You want to see beloved Christians brothers completely baffle each other, and maybe even start yelling? Watch them talk about the Immaculate Conception of Mary. There’s no other Catholic teaching more in-your-face Catholic and more Not-Protestant than that one.

Catholics celebrate the Immaculate Conception every year on December 8th, which is tomorrow as I write. It’s a dogma, a foundational belief, for the Catholic Church. It’s so important that Catholics must go to Mass that day.

The Immaculate Conception pushes really hard at our unity and friendship. It tests how strong our bonds are. I have seen two shouting matches between friends over the Immaculate Conception — one of them between two aged and dignified professors of theology who could easily have come to blows.

I’m writing, as a Catholic, for my Evangelical brothers and sisters. You may think the whole thing’s just bats, or even that it dishonors God. I understand that.

A Quick Explanation

Let me give a quick explanation. If you’re interested in more detail, here’s something I wrote a few years ago, called Delivered From All Stain. And here’s a richer (and more difficult) theological reflection by the late Jesuit theologian Edward Oakes.

It’s easiest to start with Pope Pius IX’s declaration. He declared the Immaculate Conception a dogma of the Church in a statement called Ineffabilis Deus. (Immaculate, by the way, means “unstained,” not “really clean” as it does in real estate ads.) He issued the statement on December 8, 1854. Here’s the main part:

The most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin.

The big, big thing to note here is that God does this. He does it “in view of the merits of Jesus Christ.” Mary is saved by Jesus’s death and resurrection just like everyone else. It’s  all God’s doing for His own purposes. The Church says that this is what the angel meant when he called Mary “full of grace.” She was full of grace because she’d been immaculately conceived, and that fullness left no room for sin.

The Catholic will say that the Immaculate Conception is part of God’s plan, and we probably don’t know all the reasons why. Pius gave a few reasons. One, for example, tied it to God’s words to the serpent in Genesis that “I will put enmity between you and the woman.” Mary’s life, he said, would reverse “the friendship with the serpent contracted by Eve.” Mary was the second Eve whose heel would crush the serpent’s head. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that it has to do with Mary’s being able to give her “free assent” to being the Mother of the Savior.

The Objections

Evangelicals will object to the whole thing. It seems like a wild invention, contrary to Scripture. I think, to be honest, that the Catholic has good answers to the objections. But if we were arguing we could go back and forth all day without moving each other. See the two articles above if you want some arguments.

Here’s the tricky part. It’s the reason I’m writing. The Immaculate Conception pushes really hard at our unity and friendship. It tests how strong our bonds are. I have seen two shouting matches between friends over the Immaculate Conception — one of them between two aged and dignified professors of theology who could easily have come to blows.

Here a Protestant and a Catholic who are beloved brothers in the Lord find themselves completely at odds. It’s like growing up in Boston and finding out that your best friend since kindergarten is a Yankees fan. How could he have gone so wrong?

The difference goes really deep, straight to how Protestants and Catholics understand how and what God has told us.

Protestants believe, in the words of the Anglican 39 Articles, that “Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation.” Note that “all.” Whatever “is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.” Scripture is It.

The Catholic Church doesn’t believe this. In the words of Dei Verbum, the Church’s latest major statement on Divine revelation, the Church has a “living tradition” through which God has always spoken to her. Both sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture come from God. One’s handed down through the apostles and their successors, the other’s written. “Consequently,” Dei Verbum declares,

It is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence. Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church.

A Big Difference

You can see, I hope, that starting where the Catholic Church starts, you can reasonably come to believe in the Immaculate Conception. The Evangelical says “No way” because he starts somewhere else. And fair enough.

Let’s be honest. This is a great, great difference. It doesn’t come out that often, but it comes out big time with the feast of the Immaculate Conception. So what do we do?

What do you do with beloved Christian friends you think are wrong about something? You love them. You do as much as you can with them. You pray for them and you ask them to pray for you. You share your faith. And sometimes you argue with them, but only when it’s a good time and only for their good.

We start with the fact that people on the other side love and serve the same Lord we do. This is what we do at The Stream. The publisher James Robison is as serious an Evangelical as you’d ever want to meet. The executive editor Jay Richards is a serious Catholic (he’s a convert, and they’re the worst). They’re close and devoted friends as well as colleagues. This is true of the whole, very mixed, staff.

This shared love for the Lord is an observable fact, like gravity, or the wickedness of the New York Yankees. We (divided Christians) begin there. What do you do with beloved Christian friends you think are wrong about something? You love them. You do as much as you can with them. You pray for them and you ask them to pray for you. You share your faith. And sometimes you argue with them, but only when it’s a good time and only for their good.

It’s not perfect, but we live in a fallen world where Christians have been tragically divided. It bears great fruit. It’s astonishing what people who love the same Lord can do together.

Senior Editor David Mills is the author of Discovering Mary and was a member of Evangelicals and Catholics Together.