Mary: The Beginning of Tradition

The Church teaches that Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture constitute whole cloth, from a single source, inseparable, in communication with one another, "form one thing and move toward the same goal" (CCC 80). This unity between scripture and emergent tradition is made very clearly visible in the emergent Mariology of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, AD.

We have noted how the Biblical view of Mary appears to have developed during the 50-year period in which Sacred Scripture was written. Mary is mentioned in passing - if at all - in the earliest canonical writings (Paul's letters) but the beginnings of a Marian theology (obedient servant, handmaiden of the Lord, mother of the Church) are developing in the latest Gospels, Luke and John.

Sacred Tradition underwent a similar development. Mary is a side issue in the early development of tradition (of interest, it appears, primarily as an adjunct to fierce battles over the nature of Christ). Within a few hundred years after the death of Christ, however, Marian theology began to develop as a subject of independent interest to Christian theologians, as the Church's understanding and appreciation of Mary's role deepened.

The earliest sources of tradition (to 200 AD), like the earliest canonical writings, show little interest in Mary, except as an adjunct to theological battles over the nature of Christ as God and/or man. The theology of the period was dominated by Christological controversy. Heresies came from opposite extremes: On one side was Docetism and Gnosticism (both denied the humanity of Jesus for the sake of divinity) and on the other was Adoptionism (denied the divinity of Jesus for the sake of humanity). The two heresies were so extreme that the teaching fathers of the Church were able to identify the fundamental errors in the opposing positions, and no official condemnation (e.g. a council) was needed to keep the Church on steady course.

Marian theology of the period is scarce. Marian references are rare before 150 CE and are extremely limited during the period 150 - 200 CE., but they are of importance to the development of Marian theology at a later period.From the references and evidence given by the four evangelists of the New Testament era a basic there arose a basic love and respect for the role of Mary of Nazareth both as mother and disciple of Jesus. The early Christian writers continued to use the testaments for their evolving theology and Christology. The persons who surrounded Jesus were to be emulated and revered. They were considered his valuable witnesses and disciples.

Early pastors of the church of the second and third centuries drew from the developments about her in the Scriptures. Soon, however their own theological ponderings led them to consider her as virgin mother, New Eve, woman of courage and faithful disciple, and as a symbol of the church. Such reflections of her memory served to keep Mary alive and active in the hearts and minds of Christians.

Ignatius of Antioch (=c.112C.E) in his letters to the churches of Ephesus, Tralles, Magnesia, Rome, Philadelphia and Smyrna and in his letters to Polycarp, gives a strong Incarnational Christology and an ecclesiology built upon apostolic foundations, but within these texts are five citations regarding Mary.

Written within the creedal statements Ignatius was stating they embed Mary into the central mystery of Christ, the Saviour. For Ignatius, the reality of Jesus' human nature comes from the human nature of his virgin mother, Mary. She is truly a mother, and, according to Ignatius, shows the ordinary stages of motherhood - conception, pregnancy and birth. This, of course was abhorrent to the gnostics, who eschew the material reality of womanhood and never employed a vocabulary of love - particularly, as Buby points out, creative-redemptive love.

For Ignatius, Mary is empowered to conceived Jesus and remain a virgin by the power of the Holy Spirit. Her virginal condition and her parturition give witness to the hopeful predestination of all believers, because of the power of God working through the humanity of Jesus Christ in a healing manner, precisely because he was born of a human mother (cf Buby, p. 4).

Whilst the mariology of Ignatius in embedded in his clear ecclesiology and patroal theology, it is an important step. Ignatius clearly sees the importance of Mary as verifying the humanness of Jesus. She is necessary, in his theological reasoning, for she testifies to the historical reality of Jesus.

Justin the martyr (110/110-165 C.E) developed the theological schema found in Ignatius. There is a divine and creative saving plan which is realized in and through Jesus' word and life as Logos. In that plan, Mary is seen to be participating actively as a new Eve. Going beyond the view of Ignatius, Justin explores and articulates the importance Christ and Mary have in the history of humankind. They are the new Adam and Eve. His contribution to the evolving consideration of Mary is to be found in his "Dialogue with Trypho", where he states: " 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, who was a virgin and undefiled, having conceived by 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.... 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; but works deliverance from death to those who repent of their wickedness and believe in Him."

Justin's originality lies in his re-reading of the story of Genesis 3 in light of the Annunciation expounded in Luke's gospel (Lk. 1.26-38). Basing his marian exposition on scripture, his comparison between Eve and Mary is destined to become the foundation for Marian theology.

Irenaeus of Lyons (140-202 C.E)develops the Justinian Eve/Mary parallel in a fare more complete fashion - so much so that he has been called the church's first Mariologist. In his theological exploration, he develops a theory of recapitulation in which everything which had gone wrong or turned away from God the Creator is restored and made new in the Christ event. Christ restores the new image of Adam; the Cross recalled the tree of the Fall; Mary is what Eve was intended to be, but lost through her disobedience. Moving beyond a mere analogy or parallel (which Justin had used), Ireneaus posits a theology and anthropology which underscores the new reality brought into being with Christ. There is a new creation bound up with the plan of God in the history of salvation. Mary is involved with Christ the restorer and perfection of the original project of God's creation. She as New Eve is also an image of the church.

In summary then we can say that:
(1) Ignatius' writings were concerned with Mary's pre-natal virginity and Jesus' virginal conception, and appear to have been written in response to the "human only" heresy of Adoptionism.

(2) Justin's writings expanded on the virgin birth theme. Justin argued that the virgin birth was proof of his messiahship and a sign of a new age. In addition, Justin expanded Paul's Adam-Christ dichotomy (as in Adam all men were born, in Christ all men are reborn) to draw a parallel between Eve and Mary. Eve obeyed the serpent, becoming the mother of sin; Mary obeyed the angel, becoming the mother of salvation.

(3) Irenaeus continued the Eve-Mary typology by drawing a direct relationship between the Eve-Mary symbol and the Adam-Christ model, explicitly developing a model of Mary as the new Eve, the mother of the new humanity in whom God, through Christ Jesus, made a new beginning.

The tradition of a miraculous, virgin birth seems to have gained impetus in Marian theology from two Christological needs of the early Church:

(1) the need to uphold the reality of Jesus' physical birth over against the Docetists and the Gnostics, who denied the humanity of Christ, and the impact of apocryphal writings.

The Apocrypha

If the works of Ignatius, Justin and Ireneaus are important for the development of mariological thought in the context of christology and ecclesiology, the emergence of the apocrypha in the second and third centuries are also important, as the apocrypha represent a theologically imaginative way of probing what was left unsaid about the persons who surrounded Jesus. Among these works of imaginative construction is "Birth of Mary: Revelation of James" (commonly known as the "Protoevangelium of James"), dating to about 150 CE. The document details the early family life of Mary, her birth, her betrothal to Joseph, the annunciation, the birth of Jesus, the coming of the Magi, and so on. The document *is not* important because it appears to be based on a reliable historical tradition or because it adds anything to Church teaching. The document appears to have been a Docetic apologetic, and was condemned as false teaching by the Church in numerous documents, including the Gelasian Decree of the late 4th century. However, the Protoevangelium of James *is* important in a study of the development of Marian theology in the Church because the story it told dominated the Marian "folk" legend for centuries. The fact that there are over one hundred copies of this text still extant testify to its popularity - and references to it can still be found in the writings of the Mary of Agreda (+1665) and Catherine Emmerich (+1824). While the Apocrypha cannot be used to establish any definitive Mariological insight, they are interesting because of the insight and the power they have to capture and contribute to popular marian piety and devotion.
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Mary: 200 CE To 800 CE

If, during the second century, Marian theology focused on the virgin birth. 2nd century theologians evidenced no concern about the post-partum virginity of Mary. The few 2nd century writers who did discuss the issue (Tertullian, for example) strongly resisted the idea of perpetual virginity, lest the Church yield ground to the Docetists and the Gnostics.

During the 3rd century, as the memory of Docetism and Gnosticism faded, Mary's perpetual virginity came to be almost universally accepted. The development appears to have been a pragmatic accommodation (by this period, consecrated virgins had been accorded a special status in the Church and Mary, ever virgin, was presented as a model to them) followed by theological development. Increasingly too, both Western and Eastern Church writers saw Mary as a model of all virtues, an example to all Christians of faith, obedience and humility.

A notable exception to this trend was St. John Chrysostom (d 407) who acknowledged the negative flavor of Mark's estimation of Mary. In the "Homilies on St. John's Gospel, St. John Chrysostom wrote: "... she did not cease to think little of [Jesus] ... but herself she though everywhere worthy of the first place, because she was his mother ..." As he saw it, Mary told Jesus at Cana that there was not more wine only because "she wanted to confer a favor on the others, and render herself more illustrious through her Son." Even at the annunciation, as St. John told the tale, Mary was at fault. The angel had to calm her down lest she kill herself in despair over the news that she was pregnant out of wedlock. St. John Chrysostom was an exception to the age, however - no one would speak of Mary in such derogatory terms until the Reformation.

The most important development in Marian theology during this period, however - the concept of "Mary, Mother of God" - resulted from a Christological controversy that broke out in Antioch around the year 360. The question concerned the dual nature of Jesus. Jesus was both God and human - how did the two natures relate to one another? Were the two natures unified or distinct? The debate became so bitter that two councils (Ephesus and Chalcedon) were needed to resolve the issues.

The controversy is not a simple one. It was started by a small group of Christians who regarded the unity of the two natures as so important that the human soul of Jesus was entirely supplanted by Jesus' divine nature. Jesus was not, in this view, "fully human" because his soul was divine. He was, as the phrase went, "God in human flesh", but not human.

In reaction, another group of Christians arose who regarded unity of the two natures as less important than the humanity of Christ, and this group (eventually known as the Nestorians, from which the name of the dispute - the "Nestorian controversy" arose) insisted upon the complete fullness of the humanity of Jesus. The Nestorians argued that Jesus the human was born of Mary and Jesus the divine was born by grace from God, and not of Mary. The effect was to separate the two natures of Christ.

The Council of Ephesus (431) was called to settle the issue. The council condemned Nestorianism but did not settle the issue. The primary result of the council was negative -- Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, was sacked by the council, and two great fathers of the Eastern Church, John of Antioch and Cyril of Alexandria, excommunicated each other. But the controversy raged on.

Twenty years later, the Council of Chalcedon developed a formula, based on the 2nd century work of Tertullian (Christ Jesus is one person, of two natures) which laid the groundwork for our present views of the relationship of God and man in Christ.

However, the Council of Ephesus took a major step in Marian theology. The council ruled in favor of Mary as theotokos ("Mother of God"). Mary as theotokos stemmed directly from the Christological debate - the concept defines that Jesus' divine nature flows through Mary as well as his human nature.

The decision of Ephesus was an impetus to Marian devotion. Popular interest in Marian "folk" writings, in particular the Protoevangelium of James (the non-canonical, condemned writing discussed above), increased, and the stories told in that writing became part of the Marian legend of the time.

Increased Marian devotion led to an increase of Marian feasts. Before the definition of Mary as theotokos, the Church recognized a single Marian liturgical feast - the Purification (the feast was recognized in the Eastern Churches, but not in the Roman Churches, which recognized no Marian feasts at that time). After Ephesus, Marian feasts began to multiple. Various Churches began to celebrate the assumption. By the middle of the 7th century, Rome observed four Marian feasts: the Annunciation, the Purification, the Assumption and the Nativity of Mary.

(A word on the Assumption: the belief in Mary's bodily assumption into heaven arose in the early 6th century. The belief was not founded upon Biblical evidence or the writings of the patristics, but result from an "argument of convenience" - it was fitting that Jesus should have rescued his mother from the corruption of the flesh, and therefore he "must have" taken her bodily in to heaven when she died.)

The feast of the Conception of Mary arose in the Eastern Church during this period, as well. Eventually, this feast became, in the Western Church, associated with the idea of Mary's immaculate conception. The Eastern feast, however, did not celebrate the Immaculate Conception, as we in the Western Church understand it. The Eastern Church has a different understanding of Original Sin, so for Eastern Christians, the idea of "Mary alone without stain" does not imply "conceived without sin" but rather freedom from mortality and general human weakness.

Popular faith in Mary's power of intercession with God arose during this period in the Eastern Church, as well, although theological definition of Mary's role as mediatrix and advocate did not develop immediately. The closest thing to theological development during this period was the writing of Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople (d 733) who popularized the view that Mary had a maternal influence over God, that she could turn away God's anger and vengeance. By the beginning of the 8th century, Mary's role as intercessor and advocate had become universally recognized in the Eastern Church, taught in popular literature and preaching, although not yet reflected in Church theology.

Mary's role as intercessor and advocate did not similarly develop in the Roman Church during this period. That came later. Western development awaited import of the "legend of Theophilus", which, when translated into Latin in the late 700's, began to spread in the Roman Church and formed a basis on which Mariology of the Middle Ages was founded.

In the eigth century, Germanus had expressed the idea that Mary holds back the wrath of God. This idea became one of the most popular expressions of a later medieval Marian piety and devotion. And with the evolution of the medieval period, Western theology became divorced from the Bible. A rational, deductive kind of reasoning prevailed. The most common rational argument was known as the argument from convenience. The structure of the argument was simple: God could do something; it was fitting that God should; therefore, God did. This theological principle would play a large role in the development of medieval Marian theology.

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References:
Bertrand Buby, Mary of Galillee, Vol 3: Particulary Chs. 1-4
H. Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion - Vol. 1
Walter J. Burghardt 'Mary in Eastern Patristic Thought', Mariology, 3 vols. Ed J.B.Carol. Milwaukee: Bruce, 1957, Vol. II, 88-153.
H. Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Sutdies in Justin, Clement and Origen. New York, 1966