A. Eve, Mary and the Church
Thinking of the church as feminine has a long history in Christian tradition. The first written evidence goes back to the time of the Apostolic Fathers, that is, the group of writings which chronologically follow the books of the New Testament.
In his treatise called The Shepherd, Hermas (around 150 AD) describes an experience as he walked one day toward Cumae: an old lady appeared to him and gave him a book to copy. At first, he believed the old woman was the Sibyl since it was in Cumae that the famous oracle of the Sibyl was located.[722] Later, however, it was revealed to him that she was the church, old because she is the first of creation and “it was because of her that the world was formed.”[723]So great was his respect for the Sibyl that Hermas did not hesitate to refer to her to convey a Christian message.[724] Moreover, he gave the church cosmic attributes comparable to those with which the woman in Revelation 12 is described. As the “woman clothed with the sun” reflects back upon Eve in Genesis, so the “church” of Hermas reaches back to the very beginning of creation.[725]A short time after Hermas composed the Shepherd, an anonymous sermon, now called The Second Letter of Clement, also affirmed the pre-existence of the church: the original, spiritual church was created before the sun and the moon; it “existed from the beginning.”[726] With a reference to Genesis 1.27, (“God made man male and female”) the author continues: “the male is Christ, the female is the Church.” In addition to calling the church female, the sermon also suggests (but does not expressly state) the spiritual motherhood of the church. Isaiah 54.1 (Gal. 4.27), “Sing, o barren one who did not bear...” is said to refer to Christians, “for our Church was barren before children were given to her.” (2.1)[727]
The great bishop of Lyon, Irenaeus (c.130-202) came close to identifying Mary with the church when he wrote in Adversus Haereses, “And Mary, exulting because of this, cried out, prophesying on behalf of the Church, ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord...’”[728] He did not elaborate on this statement and thus we cannot draw further conclusions from it.
While the sentence may simply mean that Mary spoke as an agent or spokesperson of the church, it seems certain, at least, that Irenaeus, too, thought of the church as female and as the mother of Christians. “It behooves us,” he wrote,[729] “... to flee to the Church, and be brought up in her bosom, and be nourished with the Lord’s Scriptures.” The image of a mother suckling her children is also used by Clement of Alexandria (died before 215) in his encomium to the church: “O mystic marvel! The universal Father is one, and one the universal Word: and the Holy Spirit is one and the same everywhere, and one is the only virgin mother. I love to call her the Church... She is once virgin and mother pure as a virgin, loving as a mother. And calling her children to her, she nurses them with holy milk, viz. with the Word for childhood.”[730] These hesitating and probing allusions of the fathers finally led to the definite, no uncertain statement of Tertullian (c. 160-C.220): “Domina mater ecclesia.”[731] Tertullian, with the clear and precise mind of a lawyer (which was probably his profession), liked to call things by their name. He came to the conclusion that the presence of a “Father” and a “Son” require the reality of a “Mother.” When in the Lord's Prayer we say “Our Father,” we include the Son, because the Father and the Son are one.[732] “Nor is even our mother the Church passed by, if, that is, in the Father and the Son is recognized the mother, from whom arises the name both of Father and of Son.”[733] He told new church members that the church where they were baptized and where they pray is “the house of your mother.”[734] In discussing the salutary effects of sleep, Tertullian used the example of Adam, “the fountain of the human race.” Adam was made to sleep by God and during this sleep God formed Eve.[735] Now, sleep is an image of death, and since Adam was a figure of Christ, the sleep of Adam prefigured the death of Christ. Just as from the side of Adam Eve was formed, so from the wounded side of Jesus the church, “the true mother of all living,” arose.[736]Tertullian's definition of the motherhood of the church was universally accepted. His pupil and follower, Cyprian (c. 200/10- 258), could say without hesitation: “Habere non potest deum patrem qui ecclesiam non habet matrem. ” (He cannot have God as father who does not have the Church as mother.)[737] To fully appreciate Cyprian’s categorical statement we must remember that the unity of the church was an overriding concern for him. Faced with severe persecutions, many Christians were denying their faith (these were called the lapsi)\ faced also with the schismatic movements of Novatus in Carthage and Novatianus in Rome, Cyprian stressed that to be a Christian means to be in the church,[738] a statement which he subsequently amplified to the famous sentence: “Outside the Church there is no salvation!”[739] The image of the mother[740] served Cyprian’s intentions well: as the mother holds a family together, so the church holds together the family of God.
The parallelism Adam-Christ/Eve-Church used by Tertullian returned in the theology of Methodius (died 311). As Adam was the husband of Eve, so Christ, the Word, came down to be joined to his wife, the church. He cleansed the church for the receiving of his spiritual seed which he implants in the mind.[741] There conception takes place “by the church as by a woman,” resulting in birth. In this way the command given to the first man and woman, “increase and multiply,”[742] is fulfilled by the church increasing daily “in greatness, beauty and multitude.” In a somewhat obscure way Methodius also applied Genesis 2.18; i.e., the statement that Eve is a helper of Adam, to the church and Jesus: the more perfect believers are the church and helpmate of Christ; to him they are betrothed and given in marriage as a virgin;[743] they receive the “pure and genuine seed of his doctrine” and cooperate with him in preaching salvation.[744] Methodius applies the image of the sexual relationship of Adam and Eve for the purpose of producing children to the relation of Christ and the church.
However, while the seed of Adam was material and impregnated Eve who thus gave birth to humankind, the seed of Christ is the Word which impregnates the mind and so produces new Christians. This same line of thought was repeated by Zeno, bishop of Verona (362-372), in one of his sermons: the devil had corrupted Eve by the ear,[745] so when Christ entered into Mary by the ear[746] and was born of the virgin he cured “the wound of the woman;” thus “Adam per Christum, Eva per Ecclesiam renovaretur. ” (Adam should be renewed through Christ, Eve through the church.)[747] [748] Methodius and Zeno saw the motherhood of the church in the fact that it was the renewed Eve, the spouse of Christ, who is the second Adam. Yet Zeno’s conclusion is surprising: if Christ entered into Mary, why is not Mary the spiritual mother? What then is the relationship between Mary and the church?The bishop of Milan, Ambrose (333/4?-397), offered an answer to this question by declaring that Mary is “the type of the Church” = Ecclesiae typos? The church is immaculate yet married, so is Mary. The virgin church conceives Christians by the Spirit and bears them without pain. Mary is married to Joseph but filled with another,[749] so the individual churches are joined to a priest but are filled with the Holy Spirit. Ambrose was the first to define this relationship between Mary and the church and he mentioned it often, as in his reference to the words of Jesus from the cross: when Christ said: “Behold your mother!” — he then said to the church: “Behold your son!”[750] Ambrose, who spoke of Mary in the most exalted terms, transmitted this devotion to his spiritual son, Augustine (354-430). No wonder, therefore, that the motherhood of the church as exemplified in Mary is also a part of Augustine’s theology, as a few examples will suffice to illustrate: “Let us love the Lord our God, let us love his Church: him as a father, her as a mother; him as Lord and her as his servant, because we are children of his servant...
hold fast, beloved, hold fast to God the Father and mother church.”[751] “The Church... is at the same time virgin and gives birth. It resembles Mary who bore the Lord. Was not the holy Mary a virgin and gave birth, and remained virgin? So also the Church... [752] “Mary bore your head, the Church gave birth to you... ”[753] “Honor the holy Church, your Mother.”[754] Let us mention finally Quodvultdeus (died about 455), a friend and pupil of Augustine. In his sermon to the catechumens, he echoes not only his master, but also the great Tertullian: “Non habebit Deum Patrem qui Ecclesiam noluil habere matrem. ” (He who will not have the Church as mother will not have God as father.)[755] [756]By this time the idea was fully developed. Later fathers, including the medieval authors, could not add more to it. They faithfully repeated the tradition which they received: the church is female, Mary is the type of the church, and the church is now doing in a spiritual sense what Mary did physically. Thus there is a mysterious relationship between Mary and the church. But this mystery has not been explored. If anything, the relationship between Mary and the church was neglected during the Middle Ages in favor of the development of other privileges of Mary. Indeed, it is only in modern times that Mary and the church have again become the focus of attention, especially since the second Vatican Council included the teaching on Mary in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, called Lumen Gentium.2,3
However, simultaneously with the development of the Mary- church parallelism, there also developed the parallelism between Eve and Mary.[757] As interest in Mary grew, it was natural to compare Eve, “the cause of sin” (Gen. 3) with Mary, who by her birth of the Savior could be called “the cause of salvation.” Justin Martyr (d. 165) was the first Christian author to make such a statement: “For Eve, who was a virgin and undefiled, 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 she replied ‘Be it unto me according to thy word.’ And by her He has been born... by whom God destroys both the serpent and those angels and men who are like him... ”[758] An in-depth theological explanation of this thesis was given by Irenaeus (c. 130-202) in the Adversus Haereses. According to Irenaeus, the economy of salvation demanded that Adam be recapitulated in Jesus.[759] The means of this was Mary from whom Jesus received actual flesh “which had been derived from the earth, which He had recapitulated in Himself.”[760] This was according to the eternally predestined will of God who decreed that the first man should be of an animal nature and be saved by one of a spiritual nature. It was also in accordance with this design that Mary was found obedient and answered to the angel who announced to her the conception of Jesus: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.”[761] Eve was disobedient and thus she became the cause of death, “both to herself and to the entire human race.” Mary, on the other hand, by yielding obedience, became “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."[762]Irenaeus based his theology of recapitulation on S. Paul’s philosophy of history, presented in Romans 5 and to a lesser degree in 1. Corinthians 15. In chapter 5 of Romans Paul starts out by affirming the hope with which mankind in the present can look toward the future, because of the reconciling death of Christ and the love of God which, through the Holy Spirit, is already active in us.[763] He then goes on to examine the significance of the past for the present and the future. In so doing he puts the whole of human history under the light of the gospel by demonstrating that there is a real relationship between Adam and Christ. From Adam came sin and death over the entire human race, from Christ came justification and life for all who are united with Christ through faith.[764] Adam is the first, the physical, the earthly; Christ is the second, the spiritual, the heavenly. As Adam is the representative of a sinful, physical, earth-bound mankind, so is Christ representative of a justified, spiritual, heavenly mankind. World history for Paul is determined by the relationship of Adam and Christ: only these two persons had a lasting, decisive and general impact upon the fate of humanity, Adam having been the cause of the fall and Christ, the cause of redemption. Adam determined the fate of mankind with respect to sin, Christ with respect to salvation, therefore, Christ is the second Adam. We do not understand Christ unless we see him in the light of Adam, and vice versa, Adam is the “type” of Christ and only through Christ can Adam be understood. Sin, which came into the life of mankind through Adam, i.e., original sin, can be eliminated only by the absolute and complete universal redemption in Christ, and vice versa, an absolute and complete universal redemption by Christ is impossible without the original sin brought about by Adam. For the work of salvation such a unity of the individual with the human race is essential, because without this a “once-for-all” redemption is impossible. If the sin of Adam is an isolated case, without further consequences, if every individual sinner is independent, then every sinner needs his or her individual savior. But salvation is universal, so Paul teaches. Christ does not meet us as Jew or Greek but as members of the human race, because the ultimate aim of God in history is the reconstruction of the universe, “to unite (in Christ) all things in heaven and things on earth.”[765] This is what Irenaeus calls “recapitulation”, i.e., the restoration of all creation under one head. “Being in Christ,” another favorite expression of Paul, is thus parallel to the unity of all in Adam.[766]
This thesis of Paul became immensely popular and determined the Christian view of history and salvation for centuries to come. It was soon to become a central part of the Christian message. Already the earliest Christian manual reports that during the Eucharist the following prayer was said over the bread: “As this piece of bread was scattered over the hills and then was brought together and made one, so let your Church be brought together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom... ”[767] Augustine, in his interpretation of Mark 13.27 (“He shall gather together his elect from the four winds,”) comments as follows: “He gathered all his elect from the four winds: therefore, from the whole world. For Adam himself (this I had said before) signifieth in Greek the whole world; for there are four letters A, D, A and M. But as the Greeks speak, the four quarters of the world have these initial letters, ’Ανατολή they call East; Δύσις, the West; ’Άρκτος the North; Μεσημβρία, the South: thou hast the word ADAM. Adam therefore has been scattered over the whole world. He was in one place and fell, and as in a manner broken small, he filled the whole world: but the mercy of God gathered together the fragments from every side, and forged them by the fire of love, and made one that which was broken. The Artist knew how to do this; let no one despair; it is indeed a great thing, but reflect who that Artist was. He who made restored: He who formed reformed. What are righteousness and truth? He will gather together His elect with him...”[768]
In the theology of Irenaeus the universal character of Christ’s work means that it includes not only present and future but in a retroactive way the past as well. He argues that Abraham, too, will inherit the kingdom of God through Jesus Christ[769] and this complete redemption, encompassing past, present, and future, is truly the “communio dei el hominis” [770] It is in this context that his parallelism of Eve and Mary is to be understood: since the event of Christ is the perfect counterbalance to the event of Adam, the role played by Eve also must be counterbalanced; here Mary was an excellent choice. We note that while Paul did not see a need to counterbalance Eve, the conclusions of Irenaeus are in harmony with Pauline thought.
Tertullian (c. 160 - c. 120) also mentioned the Eve-Mary parallel within the framework of the recapitulation theory, taking his point of departure also from Paul. The words are familiar: “As Eve had believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel.” But Tertul- lian introduced a new element to the story which was later adopted by Methodius and Zeno:[771] both women conceived by words. For Eve, even though she was not directly impregnated, “the devil’s words afterwards became as seed to her that she should conceive as an outcast, and bring forth in sorrow. Indeed, she gave birth to a patricidal devil...” — i.e., Cain. Mary, of course, conceived by the Word of God directly. Here Tertullian found yet another parallelism, namely between Cain and Abel, the “evil brother” and the “good brother.” Jesus is the “good brother” “who should blot out the memory of the evil brother.”[772]
Firmicus Maternus wrote (ca. 346-348) an aggressive book to the emperors Constantius and Constans demanding the abolishment of paganism. In his arguments he used the Eve-Mary parallelism as he learned it from Irenaeus and Tertullian.[773] By this time the theme was commonplace. The Syrian Ephraem (c. 306-73) used it often in his hymns,[774] and it flowed through the words and works of preachers, exegetes, and systematic theologians. Epiphanius of Salamis (315-403) said that as Eve was the cause of death, so Mary became the cause of life.[775] Gregory of Nyssa (335-392) elaborated the same point,[776] but the emphasis was slowly changing: Mary appeared more and more in the center, as one who played a role in the redemptive process and was somehow a touchstone of Christological orthodoxy. Central issues now will be the definition of her title as Theotokos = Mother of God, her perpetual virginity, her sanctity,[777] and even her assumption into heaven, the earliest written reference to which dates around 3 77[778]: issues more germaine to the “woman clothed with the sun” than to “a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph.”[779]
According to yet another line of thought in the early church, Mary was not a representative of the church but a symbol of the synagogue, not a type of the new covenant but a type of the old. This view appeared first in Tertullian, in his comments on those passages of the gospels which refer to the unbelief of his mother and brothers.[780]
... there is some ground for thinking that Christ’s answer denies His mother and brethren for the present... ‘The Lord’s brethren had not yet believed in Him.’ So it is contained in the Gospel which was published before Marcion’s time; whilst there is at the same time a want of evidence of His mother’s adherence to Him, although the Marthas and the other Marys were in constant attendance on Him. In this very passage indeed, their unbelief is evident. Jesus was teaching the way of life, preaching the kingdom of God and actively engaged in healing infirmities of body and soul; but all the while, whilst strangers were intent on Him, His very nearest relatives were absent. By and by they turn up, and keep outside; but they do not go in, because, forsooth, they set small store on that which was doing within; nor do they even wait, as if they had something which they could contribute more necessary than that which He was so earnestly doing; but they prefer to interrupt Him and wish to call Him away from His great work... He denied His parents, then, in the sense in which He has taught us to deny ours— for God’s work.[781] But there is also another view of the case: in the abjured mother there is a figure of the synagogue, as well as of the Jews in the unbelieving brethren. In their person Israel remained outside, whilst the new disciples who kept close to Christ within, hearing and believing, represented the Church, which He called mother in a preferable sense and a worthier brotherhood, with the repudiation of the carnal relationship. It was in just the same sense, indeed, that He also replied to that exclamation (of a certain woman), not denying His mother’s ‘womb and paps,’ but designating those as more ‘blessed who hear the word of God.’[782]
This theory is consistent with Tertullian’s view that the new Eve is the Christian church, as the new Adam is Jesus. If this is so, then the Pauline idea that the church is the “bride” of Christ falls easily in the pattern and the “motherhood” of the church also makes good sense. The parallelism in this case looks like this: Adam and Eve = sinful mankind; Jesus and the church = redeemed mankind. In this scheme, however, there is no place for Mary and Tertullian solved the problem by introducing in the image of the synagogue and the community of those who did not believe. This conclusion was not difficult to reach: since the physical body of Jesus was born of Mary’s humanity,[783] Tertullian could identify that with the old dispensation, “according to the law, according to the flesh,” as opposed to the new, “according to the Spirit.”
Hilary of Poitiers (315-367) echoed Tertullian in his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew:
... when the man came and announced that his mother and his brothers were waiting for him outside, he stretched out his hand toward his disciples and answered that they were his brothers and his mother, and whoever obeys his father’s will, he is his brother, sister and mother. Thus, by retaining the right and the name of all relationships no longer for the condition of birth but for the communion of the church, he constituted a model of general activity and thinking. However, he should not be regarded as thinking contemptuously of his mother for whom he devoted the affection of greatest care in his passion.[784] There is also a typical sense in the fact that his mother and his brothers remained outside because they had the opportunity to come in to him just as the others did. But because he came to his own and his own did not receive him, in his mother and brothers the synagogue and the Jews are prefigured abstaining from going in to and approaching him.”[785]
“The Athanasius of the West” and champion of orthodoxy, as Hilary is often called,[786] wrote this book on the basis of homilies which he delivered for the instruction of his congregation. His aim was to find the “deeper” meaning of the text and not to write a dogmatic treatise.[787] Yet together with Tertullian he does represent a thought pattern which, alongside the others we have seen, goes back to the earliest periods of ecclesiastical history. This concept, however, was not widely accepted. The suggestion that Mary’s motherhood paralleled the motherhood of the church was much easier to understand and thus it remained the tacitly approved and accepted view.[788]
In the Old Testament, God’s chosen people, Israel, is commonly refered to as female and sometimes also as virgin. A few examples will suffice to illustrate this point:
2 Kings 19.21: “... the virgin daughter of Zion...” Isaiah 37.22: “... the virgin daughter of Zion...” Isaiah 52.2: “... O captive daughter of Zion...” Isaiah 62.11- “... Say to the daughter of Zion...” Jeremiah 6.23: “... O daughter of Zion...” Jeremiah 14.17: “... the daughter of my people...” Jeremiah 1813: "... the virgin Israel...” (also 31.04, 81.21) Lamentations 1.15: “... the virgin daughter of Judah...” Lamentations 2.13: “... virgin daughter of Zion...”[789]
In these and many similar passages a female symbolizes the totality of the people of God. The image may have come from two preconceptions, one, the idea of God as male and second, the concept of the covenant, that is, the idea of a unique relationship between God and Israel as a people chosen for his unique service. This covenant relationship is like a marriage and thus “Israel” was naturally imagined as the female counterpart of God. The message of the prophet Hosea is built on this concept.[790] Thus the image of Israel as female, virgin, and wife was familiar to readers of the Old Testament.[791] Israel as bride is a natural analogy to the church as bride[792] and God as “husband of Israel” is paralleled in Jesus as “husband” of the church. This analogy raises human marriage to cosmic levels: not only is it a reflection of Yahweh’s relation to Israel, it is a proleptic realization of the eschatological consummation in which the primordial henosis of male and female (i.e. the condition before the sexes were separated) is restored.[793] This is another aspect of the recapitulation theory of Irenaeus and Paul and thus brings us back to the Adam = Christ/Eve = Mary parallelism.
Implicit in these speculations about Mary is the idea that she plays a necessary part in the economy of salvation: without her, incarnation is impossible and the whole redemptive process cannot take place. The word “implicit” needs to be underlined, because no church father spelled this out. Explicitly, they placed Mary into the context of Romans 5 by enlarging the Adam-Christ parallel to include Eve-Mary. This did not quite work because the biblical references point to the church, not Mary, as the bride and spiritual wife of Christ. Consequently, with an unerring instinct, they began to draw the parallel between Mary and the church. When this mystical identity was sufficiently common, the expanded recapitulation theory of Romans 5 posed no difficulties. It was easy to think of the church as female, the Old Testament having paved the way by calling the chosen people of God “daughter,” “virgin,” and “wife.” The church as the new Israel could easily adopt these names, and the universal role assigned to Eve supplied the vehicle for transforming Mary into a collective personality.