Of Mary, Do You Know? Some Desiderata for a Reformed Mariology
The season of Advent and the feast of Christmas is an easy choice for bringing attention to Mary, the mother of our Lord. It’s the one time of year when Christians of every tradition and variety are most open to positive and sustained reflection on her importance. It's true, I grant without resistance, that that reflection is routinely wrong-headed and compromised by intolerably cloying sentimentality, but at least Mary is somewhat on the radar.
Writing on Mary the day after Christmas Day, however, is less obviously strategic. Have I been too busy to write before today? In some ways, yes. But I also choose my timing for a reason. In the modern West, air does not escape a punctured balloon more quickly than the climactic Christological joy and Mariological honor of December 25 is–poof!--gone on December 26. Our heads hit our pillows in Mariological appreciation on December 25, and rise in Mariological amnesia on December 26. It even seems embarrassing to carry forward much at all of the one day into the next. The Christmas hymns sound different the next day. The ripe and beautiful fruit, it seems, immediately spoils.
For that reason, I write about Mary today, offering a few orienting suggestions on what it might look like for a confessional Reformed catholic appreciation of Mary that avoids errors of theology and practice on many sides and faithfully responds to the biblical call to honor her. I write today because we might possibly still, this many hours after December 25, faintly remember something of the story we sang yesterday. If we do this well, we may not only enjoy a different season of Christological and Mariological reflection when this season comes back around next year (d.v.), but may honor Mary (and others like her) properly between now and then as well.
In this series of posts to follow, I suggest that the question of Mary is, upon close examination, a fascinating and illuminating point of convergence for at least three important theological questions of our time: gender, Reformed catholicity, and what it means to read Scripture properly. The Mary question exposes contemporary vulnerabilities and problems in all three of these areas, and can serve as a kind of diagnostic tool for reconsidering what we are doing in Reformed theology today.
Gender
My interest in Mary, and my appreciation of the importance of Mary in Reformed theology, has been indirect. The occasion for my “deep dive” into Mary in Scripture, theology, and tradition has been my long, continuing work on vexed matters related to man and woman. Before long, work on gender requires focused attention on the Mary question, attention that goes beyond the caricatures of Mariology easily found in evangelical critiques of Roman Catholic theology or in many evangelical pulpits. I find it odd that so few writers in Christian gender theory and theology show any informed awareness of the tradition generally and of Mariology particularly. And it shows. In the texts of the history of theology, it is in fact remarkable to observe the extent to which reading and interpreting Mary has been the principal driver for developments and commitments in the area of what we now call gender. Philosophical schools and debates have certainly played a significant role in the history of gender theology, but nothing compares to the theology and piety related to Mary. One is related to the other, to be sure, but not identically. The development of Mariology along these two distinguishable lines of theology and piety (and these are two streams of Mariology that tend to be confused into one by evangelicals) is, to a great extent, the development of Christian gender theory.
This is not wholly inappropriate either, depending on what one understands about Mary in the world of Holy Scripture. The tradition has recognized, however imperfectly (and much has been imperfect at least), that the biblical figure of Mary says much about ideal womanhood and thus about the meaning of male and female. That she is explicitly chosen to be (and honored as) a mother will make some of our friends today uncomfortable, but Mary stands as a fixed reminder that motherhood is a high calling indeed, that “male” and “female” are not merely biological markers, that our difference is not merely physiological, and that one of these, the woman, has a glory that at least includes her unique ability and capacity to birth a child from herself. The divine choice of Mary rather than Joseph for bringing the Savior into the world bodily may have something to do with the divine favoring of women whom the world of men too often underestimate and even despise, but it also certainly has at least to do with the divine design that women, not men, give birth to children.
That much is uncontroversial for orthodox Christians. What may be less appreciated is the role of Mary biblically in putting the virtues and calling of womanhood, and therefore also of the Church, on display. This will be a key concern in the posts that follow in this series on Mary. If Roman Catholic theology (and especially piety) too often sees the Church as the type and figure of Mary in one way or another, we are arguably inclined to overlook how, biblically, Mary is a (arguably the) figure of the Church. She is not unique in this role biblically, but her positioning in Scripture signals a special importance for her calling. We are taught through Mary’s example how to be the Church–herself the bridal-motherly-city glory of the Lamb–faithfully.
At the same time, the biblical Mary is a rich and compelling figure who does not allow space for a range of current errors. She is honored and vocal and visible, but she provides no support for egalitarianism (quite the opposite, in fact). She is honored for doing as she’s told, for obeying in her call to be a mother, but she provides no support for the patriarchalists of our day either (again quite the opposite, in fact). In these ways and others, the biblical Mary stands as a critique and corrective to those who see only two options out there, and who have known or created much trouble by embracing either one of them.
Reformed Catholicity
The Mary question also serves as a heuristic tool for our commitment to confessional Reformed catholicity, or the lack thereof. There is much more to Reformed catholicity than the tradition question, and I lament how often this topic is confused with historical theology or certain figures in the tradition. For the Mary question, however, the problem of the tradition is a key one. Much of the Mary question has to do with how we will relate ourselves to the Christian tradition (in fact, traditions) on Mary in general, but one can also say that Mary exposes our relationship to Roman Catholicism in particular. One reason for this is the Roman Catholic nature of what passes for Mariology in the popular mind. Another reason is that the Roman Catholic Church has claimed that the pre-Reformation tradition of the Church (where so much Mariological material is found) belongs to them, and far too many Reformed Christians have agreed! How tragic, not least because the Reformers and post-Reformation confessional theologians insisted that the Reformed churches are not new but faithful expressions of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, and that the tradition is ours, not Rome’s. What our fathers in the Faith refused to relinquish because they knew the high stakes for doing so, we too often give up easily and gladly. Even if we say otherwise, much of what passes for Reformed theology in our day sounds as though truly good theology (and therefore “the tradition” we are obliged to honor) started in 1517, or 1640, or even 1936. Even then, the Mariological themes we read in the writings of the Reformers and the post-Reformation orthodox tend to provoke embarrassment rather than careful consideration, or are dismissed as “carry-overs” from a not-yet-completed Reformation rejection of all that the medieval church affirmed. It says a lot about us that our current thinking and practice can function so easily and thoughtlessly as a filter through which we choose to accept or reject what our fathers said before us–all while accusing others of evolutionary developmentalism and of rejecting the “ancient landmarks”!
The Mary of the Christian tradition: to whom does she belong? To us or to the Roman Catholic Church? Granted there have been many errors and distortions regarding Mary in the Christian tradition historically, as there have been for many doctrines, but are there only errors and distortions? And is there nothing to learn even from those who are wrong? This last question prompts the issue of learning from Roman Catholics today, since they tend to be the ones who have the longest tradition of taking Mary seriously in theological terms.
Early in the twentieth century a Reformed theologian wrote of his great encouragement in how his own work on Mary and the virgin birth of Jesus had been received by Roman Catholic scholars. He went on to agree “to the full” with certain critics who, though disagreeing with the writer, shared his “high estimate of the Roman Catholic Church.” He mentions in particular the great debt owed by New Testament and patristics students to Roman Catholic scholarship. Further, he said, he “rejoices greatly in the important contributions made by Roman Catholic scholars to the subject” of the virgin birth. It reveals much that is unhealthy about contemporary Reformed theology and churchmanship that expressions of appreciation like this for Roman Catholic scholarship are rare and tend to raise more than a few concerned eyebrows, or worse. Few Reformed theologians work carefully, humbly, and productively with the best Roman Catholic scholarship of our day, except perhaps (and only perhaps!) if the Roman Catholic author is agreeing with the Reformed author on a disputed point. To go as far as this older Reformed theologian, who not only recognized that Roman Catholic scholarship makes important contributions to a disputed question, but also said this without immediately launching into some or all the ways the author disagrees with Roman Catholicism on the question at issue, would provoke the accusation by some in our day of being over-generous and under-critical, and thus suspect and unreliable.
But the older writer was correct, and the contemporary blanket aversion to all things Roman Catholic suggests more about the new culture of recent “Reformed” theology than a supposed drift toward Rome by some in the Reformed camp. It also points to the failure of popular Reformed writers and teachers in the last generation or two to distinguish the Reformed tradition from the Roman Catholic tradition accurately and responsibly. For some of these current-day brethren, perhaps it would be meaningful (and for a small group, even decisive) to note that the early twentieth century Reformed theologian who said the things noted above was not Karl Barth or G. C. Berkouwer but J. Gresham Machen, and that he wrote them in the 1932 preface to the second edition of his 1930 book, The Virgin Birth of Christ. It’s a book that was well received and respected by Roman Catholics whose evaluations Machen welcomed, and which he appropriately dedicated to his own mother.
Scripture Reading
In my view, though, the single most important and conspicuous way that the Mary question serves as a heuristic tool for theology in our time is in the reading of Holy Scripture. Much of what follows in this series will focus on this question, so I will make only brief remarks here.
It often surprises many Christians to discover that Roman Catholic Mariology (here I have in view the theology, not the piety) is not derived from tradition as such but is in fact deeply biblical. I mean it is “biblical” in the sense that it is drawn from a range of careful exegetical and biblical-theological interpretations of a vast number of biblical texts. These are texts and readings which many evangelical Protestants know little or nothing about in relation to Roman Catholic views on Mary.
But they are important to examine and consider, not least because they tend to hold a great deal of rich and insightful truth while failing in what I call the Roman Catholic “leap” at the end. Along the way, before the “leap” is made, our own reading of the Scriptural Mary may be enriched, and our criticism of the Roman Catholic view may be rendered more responsible and effective.
It may also help us read Scripture better in general. In short, our ability to relate Mary carefully and properly to the rest of the canon of Holy Scripture (and thus not only to Matthew and to Luke), to appreciate the figural role she plays in the divine Word and work to which the entire canonical text bears witness, requires a departure from what has become current today among those who believe they hold to a “high view” of Scripture. As has been said before, we must join a “high use” to our “high view” of Scripture. One is not the other. On the one hand, there is arguably a hermeneutical dishonesty at work in those who will insist on various typological and figural meanings for other persons, events, and structures in Scripture (think of Joseph, Moses, David, the sacrificial cultus, the temple, the land, the feasts, circumcision/baptism) but who refuse to do the same when it comes to Mary, even when the figural connections are arguably stronger in the latter case. On the other hand, there is a manifest indebtedness to the destructive principles of modern higher criticism and, ironically, of anti-trinitarian Socinianism and Anabaptism at work in those who confuse a “high view” of Scripture with a preoccupation with alleged human authorial intention, “grammatical-historical” considerations, etymology and lexical questions, “it’s typology/figuration only if the NT explicitly says so,” and the like. Should such readers deploy the same hermeneutical rules in handling Scripture in all other places, they would have to reject the hermeneutic that led the Church to her christological, trinitarian, and other orthodoxies. Reading Mary forces such questions as we endeavor to do justice not only to her, a mother of the Faith, but to the One who has written of her precisely in the ways and in the time he did, and who has called us to hear what he says well.
How, then, does attending to the biblical Mary reconfigure our thinking and practice when it comes to the gender ideological crisis of our time, not only outside but within the Church? How does attending to the biblical Mary relate us positively but not uncritically to the catholic tradition to which we as Christian readers belong, and enrich our participation in the Church’s long obedience to the Lord’s command to honor her and others like her? How does attending to the biblical Mary force us to a faithful and productive hermeneutical self-consciousness which neither displaces the importance of space-time-history in God’s self-revelation through particular biblical authors and peoples, nor sidelines the central truth that it is one and the same God who speaks in all Holy Scripture at all times, who says the one glorious thing in these countless ways and forms, and whose “intent” is the determinative one received by faith among those in whom the Spirit of the Son works?
These are some of the considerations that belong, I suggest, to the Church’s faithful reflection on Mary. They are, if you will, only a few of the desiderata for a Reformed Mariology.