This time of year we think a lot of about baby Jesus. Baby Jesus almost didn't make it to Jude's preschool program, because my little Lucy (who turns 2 today) swiped him and began to nurture him before the play began. And with baby Jesus comes mother Mary. Just last night we put stamps on our Christmas cards with a beautiful Renaissance painting of Madonna and child. So, what's the deal with Mary? For Protestants this is a big question, because it is a source of division and misunderstanding with our Catholic brothers and sisters. And for Catholics, it is likely a question to be explored so that the devotion to Mary that is part of the Catholic faith expression has some roots in history and theology. So, I've done some thinking on this, on how and why there is a Christian devotion to Mary.
Disclosure: If you continue reading, you are wading into some historical theology... Enjoy
Much of
early Christian thought, and indeed even the creeds that contemporary
worshipers still recite every day in many languages, were formed in response to
either internal or external hostilities to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The external hostilities took the form of
persecution, and ultimately at times, martyrdom. The internal hostilities, perhaps more lethal
than imperial oppression, are known commonly and generally as heresies. Among the most notable and influential
heresies of the Patristic period is Gnosticism.
Gnosticism is a diverse religious
worldview of the ancient Near East that saw the universe as comprised of two
equal and opposite forces, good and evil, spirit and matter. Through a special, secret, and mysterious
knowledge, or gnosis, one may achieve
salvation, which is nothing more than the spirit being freed from matter, the
soul escaping the body. This view is
harmful to Christianity in several ways.
First it recognizes evil, and the Evil One, as a power on par with good,
or the Good One, or God. Rather than
viewing evil as a parasitic and bastard descendent of the good, Gnostics held
the two powers in dualistic tension.
Additionally, Gnosticism leads toward a denial of the goodness of
creation, of the theological and doxological truth and significance of the
Incarnation. That is, Gnostics would
state that because matter is bad and God is good, Jesus Christ could not have
been fully human and fully divine. It is
on this hinge that the glorious gates of salvation swing. And so the Church waged an all-out assault on
Gnosticism and its advocates and adherents.
Their main weapons in the fight were the creeds. The Apostles Creed states ‘I believe in Jesus
Christ… He was… born of the virgin Mary.’
And the Nicene Creed, formed by the Church’s early councils, states ‘Jesus
Christ… became incarnate from the virgin Mary, and was made man.’ To the Gnostic threat against the true
humanity of Jesus, and thus the efficacy of salvation in Christ, the Church
Fathers speak in one voice of the earthiness, fleshiness, humanness of
Jesus. This aspect of his person is exemplified
by the role of Mary in salvation history.
In addition to the efforts against the
heresy of Gnosticism, the role of Mary in imparting humanity to Jesus, in
bearing God to the world (it is this view that gives Mary her name, Theotokos, or ‘God-bearer’), formulates
the Christian view of history and of salvation history. During the 2nd and 3rd
centuries, there was much cultural transition and spiritual upheaval. Among the most prominent questions was that
of the meaning of time and history, and of what it means to be human. Some philosophies, religions, and worldviews
account for history from above,
others from below, but the Christian
view brings them together. There is both
‘a providence that can be merciful and a human activity than can be
responsible.’
Through the Incarnation immortality was absorbed in
mortality, and eternity took up residence in history. This cosmic coming together prepares the way
for mortality, then, to be absorbed in immortality, and for history also to
take up residence in eternity. This is
the event of salvation. The person of
Jesus is not ‘once upon a time’, but rather Jesus was born ‘in those days
[when] a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be
registered.’ Jesus is not ‘in a land far
far away,’ but rather Jesus is connected to a particular place on the map,
‘Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem.’ Salvation depends on the humanity of Christ,
humanity depends upon a birth, and birth depends upon a human mother, that is,
Mary.
Much is misunderstood about the role of Mary and the other
women who are players in the gospel stories.
The canonical gospels, except for a few pericopes, do not give much
attention to them. But other sources, like
the Protevangel of James, give scholars and the faithful much of the legend and
biography that has formed a particular view of Mary. It is from these stories that much dissension
between Catholics and Protestants emerge.
Here we find that Mary maintained her virginity, and that she felt no
birth pangs when laboring and delivering Jesus.
But regardless of these apocryphal assertions, it is clear from a
systematic and historical overview that the growth of Marian devotion in the
Patristic period, through the mystical expression of the Middle Ages, up until
the Council of Trent and today, has its origins in a defense against the heresy
of Gnosticism and in the offering of a uniquely Christian view of history,
where salvation is the principle event.
These theories do not only reside in towers and books, councils and
letters, but Mariology was expressed through devotion to and veneration of
Virgin Mary, ‘the mother of my Lord’, as in Elizabeth’s greeting.
These origins are good and right, and the growth of Marian
devotion corresponds to the shrinking of Gnostic influence in the Church. To be sure, there have been times of
overemphasis and are still times of imbalance and misunderstanding. But I wonder if an increased devotion to Mary
and her role in our salvation perhaps would be the most potent weapon against
twenty-first century iterations of Gnosticism.
Against the hyper-spiritualization of the evangelical gospel, against
the escapist Word-Faith movement, and against the ‘better you’ message of
Osteen’s gospel, perhaps all Christians, Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant,
should turn devotion toward Mary and find there what Christians in the
Patristic era found: a God who ‘became flesh and dwelt among us’.
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