Transcript

Hi, welcome to Pints with Aquinas.

I just interviewed Tim Staples on the Four Marian Dogmas.

That is to say, Mary, the Mother of God, the perpetual virginity of Mary, the immaculate conception, the assumption of Mary.

We even talked about Mary being the mediatrix of all graces, a possible fifth Marian dogma to be defined in the future.

Who knows?

Wow.

It was such a big interview, and I thought to myself, well, I'll go home and I'll record the intro tomorrow.

And then I thought, no, I'm not going to do that, because if I do that, I won't have the kind of enthusiasm that is just pulsing through my veins right now.

My goodness, goodness, goodness, goodness gracious.

This is like the one interview.

If you want to understand what the Catholic Church teaches about the Blessed Mother and why it is you have a relationship with her and ought to develop a devotion to her, this is that one interview.

And I would ask you to do something for me.

I would like you to share this video with a Protestant friend of yours.

Click share, put it on Facebook, put it on Twitter.

Send it directly to a Protestant friend of yours.

And if you're a Protestant watching this, I just beg you to be open-minded.

The fact that you've even gotten through a couple of minutes of me jabbering is evidence that you have an open mind.

But please have an open mind as you listen to this.

As a Catholic, I have tremendous love for my Protestant brothers and sisters.

And I also can sympathize with my Protestant brothers and sisters when they look at Catholics and they see statues of Mary and candles burning before her.

I get it.

I get it.

Coming from a Protestant perspective, I can see how that looks weird.

But there are also things that Protestants do that look weird to us.

And I think what you would say to me is, okay, this is a different culture to what you're used to.

At least give us the chance to explain it.

And so that's what I want to do in this episode.

I want Tim to help you understand what Catholics believe about Mary and what all Christians should believe about Mary.

Now, whenever we do these Pints of Aquinas shows, we put up post-show wrap-up videos.

This one was awesome.

So, the post-show wrap-up video today, I asked him about Marian apparitions, apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary throughout history.

I asked him the ones he finds the most convincing, and I asked him to give us his opinion on the alleged apparitions of the Blessed Mother in Medjugorje.

You are not going to want to miss that.

Believe me.

So, if you're a patron, we'll have it up at the end of the day.

By the end of the day, you can watch it.

And if you want to become a patron...

you'll get access to all of these post-show wrap-up videos that we do.

It was really great.

Can you tell that I'm just like super pumped right now?

Because I am super pumped right now.

Do me a favor, click subscribe below and that bell button, and that will force Google to let you know whenever we put out a new video.

And quite honestly, forcing Google, come on, forcing them to let you know when a video comes out on the Blessed Mother, that's a beautiful thing.

Also, as we always do, we're going to be putting out videos over the next couple of weeks, just little snippets from this interview with Tim, because it was quite a long interview, so that you can share those little snippets with your Protestant brothers and sisters, your Catholic brothers and sisters, so that we can all have a more accurate view of the Mother of God.

All right, that'll do.

Here's the show.

Tim Staples, it's good to see you.

It is good to be with you, my friend.

Are you looking at my face or a monitor of me?

No, I'm looking right at your face, the bearded wonder himself.

Yeah, yeah.

Ben, you know, this place is so empty since you left, man.

I miss Catholic Answers.

When I was with you recently, where were we at that gala?

I'm not going to lie.

There was part of me that was like, I'm just going to call my wife, ask her if I can try and talk you into giving me a job again.

Yes.

It is good to be with you, man.

It's great to see you're doing such great work.

Oh, please, God, I am.

Yeah, I just thoroughly enjoyed my time.

For those who are watching, Tim Staples was my boss back in the days of Catholic Answers for three years.

I learned so much from you, Tim, and it was just a joy to work at Catholic Answers when I did.

Well, we've also lost a whole lot of people because we don't have an Australian accent now here.

Right.

Like, I don't want Trump intellect.

We need an Aussie accent.

Yeah, so funny.

Well, today we're going to talk about the Blessed Mother.

And I'm really excited to talk about this because we have a lot, a surprising amount of Protestant viewers.

And my hope is that we can kind of clarify some things.

I think this is one of the biggest stumbling blocks people have when it comes to the Catholic Church.

They don't understand it.

And I know you're in a place to talk about that because you used to be a Baptist, correct?

Or Assemblies of God or something?

I'm sure.

I was both.

I was all kind of stuff.

But, yeah, I was raised a Southern Baptist.

I later became a youth pastor in the Assemblies of God.

I was a student at Jimmy Swaggart Bible College.

In fact, as you know, Matt, my conversion story here at Catholic Answers is called "Jimmy Swaggart Made Me Catholic" because I really did convert to the Catholic faith while I was at JSBC in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

So Mary was the greatest obstacle for me.

The greatest—how so?

So you started to kind of wrap your mind around what certain Catholic teachings you saw, what the earliest Christians had to say.

Yeah, you know what?

Let me check that because I would—I’ve been thinking about this recently.

In fact, because I would say of the top ten, because there wasn't one reason why I wasn't Catholic.

I thought the Catholic Church was just crazy.

How could anybody that has a brain that works be Catholic?

I had so many problems with the Catholic Church, but of my top ten...

I would have to say that Marian doctrines made up about six of those ten.

But I would have to say the number one reason I wasn't Catholic was the Eucharist.

I thought that was idolatry, insanity, made absolutely no sense to me.

But after that, definitely the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption.

I mean, to me, the Immaculate Conception—"all of sin," dude, what part of "all" don't you know?

Number one, and the Assumption to me was the greatest assumption ever made, because there's nothing—it is an assumption—there's nothing in Scripture, there's nothing in the early Fathers even that you crazy Catholics claim to love and cherish.

Nothing until at least the 5th century, right?

Or even 6th century, as some Protestants would say.

Yeah, because I know a lot of Protestants who say, okay, I can almost get on board with what you're saying about the Eucharist, especially when I look at the early church.

The fact that when you read John 6, at least prima facie, it seems to say what Catholics have always believed.

But Mary, it just feels like—I think there's a lot of good-hearted Protestants who are like, look, I get it.

She was a wonderful person.

I can even call her blessed because she said all generations will call her blessed.

But all you Catholics say about her is...

it's over the top.

So I was thinking, Tim, unless you wanted to say anything before we get into it, I'd love to talk about some of these things: Mother of God, perpetual virgin, immaculate conception, this sort of thing.

Absolutely.

For me, now, and as you know, Matt, most Protestants, certainly the more traditional Protestants, agree with us, at least conceptually, with regard to Mary being the Mother of God.

Among evangelicals, fundamentalists—oh, it's a no-go.

But again, now, our more traditional Protestants don't understand the ramifications involved, what follows from the fact that Mary is the Mother of God, but they would at least acknowledge that Jesus Christ is God.

Mary is the Mother of Jesus.

This syllogism is airtight.

It follows, necessarily, Mary is the Mother of God.

But I was raised, Matt, in a tradition that taught, like Jimmy Swaggart in his book "Catholicism vs. Christianity," Dr. Walter Martin, who some of your followers or watchers here who are Protestant probably remember Dr. Walter Martin at the time way back in the 70s and 80s.

He was probably the most popular Protestant apologist in the world, certainly in the United States, and Dr. Walter Martin was a famous opponent of Mary as Mother of God.

And the problem I had with Mary as Mother of God is you seem to be making a God out of Mary.

Because, look, one of the reasons why, or one of the ways we know Jesus is God is he reveals himself as the Son of God.

For God so loved the world that he gave his...

only begotten Son, monogenes.

He is the only Son by nature.

Of course, angels are sons by participation.

We are sons by adoption as well as participation.

But Jesus alone is revealed to be Son by nature, and in that revelation, then of course...

he is revealed as God.

And of course, we all agree as Christians on that point.

And so, Matt, in my mind, I can remember thinking, when they say Mary's the Mother of God, you are ipso facto necessarily saying Mary is God.

Because a dog gives birth to a dog.

Cat, cat.

Human, human.

God, God.

You've got a quadrinity.

And that was a huge problem for me, and I'll guarantee you some folks listening right now have that problem as well.

Right.

I think some people would say, okay, if you say Mary is the Mother of God, you're saying that she's the source of his divinity.

And so a lot of Protestants I know, some of them at least, want to say, okay, well, she gave birth to the human nature.

What do you say to that?

Right, right.

You know, this reminds me, in fact, in my book, Behold Your Mother, which I know you've read and memorized before, it's honestly one of the best, probably the best book, in fact, nay, the best book I've read on apologetics as it pertains to Mary and what Catholics think of it.

Really, really good.

Okay, I'll pay you later.

Thank you.

In Behold Your Mother, I make the point there, years ago...

oh my gosh, I can't believe that was 1986, Matt.

That means I'm officially old.

I was three.

Continue.

But there was a debate, and I was excited because I was in the midst of really the throes of my Catholic studies.

In my final year in the Marine Corps, I had met my buddy, Sergeant Matt Duller.

For those of you who don't know, this is the guy that got me started toward...

uh...

Rome, and we were going at it, and I hear, oh my goodness, Dr. Walter Martin's going to debate this crazy Jesuit, Father Mitch Pacwa, who I'd never heard of at this time.

He was just a young buck, just out of twenty-one years of the seminary—literally, he was in the seminary for twenty-one years.

Father Pacwa, nobody really knew him back then, but he debated Walter Martin, and in that debate, Walter Martin, whose book The King of the Cults I had read and devoured and memorized—I read it actually multiple times, still have it.

He makes this very point in the debate with Father Pacwa.

He says, look, if you accept this syllogism: Jesus is God, Mary is the Mother of Jesus, therefore—Jesus is God, Mary is the Mother of Jesus, therefore Mary is the Mother of God—well then you have to then say, God is Trinity, Mary is the Mother of God, therefore Mary is the Mother of the Trinity, pal.

Right?

And I'm going, yeah, answer that, you crazy Jesuit, right?

And, of course, Father Pacwa just calmly responds and says, look, you have an invalid syllogism there, pal.

You're equivocating on terms.

When you say God is Trinity...

that is a true proposition.

And so your syllogism fails because, yes, God is Trinity, but Mary, being the Mother of God, is not the Mother of the Trinity because the Father and the Holy Spirit were not incarnate.

It was only the second person of the Blessed Trinity who was incarnate.

And I have to tell you, Matt, this was like a first step.

It made sense to me, and I'm going, wow, he blew away Walter Martin's syllogism there.

But he still didn't answer the question because Martin still had the comeback that, okay, well, even if I say, okay, maybe I was a little bit off here.

Still, the second person of the Blessed Trinity has a divine nature.

So if you say Mary is the Mother of the second person of the Blessed Trinity, you're still saying she's the source of divinity.

And I'll tell you, Walter Martin got torched in this debate, and so did Tim Staples who was watching it, when Father Pacwa used just a simple analogy of a human being—marriage and childbirth.

And as you know, Matt, and man, this rocked my world back then.

I didn't like the fact, you know, that I was wrong here.

But he says, look, think about it.

Mom, dad get together, get married, and they have a baby.

All right, now I'll use just for our conversation, Matt, my wife and my first son, Timmy.

Now, when my wife conceived Timmy in her womb, would we say that my wife and I were the source of the human soul of my son?

No. And, of course, we say no, because we're not traditionists, right?

No. Obviously not.

Well, wait a minute.

Does that mean, then, that for the rest of Tim's life, should this mean the rest of his life he should be saying to his mother, "Hello, mother of my body?"

Of course not.

And why is that?

Because even though Val and I, my wife and I, are only the source of the body...

physically speaking, that's what we gave to our son.

My wife didn't give birth to a body.

She didn't even give birth to a nature.

She gave birth to a person who is a body-soul composite.

And so we say, we are the parents.

I am the father.

She is the mother of Timmy.

Well, in the same way, Father Pacwa points out, when Mary gave birth, did she give birth to a body?

No, she did not.

She didn't give birth to a body.

Did she give birth to a human soul?

No. Even though she is only the source of the human body of Jesus, that doesn't mean she is not his mother.

Right?

Because she didn't give birth to a body.

She didn't give birth to a nature.

She didn't even give birth to two natures.

She gave birth to a person.

And this is where the debate turns, Matt.

And Father Pacwa made the devastating connection here that blew my mind.

He said, look, if you deny Mary is the Mother of God, you are denying something essential about the person of Jesus Christ, the nature of Jesus Christ as the God-man.

Because you end up separating Jesus into two persons.

Because who did—Father had asked the question, I've asked thousands of my Protestant friends down through the last several decades—who did Jesus, or who did Mary give birth to?

Who?

Was it God?

And real quick, you know you saw in the book, I have a little anecdote in the book about a debate I had years ago.

It was actually in a Catholic church.

There were about 700 people there at the debate with a Protestant minister.

And during the debate, we got to this point on the Mother of God, and I asked him these questions.

I said, okay, well, look, let's just simplify things here.

Let me ask you this.

Do you believe Jesus is God?

He said yes.

I said, do you believe that he was God when he was six months old?

He said, absolutely.

And I'm going, thank goodness, because we'd have more work to do, right?

Okay, yes.

Was he God when he was six?

Six months in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary?

A little bit of a slower response, but yes.

He saw where you were going.

Yes.

And then I asked the question, was he God when he was coming out of the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary?

And there was kind of silence.

Well, yes.

Is Mary the Mother of God?

You could have heard a pin drop.

There was silence in the whole church for about ten awkward seconds.

And then he exclaimed, no, she's not the Mother of God.

And I said, brother, I think you need to go home and pray on that a little bit.

Because I think you know that, yes, she is the Mother of God.

Because if you acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the God-man, then there is no way around the fact that Mary is, in fact, the Mother of God.

And that was a huge step for me because I saw it, and then I dove in and I started studying Mariology.

I got books, I started reading the Fathers of the Church on it, and man, did I get myself in trouble.

So this doctrine, this dogma of Mary being Theotokos is meant to guard something about Christ more than it is something about Mary, in a sense, right?

Exactly.

In fact, if you go to—and again, I quote this in my book, Behold Your Mother—Dr. Walter Martin's famous book, and it's an excellent book.

Like I said, I've read it multiple times.

It's an excellent apologetics book.

It's called Kingdom of the Cults.

It's sold bazillions of copies over the years.

Walter Martin, on page 103 of that book, he is the classic example of what happens when you deny Mary is the Mother of God.

Because, see, it's one thing, Matt, isn't it, to deny.

It's easy to deny stuff.

Hey, you're wrong, man.

I don't believe that.

But it's another thing to build a theology based on your denial.

And so it's one thing for him to say, oh, no, Mary's not the Mother of God.

That's idolatry.

That's this or that.

Okay, well, then who is Jesus?

When he attempts to build a Christology, he goes the same road as the Nestorians did, you know, 1,400, 1,500, 1,600 years before.

And he says this on page 103. I'm going from memory here, but if you get my book, Behold Your Mother, I got it all quoted there for you.

He says that it's the Catholics basically who created this idea, you know, Mary the Mother of God, and it leads to all sorts of problems Christologically.

But he says it's based on a fallacy of eternal sonship.

And Walter Martin says, see, the Bible never teaches eternal sonship, because sonship applies to time and change and humanity.

So it can't apply to divinity.

The Catholics did that, and they get themselves in trouble.

So God can't be the Son.

He became a son.

Did you catch that, Matt?

He became a son in the incarnation.

A son by analogy.

And then, if that's not bad enough, because basically what Walter Martin did is he lost Jesus.

In the midst of denying Mary as the Mother of God, he lost Jesus.

But in the next breath, Matt, he then says, neither do we see anywhere in the pages of the New Testament the Father ever referred to as the Eternal Father.

Because fatherhood, too, applies then to time, to change, and it cannot apply to divinity.

There's only the Spirit in Hebrews 9, verse 14. Walter Martin says is referred to as the eternal Spirit.

So God in all eternity—imagine this, Matt—in all eternity, I had to ask the question of 34 years ago of Dr. Walter Martin, well then, who is God?

In all eternity, before there was a creation, who is God?

And the only thing Walter Martin could say is, we don't know.

We know there are three persons, but we don't know the first person.

The second person is the eternal Word, because John 1, in the beginning it was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God.

And the third person is the Holy Spirit.

My goodness, Matt, in the midst of denying Mary as the Mother of God, Walter Martin ended up losing Jesus, and now he's lost one of the central reasons why Jesus came to this earth, and that is to reveal God as he is in his inner life from all eternity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, the great high priestly prayer of John 17, Matt.

I mean, Father, glorify thou me with the glory I had with thee before the world was.

Father, I have revealed your name and I will reveal it again.

What name?

Father.

I mean, this was devastating.

I can't even put it into words, Matt, how devastating this was to me when I realized, oh my goodness, we as Protestants, we good Baptists and Pentecostals, in the midst of denying Mary's the Mother of God, we end up Nestorian; we end up creating two persons in Christ.

And ultimately even—and in the book I quote Dr. Eric Svensson, who has an even crazier idea of who Jesus Christ is in his denial of Mary, the Mother of God.

And this is so important.

Probably, I would say, Matt, the most important contribution I make in my book, Behold Your Mother, is I tried to show how each one of the Marian doctrines is crucial for our spiritual lives.

They're crucial for our salvation, for us to know who God is.

This is eternal life, that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

It's in knowing Mary that we come to know—and as you said earlier, Mary defends against heresies that would diminish her Son's or Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

And Theotokos is the classic example that if you miss it on Mary, you're going to end up missing it on Jesus and missing it on God.

That's excellent.

I think at this point I could hear a Protestant saying, okay, technically it's true, but we still shouldn't use the language because it confuses people unnecessarily.

But to me, that's like somebody saying, look, when we evangelize our Muslim friends, don't talk about God as Trinity.

Maybe technically it's true, but we don't want to confuse people.

In other words, the point is we want to talk about things as they are.

And even if they confuse people, well, that's something we can try and clear up after the fact.

And you know, the beautiful thing, Matt, is in my own odyssey to the Catholic faith, it started—I was petrified.

When I started to see truths like this and so many others we could talk about, I was petrified.

I didn't want it.

I mean, I wanted to be a pastor of a Pentecostal church.

Man, I was looking for a good-looking wife that plays piano.

Man, I don't want this.

And it was a fearful thing.

But what happens is once you dive in, you start seeing connections.

You start seeing that theology.

I think it was Frank Sheed who said theology works like a symphony.

And it is so true because everything is connected ultimately because truth is not just a concept; it's a person.

Jesus said, "I am the truth."

I don't just speak truth; I am the truth.

Okay, so I can see a Protestant saying, okay, fine, she's the Mother of God, got it, and not really feeling like they need to believe anything else about Mary.

So let's talk about that second dogma, Mary being a perpetual virgin.

The Bible speaks about her having brothers, and even if you can explain that away, why do you feel the need to defend her virginity anyway?

Why is that so important?

Yes.

You know, I can remember reading, and God bless my buddy Matt Dula who challenged me early on.

He said, Tim, I notice you quote Jimmy Swaggart and Walter Martin and Norman Geisler, and you quote a lot of Protestant apologists.

Have you read the Church Fathers before?

And I said, well, I think I've read a few quotes here and there.

You know, I think I read one quote from...

No, I mean, have you read the Church Fathers?

Or have you ever read any documents of the Catholic faith?

And you know what was amazing to me, Matt, is whenever, as a Protestant, I was very much into apologetics.

When I studied Mormonism, I read Mormon documents.

When I studied Jehovah's Witnesses, I read the book, The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life.

I read, but with Catholics, I just didn't do that.

He challenged me.

He actually gave me the books to read, and I started to read them.

And what was amazing to me is when you read the earliest Fathers we have, because as you know, the perpetual virginity of Mary is taught unanimously by the Fathers of the Church from some of the earliest documents we have, the Proto-Evangelium of James.

In fact, that's one of the central reasons why it was written in about 120 to 140 A.D.—was demonstrating the perpetual virginity of Mary.

And what was amazing to me, Matt, is the first serious rejection of Mary's perpetual virginity.

Now, other than Tertullian, you know, and I love, as some of your listeners may know, when Helvidius, who was basically the first serious—there was another fellow by the name of Bonissus who Ambrose took apart—Helvidius was the one that St. Jerome took apart who posited the possibility of Mary having other children.

The Fathers went nutso on them.

I mean, it was outrage.

St. Epiphanius was angry.

St. Jerome, how dare you posit?

Who, whatever.

Well, one guy Helvidius used was Tertullian because Tertullian was the first Christian to deny Mary's perpetual virginity, but it was after he had become a heretic.

And so St. Jerome, in one line in his work against Helvidius, he says, when Helvidius brings Tertullian up, he says, as far as Tertullian goes, the only thing I need to say is he was not a son of the Church.

He was a heretic, so let's go on to something serious.

But that's significant, Matt, that all Christians agreed with this.

This was something that was not just a matter of theology.

It was history.

This was a historical fact that was known in all the Christian communities all around the world, number one.

Now, why is that so important?

Well, in St. Jerome's response, as I point out in my book, Jerome gets at some of the reasons why this is so important, and that is that Mary becomes the Ark of the Covenant.

As St. Jerome says, the temple of God.

In fact, Jerome makes the point that St. Joseph knew full and well who he was living with.

She was consecrated to God for a specific purpose, and this is something, as I point out in the book, you learn Old Testament, New Testament, whenever something or someone is consecrated to God for a particular purpose, to use it or he or she for any other purpose was unthinkable to the people, Old Covenant people of God as well as New Covenant people of God.

In fact, the punishment was often death for sacrilege or using something for another purpose.

And so, at the Incarnation, St. Jerome says, when she becomes consecrated to the Holy Spirit for the purpose of bringing God into the world, to think of St. Joseph touching her is an outrage.

Are you kidding me?

Now, we need to get into the particulars, though, because we can bring up all kinds of great stuff about the Ark of the Covenant, and anybody who touches the Ark is dead meat and all of that, but I know my Protestant friends are saying, okay, I'm sorry, I can't go down that road there, because Matthew 13:55 plainly tells us that Jesus has brothers.

So maybe we should go there.

Sure, let's do it.

Yeah.

We should also point out the fact that the Protestant reformers were on your side when it comes to this doctrine.

Oh my goodness, John Calvin, Martin Luther, Zwingli.

Even 200 years later, John and Charles Wesley were defenders of the perpetual virginity of Mary.

But, yeah, and there's so much more we could get to.

In fact, in my book, I give you eight biblical reasons why Mary is a perpetual virgin.

And it's really beautiful when you dive in.

No, actually, I give eight for the Immaculate Conception.

I give seven for the perpetual virginity.

But the point is this.

For me, I had the problem, but what about Matthew 13:55? We have the brothers of the Lord named, James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas.

You've got four brothers of the Lord.

So if the Lord has brothers, that means Mary had other children—airtight argument, right?

Well, in fact, no, it is not.

Because brothers, as you know, Matt, had a very wide semantic range in first-century Judaism, whether we're talking about Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek.

In fact, in Hebrew culture, this probably is born out of the fact that in both Hebrew and Aramaic, they didn't have a word for cousin.

In fact, it was common to use, say, a circumlocution, right, "his father's brother's son," to get at cousin, but that becomes cumbersome.

And so over the centuries, you just say brother, kind of like our African-American friends here in the United States.

"Hey, brother."

That doesn't mean you're all from the same mama, right?

Well, that's kind of the way it happens, so much so that that idea of relatives being brothers and sisters.

For example, in Genesis chapter 19, we see Lot and Abraham, even though they are uncle and nephew by relation, they call each other brother.

Why?

This is a cultural thing rooted in their language.

And so when you get to the Gospels, like Matthew 13:55, it's no wonder that brothers of the Lord that are actually cousins or some sort of relative are referred to as brothers because that's the way they spoke.

Now, of course, in Greek, as you know, Mark 4, verse 10 uses "anepsios" for the cousin of Mark.

Greek did have a word for cousin.

But think of it this way, Matt.

The Jews wrote and spoke with a Jewish accent, right?

They very much were steeped in Aramaic, which did not have the term, and this is why they spoke that way.

And the good news is you can actually point this out from the text of Scripture, which I had not seen before.

My Catholic friend leveled me with, he says, okay, Tim, let's go.

Notice in Matthew 13:55, and by the way, the Catechism of the Catholic Church points this out in paragraph 500, that the same brothers of the Lord, James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas, the first two are mentioned again in Matthew 27:56. You have James and Joseph, but this time their mama is mentioned again.

And by the way, her name is Mary, but not the Mother of God.

If you cross-reference to John 19, at any rate, many believe, and I argue that it's Mary's sister, Mary of Cleopas.

But the bottom line is, the mama is mentioned, and it ain't Mary.

And that tells you that the brothers of the Lord are not uterine brothers, but they are some sort of relation.

There's a lot more, but let me just give you one.

I could go forever, as you know.

Let me just give you one more example, because John Calvin even acknowledged this, that in Galatians 1, verse 19, St. Paul talks about going up to Jerusalem, basically to get approval from Peter and the apostles.

And this was three years after he had converted.

And now he's writing about it years later.

He says, "14 years ago, I went up to Jerusalem.".

And again, this is kind of to get approval of the apostles who were apostles before him.

And he says, I went up to see Peter.

Why would you go up to see Peter?

He's going up to see the boss.

He goes up to see Peter, and while I was there, none other of the apostles did I see except James, the Lord's brother.

John Calvin points out that there are only two Jameses that are apostles.

Only two.

And obviously, he's referring not to apostle in a looser sense, as Barnabas in Acts 14:14 is referred to as an apostle, because he's talking about going up to see the bosses.

And this is 14 years ago.

These are the big guys he's going up to get approval from.

And while I'm there, I saw none other than Peter, but none other than James, the Lord's brother.

Well, as John Calvin points out, there are two Jameses that are apostles.

The first one's dad is named Zebedee.

Now, we know it's not him because he was beheaded very early in Acts 12. So, it wouldn't be him.

Well, let's see here.

Two minus one is one.

And so, there's only one left.

And he is, according to Luke 6, verses 15 and 16, he is called James, the son of Alphaeus.

And so whatever you want to say about Alphaeus, he ain't Joseph.

And so what do we have?

We have evidence, once again, that this brother of the Lord is not Jesus' uterine brother.

He is a relative of some sort.

And if you get into my book, I get into Eusebius, I get into history that shows also airtight evidence that, of course, these brothers of the Lord are cousins, some sort of relatives, not uterine brothers.

So, okay, maybe you can gel this together to show that the Catholic position and Scripture aren't inconsistent, right?

But I'm still struggling.

I can see some Protestant listeners still struggling with why it's so necessary.

I mean, other than the fact that you say she's consecrated unto God, therefore to use her in another way would be unthinkable, right?

But maybe that's just kind of my modern mindset that I don't see the problem with that.

I think some people look at that and they think, it sounds like you're denigrating the sexual act.

Is it because sex is dirty that Mary wouldn't have engaged in sex?

What's the problem?

Right, yes.

And this gets to a very important point with regard to celibacy.

In fact, in my book, I have a whole chapter on it.

It's called The Big Deal.

I did this because that was such a big issue with me.

I have a whole chapter on it, The Big Deal, why the perpetual virginity of Mary matters.

And here is a huge reason why it matters.

Because if you deny, just as we saw with Mary, the Mother of God, if you deny, once again, it's easy to deny, but then you've got to build something.

If you deny Mary is perpetual virgin, then what are you saying about marriage?

What are you saying about Jesus being born into this world?

Was he really conceived out of wedlock?

Do we really want to say that?

Many Protestants do.

In fact, I was online not long ago, and there was a Protestant who has a very passionate ministry, chastity ministry, and, you know, talking about how we're not judgmental and such because, I mean, look at Mary, right?

She conceived out of wedlock.

Well, actually, she did not.

The fact is, Mary and Joseph—and this is, I find amazingly, people just don't know this, Matt—not just Protestants, but many of my Catholic friends, that Mary and Joseph were already married.

They had what we would call a ratified union.

They were betrothed, the Greek text says, right?

Before the angel gave.

In fact, he's called betrothed to Mary, or Mary is betrothed before the angel gives her the message that she is to be the Mother of God.

Now, betrothed—unfortunately, in some of the modern Bibles, they translate it as engaged.

There was no such thing as engaged 2,000 years ago.

That did not exist.

There was betrothal.

And at the betrothal, the man would have the right to the marriage bed.

But there was a tradition in ancient Israel, which I find many of my Protestant friends write about, but don't make the connection here, that upon the betrothal, the man was tasked with going off and basically building a house for his new bride.

And he could not receive her until he built the house.

There were no deadbeats in ancient Israel.

You had to build a house.

You get your friends.

And I'll bet you, Matt, I'd have been saying, no, I'd get lots of friends and say, let's hurry this up, man, because I can't consummate until we get this thing done.

And so it would be then after building the house.

And by the way, this is the language Jesus uses in John 14:1-6. "Let not your hearts be troubled.

You believe in God, believe also in me.

In my Father's house, there are many dwelling places.

I go to prepare a place for you.

And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again to receive you unto myself, that where I am, there you may be.".

Valid language, huh?

Yeah, this is the language of the bridegroom.

He's going to prepare a place for the bride, and then he would come during the night.

And we have Jesus giving the parable of the ten bridesmaids, remember?

Yeah, the foolish virgins who are not prepared.

But here, the bottom line is, she was already in a nuptial relationship with Joseph, and this is what makes it all the more important when Mary says in Luke chapter 1, verse 34, "How shall this be, for I know not man?"

That makes that, you know, St. Epiphanius, St. Jerome, St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, they all say it.

The question makes no sense unless you understand the vow.

She had already made the vow.

Joseph is walking like Abraham, the father of faith.

Where am I going?

What's going on here?

All right, I'm going to marry this girl, and we're not going to have sex.

Okay, God, what's next?

This is the midst of what's going on here, and Joseph discovers Mary.

We all know the story in Matthew 1 is pregnant, and Joseph is greatly troubled, but being a just man, the Bible says he determined to apollosai, to divorce her privately because, of course, he didn't want Mary to be in danger.

He didn't want to.

And plus, I believe he would have known in his heart of hearts how holy Mary is.

And he may not have had full comprehension, but he's going, something's going on.

But I know this.

Deuteronomy 24:1-4 tells me I have to put her away.

That is by law.

And so he does it.

He does it quietly.

And that's when the angel comes.

And it says, and I want you to notice, folks, follow me on this.

In Matthew 1, verse 18, this all happens before they came together, which is the Greek word there is synelthein, which means to come together in an optional union.

But then when the angel comes and says, Joseph, just when he is ready to divorce her, he says, Joseph, fear not to take Mary your wife, for the child conceived in her is conceived of the Holy Spirit.

That's when Joseph knew he could take Mary.

And the angel says, you can take Mary your wife.

But when the inspired author says, you can take Mary as your wife, he doesn't use synelthein, to come together in a nuptial relationship.

He uses paralambano, which means literally to walk beside, to receive alongside, to walk with your wife.

And I believe, as I point out in my book, as you know, Matt, this comes right out of 2 Samuel 16-21. If you remember the story of David, whose son Absalom tried to take the throne from his father.

And the coup d'état happens when he takes ten of David's brides.

Now, this is strange for us, but this is a tribal culture.

He already had generals on his side.

He already had the people on his side.

And now, if he can take David's wives, the coup is complete.

It's the ultimate humiliation of his father.

He takes the ten wives.

Of course, his coup fails.

He ends up, it's kind of a powerful image of him getting caught in that tree with his beautiful long hair.

He was a handsome man, and David weeps for his son.

Well, it's a beautiful image of Jesus loving his children, but that's another talk, isn't it, Matt?

But the bottom line is, when Absalom took those ten wives of David, ten concubines, after Absalom died, David immediately sent—and again, this is in 2 Samuel 16 and 2 Samuel 21, verse 3—he sends for those ten wives and has them brought to his palace.

And they come to live with him, but the scripture says there in chapter 21, verse 3, they were locked up as in widowhood.

He could not have conjugal relations with them.

And why is that?

Because Jeremiah 3, verses 1 and 2, as well as Deuteronomy 24, verses 1 through 4, tells us that if you have a betrothed, whether it's a ratified union or a consummated union, and the woman goes with someone else, she can never come back to her former spouse, even if he dies.

Again, this is not New Testament theology.

This is not our theology of marriage today, but this is the theology of marriage in the Old Testament.

He could never take her back under any circumstances.

He could never have conjugal relations with her again.

Why?

Because she belongs to that other.

And so what David did...

he had a responsibility to take care of his former wives, because remember in ancient Israel, you couldn't just go out as a woman, get a job, take care of yourself, right?

He had a responsibility to take care of her, but he could never have conjugal relations with her because she belongs to another.

In the same way, Joseph knew when the angel said, this child is conceived of the Holy Spirit, he would have known, Matt, I argue in my book, that Mary—let's put it this way—the Holy Spirit cannot sign census papers.

The Holy Spirit cannot defend Mary against a mob that wants to know where that baby came from.

But Joseph has a responsibility to take care of Mary.

Thus, the angel says, fear not to take her, to receive her alongside, to be her protector.

But he, of course, could never have conjugal relations.

In fact, if you argue that he did, That is contradicting everything we know in the Old Testament and New Testament about that which is consecrated to God, as I said before, the nature of marriage, Old Testament, and in fact in the New Testament as well, because we have introduced in the Blessed Virgin Mary marriage on a sacramental level here.

That is, she was married to the Holy Spirit.

She becomes the prototype for marriage in the New Testament, even before the marriage of the Lamb to His bride, the Church.

And so, I say all this, and I know we're taking a lot of time here, but I say all this, Matt, and there's so much more we could say.

You have to understand from a Jewish and a Christian perspective that this is one of the reasons why the Fathers of the Church were so angry.

They were livid when anybody would posit even the possibility that Joseph could have sex with Mary.

It's not because sex is dirty, but it's because of the nature of the sacred.

In fact, it's because of the sacredness of marriage.

If you say Joseph could have conjugal relations with her, you are rejecting the sacred nature of marriage and the fact that Mary is consecrated to the Holy Spirit.

She becomes what, of course, the Franciscans championed greatly after St. Francis of Assisi, the spouse of the Holy Spirit.

Oh, and there's so much more we can talk about.

Well, that's beautiful.

Suppose a Protestant says, great, Mother of God, fair enough, perpetual virginity, I can get on board with that.

I want to talk about the Immaculate Conception.

Yes.

Because we don't have 15 hours, I would like to maybe just not delve too deep into Scripture, believe it or not.

I know faithful Protestants and Catholics can go back and forth on these verses.

Yes.

Maybe we can get to that, but I'm really interested in what did the early Church believe about this?

I mean, if you've got people as late as the...

Hey, are you able to turn that...

Yeah, I'm going to do that now.

Got it.

You know, if you've got people like Thomas Aquinas who...

you know this shows compliance with Aquinas.

Aquinas clearly believed that Mary was sinless but seems to have denied the Immaculate Conception.

If you've got somebody like him in the 13th century denying it because he doesn't know how to reconcile that with...

correct, why should we accept this?

I get when we look at the early Church I can see that they're unanimous on baptismal regeneration.

I can see that they're unanimous on the Eucharist.

What about the Immaculate Conception of Mary?

Did the Fathers use that language?

Isn't it a bit of a stretch to say that all the earliest Christians or the majority of them taught this?

Or if not, where is that found?

It's a great and, once again, very important question.

But what we find is, like the Trinity, the earliest Fathers of the Church do not teach on the Trinity.

In fact, the first time the word Trinity is used is in 181 A.D. by St. Theophilus of Antioch.

And the Trinity would be developed over centuries.

But all Christians acknowledge this, right?

Well, when it comes to the Immaculate Conception, what you have is not an explicit, just as with the Trinity.

Now, you can see in St. Paul, Ignatius, the divinity of Christ.

You can see it in St. Irenaeus and the divinity of the Holy Spirit and such.

But you don't have Trinity per se.

In the same way, my friend, what you have is the Immaculate Conception in seed form.

As far back as I point out, you know, the letter of Mephetes to Diognetus, which is written roughly about 140 A.D., that talks about Mary being without corruption.

Now, some argue that for the perpetual virginity of Mary, and I believe, as I point out in my book, he's talking about corruption as in Eve was corrupted.

She was not corrupted by sex; she was corrupted.

And that's a false notion to try to insert that into the Epistle of Mephetes to Diognetus.

But you also have, from, again, the very earliest writings, Mary revealed as the New Eve, and this was the key for Saint John Henry Newman in his great essay on the New Eve, which is phenomenal.

He really brought back typology that had kind of been somewhat dormant—not absolutely, but it didn't have the popularity that he really brought to it.

But he brings out that you have Mary as the New Eve in Methodes, 140 A.D. You have Justin Martyr, 150 A.D. in his First Apology.

You have St. Irenaeus in an extremely developed way.

Saint Irenaeus talks about how that, you know, just as through the disobedience of Eve, death came to her children.

Oh, Eve.

Disobedience of Eve.

Oh, yes.

I'm sorry.

Forgive me, Lord.

Okay.

Yeah, through the disobedience of Eve, death came to her children.

Through the obedience of Mary, life came.

And there you have really co-redemptrix, powerfully revealed.

But the New Eve is unanimously taught by the Fathers, Matt.

Unanimously, and I could go down the list, and I do in my book, Clement to—you name it.

All right, well, if in fact Mary is the New Eve, this becomes a no-brainer.

What you see, again, now I have to say, in seed form.

You know, you have St. Ephraim of Syria in the Jesus of Eden hymn number 27, who famously talks about how Mary and Jesus are without stain.

I mean, it's almost scandalous, putting them on a par.

That's not what he's doing, but he is with regard to their sinlessness.

Augustine does something similar, doesn't he, when it comes to the issue of sinlessness?

Yes, he does.

He says, I want to make clear that when it comes to Mary, in talking about sin—that's when he was dealing with the Pelagians—he says, when dealing with sin, I want to make clear we're not talking about Mary, because she's in a category by herself, because sin in no wise touches her.

You have all of these examples consistently.

However, there was not a full grasp on exactly how this works in relation to original sin.

It would not be until Radbertus Pacius in about the 9th century that he would be the first that really hammers out what William of Ware would pick up on later and then his disciple Duns Scotus in the 15th century would really hammer it out—the idea of a preservative salvation.

And this becomes a key point here.

While all of the Fathers acknowledge Mary's without sin.

Now, you may—I'll tell you, in my research, Matt, a lot of folks take for granted, well, some Fathers say Mary has sin.

You can't find it.

What you find are venial faults and things like that, but it is very difficult to find sins on the lips of any Church Fathers.

It's extraordinary how they all stay away from—and some of the very Fathers who are claimed to say it, when I actually researched them, they don't. They'll say venial faults, but they never say sin, and there's a reason for that.

Even in the East, she was referred to as panhagia, all holy, even though, again, the theology wasn't fully laid out.

But with our developed understanding of original sin came problems, because, okay, how does original sin work here?

Granted, Mary has no sins as far as personal sins.

That's a done deal.

As Ludwig Ott in his Fundamentals of the Catholic Dogma points out, it's unanimous among the Fathers when it comes to personal sin.

That's a done deal.

Original sin, it was conceptually—how do we deal with this?

Because if you read St. Thomas Aquinas, and by the way, when I was in the seminary, Matt, I actually wrote a paper.

I tried to defend Thomas on the Immaculate Conception.

I lost.

I lost.

We can admit that Thomas was wrong on things.

It's okay.

That's right.

But what Thomas could not fathom—and it's obvious when you read the Summa on this—if he says the idea of an immaculate conception doesn't make sense, because he argues there's only two possibilities.

She was either redeemed before her conception, which is absurd because she did not exist yet—that's impossible—or after her conception.

He did not even have—he must not have read Radbertus Pacius, who did posit this a few hundred years before, but it didn't really gain ground before Scotus.

Yes, before William of Ware, who taught Scotus as well.

But here's the bottom line.

When William of Ware and then Scotus' disciples really hammer this out, look, we're not saying—the Church is not saying—you cannot say that Mary was redeemed before she existed.

That's absurd.

But you also don't have to say that she wasn't redeemed until afterward.

And why is that?

Well, look at the book of Jude.

In Jude, verse 25, "Now unto him who is able to keep you from falling and preserve you blameless at the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," right?

There is preservative salvation, and that is salvation.

The fact is, Matt, you are being kept from sins entirely every day of your life by the grace of God that keeps you from falling into God only knows what.

And trust me, he would if it wasn't for God's grace.

In fact, we all would.

That's the point.

Mary was preserved.

Hence, Pope St. Pius IX in 1854 would say, by a singular privilege of grace in view of the merits of Christ, Mary was preserved free of the stain of original sin.

So was she saved?

Absolutely.

Luke 1, verse 47, "My soul rejoices in God my Savior."

She was saved, but she was saved in a more sublime way.

As Duns Scotus famously said, like the man who is approaching a mud puddle or a deep pit of mud.

One falls in; he must be saved and lifted out of the pit, but another is saved by preventing the fall to start with.

In fact, the latter is the more perfect salvation, and that's the Blessed Virgin Mary.

I've heard people say, well, if he can do that, if God can do that for Mary, why can't he just do that for all of us?

He sure could.

Well, it's one thing to say what God could do, because theoretically you could say God could do that.

But there are lots of reasons why he doesn't. And that gets into a great mystery.

But it certainly is reasonable, and ultimately, that gets us back to the problem of evil in general.

But that's a good answer.

I like that.

Yeah, well, he can.

Don't you think he can't? Are you going to argue that he's incapable of doing that?

Well, no.

Okay.

Well, here's another objection.

I mean, you've kind of given a bit of a case.

I know you go into it in much greater detail in your book, which everyone needs to go and get.

And more money for that, please.

But a lot of people will say, listen, this dogma of the Immaculate Conception wasn't defined until the 19th century by Pope Pius IX. So, come on, this is stuff that the Catholic Church is inventing really late in the game.

What's your quick response to that?

Right.

Well, obviously, when you look at history, this isn't something the Church invented late in the game because, you know, we have the Council of Trent in the 16th century talking about—in its, I think it's session five on original sin—where the Council of Trent says, with regard to this, we're leaving Mary aside because, in fact, just as St. Augustine said over a thousand years before that, because we want to make clear that this does not apply to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

See, what folks have to understand is, here's the analogy I use, Matt, for my Protestant friend.

Why did the Church not have a canon of Scripture, even on the ordinary level, until 382 A.D.? I mean, you have St. Athanasius who had a canon in 367 that did not entirely agree with what would be the final canon.

You have canons from 300 A.D. from Elvira; you have canons floating around.

You have different Fathers of the Church that were saying things like, well, look at Eusebius.

We could kind of synopsize.

When Eusebius says the book of Revelation is rejected by many, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Hebrews—these were questionable books.

Why didn't the Church define it?

Well, the fact is, this is the M.O. of the Holy Spirit working for thousands of years.

The Holy Spirit, Matt, has never come down.

Let's go back to Abraham.

Did God come down to Abraham and say, "Abraham, I am Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?"

No, this is not the way God works.

And we all know this as Christians.

When Adam and Eve fell, why didn't God just come in immediately and reveal everything to them and bring them back?

Because God loves freedom.

He created us as free.

He allows us to walk away.

He says, you walk away, you're going to reap the whirlwind.

But then he gradually begins to plant seeds to, as Hebrews 1, verse 1 says, "God, who through various and partial ways spoke through the prophets, now in these last days has spoken by a Son."

Notice how he speaks the word over thousands of years.

He speaks the word gradually.

Then Jesus.

We have the fullness of the revelation.

But even there, we spend 2,000 years plumbing the depths of what he revealed.

That's just God's M.O. And so if you're going to say, well, I'm not going to accept this because it took the Church too long, well, then you're not going to be able to accept any Christian doctrine.

Yeah, that's a good point, because we're not talking about ongoing revelation.

Like in the time of Abraham, there was ongoing revelation.

The death of the last apostle...

there wasn't. So what you're saying isn't that this was received after the fact, but this is kind of the working out of what was received by the apostles.

And what does Jesus say about the kingdom of heaven?

He says the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God on earth, is like leaven.

It gets into the lump and then it grows.

It's like a mustard seed.

It starts really small, and then it becomes enormous.

Take a Martian or alien from the Andromeda Galaxy who comes here, looks at a mustard seed and a full-grown plant.

That came from that, right?

Well, that's the Church.

The Church grows like the mustard seed, and that includes doctrine as well as our forms of worship and so forth.

It is expected to grow because the Holy Spirit brings life and growth.

That's what he does.

Okay.

Now, you mentioned co-redemptrix, I think, earlier.

I wanted to ask you about a possible fifth Marian dogma that people have been talking about, and this is the idea of Mary being mediatrix.

It's almost like Catholics are intent on scaring their Protestant brethren, you know?

What else can we say that could freak them out?

Explain what this means to us and why we don't need to be afraid of it.

Yes, absolutely.

Well, first of all, mediatrix, if you go to Lumen Gentium, the dogmatic constitution on the Church, the council fathers actually declared Mary to be mediatrix.

But there was a motion at Vatican II to define Mary as co-redemptrix and mediatrix of all grace.

The fathers said no to the mediatrix of all graces and no to the co-redemptrix.

And in fact, as you know, Cardinal Ratzinger—I still call him Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI—in his great book, God and the World, talks about how he was opposed to the definition of co-redemptrix for a particular reason.

He believed it was an abuse of language and causes way too much confusion, but he says that we have other titles of the Blessed Virgin Mary that teach the same theology, like Mother of the Church.

That's the direction Paul VI went in.

He defined Mary as Mother of the Church, and now we just had Pope Francis make it a feast day in the Church as Mother of the Church.

Of course, that's integrally related to her as a co-redemptrix because, you know, all salvation comes through the Catholic Church.

You can't get to the baptismal waters except through the womb of Mary.

I'm sorry, that's just the way it is.

So now I happen to be—I will tell you, I happen to be a fan of co-redemptrix one day being defined.

Do me a favor, right?

We've got an open-minded Catholic or evangelical who's nervous about this language.

Could you just sum it up for us?

Because I know it can get very complicated.

Could you sum it up for us in a way that we're like, okay, that's what they're saying, even though this language can sound a bit daunting?

Yes.

I think the best way to do that is go to 1 Corinthians 3, verse 9. When St. Paul is talking about his apostolic ministry, and he says, we are co-laborers with Christ, "synergoi" in Greek.

Wait a minute, how can you say you are a co-laborer?

Well, he just told you why in verse 5. He says, what is Paul?

What is Barnabas?

But instruments by which you have come to believe, he's saying to the Corinthians.

And then that moves into, for we are co-laborers with Christ.

That's what we're talking about.

It's not meaning that Paul is equal to Jesus, no.

It means that he cooperates with Jesus in bringing salvation, and in that sense, he is a co-laborer.

Not in the sense of being an equal, and that's where people get tripped up.

And by the way, that's one of the problems.

One of the problems Benedict has with co-redemptrix is the confusion it causes with people thinking they're equal.

I argue, just teach them.

Kind of like what we were saying with the Mother of God.

Clear up the confusion after you state what's true.

Absolutely, absolutely.

I point out Pope Benedict's position because I do believe we're not going to have a definition in the foreseeable future.

But what people have to understand, it's already Catholic theology.

It is what the Catholic...

And as Benedict himself says, we have other images that relate the same theology.

She is co-redemptrix.

In fact, we are all called—and this is an important part—we're all called to be co-redeemers with Christ.

If you understand we are co-laborers with him, we're called to bring other people to Jesus, right?

And as much as we do that, we can say with St. Paul, for example, in 1 Corinthians 9:22, he says, I've become all things to all men that by all means I might save some.

Paul could say to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:16, "Take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine, for in so doing you will both save yourself and them that hear thee."

How could the Bible be any more plain?

We are called to be co-redeemers with Christ, saving our own souls as well as others.

And one more, I could give you a hundred, but 1 Peter 3:22 says, Peter says we must purify ourselves from all defilement.

Purify ourselves in the truth.

How can you purify yourself, man?

What are you, the Savior?

No, it's by cooperating with God's grace.

Well, just one more.

1 John 1, verse 7. Here's a beautiful image of what it means to be a co-redeemer.

Scripture says, "If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, continues to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we say we have no sin, we are a liar and the truth is not in us.".

But if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us.

So notice, we have to do something.

We have to walk in the light, and if we do, the blood of Jesus cleanses us.

That's co-redemptrix, brother.

By our cooperation, our sins are being taken.

If we confess our sins, yes.

I like that a lot.

So just like a Christian at Philippi or Ephesus or Rome could say, if it weren't for Paul, I wouldn't be a Christian, the entire body of Christians throughout history can say, to an even greater degree, if it weren't for Mary, I wouldn't be a Christian.

Oh, my goodness.

I've got to point, folks, in my section on the Immaculate Conception, I quote what is probably the most powerful homily ever preached on the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Council of Ephesus in 431 by St. Cyril.

When you read that homily, and I give you a good chunk of it, it is beautiful.

He basically says exactly what you're saying, how that through the yes of Mary, demons are put to flight, sins are destroyed, and it goes down the list of Mary as co-redemptrix with Christ, right there at the Council of Ephesus, beautifully declared.

And, folks, really, this is just Christianity.

Yeah, it's funny.

Sometimes I'll hear people say, you know, in the East, they don't talk about Mary the way that you in the West do.

There's been this kind of development.

But, I mean, I've been going to a Byzantine church for five years now, and I can tell you, I mean, just look at the Akathist to Mary.

Are you familiar with that prayer, Tim?

I am.

I am.

Oof, baby, it's so powerful, huh?

It really is, yes.

That is a myth, because much of the Marian devotion that we have comes from the East.

In fact, I would remind people that St. Cyril was an Eastern Father at the Council of Ephesus, and you read those words.

I'll challenge you.

When you get my book, read that section in the Immaculate Conception, and you'll see it.

It's so beautiful.

And you know what?

I said earlier that if you miss it on Mary, you end up missing it on who God is, on who Jesus is.

But you know what else you miss?

You miss it on who you are in Jesus Christ.

Because Mary came not just to reveal who God is to us, but also to reveal who we are to us, and she does it so beautifully in her yes.

Because when she says yes, the entire universe is changed.

Now, Matt Fred and Tim Staples, we're not called to cooperate in transforming the whole universe the way Mary is queen of the universe, right?

But we are called to transform our universe—my life, my family, my wife, my kids, and those with whom I have contact.

And so in the Blessed Virgin Mary, we see our own dignity, and we also see the awesome nature of our responsibility.

Yeah, that's beautiful.

One of my favorite little nuggets from the Akathist to Mary is where Mary is called "Trauma to the Demons."

I love the idea that she was a traumatic event that they still haven't recovered from.

And I love in the West the hammer of heretics in the litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Why?

Because, you know, think about the Nestorians.

Think about the Christological heresies.

If you get it right on Theotokos, you are safe and secure.

Beautiful.

All right, the final Marian dogma we need to look at is the Assumption of Mary.

How would you help someone come to understand the Assumption of Mary?

What does it mean?

Is it found in Scripture?

Did the early Church believe it?

Oh my goodness, yeah.

Well, you know, this was one that I was helped greatly by my Catholic friend in helping me to see some of the ancient imagery of the Blessed Virgin Mary, especially the Ark of the Covenant.

Now, the Ark of the Covenant is something you see in St. Athanasius.

You see it—or even Athanasius really develops beautifully—Mary as the Ark of the Covenant.

But, of course, it was around long before him.

And this was helpful to me for this reason.

My Catholic buddy shows me, Tim, the Assumption is really not that tough.

Because you go to Revelation 12, verse 1, and you know where I'm going, Matt.

And here you have the woman clothed with the sun, on her head, a crown of 12 stars, the moon under her feet.

Verse 4 and 5, she gives birth to Jesus, the man-child who is to rule the nations with a rod of iron.

Quoting Psalm 2, the Messianic Psalm, this is obviously Jesus who gave birth to Jesus, but Mary.

And, of course, my response was, well, that's not Mary.

That's the Church or the Old Testament people of God.

And, of course, the Catholic response is, yes, amen.

It is the people of God.

But what is, as Pope Benedict—and I quote him in my book—says, what is the literal sense of the text, folks?

Who gave birth to Jesus?

Mary did, all right?

Now, we can fight back and forth on, okay, who is the woman?

I say it's Mary; you say it's not.

But for me, Matt, it wasn't just there.

And by the way, for the Assumption, you know, you clearly have Mary being revealed there, the woman, as being bodily in heaven.

I mean, juxtapose that with the same book, Revelation 6, verse 9, where we have the martyrs revealed in heaven under the altar, and they're saying, how long?

It says, the souls of the martyrs.

But Mary, same book, Revelation—head, feet, right?

Clearly, she is bodily in heaven.

But again, back and forth we fight with our Protestant friends, but I'm going to tell you the thing that lit me up was backing up one verse.

Revelation 11, verse 19. This is the one that blew my mind, because what is John—and as many of our listeners know, the book of Revelation is the apocalypsis.

This is John seeing heaven, the unveiling of the heavenly worship and how we are being lifted up and it is being brought down to us and we're experiencing the heavenly worship.

But in chapter 11, verse 19, as he is seeing heaven, he sees the temple of God in heaven.

Now, folks, what is the temple of God?

We know from John's own writings.

This is the same John who wrote the Gospel of John.

What is the temple?

John 2, verse 21, or if you back up to verse 19, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again," right?

Verse 21, the temple he spoke of is his body.

Revelation 21:22, what do you have?

John sees that there is no temple in heaven.

Why?

Because the temple is the Lamb.

It's Almighty God and the Lamb.

What is the visible component of the temple?

The body of Christ.

Just as he said in John 2:21, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."

What is the temple?

His body.

All right.

With that, we go to Revelation 11:19. So John sees the temple.

What is the temple?

The body of Christ.

Well, what does he see in the temple but the Ark of the Covenant?

So what would that be?

Oh, when that first hit me, as you know, Matt, you go to Luke 1, verse 43, when Elizabeth famously experiences the power of the presence of the New Covenant Ark when Mary walks into the house and just says, "How you doing?"

That's all she had to do, and all heaven breaks loose.

And under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, of course, Elizabeth exclaims, "Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?".

Quoting almost verbatim 2 Samuel 6:9, where David says when he experienced the powerful manifestation of the Old Testament Ark, "Who am I that the ark of my Lord should come unto me?"

Mary is the Ark, my friends.

When John sees the Ark, he is not looking at a box made out of acacia wood from Exodus 25 overlaying with gold.

He is seeing Mary, and guess what?

Not just Mary, but her body, because that is what carried the Lamb inside.

And that's why Mary is the Ark of the Covenant.

She's in heaven.

So before you even get to the next verse of the woman, you've already got Mary.

And point out to us, because some people don't know this, that chapters and verses weren't written like that.

That was included in the Middle Ages.

Dr. Scott Hahn, in his awesome book, Hail Holy Queen, this man is brilliant, but he beautifully points that out, that yes, the Bible was not broken up into chapters and verses and such for the first almost thousand years of the Christian era.

Well, parts of it before the thousand-year mark and then the New Testament right around the thousand-year mark that was together.

Now, usually the chapters and verses are broken up pretty good, but sometimes they're not.

And that's an example of it really not being separated at a good point, because those two verses are absolutely wedded together.

And I have to tell you, that's what did it for me.

On the Ark of the Covenant, or on the Assumption, was the Ark of the Covenant.

I saw this.

Oh my gosh, that's her body.

So then in the next verse, well, of course, that's Mary.

Right now our viewers can see the text.

I have it started at verse 19, chapter 11, going down to chapter 12. So they're seeing this as you're explaining it, and it is quite remarkable, especially given the fact that the Ark of the Covenant had been lost for how many years prior to this?

Yes, hundreds of years.

And this was very important to the Jewish people.

It sure was, yeah.

The last we hear of it in the Old Testament is in Maccabees.

And it disappears.

So at least 100 years have gone.

Okay.

So this is like the Holy of Holies?

Is that what we would call the Ark?

Or would we say that the Ark was within the Holy of Holies?

The Ark was within.

Okay.

But this is what Israel brought with them into battle to assure their victory.

Correct.

It's what made the tabernacle in the wilderness...

Holy, the Ark was in the tabernacle, and in the temple that Solomon built later, the Ark was in the temple.

So if you're a first-century Jewish reader and John says he's found the Ark, your ears pick up.

I've got to tell you, man, I don't know how much time we have, but I was on an airplane with a fellow who was on his way—he was a wonderful evangelical brother in Christ.

Oh, we had a great conversation.

We were in first class, so we were comfortable, and we just talked for hours.

This guy was on his way to an excavation where they're trying to find the Ark of the Covenant.

Oh, my goodness.

And I almost hated to pop his bubble because this guy's involved in millions of dollars and excavations, getting donations and all this stuff.

But I explained to him, I laid out to him the fact that Mary is the Ark of the Covenant, and as Catholics, you know, if you found the Ark, that would be a nice find.

But that's not the Ark.

That's not the true Ark.

The true Ark is the Blessed Virgin Mary.

He said, I've got to tell you, I have never heard that before, and I don't know what to think, but you've given me something to think about.

That is powerful.

Tim, you are such a terrific spokesperson for the Blessed Mother, and I'm so glad that you exist and that you're doing what you're doing.

I'm going to put the links to all of these products of yours below because they have been tremendously helpful to me.

But just tell our viewers a couple of the things they should get to learn more about Mary, because believe it or not, you've just scratched the surface.

Absolutely.

Well, Behold Your Mother: A Biblical and Historical Defense of the Marian Doctrines is a must-get.

Because here I deal with not just the big four, you know, the Mother of God, Immaculate Conception, Perpetual Virginity, Assumption, but I deal with Mary, Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix, Queen of Heaven and Earth.

You need to get it.

And I'll tell you a little tidbit.

You may not know this, Matt, but the book was originally longer.

Surprise, it was actually longer.

A lot of it ended up on the cutting room floor because, you know, we had to have people actually buy the book.

So I wrote another, 20 Answers: Mary, that has a lot of the stuff that didn't get in the book.

But I deal with things like praying to Mary, the rosary, why do we do practices and things like that.

So I really recommend, and it's only a couple bucks for the 20 Answers: Mary.

But I'd recommend you get those.

They really go hand in hand.

And if you like MP3 downloads, if you like to listen, well, I also have the Mary sets, and they are in three parts.

I think we have two.

We gave you the first two, right?

No, it's not all generations.

It's... It's not all generations.

I'm looking right now on the store.

Yeah, I'm thinking of the older set at St. Joseph Communications.

Yeah, New Eve, Mediatrix, and Mother.

Yeah, that's one of them.

And then, oh, here's a couple more.

You have The Gospel Truth About Mary.

That's it.

And then The Gospel Truth About Mary, Volume 2, which I think adds up, if it were in CD form, to 10 CDs, if I'm not mistaken.

Yes, yes, that's it.

So the Gospel Truth About Mary.

I had done one for Terry Barber years ago called All Generations Are Called to Be Blessed, and that one was stuck in my head.

But if you like to listen, if you get those three sets, you've got about 16 hours of teaching on the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Oh, man.

Glory to God.

Well, I want everyone to go out and buy them, and that's great.

It's shop.catholic.com.

You don't have to buy the CDs; they all have MP3 versions available, so you can just download them and listen to them on your commute or whatever.

So that's fantastic.

Tim, thank you so much for being with us.

Great.

Matt, any time, brother.

Stay in touch.

See you.

Okay, thank you very much for watching this fantastic episode of me and Tim Staples chatting about the Blessed Mother.

As I promised in the beginning, there's going to be a post-show wrap-up segment for patrons only where we discuss Tim's, you know, what apparitions he finds most credible and his raw and unfiltered thoughts on Medjugorje.

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Thanks so much.

See ya.