Hi all
there are some quite enormous historical claims of visions of Mary in the 20th century. This youtuber sets up the story, and has William Lane Craig and Sean McDowell commenting - but it’s still left me (as a Protestant of course) quite uncomfortable.
Hey Max, nice to have you join us here. Is there something in particular you hope to discuss or a certain timestamp on the video you find most interesting?
Are you hoping to discuss Marian apparitions and what, if anything, can account or explain them?
Or since many Christians believe already in a mass vision of Jesus, why should’t the Marian apparitions be believed as well - and as a consequence, taken as proof of Mary’s high status in the spiritual world?
Sure! I prefer forums where people must summarize the argument in text. (I must have felt lazy.)
The sceptical claim was that because us Protestants quote Paul on the 500 seeing a risen Jesus, we should also - to be consistent - accept the claims of thousands of secular and sceptical and Catholic people in 1917 at Fatima. Or the events in Egypt in 1968. The Wikis of course contain sceptical accounts of these events - which as a Protestant I am attracted to. One argument for the Egyptian visions is that they were Muslim - what are they doing having visions of Mary? Presuppositions and expectations are important to try and explain away such instances. But the wiki already indicates that Muslims do have a certain understanding of Mary - although I do not know much about that.
If we explain these away - are we not contributing to the same sceptical, doubt-it-unless-I-see it vibe of today’s Dawkins types? But if we are to be consistent - should we not become Catholics - or at least some sort of Protestant with Mariology hybrid? I’m interested in everyone’s thoughts.
I tend to take a somewhat sceptic attitude towards mass visions. Or perhaps a blend of sceptic and open because I assume that the persons saw something. It is like in the mass sightings of UAPs (ex-UFOs): people saw something but what did they really see?
When Paul mentioned the 500 seeing the risen Jesus, we are not told any details. The only thing that is told is that a group of 500 people believed that they saw Jesus and others accepted that claim.
In the previous appearences of the resurrected Jesus, people did not just see Jesus. Jesus told something and sometimes participated in activities, like eating with people. We are not told what he did or spoke in the case of 500 witnesses, or how did they know it was Jesus?
The mass visions of Mary provoke many questions. How did they know it was Mary (or maybe we should use the name Maryam, if they were Muslims)? It seems there were strange light phenomena and/or a shape that someone claimed to be Mary. That perhaps shows that something apparently extraordinary was seen but is not proof that the shape was Mary.
One theologian I know is currently working part-time on a project she calls ‘Mariology for Pentacostals’. She is a Pentecostal herself. It will be interesting to read the articles she will write. I don’t know how long it will take because she has also other projects, in addition to a teaching position, and her time has gone mainly to these other projects and teaching.
Her speciality is systematic theology, so the study will be that rather than exegesis.
My question is what these appearances did or said: if Mary appeared, she would only do so to point to Jesus, not to herself, not to play games with the sun.
As for Craig, I think he’s wrong about the 500: nothing tells us that they were already believers before the appearance, only that they were when Paul wrote.
The commenter in the video makes a basic error: just because “everyone saw something” and “it was supernatural” does not mean it was actually Mary – don’t forget that Satan also can “appear as an angel of light”.
I’d say that Protestants have a simple answer: Paul doesn’t say that those 500 had a “vision” of Jesus, he says they saw Jesus, i.e. the Resurrected One in the flesh – so these are not the same things at all.
I don’t think it’s comparable. There is no reason to think Mary is any more special than you, me or the next person. Mary was not special. Just a woman. A young woman who got pregnant. Maybe the conception was supernatural or maybe she was sexually assaulted, got pregnant, and the spirit of
god was with the child who became Jesus. Then afterwards, Joseph “knew her”’and maybe she got pregnant some more or they just had sex and she never had any more kids. The Bible decided to not go very deep into this subject.
The Bible lines out stories of disciples and mothers seeing Jesus several times after his resurrection and many at his accession. The Bible does mention that at some point some people rose back up and went into the city. Then never give gives any more info such as did it last just a few days and then they fell over dead, or did they return to their grave or was it just visions of the “spirits” and the corpses remained behind. Does not give us any detail.
Nothing seems to hint at it happening thousands of years later. So while the Bible does not necessarily forbid it, it also does not hint at it. Could 20k have seen Mary. Sure. Do I believe it? No.
A number of people claim to have seen Elvis or Bigfoot, also. In each case, it’s necessary to assess the plausibility of the claim. Are there likely alternative explanations? The Bible calls us to test the spirits, not to accept every claim. Is it consistent theologically? Science is not the only basis of assessing whether something makes sense. As already noted, an appearance of Mary isn’t proof that Catholicism is correct; as far as I know, none of the reports of appearances of Mary have featured lectures on transubstantiation, for example, so the argument of the video is rather beyond what can be concluded. Although it’s true that we should not a priori reject miracles, they are uncommon.
The 500 cited by Paul are part of a list of various appearances. In general, the New Testament record of post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, where there is detail, tended to be people who weren’t expecting anything and took some convincing.
I think it is natural to feel uncomfortable here. In my opinion, many non-orthodox and non-Catholic Christians have an “anti-Mary bias” and misunderstand the teachings of the Church and the scripture it is based on.
Many apologists are quick to point out “evidence” for the resurrection from an ancient letter almost 2,000 years old, the earliest copy of which comes 100 or more years after it was supposedly written. Somehow this is supposed to serve as good testimony of a miraculous event but hundreds of people alive today, who are able to be questioned and cross-examined are usually dismissed out of hand when they tell us something we do not want to believe? Maybe even comparisons to Elvis and Bigfoot are tossed around. Please also note that Paul has Jesus appearing to a 12 that didn’t exist. Judas was not there. Somehow these ancient references are more plausible than modern witnesses who are still alive? On what grounds? Paul is 2,000 year old hearsay, and as far as the Gospels go, who wrote them and where they were written is largely unknown and hotly contested. To most educated scholars they are anonymous testimony. That hardly makes it credible and the gospels are literarily dependent on one another and do not represent four distinct witnesses. The idea that the people who saw Jesus in some of the NT stories took some convincing is generally irrelevant and could be construed as narrative details whether true or false. Verisimilitude does not equal historical. It never has and never will to the highest level of academic history. Those who base their faith on historical apologetics and deny apparitions of Mary are largely being inconsistent with their own standards of evidence. So if you are in that boat, I would say you should feel tension and friction in your own beliefs.
Also, those who say Mary is not special have cut themselves off from both the Bible and the earliest Church. Mary was extremely special and plays an integral role in salvation history in both. As the new Eve and new Ark of the Covenant, this is obvious to anyone who reads the New Testament through ancient Jewish lenses–including the earliest Christians who chose and preserved the Bible.
Mary is not an enemy. Some people go too far in how they understand and describe the Blessed Virgin, but that doesn’t mean we should swing the pendulum all the way in the other direction and deny the plain teachings of Scripture and the early church about her.
Brant Pitre has a wonderful book on Mary and her Jewish roots:
Although many modern-day Christians are quick to insist that Mary was just an “ordinary woman,” this was certainly not true of ancient Christians. In ancient times, the parallels between Eve and Mary were widely recognized and led to the recognition that just as Eve had played a unique role in the fall of humankind, so Mary plays a unique role in its redemption.38 Consider the following quotations from ancient Christians living in the East and the West:
These are not obscure names in the history of the church. Neither are these two authors below who understand that 2 Sam 6 and Luke 1 clearly depict Mary as the new Ark of the Covenant.
St. Gregory: Mary is truly an ark—”gold within and gold without, and she has received in her womb all the treasures of the sanctuary.” [3rd century]
Athanasius: “O noble Virgin . . . O dwelling place of God the Word . . . You are the ark in which is found the golden vessel containing the true manna, that is, the flesh in which divinity resides” (Homily of the Papyrus of Turin). [4th]]
When we read scripture through Jewish eyes, Jesus is the new and greater Moses, he is inaugurating a new Exodus, is the new Manna from heaven, establishes the new covenant of Jeremiah, a new Passover supper to be celebrated in perpetuity, etc…Why then is there not a new Ark of the covenant which played an integral role in the first Exodus and the history of Israel? The answer is there is.
Vinnie
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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