Tag: Council of Chalcedon

Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, appears in the Bible through Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts of the events leading up to the birth of her Son. We can see the emphasis in Mary’s faith as we look at her Magnificat or Song of Praise to God (Luke 1:46-55). My Christmas greeting this year featured the Magnificat. My aim was to present how Mary saw herself and all believers in relationship to God. Let’s look at Mary’s theology.

I begin by stating outright that there are many paradoxes in Scripture. The study of theology engages these paradoxes so that we can begin to try to understand them. One such paradox is that Jesus was/is both fully human and fully divine, being son to human Mary and Son to God by the Holy Spirit. 

Luke 1:30-35 (NASB) 30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; 33 and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.” 34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.

Jesus being “fully” God and “fully” man is impossible for us to get our heads around. Because of heresies arising in the church over Christ’s divinity and humanity and how these co-exist in one person, the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD wrestled with the concepts for theological accuracy, threatened as the Church was by heretical ideas that would lead to wrong belief and practice.

The term “truly”, as in “truly God” and “truly man”, to underline the two natures of Christ that are in one person, is a term that has been used in the Creeds of the Church. The word, “truly” rather than “fully”, is significantly preferred. While probably technically correct and often used, the word “fully” can convey 100%-ness which I, for one, have stumbled over and with good reason. To say that Jesus is fully God and fully man is almost like saying He is 100% divine and 100% human, a logical impossibility. Thus the reason for the preferred wording concerning Christ’s two natures as “truly”, rather than “fully”, divine and human. As a side note, for reasons like this, that we are expected to embrace humanly difficult truths, I do not believe in a theology of accommodation whereby God waters down truth to accommodate our human limitedness. The Bible itself does not shy away from presenting concepts that appear alien to the unaided human mind. Thus the need for the Church – to teach and to guide.

Mary starts off in verse 46 of the Magnificat by exalting the Lord. Her praise comes after Elizabeth’s recognition of her strong faith in God, with Elizabeth saying of Mary:

Luke 1:45 (NASB) 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord.”

This refers back to Mary’s submissive and faithful response to the Lord when she received the angel’s appearance and annunciation of her coming conception and bearing of Jesus:

Luke 1:38 (NASB) 38 And Mary said, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

In verse 47 of the Magnificat, Mary confesses her need of a Saviour. Mary, in need of a Saviour! Mary must have considered herself a fallen human being, thus a person in need of salvation by means of a Saviour. This must be a serious disruption to the idea of her having anything approaching a divine status. She describes herself as a bondslave of God. Throughout her pregnancy, Mary points not to herself but to God as fulfilling what He promised to her and to all who would believe as Abraham did. 

Verse 48 expresses Mary’s sense of lack of worthiness for her role in history but sees herself as a bond slave of God. She would have found fulfillment in this “slavery” because God is the perfect Master and slavery to God is our ultimate being at home and what we are intended to be. There is nothing wrong with slavery if the Master is perfect. This concept can be reflected in working in a fulfilling vocation as a wage slave. She then prophesied that future generations would call her “blessed”. This blessing has parameters. She is blessed because she is serving God in such a startling way and for such an exalted purpose. The blessedness of Mary does not extend to meaning that she is somehow divine or semi-divine and now receiving prayers from us. God has time directly for all of us. It is not as though He is a business executive who assigns a deputy to attend to us because He is too busy for us or because He considers us too debased in comparison with His holiness. No, the extraordinary thing about Christianity is that God is our Father in heaven and knows each of us personally. This can seem ridiculous or difficult to comprehend but Jesus tells us this is so:

Luke 12:6-7 (NASB) 6 Are not five sparrows sold for two cents? Yet not one of them is forgotten before God. 7 Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.

Verses 49-50 – Mary expresses that God has done great things for her as one person among God’s people and she calls God “holy”. She acknowledges that God is merciful to generation after generation to those that fear Him and she is almost overwhelmed to be seeing this deliverance and mercy again within her own lifetime and to think, with her direct involvement:

Verses 51-55 She praises God for what He has already done for His people in history. The last part of verse 55 acknowledges God’s salvation to all of His people who have existed, from Abraham to those who would subsequently share Abraham’s faith in God throughout history from both believing Jews and believing Gentiles who came to recognise Christ as their Saviour. Mary does not explicitly state this but her mention of “our fathers” and “Abraham’s descendants” in verse 55 are about those of the true faith – faith in the God of Judaic and Christian history. In the Gospels, Jesus often described the Jewish leaders as harbouring their own, rather than God’s, interests. So any continuing Judaism that denies Christ is not true Judaism. True Judaism as practised and believed by faithful Old Testament prophets, priests, kings and other Israelites would have led to recognition of Christ as Lord of all history and as prophesied Saviour.

The Christmas story is summed up in Mary’s Magnificat as both a reminder of God’s past deliverances and a rejoicing at the imminent fulfillment of ultimate human deliverance with the arrival of Jesus, the Saviour of Mary and of all humanity, whoever would believe in Jesus Christ. When we find ourselves in a place of repentance and faith in Jesus to deliver us from sin, death and hell, we are translated from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of Light. This miraculous truth is a prayer away for any and everyone – your own personal prayer to a listening and merciful God.