A Quadrigatic Reading on Marian Intercession

This article first appeared on Theopolis. Read it there by clicking HERE.

There have been times when Evangelicals, in an attempt to be clear about the errors of Rome and Constantinople concerning Mary, have been so denigrating of the mother of our Lord that they sounded more like cut and pasted lines from the Babylonian Talmud than they did disciples of Mary’s Son. Some of this is fueled by a good and right desire to see the universal Church free of idolatry. Some of it is simply connected to a fallacy of origin, which dismisses vestments, catechisms, infant baptism, and mentioning Mary for any reason with the flat assertion, “That’s Roman Catholic.” It would be most helpful for Protestants to have a clear understanding of the ways in which Mary is special and the ways in which she is common. Perhaps the simplest way to do this would be to consider the issue of intercession.

The framework of Scripture seems to clearly state that there is a kind of intercession that is common to all the saints on behalf of one another and the world, but there is also a specific kind of intercession that is given to Jesus Christ and to Him alone. Mary would share in the former but not in the latter.

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
– 1 Timothy 2:5

The singleness with which Jesus is presented as the only occupant of this seat of mediation should give significant pause to anyone tempted to flatten all kinds of intercession into one mediatory pancake. Of course you can ask your cousin’s girlfriend to pray for you when your foot hurts. Of course that’s a kind of intercession. In fact, it’s not only permitted, but it is taught in Scripture.

Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. – James 5:16

But, many will argue that the host of witnesses presently unseen by those who are still living on earth is simply hidden by a veil that does not separate us. After all, Jesus Christ is the Lord of the living. So, if death does not separate members of the communion of saints, then why can’t one petition the saints who have died to intercede for those still living on earth? If this is allowable, then certainly a person may petition Mary to intercede for him as legitimately as if he were to petition St. Anthony or his beloved grandma. The issue which Protestants take is that there are ways that death does not separate us and ways that death still does.

A man may ask his wife to pray for him if he’s nervous about his job interview on Monday. If his wife dies on Sunday, he may ask someone to intercede for him; but he may no longer ask his wife to intercede for him, first and foremost because he no longer has a wife. Death may not separate them in some ways, but it undeniably ends the marriage. In the same way, we are allowed to ask the living for intercession in a way that we are not allowed to ask those who have died for intercession. To this specific point, the event of Saul’s petitioning the prophet Samuel for help from beyond the grave should suffice. The man with the interview on Monday is not separated from his wife either as it pertains to a shared membership in the cloud of witnesses or the reality of God being the Lord of the living — a truth which encompasses both those who continue in their earthly bodies and those who have died. But the reality of one’s having died does change some things about his relationships, eternally even. The man no longer has a wife, neither on earth nor in heaven. On earth, he no longer has her as a possible intercessor because she has died and if he were to die and join her in heaven he would neither be petitioning her as his wife nor would he need an intercessor.

But this still leaves untouched the reality that the quality of intercession ascribed to Mary, by both Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, is not the same kind of intercession that a man employs when he reminds his wife to pray for him about Monday’s interview.

And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there: And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come. His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. – John 2:1-5

Jesus’ interaction with Mary at the wedding at Cana shows us that Mary understands herself to be someone allowed to petition Christ. Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians rush from this point to concluding that we should then ask her to petition Him for us. His response being “woman” and not “mother”, however, is a crucial pumping of the brakes to this line of thought. Mary is reminded of her own humanity and the reality that her “claim” on Him is limited to the ways in which she is indeed the mother of His humanity and a servant of her Lord, but not more than that.

Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home. – John 19:25-27

In a related fashion, when Jesus passes off the mantle of Mary’s being mother to John, at the foot of the cross, He also passes off the mantle of John’s being a son to the confines of his newly inherited relationship with Mary. Why? Because this relationship is bound to this side of the grave. Mary being the mother of Jesus Christ’s humanity is not the same thing as her being the Mother of His divinity. She ought to be revered as the former and Christ ought to be honored as not having the latter.

It needs to be acknowledged that for God, when looking at the complete charter of humanity for an entry point, and to point His finger at one of them and say, “That one,” is a mind-blowing and wondrous event. In this sense, God’s choice of Mary is breath-taking. Gabriel does well when he declares her to be the one who is “highly favored” (Luke 1:28). Where this breaks down, for many Christians, is in the failure to understand that these things we are encountering are the furniture pieces of election. The choice was God’s and the blessing of the recipient is the honor of having been chosen by God, not an honor that God recognized as being pre-existent in the recipient and upon which He based His electing decision. That’s not to denigrate Mary; rather, it’s simply to acknowledge the proper economy of honor as it moves from and to in the event of election. Let’s continue by considering the event in 1 Kings 2.

And Adonijah the son of Haggith came to Bathsheba the mother of Solomon. And she said, Comest thou peaceably? And he said, Peaceably. He said moreover, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And she said, Say on. And he said, Thou knowest that the kingdom was mine, and that all Israel set their faces on me, that I should reign: howbeit the kingdom is turned about, and is become my brother’s: for it was his from the Lord. And now I ask one petition of thee, deny me not. And she said unto him, Say on. And he said, Speak, I pray thee, unto Solomon the king, (for he will not say thee nay,) that he give me Abishag the Shunammite to wife. And Bathsheba said, Well; I will speak for thee unto the king. Bathsheba therefore went unto king Solomon, to speak unto him for Adonijah. And the king rose up to meet her, and bowed himself unto her, and sat down on his throne, and caused a seat to be set for the king’s mother; and she sat on his right hand. Then she said, I desire one small petition of thee; I pray thee, say me not nay. And the king said unto her, Ask on, my mother: for I will not say thee nay. And she said, Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to Adonijah thy brother to wife.And king Solomon answered and said unto his mother, And why dost thou ask Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? ask for him the kingdom also; for he is mine elder brother; even for him, and for Abiathar the priest, and for Joab the son of Zeruiah.Then king Solomon sware by the Lord, saying, God do so to me, and more also, if Adonijah have not spoken this word against his own life. Now therefore, as the Lord liveth, which hath established me, and set me on the throne of David my father, and who hath made me an house, as he promised, Adonijah shall be put to death this day. And king Solomon sent by the hand of Benaiah the son of Jehoiada; and he fell upon him that he died. – 1 Kings 2:13-25

Those who champion Mary as an effectual intercessor will often appeal to this passage to show the mother of the prince of peace interceding on behalf of the covenant people of God. Clearly, Bathsheba functions as a kind of Mary as much as Solomon functions as a kind of Jesus. This is plain. The problem is not with the proposition but the conclusion. One need only read the verses that follow her petitioning the prince of peace in order to arrive at a more Biblically-shaped understanding of what happens to those who would desire to use the prince of peace’s mother as a short cut to wish-fulfillment.

The desire to use Mary as an effectual avenue to the Son often contains a glitch in one’s understanding of prayer. In order to pray “in Jesus’ Name”, one’s prayers are to correspond to the will of the Son. The problem in the above passage is that Adonijah had a desire contrary to the will of the prince of peace. The breakdown begins to take place when one believes that Christ’s reception of the prayers of His saints needs to be massaged by a feminine softening touch. This assumes that Christ is both hardened toward prayers and that, apart from Marian involvement, they somehow are lacking in efficacy. Both of these things point to single error which the 1 Kings passage exemplifies: an attempt by the prayer to camouflage “my will” as “thy will”. Adonijah shows himself to be someone who believes Solomon is the end of the Davidic promises rather than a medium of them. Adonijah believes that the power of the prince of peace truly ought to have been his own and so the grace that is being requested here would be a kind of acquiescence from the divine character to the human petitioner in an admission of, “Thy will be done.”  At this point, all readers of C.S. Lewis should shudder at the dramatic irony and holler to the character, “No. You don’t want to do that!” Prayers that the Prince of Peace answers in the affirmative are prayers that are “in His Name”, meaning in accordance with that for which He would, Himself, ask.

Scripture shows Mary to be a model prayer, but an ineffective shortcut to the Prince of Peace. In Matthew 12, Jesus shows that the appellation of mother can be stripped from Mary and given to those who, technically, have no right to such a title, if at any point Mary’s will should contrast the Father’s will. His sharp warning is that His mother will be the one who is in submission to the Father’s will. Any attempt to employ her to cook the books is not only setting up the petitioner to endure the wrath of the Son, but, in truth, probably shows that he does not understand how wholly and preciously her soul was in submission to the Father’s will.