Christian Literature & Book Reviews

Mary - Another Redeemer?
By James R. White

Protestant apologist James R. White is not known for mincing words. His aggressive and often polemical style in debating issues relating to the faith is at some times an asset and at others a severe detriment. The problem arises when he cannot separate the doctrine discussed from the behavior of some who espouse it. This problem arises frequently in Mary - Another Redeemer?, his book on the Marian movement within Catholicism, as he performs all sorts of verbal sleight-of-hand to place Catholic devotion to Mary in the worse possible light and misrepresents the historic realities of the development of Marian piety within the Church.

This probem arises early on as he tries his hand at a Biblical account of the role of Mary. In so doing he relies upon an interpretive framework that is a modernist construct and not that used by the early Church. The early development of Marian beliefs were largely typological in character and not derived directly from a simple narrative. Like much in the belief and practice of classical Christianity, it developed from reflection upon the deposit of faith in the context of the life of the early Church. In trying to comprehend a truly Biblical view of Mary, simply listing items from passages in the Holy Scriptures where she is mentioned without recourse to this reflection results in a view that is far less "Biblcal" than meets the eye.

The whole problem with Mary - Another Redeemer is White's inabillity to see how his own distaste for popular devotion to Mary and the Saints within the Roman Church has clouded his judgment to such a degree that he seems unable to treat the subject in any but the most polemical manner. It is unfortuate because what could have been a frutful critique of the excessive emphasis on Marian devotions in the Roman Church instead has become shrill and pointless.

Mary and the Fathers of the Church: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought
By Luigi Gambero

An excellent resource from the Catholic side is Luigi Gambero's Mary and the Fathers of the Church. Meticulously researched and with extensive quotes given from the patristic writings, Fr. Gambero's treatise spans the entire patristic period and points to a clear trajectory from the earliest reflections upon the role of Mary among the Church's early theologians to the richness of Marian belief in the post-Nicene period. The author paints this as an organic development of beliefs already existing in an incipient form and not as the introduction of totally alien concepts into the Christian faith.

Certainly, some beliefs concerning Mary were already fully understood by the faithful prior to the full expression of the most important Christian doctrines and it can be asked whether the development of these doctrines can be separated from the growing understanding of Mary's place in the Church. For example, we see the doctrine of Mary as Theotokos intertwined with the development of the established doctrine concerning the Incarnation in such a way that one seems indelibly linked to the other. Clearly, arguments from silence can run both ways but some sense of the "mind of the Church" must be brought to bear on deciphering the evidence.

Obviously, the author will take a strong pro-Catholic opinion but his research provides an extremely useful guide for understanding how Marian beliefs flowered within the Church. In Mary and the Fathers of the Church, we have an exclelent survey of the growth of Marian piety that demonstrates its integral position within the framework that would become the classical doctrines of Christianity. Much as Mary would be seen as pointing us to Christ, so too the Marian beliefs were seen as pointing to the profound doctrines of the Triune God and Christology that would develop concurrently.

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