McKnight’s The Real Mary: Really Close
Scot McKnight’s new book The Real Mary is intriguing and ultimately frustrating read, one I highly recommend. McKnight attempts in this book to delineate only what can be known from Scripture regarding Mary, and to examine the further claims of the Catholic tradition regarding her in the most charitable light he can muster. And he does a fine job of this — up to a point.
McKnight says his book fills a missing place in Protestant theology: “… to my knowledge, no one has written a book about the life and character of Mary helping us develop a positive, Protestant view of Mary. Allow me to say this more forcibly: We are Protestants, we believe in the Bible; Mary is in the Bible; we need to believe what the Bible says about Mary. ” He argues that “the mother of Jesus ought to matter to each of us,” and “… Mary represents each of us — both you and me — in our call to follow Jesus.”
Now, it may or may not surprise McKnight to know that, as a Catholic, I am with him all the way so far. And it is perhaps unfair to criticize the book for being so very much what it says it is: a Protestant view of Mary. And so focused is he on presenting that, that he seems to be standing right at the threshold of accepting Catholic truth about Mary, gazing on her, and not seeing. Even worse, he doesn’t see what he doesn’t see: the weight and limitation of his own unexamined assumptions.
McKnight lucidly and respectfully presents many of the major Catholic teachings about Mary, even going so far as to admit that even the doctrines defined later in Church history are attested to in the Church fathers as early as the second century. And yet, so bound is he to the necessity of relating everything to an explicit scriptural statement, that he can’t see the implications of that.
Then there is the missing piece: In the two concluding chapters that describe Catholic Marian beliefs, he never mentions the Rosary. This is, I must say, like writing about pizza without mentioning pepperoni.
Dr. McKnight, I admire your determination to stick to Scripture. Did you not notice that the first part of the Hail Mary is nearly verbatim from the gospel of Luke? That 18 of the 20 mysteries on which we meditate are Scriptural events? (And the remaining two are attested to in Scripture, if one accepts OT/NT parallels?)
I noticed Scott Hahn’s book, Hail, Holy Queen:the Mother of God in the Word of God in your bibliography. You refer to Dr. Hahn as “a Roman Catholic theologian,” and rightly so. Did you know that Dr. Hahn once guarded the supremacy of Scripture much as you do now?
Pray for me, Dr. McKnight, that I may never give Mary other than her proper place. And I will pray the same for you. And keep reading the works of Dr. Hahn.
