Thursday 10 February 2011

Mary Contrary Drivel

Here's a piece of theological reasoning that shows divorce from any biology and any historiography (unless fantasy is introduced as one type).

However, what we can say about Mary is that she was a pure virgin; that she was prepared by God from the very beginning in what she had to do. If, for some, that means 'Immaculate Conception then that is their language. Similarly with the Assumption, notwithstanding the particular language of the dogma, we can say surely that Mary reigns with Christ in glory. With Bishop Ken we can say, 'Heaven with transcendent joys her entrance graced, Next to his throne her Son his Mother placed.'

A pure virgin (including sinless)? Even if you might think Jesus was born of no conception from his dad, there were stated brothers and sisters. And how is it that speculations from theologians can produce any such declaration about sinlessness regarding Mary's condition and behaviour that has any actual meaning as regards that actual person?

Until Jesus, Mary and the lot of them are regarded as fully and completely human, understandable (or not) by normal rules of history, and by normal rules of biology (and physics) - and also until present day Christians speak a communicable language, then this sort of Christianity will remain a joke for anyone of contemporary means of knowledge and discourse.

2 comments:

Daniel Weir said...

I have, since reading Robinson's "The Human Face of God" in the 70s, been mindful of the danger in some theological writing of seeing Jesus as not really human. The other danger is of seeing God as not the actor in the Gospel. Holding both a belief that this is a real human we're talking about and a belief that in him God is uniquely present is, IMV, essential.

Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold) said...

Well I don't agree. Any transcendent is, by its nature, greater than any one person, and there is no basis other than doctrine for seeing this one man as a full and unique deity. Surely Gandhi (about which we have real, historical information) shares in that deity, if we are going to locate deity in humans.