Protestant views on Mary
aspect of Protestantism
Protestant views on Mary include the theological positions of major Protestant representatives such as Martin Luther and John Calvin as well as some modern representatives. While it is difficult to generalize about the place of Mary, mother of Jesus in Protestantism given the great diversity of Protestant beliefs, some summary statements are attempted.
Protestant theologians
Some early Protestant Reformers venerated and honored Mary. Martin Luther said of Mary:
the honor given to the mother of God has been rooted so deeply into the hearts of men that no one wants to hear any opposition to this celebration... We also grant that she should be honored, since we, according to Saint Paul's words [Romans 12] are indebted to show honor one to another for the sake of the One who dwells in us, Jesus Christ. Therefore we have an obligation to honor Mary. But be careful to give her honor that is fitting. Unfortunately, I worry that we give her all too high an honor for she is accorded much more esteem than she should be given or than she accounted to herself.
Zwingli said, "I esteem immensely the Mother of God" and "The more the honor and love of Christ increases among men, so much the esteem and honor given to Mary should grow".
Thus the idea of respect and high honour was not rejected by the first Protestants; but rather it was the matter of degrees of honor given to Mary, as the mother of Jesus, that Protestant Reformers were concerned with, and therefore the practical implications for Mariology are still a matter of debate.
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This entry incorporates text from “Protestant views on Mary” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.