The Words That Cannot Be Spoken

Scot McKnight again asks an important question at Jesus Creed, “Can anyone tell me why Mary is so often neglected when it comes to talking about women in ministry?”  The answer obviously has a number of complexities based on the nuances of belief that one brings to their practice of following Christ but in its [...]

Embracing The Real Mary

With many satisfying books that you are hesitant to place in the library, there is a tendency to linger with the volume, realign the jacket perhaps, smile as you recall some especially poignant passage, and maybe scan Amazon for the author’s other works to be added to your wishlist. Such is the case for [...]

The Real Venerated Mary

 In the final pair of chapters in The Real Mary, McKnight leads Protestants to understand the Roman Catholic traditions regarding The Virgin and the ways in which these beliefs become divisive. Especially in this last chapter, he cautions the evangelical who is uncomfortable at some Catholic practice to differentiate between the Church’s actual teaching and [...]

The Influential Real Mary

Scot McKnight turns the page on our discovery of the story of Mary. We have followed the biblical record to the foot of the cross where we find Jesus’ mother suffering the crushing realization of her fears. She is not recorded as having witnessed the resurrected Lord and the next encounter that we have is [...]

The Real Faithful Mary

Scot completes his excursus of the biblical account of Mary’s life, locating her at the foot of the cross with John , Mary Magdalene and others. Their desire to remain close and committed to Jesus is beautifully and horrifically portrayed in the pen and ink by Pietro da Cortana to the right. Our view of Mary is radically [...]

The Real Mary: Revelation

McKnight offers a chapter today entitled Woman of Ambivalence that encourages us to offer Mary a more charitable reading as she struggles to correlate the Jesus that is gradually being revealed to her with the Messiah of long term Jewish expectation. We often helicopter in to the scriptures in which Mary plays a role and, [...]

The Real Mary Wonders

In the compressed narrative of Mary’s relationship with her son Jesus, twelve years have passed since the birth and consecration of the boy. In the four gospels we are not invited to peer into this era but his mother, at his side during this formative period has had plenty of time to consider who the [...]

The Real Mary: Witness

Mary is the woman who all believers wish they could be because of her enviable status as the Witness. She alone has seen and heard every miraculous proclamation, watched the life take shape in her womb, and now holds the child Jesus in her arms. We believe from a distance rooted in faith; Mary holds [...]

The Real Mary: Evangel

 
 As we come to the fourth chapter of Scot’s book, Mary and the message that she carries about Jesus are appropriately tagged as dangerous. She threatens the powers that were by bringing the news of the powers that will be through her Son. The gospel threatens to rend Jewish society and completely upturn the fragile [...]

The Real Mary: Harbinger

Does Mary’s clarion call strike us in the same way that it rumbled through Herod’s oligarchy so many centuries ago? Mary the willing becomes Mary the dangerous as she announces the coming of the One who be the incarnation of all justice that God has exercised throughout the history of her people. Her praise extols [...]