In what way is that obvious? It’s important to bear in mind when reading the gospels that they are very short accounts of a period covering 3 years or more, involving a lot of people and events. There’s no exploration of the ins and outs of every scene in terms of what the people involved felt, thought and said, most of it is summarised for the sake of brevity, because the important thing was getting the message across. That doesn’t mean Mary, or anyone else, didn’t think anything through or have a choice.
I believe God knew she would be consenting, and that's why He chose her. I doubt He would have chosen someone who would object.
Amen. Like for we who are disciples today - when we became followers of Yeshua, immersed inHim, we declared THOU ART MASTER at that time (and SAVIOR),God knows our choice. Yet he allows us to say it. Mary was given an opportunity to say it, yet it was a yes before she said it. Do you understand?
According to the text and customs of righteous followers of Yahweh,Perhaps but my responses are just based on the text. No consent was sought.
Why did Jesus say "come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest"? Why issue this wonderful invitation if none of us can actually come to Him at all? Why invite us in this way if He doesn't care if we do come to Him, because He's just some kind of puppet master?
All that you say about God's sovereignty and righteous judgement is absolutely true, however, Scripture is clear that human beings do have free will and are therefore also accountable before God as to how they exercise it.
Anyone who reads the OT can see how profoundly this is true. How often did Israel turn away from God, even after He brought them out of Egypt so mightily and miraculously?
And God, Who knows the end from the beginning, and Whose plans and purposes do come to pass exactly as He wills, Whose ways are perfect and just, somehow, and incomprehensibly, still so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.
He is both the Just and the Justifier of them that believe.
God actually does love us, and He is concerned for us, He desires that none should perish.
And Jesus Christ has shown us the love of God, that we can find rest in our Saviour. Jesus Christ, our Sabbath.
God does desire a personal relationship with us, His children. He is not a distant and impersonal God simply seeking to strike us down at the slightest provocation. Thanks be to Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour Who has reconciled us to the Father!
This reads more like a prepared generic response to a Calvinist than anything at all that I wrote. There is no incoherence between admitting both human free will and God's disregard for that will when it contravenes His own. That is to say, for example, Jonah is free to will not to go to Ninevah, but that doesn't require God to ask his consent, which He didn't. We are not asked about where we want to be born and when, of what ethnicity, with what gifts and deficits, etc. God simply imposes those constraints on us, and we are free to be grateful for God's wisdom or to despise it. That's the part that both Biblically and naturally we can apprehend God doesn't care about. He does as He wills, and allows us to have a competing will, but doesn't permit us to contravene it when He decrees that something will be done. For example: "it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment (Hebrews 9:27)."
How many neither want to die nor receive judgment?
See where that gets them. How many want to have their own way to God? See where the Bible says they're headed.
Where did Jonah not want to go? Where did he end up? Complain to God, "why did you make me this way?" You'll just kick against the goads.
Really? Do you have any documentation to back that assertion up?
(the other idea, that she didn't consent, is just sort of yucky, IMO, as it would treat a woman's body as merely an object). .
So tell me, did Mary get a say in being impregnated? Because sometimes that part of the story just reads like get gets told that she'll be getting pregnant now, and, well, sure, she does say later on, "Okay, let it be so," that part of her response seems pretty inconsequential given the fact that she's already been told that it's going to happen regardless.
Believe me, I have a burning desire to want Mary to have agency. She did say, "Let it be according to your word." I want to let her yes be yes! What an empowering story that one would be, and what a deep and meaningful testament to the trust Mary had in God! Being pregnant was even more dangerous then than it is today. To top it off, being unwed and pregnant? And all that traveling. God didn't put her in an easy position, that's for sure. But she trusted God. And goodness knows the good book needs a woman or two with agency!
Her "Let it be according to your word," doesn't feel like consent. It feels like the child who pretends to be asleep when her dad comes into her room at night because she knows there's nothing she can do to stop what he is about to do anyway... and even if she wanted to try, how would she even begin to say "no" when they are on such unequal playing fields; she doesn't have the language yet to describe what he is doing.
How much did Mary know of the OT God? I'm not sure I know a lot about her regarding what education she would have had? Did she know enough to know how the OT women got treated? Look at Hagar. She was raped, repeatedly, and later mistreated by the wife of the man who raped her. She ran away and what did God do? God said, "Go back to the place where you get hurt." Where women do come up in the OT, it's no secret that they are generally either "vessels" or they meet unpleasant ends (or maybe both!) Would Mary have felt like she had any power to say "no" to a God who the OT credits with some pretty... strong... punishments?
So what is there to take away from that passage that just seems to be Mary being taken advantage of/being reduced to a vessel. I get the whole theme of obedience and all but the annunciation bit itself really still eats at me.
I wasn't aware that Protestant women had fewer autonomous choices. Interesting. (Also, if one must have the choice of being a nun and entering a convent, there are Protestant orders, as I'm sure you're aware.)
In any case, it's not as though Protestant women are forced to get married and have children.
I didn't say our will "contravenes" God's. It absolutely does not. We are accountable for our choices and how we exercise our free will, however, because God in His infinite wisdom created us with the ability to choose Him.
And I never said otherwise. God is sovereign and just, He is also compassionate, merciful, forgiving, gracious and relational. Scripture calls us God's "children" for a reason.
And in Christ we are reconciled to the Father and can come boldly before the throne of Grace. So, we should not see God as distant and impersonal.
There is no longer any condemnation for those in Christ.
Saved, born again believers are "headed" for eternity with God.
Yes, we can (and likely all have) at one point or another complained against or questioned God. (Unless we're just being dishonest with ourselves.
Nothing changes the fact that He loved the world enough to send His only begotten Son, and that He desires that none should perish.
We should be careful to remember that while He is absolutely sovereign, Holy, righteous and just, He is also forgiving, slow to anger, compassionate and merciful to us in Jesus Christ.
And He is not distant, aloof or uncaring. As we know, in the Word become "flesh" Who dwelt among us, we have a Saviour who absolutely and completely understands our struggles. Who was tempted in every way, just as we are, and was yet without sin. Jesus Christ calls us to Himself, to rest in Him.
In the Gospel of our salvation, we rejoice in this Hope.
God bless.
Responses to this thread so far have ducked 2 important facts about Mary:
(I) It is unlikely that she was a well grounded in Scriptures at the time of her impregnation. By Jewish custom, Mary was likely a naïve, innocent, and illiterate young girl, 13-16 years of age, when she gets engaged to Joseph. Jewish girls did not receive an education in Torah like the boys. In fact, one ancient rabbinic tradition treaches that to teach woman Torah is like teaching them obscenity!
(2) The angel never asks for Mary's permission for the divine impregnation (Matthew 1:18; Luke 1:31). Rather, she gladly consents to already accomplished impregnation after learning about its divine purpose (Luke 1:38); and God surely ordained Jesus to have a godly willing mother.
What if those 2 important facts to you, are not in fact facts, rather are two misconceptions based on the lack of information concerning Mary's previous life and so hence you make it a conjecture that she was uneducated and void of any wilful choice.
More evidence is below.....
However, Zechariah doesn’t go into his Canticle as directly as Mary does. And this is part of a larger portrayal of Mary in these early chapters as model disciple—one who hears the word of God and acts on it.
In fact, there is a subtle difference between the way in which Zechariah and Mary phrase their questions. Zechariah’s question could be quite literally (if awkwardly) translated as “According to what will I know this?” (1:18); whereas Mary’s question focuses not on how she will know, but simply on how this mysterious birth will come about: “How will this be since I do not know man” (my translation).
In other words, we can detect a subtle hint of doubt in Zechariah’s question: how can I know this or how can I be certain? For Mary, it’s not so much a matter of how can I know—it’s more “I know this is true because I trust my source, but I’m dumbfounded as to how it will happen.”
The angel clarifies the contrast we are drawing, by responding to Zechariah this way: “And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe” (1:20). Elizabeth, on the other hand, proclaims Mary’s faith: “Blessed is she who believed that there would be fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord” (1:45).
Zechariah was made a mute because of his unbelief, yet Mary was lifted up, because she expected it and wanted to know more about how it would come about, rather than why or if it will come about.
This is a great misconception about Mary. You see if you said Jospeh was poor, simple and uneducated, I would side with you on this claim because of his fearful reactions. Yet Mary when told she was pregnant with the Messiah, was not fearful and was almost expecting a blessing along those lines.
In Jewish tradition, woman could not become priests, Mary was most certainly reared up by an educated
Zechariah. Hence she was brought up in the temple of Jerusalem, top university of her day, for special reasons.
Woman used to give themselves as an offering to God, by serving as temple keepers and cleaners, hence making the temple their very home by sleeping in its quarters. You could say the temple was her convent and she, like John the Baptist's mum was like a nun of the convent. Yes that is right, Mary was literally a nun and she offered herself for God and his works and blessings.
She was being prepared to become a Lady of God, ready to receive God’s word in her flesh and to educate her precious Son for his historic role. The mother who knew the Hebrew Bible: the Law, the psalms, the stories of Genesis, and who read it all to and discussed it with her precious son.
It would now seem that Mary lived a hermit and reclusive life, within the temple walls and had given herself to God as is traditionally accepted of women in Judaism. That would explain her lack of surprise in her answer to Gabriel and her lack of fear or apprehension to the idea that she was to be used by God as a vessel for the Lord.
This is where the geanalogy of Mary comes into play, she knew that the Messiah would come through her lineage and she offered herself, as did the many women before her and the language regarding the other women highly suggested that they too offered themselves, yet God as scripture clearly states chose Mary. If it is written God chose Mary, then there certainly was a lineage of willing women who God could have chosen from, throughout the lineage of David. This would refute this false point you make.
The Angel therefore does not need to ask Mary for her permission, because according to her Jewish Torah knowledge and tradition and genealogy, she had offered her self to God and God chose her out of the women from David down to her, otherwise Matthew's opening genealogy chapter would be meaningless. She was not surprised and she had expected it and not learnt it only then as you incorrectly assert.
Here is where most conjectures are out to rest and silenced forever!
Amen. Like for we who are disciples today - when we became followers of Yeshua, immersed inHim, we declared THOU ART MASTER at that time (and SAVIOR),
and ANYTHING HE tells us to do after that is expected to be done willingly, with joy and whole-heartedly, even unto suffering and death and loss of everything.
We said "YES MASTER!" , in grace by faith, His Gift, once for all time,
no matter what He tells us to DO, where to GO.
And instead of thatThis was also a time when the expectation of a Messiah who would sweep away the occupiers and clear out the collaborators was pretty much at fever pitch.
I believe that Mary, a virgin, married Joseph and they conceived Jesus the natural way. Mary and Joseph were "chosen" like Abram was "chosen" to be the parents of Jesus. After conceiving Jesus, Gabriel appeared and revealed the miracle that the Son of God, his master, was her child.
Mary chose to wed Joseph and presumably chose to copulate and accepted the honor bestowed upon them.
There were no Protestant religious orders until the 19th century. The restoration of monasticism in a Protestant church happened in America, in the 19th century, by William Muhlenberg, a German convert to Episcopalianism and a priest who was allied with what later became known as Anglo-Catholicism, a religious movement among Anglicans which rejected much of the Protestant attitudes towards the Catholic past.
During the Carolignian reign in England prior to the Civil War, there was a house called Little Gilding where Christians lived a cloistered life of prayer together but it was harassed by Puritans and did not endure. With the exception of a few Lutherans in Germany who continued to live as monastics since the Reformation (all monks), Protestants were overwhelmingly opposed to monasticism. The state churches seized the property of monastic houses on trumped up charges of sodomy and corruption, spurned on by propaganda and ideology.
They were forced to by their circumstances, if they wanted to have a good reputation and even in many cases, food to eat and shelter over their heads. Social welfare did not really exist back then as a right. To be a spinster or widow was a terrible curse, as a result, which is why those terms have such negative conotations even into the present day.
Worse, a single woman could be accused of witchcraft very easily. Protestants engaged in witch-hunts with more zeal even than Catholics. Luther saw evil spirits everywhere, as did the Reformed churches, perhaps even more. And vulnerable, unmarried women were the easiest scapegoats for anxieties about supernatural evil.
So your suggestion that Protestant women had options in their life just isn't true. Their destiny was to get married and have alot of kids, or face a harsh and brutal life, quite possibly a short one.
The death of monasticism did not just effect women of course, it took choices away from men. You started seeing what were called "Sturdy Beggars" in Tudor England. Poor men who previously could join a monastic order or offer to work for a monastery suddenly found a new "vocation", as a highwayman or robber. In addition, many of these same types of men also would later become pirates at sea, indeed, the English were notorious for piracy, government-sanctioned or not. And all so Henry VIII could fatten his purse with the ill-gotten riches taken from the Church.
Protestantism nearly destroyed the social fabric of many European countries, in many cases the only thing holding it together was the emergence of the new, powerful nation-state that ruled by force and national myth-making.
Without a channel for celibacy (such as monasticism) women, by and large, had only one option in Protestant circles: Wives and mothers.
If you are aware of something otherwise, I wouldn't mind learning about it.
-CryptoLutheran
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