The most neglected texts about women in ministry in the entire Bible are texts about Mary, and because our class has been looking at Mary of late, I thought I'd make a few suggestions about Mary and Ministry for women. It won't do to dismiss these points as nothing more than what only the mother of Jesus could do.
I'll suggest that Mary was first in many ways.
1. Mary was the first to know about arrival of the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of the Most High God (Luke 1:26-38).
2. Mary was the first to surrender to God's new redemptive plan in Jesus (Luke 1:38). One could say she was the "first disciple" from this.
3. Mary became -- however you care to say it -- the first witness to Jesus Christ. Only she was there at the very beginning, so only she was able to tell this story.
4. This leads me to this conclusion: Mary became the first human font of the "Christian hermeneutic." Let's admit up front that the "Christian hermeneutic" -- the grid of learning to read the entire story of God through the story of Jesus -- is revealed to Mary by the Holy Spirit, but that entire grid was passed on from the Holy Spirit through Mary to others. In other words, though not alone, Mary is the first one to know what has become the orthodox Christian view of Jesus: we now believe Jesus as Messiah, as Son of the Most High God, because Mary "passed on that hermeneutic" to others. (She's not alone, but she's first.)
The words we use, the words that shape what we believe, are words that have their human origins in Mary.
5. Mary is the first "follower of Jesus" (while still in her uterus) to declare what that kingdom ministry would look like when it occurred -- even if she had to adjust her thinking, her Magnificat announces what God will do through her Most High God Son (Luke 1:46-55). Both Zechariah and Simeon confirmed this, and then Jesus himself preached it and lived it out (Luke 4:18-19 and Matt 11:5-6).
6. Mary is the first (along with Joseph) to hear that her Son would not only cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, but that the "sword" would pierce her own soul -- surely an indication of the crucifixion at some level (2:33-35).
7. Mary is the first (perhaps along with Joseph) to hear that her Son had a unique and transcending relation to his Father (Luke 2:41-50).
8. Mary, perhaps along with Peter, was the first to struggle with the unique kind of Messianic ministry Jesus would actually carry out -- from the incident in the Temple (#7) to the wedding at Cana (John 2:1-11) to her brush with Jesus' vision of the true family (Mark 3:20-21, 31-35) -- and one of the first to be a witness to the crucifixion as God's saving event (John 19:25-27).
9. Mary, with others, was the first to participate in the Spirit of Pentecost (Acts 1:14).
Put together, we've got Mary as not only a unique person in history but a dynamic woman minister -- she verbally and theologically shaped how you and I understand who Jesus is.
Can anyone tell me why Mary is so often neglected when it comes to talking about women in ministry?
And, if you are interested in helping more churches get women connected to ministry, check out this blog by Ben Dubow at St. Paul's.
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The objection Michael brings up, about the dogma of Immaculate Conception necessitating (or seeming to?) that the Theotokos is saved in a different way than we all are, is precisely the objection the Orthodox have made to it. It really does come down to a differing view of original sin and its consequences. If anyone is interested in this, I had a thread on The Ooze discussing these differences.
Ancestral vs. Original Sin
I'm sorry, Benedict, if it seems to you that pointing out real differences between Orthodoxs and Catholics seems like "throwing you under the bus." Most Protestants assume the Orthodox are Catholics with beards, but real differences do exist.
In practice, as others have pointed out, the Orthodox are not shy in proclaiming the Theotokos as All-Holy, incomparable, and various other things that give Protestants heartburn. Thus far we definitely are united.
Michael: My quote a while back about there being only one life in Christ was to emphasize the continuity of fellowship among Christians over which death itself has no power. How do we commune together as Christians now, visibly? The most powerful bond we have is in the Holy Spirit. That is not a bond that can be broken by physical death. Protestants also express this communion by doing the very sort of thing Scot is doing here- learning about the great men and women of the faith. Yet that is to relegate things only to the intellectual and to the external. As I said, to me this now (on the other side of conversion to Orthodoxy) unfeeling, cold, unnatural, and not theologically sound. I don't really expect you to understand, and that's fine. You express your admiration of and gratitude to St. Mary in your way- no arguments here about that.
Gina,
You make my point. The Immaculate Conception is simply the consequence of calling the original condition sin rather than mortality. Your difference is over how to name the original condition. And since we asterisk the "sin" in original sin as different from actual sin, our "defect in original righteousness" for the original condition is not entirely different from your mortality.
We agree that Mary was sinless as far as actual sin (freely chosen sin) goes, right? Or are you agreeing with Chrysostom and Basil that she did commit an "adult" actual sin?
Will you grant my point, taken directly from a number of Orthodox websites, that many Orthodox do believe that Mary never committed an actual sin (agreeing with Irenaeus rather than Chrysostom)? Do you really want to insist that all Orthodox agree with Basil and Chrysostom and reject Irenaeus and all the other Eastern Fathers?
Do you believe that Mary was subject to the condition of mortality? Those Orthodox who follow Irenaeus in asserting Mary never committed actual sin but was subject to mortality, are then making her a unique exception to all other human persons for whom mortality leads inexorably to actual sin.
In that sense, Orthodox who follow Irenaeus and the New Eve sinlessnes line agree with Latin Catholics: Mary was exceptional. The only difference is that the West talks about original _sin_ rather than mortality, so our "exception" occurs at conception rather than in the movement from original mortality to actual sin.
Indeed, is there not a long tradition among Orthodox that Mary, though conceived in mortality, was sanctified in the womb and freed from mortality by the power of Christ? John the Baptist and Jeremiah were "exceptional" in their pre-birth sanctification and freeing from mortality (original sin in Western terms). Surely Mary would have, in Orthodox Panaghia, "All-Holy" terms, have been sanctified at least at the same stage or earlier?
If so, then we agree on her exceptionalism but disagree about whether it occurred at or soon after her conception.
My point is that Orthodox have it drilled into them that they differ from Catholics on the Immaculate Conception issue. It's an easy way to delineate the Other's otherness. But it's something of a cheap shot. Centuries ago, when many Latin Catholics did believe that original sin was really sin and damned to hell (even if to a minimal punishment), which Jansenists resurrected but were condemned for resurrecting--in those days, there was greater gulf between Orthodox and Catholics over Immaculate Conception.
But since the high Middle Ages, we have not defined original "sin" as sin in the normal sense, rather, as an absence of original righteousness akin to your original mortality. Orthodox owe to Catholics the courtesy of acknowledging the present Catholic doctrine on original sin and the way that it relativizes the gap over the Immaculate Conception. Yes, we disagree over IC, but nearly as much as the polemicists would have us think we do.
Throwing under the bus was not directed at you but at Paul Johnston who quickly agreed with you on this matter and took a shot at his fellow Catholics without, I think, fully understanding the entire map of original "sin," original mortality, actual-sinlessness, sanctification immediately after conception, sanctification at the instant of conception (IC).
In a subsequent post I will list some quotations from Eastern Fathers about Mary's sinlessness in order to suggest that to say in a blanket statement that Orthodox do not believe in Mary's sinlessness is a bit too much.
Ephrem of Syria: Mary is more beautiful than anything, immaculate, no stain, no mark (Carmina Nisibena, 27.8; CSCO 219.76; Gambero, _Mary and the Fathers of the Church_, p. 109)
Proclus (who succeeded Nestorius as patriarch of Constantinople in 434) preached in Nestorius’s presence a homily in honor of Mary the Mother of God, Mary the Bearer of God (Theotókos), praising her as the “immaculate treasure of virginity, spiritual paradise of the second Adam, workshop of the union of [Christ’s two] natures, marketplace of the saving exchange, bridal chamber in which the Word was wedded to the flesh, living bush that was not burned by the fire of the divine birth, the true light cloud that bore the One who, in his body stands above the cherubim, fleece moistened by celestial dew, with which the Shepherd clothes his sheep.” (Oratio 1.1; PG 65:681A-B; Gambero, Fathers, p. 235)
Even Chrysostom does not explicitly say Mary sinned. He thinks she lacked faith, but exactly when that crosses into sin is hard to determine. Cyril of Alexandria does much the same--he thinks Mary was "scandalized" by the Cross, but that does not have to mean she sinned or was faithless.
Theodotus of Ancyra [Ankara] (d. before 446) (Gambero, Fathers, pp. 260-271): “The fruit of your womb is not autumnal; rather, it is a shoot of immortality. It is not a harvest that came as a gift of nature but a flower sprung from divine seed. For you gave birth to the Beginning who has no beginning, a child who is before all ages, the Virgin’s Son, the Eternal who is nurtured in your womb, to him who is older than his Mother yet is nursed by him, to him who nourishes all creatures and who clothes himself in human form, to the Splendor of God who presents himself as a pauper, to the King who will have no successor. Therefore I salute you, O Virgin full of grace, Mother among virgins and Virgin among mothers, archetype of both mothers and virgins, but superior to both.” (Homily 6.12; debate over authenticity, but Jugie believes it authentic)
she is the Virgin Mother (262) and for that role God prepared her (263-64): iron is purified in fire and takes on similarity to the fire (glows red hot, white hot):
“how much more, in a superior way, did the Virgin burn when the divine fire (the Holy Spirit) rushed in? She was purified from earthly impurities, and from whatever might be against her nature, and was restored to her original beauty, so as to become inaccessible, untouchable, and irreconcilable to carnal things” (Homily 4.6; PG 77:1397B-C; Gambero, p. 264)
He gives an extended of her upright, sinless, moral character--her obedience, humility, prudence, fortitude (not timid), gravitas (“not light in her mind, but solid in her soul”); her lack of deception or guile or flattery; her cheerfulness, gladness etc.--her interior disposition to right, to holiness as found in the excerpt on pp. 270-271 (from On the Mother of God and on the Nativity)
Andrew of Crete (d. ca. 740) (Gambero, pp. 391-99): he asserts that Mary lived a spotless life, that she was the “first to be liberated from the original fall of our first parents” (393) Her mother "Anna was . . . from all eternity, . . . destined to be the mother of the chaste Virgin, from whom the Creator was to come forth in the form of a servant. Unsullied Lamb, who alone, from your womb, gave Christ the wool of our nature, we all celebrate your birth from Anna with songs.” (Canon on the Nativity [of Mary], PG 97:1316C-1320 A; Gambero, Fathers, p. 394)
"Today pure human nature receives from God the gift of the original creation and reverts to its original purity. By giving our inherited splendor, which had been hidden by the deformity of vice, to the Mother of him who is beautiful, human nature receives a magnificent and most divine renovation, which becomes a complete restoration. The restoration in turn becomes deification, and this becomes a new formation, like its pristine state.” (Homily I on the Nativity, PG 87:809D-812A; Gambero, p. 394-95)
John of Damascus: “But we, who consider God the object of adoration--a God not made out of anything, but existing from all eternity, beyond every cause, word, or concept of time and nature--we honor and venerate the mother of God.” (Homily II on the Dormition, 15; PG 96:744A; Gambero, p. 406)
Veneration of Mary, higher than the saints, is done solely to glorify God: “If the memory of all the saints is celebrated with panegyrics, who will refuse to praise the font of justice and the treasury of holiness? This is not done to glorify her, but so that God might be glorified with an eternal glory.” (Homily I on the Dormition, 1; PG 96:700A; Gambero, p. 407)
It is true that Eastern Fathers tended to evade the exact ultimate, final statement of absolute sinlessness more than Western Fathers--the Eastern Fathres use the language of all holy, immaculate, stainless etc., implying total sinlessness, without taking the next step of saying that she never, everr sinned. But Theodotus, Andrew of Crete, John of Damascus do everything but dot the i's and cross the t's. The Western Fathers take that final step much more readily.
Benedict, these are too long. Long comments are conversation stoppers.
Hi Benedict,
Sorry if my earlier comments caused offense. I only meant to distinguish what I thought were real differences between RC and EC orthodoxies with regard to the Virgin Mary. It was my opinion, at that time, that my conversation partner was assuming that they were identical.
If my perspective lacked subtlety please accord that to a lack of understanding on my part and not a deliberate attempt to slight or offend.
As for throwing you "under the bus", if I did you sure got up in a hurry and had a lot to say about it...LOL
....That's no intent to insult either, my friend. Just a friendly "shot in the arm", one Catholic cousin to another. :)
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