A Review of John Martignoni's Newsletter #204

In his newsletter #204 John Martignoni states:

To say that Mary, who bore the Son of God in her womb, is not special, is like saying the Ark of the Covenant
was just another box. Oh sure, it carried the Ten Commandments, and Aarons staff, and the Bread of the
Presence, but so what? No big deal! Just another box. Nowhere does Scripture say the Ark of the Covenant
was blessed ABOVE other boxes. Mary carried the Word of God in flesh, not in stone. Mary carried the
eternal High Priest (Heb 4:14) Himself, not just the high priests staff. Mary carried the living Bread that has
come down from Heaven (John 6:41), the bread which if you eat of it you will live forever (John 6:51), not just
the bread that the Hebrews scooped up off the ground and ate and yet still died (John 6:49). So, if Mary isnt
more blessed than any other woman, then the Ark of the Covenant is just another box.
John Martignoni is truly an amazement. First, the reader's comments made on Mary in newsletter #204
to make the case against elevating her as the Roman Catholic Church does, actually states Mary was blessed and
chosen by God which makes her special. So Martignoni once again starts off framing his argument in a way that
is disingenuous and will serve him - not the truth. Second, he makes the argument that Mary is special because
she was the vessel, or as he uses in his analogy the box that carried the Son of God. He uses the comparison of
Mary to the Ark of the Covenant to make us believe that Mary should be elevated in some way to the level the
Roman Catholic Church insists she be elevated. There is simply no warrant for this. There are two issues here:
1: Should Mary be elevated to a higher level because she was the mother of Jesus?
2: If so, why?
It's a big leap to assume that we should accept the edict of John Martignoni that Mary be elevated to the
level she is in the Roman Catholic Church because she carried Jesus in her womb. In fact the Bible rejects this
idea. As shown in Martignoni's newsletter #204, even Mary did not believe this should be the case. She realized
she was blessed among women, but others were also blessed by God and not elevated. Mary herself admitted she
needed a savior. Only Jesus could save her, and He did this by His work on the cross. She could not save herself.
She knew she was a sinner, even if Martignoni doesn't get it.
We see Martignoni's claim that the Ark of the Covenant was not just another box, and was special just
like Mary was, but where do we see that in the Bible? Shouldn't Martignoni give the Scripture? After all, he runs
the Bible Christian Society, right? Was the Ark worshiped? No. Was the Ark revered because it was the Ark?
No. The Ark of the Covenant was important to be sure, but it was its contents that made it so, otherwise it WAS
just another box. Ask yourself this question: would the Ark of the Covenant had been special if they carried their
lunch around in it? No. The point is completely lost on Martignoni. What is raised in stature in the Bible is the
Ten Commandments, not what carried them. Was Moses lifted high on the worshiping pedestal because he
carried the Ten Commandments down from the mountain? No! Martignoni's analogy of Mary and the Ark is silly
beyond belief. Mary, by her own admission, was a servant and humble handmaiden of God, not to be elevated in
any way. What was special about Mary was the honor she received because of what she carried in her womb, not
because of anything Mary was, or did. She did not stand on her own merits. It was she that was to give honor to
the Lord because of the opportunity God gave her, not she who was to receive elevated status.

While we respect Mary, and we love her, we are in no way to elevate her in stature to the point of
praying to her, or to appeal to her. She was a sinner by her own admission, and needed Jesus just as you and I do.
Jesus is the one to be elevated, and while Mary played a critical role, the truth is that God could have chosen any
woman He desired to fill that role. There's nothing intrinsically special about Mary communicated from the
pages of the Bible, or by the words of the Apostles other than she was chosen by God to complete a task, as
many others were in various capacities and at various times in the past.
John Martignoni claims Mary was not ordinary. Really? She absolutely WAS ordinary. This is the very
miracle that God worked. By choosing an ordinary (although Godly) woman to bear the Son of God, God
demonstrates that it's the least among us whom he uses to His glory. This very fact demonstrates the greatness of
God! We never see God use great people to do his work. Even Moses was a simple Hebrew slave in the end, and
God made sure that he was reduced from his elevated platform before he performed His great works through
him. He purged Moses and forged the iron making it simple and unassuming, thereby magnifying His glory.
We need to recognize that if Martignoni's logic is correct we enter into an infinite loop. What I mean is
that if we're to elevate Mary to Queen of Heaven status because she was used by God to bear Jesus, then what of
Mary's mother? After all, if Mary's mother had not been used by God to bear Mary, Mary would not have existed
to bear Jesus, right? We need to give her a title and reverence for being Mary's mother. And what of Mary's
mother's mother, and her mother, and her mother, and her mother........and on it goes. In fact, we find in the
genealogy of Jesus the blood relationship between Jesus and Rahab the harlot!
Think about it: the idea is that Mary might pass on her sin nature to Christ so she needed to be sinless in
order to avoid that. But why not just make Jesus sinless in the same way? Why not preserve Jesus from Mary's
sin nature, the way Mary was preserved from sin? Why the need to make Mary sinless so that she doesn't pass
on her sin nature, when that can be accomplished directly with Jesus? Presumably God was capable of doing the
same thing for Jesus that He did for Mary so why make her sinless in the first place? It makes no sense at all.
The immaculate conception of Mary is a fabrication that ultimately subtracts from the glory of Jesus Himself,
and the reason it makes no sense is because it's a man-made idea; it doesn't come from God.
Another point to consider as we mull over Martignoni's insistence that Mary needs to be elevated to a
higher level above women and is sinless as the RCC teaches is that if it's true, that's a huge thing to know and
accept, because it will form your entire theological outlook. Yet the Roman Catholic Church didn't officially
teach the idea of Mary's special role and sinless state as doctrine until some 1800 years after the establishment of
the Christian church! Why? One would think this vital information would be needed by every Catholic, even
those who lived before the RCC decided it was important enough to declare as dogma. Catholics during that time
in history did not view Mary the way today's Roman Catholic Church does because they weren't taught the
doctrine.
As a side note, it's beneficial to look at another analogy that's been used for thousands of years by
Catholics to try and show why Mary was so special and sinless. The question is that if Mary agreed she was a
sinner, then how could she be sinless? While disagreeing with what Mary believed about herself and said about
herself, this popular Catholic analogy tries to show how she could have been immaculately conceived as
Catholics believe:
Suppose a man falls in to a deep pit, and someone reaches down to pull him out. The man has been
saved from the pit. Now imagine a woman walking along, and she too is about to topple into the pit, but at the
very moment she is to fall in, someone holds her back and prevents her. She too has been saved from the pit, but
in an even better way: she was not simply taken out of the pit, she was prevented from getting stained by the mud
in the first place.

While this is a great story, it's just that a story. It's a story designed to get you to see how Mary could
have been preserved from sin, but that's not the same as it actually being the case. The question is, is it true?
Was Mary kept from her sin nature? If so, then why did she say she needed a savior? If she never fell into the
pit and was never muddied in the first place, why did she believe she was muddied?
There's no indication in the Bible that any such thing (as saving Mary before she was born) did, or even
could take place. First of all it was the work of Jesus, and His death on the cross that made it possible for all of
us to be saved by His grace. His sacrificial death and atonement for our sins (including Mary's) is was saves us
and her, and He had yet to perform that work at the time of Mary's birth. If He had saved her from the pit and
the stain of sin before He was born, then why do what He did to save the rest of us? Why not just save us all
before we fall in the pit and get stained? Coming up with a fanciful story about how something could be done, is
not the same as it actually being done. There's no indication anywhere other than what the Catholic Church
claims that this type of thing ever happened or even could happen. Why doesn't the Bible speak of Mary's
pulling from the pit and declare her sinless in it's pages? Because it never happened that's why.
We hear from the Roman Catholic Church the following:
...at the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of
the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of mankind, was preserved immaculate from all stain of original sin...
Pope Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, December 8, 1854

It's an impossibility for Jesus to have saved Mary before she was born as is stated above, because in
order for Jesus to impart saving grace to anyone, He needed to first be born as a man in the flesh, lead a perfect
life, and then take on the sins of the world to kill sin through His atoning death on the cross. It was the death of
Jesus that made the forgiveness of our sins possible. His death and resurrection are the merits Pius IX spoke
about. It's shocking that he didn't see that those merits had yet to become manifest in the man Jesus Christ at the
time Mary was conceived. Jesus had not yet been born yet alone died at the time Mary was supposedly saved
from the pit. This is why God became flesh, suffered, and died for us all. To make it possible for us to be saved,
Jesus had to die. One can't die until they are born first. If there was any other way, would he have not chosen it?
In fact we see in the garden just before Jesus' death Jesus asking the Father Father, if thou art willing, let this
cup pass from me. Jesus was asking that if there was any other way to forgive the sins of man, let Me not go
through this. But there was no other way to remove sin, so Jesus went to His death on the cross to complete His
saving work.
In short, Martignoni misses the entire point on Mary, presumably because he needs the RCC story of her
greatness to live on. It must be true for him, and he'll most likely believe it even beyond the day that the Roman
Catholic Church finally declares her Co-Redemptrix. He dismisses the miracle God preformed thorough his
humble servant by trying to cobble together a crazy comparison on the Ark and Mary, and the great work
performed through Mary (not by her) is trashed by his insistence that she be more than what she really was; a
simple handmaiden that was honored by the Lord.
Blessings,
Mike