saint Cyril's real conviction that the potentially third century, but certainly fourth century, devotion to Marius Theotokos is the one who bore in her physical womb God the Word, was essential for understanding who Christ is and if we meditate on that both in Scripture and in the tradition that will understand a lot of things

about Christ that are helpful for us to identify with him. But the second thing is, it reminds me, the very ecumenical seminary, St. Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary, was kind enough to honor me by inviting me to give a talk. And they suggested to me when I gave them a series of options to talk on Mary. And it reminded me of the fact that one of the professors who really, we had an enjoyable kind of discussion afterwards, wanted to know about some old Catholic scholars who claimed that there's a debate that the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke, is it about Mary or is it about Jesus? Now the reason why there's a debate is because there's so much Mary talk in that first chapter.

And of course, some of the individuals who would think that maybe Mary is a detracting feature from Christ are gonna be tempted to try to read as much as possible the first chapter of Luke as it needs to be all Christ. And really, we don't want to have very much focus on Mary. Whereas the text itself causes the conversation to arise. And I think that a lot of the questions that we'll be answering today really are based off of the first chapter of Luke, that if,

if it's really all about Jesus in the scripture, we really need to figure out what to do with the first chapter of Luke, because that seems in many places to be all about Jesus in the scripture, we really need to figure out what to do with the first chapter of Luke, because that seems in many places to be all about Mary. All right, well, let's talk about Mary is the mother of God. To me, this seems like the most easy thing to accept. It's a basic syllogism. Mary is the mother of Jesus.

Jesus is God, therefore Mary is the mother of God. I suppose the objections I've. Jesus is God, therefore Mary is the mother of God. I suppose the objections I've heard are things like, it sounds like you're putting Mary chronologically prior to Christ, or that you're somehow putting her over him, or they might say, well, she was the conduit through which Christ came into the world. Or they might say, well, even if you're technically right, the language is so confusing, it leads people to have kind of erroneous views of Christ or God or Mary, therefore it's, since it's so unhelpful, just stop using it. What are your thoughts to those objections and what are some more?

Now I believe Mary as God bearer, mother of God, is definitely biblical. Now we can go to the Gospel of Matthew 1, chapter 1, where we read of the prophecy from Isaiah 7 that a virgin will give birth and will give birth to Immanuel, which means God with us. Now if you break down the Greek there, Immanuel, God with us, you have theos, and to give birth, to bear a child, you have the Greek word tiktos there. That's exactly what we're saying with Mary as theotokos, Godbearer. So I believe it is a biblical, very biblical. Number two, if you look in Luke 1, when Elizabeth greets Mary and says, How is it that the mother of my Lord should come to me? The Greek word utilizes kudias.

Now I know kudias is not always used for Yahweh, but every time kudias appears in Luke 1, every time it is in reference to Yahweh. And without a doubt that is a reference happening in Luke 1. Now of course there's a lot more Matt, but I think really the problem would arise with figures like Turriton, a reformer, who really had a problem with calling Mary the mother of God. And I think it really does come down to Christology. Are you going to argue that Mary only gave birth to a nature if you do that you have a big problem Mary gave birth to our incarnate Lord

The very Greek word mater for mother Mary is called the mother of our Lord She gave birth to our incarnate God not to a nature and I think if you begin to argue That you cannot call Mary mother of God begin to argue that you cannot call Mary mother of God merely because she only gave the human nature to Christ. I think you run into a lot of problems and problems that no one in the early church other than the heretics had an issue with. They didn't have an issue believing Mary was the mother of God. Yeah, I think first William's initial point is really outstanding if we go to Isaiah 7, 14,

and we understand that ticto can mean something like conceive and bear, meaning in the womb, and if we see that it is God who is being born there by a virgin, it's just, in Greek, it's as simple as taking those two words and making a compound out of two separate words. And we do this all the time in English.

Sometimes I mess up my English writing because I think high school is one word or two words, and I can't even remember now as I say it which one it is, but I think it's actually two words and I want to use it as a compound word. We do this all the time. And all that's happening in Isaiah 714 is that the prediction of Mary as bearing God with us is being combined into one word in Greek. So it is biblical in that sense of the language right there. So it was an excellent point that William made.

The second is, of course, one that is in our book on Mary, that you had mentioned earlier, which I just kind of pull up some of the old notes that I took so that I had my verse down exactly right. And if you see in Luke 1.42 and 1.43, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb? Mm-hmm and whence Does this come to me?

the mother of my lord in so many words But how does the mother of my lord comes to me? You'll see various translations of this trying to To give a modern English sense of the Greek. What's interesting here is, is we compare Luke 1 and we see how many times the references are made to the Ark of the Covenant from various mentions of David's experience of the Ark, the amount of time that Mary went and stayed with her cousin Elizabeth, and the amount of time

that the Ark was in the House of Obididum, both in the hill country. We see that this is just a rearranging by Luke in Greek. If indeed Luke is being serious at the beginning of his gospel, he says that he's interviewed eyewitnesses, and that he's also gathered data, meaning written documents, and that his gospel's essentially a compilation of that.

A lot of biblical scholars nowadays would like to not take him at his word that he interviewed witnesses. I guess it kind of begs the question why you bother studying scripture if it's just kind of a liar, you know, but let's just assume that he thought he was interviewing real witnesses. So if that were indeed the case, and he did have the ability to interview whether directly or indirectly Mary through an interpreter, et cetera,

he's free to take into the Greek language, however Mary said what she said, and Elizabeth said what she said, and to render it in a poetical or otherwise meaningful way. And here what Luke chose to do when he rendered Elizabeth and Mary's discourses into Greek is Elizabeth says under the Holy Spirit, how is it that the mother of my Lord comes to me?

And if you see mother of my Lord, how is it that she comes to me? Your question was, what about those who say that you're putting Mary before Jesus, whether chronologically or in some other way, in dignity and honor? This is always a strange one because the context here is that John the Baptist can recognize the Lord. He can leap in the womb because the Lord is in his presence So we have a real sense that there's an emphasis in this last part of Luke's gospel about what children are in the womb We're doing there's a lot of mention of womb talk here babies in the womb And there's even a baby that's recognizing Jesus and yet when Elizabeth sees the baby

Jesus in the spirit present in Mary's womb, she doesn't say through the Holy Spirit, how is it that the Lord has come to me? How is it that the Savior of all? How is it that God is with us has come to me? She says a prayer or an exclamation you might say, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. How is it the mother of my Lord comes to me? This is rather significant that in the presence of the Lord, and after having just been reminded that babies can talk, so to speak, in the womb with John the Baptist, she is distracted with Mary, and we see that she's not distracted because she's just overwhelmed to see her cousin, and she had a little moment, but rather it's under the Holy Spirit. And so the final result is we have to come up with an explanation of why it's appropriate

when the Lord is in your presence to recognize the Mother, and the biblical precedent is already there. And as you say, Lord could mean an earthly ruler. The kireos is sometimes used in that sense. But you just said to me in the first chapter of Luke, it's never used in that sense. Never. All the time it is used for referring to Almighty God, Yahweh. So I think those are really, really important points. The other important point that I would point out would

be that you have it very early on, the early church believing Mary to be the mother of God, you have incredible theology. And the other important thing that I would lay out, Matt, that I think is really important, and that I have found, the more and more I dig into Mariology, and I've said it a number of times, is that if you have a poor and a low Mariology, you're gonna have a very low Christology,

and vice versa. What do I mean by that? I mean that the only early figures, writers, that spoke poorly of Mary, for instance, Tertullian was one, in his montanous stage, after formally, I'd like to add, formally leaving the church, he had very poor statements he made about Holy Mary. You'll find that those that had a low Christology, a portu-nitarian teaching, tend to have made poor comments about Mary. So you'll find those in figures like Tertullian, and you'll find them more than ever, full-blown, Matt, in figures like Helviteus, figures like Eunomius, and people that may wonder, well, who are they?

Well, they were Arian's, and as we know, the Arian's denied our Lord was eternal God. So there's a big problem there. That if people wanna look into the early church mat for witnesses that spoke disparagingly of our holy mother, you're gonna find them, but you're gonna find them in heritance. It reminds me of what Tim Staples said, if Mary is not the mother of God, then to whom

did she give birth? And that's the problem you run into. You have to now give an explanation that's going to mess up the Christology we want to hold to. I mean, in your experience, do many thoughtful Protestants take issue with this still, or is it just they don't like how it sounds like maybe it's like calling John the Baptist the cousin of God and some of them are like look what do you have to do that? Just call him John the Baptist now people have real doctrinal issues with this still to be honest with you

The massive majority of Protestants I dialogue with don't have a problem with it. Okay, they really don't Every now and then you'll find a few people that have Problems, but by and large they don't. More than anything, they'll take issue with the Immaculate Conception, Perpetual Vigil of Mary, and of course the Dormition and the Bodily Assumption of Mary. They'll take more issue with those than anything else. I've often thought that a good response to, don't call her the Mother of God, it just

confuses people. Well, there are many confusing doctrines. The Trinity can be confusing to discuss, and often people get the wrong impression of what you're saying. But that's not a good reason to drop talk of the Trinity. It might be a reason to explain it better. Yeah.

And really, Matt, I think that when people talk about them being made dogmas, I'm all for it because even before they were made dogmatic, Matt, they were part of the liturgical life of the Church, meaning it was built into the faith. And here's the incredible thing, we've done shows with Eastern Christians, our Syriac brothers as well and sisters, and when you talk to them about Mary being Mother of God, perpetual virgin, dormition, assumption, they'll tell you, oh yeah, you know, even though we don't have that as a dogma in reference to the Oriental Orthodox, they'll tell you, it's built into our faith.

We believe it fervently and I think that tells you a lot when the apostolic church is whole to these teachings very strongly just so we're clear what is a dogma and how does it differentiate from a doctrine well when we take a look at the the use of dogma as we've been using it just to to be clear in the last, let's say, 75 years in technical speak, meaning getting better at being consistent with our language and not using old language and just trying to, kind of like a stereo instruction

kind of world. We would be looking at something that has a kind of papal decree or a kind of conciliar decree, which tends to be a long drawn out kind of statement. And within that long drawn out kind of statement, you have a pithy statement, which is obliging all the faithful to believe it, is in some sense or another saying that's because Peter

or the Holy Spirit that has gathered the council is obliging everyone to believe it. And then also making sure to double down that this is about our universal faith. And so when you have that kind of combination, that the topic is about faith, oftentimes divided into faith and morals, that it's clear that all Christians are being taught, and that some form of apostolic authority by the council or the pope, the two either working

together or the pope working separately, is clearly part of that pithy statement, then it's considered dogmatic. There are some subdivisions to that that we don't need to get into as to whether or not something, let's call it, is more obviously revealed versus something that is implied in, like, you can't have a resurrection of a body unless you know what a body is, so you do need to actually be able to say what a body is for Jesus to have a body resurrected, so that kind of what is a body may be able to be put on a dogmatic status too,

because you can't have people just always saying, well, I believe that he was bodily resurrected, but for me, a body means not a body, you know? So that kind of stuff. But I would say that we could stick there with a dogma for our purposes today. What about doctrine and how does that differ? What about doctrine and how does that differ? I don't know that I would necessarily prefer to just use the word doctrine, but we can

use that. I mean, it's used in the early church and by the fathers. Churchillian makes this distinction himself when he talks about the papal powers between doctrine and jurisdiction and various other things. But maybe for our purposes, we could say that there are official teachings which are considered to be binding on our consciences because the church is also given the authority to teach us, even if the church itself may develop these teachings to such an extent that

what was true prudentially for a time and place is no longer To bind us because we have more information Could that be the case with how say Thomas Aquinas understood the Immaculate Conception as a doctrine that developed into something we realized was actually Revealed from the Apostles. Yeah, I think that it would be accurate to say this is that there was no dogmatic statement present at the time That would have created a fence around Thomas's thinking to not allow him to use the university textbooks that he was handed. I think last time I was on here I talked about we all complain about you know the bad catechetical texts. Well Peter Lombard's sentences were bad catechetical catechetical texts that everybody was using in university. They even got

dishonorable mention at an ecumenical council in the Middle Ages, so it's not just me saying this. And so he, without I guess those things being cleaned up, had like a lot of people in their university the ability to speculate in that area. It's when there was a lot of discussion on this that eventually the church started making formal statements on this starting especially in the 15th century. But then those 15th century statements which were not universal in that dogma sense that we just said eventually. It was cleared up to be on that dogma sense by 1854 is it right to say that something cannot be dogmatic if it wasn't explicitly or implicitly taught by the apostles and believed by the apostles?

Or how else might you formulate that? I'll let William go first and then I'll follow up. Yeah, I agree with that, Matt. For instance, if there would be no hint of Mary's all-sinless nature at all in the Bible or in the early church. Without a doubt, this would not have popped up in 1854. I'd like to remind everybody that the belief in Mary being all immaculate, we've traced it to a very early period, multiple early… I want to, sorry not to cut you off, but I want to get to immaculately conceived. So

if this is a tertiary comment, that's okay, or a peripheral comment, that's okay. Yeah, definitely. I'm not going to hop in too deep, but the fact that we've been able to look at that, find that early on, and we believe we can make a very good case for it biblically as well. I think it's a really good point that you can look and find teachings of the faith either implicitly or very clearly laid out in the Bible and early church history and if you wouldn't be able to it would never become a dogma. And I suppose that's true if someone's skeptical of what you're saying here, presumably the Apostle Peter had a more primitive view of the Trinity

if he were asked to expound it than then say somebody today, like an orthodox theologian today, right? But just because he wasn't able to, maybe I'm wrong, but just because he wasn't able to articulate the Trinity in the way the church might today, doesn't mean it was invented whole cloth. It was still something taught by the apostles. This is a good jumping off point, because perhaps a good person to turn to

that addresses this exact issue, that for example at St. Cyril Methodius Seminary, I open up our dogmatic courses with every year as we read St. Vincent of Laren and his Comma Notorium, which is not a very helpful English title, we need to come up with something better in English. But anyway, St. Vincent's writing around 434 and he was very important for John Henry Newman because some of Newman's early works in the development of doctrine have their point of departure from Saint Vincent

who essentially he got rediscovered in the 16th century as really important. But to get back to the main point, how would he have understood what Peter had in his mind and Galilee after the fullness of the Holy Spirit had already come upon him, would he have articulated things as we would see at Vatican I,

which was not the most verbose of councils, but it was getting a lot more verbose than anything that we see Peter's speeches recorded in the New Testament. And I think that St. Vincent's point would be to use examples instead of to get into the technicalities, and hopefully the examples will make it clear. We look at a triangle, we could probably,

I mean like IQ tests, we can take any child and try to have them put the round shapes into the round holes and the triangular shapes into the triangular holes, et cetera, and we're kind of seeing their intuitions about how shapes. So triangles have a definition to them, and it's how many degrees all the angles add up, how many lines it consists of.

To have that intuition of a triangle, even a child can have, because they just understand its nature by kind of handling it and experiencing it. But if you ask that child to articulate the number of degrees, the angles and the lines, if they get a robust vocabulary or they get a little bit of learning behind their belt,

they may come up with the exact same discovery as anybody from Pythagoras to another great geometrician, right? The point here is that St. Vincent is talking about the development of doctrine is like analyzing a triangle. It's what we would call a scientific number. another great geometrician, right? The point here is that Saint Vincent is talking about the development of doctrine is like analyzing a triangle. It's what we would call scientific knowledge or definitional knowledge, a genus, a species, and a specific difference for all the people out there

that are in love with porphyry or the categories of Aristotle or these sorts of things. And so what we would be saying is that over time, this triangle that was just handed to Saint Peter, and he's like, oh look, a triangle. I have some sense about what triangles are about. The church is looking at it over time, and they're saying, well you know,

triangles are always consist of lines, and they assume at this angle that you're looking at a plane. And is it essential for a triangle to be isosceles, or can it be something else? And so as the church begins to say what it is not and what it is, over time there's a clarity of the definition. And has anything actually changed in triangularity? No. Has there been new words used? There have, because now we're using the word lines, which St. Peter never used, and we're using degrees, which St Saint Peter never used. Is the fundamental intuition the same? It is. In Hebrew speak their

geometry probably looked a lot different than Euclidean or anybody else's geometry but then over the centuries this kind of precision happens and this is exactly the example that Saint Vincent is using and I would argue that he's using kind of the rhetorical handbooks that are available in Byzantium and from Cicero at the time I don't know that he was a Greek speaker, but in the Ciceronian tradition he would have went to definitions in order to make arguments and so when he brings this about we know exactly what he's talking about we're talking about scientific certainty in

One's intuitions that you just need to find the right formulation and it's obvious to anyone What the definition is once you present them with this because it's so certain. Now there's an analogy then to the faith that it's something like this. After we have the content in the scripture, if we do enough analysis, if we do enough thinking about it, and if we get all the right angles on it, we go from an intuition to an actual description.

That is incredibly helpful. It blew me away. Life blew me away, wow. Yeah, you should study at Seahomar 30th Seminary. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's really incredible. That's the seminary in the world.

But does it not make the Catholic belief, and let's move on to the Immaculate Conception, difficult to refute then? Because now it sounds like you're saying all we have to show is the apostles had some vague intuition about Mary's Sinlessness or holiness in order to say yes, we were right all along This has always been believed so let's talk about the Immaculate Conception. What does that mean? Sure Because I'm the one that I guess started with the whole Description of the intuition that I guess started with the whole description of the intuition, I might as well take up from there. But maybe the easiest thing to say is, as we got precise

with thinking of grace, this was especially after St. Augustine had to do some battles in North Africa with Pelagius, not to mention some others, we started to get a really good sense of what we mean by grace. And eventually what that ends up meaning for the Latin West in its most crucial period that we were talking about, Thomas Aquinas' period, is not any sort of material stuff, grace isn't the kind of stuff that you know, you put into your tires, it's not a pneumatic in that sense, it's certainly not something that you can destroy by being really mean to it and aggregate

by being really sweet to it. Instead, it is a supernatural item in the scholastic speak of the Middle Ages that is created by God directly and is meant to be a created expression of the Holy Spirit that has a real effect in your soul. So it is implanted or infused or poured into the soul by a certain manner of speaking. And either you get this grace or you don't. And it's God who dictates the conditions under which that comes to you.

You don't get some sort of control over there's no remote where you can get some or not or download. So God places the conditions on creating it for you and removing it, whatever happens when you remove grace. I mean that's probably one of those speculative things but nonetheless it comes and it goes because God has decreed that it will come come and it will go. And the reason why this is so important to start out the conversation this way is because all we mean by immaculate conception is whatever Mary has at her conception is what Adam and Eve were created in, that original grace, that original justice as

it's called. It's not about their material status, it's not about what they did or didn't feel, it's not about sickness as a metaphor, which is a meaningless metaphor depending on how you take that word sickness. But it simply means, was Mary just before the sight of God, was she a child of wrath, as I think Ephesians 2.3 says, or was she a child of God? If she was a child of God, why? Because she possessed at the first moment of her existence equal or greater than Adam and Eve, the same justice that they had or greater than the justice that they had, equal to or better than that justice. And so once

we determine that grace is really about a supernatural gift created by God, by attribution, created by the Holy Spirit, it's implanted in the soul, the question is does Mary have it at her first moment or is she graceless at her first moment of her existence? So that's what we mean by immaculate conception. William, anything you want to add to that part? There's a great point, and I think that to add to that, I would add that, well, where do we begin biblically? Because our evangelical friends will want to know biblically, where do you even get a hint of Mary being without any sin?

Number one, we point to Genesis 3, the very beginning, right after the fall, you have got a prophecy of a woman having a seed. Now that is our Lord, the Messiah, is the seed. We know that, the early Church Fathers were unanimous on that. But who was the woman? Well, the woman is the mother of the Messiah is a seed we know that the early church fathers were unanimous on that But who was the woman? Well the woman is the mother of the Messiah We read that the woman and her child will be at enmity with the devil now What do we mean by original sin? What do we mean by being under the dominion of the devil? Well, we mean that when we talk about original sin, we mean that one

is born under the dominion of the devil, born with a stain, as the book of Psalms tells. So, if Mary was at enmity, the way the Messiah would be at enmity with the devil, by the way that Greek word utilized in the Greek Bible means kind of like a mortal warfare, a barrier. If Mary would be at enmity the mother of the Messiah with the devil, how could we ever argue that the mother would ever be under the dominion of the devil if she would be an enemy of the very devil? Now, of course, that in and of itself won't prove everything. But we do go when we do arrive at Luke 1, as Father was alluding to, when the angel Gabriel comes in and does greet Mary,

he greets her in a very unusual way, the way he greets her. Hail, kechari to menne, hail, full of grace. And then we lay it out very clearly in our book on Mary. But the incredible thing, Matt, that I remember when I was an evangelical, and perhaps due to my ignorance, I would reply to my fellow Catholic friends by telling them, well, without a doubt, Mary was full of grace. She had our Lord within her. She had to have been. The thing is, Matt, as you know very well where I'm going, when the angel greeted her, it was before the overshadowing, before our Lord was even in her, and she's already called

full of grace. She's already in possession, as that Greek root word, which appears in Ephesians 1, she's already in full possession of a particular kind of grace. And when we go to Ephesians 1 and we examine it and Which father I'm sure will break it down in a moment He's written an amazing article on that when we look at what kind of grace Mary is in full possession of it is a kind of Sinless all holy kind of grace now not only that met when we couple that Which we'll get to later, with the woman of Revelation 12, Mary as new Ark of the New Covenant, and the incredible early church

witness to Mary, when we look at it all, the conclusion is very obvious. Mary was created without any stain of sin, and as Father pointed out, in full possession of justice. And I think when we look at all that, Matt, I want to argue that it goes well above merely implicit. I think we have very strong evidence in the Bible and in the early Church, as early as the proto-evangelium of James. Mason- Now we have, there are Catholic apologists, I don't want to mention his name because I don't want to speak for him, but you might know who I'm talking about who would say listen

This is not going to get you to Mary being all holy that this is this is something that Catholics use It's very convenient for them But you're not going to get Mary's being past present and future sinless from this verse and it's a stretch Have you heard that objection? Yes, and we've actually addressed it. Certainly the Greek fathers, I think of Cephrones of Jerusalem and others, would disagree with that. Okay. The first thing is that in an old article I did with William, which is available on his Patristic Pillars site,

which didn't make it into the book, but we're probably going to have a perpetual virginity book come up in the future so it'll make it in there eventually among other things and in a macro conception book but anyway people that use the original King James version would rightly mention the fact that the Dewey-Reym's version is not the translation so it is worthwhile tackling this point. From Luke 1 you're referring to? Luke 1 29. What's the difference if you have a link? Yeah, in the original King James Version, meaning the one that was actually published in 1611, and the angel came in unto her and said,

Hail thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women. Now highly favored here, I've seen that this for some reason tends to be something that is a point of contention. She's not full of grace because that's going to, in some sense, concede more than we're willing to. So, I just out of curiosity went to the oldest English dictionaries that date at the time of the King James. Interesting. Now, sadly, to my knowledge, the one dictionary

that arrives closest to 1611 did not have the word grace in there. But we do, however, get later dictionaries after this in 1708 and 1730. These are the earliest that I can find. I'm very, very happy if somebody's an English literature person out there and knows more dictionaries to give us. But here's what you have the definitions of highly favored one. What does favor mean in 18th century English, which we hope is semantically or meaning wise very close

to the 1611 King James. So in a Elizabethan, so to speak, dictionary, meaning it's hopefully stripped of anything Catholic, we see that the definition of favor, gracious, gracious, kind, favorable. And then in Another dictionary which is a little bit older than this 1708 We find favor goodwill And then we see in 1708 an example is given just like in your modern dictionaries you get an example of how the words used

Here is the sentence that we see, favor is opposed to rigor especially in matters of justice. Did we not just say that hailful of grace is about original justice? Whoever the English translators were by and large there's an inter- very, we know who the committees are that put together the King James and they did try to do a professional job. By and large they were using previous Bible texts not really from scratch, creation. So there's a really interesting history on this, but without getting into that, there's no reason to suspect that these translators are somehow, you know, doing anything untoward here. But favor is opposed to rigor, especially in matters of justice.

So Kei-Karitomeni, I would argue, is exactly that. It is about original justice. So, on this, the King James English and the Douay-Rheims can be in agreement that it's a matter of original justice, full of grace. The next thing that I would argue is, what is the only form of Kei-Kar tomeni that we find other than Luke. Interestingly enough, if we look into the best scientific search engines we have in Greek, which they exist now, in the scholarly world, this word does not exist in Greek literature other than the Greek book of Sirach. And in there, I'll provide you, hopefully, with a quote. So, in Sirach 1817, and to my knowledge,

this has not been part of the uncovered fragments of the original language Hebrew that's been found. So, we have to go to the Greek. My son, blemish not thy good deeds without blemish. Neither use comfortable words when thou givest anything. Shall not the dew assuage the heat?" Of course we know that this is where some of the metaphors of Mary being like the dew that is on the snow white wool come from, in addition to a biblical story on that, that was a Gideon. So, is a word better than a gift? Lo, it is not a word better than a gift, but both are with a gracious man.

So this graciousness of a man is a man without blemish and word indeed. We're already starting to get closer to what Luke must mean by the word full of grace. By the way, that translation I gave you is from the 1611 King James Bible, without blemish. So we're getting closer now. When the angel says, hail, full of grace, or hail, highly favored one, meaning person who is not subject to God's rigor of justice, it means for St. Luke, the only thing it can mean, which is the only citation that exists in all of Greek language up to 70 or 80 AD, it means someone is without blemish.

But there's more. Luke's master, Saint Paul, whom we consider to be responsible for Ephesians also mentions the same root word, the only other time that the same root for full of grace is used is in Ephesians 1, 5, 6. And hopefully I can pull that up without too much looking here, since I've got too many of my articles up. I'll have to see if I can.

And it really is mind blowing. Yeah, why don't, if you wanted to say anything on that, I'll pull up the if I can it really is mind-blowing Why don't if you had to go that she does look it up? I think that When we began looking at all that Matt The one thing that really did blow me away was okay. I then realized why in particular Greek writers would cite Luke 1 and Utilize that to refer to Mary as being without sin. Now, think, well, you know, as an evangelical, I never saw it.

You know, what are they seeing that I wasn't seeing? And when I think of Greek writers, I think of figures like Romanos the Melodist, who wrote about Luke 1. In fact, there's a whole bunch of fathers that interpret Luke 1 in the greeting and then they take that step and say that this is in reference to the one without any stain of sin, the one without blemish. So the one thing that I would add, Matt, is that, you know, I think some of the Greek fathers would know a little bit more than we know today in 2022. Interesting.

And that to me is an important thing. And again, in a bit, when we delve deeper into the Immaculate Conception, I think the other point I would add is people will then say, Matt, it's a very common objection. They'll say, you know, you don't even have fathers using language of conception early on. We can grant that. But you do have fathers that talk about her being created. So in their limited vocabulary, they'll still talk about her being created without sin and in full possession of justice. For instance, a proto-evangelium calls her the fruit of justice, but the way it's breaking it down, it's kind of like what the Bible calls somebody the fruit of the womb.

It was talking about her being the fruit of original justice. That's an incredibly early reference, man. And by the way, not heterodox. I know we're going to get back to the Prodigy of Evangelion James. So for those at home, what is it? So the Prodigy of Evangelion James is an early document written in the early 100s by an anonymous author. Now, what we do know from scholarship is that it was written by a person that was part of the Christian community. And it's written in a very pious way about Mary. A lot of it is telling you pious stories about Mary's life when she was young, when she was

born, when she was young. It talks about St. Anne, St. Joachim. It's an incredible document. One thing I'll also add, Matt, and I welcome the audience in case there's anybody with an objection that might think, because they've heard from their evangelical friends, that the document is heterodox or gnostic. I welcome any objection to that as well because I've looked at it and it definitely is not. In fact, it was utilized by many early church fathers that were definitely Orthodox, and they utilized it in a very positive way. Okay, so this document from the early 100s says, what about the Blessed Virgin Mary?

So it talks incredibly, a number of things. Number one, it will present Mary in a strong way as, number one, being a vowed perpetual virgin, but it will also allude to Mary being born with actually not allude but straight out say she's born with original justice so that would make her immaculate as well it's an incredibly great insightful early document did you have that verse pulled out? I do so let's return then back to this K'haritomeni full full of grace, or highly favored one. I'm perfectly comfortable with the King James 1611 version. One of the objections that we've actually seen in print is a double-edged sword because

it actually ends up being the strongest argument for kei haritomeni, or full of grace, meaning immaculately conceived. The same root word, as I mentioned to you is used in Ephesians 1 6 so Saint Paul and Saint Luke credibly disciple and master relationship so this would be the master Paul responsible for the disciple Saint Luke's understanding of this word grace as a as a as a very peculiar vocabulary word Hence the meaning that's shared in Luke 128 and Ephesians 1 6 could very well be the same master-disciple relationship

It's only used twice once in Luke 128 the second time. this very same root word is used is only in Ephesians 1.6. And then this harit or harito-o is the Greek word. You can hear the har. When you say thank you, you-hur-ist, there's your har, good grace, good favor. So if we say that this root is shared, the next thing that we need to jump to then is hearing the passage. Let's listen. This is Ephesians 1.5 and 1.6. He, meaning God, we could even maybe say Father, predestine us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure

of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he made us accepted in his beloved Son." Now that translation, he made us accepted, could mean he made us ingraced. It's that same word that was said to Mary. Now what's interesting here is if you read the wider passage, we find out that this grace is before the foundation of the world, which was for the saints before the fall. This is the grace, this one vocabulary word is the word that is used to talk about the grace that God had planned from the beginning of the found or before the foundation of the world meaning before created time to give to all the

saints but now has to be given in a different way because we've all sinned and we need redemption hmm so what is Mary being greeted with she's being greeted with the word whose basic meaning from Luke's master, Paul, means the grace that was for the predestined before the fall. That's what we call original justice. So this is a second very philological or vocabulary-based reason where it's very difficult to avoid the implications that whatever this grace is for the saints is the same thing that the angel Gabriel is greeting Mary with, particularly because it's not a common word just thrown around the New Testament for all sorts of things, but it gets worse for those who would want to object to this reading.

We find that St. Paul provides a definition of what this grace is. He calls it in Ephesians 1-4 and he calls it in Ephesians 5-27 by the same Greek word that's used for Mary Immaculate, amomos, without any blemish. Didn't we just hear blemish in Sirach 18-17? That the just man who's without blemish, who is both good in word and deed is ch'i-chari-to-meni, is full of grace. Here we see that to have this grace is the same semantic range as far as we can tell with the grace of sirach, which means someone who is without blemish. So when the angel Gabriel says, hail full of grace, the Lord is with thee, what is he saying? hail full of grace the Lord is with thee what is he saying hail one who is full of justice without blemish

later without blemish in Ephesians is even clarified further to say without retice or retida without any sort of wrinkle so Mary doesn't even have wrinkles good for her so we have these metaphors of wrinkling and being without blemish as the definition given in Ephesians in those passages that I've just given you for what grace means. The final analysis is that when the angel Gabriel says, hail full of grace, he's saying your words and your deeds are without blemish You are someone who is blemish less someone who is without wrinkle and

Who possesses all the graces that were intended for the Saints before the fall before the foundation of the world? Sounds just like you man. There's gonna be people listening to this who are thinking this is all very impressive, but it's very easy to extrapolate from the exegesis of certain Greek passages to whatever you want. It's sort of like typology. You start with something and then you end up with something that like, there's no way you would have arrived at that

if it was just you and your Bible, which is I guess why we're against that. And most Protestants would be too. So someone might say, okay, that's all very good, but look, St. Paul said all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And so by all, maybe he meant all and your fancy Greek exegetical, whatever is to be dismissed. I'll let William pick it up first and then I'll feel free to make that argument better

than I just did. Cause I know I'm being a bit flippant. No, I think you made it very well. They would read Romans 3 and they'll say all of sin and fallen short of the glory of God. Now, that is talking about personal sin, of course, but either which way they'll argue and those say all have. The problem with that, man, is let's read it again and when we read it and when we examine it, St. Paul is utilizing the Greek word pos for all. Now, does he mean every single person? He can't.

He's utilizing it in a general way. Now, how do we know he doesn't mean every single person? Because number one, he can't mean every single person. He would never include our Lord in that. Number two, he's talking about personal sin there. How can a child in the womb or a child that is born with perhaps mental defects, how can that child commit a personal sin? It simply would not fit. So if you look at it from that perspective, Romans 3 is talking about actual personal sins.

We know it cannot be every single person in the world just by virtue of the fact that we know our Lord was without sin, and we know that children that don't have the mental faculties or perhaps those that are born with any other kind of defect or problem, they don't have the ability to commit a personal sin. So we know St. Paul doesn't mean that in a blanket every kind of person. And I'll add one other thing. There's not a single early church father that exegete Romans 3 and said, well look, Mary must have been included here. Yeah.

Not a one. You know, I find this interesting too, because someone might say, okay, well, if Mary really was without sin, surely it would be more explicit in the New Testament. And yet, when I scoured the page of the New Testament, I could only find two explicit statements about Christ being without sin. Maybe there's more and I missed one, but I could only find two. And so you would think, okay, so sure, by implication, Him being God, you would say, well, He's without sin. But if there's two or let's say five explicit statements about him being without sin, why would, if that wasn't made such a big deal, maybe it makes sense that it wasn't explicit about Mary.

But, but you think that is a reasonable objection that if this is something we're all bound to believe that it should have been more explicit? Well, let me tackle that really quickly. Real quickly, I do think that you can find it quite clearly laid out and in a bit when we go into the assumption, which God willing we'll have time, we'll even look at Revelation 12, the woman crowned because that's incredible. And I know the objections that, okay, well, early fathers, I believe it was the church we can talk about. And I want to invite that, okay, well, early fathers, I believe it was the church we can talk about. And I wanna invite anyone looking, tuning in, Matt,

anyone, give us your very best objections. Anyone, anything on the table, we welcome them all. And anybody- Are you putting them aside? Good job. And anybody that would, if you are a debater, and if you wanna debate these issues, as Matt said, we invite you, reach out to Matt,

or reach out to me, we'll make it happen. We'll look at it and we'll make it happen I think it is very clearly that laid clearly laid out there Matt The other thing that I would add would be the one thing that does did blew me away Matt when I was in evangelical when I began to look at the early fathers and how they had that incredible reverence for Mary, referred to her as I Parthenos, ever virgin, immaculate, without stain, without blemish, it really did blow me away. So the one thing that I would add is the living faith of the church, the living tradition of the church accepted Mary as a woman, humble woman, but a woman that was without sin. Another thing that I would add, I'd be very careful about adding, that the sinlessness of our Lord is very different. That is by nature.

The sinlessness of Mary would be not something that Mary merited would be all grace that was Completely grace nothing that Mary merited on her own accord that would be impossible And I think when we break it down like that When we look at it like that a lot of the times Matt I have realized that our evangelical friends will say okay Well, you know Maybe I can come to the table now and talk a little bit more about it now. And I think that's a good starting point. I can see why the doctrine of Mary being Theotokos safeguards the person of Christ. I can't see why Mary being immaculately conceived does that. So why are we bound to believe in the immaculate conception when it seems not to safeguard the person of Christ?

Because I'm not bound to believe dogmatically that, I don't know, she had a certain colored hair or it was a certain height or something like that. Like why is this something we must believe? I suppose it would be, you could put a whole series, the first thing would be a rhetorical response which would be, so I can deny the existence of King David and I'm perfectly fine as a Christian because it doesn't really have anything directly to do with Christ or

maybe King Solomon since he's not really the ancestor. Which things that are asserted in scripture do I get the privilege to deny, and which ones do I have the ability to affirm? For Christians, traditionally, because they believe that Scripture is materially inerrant, if something is asserted by Scripture, you just don't get options. Now, if you're with my biblicalist friends, we get all kinds of options. But of course, Scripture's not inspired. It's kind of just a patchwork of some guys that were kind of slobs like you and me. Rupert Spira Fair enough. So you guys are making the claim that Scripture asserts that Mary was sinless from conception.

David R. Reilly Yeah, so it really doesn't matter if we can figure out. I mean, I'm happy for us to try to figure it out, but it really doesn't matter if we in our minds figure out how this does or doesn't compliment Christ's mission in the world the point is it's asserted by scripture so This attitude is taken. I think in evangelical circles quite often scripture asserts it But once and it's clearly being asserted then I'm gonna have to assent. Okay, because it's the infallible Word of God I want to ask you about a different interpretation back in Genesis 3 15 the proto-evangelium the proto-evangelium

that we brought up. Yeah, it would be called that as well. Sometimes it's translated as, she will crush your head in the Douay-Rheims. I've heard that that's a misinterpretation, but it's actually, he will crush the head. Is that accurate? Yeah, I think that there's been a lot of work in recent years done on that to show you that basically we've never had a critical edition. Do you mind speaking to the mic? We've never had a critical edition of St. Jerome, but

for our audience, critical editions are when you're having to copy everything by hand for the first 1500 years of since Christ's birth I Don't know I have a hard time reading my own writing and then additionally I was just giving a talk the other day and I was noticing all the ease I left off everything Misspellings that was in a prayer that I composed that maybe had about ten lines What happens when you start multiplying these problems over thousands of years, right? So you can have a lot of variation in the text.

So we never had access to an answer of is it he or is it she in Jerome's text until definitively in the 1970s I believe the Jerome's critical edition came out where they were able to show where all the different errors in handwriting and various other things had happened. And basically the end result is it's he. It's he for Jerome.

I appreciate the admission, especially when you see the kind of work Colbe seems to do on the Blessed Virgin Mary based on a miss. Oh, is that right? Well, doesn't he? I mean Colby? Let me let me kind of add to that and kind of defend that a little bit now I Agree with everything father has said without a doubt. We're gonna the best reading would have to be the masculine one But would it be a problem? Theologically we have images of our Holy Mother stomping the

head of the serpent. Plenty of them. They're beautiful. Now, would it be a problem theologically to say that St. Mary also plays a role in crushing the head of the serpent? It wouldn't be, Matt, and I've done a deep study on the issue in the Fathers. You find Fathers as early as the great doctor of the church, St. Ephraim, and many others in saying that Mary also played a role in crushing the head of the serpent by virtue of being the mother of the Messiah. One of the things that I would- And unique donor, right?

Yeah. That's the thing that we oftentimes forget. Oh, yeah. There's not two biological donors to make the flesh of Christ. Exactly. Christ flesh is genetically Mary flesh, it's not two donor flesh. And the other thing I would add Matt is

because our evangelical friends have a big problem with that. They really don't like that translation. But rather than pushing that translation on them as a preferred one, why don't we look at it from a theological argument perspective or a theological teaching? And when we do that, what's the problem? If we look at the book of Acts and we look at the book of Luke, we're told that the believers

will tread on it. I just pulled this up. Romans 16.20, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. Yes. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. There you go. So you've got it in multiple areas, Matt. You know exactly where I was going then. If the believers can play a role in crushing the head of the serpent,

well are you going to argue that Holy Mary, the very first one to hear the word and vouch it, save that word in her heart, didn't play a role? She played an incredibly important role there. The most important, sure. No, fair enough. And this would be what we call the doctrine of participation, which is asserted quite explicitly in the epistle of Peter that we can participate in divine being. And so Mary is simply the principal participant in the redemptive mission of Christ, and we are lesser participants because the intensity or the participation in grace that you and I have is less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less,

less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less,

less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less, less I'm thinking of some basic objections to the Immaculate Conception. Often people wrongly believe that Catholics are saying in order for Jesus to be sinless, Mary had to be sinless. We actually have a comment, I'll read that in the form of a listener's comment. Luke Romang says, why must Mary be free from sin to carry the Lord in her womb? We say God can use sinful people to carry out his will in the world so why capitals must marry be free from sin. Yes, he does that misconception. There's no must. It's just that's what the Bible says. I mean, if our interlocutor doesn't believe in the Bible, we have people coming in from all different

perspectives. But to be real clear, Christ could have been born of a harlot. Sure. Yeah, the dogma does not. That's right. Yeah, very good point. I think you of a harlot. Sure, yeah. The dogma does not. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, very good point. I think you brought up a great point there, Matt.

If you ever figure out why God does everything that he does, I definitely want your number. Yeah. The dogma itself doesn't say Mary had to have been without sin. So that's a great point you bring up there, Matt. And I think really a common misconception. It really is. Evangelicals will believe that. So it's that it was fitting, not that it was necessary. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, these, the setting up and he may just be you know, it's meant to be like, aha! Well, we didn't agree as we began the conversation that there was a must here. What was the words used in Ephesians? Freely chosen by God's own will. So if you didn't listen to Ephesians, you didn't hear that it was God in his free choice of his will before all time chose to do this.

There was no must there. It's God taking his erector set and doing whatever he wants with it. And if you don't like it, well, yeah, I've been there. I don't like creation sometimes either. It doesn't cooperate with me, particularly mosquitoes and things like that. So yeah, I get that. But the reality is that's what the text says. Yeah.

Yeah. It's amazing how prevalent that idea is though. That the church thinks Mary had to be sinless and Jesus wouldn't have been. I even remember having that question to somebody who gave a talk on the Blessed Virgin Mary shortly after my conversion and they didn't seem to be able to answer it either. So I think it's important to kind of make that real clear.

Now there is a patristic basis for this partially. Okay. Pope Leo. And other fathers. There was, since origin, I think he's the earliest I've found with this, simply made the argument based off of Psalm 50 or 51, depending on what version of the scriptures you're using,

that because one is conceived in sin and because one is conceived by male seed and a man has to be part and parcel of that we were to take Psalm 50 51 literally that's around verse five or six in sin my mother conceived me and I was born in an inequities that if Mary had born Christ with male seed it would have been the seed of Adam and therefore he would have contracted sin. So it is possible there's a confusion there that there is a patristic argument from male

seed and this of course brings us to Mary. Well, wasn't she conceived of male seed? What you find is this patristic argument is confronted by the fathers and they make a distinction. Jesus, by his supernatural conception, by his supernaturality is sinless by nature. Mary, by the intervention of the Savior, is only sinless by grace. She couldn't do it to herself, she couldn't exempt herself,

she doesn't have her gizmo that controls grace Everything is controlled by Christ So the the distinction that becomes normative in the Greek East is whether it's Kataharin or Khatafisin Whether it's according to grace or nature. I had heard in a debate I forget which one the Protestant apologists said that there are certain church fathers that Seem to have indicated that Mary had at least some venial sin. Have you heard that? What are they referring to? How do you respond to that?

Yeah, without a doubt. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I've looked at that very in depth, Matt, and I know I can probably quote every father that they're thinking of. Basil the Great, Cyril of Alexandria, St. John Chrysostom. What sorts of things are they saying? Now here's the thing there, Matt, is that they are, and they'll even quote St. Ire Chrysostom What sorts of things are they saying now? Here's the thing there Matt is that they are and they'll even quote St. Irenaeus now I'm glad I've looked at them in depth because it really is not a whole lot of depth to the argument

So let me give you one example they will look at Basil the great and Basil the great will talk about Mary having doubt and fear at the foot of the cross. Then they will look at Irenaeus and talk about Mary being very excited about Christ and the first miracle. And they will then say that these are instances of when the fathers talk about Mary in this way, that they believed Mary was sinful. They really are a massive stretch, Matt.

Now when we get into the talk of the Immaculate Conception, there are many areas to go. One thing that some fathers did hold to was something we would call, and Father can probably break it down much better than I can, the Debitum Peccati. Many fathers did believe that Mary carried the debt of Adam's sin. Thus, she had certain things like doubt, maybe. The thing is that these fathers would not have believed Mary was a sinner because all the while Basil may have talked about Mary in that way, in other areas he would call Mary all holy and call Mary holy mother of God, holy perpetual virgin. Really the only father that I'd be willing to concede would probably have to be John Chrysostom, who has a very unusual view of Mary. And I really

think that he's probably the only one that has that unusual view. But any other father, you're not going to find any father, Matt, that believed Mary was a sinful woman. And I know the figures that they'll point to, they really don't have a good case there. But John Chrysostomus' father will probably break down as a very unusual Mary. One that we would definitely call quite unfortunate. Yeah, the genetic story here, meaning from father to son, origin, not a father of the church, always given almost honorable mention but not quite, is the origin, pun intended, of this doctrine

in his comments about Mary having her heart pierced. We see that in Basil, I believe in his Philokalia, his compilation of origin stuff, massages it a little bit, so it's not quite as clear that he's clearly uncomfortable with it, so he's actually playing with an author whom he's claiming to just kind of reproduce. We see that even that St. Cyril of Alexandria, when he gets the same passage, massages it more, where it's quite clear that he wants you to not take it in origin sense.

And then finally after that, we just see that it's all cleaned up after that. So basically what we have here is someone who wasn't sainted who had a very powerful intellect Had influence on basil, but basil wasn't comfortable with the statement So he did tweak it some and everyone knew it was in the name of origin and the same with st. Cyril of Alexandria With the Chris system. So the conclusion that we have there is Andrea. With the Chrisystem, so the conclusion that we have there is, yeah, you got us. Somebody didn't clean up as well as they could have origin

because they kind of wanted to reproduce the master, but they kind of didn't, and they didn't do an editing job for one side or the other. So whatever that makes you guilty of, they're guilty of. The second thing is with Chrisystem, Chrisystem has a couple statements that he makes against Mary, and I've always been curious with this

because I've been too afraid to read all 900 of his sermons. So I know somebody who has read all 900 of his sermons, so I just asked him. So Father Philip Roshka, and I mean, for him to remember every Mary comment, but I did ask him that I was kind of floating the hypothesis, so he says two things about Mary.

One is in one of his sermons he says, it's a good thing that the angel, I'm putting in modern English here, it's a good thing that the angel let Mary know that she was gonna get pregnant and how it was gonna happen because if not, she would have found herself pregnant and in desperation would have committed suicide. Sounds kind of like Mary could have sinned.

And then secondly, it was when Jesus's family seems to have a problem with him, as he implicates Mary that she was kind of proud and that she needed some moral correction. Yeah, just those at home, what scripture are you referring to there? Is this kind of where his family thinks he's out of his mind? This would be Mark three and Mark six. So if you read Mark chapter three at the beginning, and actually I think it's a little bit later, but in Mark chapter six, I believe, verses one through six.

And the question here is, and this is for Chrysostom scholars, so I'm perfectly fine to be corrected on this. This is not a hill for me to die on, because I haven't read the 900 sermons. I suspect, one is, that this is actually a tradition, because we actually see some of these points come up in the Koran about Mary,

interpreted as potentially committing suicide because of the unusual pregnancy. So it seems like there's a Syriac tradition behind this that may come from Chrysostom, but it also just may be part and parcel of a tradition that's in Syria. The second thing is, is this being used, is Mary in poor taste according to how we think of it, being used as a talking point for pastoral problems little girls that don't know how that Having learned about the birds and the bees and this is what happens they get pregnant and they commit suicide or

Family issues about pride I think one of the questions that I've thought about only reading the excerpts of the sermon not having read the entire thing is this could very well be just One of the questions that I've thought about only reading the excerpts of the sermon, not having read the entire thing is, this could very well be just using Mary as an allegory for talking about pastoral challenges of family life. Okay. Let me add to that because that really, doing a lot of work in Mariology, Matt,

it really did inspire me to read a lot more in St. John Chrysostom about Mary. The one thing that I would add, and Father is the one that pointed it out to me, is that when heostom about Mary. The one thing that I would add, and Father is the one that pointed it out to me, is that when he does talk about Mary in that way, they're all hypotheticals. Number two, I did talk to a top Chrysostom scholar in the world, Dr. Howell, incredible top one, and right now he's working on a massive book on St. John Chrysostom translated, and I told him about my, I said, you know, I'd like to do a show with you and talk about Mary in John Chrysostom, but I

told him it'll be a little bit uncomfortable. I want to talk about all that about Mary. Well, the real neat thing, Matt, is we looked at that and he did tell me, he said, look, it really is unfortunate language, but they are hypotheticals, but he was able to pull up one thing, Matt, that is not available in English yet. And it is a writing from St. John where he does talk about Mary as not having any sin. So that is an area where we do need to really look at more, because even with those hypotheticals, if that is the worst that you can put forth, to me it's

pretty incredible because we have a lot of early Church Fathers. And with the massive amount that we have, that really is probably the worst example that you can use, and it's being used in a hypothetical kind of manner. Everywhere else you look, you have an incredibly high level of, a high view of Holy Mary. What is the earliest quote you might point to from a church father that seems to teach the Catholic position? On Mary being sinless and immaculate. That would probably have to be the prode, right? Protoevangelium?

What about an individual father that we can name? Individual father. The new eve for Irenaeus would be good. And the reason why is because the Jewish implications here, this idea of a new eve, the idea of virgin, and the play on words in Hebrew is, there's a wonderful book that was put out that's available to be downloaded by Christophe Rico, who reexamines Isaiah 714 on the origin of the word virgin in the translation,

for a virgin shall give birth to a child, and does a very good job of showing you how likely the Hebrew Alma means virgin. But in that, he reminds the readers that among the three meanings of virgin in Hebrew, one of them is virgin earth. The primary meaning is one who is unfamiliar with relations with a man, but the second reading,

which is just considered the semantic range, is the virgin Earth. When we read somebody like Josephus who talks about Adam being created he immediately even in the Greek talks about Adam being created from Virgin Earth. Yeah. Once you start associating like Irenaeus does Mary with Eve being made from Virgin Earth this culminates at the council of Ephesus with Theodoritos, I think, of Ankara, who's homily read aloud to the fathers of Ephesus,

explicitly states that Mary was made out of virgin earth. The new paradise. Yeah. It was, it made a stretch there. No, you're right. It's a Hebraism to signify as Adam and Eve were made, so Mary was made. But what is the thing that Christians definitively add

to this without the fall? This is what the Christian theology adds to this. So I think you already see this here with this recapitulation of Mary as the new Eve with, they're the Hebrew implications of that metaphor, provided that Irenaeus is coming from apostolic tradition, which he does claim, and he is coming from Asia Minor. And so if we're dealing with a mid-second century metaphor,

this is what it seems to imply. The other thing I would say is the implications of Melito of Sardis by calling Jesus the Paschal Lamb but Mary the Paschal You. Hmm, I would addory the wonder worker as well Uh now I do know that there are some pseudonymous works out there But the text that I am particularly referring to is preserved in armenian and it is an authentic one So we have a number of early fathers. We even have century. Yeah, it's very early on

um Is all this laid out in your book? We we don't have all of that. We do have Gregory though, yeah, we do. We have a ton of fathers in there and we have- I know I'm putting you on the spot here, so I just wanted to remind people. No, the book on the immaculate conception is to be written. But haven't you written one?

That was just on one Greek term as it was used throughout the patristic literature, yeah. I'm gonna keep saying this until I die. I heard somebody say that an academic is somebody who has found something more interesting than sex. So I love that you, an academic, have written a book on the Immaculate Conception. But no, no, no, that was just on one term. Good. Well, you have to write another one. Incredible book, by the way. I put a plug in for that book that Father wrote.

An incredible book. It shows you how even the Eastern Fathers... Okay, could you look this up? Father Capus on the Immaculate Conception, put a link to that book below. The reason I'm bringing this up now is I know that you're going off memory. If people want to do a deeper dive, these are some books that people can check out. Definitely. Can I ask real briefly if you could sum up the Orthodox objection to the Immaculate Conception and respond to it? And I want to remind people that we have an entire debate between you and Father Ramsey. Thank you on this very topic. And it's approaching 100,000 views right now.

So for a more in-depth understanding of how the Orthodox view differs from the Catholic view, they can check that out. But could you sort of sum up the objection and respond to it? Catholic view, they can check that out. But could you sort of sum up the objection and respond to it? Now really the number one objection, Matt, would be that they will tell us that Holy Mary died, the massive majority of fathers believe that Mary indeed died. And if Mary died, that is the result of the fall of her having inherited original sin, they will say. They will also object to the language of stain. They believe it's a little bit too Latin, as we heard from Father Ramsey, and Father Ramsey's written articles on that very issue.

But by and large, to me, Matt, that really does create a number of issues, because, okay, well, when are you going to argue that Mary received the full possession of original justice? Now depending what Orthodox scholar you want to talk to, there are some that believed in the womb, some that believed at the Annunciation. So Father Ramsey alluded to believing it was a little bit after Mary was created, because

he believed she had to inherit original sin, because indeed Mary died. And they will point to the two witnesses of the book of Revelation, and they'll say, because the Catholic will point to Enoch and Elijah as being examples that, well, not everybody with original sin dies. They had original sin and not everybody that dies has original sin will also point to. They will then point to the two witnesses of revelation and claim well, Enoch and Elijah will return to die in the future. Thus, you cannot use that.

Mary had original sin and Mary died. Now, I would point the audience, by the way, for an incredibly in-depth treatment of this from what we've done and worked with them before. An incredible Catholic by the name of Elijah Yossi, done an incredible amount of work, and in fact he's one of the very best on the very topic. Now, when we look at that, Matt, when we look at the early fathers, we realize they're not even in close to unanimity in believing that Enoch and Elijah would be the figures to return and die. The other point, and as I pointed out to Father Ramsey, is Father Ramsey, in order for this argument to work for

the Orthodox, Enoch and Elijah would have to return and they would have to die a normal death. But the witness in the early church talks about them returning and being martyred. Now, nobody believes that Mary was martyred. And them using Enoch and Elijah won't fill that particular issue. The other point that I would point to, Matt Matt and then I'll let father chime in is when we go to the very famous fathers of the assumption and the dormition we mean Germanus of Constantinople the great John Damascus The great Andrew of Crete and multiple others They live in a period where we can dub them Dormition fathers because they begin to write a whole lot about Mary's dormition and bodily assumption

They talk about the death of Mary. We can also add Modestus of Jerusalem Timothy there are many figures we can add Matt Theoteknos of Livyus and we've looked at all the texts Matt Here's a big problem for the claim that Mary's death was because of original sin. When you examine all of those fathers, they tell you Mary's death was very different. She did not die because of original sin. So that is another particular issue that when we look at those fathers and talk about the death of Mary, they don't believe she died because she

inherited original sin. I think that's an important thing. Okay. Yeah, I would maybe take a more, what do I wanna say? I wanna say episodic, but stages. And let's say from the second century until, just to use a nice timeframe, until Maximus the confessor in the 600s,

who does deal with original sin as a very interesting topic for himself, it's not usually discussed that much in the East. He's responsible at Lateran 649 for declaring absolute immaculateness of Mary, so there's not any discussion of her being without grace. So if that's the case, and if grace is agreed upon to be the thing that makes a person

with original justice or without, then I don't see any problems here. We're not seeing in Sophronius, the spiritual father of Maximus, we're not seeing in Maximus. In the first seven centuries, any tradition in Byzantium, other than Mary was With grace at any time of her life that you care to look at

That would be for Western Christians at that time immaculate conception. Okay If we want to deal then and later times As Martin Gigi's book in French on the immaculate conception Chronicles. He gives full paragraph and page long quotes of all the people that discuss this in the Greek East. And that is being translated now, so we should see that probably out in the next few months. I've been asked to write the preface for it actually.

It's a wonderful book. What we see is that the first time that we have to worry in the Orthodox East about discussions on the Immaculate Conception is in the 14th century and I actually presented at Oxford at the, I better get it right, something for Byzantine studies, I can't remember, I forget these things, but anyway it was alleging the discovery, I mean it has to be peer-reviewed and people have to agree that this in fact is, what I'm claiming is legitimate,

passes the muster of scientific rigor. But the first individual to mention this was quoting Peter Lombard's sentences. He was a Greek that got a hold of the bad textbook that was being used in the Latin universities. He doesn't agree with it, he just reports, some people are saying that Mary had sin. Which you find in the 14th century

after this individual reports and quoting Lombard's sentences that have been translated into Greek, which I have proven to scholarly satisfaction was translated by this time, is that you see the first preoccupations with this are in Palomite writers, meaning followers of a fellow by the name of Gregory Palomus. Anything that they do say about Mary explicitly falls on the side of her being immaculate every moment of her life, and it culminates

in Joseph Brineas, who I don't expect anyone to know, even the most pious Orthodox, I'd be surprised if they know Joseph Brannhouse. But he was a hero of his time against the Latins, and he finally explicitly just says, look, Mariette, the moment of her conception, was completely filled with grace. Because he knows that the Latins are debating this. He's watching Dominicans and Franciscans

fighting in Constantinople about this. Who knows if they're on the streets smacking each other around. I might have this text. Yeah, look at that. But as Jugee notes, the first modern Orthodox writer to ever take the position of Thomas Aquinas, that was the position that was taken, that the only naysayers were taking Aquinas's position, was in the 16th century.

And it's from this point that we start seeing orthodox writers quoting arguments made from Thomas Aquinas Against other orthodox writers who hold either the traditional position Before there were any Latin discussions or they hold scotus's position because they know about scotus So really the discussion in orthodoxy is a modern discussion and it was prompted by Thomas Aquinas's text. So when we talk with Orthodox nowadays about this question, I think one of the things that we oftentimes don't know is what is the definition of original sin for them? Because if the Council of Jerusalem in 1672, which is called pan-Orthodox, has ideas on justification, what makes a person just before God.

We argued today that the scholastic culmination of this was whether or not you receive or you don't receive infused grace, by and large thought of as a created accident or a created gift in Latin theology, even if you are allowed to speculate that maybe it's uncreated. Do you have this at your conception or not? Do you have this during your life or not? That's what makes you a child of God versus a child of wrath. If we use the Council of Jerusalem

as our talking point on its ideas on justification, I think that we'll come to the same conclusions, which is Mary always had justification, which means immaculate conception. There's, some people have made a point of quoting a canon, actually misquoting the English canon, where they claim that somehow Mary was imputed with sin, but actually it's just imitating Trent's own discussion of this, and if they read it in the way that they want to,

that this canon actually implies that Mary had personal fault, but I won't go into that. But the point is, is the Council of Jerusalem is a good point of reference for justification. Now, fortunately, the Council of Jerusalem in 1672, a pan-Orthodox council, was reaffirmed by the Great and Holy Council, which represents a lot of Orthodox churches. So, if I were to use

the Council of Jerusalem in its decree on justification as what original sin means, I think we could all agree. If I were to use a different definition which Orthodox by and large, like in your last debate, Father Ramsey did not feel obliged to the Council of Jerusalem as I understood him. Now if I'm incorrect then I need to reverse that after the show and I'm happy to do so. But if I've understood him correctly, he feels that being a good orthodox you can exempt yourself from portions of the Council of Jerusalem if you identify them as being, as I understood him to say, too Latin. So and if I am misspeaking then I am perfectly fine in correcting myself. I don't wanna speak for anyone,

let them speak for themselves, but unfortunately he's not here. But that position sounds familiar to me, that a Pan-Orthodox council is not binding, and that the Great and Holy Council has no ability to make it further binding. So, what is the alternative to use a definition which is recent on what original sin is?

Because the patristic definitions, Cyril of Alexandria, aren't death taken in isolation. It's death and the passions, as well as possibly other implications, but at a minimum the passions, which are disordered, are included. So if we were to say Mary had original sin in a patristic world, it should be death and passions.

It shouldn't just be death. So Mary should be having pretty bad temptations and out-of-whack passions and all these sorts of things. But that's not conceited. So I think that my own sense is on this debate, until we can have a fruitful discussion Okay, you had that quote from I found it very good one now Let me let me confirm Joseph Ranius is a pretty important figure isn't he father? Yeah, we don't want to over emphasize his authority in orthodoxy though, right? By the way the translation It does come from Father Coppice second homily in the Annunciation Another woman was not chosen over her because God for knowing all women

Santified her in her mother's womb the one who was to be the worthiest of all who were to exist Established her beyond all virtues, but he rejected all the women unworthy of this purpose as was reasonable. And she possessed a virtue superior to all other virtues, that of being purified by the Holy Spirit and being prepared as a containing receptacle of the inaccessible divinity. And that's from that book that you were kind enough to bring up that I wrote on the Immaculate Conception. Incredible book by the way. Forgive the ignorant question.

You can answer it and then we're going to go to a break and then get to the next two dogmas and other things. But if somebody says well Mary couldn't have been immaculate in the way Catholics mean it because she died, how do they respond to the fact that Christ died? Yeah, maybe it's he got to in the way Catholics mean it because she died, how do they respond to the fact that Christ died? Yeah, maybe it's he got to kind of choose for himself, just wanted to die and- Then couldn't you say the same about,

I'm not saying you would, but couldn't you say the same about the blessed- My understanding is I'd have to go back and reread the Dormition, one of the Dormition sermons of John Damascene, but I think that he implies that Mary just kind of opted to imitate Christ, which was the Franciscan position traditionally on this whole question.

We should also point out too that, and we'll get to the assumption of Mary soon, but in that official kind of dogmatic statement, the Holy Father leaves room for the possibility of her dying. So it's not like what Catholics teach, she never died. All right, let's take a break, and then we'll come back and we'll get to two more dogmas, namely the perpetual sorry.

Yes, perpetual virginity and assumption. I want to talk about the devotional life to Mary and we'll see how many objections we can pull up in the comments section. Great. Hey, if you want to pray better and you're not great at praying right now, you might need the fantastic number one downloaded Catholic app in existence. Hello. Hello.com Slash Matt go check them out over there click the link in the description below because if you sign up over there You'll actually get three you'll get hello for three months free. You'll have access to their entire app

There's sleep stories, their novenas, their daily gospels, their everything. Matt, on an unrelated note, I was trying to find somewhere that I could, you know, hear Jonathan Rumi read the Sermon on the Mount or something like that. Yes, exactly. Do you know anywhere that I could do that? Hallow.com slash Matt. Yep, yep. Jason Everett can read a night story to you. Bobby Angel that does stuff. Father Mike Schmitz. Yeah, Father Mike Schmitz. It really is a fantastic app. Here's the thing though, Matt. I don't like, I don't want to put all this money into it if I don't know if it's great.

Exactly. You're very good at throwing up softballs. So if you download the app right now, I think you can like use a couple of features, but not many. So you can pay for it and it's a reasonable price a month but if you go to hello.com slash matt again click the link in the description below that does two things number one it lets them know that i sent you making them like me more and i like being liked by them second and more importantly for you you'll get a three month free trial so you can try

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with all the work of Pines with Aquinas. It's nonsensorial. You know, they're not gonna shadow ban you or any stuff like that. So parlour.com.com. Thanks so much. so so so so so so so so So So I guess you had to cancel the liver king, didn't you? That was crazy.

You knew it. I can't believe that you brought that up. Do both of you work out? We do. You both knew it. We knew it. We'd been laughing for what? Almost a year.

We knew it. He looks terrific though. Yeah, but you know, it's like a Greek Go both natural. So we know we know What's achievable and what's not it really isn't? And we're back. Okay, so we have discussed two of the dogmas We're gonna get two more. I want to talk about What do I want to talk about? I want to add devotional practices to Mary had a grown relationship with Mary will also take some objections, sir We're good to keep going yeah

All right. Did you have a final thought on the Immaculate Conception? I did it's it's something that's worthwhile It this is not a is direct as the evidence that we saw with Luke 128 Khari to as the Greek word meaning to grace, and ke charitomeni, meaning full of grace. But it is important to know that a Protestant Catholic team headed by Reverend Dr. Ray Brown, God rest him now, analyzed Mary's Magnificat, and they were very troubled by what they found there

as an ecumenical team when Mary, at the beginning of her Magnificat says ke igaliasen, or igaliasen, topnevanu epitotheo to sutirimu, which is, and my spirit in the past tense rejoiced in God my savior. Now, to understand how modern Biblists kind of look at this, it's, well, Luke kind of must have screwed up here.

This is essentially what they're saying. They do it in nice words, but the point is, Mary is 12 years old. We know this, whether we look at Mishneik or the Prodigy of Evangelium, that Mary's 12. I was never sure how much, yeah. There's a Provangelium manuscript that also has her at 14.

Okay. But if you actually look. I didn't know if that was just Catholic folklore at this point. People just throw out that she was a young girl. No, no, we have good grounds for believing this. And in fact. Wow. The study that's done by Christoph Rico

on the word Alma can actually give you the age ranges for every Hebrew word that's used. And they knew this because of music. You know when a girl's voice starts to change at a certain age that she doesn't have the ability to be soprano anymore. So you actually have these words that are used at the, we'll call them at the titles of Psalms, that you're supposed to sing these at virginal ranges. Interesting.

Incredible. Which takes you up to about 14 years old. But anyway, so without getting into it, we've got really good reason to think that the Blessed Virgin Mary was between 12 and 14 when she conceived. Yeah, she was 12 to 14 when she was conceived. And not only that,

but when she's singing the Magnificat, she's saying that God did some sort of megalo or great things for her when she was quite young apparently. And this is troubling towards the ecumenical team who's versed in the New Testament because- Because there's not many years before 12. She's recounting her life, her very long life, her biography.

And their solution for this is gonna sound unduly complicated to the lay here. And I think it's unduly complicated even for the specialist. Which is, well, what Luke did here is, he probably borrowed a hymn that was already being used, which I don't have a problem with that. Mary would even claim that she was singing a hymn based off of Anna's hymn, which I believe is,

is it one, Samuel's, two. And so, but the hymn that is being sung for these fellows is inappropriate because this is all about Mary now it should be all about Jesus this is that that point that I was telling you at the very beginning of our talk it's all about Jesus then why is Mary singing about herself she should be singing about having the baby, not about what God did to her years and years and years ago. We know what happened.

Luke took a post-resurrectional hymn that Mary was saying about the resurrected Jesus. Much later in her years, I see. And Luke decided to put it at the front end of the gospel because it seemed to make sense for telling a story about Jesus's Conception, but he forgot to put it in the future sense. I see So if only Luke, you know took the Greek and put it in the future then everyone everything would be okay The other way you could look at this would just be like a first century Christian

Is wants to know about Mary's life. And Mary claims that when she was a tiny little girl or younger, that God did some sort of great marvel for her, a miracle that is as great as the implications are of crossing the Red Sea, God intervening with the angels of the Lord. What is this great miracle that could be being referred to? Well, if you actually look at the context in which this happens, it happens where the very beginning of this literary unit, this grouping, is talking about a child leaping in the womb. This literary unit ends with a child being born from the womb. So what is Mary talking about in the context of a child being leaping in the womb and a child being born from the womb? God did

great things for me too. It has something to do with her being in the womb. Now we can't get more precision than that. We can't say, oh well this means at the moment of her conception, but I'll tell you who does read it that way. A second century, potentially in some parts, first century document called the Prodevangelium of James. I see. And this Protestant who is having problems with that Magnificat. It's a group of them as group scholars. Are they aware of this Prodevangelium? Is that how they tried to sort it out? Or do they just suspect that the conclusion was...

No, theirs was the complicated solution, which is Mary can't be talking about Mary. All right. Yeah Unfortunately, yeah All right. Can we move on to? We've spent a lot of time on the Immaculate Conception which is called for because I think this is the most the biggest obstacle I think one of them but okay, let's talk about Mary Being perpetual virgin and I'll throw two objections your way if you can think of more you can share them with me. Number one it clearly says that Christ had brothers and so therefore you know Mary isn't

a Virgin. She had children after Christ. Second of all it says that Joseph didn't know Mary until she gave birth. Well, that word until seems to imply that there was a point that he did have conjugal relations with her. Third objection is, well, I thought you Catholics were supposed to say that sex was holy and good. And so if you're so hung up on her being a virgin, then it seems like you're implying

that there's something wrong with sex. So there's this kind of three objections for you to respond to. So if you're so hung up on her being a virgin, then it seems like you're implying that there's something wrong with sex. So there's kind of three objections for you to respond to. You want to go first, William, and I can fill in the blanks? And by the way, that last one. I think I'm gonna have that beer. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

It just feels appropriate. Oh, it looks very cold to it. It's very cold. I'm gonna pull up my Bible just so I can be... While you do that, I'm going to reread everything Matt said in the form of a listener's question. Let's see, Anne Searasing Sun. Oh, it's Anne Rising Sun.

That stumped me. The Bible states her husband did not know her until after Jesus's birth, and know her in quotations. There are biblical references to Jesus's birth and know her in quotations. There are biblical references to Jesus's siblings. Joseph married her to create his family. Did you catch that? I did. Okay, let me, number one, I think it is really important to point out, you're right. You have the brothers that are named.

They're named in the Gospels. And I think the common reply from a Catholic, Matt, would be, and I would utilize it a lot too, would be that Adelphos, the Greek word for brother, and Adelphos for sister, is not always utilized for blood siblings. We can agree with that. Not all the time. In fact, many times utilized for nephews, cousins. But I think we need to go beyond that because our evangelical friends will come back, Matt, and they'll say, okay,

but everything is depending on the context, right? And then they will go to Mark, the Gospel of Mark chapter 6. Let me go ahead and read it. They will usually begin in verse 3 where it says, Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us? So they were offended at him. And Jesus said to them, a prophet is not without honor, except in his own country and among his own relatives and in his own house. Now, we have to be fair, Matt. It just named all the brothers. And it tells you, the son of Mary, brother of James

Joseph, Simon. So I know that Adelphos doesn't always mean literal blood sibling, but what else could the contents be, right? You would think. How are they not his blood siblings? And I think, as we break it down very clearly in the book, Matt, when you look at it in the Greek, you get the clearest indication that they cannot be children of Mary. Number one, when you read the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon, we then go to verse 4 where our Lord will reply, says a prophet

is not without honor, except in his own country and among his own relatives. So he's referring to the relatives and in his own house. So two big problems. Number one, there is relatives. Number two, they're in the house. How can they not be children of Mary if they live in the same house? So we need to tackle both. Number one, when you look at the Greek, Matt, you get the answer right there. Because when it says among his own relatives, the Greek word utilized here is syngoneuson. That can never be utilized for blood siblings. So in other words, that is utilized for cousins or relatives.

Of the same mother. Of the same mother, yes. They cannot be children of Mary. By the way, Father has probably done the insane job, has done the insane job of looking at every usage of it. It cannot be utilized for children of it. It cannot be utilized for children of Mary. They cannot be children of Mary. We're literally being told, okay, they're the brothers, but how are they related? Because the Bible calls people brothers and

sisters in many ways. How are they related to him? And we're literally told they are his relatives in verse 4. But it utilizes that particular Greek word to tell you they're related. How likely? Probably cousins, but they're not, it has that particular Greek word has got to exclude Mary. She cannot be the mother of those children. And so what we have here is, let's take a listen to what is going on here, which is something like, And when the Sabbath had come, he began to teach at the synagogue, and many hearing him were astonished, saying, Where did this man get these things? And what wisdom is this which is

given to him, that such mighty works, that's Mary's own thing, you know, these mighty works are performed by his hands. Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James, Josie's, Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us? So they were offended at him. But Jesus said to them, so these are this is Jesus's response to his enemy's list. A prophet is not without honor, except in his own home in his country, and among his own cousins of a different mother.

That's the word. That's the word. Cousins of a different mother. So the first group that is mentioned by his enemies are his brothers. There are three of them. No, four. James, Josie, Judas, and and Simon Jesus calls them as a group

my relatives of some other womb brothers of another mother that is exactly what it means and that's the only thing it can mean in Greek Jesus is the reason why we don't believe Jesus had brothers and sisters who were siblings am I right in thinking too that when you look at the crucifixion account, you see that these people the sons of a different Mary? This is a William specialty. Yeah, you definitely do.

And you find that in the early church as well, Matt. Now, the one thing I would add is people will then note how a lot of early church fathers just really don't identify how they are related to him. But you've got Hegesippus, and you have many others I will point to them being cousins. A second century Church historian. And I'd add this, as Father pointed out, he wasn't trying to do an apologetic in that work. He was merely recording history, Church history. The other really, really important thing,

and I believe we, I think, I'm positive we bring it out in the book, the reading we just gave you in Mark, in the Gospel of Mark, was noted by Jerome. St. Jerome caught that very same reading. Interesting. So, the incredible thing is, Matt, is that Catholics very often will reply with,

well, brother doesn't always mean brother and we agree. But our evangelical friends want more. They want you to show them how it cannot be literal brother here. And their requests are reasonable. Without a doubt. We have got to be, we have to realize, and with all due respect Matt, they love the Bible, they're Bible loving, they're not sure, a lot of them are not trying to be hostile. We need to reply to them. They will be faithful to the Word of God.

Without a doubt. Good for them. And if we can show them from the Word of God, in fact, Matt, you'd be shocked that a lot of them have reached out to us and told us we can get on board with that about Mary. We've got no problem with Mary being perpetual virgin. We don't believe it takes away. We rather believe it gives even more honor to our Lord. And the other thing that I would add, Matt, is that the belief that Mary remained perpetual virgin her whole life, even though we won't have

the time to go through it, was held by all of the Reformers as well, Matt. Mason- Is that true? Calvin didn't sway on this? Bates- Never. Now, I on this I never won now I've heard The only argument I have heard Matt has been from somebody claiming that Martin Luther swayed from it towards the end I've looked at Luther in German at the very end He never ever swayed from it Calvin was very strong Luther Calvin's wingly Triton Was and what's interesting about these characters is not only are they affirming the perpetual

virginity of Mary, but they're responding to objections that come like modern day Protestants would offer such as the one I just offered. But then also the one where it says Joseph didn't know her until she gave birth. Yeah, before we move to that, let's finish out this passage and then we can tackle that. We just said that Jesus responded to his enemies list by saying that the person that they name, brother James, brother Josie's, brother Judas, and brother Simon, are in Jesus' tit-for-tat response people he says, these are my brothers of a different mother. But the second group they name are these girls that live in Nazareth in Joseph's house and those are called by his enemies Jesus's sisters. So we've

taken care of the brother issue. But what about these sisters? Couldn't those be his biological siblings? Fully, full siblings. And of course the answer is yes. I think it demands a response. They could be until Jesus also includes them in his list of responses. He says That a prophet is without honor not only among his own relatives brothers of a different mother He says but also of his own household Now to you and me that sounds like normal language, but the divisions that Jesus is using here between brothers of a different mother and household, Jerome directs us that this is Jesus quoting

from the book of Numbers and the divisions of the families in Israel. This is a family division that is mandated by Moses to divide people according to whether or not they are brothers of a different mother or whether or not they are brothers of a different mother or whether or not they are even different kinds of relatives that could be more distant and those are called household relatives.

So these divisions are Jesus quoting numbers as the response to who these individuals correspond to in his family structure. response to who these individuals correspond to in his family structure. So what we have here is not only the certitude that Jesus is just listing off his family members, but the source for Jesus using the division of his family to identify with these individual named people. And that is the book of numbers and the way that you take, uh, what do we call those? A census of the people of Israel.

Thank you. I, I, I was talking as you were talking I looked up Jesus brothers Catholic answers enter and I pulled up an article and it's mine I don't even remember writing it but here's what I said and you tell me if I'm right James and Joseph also called Josie's who are called Jesus brothers in mark 6 3 are indeed the children of Mary Just not Mary the mother of Jesus After st. Matthew's account of the crucifixion and the death of Jesus he writes quote There were also many women there looking on from afar who had followed Jesus from Galilee ministering to him among who were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and

The mother of sons of Zebedee. So that seems to very clearly indicate that these women looking on were not the Mary who was by the foot of the cross. You're correct. Yeah, and another argument that you hear Matt will be that in the Gospel of John they will try it. Unfortunately, they'll try to connect try, unfortunately, they'll try to connect the figure titled the Other Mary as being Mary the Mother of Christ, but clearly it is not. Mary is never, ever called the Other Mary in the Bible, and I've looked at a ton of early Church Fathers and not one of them ever identified that Mary as Mary the Mother of our Lord.

More so, Matt, if you look at it in the Greek, to call Mary the other Mary would have been very odd because Mary the mother of our Lord had already been identified. Why would you need to then later on identify her as the other Mary? Yeah. Doesn't make any sense. Your article is great, by the way. Oh, thank you. I don't know if you've read it, have you? I have. Oh, well, this is where I used to work at Catholic Answer back in 2012.

Many things came pouring out. I can't keep track of them all. But also we have the consensus of the early church, the pro evangelium of James. And here I want to bring up an interesting point. It seems like we're trying to rediscover St. Joseph these days. And we're trying to perhaps salvage him from the rosy red cheek man and kind of say, no, he was a warrior, you know? But whereas you have certain Catholic modern authors and even I think Fulton Sheen wanting to say that Joseph was a young strapping lad because of look at the different kind of journeys

he had to take on foot. Am I right in saying that the pretty Evangelium of James says that he was a widower and perhaps older? Yeah. So then what view are we to take? What seems most likely? From a dogmatic point of view, the church is not taking a historical stance on this. It certainly for, in modern magisterial documents, has favored the virginal hypothesis, which is sustainable biblically.

It's just more complicated. And as you know, as things get more complicated, they're less likely to be justified, but there is no contradiction. So what does the more complicated story look like? This would not be the one that you're talking about that you might see in a fold machine, but it would be using the historical sources that we have

to still come to the same conclusion about a virginal Joseph, okay? So it's a more complicated way to marry the historical sources to the post-reformation images of Joseph. And that would basically be that Joseph was indeed marrying a widow before he married Mary, and the children were of a previous widow.

This would just be the way in which you could reconcile all the sources. That makes it a bit more complicated, and you, of course, are trying to fit together pieces which you don't have more evidence for. So you can't say that it's wrong, but at a certain point as the complications continue, it becomes for a historian less likely. Less likely, I see. Okay. Anything else you want to say about the brothers of Christ? I don't think so.

I mean, Calvin addresses this, but I don't think we've addressed specifically the idea that he didn't know her until. Yeah, well, I'll let Father begin with that one in a moment. Let me touch upon, in particular, the Reformers. The comment that I made earlier, I want to emphasize that when the Reformers talked about Mary being perpetual virgin, I think the most important thing that we need to realize, Matt, is that they were coming at the Bible from a Bible-only perspective. Remember, they thought the word tradition was terrible.

They didn't want to hear about it. They did not rely on sacred tradition to make dogma. Now, I know an evangelical will come back and say, well, you know, they didn't call it dogma. No, but they believed that it was part of the faith. They believed you could not deny Mary as perpetual virgin. In fact, in a letter from Luther later in his life, he writes a sermon and he says, there are some people slandering me claiming that I have denied that Mary remained perpetual virgin. So clearly the reformers held to the belief as Mary is perpetual virgin and they did it from a Bible only perspective. Okay, Great. Well, shall we turn to the... Did you have something you wanted to bring up?

Oh, well, there was something from way earlier, which was... I mean, as you look for that, my objection, which I've heard sometimes is like, well, what's so bad about sex? And why is this something that even needs to be dogmatically defined? We don't have a dogmatic definition on whether or not Joseph was a virgin. Why do we have to have this about Mary? It seems to sort of, what do you say, like raise the bar, and it makes it more difficult for sincere Christians

to accept Catholicism if we're being asked, told, you must believe this if you wanna join our church. Suppose if you're framing celibacy and virginity from the get-go as sex is bad, you have a point. The issue is whether or not there's any value to virginity in a religious context. Certainly in our popular culture today we have an appreciation for it in Buddhism with their monks, maybe some other religious groups, and that's secular people being able to appreciate it,

but it's interesting that many of those secular appreciations for it within foreign contexts are not now any longer applied to our own post-Christian world. So I would just say that the framing of the question is already presuming that you can't have a positive view of human sexuality presuming that you can't have a positive view of human sexuality if you have people that are dedicated to either celibacy or virginity,

and I simply deny the premise. Anything you'd like to say there, William? Yeah, no, I totally agree with him, and in fact, I think that when you look at what the early fathers had to say, when you look at St. Paul, there was an incredible level of respect for virginity. You find that you look at St. Paul, there was an incredible level of respect for virginity.

You find that in the great St. Jerome, in the great St. Ambrose, you find it all throughout the early fathers. But I think the other thing, Matt, and I've heard it brought up very often, and I want to really point out that the Church has never ever taken this position. I have heard the objection that the Catholic Church believes that sexual lapse in marriage are, you know, sinful in some kind of way. And that couldn't be further from the truth, Matt. That kind of an objection, which I have heard from prominent apologists, by the way, I think is a very poor one, and I want to be very clear that the Catholic

Church does not have a defective or poor view when it comes to that I should add that st. John Damascene and his on the Orthodox faith Likes to draw our attention to the fact that if we have this attitude towards celibacy and virginity as being negative as biblical people We really need to throw Elijah in a negative light we really need to throw Elijah in a negative light. We also need to throw Elisha into a negative light because the scriptures seem in every way to only be interpreted as meaning that they did not marry during the course of their lives.

Jesus, perhaps an imitation of them as his types, clearly did not marry and beget children during his life. And so what we're really saying is the paradigmatic activity of Jesus had one defect. And that one defect was Jesus should have been married and he should have had children and were so much better for having Dan Brown give us the truth of it all so that the defect of Jesus is now a thing of the past. Greg Foss I would recommend that people type into Google,

you know, Protestant reformers on the perpetual virginity of Mary. If you want to see these quotations for yourself, but here's just one from Luther. She, that is the blessed Virgin, brought forth without sin. Actually, that's not the one I want to, that's not the one I want to look at because that has to do with her. Mcclough conception, yeah.

So here's another, a new lie about me is being circulated, says Luther. I am supposed to have preached and written that Mary, the mother of God, was not a virgin either before or after the birth of Christ, but that she conceived Christ through Joseph and had more children after that. When Matthew 1.25 says that Joseph did not know Mary carnally until she had brought forth her son. It does not follow that he knew her subsequently. On the contrary, it means that he never did. He never did know her.

And that's not to say that all Protestants hold everything that Luther said is true. But if they have any kind of recognition of what the past. I suppose it was just kind of give Protestants an off ramp, you know? So it's like, fair enough, you know, you don't hold Calvin, Zwingli, Luther as infallible. You're not bound to believe everything that they say, but you are bound to the sacred scriptures. Well, you could, you as a Protestant can disagree with me as a Catholic on the Immaculate Conception, say, but you don't have to disagree with me on this because these Protestant Revolters didn't and so you could remain a Protestant and agree with Catholics that Mary is perpetual virgin

What I need to investigate further, I was just brought to my attention actually by dr. Robert fastigi Is the fact that there has been some work done on this question in modern Protestantism that only after higher criticism came about and the tendency to call into question the very inspiration of the Gospels, do we actually start seeing people from a Protestant culture who are no longer Christians who believe in the inspiration of scripture are the ones that begin to press the Jesus brother and sister, meaning siblings from the same mother arguments, and that this really was resisted by the children of the reform until you get to basically the late 19th and the early 20th century, and then you start seeing some resistance break down to it, and it to actually be absorbed into Christians who are antithetical to the higher critical movement. So the question here isn't anything else then,

it's not Protestantism per se which is wed to this, it's modern Christians who tend to come from an evangelical background who are unaware that they're simply embracing the Enlightenment and they need to be maybe more critical of it. Alright, yeah, let me add to that real briefly Matt, and to Neil's point, which is a very good point, you can quote Luther all the time, evangelical will reply quite true. They'll say, well we don't believe everything Luther believed, we don't believe everything Calvin believed or Zwingli or Turton. The point of quoting all of them is not to say, well, you know, you have to believe this.

No, the point is to show there was a continuity that even after the revolt, they held to this and they believed it to be apostolic. And notice how I read a number of reformers, even when we get to Wesley, really the main issue, Matt, would be when did the break happen? If we can trace a belief to the beginning, go all the way to the reformers. It's not a matter of believing what Luther believed. It's a matter of when did the break occur?

That's a great question. What would it say? And the break occurred very late. And Dr. Fastidji, as Father pointed out, has been doing work and showing that this has happened very late and very likely in a liberal leaning movement that led to the break because, Matt, today you walk into an evangelical church, it is almost dogmatic to deny Mary remained perpetual Virgin. So the issue would then become if there were former as held to it yet this teaching was eventually shed and abandoned, well what other teaching is gonna be shed and abandoned in a hundred years in Protestantism? And it really does show a problem. Do we know who first

sort of popularized the idea? That's the reason why I won't state it as a fact is because I want to see the paper trail. Yeah. But I do trust inherently Dr. Robert Fastidji, but he himself told me that it was merely work that someone else did. It's not his personal research and he was just commending it to me to read. So I don't want to put too many, too much effort into what a very good scholar told me that another scholar whom I don't know had written. All right, so.

Yeah. Before we leave the topic, I have a question that I've, I still don't fully understand, I think, the answer to, which is that it seems to me that the Catholic view of marriage is that the physical relational aspect of it is very important, like consummation of the sacrament, things like that. So, in what way could we say that Mary and Joseph were married if there wasn't this

element of… Great question. If the Conjugal Act is necessary to solidify the marriages of women? I didn't realize that my rhetorical and meant to be amusing response would be I didn't realize they were baptized. Yes, it's a very smart-ass response. Yes. The point is that we can't hold the Old Testament to the same standards we're

bound to in there. Because we know from Jewish law that those who are engaged have to get a divorce and are treated as if they are married and this is a Jewish convention for non-baptized Jewish persons. So we don't have categories like this. For us you're engaged, you're not married. For them you're engaged and in certain activities you're treated as a married person, but in other activities you're not treated as a married person. So for us we were like it's neither fish nor fowl, it's got to be one or the other. And they're sort of like, well, Moses doesn't think so,

so why should we think so? So I think it's a different world that we're living in there. Luke got the marriage right for Jesus and Mary, and Matthew too, that Joseph needed to get a divorce from a fiance. This is quoting two different parts of the old law. Forgive me saying it was a smartass response, that was me trying to be funny.

No, no, and another thing to add is, we will definitely, for people that may be wondering, included in our book on marrying the perpetrator of rigidity, we have found a number of early Jewish references that talk about married celibate couples. And that really is incredible. And this is we have found in Philo and multiple others. Go ahead.

Sorry. Even the Produt Evangelium of James, even if you don't want to take that as being basically accurate, it still shows evidence of people consecrating themselves as virgins. Oh yeah, and a very early document too. Second century? Yeah, very early document as well, Matt. A document that was valued by the early church,

was utilized by the early church. So even if people will come out and say, well Matt, it has fantastical elements within it, sure. But the idea was to present a theology about Holy Mary that was believed by the early church, and I think it did a very good job of that. All right, so so far we've looked at Mary as Theotokos, Mary as immaculately conceived, Mary as perpetual virgin. We're about to move on to the assumption of Mary. I don't know if you want to do a follow-up.

Matthew 1.20 to 25. father could touch upon Matthew 125 until Sure, we haven't done that yet. All right, please. So let's read the passage, which is basically Matthew chapter 1 verses 20 on but while he thought about these things behold an Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. I think we all know this is Joseph saying Joseph son of David Do not be afraid to take to you, marry your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bear the son, and you shall name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

That ends at verse 21, that's a literary unit. So there's several pieces here. The angel of the Lord is mentioned, the second part, Joseph is mentioned, the third part, Mary as wife is mentioned, the fourth part, what is conceived of her is the Holy Spirit, and the fifth part, she will bear a son, and finally the sixth part, you'll call him Jesus. Each one of these parts is in a artistic way, reflecting all the parts of the ancient prophecy of Isaiah. If you were to go to Isaiah 714, you would see all those same parts. The angel just repeated in substance what Isaiah 714 said, so let's see what that says. So this was done. That it

might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet saying behold the virgin shall conceive with the child and birth a son is exactly what we just heard. It's like deja vu. And they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is translated, God is with us. What are we hearing now so far is that the angel is concerned about a temporal period, a period of time. From the moment of conception until the moment of giving birth, she's going to be a virgin. Why isn't the angels talking about afterwards or cause that's not the prophecy. The prophecy in Isaiah is about a very strict period where the child has to fulfill this period and this period only in order to be the child of prophecy

from the moment that the Virgin has conceived to the moment that she has physically given birth. That is the moment where she has to remain a virgin in order for the prophecy to be fulfilled. It doesn't matter if she was magically a virgin, not a virgin before she was a virgin. It doesn't matter if she is naturally not a virgin after she gives birth. The only thing that fulfills the prophecy is that in those two periods of time that she's a virgin. So then what is the last part of this? Then Joseph being aroused from sleep as the angel the Lord commanded him we're seeing a repetition of those six parts again and

took to him his wife exactly repeating what the angel said and was not knowing her or was accustomed to not know her, was continuously not knowing her, might be another possible translation. But then we have that magical until she had had birthed her first-born son and he called his name Jesus. Now the first thing that we should already be prepped for with my dramatic reading is that until she had birthed is talking about what? She completed the prophecy period. The prophecy period began at conception and the prophecy period ended at the giving of birth. So what this literary piece is meant to

emphasize, this is not the only argument but this is the solid literary argument. All that Matthew wants to talk about are two periods, from conception to birth. Now, Basil the Great gets this right, as we mentioned in our book, thanks to William finding this. Basil the Great hears all these people yelling about, is she a virgin afterwards, isn't she a virgin afterwards,

all the faithful are speculating. His whole point is, that's not what this passage is about As a as a Greek Retorition he knows that it's about the prophecy That's the only thing that Matthew is concerned with we need to demonstrate that Jesus is the Messiah and you don't demonstrate that Jesus is the Messiah Because Mary remained a virgin after she gave birth. There's nothing in that. Mm-hmm in Isaiah 7 14 But what we do find, what we do find is that there are some parallels that are very very strange. The first thing is that St. John Chrysostom, which I'll let you talk a

little bit more about, which is repeated by St. John Damacy would say is, there's tons of places where until means that the action continues afterwards. I have three examples here if you'd like me to read them unless you have them. Feel free, yeah. So this comes from Tim Staples. He says, a phrase like this, until,

is used to emphasize what is being described before the until is fulfilled. It is not intended to say anything about the future beyond that point. Here are three examples. And that is precisely what we just said about prophecy, right? This is only about prophecy and nothing but prophecy. Go ahead. Second Samuel 623 and Micah, the daughter of Saul, had no child until the day of her death. Yeah, she had children afterwards.

That's right. Or first Timothy 41313, until I come, attend to the public reading of scripture, to preaching, to teaching. This doesn't mean that Timothy should stop teaching after Paul comes. And then thirdly and finally, 1 Corinthians 15.25, for Christ must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet. I love that one the most. Right. This doesn't mean that Christ's reign will end.

We could give more examples. And the last, I believe, is used by Chrysostom and John Damacy in an imitation of Chrysostom. But what's oftentimes missed is the entire Matthew chapter 24. And this is in an article that we have on the Petristic Pillars blog. Notice that Matthew chapter one and Matthew chapter 24

are all using the same vocabulary. It's all about being pregnant and birthing. You're like, who's giving birth in Matthew 24? Well, it's the end times. Jesus coming at the end times is like a woman giving birth. So here's what he says, for nation will rise against nation and king against kingdom, and there will be famines, all these from the beginning with birth pangs. That's exactly what verse 21 used as the concept in words.

And then Jesus says, therefore, when you see the abomination of desolation, etc., then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, etc. But woe to those who conceive. That exact phrase is used in Matthew 123. Maybe there's a connection, but if we keep seeing connections. And then he says, for then there will be great tribulations such as has not been from the beginning of the world until this time, no nor ever shall be. That is the exact words used in Matthew 1. What does the until that time mean here? And it never shall be. So now we see

parallels. Conceiving in the womb, conceiving in the womb, we see the idea of birth pangs and bearing a son and birth pangs. It's the same language. You have this idea of from one time until another, that exact construct is used in both Matthew 1 and in Matthew 24, but it doesn't stop there. That's what this episode should be called. But there's more. There's more. In chapter 1 we heard Joseph was supposed to take you, Mary, as wife, and we also see that Joseph took to himself his wife. Well, in 24, guess what it Jesus talks about the end of the world.

For in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking and continuously marrying and giving in marriage. The exact same concepts. Then we see until the day that Noah entered the ark. Well, that's oh my gosh, he took his wife until she bore a son he did not have relations with her this is an exact parallel mmm but what but but what is the response well after no after they entered the ark everything disappeared and you know they were they know if you actually read the Old Testament after they enter the ark they were still marrying and giving to marriage it continued after the action it was many days later that the world got destroyed. So now we actually have vocabulary parallels,

conceptual parallels, birthing parallels, and even grammatical parallels from until. But what does each instance of from until mean in Matthew 24 as Matthew's brain works? Until always means that the action is continuing afterwards. and there's even yet a third example He says in the very same chapter he says they were eating and drinking marrying and giving into marriage until the day that no under the ark and they and

They did not know who that sounds familiar They did not know until the flood came and took them all away What does that mean? They did not know until the flood came and took them all away. What does that mean? They did not know until they died is what it's saying. Did they all of a sudden know that they're dead? Or did they all of a sudden know the day and the hour in the midst of the flood like they had a revelation? Oh, this is going to destroy the entire world. Or was it just a flood?

What it means here is they didn't ever know. They did not know anything and that's the reason why they died. So what does using parallel grammar, parallel vocabulary and parallel concepts where Luke, I'm sorry, Matthew self-plagiarizes in Matthew 1 and Matthew 24 mean? That as they did not know the day or the hour until the day that he died, Joseph did not have relations until she gave birth. What's the parallel? Never. That's what the parallel is.

I think it's pretty much a open shut. And what's funny is all of this stuff is interesting. I think the exegesis is accurate and convincing, but in a way it's like unnecessary. Because when you've got the unanimous consent of the fathers, and this is such a novel interpretation, it's like this is just sort of icing on the cake, as it were. Which is exactly the words actually of Trent when all the fathers are agreed on a particular piece

of scripture, just be quiet, you're not allowed to say anything anymore. That really is the one thing that I point out often, Matt, and I've pointed it out multiple times in debate that in the early church it was a mark of orthodoxy to believe that Mary remained perpetual virgin. Now if you denied that you were like Helvideus or Eunomius or Arsentius, you were outside of the fold. You were not in the church. You don't find any early church father, you don't find an Athanasius, a Gregory of Nazianzus, a Jerome. You don't find any of them denying that Mary remained perpetual virgin. And with that, I believe there's an incredibly powerful biblical point to be made

that Mary did remain a perpetual virgin. All right, like we're going to move on to the assumption of Mary, but I want to ask everybody who's watching right now, you know, just to consider sharing this because not just so you know, my channel does better. I mean, that is one reason I want you to share it. But there are a lot of Protestants who are just wonderful folks who love our Lord, who love the scriptures. And if you ask them, they would say this is their biggest hang up. And I think you'll agree. We've covered a lot of a lot of ground tonight. And I think that many Protestants would find this very compelling. So please help us out

by sharing this show on Facebook, leave a comment, subscribe, like that helps the algorithm and that sort of thing. Especially if you know a Protestant who's looking in or, you know, somebody else who's looking into the claims of Catholicism to check this out. Mary, the church also teaches, was assumed bodily into heaven. Okay. Yeah. Is that it?

Does that sum it up? At the end of her earthly life, she was assumed body and soul into heaven. Now when I first, when I first think about that, maybe from a strictly kind of materialist point of view, it sounds silly. I'm not saying it does, but someone might say this. They might say, well, where did she go? Like, did you, could you look up and see the bottom of her feet just ascending into the void, like into the, you know, what's your basic response to that sort of incredulous objection? I mean, that would apply both to Christ's ascension and Mary's assumption.

No, Matt, I really did not like the bodily assumption when I was an evangelical. I had a big problem with it. You know, where do you find it in the Bible? Not only that, where do you find it in early church history? In my opinion, you found it incredibly late. Now I believe differently now. I believe you can clearly find a very powerful allusion to Mary's bodily assumption in Revelation 12. Okay.

Now, I believe it's very clear Mary is the woman clothed with the sun with a crown on her head, represented as the mother of the church, portrayed in beauty, beautiful. Now there are an incredible amount of parallels there, Matt. Earlier we talked about Genesis 3, which is great, we've come full circle. What a great show. We talked about Genesis 3 where the woman would be at war, enmity, remember, with the devil. Well, the woman in Revelation 12 is at war with the devil.

That serpent of old, we're told in the Greek, that old serpent is after the woman, trying to devour her and her child. It's definitely true that enmity is a reality biblically. Now I know the argument that there are early fathers that believed Mary, that believed the woman in Revelation 12 was the church. I know that. From a Catholic perspective, we have no problem with dual imagery there. Not at all. Or three-way imagery, right? Israel, the church, the mother?

There's no problem. In fact, Matt, multiple fathers believed there were multiple images there. They believed it. We have many fathers that recognized, in fact, there are fathers, as Father has even talked about and written about, that would talk about it being the church, would say, hey, their fathers before us, I believed it was Mary. It was a Theotokos. Primarily, we have, it has got to be Mary primarily met, because the woman of Revelation 12 is the mother of the child that will rule the nations with a rod of iron. Now, that is a Messianic song. The child that will rule the nations, quoting from the Old Testament.

Well, biblically, who is the mother? It's Mary. Revelation 12 has got to be Mariological, primarily, I would argue. I would also add we have a number of early fathers that interpreted it as being Mary. But even outside of that, Matt, even if we don't interpret that, even if we leave Revelation 12 out, we have early testimony, early fathers that believed Mary was bodily assumed into heaven. You find it in Ephraim the Great, Ephraim the Syrian. You find it in Jacob of Sarug, great Syriac or early church father, and multiple other fathers that wrote about Mary being body and soul taken into heaven.

And the other incredible thing is that the bodily assumption of Mary was part of the liturgical life of the church from a very early period. Now, by the recommendation of Father here, many months ago I got in touch with Father Brian Daly, the Reverend Dr. Daly, who has done a lot of work on the Dormition. And I asked Dr. Daly, is it Father, by your estimation, what are the earliest documents to the bodily assumption of Mary? Maybe if we don't have them all translated, what are the earliest? He told me, in the liturgical life, second century. It's in biological life. What does that mean? That would be in the liturgy of the church. So, Father could probably break that down way, way better. Father, I don't know if you want to? Sure. This would just be anything from

break that down way, way better. Father, I don't know if you wanna. Sure, this would just be anything from gatherings to sing a formal collection of hymns mixed with scripture. We can call these divine praises. The Liturgy of the Hours is probably a very popular way to say this. I'm not claiming that in the second century the Liturgy of the Hours is organized.

There is recommendations that we do have in church orders for private prayer to be done at very fixed times, and some of these prayers are prescribed. But we do have gatherings for singing hymns and things like this. We do have a sense, as early as Origen, that there was a reading cycle of readings that was being used that was appointed by bishops. And we have evidence that there were Christian hymns being composed as early as maybe the late second, early third century. Wow. On the assumption. Not on this assumption per se, but when we say liturgy, we mean this mixture of hymn and scripture in ritual and ceremony and it's within this context of the living and believing community that

this Marian stuff, this Mary is in heaven body and soul kind of stuff arises. And when did your friend say that he thinks that first appears? Second century. And I have also talked to a number of scholars on it that have looked at the documents and they would say second century as well. Now I want to also be very careful because there is a claim that the very earliest texts on the assumption of Mary are heterodox. I want to be very clear. They are not. I've examined them. In fact, I'd recommend people go look at the debate

I did here in Pius the Aquinas in the very topic. We talk about that they definitely are not and we even have multiple early fathers that talked about Mary being bodily assumed into heaven. How does the Orthodox opinion of the translation of Our Lady differ? There's more of a standardized tradition in their patristic homilies and liturgical implications, like how hymns are, are designed, um, that we want to, they, they want to emphasize that there was a separation of body and soul that took place and then a reuniting of it in heaven. And, um,

would any faithful Orthodox person say that the bones of Mary could show up somewhere someday? I'm not aware of anyone who would be welcomed by either their bishop or any sort of synod. So there's a lot of agreement here. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, I would even add that we have St. Epiphanius as well. St. Epiphanius, it also talks about the bodily assumption of Mary. So there are multiple figures. I would also add that there is also an incredible allusion in Scripture. Psalm 132, I believe, is the Greek rendering of it, where you have a number of fathers reading that, where it talks about, arise, O Lord, you and the ark of thy holiness.

And as we talked about earlier, if Mary is viewed as a new arc and If Psalm 132 is already applied in the New Testament because it already is read and applied Do you have it present you might want to read this? Let me pull that up Because and if you don't have it all I think I have it ready. Yeah, let me look could you read that? Let me talk a little bit more when you pull it out. Sure. Let me add that really important point.

Psalm 132 is already applied in a Messianic sense in the New Testament. So if we look at Mary and we realize Mary is the new Ark of the new covenant, we realize why the earliest of early fathers, such as Ezekias of Jerusalem, interpreted that in a Mariological manner and here is the Hebrew Psalm 132 8 through 10 which still gets us where we want to be

up God or arise is the is the Greek translation and it has a resurrection resonance to it almost arise arise or up God, enjoy the new place of quiet repose, you and your mighty covenant arc, get your priest all dressed up in justice, prompt your worshipers to sing this prayer, honor your servant David, don't disdain your anointed one. And you see that in the depictions of Mary's own burial

is that you have the procession of the apostles that are oftentimes Displayed as part of what happened at Mary's as funeral if we want to call it It's usually left in very ambiguous language her falling asleep Which is a obviously euphemism which it seems to imply death, but they don't want to go that That next step and say death because that would overcommit them to something that's beyond the tradition they've received. Who's they? The liturgical documents that are the earliest

and then the fathers who quote these liturgical documents, they don't tend to want to step beyond the words of the tradition out of fear of making an implication which, though logical, is not necessarily what the original authors meant. It's a really good point because the majority of the Dormition Fathers do just that. Out of incredible reverence for Mary, they will talk about it as a holy falling asleep. And

in fact you'll find fathers like Germanus that'll say, indeed Mary fell asleep and went into eternal life. They have incredible reverence for Mary, and rightly so. It shows you the mind of the early church, and it shows you that when they began to talk about Mary and her dormition and bodily assumption, they talk almost in incredible unanimity with you've got different fathers in various different parts of the world and they're talking about this about Mary almost as if it was already an accepted belief and it was. Well, the reason why it's so significant that William brings up Psalm 132 arise or go up Lord

You and the ark of your strength Using more of a Septuagint spin on it Is because in chapter 11 of Revelation just before mentioning the woman who is clothed with the Sun The Ark of the Covenant is the first thing that John's vision brings him to, and then it immediately switches. Like, presented with the Ark of the Covenant and its contents, as we just heard in the Psalm, and all of a sudden we're switched to Mary, almost styled, as Joseph was seen styled as himself, the shadow of Christ, right, that the sun and the moon, they're all bowing down to him, the stars, and an act of what appears to be worship. And now Mary is, in some sort of vague sense, being given honors that normally we only associate

with Christ, and we say, well, what is our evidence that the fathers of the church understood this? Well, William did a lot of digging on the Revelation, and he presented to my eyes Ecumenius, which is one of the... It is the earliest extant or existing commentary, where he admits that he's looked at previous commentaries, which are no longer accessible to us,

and that he finds that Mary is indeed a focal point of this chapter. We also see that Methodius of Olympus, who is writing probably in the early 300s, but himself is a third century saint by and large, is admitting to us that the majority, I believe, is the one that he says, if not as vice versa, that the majority of the early discussions of this text

point to Mary, and that he is actually going to, he seems to imply that he's actually going to be a little innovative and make it more typological of the church and less Marian. So now we're starting to see that the Ark that is supposed to disappear from this world and arise into the heavens is taken by Revelation chapter 11, that image of the Ark up in heaven, it's already arisen, it's up in heavens where it's supposed to be, exactly as Psalm 132 says, and then it switches to an image of Mary. One of the things that is often neglected is exactly where we started this conversation today, which was Genesis 3 15, that

Mary's seed will conquer the world, Eve's seed will conquer the world of Satan, right? What is this woman called in Revelation 12? Woman. She's called woman and then it says, and her children are all those who are her children, but it says, I think it uses the genitive, which is to spermatoz of Tis that are of her seed.

The only other time in the Old Testament or the New Testament than Genesis 315 that her seed is used. And it's used because she gives birth to all the children of the church who die in sanctity. And it be martyrs here that may be the inference I think those who are suffering for the faith. So what we start seeing then is the double typology. Mary is the ark. She is the place where Jesus, the covenant was held.

She gives birth, but then there's that strange message. She was in pain. John's giving you his vision. He's saying, okay, here's what, I'm seeing the actual, I'm in the hospital room and I'm seeing the live birth. Well, how can that be a historical description of the actual birthing of Mary? It's already happened.

He's seeing an eschatological vision. Even though he sees it as Mary, it's not Mary in the past. He's using Mary's past life just as it's shared in Matthew. The child was born, they had to go and flee to Egypt, here the child goes out into the desert to escape from Satan, etc. So yeah, the baby life of Jesus and Mary is being referenced here as the vision, but the actual vision is not of the past, but it's of the heavenly Mary who's giving birth to martyrs. So her pain is no longer the historical pain that

she did not suffer according to our dogmas in the giving of, in the birthing of Jesus. But this pain, which is a standard woman's pain in the images that were given, has a reason, because all these children are going to die. And we've seen- So it expresses Mary's concern for Christians, is that... Who are suffering and being martyred. And the final seal that this must be an individual woman, as far as the Christian interpreters are, is that the seed of Eve is an individual who has an individual child. The seed here is of an individual woman who has individual children. Here they're typological children who are the

martyrs or the ones that are born by Mary, which can also serve as the church. So it serves a double role. But you can see now why the fathers consider this in the earliest text, Mary, because it's the only other place where Genesis 3 15 is fulfilled. And that is the new Eve that we see as early as Irenaeus. And so what we see as a consistency here, it's a double fulfillment that Mary as, as the mother of Jesus, Jesus is the begetter of the church, so to speak, by his appointment of the apostles. Mary is mother of the church.

Here she is mother of the church because she's mother of Christ, but also the church is the mother of these children because we're all baptized into the maternal womb, not of Mary physically, but spiritually of the immaculate, without stain church of Ephesians 1.5 and 1.6, that is without wrinkle. And it is entering our mother's womb a second time in which we are made holy.

So you see all these images work very very well together. And so it's very difficult to escape from how that arc got up into heaven and why Mary is immediately imaged afterwards and then called the the fulfillment of Genesis 315. You know, some people say that children naturally believe in God and they have to be talked out of belief in God, right? And I think there's something similar with the Catholic teachings on Mary. I think if you just didn't know much about Christianity and you picked up Revelation Chapter 12, you're like, oh yeah, this is obviously Mary.

But then maybe when you start to engage with Protestants and those who would be critical of it, you're like, oh, okay, well maybe it's not, you know. I remember thinking that with our Lord's teaching about the Eucharist. I had just become a Christian at the age of 17 and I thought the only text we had from scripture had to do with the Last Supper narrative. And I remember one day walking around my room and I opened up to John six and I thought, oh my gosh, like it's saying it right here. Maybe this isn't in their Bible, that kind of thing.

And then maybe you get into conversation. It seems like prima facie is what I'm getting at. In Revelation 12, I was like, why have a problem that this is Mary? What's the issue? And the fact that it can be thought of as Israel, the church, and Mary is not an objection. There really is no problem with multiple imagery, Matt. I think the main problem that our evangelical friends would have is the incredibly beautiful imagery. It portrays Mary as the mother of the church, crowned bodily in heaven.

And I think that that at times can bother them if they are against Catholic teaching. The other thing that I would add is that Mary as new Ark of the New Covenant is very early. You find it in multiple early fathers. Well, we'd argue it's biblical without a doubt. You find it in multiple early fathers. And the connection of Mary as Ark of the New Covenant in Revelation 12, as Mary being the woman, is also in Paschasius Radbertus, I would like to add. So we do have a patristic witness in that as well. Okay. Yeah, and I just want to kind of read that for the folks at home. So if you just kind of accept what we're saying here about Luke very clearly and very clearly demonstrating

Mary as the new Ark of the Covenant, and you don't have to take our word for it, you can look it up yourself, but just trust us, it's very clear. And so once you see that, and then you go to the end of chapter 11, and I know we've been talking about this, but there are some who may not have even seen this. These chapters, obviously the Bible wasn't written with chapter and verse, this wasn't in serif. They were very artificial, they were even, the person that put the chapters together didn't even know Greek. So the reason why we haven't gotten rid of these is mainly because we've gotten so used to them since the 16th

Century with the verses I should say the verses since the 16th century the chapter since the 13th century Okay, is because it's hard to get rid of something that everybody's already using absolutely. Yeah But I mean the consequence of this is you read a particular chapter and you naturally think, okay, breaking chapter onto the next story. But suppose we didn't do that. Well, here's what you might read at the end of chapter 11 in Revelation. Then God's temple in heaven was opened and the Ark of his covenant. Now just context, the Ark of the covenant was the holiest thing in Israel. It was brought into battle.

Where Yahweh's presence was beneath the two wings of the cherubim. When's the last time we hear of the ark in Scripture, Father? Is it 500 years? I believe it's either one or two Maccabees. Either one or two Maccabees. But if you're a Protestant, you don't even have one or two Maccabees.

Yeah, it's been a long time. It's been hundreds of years since the holiest thing on the face of the earth is not in the second missing Mm-hmm, and now we hear about it and as I've heard some Catholic apologists point out in Ethiopia I don't get that reference. They have they have the Ark of the Covenant one of their churches Ah, very good habit amazing. All right, so but if you're a first century Jew surely you're picking up Okay, we're seeing the Ark of the Covenant. This is pretty important. So let's read it. Then God's temple in heaven was open in the Ark of Covenant of his covenant was seen within his temple.

They were flashes of lightning rumblings, pills of thunder, an earthquake and heavy hail. End of chapter. Of course, that's a reference by the way to Manna following from heaven, which is another story from a different book on transubstantiation. But go ahead. Ah, well, you know, what's funny is like that that feels like as as anticlimactic if it was to end there as say an episode of Lost or 24 if you get that reference. But it doesn't end there.

It doesn't end there. It says earthquake and heavy hail and a great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothe with the sun, etc. So it seems to be like very clearly saying that the ark is the woman. Without a doubt, it's continuous. There is a sign in the heavens and we're told that that sign is the woman now Here's the other the mother of my lord came to me. How is it? The ark of my lord should come to me there we go David himself uses that phrase same same hill country and the song walk apart

Remember father, you know this the sign of Isaiah 7 The sign in heaven the woman clow with the Sun the sign of Isaiah 7, the sign in heaven, the woman, clove of the son, directly connected to Isaiah 7, the virgin, Mary. Without a doubt, Revelation 12 has got to be Mariological. There is no doubt. Okay, so what do you think about this? I've heard Catholics argue, you know, if Mary didn't die, sorry, if Mary wasn't assumed, then we should expect the first and earliest Christians to venerate her relics. But there's no account of her relics. To me,

that's never struck me as a terribly powerful argument, because I would presume that Joseph's relics would also be something important to have, or John the Baptist's, and yet I'm not aware of those being, uh, reverence those relics. Are you? Yeah. The, I, for me, because I'm kind of hitting on stuff that I feel very, very, um, like I have a mastery over. One of the things I haven't done is a documented history of relics.

It would be something worthwhile doing for the purposes of William's series. But I'd be very interested to know in what archeology can get us back to when interest in relics was in Christians, shrines of relics. We do have some from the late second century now that have been archeologically dug up. So we are seeing that relics have a very old shrine system

which starts to give us the sense that if we have, for example, the relics of the relics, I think it was on St. Philip's feast day that I talked about the shrine in Turkey that has been recently uncovered. It potentially has second century roots, et cetera. So if we're seeing that relics go back this far, there is something to be said from archeology and fake stories of the lives of saints and apostles and things like this that were being multiplied during this time that we, we should expect the best relic you can get as a Mary relic.

Fair enough. And I suppose someone could say, well, Joseph and John the Baptist died prior to the kind of Christian explosion. Yeah. And I would say that you would think there would be an automatic interest in Joseph, but we don't, we do see relatively early interest in Joseph, but liturgically it's, we're talking about maybe six, seventh century, maybe even as late as eighth century. So, uh, which is a puzzle. I mean, that doesn't mean that there wasn't a cultist to him somewhere beforehand I just haven't seen the literature that's been updated on this is why I

Hesitate to say too much because I'm not a specialist about academics. They don't talk about what they don't know No, like me talk about everything we don't know. I will give What do you think just kind of resum this up? What do you think of that objection that if if Mary died and was buried We should expect evidence of people. I have to give them a little credit. That is a good argument Okay the only reason why I will admit that man because I've looked at a number of early fathers that claim to be Relic hunters that claim to have gathered relics new places places to go, new places where there were

shrines of great saints, and you never hear about Bones of Mary. So because of that, I do think they have a very good point, Matt. All right, so someone's listening to all of this. We've covered these four different dogmas, and no doubt we could spend 10 hours on each of these things. But someone might be listening, and I've heard Protestants say this, many people who follow the channel and say, I want to become Catholic, but I feel very uncomfortable praying to Mary. I mean, the four things we've talked about today don't

directly indicate that we should pray to her. We don't have to get into that right now. So let me just ask you a very pointed question. Can one convert to Catholicism except what the Catholic Church teaches about these four dogmas we've discussed today and not. Directly and intentionally pray to Mary. Yeah I think they can Matt I'm gonna tell you why when I became Catholic Matt. It took me maybe two years to feel comfortable to pray to Mary. Now when I became Catholic, I was fully convicted of the Catholic faith, but I still felt a little bit, you know, a little bit wary of that. You know what, I'm still not a little bit comfortable with that.

Today I have no problem calling on the intercession of our Holy Mother Mary. But I would tell those that maybe are on the fence, Matt, to look at the book of Revelation, Revelation 5, where there are saints in heaven and they are receiving prayers, presenting them to the Lamb as bowls of incense. Now that would, in any way you could look look at it, anyway you cut it, that is intercession, no matter how you look at it. Then you look everywhere else in the Bible, 1 Timothy 2, multiple areas, the book of James, where we read that the prayer, prayers of holy people, avail much. We're told to ask for holy people to pray for us, to

intercede for us. Now, how much more important and powerful would the prayer be of the Mother of our God? We know that those that are physically dead in heaven with our Lord, we're told in the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, they are alive in heaven, utilizing the Greek word zaō. They're more alive than we are. They're living with Christ. So in a way, this is the opposite of necromancy. It is the opposite.

In necromancy, I'm seeking information from the dead. In praying to the saints, I'm giving information to the living. Namely, please pray for me for this reason. That is the exact point. They are living in our Lord and I've got to be honest, Matt, I would rather have our immaculate mother Mary intercede and pray for me. That they my friend. Yeah. Yeah. No offense. Even though I love you as a brother, even though I love you as a brother, I think you'd say the same about me.

Of course. Of course. We love our mother Mary. And let me add this point, man, if everything that we have said about Mary is true, then Mary is an incredibly holy woman, beautiful woman, all holy, perpetual virgin. But we recognize Mary was a creature. We recognize that. We don't worship Mary, we venerate Mary. But if everything we have said about Mary is true,

then our Lord truly is an incredible God, and He is an incredible God. He did great things for His mother. Some would say that the Catholic emphasis on Mary detracts from the glory of God, that if you would have focused solely on Christ, then surely this would give more honor to Christ. What's your response to that? Well, in addition to condemning Elizabeth and the Holy Spirit, who ignored Christ in

utero and to talk, talk, talk about Mary, we should also remember is that the Ark of the Covenant is undoubtedly styled as Mary in Luke's Gospel. We've just talked about it in Revelation. And one of the things that we have to remember is if you track in the various books of kings, depending on which version you know you're using, there's four kings or just one, two Samuel and one, two kings, you'll find that there's something very puzzling happens with the ark in the Old Testament. It goes to cities and you can choose to bring gifts out and leave them on the ark or not. And there's people that don't leave gifts on the ark and they get smitten with plagues

and they're like, oh, we should have left gifts on the ark. What you start seeing is there's some very uncomfortable devotion going on to this ark thing. Like, why are you leaving gifts for the ark? That's not said gifts for God. It's not said they're offered to God. God's angry that the arc's not getting gifts. That's where the smiting is taking place. So we have to understand that even if we don't know why God does some of the things that he does, provided that we've started as interlocutors with what God does isn't wrong. We have to ask ourselves

what Luke, what does the analogy end with Luke, that if Mary is in every other way the Ark, that all of a sudden we're not supposed to leave offerings or in some way invocations or give gifts in some sense to her. Secondly, with Revelation, the saints are clearly interceding with God in heaven in order to do things on earth. They want revenge in the language of Revelation to happen on earth. Now, you could argue that their prayers were in vain, but I don't think any Christian would do that. They say maybe they aren't going to get eschatologically fulfilled to the final judgment, some of these. So we have the second thing, is whatever prayers of the saints that are happening there for

earthly intercession, the words that are used, prosergés, are the same words that are used for St. Paul to commend individuals to offer prayers and hymns and spiritual songs. And then finally, people forget that Jesus liked to tell stories about people praying to Saints Here's what Jesus says The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side The rich man also died and was buried in Hades where he was in torment The rich man also died and was buried in Hades where he was in torment He looked up and he saw abraham far away with lazareth by his side and he called out to him father abraham

Have pity on me and send lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue Because I am in agony in this fire and they proceed to have the conversation Would jesus be using heretical theological concepts in order to bring about truth? My answer would be if you show me him doing that I will be happy to concede that. His argument with the Pharisees was typically actually you guys have just read the law wrongly. I can heal on the Sabbath. You say that it's illegal to do so. Interesting. Here whatever concept that he's conveying is clearly that somebody can have a conversation with someone that is in the bosom of Abraham and ask for intercession. Abraham's problem

is he's in hell. I can't do anything for you when you're in hell. Sorry, I can't dip my finger. Jesus doesn't reprimand the image. In fact, Jesus is the creator of the image here. And is it an image that Jews are familiar with or unfamiliar with? Is it that they're going to be offended by and they're not going to be able to listen or get anything paralleled from the story? They're going to get something. This is a teaching instrument. The point is, Jesus was already affirming Jewish intercession to Abraham, which we have seen from intertestamental literature. He's using this as a commonplace, something everyone understands and does, and he's affirming

it. And so what we have is, if I can pray to Abraham, why not Mary? Yeah. I just, just make sure that you're not in hell when you try it. Okay. Alright, so here's what I want to do. I see the super chat there. We have so many questions. It's ridiculous. And we haven't even begun to get them, and we're almost at the three hour mark. So what I would propose is a lightning round. So even though you guys could answer these questions for an hour each, would it be okay if we just- How many seconds you're going to give us?

Well, I won't be that cruel, but if you could just try to answer as succinctly as possible. All right. So Lyndon, thanks for the super chat, says, can Father Kappas comment briefly on his response to Eastern Catholics who deny the Marian dogmas citing Vatican to is their authority for doing so Yes, all their bishops took an oath of fidelity to Vatican to at Vatican to and therefore all their bishops said that there were all the previous Ecumenical councils that they believed in thank you. Dr. Fastigi for that information It's part of the magisterium and unless they were crossing their fingers

Which I don't think really counts in ecumenical councils, you usually get killed for that, then they're obliged like everybody else. Rutger Dumm says, if Christ came to earth through Mary, does it follow that we must always go to Jesus through Mary? Is there a point where one can pray to Mary in excess? No, I think that it would be, one could definitely pray to anyone too much if they neglect praying

to Christ, if they neglect Trinitarian prayers, if they neglect every other aspect of the faith. But to be very honest with you, Matt, and to answer the concern, I don't know any Catholics that do that. The ones that I do know honor Mary well, but all the while honoring Mary, they recognize Christ is true God and they have great devotion to our Holy Trinity. Anthony Skinner says, this is a problem through all of Christianity for me, but if Mary was given such an abundant amount of grace to preserve her from sin,

why does God not give such grace to everyone? This is an excellent question. It does work on the presumption that grace is quantitative. In other words, it's kind of some stuff we get in material terms. Whereas again, grace is really something where God works on the will. He works on the intellect. He either makes the will stronger in doing what it does or the intellect somehow more adept at doing what it does, the thinking and the choosing. And so, could you repeat then, once we've clarified that it's not a quantity,

which I understand the question, even Catholics follow that. Yes, so why does God not give such grace to everyone? This is, yeah. In other words, if God could have just saved her from sin, why don't he just do it to all of us? This question comes to, why do artists have to put the sun here?

I think that the sun would be much better there. There's nothing wrong with him thinking that this world doesn't make sense. I plenty of times don't think this. The problem that you're dealing with here is either God is a platonic machine that has to pump out necessary products and he doesn't get choices or God is a free agent. He's a free agent, he's the supreme artist.

Sadly, what comes with that for us is that he gets to choose to do with us according to a plan that only he chose. And it sometimes really does not feel like he likes us very much. Interior Castle 1 says, I'm preparing to consecrate myself to Jesus through Mary and have read about Our Lady of Lourdes saying, I am the Immaculate Conception. I still understand how and why this is different to saying she was immaculately conceived. Please, can you help? You know anything on that? Yeah, it is not different at all. Now, let me be very clear. There are a number of different Marian consecrations. There are different ones that you can find in Latin America,

different ones you can find in Europe. All of them point to Christ ultimately. There's nothing wrong with either of them, and all of them are right in line with the dogma of the Immaculate Conception I would point out to that myself and Father Gregory pine Put together a nine-day preparation for total entrustment to Mary based on the teachings of Thomas Aquinas incredible So people can check that out, especially if you're more of a sprint guy like me nine days I can do that my understanding correct me if I wrong, is that Kolbe's interpretation of this is when she says, I am the Immaculate Conception, as opposed to I am Immaculately Conceived, she's using the name of her spouse, the Holy Spirit, who is in a way the Immaculate Conception of the Father and the Son.

That is his interpretation, you're correct. Kolbe is really interesting. When I read him, I love him. He makes a lot of sense to me. My concern, and I'm sure it's my problem, not Colby's problem. I want to make that very clear is he seems to base a lot of his Mariology and Pneumatology on both Genesis and misinterpretation because we've now discovered that Jerome didn't say, you know, in just 315, she shall crush her head, but it's he. And then, and then a private interpretation of Lewitt's, but I'll work through that. Feel free to give me some advice. To comment on that. You find a lot of people also a little bit uncomfortable with Garagulu

Lagrange, not Garagulu Lagrange, forgive me. What's his name? De Monfort? I forgot the name. Yeah. De Monfort. yeah. I want to add that even though they have incredible Marian devotion, great Marian devotion, they have incredible, incredibly good Christology and great Trinitarian Christology, great Trinitarian orthodoxy as well. So even though their language about Mary is very flowery, I can totally get how an evangelical

might feel a little bit uncomfortable Yeah, but I'd recommend they read them in totality and they'll realize you know what I very orthodox Yeah, and I'd want to kind of give people some peace of mind to like you don't have to Immediately resonate with the writings of every saint right like it's okay If you don't find Louie de Monfort's writing as inspiring as everybody around you Yeah, just like Jerome pretty much didn't like anything that Augustine, right? Yeah Yeah, they wanted each other Sycamore tree says if the Blessed Mother passed down her maternal DNA to Jesus who contributed to Jesus as paternal DNA

His y chromosome if we assume that Jesus did have a y chromosome as a fully human male Yes, basically, you're not gonna get a patristic response out of this, but you have kind of two horseshoes and hand grenades ways of responding to this. Horseshoes and hand grenades are, either God had to make ex nihilo, that means from nothing, what was necessary to be male,

or he reformatted what Mary's donation was in such a way, and then the objection is, well, how can he do that? Well, how can there be nothing, and then there be something? This is St. John Chrysostom's response. So if there can be nothing, and then there be something, or if in evolutionary terms, there can just be dirt and elements, and all of a sudden, there can be living things with DNA,

then I don't think if it's not impossible from an evolutionary perspective, for all of a sudden there to be a Y chromosome where there was only dirt, then all the more can there, then God, make Y chromosomes from dirt. Fair enough. Right. Tell me what you think about this. I'd love you to critique this or offer something to kind of help me flesh this idea out. Because I've often thought, OK, people have trouble sometimes with the way Catholics speak about Mary.

So I thought to myself, then what's the strongest, most over the top thing I can say about Mary that I still think is true? And can I defend it? Because if I can, then everything that's like sounds lesser than this can also be justified. Right. And he is, I think, I don't know what you could say stronger than this if it were not for Mary I would be damned Mary has saved me I think I can justify those claims I'm sure you do too. Yeah.

Do you see the point if I can justify those claims that sound outrageous to Protestant sensibilities then anything else is a walk in the park and here's what I would say those very things I just said about Mary people say of the cross if it were not for the cross I would be damned I've been saved by the cross and we know what they mean by those things Thomas Aquinas makes the point that God could have saved us even without the incarnation he said it was most fitting that he would die on the cross but he could have saved us in any number of ways and yet I, I say, still, nevertheless, I've been saved by the cross,

and we all know what I mean by that. The cross is an inanimate object. It had no choice in the matter. Mary had a choice in the matter, right? And so how much more can I say of her, because of her fiat, that I have been saved because of Mary? If you can understand what I mean about the cross,

surely you can understand what I mean about Mary., surely you can understand what I mean about Mary. Flesh that out, correct it, criticize it. Sounds to me like moral causality, which is in the Franciscan tradition and basically culminates in Maximilian Kolbe. So not bad, if that was your stab at it, you're with good company. I was going to say, sounds very Franciscan. Yeah, without a doubt. I loved it.

I thought it was great. Now, the objection we'll get from the evangelicals will be, what do you mean by Mary has saved you? And I think as a Catholic we can break that down very clearly and show them what we mean. We don't mean Mary died on the cross for their sins. We don't mean Mary is the savior of the world. Yeah, or the immediate efficient cause of our salvation. But everything we've said can be utilized and we can show them it is very biblically based and very patristic as well.

Yeah, I once cataloged, and I wish I had it on me, the number, there's about two or three times in the Old Testament where people fall down in front of the king and worship him and say, save us. So if you can do that for somebody that, you know, kills his, um, best soldier to marry his, uh, his wife, I guess you could do it for people that are nicer than that. Fair enough. Okay. So we addressed this when we talked about Mary earlier, but, um, let's take another stab at it. This comes from Daniel Friis. He says, did the gospel writers know that Mary was immaculately conceived or at least sinless? Why do you think they did not explicitly speak of it? And then he said, big fan of Williams, much love, brother.

Awesome. I do believe they did know that. Now, I don't think that was the point of the gospel of St. Mark or Mass. This gets back to your excellent analogy of the triangle, which may not have been yours originally. Yeah, I stole it from St. Vincent, but let's call it mine for the purposes of this show. It's so good. That's a good one. Yeah, I definitely think that the Gospel writers knew it, and I think it's very clearly brought out by St. Luke. Now, I don't think it was the point of every Gospel writer or every writer of the New Testament

to lay that out. I think we have it sufficiently laid out, the very point of everything that the Gospel of St. Luke was trying to lay out, Mary as perpetual Virgin, which of course we can lay out in another show. There's so much more material. But I think Luke was very clear in presenting Mary as an all-sinless, incredibly humble woman. And with that being said, I think it's very clear he knew what he was saying.

And I do believe, let me add one other thing I wanted to talk about earlier, I do believe Luke definitely did interview people, because the early Church Fathers believed that very strongly. Right. Final question has to do with devotions and apparitions to Mary. Because I think what happens, right, is people find an apparition that resonates with them or a particular devotion, and it means so much to them that they then begin, very often it seems to me, to speak about those apparitions or devotions in a way that seemed really non-negotiable.

Like this has to be as important to you as it is to me. And I don't like that. I think we shouldn't demand uniformity where the church allows diversity of opinion or custom. So I don't like it when people say in order to be a good Catholic you have to pray the rosary daily. And I don't like that because the Catholic church doesn't say that. Talk into that because I sometimes fear that these things that I'm addressing now are obstacles to those looking in. Let me give you the last word. I'll give Father the last word on that. Sure. I agree with you, Matt. Number one, I think we have a little bit of a problem today where

people look at a private revelation and they will then raise that to a very high level to the point where, let me give you an example. Let me say that today I would have come in here, and you would have told me, William, I have a devotion to the Nine Steps of Mary from Germany. And I say, well, Matthew. Never heard of it, that's cool. Yeah, yeah, so I say, Matthew, well, I have a different one. You tell me, what are you talking about?

You have to have the one that I have, or you're not part of the church. The problem is, Matt, we encounter a lot of people today that follow that very mindset and I think that's very problematic. Well, I'm just kind of struck that we have a tendency, we don't really have kind of a apocalypticist movement that's very successful in Catholicism, like, um, uh, left behind. So I guess we kind of make a lot of the revelation stuff,

uh, person, private revelation stuff, kind of substitute for that. Uh, maybe it's just a facet of, of psychology. I mean, maybe there's a real need for things to be eminent and it's an emergency and we've gotta do it now or we're gonna get fried and those sorts of things. I mean, certainly with nuclear weapons and everything, I mean, whether or not you believe or not the scientific basis for things like the change

in the climate is primarily human driven or those sorts of things, there's a lot of apocalypticism out there. Maybe this is just a sociological phenomenon and that doesn't really address the theology of it. The theology is quite clear. All public revelation ended after the death of the last apostle, that's already taught in the formal magisterium.

You can find it in Robert Pastigi's excellent translation of Densinger, which has all the papal statements on that, and a story. So therefore, if we're discussing this, what we should be discussing is whether or not it is prudently helpful to this person or that person's personal journey to love Jesus, Mary,

the saints, their neighbor better, or if they find that something else is more effective in overcoming sin and embracing truth. Yeah, and none of this, of course, and it's so sad you even have to offer this as a qualifier, is to downplay the beauty and importance of these devotions that have been held in high regard by the church, but it is to say that we have to make distinctions between what the church mandates, what she encourages, what she permits, what she forbids.

And I think very often we don't make those distinctions and thereby we kind of heap burdens up on people. It seems to me that when you look at these Western devotions, I'm not sure what it's like in the East, right? There's a cornucopia of devotions that you could choose from. And most of them allege some supernatural origin. Like I'm sure that there are promises associated with every coloured scapula out there and every medal and chaplet and great. But the idea that you have to take all of them on or the idea that well, because there are promises associated

with a particular devotion that everyone is now obliged to do them, if you were to follow that logic, it would seem like, okay, well, now you've got about 8,000 chaplets to pray today and you need to be wearing every colored scapular. I'm passionate about this because it nearly drove me insane as someone who was struggling a great deal with scrupulosity. So I recognize the importance of devotions, the beauty of devotions, but I think as Jose Maria Escrover said, there are many devotions within the church's treasury, choose only a few and remain faithful to them.

Any thoughts on that? I'm the only one who's very, very passionate about this. That is incredible advice because Matt, I have encountered people that have been hesitant to come to the church because of the massive amount of devotions and misinformation. And they burn themselves out because they come to the church, they see the beauty of these different devotions, they get super into it, and they have people say them, unless you're doing it, you're not part of the team, you're not part of the church. Which is a major problem when people begin to use that line of reasoning. And I think Father Brokodon, great.

When did public revelation end? The death of the last apostle. And that is Catholic dogma. And that should be enough. Yeah, this has been bloody terrific. Thank you for sticking with me for three hours now. I had a great time, Matt. All right, everybody, subscribe, like, share, tell people about this show and you can learn more about William at patristic

Pillars comm link is in the description below father capas's book is in the description below the book They wrote together is in the description below. Please check it out read it anything else You should like to point people. Let me say one thing. I'll give father the final word We just came out with a book in the papacy People have really really been enjoying it if they want to check it out They can find a link to what is about on my blog. I really hope people enjoy it We both co-authored that together and it's it's the same theme. It's it's 75% every papal passage how it was understood in its own first century world and

How it contributes to our understanding of the papacy now, including many of the problems that we encounter, which is can Pope's make mistakes? Is there such a thing in the scripture as a, as a so-called papal correction? What do those corrections entail? What's some of the collateral damage that can come for those? We kind of look through all that, that, that is present in the first century church and, and try to come

up with a biblical model for the constitution of the church just based off of the biblical text and then as those are filtered through in the last 25% of the book through the eyes of the fathers up until Constance and Opal 3 and 680. We said at the beginning of the show that we're going to try to answer every conceivable objection to the teachings of the church on the Blessed Virgin Mary. If you're watching today, maybe you're a Protestant minister or scholar and you think, look, you really did a terrible job, we invite you to come on this show to debate William in good faith and friendship. If you are interested, please write to my assistant,

Melanie at assistant at matfrad.com. Recognize too that we're not gonna take every person up on this, like if you're just somebody who's got some interest in it. We wanna take the best Protestant apologists and scholars up against William. So that's really who we're after. I don't want to be setting up Somebody who William can just debate in his sleep. So when the invitation that we're extending

Isn't going to apply to somebody Let's say who's got like five YouTube followers and is in their senior year of high school And and if you are that person maybe wherever you you purged your argument from, maybe point them to debate William. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. All right. God bless everyone. Thank you very much. Let us know what you thought about the episode in today's of today's episode in the comments below. God bless.