Editor’s Note: This article was contributed as part of Good Faith Media’s partnership with International Baptist Theological Study Centre (IBTS)-Amsterdam.

Baptist theologian Timothy George says Protestants often feel what might be called “ecclesiological hardening of the arteries” toward the Virgin Mary. This is characteristic of both conservatives, who want nothing to do with “idols,” and liberals, who, by denying the possibility of virgin conception, render Mary dogmatically useless.

Christmas is one of the few times of the year when we can hear something about the Virgin Mary among Protestants. To return to George’s colorful expression, this is a moment when fresh blood bursts through hardened arteries.

This is good because the Virgin Mary embodies some of the most essential trusts of the Protestant Reformation. She hears God’s word and responds to it in faith despite the potential consequences and the price she knows she may have to pay. 

It is fascinating to see how the patristic authors develop this idea in different directions. Proclus of Constantinople introduces the intriguing motif that Mary conceived Christ “through the ear,” hearing and believing.

Augustine agrees, saying that without faith Mary would not have conceived. But he goes further. 

Through faith, Mary not only gives birth to Christ but is herself born (again) of him. The same idea is beautifully expressed by the Christian poet Ephraim the Syrian:

The Son of the Most High came and dwelt in me,

and I became his mother. 

As I gave birth to him—his second birth, 

so too he gave birth to me a second time. 


These are the solas of the Reformation in almost pure form.

Unfortunately, these insights are so forgotten today that Christians and secular people alike could listen to the famous modern Christian hymn, “Mary Did You Know?” without understanding what it really says:

Mary did you know that your baby boy will one day walk on water?
Mary did you know that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters?
Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new?
This child that you’ve delivered, will soon deliver you.    


But we can go further.

The Virgin Mary may be one of the best guides on the path of Christian discipleship. When she refers to herself as the “handmaid of the Lord (literally doule – slave), Mary is walking this path.

In his 72nd sermon on the New Testament, Augustine writes:

“Indeed, the blessed Mary certainly did the Father’s will, and so it was for her a greater thing to have been Christ’s disciple than to have been his mother, and she was more blessed in her discipleship than in her motherhood. Hers was the happiness of first bearing in her womb him whom she would obey as her master.”

Mary is a good guide, but not because she is sinless and always takes the right steps. In fact, if we read the gospel account carefully, we will see that she experiences doubts and hesitations. She often misunderstands her son’s purpose and mission and sometimes even opposes him.

It could be argued that the gospels deliberately create a sense of uncertainty about whether Mary is a true disciple until the very end, when, at Pentecost, we find her among the apostles receiving the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:14).

But it is precisely because she stumbles and falls, because she walks through light and darkness, because she is, in Luther’s words, “simul iustus et peccator,” both saint and sinner, that Mary can embody real-life discipleship. It is for this reason that she is an example with which we can easily identify.

She is one of us because we walk the same path and in the same way.

Reformed scholar Kathleen Noris eloquently asks

“Is Mary a cultural artifact or religious symbol? A literary device or a theological tool? A valuable resource for biblical exegesis or a matrix of extrabiblical piety that we, as Protestants must avoid at all costs? The point about Mary is that she is all these things, and more, always more.”

Indeed!

There is more to Mary than the average Protestant eye usually sees. It is worthwhile to look more closely and reflect more deeply on her image, not by ignoring the spirit of the Reformation but by affirming it. 

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