Robert Jeffress blasts professor's accusation that God raped Mary as 'blasphemous babble'
A Minnesota professor's accusation that the Virgin Mary didn't consent to the conception of Jesus Christ and God acted in a “grossly predatory” manner is little more than “blasphemous babble,” says Pastor Robert Jeffress.
After Minnesota State University associate professor of Clinical Psychology & Sexuality Studies Eric Sprankle asserted that Mary did not give her consent to become pregnant with Jesus, Jeffress, pastor of the 13,000-member First Baptist Dallas responded.
“Sprankle’s comments are nothing but blasphemous babble from a liberal who is completely ignorant of the Bible,” he said in a statement to The Christian Post. “First, Luke Chapter 1 records Mary’s hymn of praise thanking God for choosing her to give birth to the Messiah. Furthermore, a sovereign God doesn’t need consent from any of us for anything He chooses to do.”
Get Our Latest News for FREE
“This professor had better pray that there is no God because if there is, his goose is cooked on Judgement Day,” he added.
Sprankle made the controversial comment in a recent Twitter post, declaring: “The virgin birth story is about an all-knowing, all-powerful deity impregnating a human teen. There is no definition of consent that would include that scenario. Happy Holidays.”
Sprankle, a self-identified “secularist” who decorated his Christmas tree with Satanic decor as shown in another tweet, went on to argue that God acted in a “predatory” manner.
“The biblical God regularly punished disobedience,” he wrote. “The power difference (deity vs mortal) and the potential for violence for saying ‘no’ negates her ‘yes.’ To put someone in this position is an unethical abuse of power at best and grossly predatory at worst.”
A number of Twitter users responded to Sprankle, pointing out that in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Mary clearly consents to becoming the mother of Jesus Christ.
When the Angel Gabriel tells Mary that God will “overshadow” her and givers her a son, she replies: “I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.” Following her declaration of consent, the angel departs from her.
The idea that “God is a rapist” has been perpetuated throughout history by those opposed to the biblical account of Mary's conception of the Christ child.
In 2002, the BBC received a “record number of complaints” after airing a documentary suggesting that the Virgin Mary was raped by a Roman soldier.
Vatican spokesman Cardinal Martins Jose Saravia condemned the program, stating: “This was a program that did not honor the BBC. It was silliness, old stories that every now and then resurface and that have never had any historical support. When space is given to these legends, the truth is twisted.”
“Above all, as a Christian, I am simply mortified that something like this should be shown so close to Christmas.”
After Salon's Valerie Tarico penned an op-ed asserting that “rape is so intrinsic to religion” and that God raped Mary, op-ed writer Matt Barber pointed out in CP that the Bible is abundantly clear in both the Old and New Testaments that sexual behavior is only permissible and moral within the loving bonds of natural male-female marriage.
“It is absurd to suggest, as does Tarico, that the Holy Scriptures somehow condone rape,” he said. “Let alone Christ's central admonition that we ‘do unto others’ as we would have them do unto us.”
