Comparison To Roman Catholic Views
Luther came to criticize Roman Catholics for blurring the distinction between high admiration of the grace of God wherever it is manifested in human beings and religious service offered to them and other mere creatures. In some instances he considered the Roman Catholic practice of making intercessory requests addressed especially to Mary and other departed saints to be idolatry.
- "Furthermore, how will you endure terrible idolatries? It was not enough that they venerated the saints and praised God in them, but they actually made them into gods. They put that noble child, the mother Mary, right into the place of Christ. They fashioned Christ into a judge and thus devised a tyrant for anguished consciences, so that all comfort and confidence was transferred from Christ to Mary, and then everyone turned from Christ to his particular saint. Can anyone deny this? Is it not true?"
This distinction separates Lutheran views from Roman Catholic Mariology. It is also significant in the context of Roman Catholic claims, that modern Protestants deserted Luther's Mariology. Roman Catholics and Protestants may have held some similar views on Mary in the 16th century, but for Luther it was a "passive" Mariology, while for Roman Catholics it was "active" in suggesting devout veneration ("hyperdulia") and constant prayers for intercession. Questions have been raised, if the Marian views of Martin Luther could bring separated Christians closer together. These seems to be scepticism on both sides. The eighth "Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue" addressed these issues.
Throughout Luther's life, he called Mary by the title Theotokos, Mother of God, but at the same time he rejected the active invocation of Mary as formulated in such prayers as the "Hail Mary." Protestantism usually follows the reformers in rejecting the practice of directly addressing Mary and other saints in prayers of admiration or petition, as part of their religious worship of God.
Read more about this topic: Lutheran Marian Theology
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