@17:45-20:21, “Now a question that always comes up…is whether Mary was “the mother of God.” You say that sounds almost blasphemous…Mary was not the mother of God, because we know from Scripture that Jesus actually pre-existed Mary…John 17 verse 5…John 8 verse 58…John 1 verses 1 through 3…I’d like to read to you a very interesting statement that we find in the devotional book ‘Lift Him Up’…”
By the year 431 A.D., the Bible had already been canonized for close to 3 decades, thanks to the early Catholic Church, and it was specially due to the misinterpretation of Scripture that led to the ecumenical council at Ephesus. Indeed, a reading of Nestorius’ Second Letter to Cyril at the Council of Ephesus surmises this premise conclusively, for we see that Nestorius’ personal view of what the nature of Christ was - based on his view of Scripture - was what ultimately biased his take on Holy Writ. It’s a good thing that the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church was around to hammer out this basic Christian fundamental belief of the nature of Christ, right, Protestants?
Additionally, it took two Church Fathers at the Council at Chalcedon, Cyril of Alexandria and John of Antioch, to come up with what would be called The Formula of Union which states (with my emphasis):
We confess, then, our lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God perfect God and perfect man of a rational soul and a body, begotten before all ages from the Father in his godhead, the same in the last days, for us and for our salvation, born of Mary the virgin, according to his humanity, one and the same consubstantial with the Father in godhead and consubstantial with us in humanity, for a union of two natures took place. Therefore we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord. According to this understanding of the unconfused union, we confess the holy virgin to be the mother of God because God the Word took flesh and became man and from his very conception united to himself the temple he took from her…
As for Mr. Bohr’s statement that Mary cannot be the mother of God because Jesus existed before everything, Cyril of Alexandria wrote several letters to Nestorius in regards to his heretical notions and, in doing so, Cyril also addresses Mr. Bohr’s statement. In St. Cyril’s first letter, written in 430 A.D., he says the following (my emphasis in bold):
“…for the Scripture hath not said that the Word united to Himself the Person of a man, but that He hath been made Flesh. And the Word's being made Flesh is nought else than that He partook of flesh and blood in like way with ourselves and made our body His own and proceeded Man of a woman, not casting away the being God and His Generation of God the Father, but even while in assumption of flesh remaining what He was.
Plainly stated, the blessed virgin didn’t originate God the Son, she gave birth to the body in which God was inside of, CCC #495 states this as succinctly and as simple as possible:
Called in the Gospels “the mother of Jesus,” Mary is acclaimed by Elizabeth, at the prompting of the Spirit and even before the birth of her son, as “the mother of my Lord.” In fact, the One whom she conceived as man by the Holy Spirit, who truly became her Son according to the flesh, was none other than the Father’s eternal Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity. Hence the Church confesses that Mary is truly “Mother of God” (Theotokos).
What is even more interesting is that by making the statement that “Jesus actually pre-existed Mary,” Mr. Bohr unwittingly and stupidly repeats the words of Nestorius! For it was Nestorius himself that declared,
“No one can bring forth a son older than herself.”
See how the enemies of the Church conjure up old heresies anew! How fitting that Mr. Bohr would use the SAME EXACT wording in our modern time that the Catholic Church condemned over 1,450 years ago. The most relevant fact about this heretical notion is that it is clear that even to this day Mr. Bohr didn’t learn the lesson from the Council of Ephesus as well as what the Catholic Church determined was the truth; as such, let me reiterate Christian history…
The title Mother of God or, Theotokos, was given to Mary NOT TO glorify her but, to glorify Him! The Council stated that the title of Mother of God, unifies Jesus to BOTH of His natures. Mary DID NOT give birth solely to Jesus’ human nature, she gave birth to Jesus as both man and God so, therefore, when Mr. Bohr states at the 18:00 mark that, “in the strictest sense of the word, Mary was not the Mother of God,” he is wrong because in birthing BOTH natures of Christ she birth God as well. What Mr. Bohr is failing to see is that the blessed mother did not give birth to the eternal Trinity (God) but, she birth the second person of the Godhead; she wasn’t the creator of the Son, she was the conduit through which God the Son made Himself man. She gave birth to God the Son and, as such, is the Mother of God. To believe that God had a creator is simply foolish, however, to state that Mary is the Mother of God, is to state that Jesus HAS TO BE both man via His mother and God via His divine origin. Therefore, the title given to Mary is an extremely apt reflection of who her Son is.
Moreover, to say that Mary isn’t the Mother of God is to take away – not from Mary – but, from Christ and his divine nature. For if Mary did not give birth to a child that had the nature of God, then she only gave birth to a human child, at which point we must ask ourselves: So when did Jesus become God? Did he “grow into” his divine nature? If it did happen after His birth, where does Scripture mention it? If Mary did not give birth to Jesus’ divine nature, then Elizabeth’s words in Luke 1:43, have no meaning at all. Nor would Matthew 1:23 make any sense when it states:
“Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, ‘God with us.’”
In other words, God is with us because a virgin with child gave birth to Him! Mr. Bohr attempts a semantics game at the 18:00 mark but unfortunately his attempt at convincing a smart Catholic that the proper title for Mary should be “God-man bearer” very perfectly illustrates why the Church chose Theotokos over 14 millennia ago: only by stating that she is the Mother of God can we really start to fathom the mystery of the incarnation and truly appreciate the inseparable and unchanging nature of Christ when He walked on earth and as He is in heaven. St. John Cassian in chapter 2, book 2 of his On the Incarnation of the Lord, written in the late 300’s, goes into great detail to set forth the proper view of Mary as the Mother of God, he begins by saying:
…O heretic, whoever you may be, who deny that God was born of the Virgin, that Mary the Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ ought not to be called Theotokos…For no one, you say, brings forth what is anterior in time. And of this utterly foolish argument whereby you think that the birth of God can be understood by carnal minds, and fancy that the mystery of His Majesty can be accounted for by human reasoning…
…O heretic, whoever you may be, who deny that God was born of the Virgin, that Mary the Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ ought not to be called Theotokos…For no one, you say, brings forth what is anterior in time. And of this utterly foolish argument whereby you think that the birth of God can be understood by carnal minds, and fancy that the mystery of His Majesty can be accounted for by human reasoning…
And finally, another perfect example of this most joyful mystery that is the incarnation, is stated by none other than Protestant Reformer Martin Luther in his 1521 commentary On the Magnificat:
The “great things” are nothing less than that she became the Mother of God, in which work so many and such great good things are bestowed upon her as pass man's understanding. For on this there follows all honor, all blessedness, and her unique place in the whole of mankind, among whom she has no equal, namely, that she had a child by the Father in Heaven, and such a child.
She herself is unable to find a name for this work, it is Too exceedingly great; all she can do is break out in the fervent cry: "They are great things," impossible to describe or define. Hence men have crowded all her glory into a single word, calling her the Mother of God.
No one can say anything greater of her or to her, though He had as many tongues as there are leaves on the trees, or grass in the fields, or stars in the sky, or sand by the sea. It needs to be pondered in the heart, what it means to be the Mother of God.
Bonus point of truth: Need further proof that devotional beliefs of Mary are firmly grounded in Christian history? The oldest prayer we have which refers to Mary as the Mother of God is called the Sub Tuum Praesidium, which means “Under Thy Protection,” and was written around 250 A.D. It reads:
We fly to thy patronage, O holy Mother of God; despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, O glorious and blessed Virgin. Amen.
@ 22:50 – “Another interesting characteristic about Mary is that Mary was blessed…the bible does not say that Mary was the blessor. Scripture says that Mary was blessed…Luke chapter 1 verses 48 and 49.”
I simply love it when bible-alone Protestants use this passage due to the fact that they tend to go against what the Bible says in verse 48 when Mary says, “all generations will call me blessed!” I would like to therefore ask all bible-only Christians one question: Do you address Mary as blessed whenever you refer to her? Obviously Scripture demands you to do so, therefore, do you? At this point, I would like to state a simple fact: since the beginning of this video, Mr. Bohr has mentioned Mary 53 times and yet, never once, has he ever called her or refer to her as blessed; very interesting from a man who has set out to describe Mary using only the bible (and Ellen G. White) as his only source.
I therefore pose the question: what Protestant churches have existed in ALL generations (none), and how many of them call Mary blessed with special prayers and devotions? Strangely enough we crazy Catholics, who apparently don’t follow Scripture (according to most Protestants), tend to call the Virgin Mother as Blessed Mary in both our prayer life and liturgical services, talk about weird, eh, Protestants?
@ 23:57 – Notice that we are not told here…it says [Luke 1:42] ‘blessed are you among women,’ and for those who think this is some peculiar, special way of addressing Mary because she was out of the ordinary, this expression is used more than one time in the Old Testament…Genesis 30 and verse 13…”
Mr. Bohr quotes Genesis 30:13 in order to see that Mary isn’t really “special,” unfortunately he totally misses why this term is used for Mary in light of the Old Testament. So let’s look at some other Old Testament expressions that Mr. Bohr didn’t quite get to and see how this translates to Mary. Deuteronomy 28:1-4 speaks about obedience and the blessings that one receives from being obedient to God, of specific note is verse 4 which starts by saying, “Blessed be the fruit of your womb…” When read in full context, chapter 28 talks about the many ways in which God blesses those who heed His word and curses those who abstain from it. But, a more illustrative expression that is also used to define Mary can be found in Judges 5:24, which reads:
Most blessed of women is Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, blessed among tent-dwelling women!
Easily seen here is that this verse parallels Mary in Luke 1:42 as being “blessed among women,” it is the following verses however, that clearly and explicitly point to the direct pre-eminence of Mary. Verses 25-27 speak of how Jael murdered Sisera, a general of the Cannanite king who was oppressing the Jews (Jgs4:2), and of particular note is how Jael, who was blessed among [tent-dwelling] women, kills this tyrant. Picking up at verse 25, Sisera has fled into Jael’s tent after losing a battle, she promises to keep him safe at which point she offers him milk to drink in a Lordly cup:
25 He asked for water, she gave him milk, in a princely bowl she brought him curds. 26 With her hand she reached for the peg, with her right hand, the workman’s hammer. She hammered Sisera, crushed his head; 27 At her feet he sank down, fell, lay still; down at her feet he sank and fell; where he sank down, there he fell, slain.
Finally, the most impressive Old Testament verse is found in Judith 13:18, which reads:
Then Uzziah said to her, “Blessed are you, daughter, by the Most High God, above all the women on earth; and blessed be the Lord God, the creator of heaven and earth, who guided your blow at the head of the leader of our enemies.
Uzziah was the king of Judah and he blesses Judith by telling her how she is blessed above all the women and he blesses her for beheading Holofernes, an Assyrian general who was about to destroy Judith’s hometown of Bethulia (see v.4-8)! So, once again, we see that Mary is foreshadowed here in the same manner as she was in Judges chapter 5. It is impossible for any of the early Christians to have escaped such similarities when posed with the character of Mary, they would’ve easily saw her as, not only the temple of the Word Incarnate but, as the most obedient and chaste creature that ever lived; the true handmaiden of the Lord who was far above and beyond any of the other women in the Jewish Scriptures.
So sorry Mr. Bohr, Mary IS special in every way imaginable: she was chosen from the beginning of all time to conceive the birth of Christ, she was an epitome of what all Christians should be like, she saw and suffered for her Son as He suffered for us and, of the utmost precedence, she was the 1st Christian in all of history; for she knew, way before anyone, who she carried in her womb was none other than God Himself and she ,naturally, continues to remain faithful to Him unto this present day in His Glorious kingdom. To depict her as anything else is to mock God’s mighty will.
@25:00 – “Another very clear characteristic of Mary…is the fact that Mary is a sinner in need of redemption, in need of a Redeemer. In fact, we’re told in Romans 3 and verse 23 that ‘all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.’ …So if you read the Bible, if you read the New Testament particularly, you’re going to discover that there is only one who is exempted from sin and that is Jesus Christ…Luke chapter 1 verses 46 & 47, where we’re told very clearly that Mary needed a Redeemer, she needed Savior…I’d like to read another statement from the book ‘Desire of Ages’…”
Ah yes, Romans 3:23! The deathblow to all Catholics who maintain that Mary was without sin! As it is stated, it reads:
...all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God.
As I stated in Part 1 of this current Throwing Down episode, we cannot merely read the Bible and expect to learn the intricacies and beauty of God’s Word. We must dive deeper into the meaning and uses of words and phrases in order to truly grasp what is being said; to take simple cursory readings and apply them against Catholic teaching, as Mr. Bohr is doing, is a dead end. There is, therefore, an issue to be taken up here with the use of the word all. In the Greek it is written as πᾶς and is pronounced phonetically as pas (see Strong’s #3956). However in Romans 3:23 it is written as the normative masculine plural adjective πάντες, pronounced phonetically pantes and, it is also the same word used in 2 Corinthians 5:14 which states:
For the love of Christ impels us, once we have come to the conviction that one died for all; therefore, all have died
It is also used in the same manner in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verse 22:
Notice that in these two aforementioned verses, they both state that ALL have died. Now, if we are to use Mr. Bohr’s rationale, this HAS TO MEAN that every single human being that ever lived (before Christ) HAD TO of died. But, does the Bible support this claim? This is a favorite tactic used by Protestants to demonstrate that Scripture is at odds with Catholic teaching and therefore must be wrong. However, since I already went very in depth on this topic in my last Throwing Down series (see here @19:58), I will briefly reiterate the biblical proof that can be used to disprove that every single human, that is all, have died.
To begin with, let’s look at Hebrews 11:5. In it we read the following:
By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and "he was found no more because God had taken him." Before he was taken up, he was attested to have pleased God.
In other words, Enoch did not die and yet was able to see heaven; because of the faith that he had in God, Enoch was translated into the presence of God and thus he escaped death (see Gen. 5:24). We see the same thing with Elijah in 2 Kings chapter 2 verse 11 where he is taken up to heaven:
As they walked on conversing, a flaming chariot and flaming horses came between them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.
So here we have 2 different instances in which actual living creatures were miraculously taken up to haven WITHOUT dying. For this reason we can, with biblical certainty, assume that the word all does not necessarily mean “every single thing ever.” Hence when Mr. Bohr says that “all have sinned,” this likewise DOES NOT necessarily mean “every single living human ever” has sinned and, Roman Catholicism is the only religion that has always accepted this biblical reality to be undeniably true. As Christian history dictates, the early members of the unchanging Body of Christ also believed this to be factual, see here @ 19:25 for a quick look at the historical validity of Mary’s sinlessness.
The document d’être of Mary’s Immaculate Conception is none other than Ineffabilis Deus. Penned in 1853 by Pope Pius IX, this papal decree once and for all settled the case over Mary’s sinless nature that had began since the existence of the early Church, indeed, the document reads more like a historical analysis for proof of belief than a mandate for observance. Holy Mother church, imbued with the Holy Spirit, and speaking infallibly to all Christian faithful declared:
From the very beginning, and before time began, the eternal Father chose and prepared for his only-begotten Son a Mother in whom the Son of God would become incarnate and from whom, in the blessed fullness of time, he would be born into this world. Above all creatures did God so loved her that truly in her was the Father well pleased with singular delight. Therefore, far above all the angels and all the saints so wondrously did God endow her with the abundance of all heavenly gifts poured from the treasury of his divinity that this mother, ever absolutely free of all stain of sin, all fair and perfect, would possess that fullness of holy innocence and sanctity than which, under God, one cannot even imagine anything greater, and which, outside of God, no mind can succeed in comprehending fully.
As for Luke 1:46-47, the Catholic Church has NEVER denied that Mary was in need of a savior. Although sinless, she was still a creature and a descendent of Adam and Eve. Therefore, as a human being, she was unable to save herself in any way and therefore needed her Son’s infinite merited Grace to save her. What the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception ultimately states is that Mary – from the moment of her conception – was instantly filled with so much of God’s grace that He not only removed the stain of Original Sin from her but she was also redeemed. However, the true cynic will invariably state that, since Jesus hadn’t died for us yet, it is impossible for Mary to have been saved beforehand. To which we must simply acknowledge the fact that Jesus has always been eternal; He, in all his heavenly glory, is not bound by time as we are…and neither is his power to save.
So before she was, He was. And He was able to give His mother-to-be the gift of grace that led to a sinless life as well as the gift of salvation from the very instance of her conception. Additionally, just using common sense we must deduce that if a sinless God were to be formed in a humanly womb, that womb would have to be absent any stain of sin. If the body is the temple of God then surely the temple that carried the Word would have to be as pure, innocent and unchanging as He who dwelt within it was. This thought of Mary as an undefiled carrier of the Messiah is prime in the belief that Mary was truly sinless, and no other title explains this Marian philosophy better than that of Ark of the New Covenant.
The title of Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant clearly depicts why Mary HAD TO BE the purest human that was ever created. As early as the second century A.D., we see numerous church fathers exclaim that Mary is the new “Ark of the Lord” and this is one of the things that most Protestants won’t readily admit - that there are HUGE similarities between Mary, as the New Ark, and that of the Old Testament Ark of the Covenant. With that being said, let’s see if we can flesh out the reasons from Scripture that make Mary the holiest wholly human that ever was.
To begin with, let’s see some characteristics of the Old Testament Ark. Exodus 25 mentions the measurements of the Ark as well as the fact that the Ark is to be lined outside and inside with precious gold. Exodus 37 speaks about its construction at the hands of Bezael. Indeed, the Ark itself was a treasure from God, it was the most prized treasure of the Israelites, for in it dwelt God Himself. Likewise with Mary: she was predestined to be the New Ark by carrying God inside of her and, in the same manner, Mary too remained “untouched”since the Ark and other sacred things were not to be touched nor looked at by the Kohathites (Numbers 4:15;20), who were specifically in charge of caring for the vessels within the sanctuary. So strict was this edict that we see God kill off over 50,000 people who dared look inside the Ark in 1 Samuel 6:19! In other words, wherever God dwelt, was a special place, as seen when Moses was commanded to take off his sandals in front of the burning bush in Exodus 3:5. We also see the same thing in Exodus 19:12 , before Moses goes up into Mount Sinai to meet the LORD, God tells Moses that absolutely no Israelite is to touch or set foot on the mountain under the penalty of death!
But there are even more similarities, take for instance what was placed inside the Old Testament Ark. According to Exodus 25:16, the tablets of God’s commandments were placed inside the Ark along with a container of manna (Exodus 16:31-35) and, according to Numbers 17:10, Moses told Aaron to put his staff alongside the tablets of God’s commandments. All 3 items inside the O.T. Ark are also mentioned in Hebrews 9:4. So, what do we have inside the O.T. Ark? We have: 1) the 10 Commandments, 2) manna and 3) Arron’s staff, in other words, we have: 1) the Word of God, 2) the Bread of God and 3) a symbol of the High Priesthood. Is this not what Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant possessed inside of her womb? Did Mary not carry the Word who was the Bread of Life as well as our High Priest? There is no way that anyone could deny this parallel between the two but, even if one were to, there are still other biblical typologies that not only lends credence to the title of Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant but solidifies it as such!
Take for instance the blatant similarities used by Luke in his Gospel when describing certain happenings with Mary. In Exodus 40:34-35 as well as Numbers 9:18;22, we see that God, in the form of a cloud, is covering or tarrying over the Ark of the Covenant; is this not the same thing God is doing in Luke 1:35 when the angel Gabriel tells Mary that God will “overshadow” her with His power to conceive the Son of God in her womb? The parallel between the Holy Spirit overshadowing the O.T. Ark and the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary - between the Ark of the Old Covenant as the dwelling place of God and Mary as the new dwelling place of God - is explained even better in CCC #697. It states:
…The Spirit comes upon the Virgin Mary and "overshadows" her, so that she might conceive and give birth to Jesus. On the mountain of Transfiguration, the Spirit in the "cloud came and overshadowed" Jesus, Moses and Elijah, Peter, James and John… the cloud took Jesus out of the sight of the disciples on the day of his Ascension and will reveal him as Son of man in glory on the day of his final coming. The glory of the Lord "overshadowed" the ark and filled the tabernacle.
In Luke 1:43, Elizabeth exclaims:
“And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”
In 2 Samuel 6:9, after the Ark of the Covenant had been taken away from the Israelites in a battle with the Philistines and then it was later returned to the Israelites (1 Samuel 5), King David went goes out to retrieve the Ark. And in 2 Samuel and in chapter 6 verse 9, we here David ask the following:
David feared the LORD that day and said, "How can the ark of the LORD come to me?"
If this isn’t a clear and deliberate attempt by Luke the Evangelist to equate Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant, then perhaps the following examples in his Gospel are:
In 2 Samuel 6:1-10, the Ark travels to the house of Obededom in the hill country of Judea. Luke 1:39 has Mary traveling to the house of Elizabeth through the hill country of Judea.
In 2 Samuel 6:11 we read that the Ark of the Covenant stayed at the house of Obededom the Gittite for three months. Luke 1:56 states that Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months.
In 2 Samuel 6:14;16 we see David dancing and leaping for joy in front of the Ark, in Luke 1:41-44, we see St. John leaping in his mother’s womb upon hearing the voice of Mary, the New Ark.
In 2 Samuel 6:15, David shouts in the presence of the Ark. In Luke 1:42, Elizabeth “spoke out in a loud voice” in the presence of the New Ark.
In 2 Samuel 6:17 we see the Ark returned to the City of David (Jerusalem) and it stays there until David’s son, Solomon, constructs the temple (1 Kings 6). In Luke 2:21-22 we see that Mary, the New Ark, is at the temple in Jerusalem.
Based on this biblical analysis one has to come to the conclusion that Mary is indeed the Ark of the New Covenant and, as such, she is the prize of God and of all of us Christians in the same way that the Ark of the Old Testament Covenant was the prize of Zion and her children. And just in the same manner that the Ark was special, protected, valuable and undefiled so too is our New Ark in Mary; and since God never changes, she too remained special, protected, valuable and undefiled in her earthly life, and now, more so in heaven.
To begin with, let’s look at Hebrews 11:5. In it we read the following:
By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and "he was found no more because God had taken him." Before he was taken up, he was attested to have pleased God.
In other words, Enoch did not die and yet was able to see heaven; because of the faith that he had in God, Enoch was translated into the presence of God and thus he escaped death (see Gen. 5:24). We see the same thing with Elijah in 2 Kings chapter 2 verse 11 where he is taken up to heaven:
As they walked on conversing, a flaming chariot and flaming horses came between them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.
So here we have 2 different instances in which actual living creatures were miraculously taken up to haven WITHOUT dying. For this reason we can, with biblical certainty, assume that the word all does not necessarily mean “every single thing ever.” Hence when Mr. Bohr says that “all have sinned,” this likewise DOES NOT necessarily mean “every single living human ever” has sinned and, Roman Catholicism is the only religion that has always accepted this biblical reality to be undeniably true. As Christian history dictates, the early members of the unchanging Body of Christ also believed this to be factual, see here @ 19:25 for a quick look at the historical validity of Mary’s sinlessness.
The document d’être of Mary’s Immaculate Conception is none other than Ineffabilis Deus. Penned in 1853 by Pope Pius IX, this papal decree once and for all settled the case over Mary’s sinless nature that had began since the existence of the early Church, indeed, the document reads more like a historical analysis for proof of belief than a mandate for observance. Holy Mother church, imbued with the Holy Spirit, and speaking infallibly to all Christian faithful declared:
From the very beginning, and before time began, the eternal Father chose and prepared for his only-begotten Son a Mother in whom the Son of God would become incarnate and from whom, in the blessed fullness of time, he would be born into this world. Above all creatures did God so loved her that truly in her was the Father well pleased with singular delight. Therefore, far above all the angels and all the saints so wondrously did God endow her with the abundance of all heavenly gifts poured from the treasury of his divinity that this mother, ever absolutely free of all stain of sin, all fair and perfect, would possess that fullness of holy innocence and sanctity than which, under God, one cannot even imagine anything greater, and which, outside of God, no mind can succeed in comprehending fully.
As for Luke 1:46-47, the Catholic Church has NEVER denied that Mary was in need of a savior. Although sinless, she was still a creature and a descendent of Adam and Eve. Therefore, as a human being, she was unable to save herself in any way and therefore needed her Son’s infinite merited Grace to save her. What the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception ultimately states is that Mary – from the moment of her conception – was instantly filled with so much of God’s grace that He not only removed the stain of Original Sin from her but she was also redeemed. However, the true cynic will invariably state that, since Jesus hadn’t died for us yet, it is impossible for Mary to have been saved beforehand. To which we must simply acknowledge the fact that Jesus has always been eternal; He, in all his heavenly glory, is not bound by time as we are…and neither is his power to save.
So before she was, He was. And He was able to give His mother-to-be the gift of grace that led to a sinless life as well as the gift of salvation from the very instance of her conception. Additionally, just using common sense we must deduce that if a sinless God were to be formed in a humanly womb, that womb would have to be absent any stain of sin. If the body is the temple of God then surely the temple that carried the Word would have to be as pure, innocent and unchanging as He who dwelt within it was. This thought of Mary as an undefiled carrier of the Messiah is prime in the belief that Mary was truly sinless, and no other title explains this Marian philosophy better than that of Ark of the New Covenant.
The title of Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant clearly depicts why Mary HAD TO BE the purest human that was ever created. As early as the second century A.D., we see numerous church fathers exclaim that Mary is the new “Ark of the Lord” and this is one of the things that most Protestants won’t readily admit - that there are HUGE similarities between Mary, as the New Ark, and that of the Old Testament Ark of the Covenant. With that being said, let’s see if we can flesh out the reasons from Scripture that make Mary the holiest wholly human that ever was.
To begin with, let’s see some characteristics of the Old Testament Ark. Exodus 25 mentions the measurements of the Ark as well as the fact that the Ark is to be lined outside and inside with precious gold. Exodus 37 speaks about its construction at the hands of Bezael. Indeed, the Ark itself was a treasure from God, it was the most prized treasure of the Israelites, for in it dwelt God Himself. Likewise with Mary: she was predestined to be the New Ark by carrying God inside of her and, in the same manner, Mary too remained “untouched”since the Ark and other sacred things were not to be touched nor looked at by the Kohathites (Numbers 4:15;20), who were specifically in charge of caring for the vessels within the sanctuary. So strict was this edict that we see God kill off over 50,000 people who dared look inside the Ark in 1 Samuel 6:19! In other words, wherever God dwelt, was a special place, as seen when Moses was commanded to take off his sandals in front of the burning bush in Exodus 3:5. We also see the same thing in Exodus 19:12 , before Moses goes up into Mount Sinai to meet the LORD, God tells Moses that absolutely no Israelite is to touch or set foot on the mountain under the penalty of death!
But there are even more similarities, take for instance what was placed inside the Old Testament Ark. According to Exodus 25:16, the tablets of God’s commandments were placed inside the Ark along with a container of manna (Exodus 16:31-35) and, according to Numbers 17:10, Moses told Aaron to put his staff alongside the tablets of God’s commandments. All 3 items inside the O.T. Ark are also mentioned in Hebrews 9:4. So, what do we have inside the O.T. Ark? We have: 1) the 10 Commandments, 2) manna and 3) Arron’s staff, in other words, we have: 1) the Word of God, 2) the Bread of God and 3) a symbol of the High Priesthood. Is this not what Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant possessed inside of her womb? Did Mary not carry the Word who was the Bread of Life as well as our High Priest? There is no way that anyone could deny this parallel between the two but, even if one were to, there are still other biblical typologies that not only lends credence to the title of Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant but solidifies it as such!
Take for instance the blatant similarities used by Luke in his Gospel when describing certain happenings with Mary. In Exodus 40:34-35 as well as Numbers 9:18;22, we see that God, in the form of a cloud, is covering or tarrying over the Ark of the Covenant; is this not the same thing God is doing in Luke 1:35 when the angel Gabriel tells Mary that God will “overshadow” her with His power to conceive the Son of God in her womb? The parallel between the Holy Spirit overshadowing the O.T. Ark and the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary - between the Ark of the Old Covenant as the dwelling place of God and Mary as the new dwelling place of God - is explained even better in CCC #697. It states:
…The Spirit comes upon the Virgin Mary and "overshadows" her, so that she might conceive and give birth to Jesus. On the mountain of Transfiguration, the Spirit in the "cloud came and overshadowed" Jesus, Moses and Elijah, Peter, James and John… the cloud took Jesus out of the sight of the disciples on the day of his Ascension and will reveal him as Son of man in glory on the day of his final coming. The glory of the Lord "overshadowed" the ark and filled the tabernacle.
In Luke 1:43, Elizabeth exclaims:
“And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”
In 2 Samuel 6:9, after the Ark of the Covenant had been taken away from the Israelites in a battle with the Philistines and then it was later returned to the Israelites (1 Samuel 5), King David went goes out to retrieve the Ark. And in 2 Samuel and in chapter 6 verse 9, we here David ask the following:
David feared the LORD that day and said, "How can the ark of the LORD come to me?"
If this isn’t a clear and deliberate attempt by Luke the Evangelist to equate Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant, then perhaps the following examples in his Gospel are:
In 2 Samuel 6:1-10, the Ark travels to the house of Obededom in the hill country of Judea. Luke 1:39 has Mary traveling to the house of Elizabeth through the hill country of Judea.
In 2 Samuel 6:11 we read that the Ark of the Covenant stayed at the house of Obededom the Gittite for three months. Luke 1:56 states that Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months.
In 2 Samuel 6:14;16 we see David dancing and leaping for joy in front of the Ark, in Luke 1:41-44, we see St. John leaping in his mother’s womb upon hearing the voice of Mary, the New Ark.
In 2 Samuel 6:15, David shouts in the presence of the Ark. In Luke 1:42, Elizabeth “spoke out in a loud voice” in the presence of the New Ark.
In 2 Samuel 6:17 we see the Ark returned to the City of David (Jerusalem) and it stays there until David’s son, Solomon, constructs the temple (1 Kings 6). In Luke 2:21-22 we see that Mary, the New Ark, is at the temple in Jerusalem.
Based on this biblical analysis one has to come to the conclusion that Mary is indeed the Ark of the New Covenant and, as such, she is the prize of God and of all of us Christians in the same way that the Ark of the Old Testament Covenant was the prize of Zion and her children. And just in the same manner that the Ark was special, protected, valuable and undefiled so too is our New Ark in Mary; and since God never changes, she too remained special, protected, valuable and undefiled in her earthly life, and now, more so in heaven.
End of part 2
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