I didn’t really want to write a chapter about Mary. I didn’t think it would be helpful. I think that sometimes Catholics make too big a fuss about Mary. And often Evangelicals go to the other extreme and ignore her completely – except when arguing with Catholics…! Why stir up a hornets’ nest, when the fact is that the biblical evidence is so inconclusive that neither side can prove the other wrong?
Well, I changed my mind, for two reasons. First, I remembered that my objective is not to prove the Catholic Church right. Rather, it is to introduce you into the Catholic mindset, so that you can see that what we believe, about Mary no less than anything else, is not anti-biblical, but is a valid interpretation of the evidence available, in Scripture and in the early Tradition of the Church.
Second, I have become aware of what a terribly sore point Mary is for many Evangelicals. For example, the Baptist friend I mentioned at the beginning of the last chapter, upon reading an early draft of my Chapter Five, wrote back to me:
I think the statement “the Church is called to be like Mary” may cause some evangelicals to throw up holy hands in horror and throw down your book. I understand what you say, and it is a valid analogy; however the matter of venerating Mary is such a sore point that you might want to think again about letting it arise (however unwarranted) in the reader's mind at this juncture. [1]
I decided, perhaps rashly, not to omit mention of Mary from that chapter. Did you throw down this book in horror? Even if you did, I’m glad you have come back and stuck with it this far. Clearly, for Evangelicals, Mary is scary! Even scarier than the Pope, perhaps?
The annunciation
So, let’s be sola scriptura for a while, and proceed cautiously. Now, please read in your Bible Luke 1:26-56, and let’s see what we find there. Here are a few of the things I notice:
First, Mary is depicted as a woman of deep faith. “‘Blessed is she who has believed [pisteusasa] that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!’” (Lk. 1:45) says Elizabeth – a sentiment echoed beautifully by Martin Luther 1500 years later in a Christmas sermon:
There are here three miracles: that God and man should be joined in this Child; that a mother should remain a virgin; that Mary should have such faith as to believe that this mystery should be accomplished in her. The last is not the least of the three. The Virgin birth is a mere trifle for God; that God should become man is a greater miracle; but most amazing of all is that this maiden should credit the announcement that she… had been chosen to be the mother of God. [2]
As a woman of faith, Mary also recognises that everything which is to befall her comes as a free gift. Mary is a recipient of grace: there is no way she can work for what God is offering her, for no virgin can remain a virgin and conceive a son no matter how hard she tries! And so she utters one of the most profound statements of faith and grace ever spoken: “‘I am the Lord’s servant… May it be to me as you have said’” (Lk. 1:38). This is an example to all of us who strive to accept God’s will in our lives. Mary is the Lord’s servant, but she does not try to prove her worthiness for that vocation by doing lots of things for God. No, instead she says, “May it be to me as you have said.” Faith means submission, joyful acceptance, receptivity. Faith means recognising grace when you see it.
Mary is not just an example for us, however, but a typos. For, as we saw in Chapter Five, she is an allegory of our destiny in Christ. We too are called to accept the Holy Spirit (Lk. 1:35-38), to receive the Word of God into our lives. We too are called to rejoice, praising God as the Word gestates and grows within us (Lk. 1:46-55). We too are to guard and nurture the Word within us, pondering all these things and treasuring them up in our hearts (Lk. 2:19,51) – so that this gift of God within may grow in wisdom and stature (Lk. 2:52). In sum, we too are called to say, “I am the Lord’s servant… May it be to me as you have said” (Lk. 1:38).
Mary is thus the first Christian – the first to know Jesus by name and welcome him in faith. But in a sense she is also the last Old Testament prophetess, for she is the ultimate antitypos of the many great Jewish women of faith. Like Sarah, she receives a miraculous conception, and rejoices in the grace of it (Gen. 21:2-7); unlike Sarah (Gen. 18:11-15), her faith is solid from the beginning. Like Miriam, she sings praise to God for overthrowing the mighty and exalting the lowly (Ex. 15:20-21, Lk. 1:51-53); unlike Miriam (Num. 12:1-15), she does not rebel. And Mary’s Magnificat prayer (Lk. 1:46-55) also echoes that of Hannah, mother of another great prophet:
“My heart rejoices in the LORD; “My soul glorifies the Lord
in the LORD my horn is lifted high… and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour…
The LORD sends poverty and wealth; He has scattered those who are proud
he humbles and he exalts. in
their inmost thoughts.
He raises the poor from the dust He has brought down rulers from their thrones
and lifts the needy from the ash heap; but has lifted up the humble.
he seats them with princes He
has filled the hungry with good things
and has them inherit a throne of honour.” but has sent the rich away empty.”
(1 Sam. 2:1,7-8) (Lk. 1:46-47,51-53)
That Mary is the culmination of a long typological history, documented in the pages of Scripture, is undeniable. And this is the key to our coming to know her even better.
All generations will
call me blessed
Mary says one more thing of immense significance in her Magnificat:
“From now on
all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty
One has done great things for me –
holy is his
name.” (Lk. 1:48-49)
Her statement is prophetic, for since then all generations have indeed called Mary “blessed”, and have showered great love and respect upon her. Have they been right to do so, or has this love at times tipped over into idolatry?
I cannot of course deny that out of all the generations there have been since Mary some people may have mistaken love and respect for worship, and treated the mother of our Saviour as saviour herself. When this has happened, this has been condemned by the Church. Here, for example, is the fourth-century Cypriot bishop Epiphanius of Salamis (c. 310-403 A.D.) on the subject of a Mary-worshipping group called the Collyridians:
I have heard… that others, who
are out of their minds on the subject of this holy Ever-virgin, have done their
best and are doing their best, in the grip both of madness and of folly, to
substitute her for God. For they say that certain Thracian women there in
Arabia have introduced this nonsense, and that they bake a loaf in the name of
the Ever-virgin, gather together, and both attempt an excess and undertake a
forbidden, blasphemous act in the holy virgin’s name, and offer sacrifice in her
name…
This is entirely impious, unlawful,
and different from the Holy Spirit’s message, and is thus pure devil’s work, and
the doctrine of an unclean spirit. [3]
Epiphanius is unequivocal in his condemnation of such activity. But let us not, out of fear of the possibility of idolatry, run away from the words of the Bible themselves: “From now on all generations will call me blessed” (Lk. 1:48). This is scriptural prophecy, and so we have to not only accept it but rejoice in it. It is instructive that Mary does not make the mistake of tipping over into self-worship, because she knows – far better than most of us know it – that any honour or respect accorded to her serves only to glorify God (Lk. 1:46). Why will all generations call her blessed? Because the Mighty One has done great things for her. Why are we blessed? Because the Mighty One has done great things for us! In Christ, blessing and exaltation do not need to lead to idolatry, because we recognise that no one, neither Mary nor ourselves, has done anything to deserve that blessing. Those who love God can bless Mary.
Perhaps part of the objection that some Christians have to blessing, loving and respecting Mary is not necessarily that we do it per se, but that some people seem to do it disproportionately. After all, the Mighty One has done great things for all of us, hasn’t He? Surely it is dangerous to exalt any one person over and above everyone else, isn’t it? Aren’t we all equal in God’s eyes? Don’t all Christians have fundamentally the same destiny? Now that Mary has passed beyond this world into Heaven, surely she is as all Christians in Heaven are? Any special privileges she may once have had on earth are no longer relevant among the saints in Heaven, are they? Well, let’s see.
The woman clothed
with the sun
Let’s see, first, what the biblical testimony is about what life is like for the saints in Heaven. There is no better place to look than the book of Revelation:
There before me was a throne in
heaven with someone sitting on it. And the one who sat there had the appearance
of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the
throne. Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on
them were twenty-four elders [presbyterous].
They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads…
Before the throne, seven lamps
were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God…
In the centre, around the throne,
were four living creatures… Day and night they never stop saying:
“Holy,
holy holy
is
the Lord God Almighty,
who
was, and is, and is to come.”
Whenever the living creatures
give glory, honour and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for
ever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him whom sits on the
throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. […]
Then I looked and heard the voice
of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten
thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In
a loud voice they sang:
“Worthy is the
Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom
and strength
and honour and praise!”
Then I heard every creature in heaven
and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them,
singing:
“To him who
sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honour and glory and
power
for ever and ever!” (Rev. 4:2-6,8-10,
5:11-13)
Far from depicting the inhabitants of Heaven as a uniform democratic mass, this passage describes a series of orders, all centred on God. This should not surprise us. We saw in Chapter Nine how the Bible depicts the earthly order as calibrated by degrees of closeness to the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence. The Temple in Jerusalem, the centre of the divine order on earth, is a copy of the heavenly Temple (Heb. 8:5), and so Revelation shows us that that the earthly order is also an image of the heavenly order. This order, far from being egalitarian, is monarchical. God is King, seated on His throne, and surrounded by His court in a series of concentric circles, symbolised by a rainbow: first the four “living creatures”; then the twenty-four presbyteroi; then the “seven spirits”; then the thousands of angels; and then every creature remaining.
We saw in Chapter Eleven that one of the roles of the twenty-four elders is to present the prayers of men to God (Rev. 5:8). They also have another role, which is to “judge the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28). They are clearly highly exalted among the ranks of God’s fellow-workers, even to the extent of wearing crowns and sitting on thrones and acting as judges of mankind.
Is there anyone else in this catalogue of the inhabitants of Heaven? Yes, there is, and she too is crowned:
Then God’s temple in heaven opened,
and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes
of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and earthquake and a great
hailstorm.
A great and wondrous sign
appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet
and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain
as she was about to give birth… She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will
rule all the nations with an iron sceptre. And her child was snatched up to God
and to his throne… (Rev. 11:19, 12:1-2,5)
Who is the woman who gives birth to a son who will rule all the nations, and who ascended to God’s throne? One can of course come up with all sorts of interpretations and re-interpretations of this verse. Perhaps she represents Israel; perhaps the Church. And quite likely the ancient Jew who wrote these words meant several things at the same time, for he almost certainly saw the typological connections between them all. But without doubt one of the meanings he had in mind was the most obvious one: the child who will rule all the nations with an iron sceptre is the Messiah (Ps. 2:9, Is. 9:6-7) – and His mother, we know, is Mary.
Mary, then, is shown in Revelation “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.” Twelve crowned apostles, twelve crowned patriarchs, and amidst them all Mary, with a crown of twelve stars. And so, from earliest times, Christians have called Mary the queen of Heaven.
It is easy to baulk at this expression. To some, it sounds too much like according Mary equivalence to God. But queen she must be, else there would be no crown on her head. So what kind of queen is this?
Queen and mother
The answer lies in the pages of the Bible. For it turns out that Mary is not just an antitypos of the great prophetesses of the Old Testament, but also its queens – particularly its queen mothers. The Kingdom of Judah gave great honour to its queen mothers, called gebirah in Hebrew. In the days when kings had many wives and concubines, it was not the wife of the king who was the most honoured woman in the royal house of David, but the mother of the king. Look through the books of the Kings and you will notice that almost every king of Judah is listed along with the name of his mother. Solomon’s mother was Bathsheba (1 Kgs. 1:28-31); Rehoboam’s mother was Naamah (1 Kgs. 14:21,31); Abijah’s was Maacah (1 Kgs. 15:1, 2 Chr. 13:2); Jehoshaphat’s, Azubah (1 Kgs. 22:42); and so on. The position of gebirah was one of considerable importance and influence. Those seeking a favour from the king often sought first the intercession of the queen mother (1 Kgs. 2:13-22). The queen mother was the only person in whose presence the King would stand, and to whom he would bow (1 Kgs. 2:19), and whose requests it was expected he would not refuse (1 Kgs. 2:20). And it was she who sat at the right hand of the king, on a throne of her own (1 Kgs. 2:19). In the wrong hands, the position of the queen mother allowed considerable abuse of power. Sometimes the king had to depose his queen mother – as in the case of Maacah (1 Kgs. 15:13, 2 Chr. 15:16). Sometimes the queen mother became so powerful that she attempted to murder her relatives in order to preserve her power – as in the case of Athaliah mother of Ahaziah (1 Kgs. 11, 2 Chr. 22:10-23:15).
Jesus is our King, the new and eternal King of the house of David. His mother stands in Heaven, wearing a crown of twelve stars, representing both the twelve sons of Israel (Gen. 37:9-10) and the twelve apostles of the new oikos of God. Is it too much to suppose that she is our gebirah, the queen mother of David’s eternal kingdom? And so, in Jesus’s household, she is the most honoured woman, whose requests we can be confident our King will not refuse lightly.
While Mary was on earth, those seeking a favour from Jesus sometimes sought her intercession, and she gladly provided it (Jn. 2:3). And, unlike Maacah and Athaliah, her message to us is always, “‘Do whatever he tells you’” (Jn. 2:5). We have seen already that the saints in Heaven convey the requests of men to God (Rev. 5:8). And so it is not too much to suppose that Mary too, the first of Christian saints, can, as at Cana in Galilee, convey the requests of men to her son the King – just as Bathsheba did centuries before.
The description of Mary in Revelation 12 continues beyond the section I have quoted above, and includes a lengthy episode where she is pursued by “the dragon”. To what extent this passage refers to specific events in Mary’s life, [4] or to what extent it has a broader allegorical purpose, one cannot be entirely sure. But it ends with a description of Mary which is quite remarkable, though easy to miss if we are not careful:
Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring – those who obey God commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus. (Rev. 12:17)
“Those who obey God commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus” are “her offspring”. In other words, Mary is the mother of all the saints. She is our mother. This is the testimony of Scripture, and we would be wise to take heed of its implications. A Christian mother only not gives birth, but loves, nurtures, and prays for her children. If Mary is the mother of all who “hold to the testimony of Jesus”, then it is not unreasonable to suppose that in some way she does all these things for us.
This is not the only instance in Scripture of Mary taking on the motherhood of Jesus’s disciples. On the cross,
when Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing near by, he said to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. (Jn. 19:26-27)
Whether or not this was another way of Jesus giving his mother to all of us as our mother, we do not know. But without doubt “the disciple whom he loved” accepted her in the role. We have no proof as to who this disciple was, but there is a settled opinion from ancient times, attested to by the earliest Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea, [5] and generally accepted by Evangelicals as well as Catholics, that this disciple was John, and that he was the author of the fourth gospel, three epistles, and probably also the book of Revelation. John later settled in Ephesus, where he became episkopos of the Christian community there – and there is a tradition that, in obedience to Jesus, he took Mary with him. After Mary left this earth, John was in his old age exiled for a while to the island of Patmos (Rev. 1:9), [6] where he wrote his Revelation. Perhaps it was this close intimacy between John and Mary that led to the Revelation account of Mary’s pursuit by the dragon, as well as the other stories involving Mary in John’s Gospel (e.g. Jn. 2:1-5, 2:12, 19:25-27).
The serpent and the
new Eve
We cannot leave this passage in Revelation behind without discussing in some greater detail the figure of the dragon, or the “ancient serpent” (Rev. 12:9) – for this image is the key to one of the most important typological descriptions of Mary there is. Serpents, are, in the Bible, not just “any old” monster: they have a profound and wide-reaching significance. The Hebrew for serpent is nakhash; the Greek, ofis. Read again in your own Bible the story of the serpent in the Garden of Eden: Genesis 3. It incorporates this remarkable passage:
So the LORD
God said to the serpent [nakhash],
“Because you have done this,
“Cursed are
you above all the livestock
and all the
wild animals!
You will
crawl on your belly
and you
will eat dust
all the
days of your life.
And I will put
enmity
between you
and the woman,
and between
your offspring and hers;
he will crush
your head,
and you
will strike his heel.” (Gen. 3:14-15)
Even in the Old Testament, this passage was never interpreted purely in zoological terms. The serpent was the enemy and the deceiver of mankind. In the Psalms, he is the enemy of Creation: Leviathan, who lurks in the primordial waters (cf. Gen. 1:1-10), and who must be defeated in order that the world be created:
But you, O
God, are my king from of old;
you bring
salvation upon the earth.
It was you
who split open the sea by your power;
you broke
the heads of the monster in the waters.
It was you
who crushed the heads of Leviathan. (Ps. 74:12-14)
In the end-times, the prophets declared, deliverance for mankind, the New Creation, would also entail the destruction of the serpent:
In that day,
the LORD
will punish with his sword,
his fierce,
great and powerful sword,
Leviathan
the gliding serpent [nakhash],
Leviathan
the coiling serpent;
he will
slay the monster of the sea. (Is. 27:1)
Now I suggest you read Revelation 12 in its entirety in your own Bible. In the course of this passage
the great dragon was hurled down – that ancient serpent [ofis] called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. (Rev. 12:9)
So, in the end-times, the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled. And here at last it is made clear who the serpent has been all along: serpent, dragon, Leviathan, devil and Satan are all different manifestations of the same thing – and his final defeat takes place in the context of a long battle, in which “the woman” plays a pivotal, but strange role: she is not an active combatant, but the dragon is apparently pathologically enraged at her survival. Why so? Why is the dragon so obsessed with destroying “the woman”? Let us see.
When the early Christians came to study this passage in Scripture, they noticed some striking parallels between the defeat of the dragon as described in Revelation 12, and the fall of man as described in Genesis 3. First of all, both these accounts have three main characters. In Genesis 3 they are: the serpent; the man (in Hebrew, adam); and “the woman”, Eve. In Revelation 12 they are: the dragon, who is the “ancient serpent”; the “male child” Jesus; and “the woman”, his mother.
Two of these antitypoi are interpreted explicitly in Scripture: First, John tells us that the dragon is none other than “that ancient serpent… who leads the whole world astray” (Rev. 12:9): he is one and the same as the serpent who deceived Eve in Genesis. Second, the apostle Paul tells us that Adam was a typos of Jesus, and that therefore the adam of Genesis looks forward to the “male child” of Revelation:
Death reigned from the time of Adam
to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as
did Adam, who was a pattern [typos]
of the one to come.
But the gift is not like the
trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more
did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus
Christ, overflow to the many! Again, the gift of God is not like the result of
the one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but
the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the
trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will
those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness
reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. (Rom. 5:14-17)
But both of these stories contain a third character, and both of them are called not by their names, but instead merely “the woman”. And immediately it becomes clear that these two women are typologically related.
The first woman, Eve, contributes to sin first entering the world (Gen. 3:1-7). Given the choice of accepting God’s will or rejecting it, she chooses to reject it, seeking instead to be “like God” herself (Gen. 3:4). And so mankind (adam) is driven from Paradise. By contrast, the second woman, Mary, co-operates with God’s plan of salvation. Given the choice, she says, “I am the Lord’s servant… May it be done to me as you have said” (Lk. 1:38). Eve says no to God’s plan; Mary says yes. In Genesis, “the woman” is deceived by the serpent (Gen. 3:13); in Revelation, “the woman” prevails against the serpent (Rev. 12:14).
Justin Martyr (c. 100-165 A.D.) is the first Christian to explain this in writing:
He became man by the Virgin, in order that the disobedience which proceeded from the serpent might receive its destruction in the same manner in which it derived its origin. For Eve…, having conceived the word of the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to her that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and the power of the Highest would overshadow her: wherefore also the Holy Thing begotten of her is the Son of God [Lk. 1:35]; and she replied, “Be it unto me according to thy word” [Lk. 1:38]. And by her has He been born, to whom we have proved so many Scriptures refer, and by whom God destroys both the serpent and those angels and men who are like him. [7]
So, Eve is a typos of Mary – and yet, as Irenaeus (c. 120-202 A.D.) explains, a typos almost as different from her antitypos as Adam is from Christ:
In accordance with this design, Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” [Lk. 1:38]. But Eve was disobedient…; and having become disobedient, was made the cause of death, both to herself and to the entire human race; so also did Mary…, by yielding obedience, become the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race… And thus also it was that the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith. [8]
And so, if Christ is the “new Adam”, is it too much to describe Mary as the “new Eve”? John’s deliberate use of the term “the woman” [9] seems to suggest that he is definitely aware of the parallel – choosing to describe Mary with the same epithet that Genesis uses to describe Eve. John also, as we have seen, describes Mary as mother of all “those who obey God commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus” (Rev. 12:17) – echoing the Genesis description of Eve as “mother of all the living” (Gen. 3:20). Thus Eve is the mother of the Old Creation; and Mary is mother of the New.
God’s words to the serpent:
“I will put
enmity
between you
and the woman,
and between
your offspring and hers;
he will
crush your head,
and you will
strike his heel.” (Gen. 3:15)
turn out, therefore, to be deeply prophetic. He may of course be referring to women in general and to their offspring in general – but He could also be indicating one particular “woman” with whom the serpent will, in the end-times, have enmity. And it is indeed her offspring, “a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron sceptre” (Rev. 12:5) whose heel the serpent Satan will strike, but who will crush his head. Satan does indeed strike at Christ – but it is Christ who prevails. This verse in Genesis is often called, therefore, “the first gospel” (in Greek, protoevangelion), because it is the first verse in the Bible which can be interpreted as announcing the redemption promised in Christ. Almost certainly its original human author did not intend it this way – but is it too much to surmise that God, who knew from the beginning how he would redeem mankind, was dropping a hint?
Theotokos
We have seen that Scripture tells us unequivocally that Mary is the mother of all Christians – our mother (Rev. 12:17). But there is another title for Mary which has been held by the worldwide Church since the earliest times, and which has been misinterpreted more than once during the course of the history of our faith. The title in question is, in Greek, theotokos. Literally, it means “God-bearer”, or “the one who gives birth to God”. In English it is often rendered, somewhat imprecisely, as “mother of God” – which can give rise to some misunderstanding.
It is important to emphasise that this designation has nothing whatsoever to do with, nor is it in any way parallel to, God the Father’s fatherhood of Jesus. When we say that God the Father is the father of Jesus Christ, we are discussing an eternal relationship, from the beginning of time: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning” (Jn. 1:1-2). Jesus is thus, we say in the Nicene Creed, “begotten from the Father before all ages”. [10] God was His Father “in the beginning”, long before Christ Jesus was born on earth.
Calling Mary the “mother of God” or “the one who gives birth to God” is a completely different matter. Mary only became theotokos from the moment of Jesus’s conception in her womb by the Holy Spirit. Jesus was not “eternally begotten of Mary” – because Mary was not there “in the beginning”. The theotokos title does not imply any level of eternal existence or divinity for Mary – and it never has.
What does it mean, then? We can begin to understand this question if we look at the historical context in which this title grew up. First of all, “God-bearer” or “mother of God” are terms which were used to describe Mary right from the earliest days of our faith: Ignatius, in c. 100 A.D., wrote: “Jesus Christ our God was conceived by Mary”; [11] Irenaeus, c. 80 years later, wrote of how Mary “received from an angel the glad tidings that she would bear God”. [12] These comments were never considered controversial, because they merely re-stated universally-held Christian truths: Mary is the mother of Jesus; Jesus is God; therefore Mary is the mother of God. It was a no-brainer.
The title of theotokos [13] only became controversial a couple of centuries later – but not because anybody complained that it over-exalted Mary. Rather, heretics complained that it over-exalted Jesus! In the early fourth century A.D., the Arian heresy raised its head, and the controversy this engendered swept through the Church. Arius (c. 270-336 A.D.) denied that the Word was there “in the beginning”; indeed, he wrote:
God was not always a Father; indeed there was a time when God was alone, and He was not yet a Father. Afterwards, however, he became a Father. The Son was not always; for inasmuch as all things were made out of what did not exist, the Son of God, too, was made out of what did not exist; and as all that are made do exist as creatures and works, He too is a creature and a work; and since formerly all things did not exist, but were afterwards made, so also there was a time when the Word of God did not himself exist; and before He was begotten, he was not. [14]
Now is not the time to discuss the disastrous effect this doctrine would have had on the Christian faith had the Church allowed it free reign – and thanks be to God that the universal Christian faith eventually prevailed against it! But one can see how someone subscribing to such a diminished view of Jesus Christ would not be happy with the title “mother of God” – for according to the Arians, Jesus was not God – at least, not quite. And so an integral part of defending trinitarian Christianity against the Arian heresy was to defend Mary as theotokos – and the staunchest defenders of the Trinity did precisely that. That great scourge of the heretics Athanasius (c. 293-373 A.D.) wrote:
The Word begotten of the Father from on high, inexpressibly, inexplicably, incomprehensibly and eternally, is He that is born in time here below, of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God [theotokou], – so that those who are in the first place born here below might have a second birth from on high, that is, of God. [15]
The Arian threat was not effectively neutralised until the Church council held at Constantinople in 381 A.D., but it was followed by another heresy – though definitely a lesser one – named after Bishop Nestorius of Constantinople (c. 386-450 A.D.), who launched an attack on the theotokos title – again, for purely Christological reasons. Nestorius, unlike Arius, accepted the full divinity of Christ, and the doctrine of the Trinity, but was concerned about how to properly define the relationship between Jesus’s divine and human natures. Jesus was, to be sure, fully man and fully God. But did He have one nature, a sort of human-divine hybrid? or two entirely separate natures, one human, the other divine? or two natures which were yet somehow united in one person? Now is not the time to examine all these options in detail – but Nestorius went for the second option. He wrote to his opponent in this debate, Bishop Cyril of Alexandria:
Holy scripture, wherever it recalls the Lord's economy, speaks of the birth and suffering not of the godhead but of the humanity of Christ, so that the holy virgin is more accurately termed mother of Christ [Christotokos] than mother of God [theotokos]. Hear these words that the gospels proclaim: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham” [Matt. 1:1]. It is clear that God the Word was not the son of David. Listen to another witness if you will: “Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called the Christ” [Matt. 1:16]... Again, scripture says when speaking of his passion: “God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh” [Rom. 8:3]; and again “Christ died for our sins” [1 Cor. 15:3] and “Christ having suffered in the flesh” [1 Pet. 4;1]; and “This is”, not “my godhead”, but “my body, broken for you” [1 Cor. 11:24]. [16]
To us modern rationalists, Nestorius’s reasoning sounds quite plausible, doesn’t it? Was God born of Mary? Was God the son of David? Did Jesus say, “This is my divinity, broken for you”? What then is so heretical about Nestorius?
The danger of Nestorianism (at least, when taken to its logical conclusion) is that it attempts to foist on the Christian faith something which was unknown in ancient Christianity, which is to separate the physical and the spiritual aspects of Christ and to place them in opposition to each other. We discussed in detail in Chapter Ten how, in both Jewish and Greek thought, what exists on earth is a shadow or image of what exists in the eternal realms. The special charism of Jesus Christ is that “in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17). In a sense, Nestorius was way ahead of his time, in that he anticipated in his Christology ideas about reality which were not going to resurface again until the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. And in his words about the natures of Christ, I sense in him an early prefigurement of our old friend Zwingli (whom we met in Chapter Ten of this book):
As the body cannot be nourished by a spiritual substance, so the soul cannot be nourished by a corporeal substance. But if the natural body of Christ is eaten, I ask whether it feeds the body or the soul? [17]
Both these men are struggling with how something can be both spiritual and material at the same time. How can Mary be the mother of the divine Christ as well as the human one? asks Nestorius. How can this bread be the corporeal Christ as well as the spiritual? asks Zwingli. Both of them forget, of course, that in Christ all things hold together (Col. 1:17): He is perfectly capable of being spiritual and material at the same time. The only way to make peace with this paradox is to accept it as mystery. There is only one Christ, and He has two natures, one fully divine and the other fully human; yet they are not separable, but are held together in one person, Jesus the Christ, who is the Word, God incarnate Himself. If we can accept this mystery, then we can accept that He who has always been there was born in a particular time, and that He through whom “all things were made” (Jn. 1:3, cf. Col. 1:16) was given birth by a particular woman. To call that woman the “bearer of God” is not to divinise her, but to accept the fullness of the truth about Jesus Christ.
The Nestorian controversy was eventually settled (more or less) at a church council held at Ephesus in 431 A.D.:
Therefore we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord. According to this understanding of the unconfused union, we confess the holy virgin to be the mother of God [theotokos] because God the Word took flesh and became man and from his very conception united to himself the temple he took from her. [18]
In other words, Mary is theotokos for no other reason than that Christ is God-made-flesh. Evangelical Anglican theologian Tim Perry explains:
Whatever the legitimacy of Nestorius’s worries, his position had the undesirable effect of sundering the union of humanity and divinity in the incarnation, effectively creating two sons in the one Jesus Christ… To maintain this position… was to deny the… conviction that the Son of God actually assumed a human nature. If Christians cannot confess that the incarnate God was conceived and born of Mary, then God has not embraced their lot and they are not saved. [19]
Zwingli, interestingly, recognised this fact – and in a 1522 sermon he unashamedly called Mary “the mother of God [muoter gottes]”. [20] His fellow-reformer Martin Luther wrote at great length about Mary, saying:
Mary… says, “He hath done to me
great things” [Lk. 1:49]. […]
The “great things” are nothing
less than that she became the Mother of God, in which work so many and such
great good things are bestowed on her as pass man’s understanding. For on this
there follows all honor, all blessedness, and her unique place in the whole of
mankind, among which she has no equal, namely, that she had a child by the Father
in heaven, and such a Child… Hence men have crowded all her glory into a single
word, calling her the Mother of God. No one can say anything greater of her or
to her, though he had as many tongues as there are leaves on the trees, or
grass in the fields, or stars in the sky, or sand by the sea. It needs to be
pondered in the heart, what it means to be the Mother of God. [21]
Ponder we must.
The Ark of the Covenant
Let us go back now to the beloved apostle, John. If John did indeed spend some years with Mary in her old age, then perhaps we can trust him to know her well – perhaps better than any of the other apostles. And so the hints he drops in his Revelation regarding Mary are worth taking seriously. Let us examine, therefore, another Marian typos which Revelation presents us with. Look back at the quotation from Revelation 12 above and you will notice something strange: that Mary’s arrival on the scene appears to be preceded by a mention of the Ark of the Covenant. How strange: prior to this point, the last clear indication in Scripture as to the location of the Ark is at its installation in the Jerusalem Temple by King Solomon (1 Kgs. 8, 2 Chr. 5). There are various theories as to what happened to the Ark after the fall of Jerusalem. The prophet Jeremiah seems to deem it lost for ever:
“In those days, when your numbers have increased greatly in the land,” declares the LORD, “men will no longer say, ‘The ark of the covenant of the LORD.’ It will never enter their minds or be remembered; it will not be missed, nor will another one be made.” (Jer. 3:16)
However, Jeremiah’s suggestion that the Ark will be completely forgotten seems to be premature, for around the time of the dedication of the second Temple, in 164 B.C., a letter written by the Jewish leaders of Jerusalem claims that
“it is on record that the prophet Jeremiah…, warned by an oracle, gave orders for the tent and the ark to go with him, when he set out for the mountain which Moses had climbed to survey God’s heritage. On his arrival, Jeremiah found a cave-dwelling, into which he put the tent, the ark and the altar of incense, afterwards blocking up the entrance. Some of his companions went back later to mark out the path but were unable to find it. When Jeremiah learned this, he reproached them. ‘The place is to remain unknown’, he said, ‘until God gathers his people together again and shows them his mercy. Then the Lord will bring these things once more to the light, and the glory of the Lord will be seen.’” (2 Macc. 2:1,4-8, NJB)
In Christ, this prophecy is fulfilled: the end-times are here, God is gathering His people, and His glory is seen in the face of Christ. The Revelation of John tells us that the Ark is revealed anew, not in the earthly Temple in the Old Jerusalem, but in the heavenly Temple. And what is this new heavenly Ark? Read the passage again in this more literal translation, of which I have tweaked the punctuation slightly – remembering that in the original Greek there were no capital letters, no punctuation, and no verse or chapter numbers:
Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple (and there were flashes of lightning, voices, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail, and a great portent appeared in heaven): a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. (Rev. 11:19-12:1, RSV, my repunctuation)
Punctuated like this, it becomes possible that the woman and the Ark are the same thing. Mary, perhaps, is the new Ark, the Ark of the New Covenant of Jesus Christ. The Ark of the Old Covenant was the typos, pointing the way to its fulfilment, its antitypos, in the New Covenant. How can this be?
What was the old Ark of the Covenant? It was just a container, a vessel. In it rested the Word of God, written on stone tablets; a jar of manna from Heaven; and Aaron’s staff (Heb. 9:4), representing priestly authority. Most importantly, the Ark was the bearer of the Shekhinah. It was not God, but it was holy because it was the place where God dwelt (Ps. 132:7-8, 1 Sam. 4:4, 1 Chr. 28:2). Who is Mary? She too is a vessel, who carries in her body the Word of God (Jn. 1:14), the true bread from Heaven (Jn. 6:35), the “great high priest” (Heb. 4:14). She is not God, but she is holy because she is the place where God dwells. She fulfils all the characteristics of the Ark of the Covenant.
This is not just a view peculiar to John. Luke also perhaps knew Mary well, for he is the only Gospel writer to describe the annunciation, the visit to Elizabeth, and the presentation of Jesus in the Temple. And he too, like John, seems to see parallels between Mary and the Ark of God:
David… and all his men set out Mary got ready
from Baalah of Judah
to bring up from there the ark of God… and
hurried to a town
They set the ark of God on a cart in the hill country of Judea,
and brought it from the house of Abinadab, where she entered Zechariah’s home
which was on the hill. (2 Sam. 6:1-3) and greeted Elizabeth. (Lk. 1:39-40)
David was afraid of the LORD that day When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting…,
and said, she exclaimed…:
“How “But
why am I so favoured,
can the ark of the LORD that
the mother of my Lord
ever come to me?” (2 Sam. 6:9) should
come to me?”(Lk. 1:41-43)
The ark of the LORD remained Mary stayed
in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite with
Elizabeth
for three months. (2 Sam 6:11) for about three months. (Lk. 1:56
Now King David was told, And
Mary said…,
“The LORD has blessed “From
now on
the household of Obed-Edom all generations will call me blessed
and everything he has, for
the Mighty One
because of the ark of God.” (2 Sam. 6:12) has done great things for me.”(Lk.
1:46-49)
As the ark of the LORD She
was entering the City of David, entered
Zechariah’s home
Michal daughter of Saul and
greeted Elizabeth…
watched from a window. “As soon as the sound
And when she saw King David of
your greeting reached my ears,
leaping and dancing before the LORD, the
baby in my womb leaped
she despised him in her heart. (2 Sam. 6:16) for joy.” (Lk. 1:40,44)
If Luke and John were deliberately presenting us with these parallels between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant, they must have been trying to make some point. What were they trying to say about Mary? We can answer this question by seeing what the Old Testament says about the Ark.
All-holy, ever-virgin
Throughout the Old Testament, the Ark of the Covenant is treated with immense reverence. No, the Israelites do not worship the Ark – just as Christians do not worship Mary – but they honour it to a degree rarely accorded to other created things:
Whenever
the ark set out, Moses said,
“Rise up, O
LORD!
May your
enemies be scattered;
may your
foes flee before you.”
Whenever it
came to rest, he said,
“Return, O
LORD,
to the
countless thousands of Israel.” (Num. 10:35-36)
The Ark of the Covenant is, after all, the “closest thing to God”. That it not to say that it is at all divine; but it is, in a physical sense, “right there” with God, because God’s Shekhinah abides in it and on it and around it. Therefore those who do not treat the Ark with the reverence it deserves are punished by God. For example, Scripture tell us that “God struck down some of the men of Beth Shemesh, putting seventy of them to death because they had looked into the ark of the LORD” (1 Sam. 6:19). And, when the Ark was being transported by cart from the house of Abinadab to Jerusalem
Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab,
were guiding the new cart with the ark of God on it, and Ahio was walking in
front of it…
When they came to the threshing-floor
of Nacon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen
stumbled. The LORD’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act;
therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the ark of God…
David was afraid of the LORD that
day and said, “How can the ark of the LORD ever come to me?” (2 Sam.
6:3-4,6-7,9) [22]
There is every likelihood that Elizabeth’s words to Mary, “But why am I so favoured, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Lk. 1:41-43), which so closely echo those of King David, were not randomly extemporised, but a direct echo of this passage in Samuel. Apparently Elizabeth also saw the parallels between Mary and the Ark, and approached her relative with a level of awe and reverence appropriate to the New Ark of the Covenant, the new bearer of the Shekhinah.
From ancient times it has been believed that this special calling of Mary to be holy in the manner of the Ark of the Covenant was accompanied by a special grace to resist sin, so as to be a fitting bearer of the Lord. As early as c. 250 A.D., Mary was described in prayers as the “only pure, only blessed one”. [23] And in the following century the Syrian deacon and poet Ephraim wrote this hymn, addressed to Jesus:
You alone
and your Mother
are more
beautiful than any others;
For there
is no blemish in you,
nor any
stains upon your Mother.
Who of my
children
can compare
in beauty to these? [24]
Catholics call this special Christian grace accorded by God to Mary the “immaculate conception”. The Orthodox do not use that particular phrase, but nevertheless refer to Mary as “spotless”, “all-holy” and “altogether without stain”. [25] There is not time or space here to fully explore the rationale behind this doctrine, but here is one explanation from the great Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.):
For we by His grace are to be made the sons of God, whereas He was evermore by nature the Son of God… He, therefore, alone having become man, but still continuing to be God, never had any sin, nor did he assume a flesh of sin, though born of a maternal flesh of sin. For what He then took of flesh, He either cleansed in order to take it, or cleansed by taking it. His virgin mother, therefore…, He formed in order to choose her, and chose in order to be formed from her. [26]
It may seem strange to us these days that Augustine should be so concerned about the origin of Jesus’s flesh. But remember, Augustine was a true ancient, and for the ancients, the very modern distinction we make between spirit and flesh did not exist: Jesus took all his flesh from Mary, and so Mary’s flesh needed to be redeemed, no less than her spirit. [27] Jesus was Mary’s saviour: He was the source of her justification and sanctification, in order that she could be the source of His human flesh. The Son delivered His mother, in order that she could be delivered of Him.
It is the belief of all the ancient churches, attested to in writing to at least as early as c. 145 A.D., [28] that Elizabeth, Luke and John were not the only people to have known Mary and to have realised that they were in the presence of something quite special. We also believe that Joseph, “a righteous man” (Matt. 1:19), recognised this fact too, and that he understood the lessons of Uzzah and the men of Beth Shemesh – and therefore avoided committing any “irreverent act” (2 Sam. 6:7) towards Mary. And that is why all the ancient churches, and the great reformers – Luther and Zwingli not excepted – call Mary “ever virgin”.
This is not such an unlikely hypothesis. It was not uncommon in Bible times for holy men and women to consecrate themselves to the Lord through a vow of sexual abstinence. Indeed, special moments of encounter with God demanded this. For example, at Mount Sinai, God commanded the Israelites to abstain from sexual relations in preparation for receiving the Ten Commandments (Ex. 19:15). And at Nob, David’s men were expected to “keep themselves from women” in order to be able to receive the Bread of the Presence (1 Sam. 21:4-5).
Whilst in the Old Testament most of these examples imply vows of merely temporary abstinence, the atmosphere of New Testament times was quite different. Christians were expecting the return of the Christ to take place very soon (e.g. Rom. 13:11-12, Rev. 22:20), and with it the passing away of this world and all its pleasures. For Christians of that time, consecrating oneself to God through sexual abstinence until the end was not an unreasonable thing to do: the end was, after all, nigh! Jesus had said that “when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage” (Mk. 12:25). He Himself had been celibate, and had commended celibacy for “those to whom it has been given” – those who
“have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.” (Matt. 19:11-12)
John’s Revelation confirmed that the “144,000 who had [Jesus’s] name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads” were “those who did not defile themselves with women, for they kept themselves pure” (Rev. 14:1,4). The apostle Paul was one of the most enthusiastic of early Christian celibates, writing that “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24, RSV), and giving this advice:
Now to the unmarried and widows I
say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. […]
An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned
about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and
spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world – how
she can please her husband. I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict
you, but that you may live in the right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.
(1 Cor. 7:8,34-35)
Mary was without doubt someone who would want to live “in the right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.” After realising God’s vocation for her, it is not an unlikely hypothesis that she took a vow of abstinence – which lasted until her passing from this life.
Mary’s passing
And what of that passing? We have spoken a lot about the beginning of Mary’s Christian journey, which is documented in the Bible. But the nature of the Bible is that it can only tell us about things that happened in “Bible times”. If we want to know about the later life of Mary – or indeed, the later life of anyone mentioned in the New Testament – we must look outside the Bible for our information. As we have seen in previous chapters, there are other writings dating from the early days of Christianity which, though not infallible like Scripture, nevertheless give us indications, some more reliable than others, of some of the things which happened to Jesus’s disciples after the end of the New Testament accounts. The apostle Paul was, according to the early accounts, beheaded in Rome under the Emperor Nero. [29] Peter was also martyred in Rome, by crucifixion. [30] John was banished to Patmos (Rev. 1:9), [31] but returned to Ephesus after the death of the Emperor Domitian, [32] ending his days there. [33] The gospel writer Mark travelled to Egypt and founded the Christian church in Alexandria. [34] Thomas “the doubter” preached the Christian faith in India. [35]
What about Mary? The accounts which remain are not unanimous, but some tell us that after the Ascension she lived with John in Ephesus – and to this day there is a house outside Ephesus which is claimed by both Christians and Muslims to be Mary’s home. [36] However, unlike some of the disciples listed above, Mary seems not to have died a martyr’s death. Actually, it is rather difficult to find out how and where she died – or whether she had any final resting place at all! Now that is a strange thing to say, so let me explain.
From ancient times, it has been both Jewish and Christian tradition to accord great respect to the relics of holy men and women. The Bible tells us that sometimes the bodies of great saints, or things they have owned or touched can, like the Ark of the Covenant, can be carriers of divine grace. This is just another example of the communio sanctorum which we discussed in Chapter Eleven – the fellowship of all the holy, whether people or things. Thus, for example:
God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them. (Acts 19:11-12)
Once while some Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders; so they threw the man’s body into Elisha’s tomb. When the body touched Elisha’s bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet. (2 Kgs. 13:21)
For this reason, the final resting places of great Jewish and Christian saints have always been regarded as places of pilgrimage and prayer – and sometimes, it is claimed, miracles – from the earliest days of our faith. Now, my object here is not to convince you that all these accounts of miracles are true, nor that all the proclaimed saintly relics are genuine. It is merely to establish the fact that wherever the remains, or that which is believed or claimed to be the remains, of a great saint have lain has always become a major religious attraction. Saints have never died and been buried in obscurity. Their graves, and their relics, are rarely forgotten: indeed they usually become very famous – even if disputed. And so, the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their wives are buried in the caves of Machpelah, in Hebron (Gen. 49:31, 50:13) – except for Rachel, who lies in a tomb near Bethlehem (Gen. 35:19-20). The alleged tomb of King David on Mount Zion in Jerusalem remains a place of pilgrimage and prayer for Jews. The apostle Paul’s bones are thought to be kept under an altar in the Church of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. Peter’s are claimed to be in a small ossuary in the crypt of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. The apostle John lies under the Basilica of St. John in Ephesus. The followers of John’s student Polycarp, upon his martyrdom,
did gather up his bones – more precious to us than jewels, and finer than pure gold – and we laid them to rest in spot suitable for the purpose. There we shall assemble, as occasion allows, with glad rejoicings; and with the Lord’s permission we shall celebrate the birthday of his martyrdom. [37]
This list of saints and their burial places goes on and on – but with one very significant omission: Mary, mother of Jesus. Nowhere in the world is there a tomb where Mary’s body, or what anyone claims to be Mary’s body, lies buried. Nowhere in the world claims to hold any relics of Mary, or ever has – from the beginning to the present day. It is as if Mary’s body has disappeared off the face of the earth. There are all sorts of written accounts about Mary’s later life, some doubtless more historically accurate than others. But, whatever one believes, it is a fact that none of these accounts claim a final resting place for Mary’s body.
Why not? If Mary had a final and continuing resting place on earth, it would without doubt be a major pilgrimage site. Holy men and scoundrels alike would love to be able to claim that they know where Mary’s body lies – the former in order to pray there, the latter in order to rake in the cash. But neither the virtuous nor the scammers have ever made any such claims. The only possible reason for this is that no one has ever believed that the body of Mary is still on earth.
So how and where did Mary leave this earth? There are several written accounts dating from the fourth century A.D., some more extravagant in their detail than others. But they have in common the story that Mary ended her earthly life in Jerusalem, surrounded by the apostles. One says:
Then the apostles with great honour laid the body in the tomb, weeping and singing through exceeding love and sweetness. And suddenly there shone round them a light from heaven, and they fell to the ground, and the holy body was taken up by angels into heaven. [38]
Catholics tend to call this event the “assumption” of Mary, signifying her being assumed, body and soul, into Heaven; the Orthodox refer to it as the “dormition” – meaning “falling asleep”. Now, some may find the account far-fetched or unreliable. But it is not outside the character of God for some particularly special people to make their journey from earth to Heaven in special circumstances:
After he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enoch lived 365 years. Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away. (Gen. 5:22-24)
As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha saw this and cried out, “My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!” And Elisha saw him no more. (2 Kgs. 2:11-12)
Mary’s “assumption”, then, was just another extraordinary way God intervened in the end of life of a very special person in His Kingdom. [39] The assumption explains why it is that there is no place on earth where Mary’s body lies, and how Mary made her journey to Heaven. It befits the woman who was the last Old Testament prophetess, and the first Christian, the New Eve, the New Ark of the Covenant, the God-Bearer, the Lord’s Gebirah, “blessed among women” (Lk. 1:42).
In 2015, I had the privilege of making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. And at one end of the Garden of Gethsemane, not far from the spot where it is believed that Jesus prayed on eve of His Crucifixion, there is a small underground church. Walk down the broad stairs into the smoky gloom, and on the right there is a small Orthodox chapel, bedecked with icons and candles, in which an empty stone sarcophagus lies. Here, it is claimed, Mary was laid by the apostles, and from here she began her journey to Heaven.
What can the assumption of Mary teach us? That the Child who rules all nations with an iron sceptre (Rev. 12:5) invites us to stand with His mother in Heaven, “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head” (Rev. 12:1). All we need say, like her, is: “May it be to me as you have said” (Lk. 1:38); and then we will know that our souls “glorify the Lord… for the Mighty One has done great things” for us (Lk. 1:46,49). The assumption reminds us of our own destiny among the resurrected, for
Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn… (1 Cor. 15:20-23, my emphasis)
Some years ago, my and I attended a service celebrating the feast of the Assumption in Penang, Malaysia. My favourite hymn from that evening could have been written by Mary; we sang it in Tagalog:
Ang himig Mo, ang awit ko,
lahat ng ito'y nagmula sa Iyo…
O Diyos, O Panginoon, lahat ng
biyayang aming inampon,
aming buhay at kakayahan,
ito'y para lamang sa 'Yong kalwalhatian. [40]
Your hymn, my song, all these are
from you…
O God, O Lord, all the blessings that
we borrowed,
our lives and talents, are for
the greater glory of Your name.
SCRIPTURAL SUMMARY of Chapter Fourteen
All generations will
call her blessed.
Gen. 21:2-7, Ex. 15:20-21, 1 Sam. 2:1-10, Lk. 1:26-56
the woman clothed
with the sun
Gen. 37:9-10, Ps. 2:9, Is. 9:6-7, Matt. 19:28; Rev. 4:2-10, 5:11-13,
11:19-12:5
queen and mother
1 Kgs. 1:28-31, 2:13-22; Jn. 2:3-5, 19:26-27; Rev. 5:8,
12:17
the serpent and the woman
Gen. 1:1-10, 3:1-20; Ps. 74:12-14, Is. 27:1; Jn. 2:4, 19:26;
Rom. 5:14-17, Rev. 12
Ark of the Covenant
1 Sam. 4:4, 2 Sam. 6:1-16, 1 Kgs. 8, 1 Chr. 28:2, 2 Chr. 5,
2 Macc. 2:1-8, Ps. 132:7-8, Jer. 3:16,
Lk. 1:39-56; Jn. 1:14, 6:35; Heb. 4:14,
9:4; Rev. 11:19-12:5
all-holy, ever-virgin
Ex. 19:15, Num. 10:35-36; 1 Sam. 6:19, 21:4-5; 2 Sam. 6:3-9,
Matt. 1:19, 19:11-12; Mk. 12:25,
Lk. 1:41-43, 1 Cor. 7:8, 7:34-35; Rev. 14:1-4
Mary’s passing
Gen. 5:22-24; 2 Kgs. 2:11-12, 13:21, Acts 19:11-12, 1 Cor.
15:20-23
[1] William N. McElrath, personal e-mail,
13th February, 2013
[2] Martin Luther’s Christmas Book, ed. Roland H. Bainton (Augsburg,
Minneapolis, 1948), p. 15, on books.google.co
[3] The Panarion of Epiphanius of
Salamis: Books II and III (Sects 47-80, De Fide) VII.23.3-4, trans.
Frank Williams (Brill, Leiden, 1994), p. 618, on books.google.co
[4] perhaps Matt. 2:13-18
[5] Eusebius, The History of the Church III.23 (Penguin, London, 1989)
[6] Eusebius, History of the Church III.18 (Penguin, London, 1989)
[7] Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho C, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, ed. Phillip
Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org
[8] Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.XXII.4, in Ante-Nicene
Fathers, vol. 1, ed. Phillip Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on
www.ccel.org
[9] also in e.g. Jn. 2:4, 19:26
[10] from J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (Longmans,
London, 1967), p. 297
[11] Ignatius, The Epistle to the Ephesians 18, in Early Christian Writings, ed. Maxwell Staniforth (Penguin, London, 1988)
[my emphasis]
[12] Irenaeus, Against Heresies V.19.1, quoted in The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 1, ed. William A. Jurgens
(Liturgical Press, Collegeville) [my emphasis]
[13] The oldest extant use of the word theotokos appears to be in the Sub tuum præsidium prayer, from c. 250 A.D.; see e.g. Henri de Villiers, “The Sub Tuum Praesidium”, on www.newliturgicalmovement.org. According to
Socrates of Constantinople (c. 380-439), Origen used it before then in
his now lost Commentary on Romans [Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical
History VII.XXXII, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Ser. II vol. 2,
ed. Philip Schaff (CCEL, Grand Rapids),
on www.ccel.org].
[14] from Arius, The Banquet; quoted in Athanasius, Discourses Against the Arians 1, 5 and Encyclical Letter to the Bishops of Egypt and Libya 12; quoted in The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 1,
ed. William A. Jurgens (Liturgical Press, Collegeville)
[15] St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word of God and Against
the Arians, quoted in The Faith of
the Early Fathers, vol. 1, ed. William A. Jurgens (Liturgical Press, Collegeville)
[16] Nestorius of Constantinople, Second Epistle to Cyril of Alexandria,
on www.monachos.net
[17] Huldreich Zwingli, “An Account of
the Faith of Huldreich Zwingli Submitted to the German Emperor Charles V, at
the Diet of Augsburg. (July 3, 1530)”, in The
Latin Works of Huldreich Zwingli, vol. II, ed. William John Hinke
(Heidelberg, Philadelphia, 1922), p. 53, on archive.org
[18] “Formula of union between Cyrill
and John of Antioch”, in The Council Of Ephesus - 431 A.D., on www.papalencyclicals.net [my emphasis]
[19] Tim Perry, Mary for Evangelicals (InterVarsity, Downers Grove, 2006), p. 271
[my emphasis]
[20] from “On the Eternally Pure Maiden
Mary”, quoted in Rebecca A. Giselbrecht, “Reforming a Model: Zwingli, Bullinger
and the Virgin Mary in Sixteenth-century Zurich”, in Following Zwingli: Applying the
Past in Reformation Zurich, ed. Luca Baschera, Bruce Gordon
& Christian Moser (Ashgate, Farnham, 2014), p. 150, on books.google.co
[21] Martin Luther, The Magnificat – translated and explained
1520-1, from Works of Martin Luther,
on www.godrules.net
[22] To understand the context of this
event better, it is useful to read Num. 4:4-20.
[23] Sub tuum praesidium, in Henri de Villiers, “The Sub Tuum Praesidium”, on www.newliturgicalmovement.org
[24] St. Ephraim, Nisibene Hymns 27.8, in The Faith
of the Early Fathers, vol. 1, ed. William A. Jurgens (Liturgical Press,
Collegeville)
[25] Bishop K
[26] Augustine, On Merit and the Forgiveness of Sins, and the Baptism of Infants
II.38, in Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers ser.
I vol. 5 (CCEL, Grand Rapids)
[27] gratias Fr. Jim Overton (personal conversation, c. 1990)
[28] see e.g. The Protevangelium of
James, in Philip Schaff, Ante-Nicene
Fathers vol. 8 (CCEL, Grand Rapids), on www.ccel.org
[29] Gaius of Rome, Dialogue with Proclus & Dionysius of Corinth, Letter to the Romans: both quoted in Eusebius, History of the Church II.25 (Penguin, London, 1989); Tertullian, The Prescription Against Heretics XXXVI,
in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, ed.
Phillip Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org
[30] Clement, The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians 5, in Early Christian Writings, ed. Maxwell
Staniforth (Penguin, London, 1988); Gaius of Rome, Dialogue with Proclus
& Dionysius of Corinth, Letter to the
Romans: both quoted in Eusebius, History
of the Church II.25 (Penguin, London, 1989); Tertullian, The Prescription Against Heretics XXXVI &
Against Marcion IV.V & Scorpiace XV, all in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, ed. Phillip
Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org; Acts of Peter XXXVII-XXXVIII, on www.earlychristianwritings.com
[31] Eusebius, History of the Church III.18 (Penguin, London, 1989)
[32] Eusebius, History of the Church III.23 (Penguin, London, 1989)
[33] Polycrates of Ephesus, Letter to Victor of Rome, quoted in
Eusebius, History of the Church
III.31 (Penguin, London, 1989)
[34] Eusebius, History of the Church II.16 (Penguin, London, 1989)
[35] The Acts of Thomas, from The
Apocryphal New Testament, trans. M.R. James (
[36] See www.meryemana.info.
[37] The Martyrdom of Polycarp 18, in Early Christian Writings, ed. Maxwell Staniforth (Penguin, London,
1988)
[38] The Passing of Mary (First Latin
Form), in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 8, ed. Phillip Schaff (T&T Clark,
Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org
[39] There is also a Jewish tradition
that Moses was assumed into Heaven: see Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Sotah 13b, on www.come-and-hear.com; The Assumption of Moses, ed. R. H. Charles
(A. & C. Black, London, 1897), on archive.org; cf. Jude 1:9.
[40] Paghahandog (based on Ignatius of Loyola, “Suspice”), on
www.lyricsmode.com
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