By A Follower of the Christ – December 2024

I wrote this essay after reading one of your articles, “Who were Mary and Joseph’s Other Children”, which examines the direct Biblical evidence that Joseph and Mary produced several sons and daughters by common marriage. It isn’t terribly on-topic, but it contemplates what caused such a common-sense thing to be lost in the first place.

HIDDEN IN THE SIGHT OF ALL NATIONS: A SIGN TO BE SPOKEN AGAINST

The Thought occurred to me the other day — If Mary was, as some claim, a perpetual virgin who never ‘knew a man’ so that she could be ‘assumed to heaven’ like Enoch or something (didn’t Enoch have children?), then wasn’t Joseph also one who ‘knew no woman’? Doesn’t Moses say that’s wrong for a married man? Sorry, but that’s also just plain creepy — Then came the Thought, which had actually been with me some time but hitherto had not connected directly to the topic at hand: Every time we of the fallen human race try to make something fit our distorted ideals it comes at the expense of something else, or some many things, going horribly wrong. This is the core of the matter: God is. He is who he was and who he will be. That was the eternal name he revealed to Moses. We, on the other hand, are not even quite sure who we are, or will be tomorrow. We are a mist vanishing before the rising sun, knowing neither our beginning nor end. In other words, at the boundaries of human life is an indeterminacy principle, and God alone keeps to his word.. Yet it is we who are fromthe dead and God who is the Living. How do we reckon with this?

A thing may be certain, but your grasp of the matter is bound to your humanity. Each and every man is moving along the surface of the “eternity in our hearts” with the finite and crude actions in this visible realm, while the invisible holds the volume and weight to it. Yet the two are not disconnected. Everything on the boundary and surface are deeply interconnected. Earth is surely a surface and the heavenly realm the extensive; a footstool to the throne. Which is more important? That Enoch was assumed to heaven or that he walked with God below? To me, the second seems the more interesting point to wonder about. That leads me to the topic of today’s essay. When God has taken elaborate care to hide something important in full view of all nations yet in plain sight, what about this causes dynamic and almost universal frustration, to the point where everyone takes great effort to find any other possible explanation? To the point of exclaiming. Let not our cries of “It cannot be so!” yield to the unbelieving impulse “It musn’t be so!” Jesus Christ is the living, not dead, answer to the question “Why”, and to demand instead a dead answer from the Living God, would be dangerous. If something is a mystery, its purpose is for our living by it. Why buy a bottle of water when it is possible to buy a spring? This applies especially to the mystery of the Incarnation.

The risk in trying to make the plain incarnation sparkle is losing the ability to see the hidden quality in other things that also appear plain. “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter and the glory of kings to search it out.” More thoroughly, “we have this treasure in jars of clay so that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” Were an angel to show up and offer to let me know either how Enoch were assumed or how he walked with God before he was taken away, I doubt I could muster the courage to ask to know the answer to the second. Would I have the courage to face it?

Why do people think so much on what had to be? Do we know the mind of God? We have merely received what has been. Well – we would like to know! Find! Discover! The volume of post-apostolic writings is largely made of attempts to arrive at systematics, and we would be excused for referring those who prefer the end result to the process of treasure-hunting to those who began such a practice of speculation, for these, the first of these, held many an opposing view or conclusion to what is considered catholic today in regards to many things. Matters that were debated even among these can hardly be considered suitable for reflection, let alone foundation. On the other hand, the doctrinal mysteries agreed upon with certainty, are difficult to meditate on and live by.

If we want to know what Calvin thought we do not consult Kuyper first, or Knox, nor even Augustine. Not that we would bind anyone to history as a precondition for learning about God. Repentant men have knowledge of God by spending time with Him, and it is from that that they wish to also learn about Him. Yet for those who would impose burdens on others to bear, with claims to historical supremacy, we would demand thorough historical justification as a commonsense guard for the sake of those who for the sake of tradition or youth or station in life may be easily persuaded by persuasive yet incomplete claims to authority.

Many of the earliest church fathers in their wonder-why type of writings maintain a reasonable respect for the person of Mary that clearly rejects the later-introduced immaculate conception and all related nonsense that is, as musings derived, of questionable authority. Even these disagreed as to what degree Mary was indeed blameless in life despite sharing in common human sin, and other falterings not sinful, such as doubt and wavering and weakness. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ.” Everyone has some thematic idea that Mary represents the church universal, but the analogy falls short of being two ways. What one thinks concerning the church – better understood in analogy as the body of Christ – ends up shaping what one thinks about Mary. The converse is seldom the case in arguments I have read, up to Aquinas. And what is the question? How can that which is impossible with man yet be – that God redeem man to himself when man cannot on his own come back to Him? We know that “with God nothing is impossible”, but we would like to apprehend.

The central question is this: how can a man be made righeous in imperfect action and faltering committment, and further, accounted blameless and acceptable to God though he is not without sin nor complete in sanctification? How is it the token of mere repentant obedience enough to make a man right with God and allow him to draw near to God and thus be made holy by Him when he is by no means yet made thoroughly perfect?

Every endeavor to answer this without acclaiming the mysterion will fail. Where did the twin errors of Gnosticism and Arianism come from? It was direct disobedience to the apostolic instruction that led the church astray: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down) or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).” It was Alexandria that first led everyone astray in these, and Rome’s teachings on Mary come from there.

Many an error begins with a diversion of acknowledgement due God and honor due his appointed Son and not ourselves. Today mercy is interpreted as an action, and love the object, but in the prophet Hosea it is more plainly an objective state of heart humbled before God and therefore “transformed to the renewal of your mind”, while love is the foreign moving action: “love comes from God… This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son”. Should this take anyone aback, I commend the sense of nobility and honor for which John uses the term ‘grace’. Grace and truth are authored above, and mercy with love is shown where it has been revealed below. Our lives have beginnings and ends many, but the real beginning and ends of these threads is not on the surface of what we may claim for ourselves.

Without even considering the weightier heavenly realm, this principle that diminishes the place of every man (including Christ in continued humiliation in being mocked to this day) is already made evident just by considering history. What holiness that is residual to us who live in later times need not be considered generative though it has regenerating power. These are things that simply were rather than had to be. Still, this works to the exaltation of one man, Jesus Christ, in the grand scheme of things unseen. There was absolutely only one chance for mankind and no two ways about it. That no other way remained is evidenced in the prayer of Jesus in the garden for our sake. We may think we comprehend, but it is not ours to reverse-engineer who are incapable of adding one hour to our life to ourselves, let alone to any other. When the theologians speak in such a manner of deduction it would be ridiculous to think they actually are implying some sort of command of the spiritual realm but rather making an observation. We live because of God, not the other way around!

“I have found one righteous man among a thousand, but not one righeous woman among them all.” One, born of God. Just one, and not his mother. Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zechariah; these were declared righeous by God, like Abraham, and lived evidently so, but not intrinsically so. They acquired a living righteousness, but it did not come out of them. We do not have faith in these, but mere admirable example. We receive the apostles as disciples of Christ, and the earliest of their disciples as second-hand witnesses, yet if someone claims today after thousands of years to be an apostle, people would rightly be critical. Appointment cannot come from mere man. True admiration should be directed to that which is forever, an object worthy of faith. Is it paradox that the Son appointed by God, hidden plainly in the sight of all nations as a sign, is difficult to apprehend? Not by mere appearance or contrived promotion but confirmed by word and actions and evidences, the living mystery is presented. Yet it is difficult to receive. We would prefer the kind of mystery that is on our level. The believer ought not to be discouraged by this difficulty, just remember: Angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man you may see, but it was not because of these shiny things that you believed. This sign continues in the sight of all nations, and is spoken against to this day, but is hidden in plain sight. It is too plain to be of interest to those who want dead mysteries, and it will disturb to life the dead who believe.