Blessed Among Women

A Modern Icon Showing Christ, His Mother, The Blessed Virgin Mary, His Grandmother, St. Anna, and His Great-Grandmother, St. Maria

By Bishop Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

On the Dogma of the Virgin Birth, the Title “Theotokos”, and the Teaching of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary in the Ancient Church 

“And the angel said unto her, ‘Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” – Luke 1:28 KJV 

I came to accept the Church’s teaching on the Blessed Virgin, the title “Theotokos”, and the history behind the veneration of the Mother of God only after much agonizing research and soul-searching. Like many, it didn't seem necessary to me, and I saw it as a stumbling block, and suspected it of latent idolatry. However, as I examined the history, the Church Councils, and the reasoning behind my own revulsion, I realized that I had the advantage of an assumption that the Early Church did not have - I could assume the Incarnation, without giving thought to how, why, or to whom such a mind-blowing mystery would occur. The Early Church had no such cushion, no such obvious necessity. The Jewish-speaking world of that day, as it still maintains today, insisted that such an incarnation was impossible, and that the "Virgin Birth" was an error of Greek translators in the corrupted Septuagint. To them, the fact that God both submitted to a human form, and also to the humility and limitation of a human womb, was devastatingly ridiculous. It was also far too similar to the Greek tradition of half-gods as heroes for the comfort of many groups - all of the heretics, Arians, Adoptionists, the Gnostics, the Ebionites, etc, argued against the Incarnation and for a preservation of God’s transcendence. It was an affront to the dignity of God in the monotheistic tradition. To many, this simple contradiction proved that Christ was not God. The same reasoning still echoes in Islam today, and is not an invalid objection of a later time, but one of the problems that the Hebraic mentality has always had with Christianity. Thus, for the Early Church to insist on the Incarnation, one had to insist on the person of Mary being chosen by God as a vessel of salvation in the world. Mary had to become a big deal (as early manuscripts prove), in order to communicate the message of salvation through the Incarnation. The fact that the FIRST prophecy of the Messiah was given to Eve, and referred to the woman crushing the Serpent's head was always pointed out by the Fathers, as was the female nature of "Wisdom", "Spirit" (not that either of these were a goddess, but figures pointing to the role of the female in the salvation of mankind), and the references to a "queen" in the Septuagint translation of the Psalms (particularly Psalms 45). It was not just the verse about the “garden shut up”. The vision of a Virgin and Child in Revelations also fed into this imagery as well. In my inherited paradigm this issue seemed insignificant, but its importance in the Adamic Covenant, the promise God made with ALL mankind, was apparent to the Early Church. Also, that the primary prophecy of Christ being God, Emmanuel, occurs in reference to the Virgin in Isaiah. Because the Early Church was Incarnational in its soteriology, seeing salvation as a result of the entire work of Christ on earth, and also because they saw salvation as "Resurrectional" (looking for actual, physical immortality) his physical origins within Mary were of the utmost philosophical importance. 

The Ancient Church read the Old Testament through one interpretational model, one hermeneutic principle - the Life of Christ. Christ Himself said that the Scriptures pertained to Him. (John 5:39) Therefore, it was not just His Mother who was found in the Old Testament, but everyone else, from John the Baptist to all of His Disciples, in prophesied throughout all of the OT. To our modern exegetical paradigm, this is illegitimate, but if you study the Epistle of Barnabas, the Letters of Clement, and St. Justin Martyr, you will find that this was not only the Apostolic interpretational model, but it was the model that HAD to be used in order to prove the claims of Christ. Mathew used this in His Gospel, when He quotes from multiple OT passages that Jews and Protestants alike now say are "out of context". If this is true, the claims of the Early Church and of the Apostles are invalid, and the objections of the "rightly interpreting" Pharisees were accurate. I have Protestant text books on hermeneutics that posture around this very premise, that Matthew and the Early Church were wrong, misapplying scripture according to the “science of interpretation” founded on “principles of biblical exegesis” that we have “discovered over the course of Christian history.” But, the Life of Christ was the interpretational model, within and without the "historical method" of hermeneutics, regardless of the problems that later developed between the School of Alexandria and the School of Antioch in Church History and within the Bible itself. Therefore, to refer to the OT application to affairs directly connected with the Life of Christ as a "bit of a stretch" or "contortions" would ultimately bring down the entire house of cards for Early Christian authority, and ultimately the entirety of Christian teachings within Protestantism as well. This contrarian position is an artificial construct, foreign to the experience of those whose witness is the basis of Christian authority. 

I believe in the "Perpetual Virginity" based on a couple of things, and my least consideration is the authority of Reformers Luther and Calvin, even though they both held the perpetual virginity as an important teaching. The first great reason is the extremely early references to it, not just in the Fathers, but in a post-apostolic work called the "Protoevangelion", a work that scholars try to place in the 2nd century, but of which there are references in other works that seem to imply a much earlier origin. In this work, we have Mary dedicated to the Temple as an ascetic in the tradition of the Essenes, an arranged marriage to an already elderly Joseph, and the broader context of his sons and their life together. I know that Wikipedia doesn't source these ancient ecclesial works often, so it probably won’t show up if you do a quick Google search, but this work was recommended for reading in the Church in the 4th century, along with all the other writings, making it an extremely earlier, pre-biblical canon, source. It has been read as a part of the non-biblical commentaries, along with the Apostolic Fathers, Ante-Nicene Fathers, and the Nicene Fathers in the Orthodox and Catholic Churches since the establishment of "readings". The other argument is that Christ derived his body from Mary, and it was through her that the material world was divinized. This philosophical argument sees Mary as an icon of the Church, as the first to "bear Christ", and her physical, created nature as the “gateway” through which God worked our salvation. If Mary is a type, a personification of God's work, then for her to "bear other children" is a philosophical problem - it destroys the type, erases the importance of the Incarnation, and makes Mary a "temporary accessory" to the plan of salvation. With the general tendency of the Early Church to link theological truth to "Prosopon" (person), not "Principium" (non-personal origin or "principle"), the "Ever Virgin" status was seen as an important "Seal" or "Protection" against accusations against the person of Christ. This is why the exalted status of the Virgin Mary was sealed in the Third Ecumenical Council in Ephesus in 431. Protestants have successfully separated Christ from His Mother as they have separated salvation in Christ from the Eucharist, but Apostolic Christians have all held that Christ inherited His Body and Blood from Mary, changing them into God just as He changes us into "gods by grace" by partaking in His Body and Blood through the Work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. 

At this point, one often hears the protest - “What about the Scriptures where it says ‘Joseph did not know his wife until the birth of their firstborn son’ (Mat 1:24-25) and places where it talks about the ‘Jesus’ brothers’? (Mat 13:55-56)” These are both sticky issues for some, since there is a tendency to believe that the text of Scripture means what the modern reader takes it to mean within their own culture and context. Firstly, the Protoevangelion makes it clear that Joseph was a widower and had sons of his own, so later on when James the Elder, brother of Jesus Christ, became the first Bishop of Jerusalem, it was Joseph’s eldest son, Jesus’ step-brother, who was over a decade older than Jesus and older than all the other disciples. Even though Peter was given the Apostolic Keys to the Kingdom and Christ says that the Church will be built on his statement “You are the Christ, the Son of God,” it was James who held sway, both because of his relationship with Christ and because of his seniority. Second, in Aramaic, the language that Jesus and his disciples speak, and that he is quoted in the New Testament as speaking, makes no difference between “brother” and “cousin.” This is how someone’s great-grandfather could be their “father” and their cousins, 2nd and 3rd cousins, could be accounted as their “brothers.” This is seen clearly in the Old Testament. Thirdly, the Greek word heos, “until”, that presents such a problem for so many, means “up to”, which insures us that Joseph did not carnally know Mary up to the point that Jesus was born. When it is used in the Septuagint in 2 Sam 6:23, and in the New Testament in 1 Tim 4:13 and 1 Cor 15:25, it does not imply that something ceased working after it was accomplished. This is clearly understood in many translations of the Greek into other languages, like the Aramaic Peshitta and the early, pre-Vulgate Latin translation, where they translate this troublesome passage as something like “Joseph did not know Mary during the entire time she bore Jesus.” The word heos does not tell us what happened afterward. Taking away the validity of the assumed circumstantial evidence that Jesus had younger brothers and sisters by comparison of biblical texts with the testimony of the Early Church, which explains the presence of older step-brothers and cousins in Christ’s life, we see that the word “until” does not imply that Joseph and Mary had sexual relations or other children after the birth of Christ or bore other sons and daughters. This is fortunate, because Joseph disappears from the biblical record after Christ’s debut in the temple with the scribes and elders, not because of an untimely death, but, as the Early Church maintained, that he passed away due to old age. 

Protestantism explains the Virgin Birth in terms of Causality, as if God had to come into the world without the agency of human fatherhood, and I accepted these teachings based on the authority and "common sense" of the logic. However, why is this the case? An even greater sign and redemption of Adam would be a birth without a mother, would it not? Wouldn't a divine theophany, not bound to flesh and shining in ultimate power and beauty be a form far more fitting for the avatar of God? Why would God take on dirty, entropy-filled, absolutely worthless flesh? Why would God decide that He wanted to come into our world through a little girl? The subtle minds of Greek and Roman philosophers were deeply attached to views of transcendence and gnosis, mysteries that imparted hidden and pride-inducing powers, and that relegated the body to a position of filth and brutality. The Jews saw God in a way that also rejected the possibility of God humiliating Himself. In the OT, God is always the "winner", always the condemnation of the physical, demanding the cutting of man's central and definitive part as a mark of submission to His Will. How could a cult that controverted all of these teachings, embracing the goodness of creation, the servanthood of God, and the hope of an eternally physical salvation respond? They did so by teaching that, through Christ, we were all destined to become like Christ's Mother, the Theotokos, who was the first in a long line of "Christ Bearers" - those who have been baptized into the Church and who are imparted the Holy Spirit! 

There are genuinely good people who believe they are defending against idolatry by rejecting the importance of Mary in the Church. I believe her role is a ultimately a mystery and something we cannot know through scholarship and reason – it is at the core of the greatest mystery that God ever accomplished, the Created taking on the Uncreated and uniting what is, by nature not God, to God Himself. One thing that is clear is that we are not free to disbelieve in the Virgin Birth and still call ourselves a “Christian.” The whole point of Christianity is that Christ must be fully God and fully Man in order to save us, and that this miraculous mystery was accomplished for our salvation in the womb of a Hebrew teenager in a Roman backwater. God emptied himself and took on the form of a servant (Phil 2:7). 

The truth of St. Mary’s absolute importance within this story, and her later position as “Seal of the Incarnation” in the Early church, is clear to us in our time and place. The reasons for loving her and honoring her are based in a love for Christ and a desire to obey God, not a desire to worship and love the creature more than the Creator. Those who have worshipped her are wrong in doing so, but the Early Church made a great distinction between “worship” (latria) and “respect” (dulia) – and the Councils all prohibit the former and encourage the later, recommending the Church to adopt an attitude of “Hyper-Dulia” and see Mary as the pinnacle of God’s Creation. When Mary, as a women and the representative of the Human Race, was pulled down from this position respect by the Radical Reformation, Christianity lost an extremely important aspect of love and appreciation for women in general, verging on an abusive attitude that has become prevalent in bible-believing and anti-sacramental churches, and undermining women as spiritual betters within an otherwise, necessarily male church hierarchy. This has been, unfortunately, one of the primary reasons that contemporary women have identified the Church as part of the problem, rather than the solution, to the oppression of women throughout the modern world. 

I personally believe it is better to side with Fathers and the Early Church (and the Reformers, on this point), to embrace the mystery, and see the Blessed Virgin as a paradigm for our salvation, rather than lifting myself up in pride and thinking that I somehow know better than those who were close to Christ, his Apostles, and the local churches that they started. It is better to love Mary, maintain the Church’s historic teachings and be wrong about her continual virginity, than to dismiss her and insult the uniqueness of Mother of Our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, who, while hanging upon the cross, thought of his mother’s safety and comfort above his own (John 19:26).