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ELIZABETH A. JOHNSON

The first-century Jewish woman Miriam

of Nazareth, mother of Jesus, pro-
Claimed in faith as the 7heotokos, the
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waited book on Mary (the title of which
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with God, Johnson seeks to understand
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faith’s dark cloud. Remembering Mary

(Continued
on back flap)
 or 8 TITAN 3 1111 02407 1688

N RAFA
SAN RAFAEL, CALIFORNIA

DATE DUE
DEC 2 0 2003
JAN 2 1 2004
app 03-200
“NOW 0 82005"
DEC 0 8 2005
JAN 12 2006
MAY 0.6 2010
 OU Your bees eee
Teale Moree Wee
? TRULY OUR SISTER
 Truly Our Sister
A THEOLOGY OF MARY
IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

Elizabeth A. Johnson

San Rafael Public Library

1100 E Street
San Rafael, CA 94901

\ continuum
NEW YORK @e LONDON
2003

The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc

370 Lexington Avenue, New York NY 10017

The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd

The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE] 7NX

Copyright © 2003 by Elizabeth A. Johnson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Rosemary Broughton for permission to reprint the

poem “Liturgy” by Irene Zimmermann, SSSF, from Womensprings, compiled by Julia
Ahlers, Rosemary Broughton, and Carol Koch, and published by St. Mary’s Press; also to
Theological Studies for permission to use “Mary and the Female Face of God” (Theological
Studies 50 [1989]: 500-526) as the basis for chapter 4.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Johnson, Elizabeth A., 1941-

Truly our sister : a theology of Mary in the communion of saints /
Elizabeth A. Johnson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. __).
ISBN 0-8264-1473-7
1. Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint—Theology. 2. Catholic
Church—Doctrines. I. Title.
BT613.J65 2003
232.91—dc21
2003005640
 Dedicated to
all the women of the world
who struggle for the flourishing
of their own human dignity
oe

Mary is “truly our sister, who as a poor and humble

woman fully shared our lot.”
—Pope Paul VI

“For poor women Mary is not a heavenly creature but

shares their lives as a comrade and sister in struggle.”
—Maria Pilar Aquino, Mexico

Mary is our “sister: a woman in solidarity with other

women and the oppressed.”
—Chung Hyun Kyung, Korea

“Tt is the Mary of the Gospels, on whose lips is placed the

Magnificat, who is seen as a colleague by women around
the world who are rediscovering that they have a mission
in society and church. ... [Her] face is no longer only
that of Our Lady, glorious Queen of Heaven, but also
and primarily an elder sister and traveling companion.”
Ivone Gebara and Maria Clara Bingemer, Brazil

“Perhaps for our time her best title is not ‘mother, but
‘sister in faith, not one who directs or defines our way,
but one who reminds us of the resources we carry with
us as we go.”
Patricia Noone, United States
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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xl
INTRODUCTION xiii

PART 1
WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEw KEY

CHAPTER
ie Fragments in the Rubble
A Rich Tapestry
Hearing Women’s Voices
Critical Judgments
Creative Insights —

Theological Significance Ww
W
DW
CO
WN

NO . Women’s Theological Work

The Ice Cracks 18
Critical Judgments De
Creative Interpretations 36

PART 2
Roaps Not TAKEN

1S). Cul-de-Sac: The Ideal Face of Woman 47

One Human Race 47
Mary and the Patriarchal Feminine 54
Lighting Out for the Territory 66

Vil
Vili CONTENTS

4, Cul-de-Sac: The Maternal Face of God 71

Mining a Rich Lode ig
Historical Soundings 73
Giving Back: The Migration Begins 86
Pastoral Judgment 91

PART 3
A Way FoRWARD

Qn . A Modest Proposal 95
From Transcendent Symbol to Historical Person 95
A Pneumatological Theology of Mary 101
Issues of Interpretation 104

ON. Precedents 114

Two Millennia, Two Patterns 114
Vatican II: Clash of the Titans 1s:
From Mediatrix to Model 128
“Truly Our Sister” 131

PART 4
PICTURING A WoRLD

NI. Galilee: The Political-Economic World 137

Picturing a World 137,
The Lay of the Land 140
Economic Structures 144
Political Rulers 150

co. Second Temple Judaism: The Religious World 162

On Being Jewish 162
In Galilee 166
Going Up to Jerusalem 171
Jewish Christians/Christian Jews Lie

\O. Women: The Social-Cultural World 185

A Pernicious Contrast 185
Marriage and Family 190
Everyday Life i359
CONTENTS

PART 5
Mary IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

10. The Dangerous Memory of Mary: A Mosaic 209

Theological Memory 209
Outside (Mark 3:20-21 and 31-35) 27
In the Company of the Unconventional Foremothers
(Matthew 1:1-17) PPA
Scandal and the Spirit (Matthew 1:18-25) 226
Wisdom from the East (Matthew 2:1-12) 240
Refugees from Slaughter (Matthew 2:13-23) 242
Annunciation: Call of the Prophet (Luke 1:26-38) 247
Visitation: Joy in the Revolution of God (Luke 1:39-56) 258
“And She Gave Birth” (Luke 2:1—20) 274
Fulfilling Torah (Luke 2:21-40) 278
Losing and Finding (Luke 2:41-52) 282
Wine at the Wedding (John 2:1-11) 287
Near the Cross (John 19:25—27) 293
“All Filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:14-15 and 2:1-21) 2,

Be Mary, Friend of God and Prophet 305

The Spirit Who Weaves Connections 305
The Grace of the Living 308
A Cloud of Witnesses S44
Paradigmatic Figures 313
The Companionship Pattern 315
Companions in Memory and Hope 319
A Prayer for a Season of Struggle 322

NOTES 326

INDEX OF SUBJECTS AND NAMES Jf4

INDEX OF ANCIENT SOURCES Dias

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4

Acknowledgments

|t is a distinct pleasure to acknowledge the many persons and institu-

tions which have contributed to this work. My leading thanks go to
Fordham University, whose generous and enlightened sabbatical policy
provided the time for research and writing. The university’s library staff,
led by James McCabe, gave unending, superb service. My graduate
researchers, Antoinette Gutzler, Kathryn Lilla Cox, Patricia Houlihan, and
Gloria Schaab, assisted me generously and with joy; they have my heartfelt
thanks. Gloria Schaab in particular deserves credit for casting a sharp edi-
torial eye over the final text and notes, and doing yeowoman’s service on
the index.
For over twenty years I have taught graduate courses on this subject in
universities and schools of theology. John Ford, chair of the Theology
Department at Catholic University of America, deserves credit for my
beginnings, insisting that I design and teach such a course despite my ini-
tial reluctance. The questions and insights of younger Catholics and of stu-
dents from Protestant and Anglican traditions, and in a special way from
women, have immeasurably enriched and challenged my own thinking, as
any teacher knows. I am honestly and happily in my students’ debt. As a
member of the Lutheran/Catholic dialogue in the United States, I partici-
pated in an eight-year round on Mary and the saints, delving deeply into
official Catholic and Reformation sources and wrestling with ecumenical
aspects. This was challenging, enriching work, and I learned much from
my colleagues in dialogue.
Warmest thanks go to my colleagues Mary Catherine Hilkert, Nancy
Dallavalle, Ellen Umansky, Mary V. Maher, and John Perry, who read and
critiqued chapters of this text in progress. In a special way Anthony L.
Rubsys, biblical scholar, teacher, and friend, accompanied me with criti-
cism and encouragement through the scripture passages that form the

xl
Xil ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

heart of this book. Our conversations shortly before the book was finished
and, unknowingly, shortly before his life was finished, led to a wholesale
revamping of the flow of the book’s argument. I honor this unpayable
debt. Other friends provided me with substantive material on the subject:
Constance Fitzgerald, Thomas Shelley, Aristotle Papanikolaou, Connie
Loos, and Jack Healy. Through e-mails and other communiqués, Terrence
Tilley, Catherine Patten, Margaret Galiardi, Robert Sadowski, John
Cabrido, Miguel Lambino, Ginny Gerace, and Kathryn Lilla Cox sent
invaluable questions, suggestions, and their own wisdom.
In its early stages this work received a hearing as the keynote lecture at
Villanova University’s 26th Theology Institute. Midway through, some of
its ideas were presented at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress.
When it was at a more advanced stage, the John Courtney Murray lecture,
sponsored by the journal America, provided another airing with a discern-
ing audience. I thank the organizers of these events for the opportunity to
engage a wider public, with resulting benefits to my own thinking. With
elegance, wit, and grace, my editor Frank Oveis supported this work. His
personal encouragement, laced with humor, lit up long days of writing; his
professional interest ensured publication in a more than timely manner.
He is a marvelous ally, and my gratitude knows no bounds. My religious
community, the Sisters of St. Joseph, Brentwood, has never ceased sup-
porting my work, including this book; I am deeply, continually grateful.
Finally, I thank all the women from different parts of the world who have
shared with me their stories, struggles, and insights about faith over the
years, both orally and in writing. Our ongoing dialogue sparked this book.
It is to them that this work is dedicated.
4g

Introduction

- his book proposes that one fruitful approach to the theology of

Mary, historically the mother of Jesus, called in faith the Theotokos
or God-bearer, is to envision her as a concrete woman of our history
who walked with the Spirit. Keeping faith through the days of her own life,
she is now counted among the great “cloud of witnesses” that surrounds
the church on earth with encouragement. This proposal entails picturing
her historical world and pondering the theological glimpses of her life in
scripture, so as to remember her today as our sister, herself a friend of God
and prophet in the communion of saints. In a previous book, Friends of
God and Prophets: A Feminist Theological Reading of the Communion of
Saints (New York: Continuum, 1998), I have already explored the history
and theology of the great doctrinal symbol of the communion of saints,
that intergenerational community of the living and the dead stretching
across time and space and comprised of all who are made holy by the Spirit
of God. Here I explore the intellectual, practical, and spiritual understand-
ings that result when we place Miriam of Nazareth in that blessed com-
pany. Since Friends of God and Prophets forms the theological framework
of this book, the two are companion volumes. At the same time, since
major ideas are reprised here, this work can be read on its own.
While it draws on the history of marian doctrine and devotion and
seeks precedent there for my proposal, this is not a work of doctrinal the-
ology in the traditional sense. It does not aim to present the full teaching
of the church about Mary, which is amply available elsewhere. Following
the practice of Vaitcan II, it does not “have it in mind to give a complete
doctrine on Mary, nor does it wish to decide those questions which have
not yet been fully illuminated by the work of theologians” (Lumen Gen-
tium §54). Its purpose is to explore a new avenue of approach to Mary, one
grounded in scripture, liturgy, and ancient Christian preaching, and able

xiii
X1V INTRODUCTION

to evoke appreciation of the presence of God’s Spirit in the community of

faith today. Toward that end, convinced that history is the arena of encoun-
ter with God, I do not begin, as does so much contemporary mariology, by
thinking about Mary as a religious symbol. Rather, I seek to understand
her meaning as a particular person with her own life to compose. She has
been symbolized to such an extravagant degree divorced from her own his-
tory—symbol of the maternal face of God, of the eternal feminine, of the
disciple, of the idealized church—that approaching her as an actual human
being surprises us with the discovery that she too struggled, that her own
life’s journey, in Vatican II’s poetic phrase, was a pilgrimage of faith,
including sojourning in faith’s dark night. Remembering her in the great
cloud of witnesses that surrounds the community of disciples, we draw
strength from “the lessons of encouragement” flowing from her life.
In seeking thus to interpret the meaning of Mary within the logos of
faith for our day, this work goes forward as part of the broader wave of
women doing theology, a new phenomenon.
Around the world, large numbers of women are slipping the bonds of
male control and seeking instead a partnership that honors the equal
human dignity befitting themselves as human persons. This liberating
movement, which is more than ever a sign of our times, reverberates in
theology as in other disciplines, where it brings new voices to the table.
When it comes to the subject of Mary, women’s judgment is decidedly
ambiguous. On the one hand, the marian tradition has functioned nega-
tively to promote an idealized notion of the obedient female self, a con-
strual that legitimates women’s subordinate place in the church. On the
other hand, the living remembrance of this woman can function positively
to inspire the struggle for God’s compassionate and liberating justice. Sort-
ing out this blessing and bane, mariology done by women in the last
decades has served up groundbreaking critique as well as creative new
interpretations. Particularly rich insights have poured forth from women
in situations of dire suffering caused by injustice. In different cultural sit-
uations of poverty, racial and ethnic prejudice, and violence, they consis-
tently find connections to the biblical story of Miriam of Nazareth as
herself also a poor woman, “someone like us.” They form alliance with her
as a companion in the struggle for voice and fullness of life. Vastly indebted
to this scholarship and engaging it, this book joins the effort to articulate
a theology of Mary that will promote the flourishing of women and
thereby all the relationships and communities of which they are a part.
INTRODUCTION XV

The context in which I write, a postindustrial culture often character-

ized as postmodern, provides an interesting opening for the reception of
this approach to a theology of Mary. For a variety of reasons, this culture
has little time for faith symbols configured to medieval or premodern sen-
sibilities. One visible sign of this is the diminishment of traditional devo-
tion to Mary in the years since the Second Vatican Council in the Catholic
Church in the United States. Neither Mary nor indeed the rest of the com-
pany of saints has found much of a suitable place in the contemporary pat-
tern of faith. This holds true especially for the generations born and raised
after the council. In fact, the issue of Mary can even be deemed irrelevant
to the burning religious questions of the day, chief among which is the
search for God in a world of suffering and secularity. My social location in
precisely this context precludes interpreting Mary through appeal to a tra-
dition of veneration of ancestors, such as is done in African theology, or to
vibrant traditions of popular religion intrinsic to faith in Latin America
and in Hispanic communities in the United States, or to local customs of
immigrant ethnic groups. These sources of marian reflection not only
deserve respect; they also have much to teach, as scholars among them
show. But such are not the experiences of many who live their lives and
express their faith in the postindustrial mainstream. This book seeks to
make sense of Mary so as to sound the challenge of discipleship in precisely
this setting, drawing people into deeper friendship with the heart of divine
mystery and turning them toward the praxis of justice and compassion for
the world, both human beings and the earth. It is my thesis that women’s
work on Mary as a friend of God and prophet can do precisely that.
Thereby part of the living Christian tradition being lost in postmodern
culture can find an avenue to perdure into the future.
Truly our sister: this proposal is worked out in five steps. My point of
departure is the global chorus of women’s voices today, which, heard in all
fullness, offers both critical and creative theological interpretations of the
marian tradition (part 1). Counterposed to this, the next section analyzes
two types of androcentric marian theology that form the chief alternative
to women’s liberating approach and judges them paths to be avoided (part
2). Thus fortified and warned, part 3 explores in a preliminary way the
proposal of this book and the precedents for it in ancient and recent the-
ology and church teaching. Now begins the heart of the book, remember-
ing Mary in a theologically and practically fruitful way. Part 4 pictures the
world she inhabited, including political, economic, religious, and cultural
Xvi INTRODUCTION

conditions that impinged on her life. This forms the context for part 5,
which engages in a close reading of thirteen scripture passages in which
Mary appears. These stories encode the theological memory of the early
church, which wrote her into the faith event of salvation coming from God
in Jesus through the power of the Spirit. Each story is like a tile of colored
stone. Assembled together they form a mosaic of this Spirit-filled woman,
who, in company with other significant gospel persons, partnered the
redemptive work of God. Stepping back and viewing the mosaic as a
whole, the last chapter situates Mary in the whole cloud of witnesses who
accompany the church on its following of Jesus, ending with her own rev-
olutionary prayer, the Magnificat.
Theology today is nothing if not multicultural and pluralistic. I stress at
the outset that this proposal is but one of several fruitful approaches in
current theology of Mary. Its purpose is to seek understanding of an aspect
of the Christian faith confession for our era. As Karl Rahner famously
noted, however, not all who are alive at the same time are contemporaries.
My own respect runs deep for the elders of the community whose lifelong
relationship with Mary, formed in the context of preconciliar mariology,
has been a source of strength and for whom the approach of this book may
be jarring. I also appreciate views of Mary arising from different ethnic
cultures. Coming from a perspective that is American, Catholic, and fem-
inist, in dialogue with women’s work on Mary around the world, my crit-
icism is reserved for patriarchal mariologies that function to subordinate
women. Otherwise, different approaches are possible and, to the degree
that they offer intelligible and liberating directions, definitely desirable.
We have arrived at a new moment in the history of interpretation. Con-
centrating on Mary as a concrete, graced individual in the company of all
God’s friends and prophets, this book develops a marian theology rooted
in scripture read through women’s eyes with feminist hermeneutical
methods. It seeks a glimpse of the raw, mostly unknown historical reality
of Miriam of Nazareth, a Jewish woman in a relatively poor, politically
oppressed, first-century peasant society. It tries to understand the pres-
ence, call, challenge, and creativity of the Spirit of God in her life, as in the
lives of all who believe and love down through the centuries. It connects
her unique vocation, which included but was not limited to mothering the
Messiah, to the stories of the women and men disciples of Jesus then and
now, finding challenge and encouragement for disciples today. In a word,
this proposal invites Mary to come down from the pedestal where she has
INTRODUCTION XVli

been honored for centuries and rejoin us in the community of grace and
struggle in history. Far from dishonoring her, this connection esteems her
and the whole company of the saints in one liberating way appropriate to
our time and place.
Doing research for this book, I requested Jeanette Rodriguez’s book Our
Lady of Guadalupe from my university’s library on a sister campus. When
it arrived, the student on duty notified me by phone, mentioning, accord-
ing to custom, the book’s title. Here is what I heard on my voice mail: “Dr.
Johnson, Our Lady of Guadalupe has come in and is waiting for you at the
front desk.” One of my colleagues, with whom I shared this humorous
message, paused and then responded quietly, “May she be there for you.” A
striking thought, and one with which I end this introduction. Remember-
ing Mary as a friend of God and prophet in the communion of saints, a
woman who is truly sister to our strivings, allows the power of her life to
play in the religious consciousness of the church, encouraging ever-deeper
relationship with theJiving God in whom our spirits rejoice, and allying us
with God’s redemptive designs for the hungry, the lowly, and all those who
suffer, including in an unforgettable way women with their children in sit-
uations of poverty, prejudice, and violence.
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? PART 1

Women’s Voices in a New Key

y
 e

Fragments in the Rubble

A RICH TAPESTRY

= he first-century Jewish woman named Miriam of Nazareth, mother

of Jesus, also proclaimed in faith to be Theotokos, the God-bearer, is
the most celebrated female religious figure in the Christian tradition.
What would be a theologically sound, ecumenically fruitful, spiritually
empowering, ethically challenging, and socially liberating interpretation
of Mary for the twenty-first century? What is her significance in the light
of Christian faith in the gracious mystery of God? What difference does
remembering her, along with all the friends of God and prophets, make in
the life of church and society? How in particular can her image be con-
strued so as to be a source of blessing rather than blight for women’s lives
in both religious and political terms?
The figure of Mary referred to by these questions is extraordinarily
complex. Whether studied from the point of view of theology, spirituality,
or culture, this Galilean woman has been interpreted and explained, imag-
ined and rejected, loved and honored in ways so diverse as to be impossi-
ble to codify.! The diversity begins in scripture, where each of the four
Gospels portrays her in a different way according to the theological per-
spectives of the evangelists. This biblical difference is so real that in ecu-
menical circles it serves to explain the variety of approaches in different
church bodies. Protestants traditionally follow Mark’s rather negative
assessment of Jesus’ mother; Catholics take from Luke a positive, person-
alistic view of her as full of grace and favor from God, a woman who coop-
erated with the divine adventure of bringing the Redeemer into human
flesh; while Orthodox approach Mary in the iconic, symbolic manner of
John.”
4 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

From the fifth century on, creative artists have used their imaginations
to depict Mary in paintings, sculptures, and icons, musical compositions
from classical motets to simple hymns, poetry, dancing, dramatic arts, and
contemporary films that reflect cultures as different as Byzantine, Euro-
pean baroque, and Latin American. Soaring cathedrals, parish churches,
and simple chapels in cities and in the bush have been dedicated to God in
her name. Annual liturgical feast days along with a wealth of sermons,
devotional practices, and private prayers including the rosary have brought
her memory into the midst of the church community in divergent times
and places. Meditations and litanies of her praises, belief in her appear-
ances and miracles, pilgrimages, legends, folk customs, and street festivals
make her figure accessible to ordinary folk, even to those with less than
strong attachment to the institutional church.
When this devotion passes into scholarly theology and church doctrine,
it remains true that, as Els Maeckelberghe phrases it, “Mary” is a collective
noun.’ From Ephraem to Augustine, Hildegard to Julian of Norwich,
Aquinas to Luther, Rahner to Ruether, generations of thinkers in eastern
and western churches and on northern and southern continents have
offered different explanations of the meaning of her life for the commu-
nity of faith. They have used categories coherent with the diverse theolo-
gies of their day, whether scholasticism, the Reformation’s sola gratia,
transcendental Thomism, or liberation and feminist insights. Exercises of
papal power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries added another
dimension when they defined as doctrine that God freely bestowed gifts on
Mary at her coming into the world (the Immaculate Conception) and
departing it (the Assumption), while virtually every pope in the modern
era has also exhorted the faithful to cultivate proper devotion to her in var-
ied ways.
In recent decades ecumenical dialogue among Protestants, Catholics,
and Orthodox Christians has sought a common root in the Bible and
creeds for understanding Mary’s significance, each making a case for the
coherence with scripture of its traditionally distinct patterns of thought
and prayer.* Dialogue between Christians and members of other world
religions further widens the scope of diversity in marian matters. The
Quran of Islam gives Mary, named Mariyam, a relatively important posi-
tion as mother of the prophet Jesus whom she conceived by the Spirit. She
herself is one of God’s chosen ones in the line of the great prophets. It is
not uncommon for Muslims to venerate the mother of Jesus, a factor high-
FRAGMENTS IN THE RUBBLE 5

lighted in the Second Vatican Council’s groundbreaking call for mutual

understanding: “They also honor His virgin mother; at times they call on
her, too, with devotion.”® Speaking of the great religions of Asia, scholars
point out pictorial and devotional parallels that developed as people with
a long tradition of venerating Kannon or Kwan Yin, the Buddhist female
image of compassion in Japan, or Guanyin, the popular Chinese deity who
gives herself for the salvation of others, or Sakti, the divine female princi-
ple of power in Hinduism, interpret the meaning of Mary in their own
context.
The picture becomes even more complex in the light of recent scholar-
ship that highlights how this adaptable marian image functions to pro-
mote particular social-political agendas. In Constantinople the Virgin
Theotokos protected the scepter of orthodox emperors and flew on the
banners of their armies, guiding the civic religion and military might of
the Byzantine empire especially in times of invasion.’ The nineteenth-
century Roman Catholic marian revival cannot be separated from the
church’s sense that it was in a state of siege against the modern world. Bar-
bara Corrado Pope’s analysis of this period’s image of Mary crushing the
head of the snake demonstrates that “while the outstretched arms of the
Immaculate Conception promised mercy to the faithful, the iconography
of this most widely distributed of Marian images also projected a militant
and defiant message that through Mary the church would defeat its ene-
mies.”® Robert Orsi’s beautiful study of The Madonna of 115th Street clar-
ifies how the struggle of newly arrived Italian immigrants for spiritual and
economic survival in New York City was aided and abetted by their
Madonna brought from the old country.’ Militant cold-war opposition to
the Soviet Union among Catholics in the United States drew strength from
devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, as does continuing opposition to modern
trends in society.'° César Chavez’s struggle for just wages and living condi-
tions for migrant workers in the California vineyards invoked the sup-
portive protection of Our Lady of Guadalupe.'' From right-wing imperial
power to the struggle of the poor for justice, the figure of Mary has been
pressed into service for goals that are far from neutral.
There is no one thread that would knit this exuberant tradition into a
unified whole. The apt title of George Tavard’s work gets it exactly right:
The Thousand Faces of the Virgin Mary.'? While an historical woman obvi-
ously dwells at the root of this whole phenomenon, there has been a plas-
ticity to her image that has allowed the Christian imagination to create
 6 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

widely different marian symbols and theologies in relation to spiritual and

social needs.
A living tradition calls forth new interpretations in keeping with chang-
ing historical contexts. Now artists and theologians need to do for our age
what former eras did for theirs. How does this generation, living in a multi-
cultural church at the beginning of a new millennium, interpret and honor
Miriam of Nazareth within a faith context, and with what social and polit-
ical effects? Obviously, more than one answer is possible. The historical
diversity regarding Mary is mirrored geographically today around the
world as local churches on different continents express her significance in
accord with their own cultures. So too do local communities within plu-
ralistic nations such as the United States, where, for example, Hispanic
practices of popular religion honor Maria in warm, colorful, identity-
building ways, while among most Anglos even major marian feasts meet
with restrained celebration.

HEARING WOMEN’S VOICES

Amid this pluralism a genuinely new development is occurring around the

world, namely, the rise of women’s voices. It is a sign of the times that
women, marginalized for millennia in male-dominated cultures, are
becoming increasingly conscious of their human worth and, in the
prophetic words of Pope John XXIII, “will not tolerate being treated as
inanimate objects or mere instruments, but claim, both in domestic and in
public life, the rights and duties that befit a human person.”!3 As part of
this emerging awareness, women for the first time in history are publicly
and corporately interpreting the figure of Mary from the perspective of
their own struggle to be independent, strong, lively, and holy, that is, from
their option for full human dignity. They are raising criticisms of the ways
traditional idealizations of her privileges and perfections have been used
to short-circuit women’s own quest for wholeness. They are also making
creative moves toward reclaiming this woman as an ally of women’s flour-
ishing. Now the tapestry of marian tradition becomes ever richer as
twenty-first century women weave their insights into the great cloth.
The heritage women have received and set out from is nothing if not
ambiguous. On the one hand, for centuries Mary was the only female fig-
ure allowed in or near the sanctuary. This kept the image of a woman in
FRAGMENTS IN THE RUBBLE 7

full view, an important and frequently powerful woman, which not only
counterbalanced a heavily patriarchal view of God but also made cultural
room for promoting respect for the dignity of women. In unintended ways
the role of Mary worked subversively to denote female power and possi-
bility. The history of spirituality reveals that women found in prayer and
companionship with her a source of inspiration, comfort, and strength,
precisely as a woman and particularly in times of trial.
On the other hand, official views of Mary have been shaped by men in
a patriarchal context and have functioned powerfully to define and control
female lives. Women were not consulted, nor were they permitted to bring
their knowledge of their own lives before God into this official portrait.
Almost inevitably the marian symbol became that of an idealized woman,
created as an act of men’s definition of women, whose voices were officially
silenced. Strong emphasis on Mary’s obedience, virginity, and primary
importance as a mother shaped a religious symbol that satisfied the needs
of a monastic or ecclesiastical male psyche more adequately than it served
women’s spiritual search or social capabilities. Throughout the centuries
this did not exhaust interpretation, for those outside the circles of power
had their own depictions. One can sense the hidden, repressed power of
the female breaking through in popular piety, as Rosemary Radford
Ruether has pointed out:
there is the Mary of the monks, who venerate her primarily as a virgin and
shape her doctrines in an antisexual mold. But there is the Mary of the peo-
ple who is still the earth mother and who is venerated for her power over the
secret of natural fecundity. It is she who helps the woman through her birth-
pangs, who assures the farmer of his new crops, new rains, new lambs. She
is the maternal image of the divine who understands ordinary people in
their wretchedness.'*
However, the official marian symbol perdured as the fruit of a history of
socially powerful men’s interpretation of the ideal woman. On balance,
this ideal has functioned effectively to keep women in their preassigned
place subordinate to patriarchal authority.
The wind of female empowerment blowing throughout the land dis-
turbs this traditional arrangement. Bringing about a sea change in
women’s own self-definition, it casts up new understandings of women’s
nature, capabilities, role, status, and relationship to men and male-created
structures. As women today take charge of their lives, their explorations of
what it takes to be a liberated, whole human being in relation to others lead
8 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

to far-reaching critical rejection as well as creative reimagining of various

aspects of the marian tradition. Something new is occurring in the
encounter between women and the figure of Miriam of Nazareth.

CRITICAL JUDGMENTS

Not surprisingly, many express negative assessments, even if reluctantly.

* In South Africa an elderly woman, Margaret Cuthbert, confided an
incident that happened in her women’s prayer group. They met weekly to
recite the rosary and the Litany of Loreto, a traditional compendium of
Mary’s praises. One day, after much discussion and with some distress,
they decided to omit forever two of the litany’s encomiums, “Mother invi-
olate, Mother undefiled.” Their reasoning went this way: if Mary is an
undefiled mother because she conceived without having sex, then we are
defiled because we have had sex. However, our experience of our own bod-
ies, of making love with our husbands, and of bearing children has not sul-
lied us but has been, despite the suffering, a source of joy and blessing from
God. These praises of Mary insult us; they do not make sense; so we
dropped them." The cognitive dissonance between women’s present expe-
rience of God and the traditional marian symbol sets up a conflict in
which the latter, inevitably, loses.
* During a basic Christian community prayer meeting in Oaxaca,
southern Mexico, Sabina Lopez de Hernandez reflected with the group on
her strong reaction to a recent sermon. The gospel reading had depicted
Mary at the foot of the cross. The priest said that she stood there in accord
with God’s will, freely offering up her son for the salvation of the world. As
a mother, Sabina found this abhorrent. A mother, even a woman of faith,
wants her child to live, not to be killed. Did the others not think so? They
did. This preacher did not understand a mother’s heart. The prayerful dis-
cussion turned toward the idea that the God of life passionately abhors
people killing or hurting each other. The violence of the cross is not what
is salvific in and of itself. The long-standing idea that Mary willingly joined
in a divine plan for the suffering of her son was rejected.!°
* British writer Marina Warner crafted a massive study brilliantly enti-
tled Alone ofAll Her Sex, analyzing the harm done to women by idealizing
Mary, who alone among women is honored as unsullied and privileged. At
FRAGMENTS IN THE RUBBLE 9

the end of her research she found herself in Notre Dame cathedral in Paris,
weeping, torn between her heart, which was still moved by love of Mary,
and her new-found insight that “in the very celebration of the perfect
human woman, both humanity and women were subtly denigrated.”!” Her
study of the exalted marian myth and cult, its images, prayers, and practi-
cal effects, concludes:
The Virgin Mary has inspired some of the loftiest architecture, some of the
most moving poetry, some of the most beautiful paintings in the world; she
has filled men and women with deep joy and fervent trust; she has been an
image of the ideal that has entranced and stirred men and women to the
noblest emotions of love and pity and awe. But the reality her myth
describes is over; the moral code she affirms has been exhausted."
The legend might live on in its lyricism, she suspects, but it will have lost
its power to heal and to harm, for women now see right through the myth
and reject it.
+ That this is not the experience of just a few isolated individuals is indi-
cated by a story told by Professor Mary Hines at a school of theology in
Washington, D.C. At the beginning of a semester she discovered that all the
students registered for her course on theology of Mary were young men;
all the students in her course on feminist theology were women. When
asked to explain their choices, the men said it was because they knew next
to nothing about the church’s teaching on Mary but as ordained ministers
would be expected to. The women, on the other hand, avoided that course
because of their negative feelings about what they already knew. “Some
responded with a sense of betrayal and disillusionment, some with a sense
of undefined unease, . . . some said there was just too much baggage for
them to summon up interest in studying Mary.”
* Reflecting on the experience of women in the Philippines, Hilda
Buhay, O.S.B., focuses on how during the Spanish colonial period the ideal
Filipino woman was the Maria Clara, a young female whose purity, docil-
ity, and winsome feminine qualities resembled Mary. That period may
have passed, “but our society still puts a premium on submission, blind
obedience and passivity in Filipino women. Mary, then, when imitated,
becomes an extremely useful means of domesticating women and other
oppressed people.””°
- A young Christian woman in India, Astrid Lobo, expresses the frus-
tration of many of her peers who find Mary too high, too holy, and too
innocent to be of much use for their own spiritual growth.
10 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

As a human being constantly struggling through difficult choices I could

find no comfort in this docile Mary who said “Yes” so easily to God. As a
young woman faced with the challenge of taking up my rightful role in soci-
ety, I just could not understand this Mary tucked away inside her four walls.
She was the “virgin most pure” with whom I could never share the excite-
ment of my flowering sexuality. What could this sinless woman understand
of my weakness and failure?”?!
* Reflecting on the prevailing idea of Mary in the Orthodox church,
Elisabeth Behr-Sigel laments the exclusion of women from the develop-
ment of marian theology. “Rather has this been largely the preserve of men
who, unwittingly perhaps, left the imprint of their dreams upon it. Hence
the vision of an ideal woman, which could go hand in hand with the way
in which actual women might be despised or devalued in societies where
patriarchal norms prevailed.” If one should think that idealization of
Mary might redound to the benefit of other women, just observe the prac-
tical consequences: “In actual fact, idealised women are kept from func-
tions in the Church which imply authority and involve the making of
decisions.””°
* Addressing problems of identity and self-esteem in Hispanic women
in the United States, psychologists Rosa Maria Gil and Carmen Inoa
Vazquez teach their clients to recognize the socially learned set of behav-
iors called marianismo, the flip side of men’s machismo. Taking as the
model of perfection the Virgin Mary herself, marianismo cultivates the
notion of feminine spiritual superiority and teaches women to live a life of
self-sacrifice in order to please men. Its “Ten Commandments” include: do
not forget a woman’s place; do not be single, self-supporting, or indepen-
dent-minded; do not forget that sex is for making babies, not for pleasure;
do not be unhappy with your man or criticize him for infidelity or verbal
and physical abuse; do not challenge things which make you unhappy. In
the old country, the reward for this total surrender of self was a certain
measure of protection and power in the family. But in today’s North Amer-
ica, this ideal becomes a yoke that binds capable Latinas into self-defeating
behavior and unhappiness. These psychologists issue a stirring call: “open
your heart, your mind, your soul, and your spirit to the winds of change as
you travel beyond marianismo through acculturation to self-esteem, and
become your own woman at last.”?4
* Speaking for a generation of women, American novelist Mary Gordon
famously observed how in her Catholic high school, “Mary was a stick to
FRAGMENTS IN THE RUBBLE EE

beat smart girls with. Her example was held up constantly: an example of
silence, of subordination, of the pleasure of taking the back seat.” Describ-
ing the move made by countless others, she continues: “For women like
me, it was necessary to reject the image of Mary in order to hold onto the
fragile hope of intellectual achievement, independence of identity, sexual
fulfillment.”*°

It would be difficult to underestimate the depth of repugnance, both

existential and intellectual, felt by women who become conscious of the
negative ways in which the marian symbol has worked upon them. Inter-
preted largely by the imagination of men, Mary has been depicted as one
kind of woman rather than another and has been held up by male preach-
ers and church leaders as the ideal for women’s virtue and social roles. The
symbol of Mary functions. Much traditional theology makes her a means
to keep women in their subordinate place, for, as Rosemary Haughton
argues, “with all her glory she is always obedient, she is not ‘ordained, she
is the busy but submissive, patient and suffering auxiliary who can inter-
cede but not decide.”*°
Now engaged in a historic struggle for equality in political and familial
structures and for freedom from male dominance with its all too often
physically violent manifestations, women have found this traditionally
gendered marian model decidedly unhelpful. Women of color who resist
the racial prejudice that ravages their communities, economically poor
women who struggle daily to raise their children on mean streets, women
of different sexual orientations who seek respect for their embodied life,
heterosexual women who find their sexual pleasure to be a source of glad-
ness and grace: these and many others now judge this religious symbol to
be deficient. Notice that the charge is not that Mary is irrelevant, a criti-
cism now heard from the cultural quarter. It is rather that the figure of
Mary is harmful, functioning as it does to support the patriarchal oppres-
sion of women. The marian tradition is accused of distorting women’s
reality, of promoting a restrictive ideal of human fulfillment, of constrict-
ing women’s social roles, of blocking their access to God’s blessing in the
fullness of their lives. It has presided over the evil of sexism rather than
challenged it.
Paul Tillich’s often used analysis of how a symbol works sheds useful
light on these critical women’s voices.”” Any symbol arises from a dimen-
sion of the human spirit not under immediate rational control. It is born
12 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

and grows from the depths of the psyche and takes root in particular
historical circumstances insofar as it feeds the human hunger for tran-
scendent meaning. Just as a symbol cannot be created by a conventional
decision, neither can it be replaced at will. It goes on living in dynamic
interchange with the spirit of a group even in the face of attempts to crush
it. But once a symbol no longer opens up the “power of being” the human
spirit is thirsting for, then it will die in relation to a group. No official
command can keep it functioning in a living way if it contradicts what the
community yearns for. The critical voices above make clear that the tradi-
tional marian symbol has died out among hosts of women by just such a
deeply intuitive process.

CREATIVE INSIGHTS

At the same time, rigorous criticism does not exhaust contemporary

women’s response to the marian tradition. The struggle for fullness of life
together creates a context for discovering new sources of empowerment
from her image. Mary Jo Weaver’s query, “What would it mean to read the
symbol of Mary differently?””* now resonates across cultural boundaries
and sets an agenda for the future. Stubbornly unwilling to abandon this
woman to her imprisonment behind patriarchal bars, women are risking
new, liberating interpretations of her meaning in the light of their lives
before God. Growing in their ability to appreciate themselves and each
other precisely as women, they are reclaiming her as a woman into the sis-
terhood of struggle. These voices resonate with fresh, even if tentative,
appreciation.

* Moved to explore the symbol of Mary once again by giving birth for
the first time, Mary Gordon, who had rejected this figure for the sake of her
own maturity, begins to see new possibilities. We must begin, she advises,
by understanding that the history of human thought about women has
been a history of error, leading to degradation, oppression, and “the ideal-
ization whose other side is tyranny.” The image of Mary has been a prime
example of this distortion. If women wish to take our place in the Chris-
tian tradition rather than leave it, the only option is “forgiving vigilance.”
From that stance, we can sift through the nonsense and antiwoman hostil-
ity of the marian tradition,
FRAGMENTS IN THE RUBBLE 13

to find some images, shards, and fragments, glittering in the rubble. One
must find isolated words, isolated images; one must travel the road of
metaphor, of icon, to come back to that figure who, throughout a corrupt
history, has moved the hearts of men and women, has triumphed over
hatred of women and fear of her, and abides, shining, worthy of our love,
compelling it.

* In Latin America, women in situations of poverty and violence pio-

neer the insight that Maria was like them, a poor woman of the people. As
Pilar Aquino makes clear, “poor women identify with her because they
share the same hope and the same language as women.” A villager who
lived her trust in God in the midst of hard daily labor, she knows their
struggle and their pain. A widow who survived the violent public execu-
tion of her son, she is a companion on women’s shared Calvary. As one lilt-
ing hymn sings, “she is our compafiera.” And it is to this woman that God
has done great things. Honoring her puts one in solidarity with God’s own
option for the poor, and with the poorest of the poor, colonialized women
in violent situations, most of all.°!
* In search of Mary as a credible woman who could serve her own
maturing spirituality, Euro-American literature teacher Sally Cunneen
movingly recalls her grief at the death of her oldest son. Being able to relate
to the woman of Nazareth who knew the same loss was a source of con-
soling strength. “I no longer saw Pietas, in which the mother holds the
body of her son across her knees, as simply pious images; they became rep-
resentations of a completely human woman who shared the pain of all
mothers—all parents—who have lost their children.”** Such alliance
between women’s experience and what can be seriously imagined as
Miriam of Nazareth’s own life history begins to renew appreciation.
* Speaking not as a white woman or as a black man but as one who
combines oppressed gender and race in one person, African American
Diana Hayes presses the similarity between the life Mary lived as a Jew
under Roman oppression with the poor and marginalized existence of
black women in our racist society and church. Like the Galilean woman,
black women keep on keepin’ on despite prejudice and hard days, giving
birth to the future with their very lives. What commends Mary is not her
passivity, of the type classically inculcated into slave women, but the way
she models strong, righteous, behavior in alliance with God’s liberating
14 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

justice for her people. Paying a high compliment drawn from the black
community, Hayes describes her as “womanish.”**
- Women in Hispanic communities in the United States analyze how
the figures of Mary in various traditions—Mexico’s Our Lady of Guada-
lupe, Cuba’s Our Lady of Charity—function to encourage a strong sense of
self in women whom society otherwise devalues. Jeanette Rodriguez dis-
covered that the bond Mexican-American women have forged with Our
Lady of Guadalupe influences their lives for the better, providing them
with a spiritual form of resistance to their marginalization in society and
church. Reflecting the merciful, maternal face of God to women whose
humanity is systematically denigrated, this icon offers them an experience
of being accepted, embraced, and loved by someone of the highest value.
Thereby their sense of being worthwhile and valuable persons grows:
“certainly she is a source of empowerment.”*’ This stream of reflection
continues despite the ambiguity pointed out by other scholars, insofar as
devotion to Mary has not liberated Hispanic women from sexual or eco-
nomic oppression.*°
* Living in strongly patriarchal cultures pervaded with religious diver-
sity, Asian women rediscover not the bejeweled Mary crowned Queen of
Heaven but the poor, courageous Mary, herself a west Asian woman. Meet-
ing in Manila, a group of church women from across the continent write,
“We saw Mary, the mother of Jesus, no longer as a passive, ethereal being,
detached from the suffering of millions in Asia. We now see her in a new
light, as a strong woman who can identify and be with today’s grieving
mothers, wives, daughters in the bitter fight for freedom.”** Rather than
adhere to a marian cult that vitiates her person and minimizes her part-
nership, these women assume the responsibility to reclaim and redefine
Mary with regard to the liberation of all people, especially women. As in
Latin America they hear Mary’s song, the Magnificat, which tellingly has
found no place in traditional marian theology, as a rallying cry for the poor
and oppressed to overcome injustice. A striking sign of the reversal
announced in that song is the virginal conception. This strong woman of
Israel conceives her child without a man. God and a woman together bring
forth the Christ. Thus the end of the patriarchal order is announced, and
the revolutionary vision of a new creation where women claim their
human dignity comes into view.*”
* From Appalachia comes a Christmas card with a line drawing of the
creche and a text that reads in part: Imagine yourself young, inexperi-
FRAGMENTS IN THE RUBBLE 15

enced, pregnant, and poor. You are forced to leave home. On your journey
you give birth, but because you have no money you do not receive ade-
quate care or comfort. Right up to the time of delivery you have experi-
enced unjust accusation about your pregnancy, near abandonment by
your young husband, and the cruelties of discrimination from society.
Nowa refugee, you give birth in an unkempt place, a lean-to where animals
move about freely. Your name is Ana of Brazil, Debbie of West Virginia,
Michelle of Brooklyn, Mary of Nazareth... .*°
* The quest widens as women of the Reformation tradition, whose reli-
gious horizon holds no strong female image, begin to attend to this lack
from their own religious perspectives. “I fear we are so concerned not to
fall into the trap of making her co-Redemptor that we are wary of
acknowledging her at all,” writes Pauline Warner, a Methodist; “I am say-
ing that we should be wary of our wariness.”*? Commenting on the Church
of Sweden’s decision to dedicate the fourth Sunday of Advent to Mary,
Mother of the Lord, Dr. Margit Sahlin credited a growing feminism which
stresses the importance of women and the need to counter a masculine
tradition in the church; “it seems important to have a woman painted
before your eyes as an object of identification.”*° Once while I was teach-
ing the theology of Mary in a graduate course populated largely by men, a
young Lutheran woman studying for the ordained ministry shot her hand
into the air and shouted, “I like this woman!” In the lecture she was sens-
ing something beneficial in the story of a female like herself, someone who
walked by faith, a companion she was determined to bring to light for oth-
ers in her future preaching. German theologian Dorothee Soelle makes the
case to Protestant and Catholic women alike: let us not be too hasty to
abandon Mary to our patriarchal opponents. The millions of women
before us who have loved Mary were not simply blind or duped. They, too,
sensed her subversive power and offered resistance from which we can
learn. Uniting the militancy of the Magnificat with the charity of a lover of
God, “she becomes an image of hope for those who have been cheated of
their lives.”*!

THEOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE

The quest for “fragments, glittering in the rubble” now goes on in women’s
prayer and poetry, art and midrash, conversation and religious reflection.
16 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

Laying their own religious desires side by side with the official symbol of
Mary, women struggle intensely for a liberating rather than restricting
interpretation. They read her stories in the Bible from their own location
outside the corridors of ecclesiastical power, discovering meanings that
would never be apparent to a patriarchal mind. Rather than letting her
stand alone, they link her to the other women around Jesus. They catch
glimpses of her as a companion, sister, and friend with her own human
experiences that connect her to women across the centuries. Their uneasi-
ness, rejections, and creative new insights are crafting theologies of Mary
that ally her with women around the world as they contest for the recog-
nition and exercise of their full human dignity and that of their girl chil-
dren. The sound of these voices cannot be hushed, however urgently one
insists on traditional understandings.”
In a perceptive analysis Mary Catherine Hilkert presents the argument
why women’s voices resound with legitimate power in the Christian com-
munity.*? Though banned from ordination and thereby officially margin-
alized, they nevertheless speak with authority. The source of this authority
is the Spirit of God, ultimately the only source of authority for the church.
Women are gifted with this Spirit in three ways: through their vocation as
baptized persons, which makes them into prophets, priests, and leaders as
part of the body of Christ; through their actual experience of living the
Christian life every day, which gives them a growing wisdom in discerning
the truth in love; and through their negative experiences of suffering,
which engenders knowledge of what should not be. With courage born of
mutual support, women speak as persons of faith with the authority of
their experience of questing for the living God. Partners with the Spirit,
they ultimately appeal to the authority of the future in accord with the
reign of God when the fullness of life, shalom, is poured out on everyone,
the lowest and least most of all.
In a theological sense, this new phenomenon is a sign that the Christian
tradition is indeed a living one, empowered by the Spirit of God, who
forever vivifies and recreates the world. As John XXIII realized, signs of the
times arise because this God continues to speak and act in and through
human history. History in this view ceases to be the place where the church
simply applies binding principles derived from eternal truths known from
philosophical reasoning. Rather, it becomes the place of ongoing interpre-
tation of revelation. The church therefore needs to look to the world to
discover God’s designs for the present time. Like the two other signs of the
FRAGMENTS IN THE RUBBLE 17

times that Blessed John XXIII pointed to, namely, the demand of the poor
for economic justice and the right of colonialized nations to self-
governance, the rise of women’s claims to human dignity and their con-
comitant power to speak are rooted in God’s design for the world.
In a farsighted essay Karl Rahner noted that the image of Mary in the
church has always been closely tied to the image of women at any given
time. Since the culturally conditioned image of women in our day is
undergoing radical change, this raises serious questions about the image of
Mary that have not yet been adequately recognized. Consequently, he sug-
gested, perhaps it is time for men to stop writing books about Mary and let
women have a go at it, since there is much wisdom in that quarter that has
not yet come to light: “Mariology today and in the future still has a great
deal to do if it wants to have an image of Mary that will really be true for
the religious existence of woman as such. It is an image that can perhaps
be produced authentically today only by women, by women theolo-
gians.’* There is more consequence to this suggestion than he could have
imagined.
$$ ¢——____—

Women’s Theological Work

THE ICE CRACKS

n every continent, women scholars with their ear to the ground of

women’s religious experiences are bringing this harvest of insights
about Mary into the formal language of theology. Their writings in
mariology form but a small part of the much broader endeavor of doing
theology “with women’s eyes,” work made possible by the new sociological
phenomenon of women’s advancing into the academy and gaining there a
public voice. As historically practiced, theology, classically defined by
Anselm as “faith seeking understanding,” has been almost exclusively a field
of men’s endeavor. Inevitably, the result has been a male-inflected set of
understandings. The sheer fact of the omission of women has led to
ambiguous results. While carrying forward the good news of salvation in
Christ through changing eras and cultures, sometimes with heart-warming
success, theology has been marred by deeply embedded attitudes of men’s
privileged place before God coupled with definitions of women’s inferior-
ity that support practices of exclusion.
As part of the social movement on a global scale for the betterment of
women’s lives, women in increasing numbers have gained access to theo-
logical education. When they begin to practice their craft as professionals,
their unique position as “insider-outsiders”! inevitably gives rise to new
theological approaches. Like theologians everywhere, women scholars
engage in careful, honest dialogue with scripture and Christian tradition
to arrive at wisdom for practice and belief in their own cultural contexts.
Given their explicit commitment to do this from the position of those who
have been long silenced, they pay specific attention to what traditionally
disparages women and to what could contribute to the flourishing of
women in all dimensions of their lives. In a critically negative step, their

18
WOMEN’S THEOLOGICAL WORK 19

diverse methods confront bias against women and their communities

based on gender, race, class, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation—the whole
inter-structured edifice of oppressions, based on religious belief, that allow
some to lord it over others and even over the earth. The enemy in every
instance is not men as such but systems and thought patterns that dispar-
age and abuse the genuine humanity of women in all their differences
along with their communities. In a critically positive step, they seek under-
standing that will promote “the full humanity of women,” who are created
in the image of God. It is a mistake to think that this theology is concerned
simply with “women’s questions.” Rather, it reflects on the entire realm of
Christian faith, seeking to interpret beliefs, moral values, rituals, symbols,
and structures in ways that give life to the heretofore excluded half of the
human race. Women of color who suffer the ravages of racial prejudice
stemming from slavery’s inheritance, women in economically poor cir-
cumstances, women whose ethnic communities differ from the majority,
women of different sexual orientations, and women caught up in violent
situations in their home or society push this project to utter inclusiveness.
The genius of this approach is that by promoting the full humanity of the
diversity of women it also enhances the Christian gospel’s hope for the
well-being of the whole human community and the earth, insofar as women
exist in and profoundly sustain whole living networks of relationships.
To signal their intent to interpret religious truth with the flourishing of
women as a goal, women on every continent employ certain adjectives.
They name their work feminist theology, or womanist theology in the case
of African American scholars, or mujerista theology in the case of His-
panic/Latina scholars in the United States.’ As is always the case in theol-
ogy, they utilize theories taken from other disciplines such as philosophy,
sociology, and psychology to help interpret matters of faith.* Some con-
cepts have proved enduringly useful as analytic tools.
Sexism, prejudice against women precisely because they are female. At
the end of the twentieth century the U.N. world conference on women
held in Beijing describes this in striking phrases:
While women have made significant advances in many societies, women’s
concerns are still given second priority almost everywhere. Women face dis-
crimination and marginalization in subtle as well as in flagrant ways. Women
do not share equally in the fruits of production. Women constitute 70 per
cent of the world’s poor. ... Women and men still live in an unequal world.
Gender disparities and unacceptable inequalities persist in all countries. In
20 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

1995 there is no country in the world where men and women enjoy com-
plete equality.

Patriarchy, the rule of the father. Poet Adrienne Rich offers a compre-
hensive definition: “Patriarchy is the power of the fathers; a familial, social,
ideological, political system in which men—by force, direct pressure, or
through ritual, tradition, law and language, customs, etiquette, education,
and the division of labor—determine what part women shall or shall not
play, and in which the female is everywhere subsumed under the male.”®
This is a complex system of subordination and domination that has func-
tioned throughout much of recorded history as the paradigm not only for
the family household but also for church, society, and the state. As historian
Gerda Lerner insists, patriarchy does not render women totally powerless or
totally deprived of rights, resources, and influence. The permutations of
patriarchy are many, and it has shifted and adapted throughout history in
response to female pressure and demands.’ Still, its web of regulations
never grants women equal rights or equal opportunities for participation
and decision making.
Kyriarchy, rule of the lord and master. Broader than patriarchy, this
neologism encompasses the whole range of exploitation practiced around
the world wherever certain powerful persons assume the right to control
individuals or groups who might benefit them. It refers to multistranded,
interstructured layers of oppression based on gender, race, class, ethnicity,
colonial status, sexual orientation, age, disability, and other markers used
to denigrate peoples’ human dignity. This analytic concept makes it clear
that while all women are marginalized by law and custom in kyriarchal sys-
tems, in some instances women themselves may benefit at the expense of
other women—think of white women in the South during slavery, or first-
world consumers who buy apparel made by women in sweatshops in
developing countries. Indeed, “the full oppressive power of kyriarchy is
manifested in the lives and struggles of the poorest and most oppressed
wo/men who live on the bottom of the kyriarchal pyramid.”®
Sex refers to the biologically distinct designs of the male and female
body that function in reproduction, a physiological constant normally
needing surgical intervention to be changed.
Gender is not a given in the same sense. It is the socially constructed
expectation of how sexually embodied male and female persons should
WOMEN’S THEOLOGICAL WORK pI

act, what characteristics each should develop, and what social roles they
will be allowed to play. As Gerda Lerner writes, gender is “the cultural def-
inition of behavior as appropriate to the sexes in a given society at a given
time.”” Complete with linguistic and symbolic expressions, gender orga-
nizes the relation between the sexes in a given time and place. Because they
are historical constructions, gender definitions can and do change from
age to age—including in spectacular ways in our own—while sex remains
a constant.

Feminism, that much-maligned but still beautifully meaningful term, is

the intellectual and practical stance that promotes the well-being of
women as genuine human beings, fully gifted while very diverse, and wor-
thy of equal dignity, rights, and power in every sphere of life. In Sandra
Schneiders’s lucid description, it is a comprehensive body of ideas “which
is rooted in women’s experience of sexual oppression, engages in a critique
of patriarchy as an essentially dysfunctional system, embraces an alterna-
tive vision for humanity and the earth, and actively seeks to bring this
vision to realization.”!° Multicultural and pluralistic, academic feminism
has grown by listening to the challenge of women of color to avoid false
universalism, which would define all women by the narrow range of white
women’s experience. “Those who are willing to engage us,” Ada Maria
Isasi-Diaz points out, “must embrace our difference instead of making us
a reflection of who they are.”!! Dialogue marks the way ahead.
Inheriting a patriarchal religious tradition, women use these analytic
tools to do Christian theology in a way that seeks liberation from all forms
of kyriarchal oppression, including an unjust sex-gender system, for the
benefit of church and society. There is no uniform approach. Depending
on their analysis of the situation and the strategies utilized, women’s theo-
logical work is variously labeled as liberal, social, cultural, radical, reform,
reconstruction, liberation, or postmodern, depending on the feminist the-
ory utilized.'* Regardless of the particular methods used, the goal is pro-
found. This theology works to heal patriarchy’s broken heart, in Rita
Nakashima Brock’s peaceable metaphor, or to liberate women and men
together into a community of the discipleship of equals, in Elisabeth
Schiissler Fiorenza’s powerful symbol, or to mediate the Spirit’s offer of
transforming grace to the church in this age, as Anne Carr prophetically
proposes.'? Both critical and hopeful, it is drawn by the power of the Spirit
to believe in the biblical promise that what exists in the present is not all
there is, that God’s deepest hope for humanity is the liberating wholeness
22 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

of all people and indeed of the whole world itself. This is faith seeking
understanding so passionately that it enables an encounter with the living
God that challenges a whole calcified pattern of structured sinfulness.
Spiritually, it expresses a hunger and thirst for justice that includes women
of all kinds, for the benefit of the whole community. In the course of this
work, the ice of centuries of women’s public silence and invisibility begins
to crack.
Different though their “adjectives” may be, women theologians on every
continent who have turned their attention to the subject of Mary note that
elements oppressive to women pervade the marian tradition. These need
to be uncovered and corrected so that “the liberation of Mary,’ in Sally
Cunneen’s telling phrase, in union with her sisters, can be accomplished."4
The wealth of women’s theological work on Mary done to date cannot be
neatly systematized. Their work has yielded a raft of critical judgments and
a wealth of creative interpretations. Taking note of key contributions
makes clear just how rich these emerging options are and depicts the col-
orful spectrum on which the proposal of this book is situated.

CRITICAL JUDGMENTS

In order to move forward, one must identify obstacles that are blocking the
way. When women begin to analyze the marian heritage, one basic prob-
lem emerges that undergirds all others, namely, this tradition is just satu-
rated with sexist construals of gender. Drawing from the unquestioned
assumption that men are by nature active, rational, and capable of exercis-
ing authority, while women are naturally receptive, emotional, and ori-
ented to obedience and service, male theologians over the centuries
created an image of Mary as the ideal feminine person. They then either
contrasted her unique virtue with that of all other women or held her up
as the norm whom all other women should seek, impossibly, to emulate.
In the process, the marian symbol functioned powerfully to legitimize
patriarchal social structures. Without these sexist gender assumptions,
which result inevitably in male social dominance and female subordina-
tion, the classic construals of marian theology would fall apart.
Parsing this basic critique, we can see that the baleful effect of patriar-
chal mariology operates in at least three ways. It idealizes this one woman
to the detriment of all others. It construes her holiness with virtues con-
WOMEN’S THEOLOGICAL WORK 23

ducive to women’s subservience. And it draws sociological lessons from

her relationship to Christ that point to female subordination. These strate-
gies are clearly interrelated, but each unveils a different aspect of the prob-
lem. Together they set parameters for what a liberating theology of Mary
at the very least should not be, and guide thought onto a more promising
path that avoids these dead-ends.

Idealization

Picturing Mary as the most perfect of women, the patriarchal marian tra-
dition functions paradoxically to disparage all other women. One would
think it might work in the opposite way, that honoring one would lead to
honoring all members of her group. But praise of Mary in theology and
cult redounds to her benefit at the expense of other women because of the
fundamental assumption that Mary does not exemplify the capacity for
God of redeemed humanity including women. Rather, she is the great
exception. “Alone of all her sex” she stands pure and blessed by God.!° Her
glorious precedence prevents any analogy between herself and other
women, all of whom fall short by comparison with her perfection.
Historically, this idea first emerged in the Mary—Eve analogy. Intro-
duced by Justin in the second century and developed by Irenaeus and oth-
ers with great embellishment, this analogy takes the biblical Adam—Christ
contrast and extends it to their female partners. “As in Adam all die, so also
in Christ shall all be made alive,” Paul writes (1 Cor. 15:22). Similarly,
through her disobedience Eve is responsible for the fall of humankind with
all its attendant misery. Through her obedience Mary, the new Eve, is
responsible for bringing forth the conqueror of that sin, the Savior. As Ire-
naeus writes, “Just as Eve, while wife of Adam, was still a virgin .. . and
became by her disobedience the cause of death for herself and the whole
human race, so Mary too, espoused yet a virgin, became by her obedience
the cause of salvation of both herself and the whole human race. The knot
of Eve’s disobedience was loosened by Mary’s obedience.”!® Death through
Eve, life through Mary became the axiom. A greater contrast could hardly
be imagined.
Where do the rest of women fall in this dichotomy of female behavior?
Since no other woman is as obedient, pure, or holy as the mother of God,
women are ranked with the sinful temptress Eve. As Tertullian so disas-
trously exclaimed to women:
24 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

Do you not realize that you are each an Eve? The curse of God on this sex of
yours lives on even in our times. Guilty, you must bear its hardships. You are
the gateway of the devil; you desecrated the fatal tree; you were the first to
betray the law of God; you softened up with your cajoling words the one
against whom the devil could not prevail by force. All too easily you
destroyed the image of God, Adam. You are the one who deserved death;
because of you the Son of God had to die.!”

Eve is the cause of sorrow, condemnation, corruption, and death. Identi-

fied with Eve, women are sinful, seductive accomplices of Satan. Note that
women’s sexuality here is deeply connected with sin, which is not at all
what the biblical text of the so-called fall in Genesis 3 suggests. By contrast,
Mary alone is pure and undefiled. Unfortunately, as Susan Ashbrook
Harvey points out, Tertullian’s invective became the hallmark of preaching
about women.'® Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, and many others pro-
jected primary responsibility for the sinful condition of humankind onto
Eve and all other women who are like unto her instead of perceiving clearly
the solidarity of the whole human race, both men and women, in sin and
grace. The pattern is repeated throughout the history of theology. A fasci-
nating study by William Cole documents how even so rigorous a thinker
as Thomas Aquinas was less than consistent on this question. To compare
Aquinas’s texts that describe women as defective and misbegotten males,
inferior not just because of sin but originally and by nature, with his texts
on the woman Mary, which exalt her above all creatures, even the angels, is
to expose a logical gap in his thought that he never resolved.!? A modern
articulation of the same idea comes from the early Schillebeeckx, who
wrote, “It is clear that she must be a creature of matchless wonder, this
Immaculata and Assumpta, with whom even the most physically and spir-
itually beautiful women in the world cannot in any way be compared.””°
Some of this is the language of devotion, but the practical effect on women
is deadly.
The Eve—Mary contrast has been used to disparage women much more
vehemently than the Adam—Christ distinction was ever used to men’s dis-
advantage. By idealizing Mary, splitting her off from Eve and all other
women, the denigration of the many became the shadow side of the glori-
fication of the one. Now male authors could deploy women as a theologi-
cal code signaling weakness, sexual temptation, and even depravity. And
practical consequences could be drawn: Eve spoke and sin entered the
world, which is the reason why women must keep silent in the churches.
WOMEN’S THEOLOGICAL WORK 25

As Australian Orthodox editor Leonie Liveris laments, “Always women

carry with them the past reputation of Eve; always they travel towards the
sinless and unobtainable but beloved Mary, the Mother of God.””! Raising
this one woman onto a pedestal became a strategy of patriarchal dispar-
agement and control of all other women.
Those who approach this critique from a contemporary psychological
point of view note that the official, exalted view of Mary, insofar as it is cre-
ated primarily by patriarchal minds and hearts, bears an overload of male
projection. Men split off what is uncomfortable in their own nature and
identify it disparagingly with the “other” who is different from themselves.
Similarly, they sense what could inspire their lives and idealize it in the
“other” who draws them on like a good angel. Thus dividing women’s
human reality into good and harmful elements, they project the good onto
Mary in an idealized fashion and the weakness onto the rest of women,
who must then be kept subject because of their very nature. Truth be told,
this view comes nowhere near the experience actual women have of them-
selves. Nor, given the opportunity, would women ever theologically define
themselves this way. As Rosemary Ruether analyzed early on, this is a clas-
sic example of the “madonna—whore” syndrome, which exalts the symbol
of the spiritual feminine but denigrates the sexual, maternal, carnal reality
of actual women in the concrete.” The pattern is powerfully harmful
because it allows churchmen to love and revere their ideal of woman in the
transcendent woman Mary, but to ignore and dominate concrete women
with impunity and with immunity even from the searchings of their own
conscience. Further evidence for this judgment is provided by sociological
observation. In those countries where devotion to Mary still flourishes
strongly, women find great difficulty in claiming significant involvement
in public and political life. The same holds true for those churches that
have the strongest official attachment to Mary: they are the least likely to
be open to full participation of women in ecclesial public life and ministry.

Feminine Modeling
In addition to idealizing Mary, the patriarchal marian tradition also oper-
ates to harmful effect by construing the image of Mary with virtues and
roles conducive to women’s subservience. With no little irony, since Mary
has already been classified as beyond the reach of her sinful sisters, she is
set up as the supreme model whom all other women should emulate. This
second strategy uses strong gender dualism that assumes, contrary to
26 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

Christian faith, that Mary models the ideal spiritual path for women while
leaving Jesus for the men. It mounts this argument with particular empha-
sis on Mary as handmaid, as virgin, and as mother. Let me be very clear. To
be responsive to the call of God, to live a life of freely chosen virginity, and
to be a loving mother are fine and excellent things in and of themselves.
But patriarchal interpretation has derailed these options into a wreck of
oppressive expectations.

Handmaid. Luke’s gospel narrative of the annunciation presents a

powerful example of a young girl’s positive response to the invitation of
God operating within history. But rather than seeing Mary’s response as
the radical free decision of a young woman to risk her life on a messianic
adventure, patriarchal mariology interprets it as an act of feminine sub-
missiveness to the will of God, imaged here in literal fashion as a male
authority figure. In preaching, spiritual writing, and theological treatises,
Mary stands forth as the feminine epitome of dependence on this male
God’s initiative, a model of humility understood as lack of a personal ego
or will of one’s own. She models obedience understood as acquiescence:
“Tl do whatever you say.” The overwhelming passivity connected with this
construal has rendered Mary, in the words of famed mariologist René
Laurentin, “a psychological model of a perpetual minor,” hidden and
enclosed, timid and sweet, taking direction from others with no inner pur-
pose of her own.”* Such a presentation of Mary, as Sri Lankan theologian
Tissa Balasuriya critically observes, does not present her as a strong women
“who can respond to a world seeking justice”; nor does it encourage those
devoted to Mary to play their part “in the liberation of humanity from the
social evils which are part of the cause of our misery.”*4 Presented with this
ideal, women learn that they find their true path to God by being obedi-
ent, submissive, self-sacrificing, silent, and deferential, rather than exercis-
ing independent, responsible thought and action, especially in the face of
social and political evils. This construal of Mary the obedient handmaid
legitimates the idea that women’s virtue lies in being receptively obedient
to the authority of males, be they divine or human, God, fathers, husbands,
or priests. Note how the problem is compounded by the thoroughly mas-
culine character of the deity.
Growth in their own autonomy as human persons ensures that women
find this model increasingly intolerable. Kari Borresen speaks for many
when she argues that to make Mary a model for women is absurd if the
WOMEN’S THEOLOGICAL WORK a7

essential connection between femininity and subordination is not broken.

Only when the divine is no longer pictured in predominantly male »
metaphors, and only when human dependence on God is not cast in terms |
of female subordination to male authority, will the figure of Mary stop
being “a patriarchal construct: virgin, wife, and mother, an adjunct to the
male.”
New depth is brought to this critique by African American women who
inherit the legacy of chattel slavery. Clarice Martin, noting that the Greek
word doulos/doulé, which the annunciation scene translates “servant” or
“handmaid,” literally means “slave,” lists the degradations of slavery,
including violence, which enormously complicate its use as a metaphor for
relationship to God.”° The experience of slavery, furthermore, was differ-
ent for women and men insofar as women had to be bodily available to
serve the physical requirements of the males of the household, not only
feeding and cleaning them but servicing them sexually. Delores Williams’s
analysis of the coerced roles of the slave “mammy” in the American South
who had to be wet nurse, concubine, and breeder for her master removes
any possibility of glorifying the position of handmaid.”’ Shawn Copeland
argues that Christian teaching and preaching on the plantation sought to
bind slaves to their condition “by inculcating caricatures of the cardinal
virtues of patience, long-suffering, forbearance, love”: the more compliant
the woman, the better.” Today these virtues are being reevaluated in light
of women’s need for their own integrity, a rethinking that engages a
hermeneutic of suspicion to subvert the value of submission. No longer is
religious promotion of self-surrender and humble obedience bearable if
black women are to live in the freedom of the gospel. Jacquelyn Grant’s
work on the symbol of the servant reveals the ambivalence of this motif
even when applied to Jesus: when servanthood instead of discipleship is
offered as an ideal to black women, especially if it be shorn of concomitant
emphasis on resistance to evil, it is nothing short of sinful.””

Virgin. Postbiblical theology of Mary grew in an intellectual and reli-

gious environment that was increasingly suspicious of the human body
and its sexuality. The early church’s move from a Hebraic to a Hellenistic
environment entailed using the intellectual tradition of that culture,
including a philosophy that posited strong, underlying tension between
spirit and matter. This translated into a Christian spirituality that prized as
the highest value detachment from the world and its fleshly pleasures. The
 28 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

end of persecution in the fourth century gave additional impetus to the

_ path of asceticism, including abstinence from sex, which was considered a
new form of martyrdom. Theologians developed a strong bias against
marriage and sexual pleasure, which in their view enmeshed the soul in
earthly goods and distracted from the things that are above. They valorized
lifelong virginity as the holier way, achieved by special graces and leading
to a higher position in heaven. Interpreting Jesus’ parable of the sower and
the seed, innumerable patristic authors taught that marriage brought forth
thirtyfold, widowhood sixtyfold, and virginity the hundredfold harvest
that was so desirable. Jerome did famously grant that marriage was good
for one thing: it produced virgins, who could then avoid the fate of their
pitiable mothers. As for those already married, he offered the consolation
that they could become holy if they stopped having sex and practiced vir-
ginal chastity within the married state.
In the battle between the spirit and the flesh, waged by men who aspired
to God, women were placed on the side of the flesh owing to their role as
marriage partners as well as their messy connection with pregnancy and
childbirth. You can watch it develop in the literature of the early Christian
centuries: an increasingly strong torrent of misogyny against women and
their bodies.*° In this context, the resulting powerful aversion of Christian
male thinkers to female sexuality gave them a strong impetus to honor
Mary for her virginity. If virginity was the highest ideal for women, then
the mother of the Savior epitomized this ideal. The New Testament
affirmed that Mary had conceived Jesus by the overshadowing of the Holy
Spirit. Her virginity at his conception was now extended to include the
idea that she gave birth virginally, with her hymen unbroken, and
remained ever afterwards a virgin par excellence. It got to the point where
in the fourth century Pope Siricius even said that Jesus would have rejected
his mother if she had conceived other children. He would not have chosen
to be born of Mary “had he been forced to look upon her as so unre-
strained as to let that womb, from which the body of the Lord was fash-
ioned, that hall of the eternal king, be stained by the presence of male seed.
Whoever maintains that, maintains the unbelief of the Jews.”>!
A series of vicious debates in the fourth century showed that the inter-
twining of marian doctrine and ascetical theology was not universally
accepted. Arguing that marriage, sex, and children were the gift of God,
both Helvidius and Jovinian opposed the ascendent view of Mary’s per-
petual virginity because its accompanying rhetoric degraded those gifts. It
WOMEN’S THEOLOGICAL WORK Zo

also drove a wedge between all baptized Christians, profoundly devaluing

all who were not virgins. Baptism made both married women and virgins
equally sanctified in Christ, they argued, and while Mary conceived Jesus
virginally, her marriage to Joseph involved sexual relations, as can be seen
from the presence of the brothers and sisters of Jesus in the Gospels. While
their views were arguably more in accord with church tradition up to that
point, their opponents Ambrose and Jerome ultimately won the day. In the
end, Mary’s virginity was detached from its original Gospel significance
and came to stand alone as a physical value in itself. “What was once a tes-
timony to the presence of God in Christ had become an affirmation of
absence, an emblem of exclusion and closure; what was once a sign of sal-
vation extended to all, became a symbol of holiness possessed by the few.”*?
When this view was wedded to the Mary—Eve dichotomy, the patriarchal
imagination not only scapegoated female sexuality as the cause of sin and
death. It also created a marian tool with which to disparage all women who
engaged in sexual behavior, even if they were legitimately married.
There was one bright light in all of this. Historians of the ascetic move-
ment in early Christian centuries underscore how revolutionary the possi-
bility of virginity was for women. Ancient patriarchal society “conscripted”
young women without question into marriage and childbearing as their
duty to family and state. Once married, a woman became her husband’s
property, meant for his pleasure, the service of his life’s needs, and the
reproduction of his progeny. Virginity offered a new option. It opened up
possibilities for women that departed dramatically from the traditional
role expectations of patriarchal marriage. Dedicated to Christ, virgins
could resist family demands for unwelcome marriage alliances and a life of
bearing children for the clan. They could, in effect, choose a more inde-
pendent lifestyle that included private time, cultivation of the mind, and
empowering association with other women in female-run communities.*?
Seen in her social context, the virgin was “intact” not only physically but
also socially from patriarchal pressures.** An index of the consternation
this caused is the degree to which women had to struggle for the right to
be virgins or, in social terms, for the right to dispose of their bodies as they
pleased by keeping them out of circulation. What is clear is that this choice
was not imposed upon women by men. Rather, as Jo Ann McNamara’s
research demonstrates, “it was a revolt against an earlier set of male defin-
itions, a rejection by some women of the sexual roles they had played for
so long. No early Christian Father recommended virginity to women until
30 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

they had already claimed it as a new role for themselves in Christian soci-
ety.’5 Indeed, it was only after women chose this way of life in large num-
bers that male theologians and church leaders began their voluminous
outpourings in the effort to regulate their lives.
One strategy in this effort to tame the virgins’ freedom involved setting
Mary up as the ideal virgin who was not only chaste but silent, submissive,
and obedient.** If they emulated her, independent groups of women could
be controlled by church authorities. Despite some success along these
lines, the image of the virgin Mary did subversively signal that women
could be valued as persons in themselves without being identified with a
man. As Sydney Callahan writes, “All of Mary’s powers and privileges, her
strengths and virtues, were seen as independent of her status as a wife.”*”
Emphasis on Mary’s virginity served paradoxically to strengthen women’s
search for freedom. ;
On balance, however, the glorification of Mary’s virgin status, part of
the larger spiritual suspicion of the body, functioned to the detriment of
other women’s holy exercise of their own sexuality. Theoretically Jesus
might still have been the Son of God however conceived, since God’s
power is unlimited; but concretely Mary could hardly have been found
worthy of the honor unless preserved from the contamination of sexual
desire and activity, which theologians began to equate with sinfulness or at
least a lesser degree of holiness. Consequently, as Susan Roll observes, “the
virginity of the mother of God captured the imagination of male theolo-
gians and inspired extraordinary poetic images and discourses: Mary as a
sealed fountain, an enclosed garden, and so forth, to the point of morbid
fascination, embarrassing to read.”** The fundamental hostility of this the-
ology to women’s sexuality has perdured through the centuries. As the
feminist critique has laid bare, the results are derogatory to women whose
embodied human reality is disparaged in direct proportion to Mary’s
unearthly, asexual exaltation. Today as women reclaim their own sexuality
as part of their blessed human and spiritual wholeness, they emphatically
reject this disparagement. In South Africa, Sister Bernard Mncube, ex-
prisoner in the struggle against apartheid and campaigner for justice for
women, typifies the attitude when she exclaims:
Women in the Church need to re-affirm their sexuality against the cult of
virginity. | am a Roman Catholic nun and proud of it. But why must I be
ashamed of my sexuality? ... Our sexuality has been so mystified today that
we fear even to talk about it. I can talk about my hand, face, and every part
WOMEN’S THEOLOGICAL WORK 31

of my body, but when it comes to my vagina, I dare not even whisper the
word. As if God has created something so evil that we are not even allowed
to say a word about it.*?

She suspects that God, too, who created and loves women, feels marginal-
ized in the church by the antisexual tradition that so disrespects women at
the very core of their being.
One promising development stems from the discovery that the arche-
typal virginity of goddesses in ancient mythology lay not so much in their
lack of sexual activity as in their personal independence. “The virginity of
a goddess is a symbolic statement of her spiritual purity,” writes James
Preston from the perspective of cultural anthropology; it is “not to be
taken literally or confused with human sexuality.” A virgin goddess might
engage in sexual activity or she might not, but her virginity was not thereby
affected so long as she remained one-in-herself. C. G. Jung’s work on
archetypes came to the same insight. More than a biological reality, being
a virgin indicates a state of mind characterized by fearlessness and inde-
pendence of purpose. Whether wife or mother, the virgin retains an inner
autonomy. “She does what she does . . . because what she does is true,” as
psychologist Jean Shinoda Bolen describes it.*! When this becomes the lens
for interpreting Mary’s virginity, the resulting image can function spiritu-
ally and politically to encourage women’s integrity and self-direction.
Korean theologian Chung Hyun Kyung approvingly describes a virgin
Mary who is a self-defining woman, connected to her own inner self and
free to serve God. She does not lead a derived life as merely daughter, wife,
and mother of men. Rather, she lives from her own center with a power
that only gets stronger as she ages. In a similar vein, Marianne Katoppo in
Indonesia and Rita Monteiro in India, arguing that virginity refers to the
state of being whole in oneself rather than biological abstinence from sex,
relate Mary to poor women who struggle to be the subjects of their own
actions.*” European Catharina Halkes suggests that since virginity denotes
“an attitude of being open and available to the divine mystery, to the voice
and power of the spirit in us,” then we can learn from the virgin Mary “to
live from our own centre, our own roots, in independence, and not in one-
sided and alienating dependence.’* Thus Mary’s virginity functions as a
symbol of autonomy, signaling that a woman is not defined by her rela-
tionship with a man.
This symbolic interpretation of virginity is not as implausible as it
might sound at first to those familiar with traditional church teaching.
32 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

Spiritual writers have long held that, in essence, virginity connotes an

openness of spirit to God. Considering incidents of rape during military
invasion, Augustine held that purity is not lost even when the body has
been violated, if the will remains pure. Hence, a woman who is raped has
no cause to commit suicide.“ In holding Mary up as model of the church,
Vatican II points not only to her role as mother, which typifies the church
bringing forth new children in the body of Christ by preaching and bap-
tism, but also to her role as virgin, which typifies the church following
Christ with wholehearted fidelity. “The church herself is a virgin who
keeps whole and pure the fidelity she has pledged to her Spouse. Imitating
the mother of her Lord and by the power of the Holy Spirit, she preserves
with virginal purity an integral faith, a firm hope, and a sincere charity.’
Since Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, has
already defined the church as the whole People of God, its virginity is obvi-
ously something other than sexual abstinence. Rather, it signifies a quality
of religious commitment.
With these notions of virginity, the church’s official position about
Mary’s perpetual virginity, which teaches that she was a virgin before, dur-
ing, and after the birth of Christ, takes on a strangely liberating power.
Here is a woman whose worth is not dependent on a man; a woman whose
yes to God's invitation was at the same time an assent to the totality of her-
self; a woman who acted with integrity from her own center. Saying that
she is perpetually virgin encourages women to relate to the world with
freedom all their life long. Poor women have used this approach subver-
sively to emphasize Mary’s strength, autonomy, and prophetic spirit, which
empowers their own earthly struggle against forces of death. Many Asian
women have come to realize that “when a woman defines herself accord-
ing to her own understanding of who she really is and what she is meant
for in this universe (and not according to the rules and norms of patri-
archy), she is a virgin. Therefore her virginity persists in spite of sexual
experience, child-bearing, and increasing age. Actually her virginity, her
ability to be a self-defining woman, grows because of her full range of life
experience.:*°
Despite these attempts at reinterpretation, many other women find the
whole discussion of Mary’s virginity depressing and obnoxious. One New
Yorker dismissed the whole issue in inimitable fashion: “Mary’s sex life is
her own business. She, like all of us, needs some privacy.”4” Feminist analy-
sis has laid bare the fundamental problem. Cast in a dualistic framework
WOMEN’S THEOLOGICAL WORK 35

profoundly inimical to the body and sexuality, the patriarchal construc-

tion of Mary’s ideal virginity disparages actual women in their embodied,
sexual, beautiful reality.

Mother. Historically, Miriam of Nazareth was indeed the mother of

Jesus of Nazareth and can be assumed to have had influence on the kind of
compassionate, courageous man he became. However, concentration on
Mary’s motherhood in the tradition has served to reinforce the teaching
that motherhood is the raison d@’étre of a woman’s life, her one divinely
approved accomplishment. It thereby shores up the patriarchal social
expectation that reproduction with its accompanying domesticity is the
primary vocation for women. Equally problematic, Mary’s motherhood is
construed in absolute separation from eroticism and sexual love, handing
women a Virtually celibate ideal even in their motherhood. In addition, the
kind of mothering portrayed in marian hymns and prayers entails total,
lifelong devotion to the needs of her children, which precludes any idea
that she might develop as an independent individual. Her perpetual avail-
ability suffocates women, in Susan Harvey’s strong language, “with threats
of innate enslavement to a self-abnegating motherhood.”* The other side
of that relationship is that all too frequently it keeps devotees in a state of
perpetual childhood, narcissistically looking to the mother for the satis-
faction of needs, a state that is the antithesis of adult responsibility for the
world.”
Traditional construals of Mary as mother have yet another drawback.
They promote a spirituality that imaginatively takes the social experience
of the patriarchal household and projects it into heaven. One of the key
roles of the mother in a patriarchal family, where she is supposedly the
“heart, is to intercede on behalf of her children with the rather more dis-
tant father, who is supposedly the “head.” Her merciful influence can
soften punishment and obtain benefits that would otherwise not be forth-
coming. Reinscribing this human institution into heaven makes Mary the
merciful mother who intercedes for her wayward children before a basi-
cally loving but definitely just, perhaps testy, sometimes even angry God
the Father. The whole theology of her maternal mediation derives from
this scenario.*” While we have no adequate idea of heaven, however, we can
be quite sure that since it is supposed to be a state of bliss, one thing it
decidedly does not resemble is a patriarchal household.
Feminist research makes a distinction between women’s experience of
34 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

being a mother, which involves relationships of giving and nurturing that

can be deeply fulfilling, and the patriarchal institution of motherhood,
which is invariably restrictive.°! To be a mother is to give life abundantly
out of one’s own body and to nurture its well-being with power. Far from
pusillanimity, mothering awakens fierce protective instincts as the one
who gives life fights like hell to ward off what will harm the young.”
Retrieving and renaming this rich, life-changing relationship in their own
voices, women are freeing up from patriarchal definition an experience
that is uniquely female. In this context, Mary’s mothering has the potential
to promote the “ripeness of maturity” that enhances the dignity of all
women who nurture and serve the life of others, whether biologically or in
other ways.” Indeed, given Christian faith in the identity of the one she
bore, her act of mothering rings with subtle power for all believers. As a
popular axiom would have it, we are all meant to be mothers of God, for
God is always needing to be born. The strength of patriarchal gender def-
initions, however, makes women’s recovery of Mary as mother a continu-
ingly dicey proposition.
For women who now enter into mutual partnership with their hus-
bands in marriage, or who yearn to transform their relationships in this
direction, or who run single-parent households, or who combine mother-
ing with a career, or who live with their female partner, or who just root for
fullness of life for women, the whole patriarchal paradigm of motherhood
is simply ignored or even rejected. Discussing the unreality of Mary’s
motherhood as construed by the male celibate tradition, Ute Ranke-
Heinemann notes that “they have ignored the fact that a woman is also
something more than the bearer of a child according to a plan.””*4 A
woman’s personal worth does not depend on having children. Valuable
though it is, being a mother is not the only choice of vocation a woman can
legitimately make. In fact, persistent emphasis on the importance of hav-
ing children has but served to undermine the human dignity of women
who are childless whether by choice or necessity.*> Even when she is a
mother and happily stamped forever by her childbearing, a woman’s iden-
tity is not exhausted in this fact. There are more facets to her person as a
mature woman.

Sociological Subordination
Besides idealizing Mary and assigning her stereotypical feminine roles, a
third strategy uses Mary sociologically to divide women from other
WOMEN’S THEOLOGICAL WORK 35

women and all women from men. In the first instance, emphasis on the
value of Mary’s virginity implies that women who live a vowed life of vir-
ginity are closer to the ideal, are living a holier life, are more favored by
God, than women who actively exercise their sexuality even if this be in the
context of the sacrament of marriage. Thus Mary in patriarchal hands is
used to drive a wedge between women by assessing them to be of greater
or lesser spiritual worth, thereby replicating hierarchy instead of promot-
ing solidarity. Women on both sides of this divide are increasingly reject-
ing this sexual stratification, along with women who are neither virgins
nor mothers. Appreciating the great diversity of women’s ways to God,
affirming the sexually active female body as blessed, and refusing to con-
sider marriage inferior to religious life, they are finding each other as allies
in a community of celebration and resistance rather than rivals in a hier-
archy of holiness.
A further insidious use of Mary occurs when her relationship to Jesus
Christ as perceived by Christian faith serves as the model for the sociolog-
ical relationship between concrete historical women and men. Despite
heroic efforts to the contrary, this strategy inevitably relegates women to a
subordinate position. Jesus Christ is the Savior and Mary is caught up in
the mystery of salvation coming from God through Christ in the Spirit.
But this sound theological pattern is corrupted by patriarchal construals of
gender. God is envisioned as male, and she obeys him. Jesus’ human male-
ness is brought to the fore and interpreted in naive ontological fashion: he
is Messiah and she is oriented to him. This pattern is then translated into
normative social structures that shape the relationship between women
and men in the church. Men take initiative, women respond; men are
slated for the public sphere, women for the private; men exercise author-
ity, women are supportive of them.
Even without Mary, this is an argument as old as scripture. Christ is the
head of the church, his body. In a parallel way the husband is the head of
his wife: “as the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in
everything to their husbands” (Eph. 5:24). Granted, the husband is
exhorted to love his wife as Christ loves the church. But there is no mutu-
ality of equal partners here. The human analogy is patriarchal marriage,
with dominance-submission the fundamental pattern of relationship. In
subsequent theology, when Mary, again because of her gender, is construed
as a model of the church, the biblical Christ-church metaphor shifts to a
Christ—Mary one. In the resulting ideal, the patriarchal authority exercised
36 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

by men is complemented by women’s loving obedience and publicly silent

but privately supportive role. Theologian Jean Galdét framed the argument
in a blatant way: since Christ operated while Mary, who was totally depen-
dent, cooperated with him, the roles of men and women in the church are
clear. Man leads, woman follows. Man preaches the word, woman receives
it. Her role is her listening silence by which she renders service to the man
who speaks.°° The point to note is that the argument is being mounted
from the marian symbol in relation to Christ, applied sociologically in
direct fashion. For women and men who have glimpsed the new vision of
a community of the discipleship of equals, who yearn for it with a passion
born of their encounter with the Holy One, this construal is a distortion of
gospel truth. It exalts Mary the woman precisely for accepting the sec-
ondary role assigned her in view of the priority of Christ the man. Any
woman who does otherwise is judged to be not living up to the ideal
limned by the mother of God. Little wonder that independent women
walk away.
To sum up: separated and idealized, given a life story in which she is
submissive, desexualized, and fixated on motherhood, and then sent back
as a model for women subordinate to men, the traditional image of Mary
emerges from critical feminist analysis as a male-designed creation that
functions to define and control women. This image shores up patriarchal
social structures and inculcates in women the legitimacy of their restricted
place. This, of course, is not the whole sum and substance of the marian
tradition. But the burden of proof is on those who would deny this analy-
sis, which points to the deep problems that women face when they turn to
the work of liberating Mary from patriarchal interpretation.

CREATIVE INTERPRETATIONS

Despite the problems delineated above, “religious images do not belong

just to the powerful in the church,” as South African Megan Walker
points out. Gleaning wisdom from those disenfranchised, a legion of
women scholars now deals with the question of Mary in new ways. Their
creative proposals move the conversation to more spacious quarters of the
mind. One of the most significant interpretations is that of Rosemary Rad-
ford Ruether, who envisions a liberation mariology based on Luke’s gospel.
The primary text is Mary’s song, the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). Here, with
WOMEN’S THEOLOGICAL WORK a7

her declaration that God casts down the mighty from their thrones and
lifts up the lowly, Mary proclaims the saving power that enters history to
reverse the present order of power and powerlessness. As a woman from
among the poorer classes of a colonized people, she herself “represents the
oppressed community that is to be lifted up and filled with good things in
the messianic revolution.”°* Her story embodies God’s preferential option
for the poor and challenges economically advantaged people to be con-
verted to their cause. Insofar as Mary represents the church as redeemed
humanity, a new paradigm comes into being. Rather than the typology of
Christ and the church as dominant male and submissive female, we now
have the kenotic Christ self-emptying divine power out into the human
situation of suffering and hope, and the church being empowered and
lifted up as the transformed community of the poor and those in solidar-
ity with them. Together Christ and church/Mary/we ourselves begin to live
the reversal of values characteristic of the coming reign of God. While
some have criticized this construal because it continues to use gender as a
basic category, its strength lies in turning the Mary—Christ relationship
into a liberating rather than repressive symbol.
Mary Jo Weaver puts forth the intriguing suggestion that we should
commit an act of symbolic integration that would conflate all the different
women named Mary in the New Testament into one composite figure.
This would both heal the separation of Mary from other women and func-
tion as a powerful icon for feminists.°? Another suggestion, put forward by
Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, would be to reinstate and honor the tradi-
tion of women’s friendship with Jesus rather than Mary’s motherhood.
Critical of the way mainstream tradition has tamed Mary of Nazareth
“from a living, critical, angry, unadapted mother into the symbol of femi-
ninity,’® this theologian argues that in the Gospels friendship rather than
motherhood is the constitutive mark of the eschatological community of
the disciples. Though nativity scenes and pietas would not lead one to
think so, Jesus’ life was shaped not only by relation to his mother but also
by adult friendship with his women disciples, chief among whom was
Mary Magdalene, first witness of the resurrection, which is the central
proclamation of Christian faith. Until the women disciples are given their
rightful place, mariology has no future.
Women’s theological work on Mary is by now voluminous enough to
permit classification into distinct models. In an enlightening essay, British
theologian Sarah Coakley connects five different forms of theological mar-
38 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

iology to the kinds of feminist theory that they utilize.° Liberal feminism
and its ensuing mariology seek to promote equality, autonomy, and self-
determination for women as individuals. In this vein, Rosemary Radford
Ruether parses Luke’s annunciation scene to mean that in a free act of faith
Mary makes her own choices about her body and sexuality without con-
sulting male authority figures. She thereby enters into a real co-creatorship
with God, possible only if we understand that faith consists not in obedi-
ence to external authorities but in response to God, which is intrinsically
united with growth in our own autonomy. Radical feminism and its con-
comitant mariology deconstruct the tradition in an entirely negative way,
finding it nothing more than an elaborate set of projections of the “femi-
nine” by and for the benefit of men. Mary Daly is a prime example here,
interpreting Mary as a male-controlled shadow of the once-powerful God-
dess. Placed on a pedestal, she answers men’s psychological need and serves
their purpose with no purpose of her own. In her inimitable style Daly dis-
misses the result: “Dutifully dull and derivative, drained of divinity, she
merits the reward of perpetual paralysis in patriarchal paradise.”®’ Even
here, however, there is some hope, as Daly sees the Goddess enchained in
the figure of Mary set free to foretell women’s future independence. The
Assumption image of “Mary rising,” for example, has a prophetic dimen-
sion that portends women’s reclaiming their true identity; it foretells
“women rising.” French postmodern feminism, eschewing a fixed, definable
view not only of “feminine” nature but also of human nature, approaches
Mary with a psychoanalytic interest. In this vein Julia Kristeva’s reading
shifts attention to motherhood, uncovering how language, institutions,
and individual consciousness in patriarchal society coalesce to repress and
distort this experience unique to women. She substantially deconstructs
the virgin-mother image of traditional dogma and calls for a profound
new discourse on the dynamics of motherhood that incorporates not only
suffering unto death but also erotic pleasure, jouissance.® Socialist femi-
nism and its liberation mariology bring women’s struggle against patri-
archy into the cultural, economic, and political realms. The Magnificat is
clearly relevant here, and its use is exemplified by Latin American theolo-
gians Ivone Gebara and Maria Clara Bingemer, who pursue the theme of
God's favor to Mary because she is a poor, socially insignificant woman. It
is precisely on this basis that God begins with her the messianic work of
liberation of the people, which affects not just spiritual matters but all
aspects of society. Finally, romantic feminism and the mariology aligned
WOMEN’S THEOLOGICAL WORK 39

with it construct a “feminine other” complementary to the male psyche,

updating traditional gender stereotypes with Jungian psychology. In
Leonardo Boff’s work, for example, the feminine is characterized by “life,
depth, mystery, tenderness, interiority, and caring.’™ Its pinnacle can be
found in Mary’s humility and discretion: “Mary never lived in or for her-
self. Mary was a woman ever at the service of others.”® In this woman, Boff
argues, the feminine person of the divine Trinity, the Holy Spirit, became
embodied, just as the Word of God became incarnate in Jesus. Because of
this special relationship between Mary and the Spirit, the “feminine” so
described reigns now at the very heart of the Trinity, while Mary shows the
world the maternal face of God. Judging this romantic model to be reflec-
tive of a perspective spun out from the needs of the male psyche, Coakley
calls it weak-kneed and limping compared with the other options now in
play, options that even if fragmentary begin to illuminate how women are
developing new readings that may truly liberate.
A different take on the current scene is presented by Elisabeth Schiissler
Fiorenza, who describes four models of mariology prevalent in the patri-
archal tradition, two centered on the human qualities of Mary and two on
aspects that relate her to the divine. She cautions that harmful effects of
these same approaches tend to surface in feminist reconstructions when-
ever women do not scrutinize carefully enough how much their thinking
still remains within dominant male paradigms. The historicizing Reforma-
tion approach cuts through the excesses of marian piety by a return to
scripture. There, the focus is on Christ, who alone is the Savior worthy of
our absolute trust. Mary’s story, written around the margins of the story of
Jesus, is read historically, and her importance in the scheme of salvation is
consequently diminished. The result did not reform patriarchy, as Refor-
mation views on the subordinate position of women in marriage and min-
istry make clear. Rather, it threatened to turn Protestantism into a purely
masculine religion: “The elimination of Mary and the saints from the spir-
itual cosmos of theology and church had as a consequence—probably
unintended—that women no longer appeared in the religious symbolic
cosmos nor in the public of theology and church at all.”° Likewise drawn
from scripture, the ideal-typical ecclesiological approach was adopted by
Vatican II when it confirmed Mary to be an ideal representative or “type” _
of the church, symbolizing the faith, charity, and union with Christ that
should mark the whole community. The difficulty here is that old dualis-
tic sex/gender framework continues to prevail, undermining what could
40 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

be this symbol’s liberating power. Mary as feminine symbolically repre-

sents the church or the new humanity, whose virtue resides in obedience
to God. In the context of male imagery for God and an all-male clergy that
excludes women from ordained leadership, this symbolism has political
ramifications. Some men exercise the authority of God the Father and
Christ, while the remainder of men and all women are exhorted to imitate
Mary, who perfectly represents the qualities of receptivity, humility, obe-
dience, and passivity. Thus the typology reinscribes women’s secondary
status.
In contrast to the minimalist tendencies of these two models, two other
approaches to Mary place her at the center of attention and exalt her
above the heavens. But here again the basic dynamic of what Schiissler
Fiorenza calls kyriarchal theology, centered on the dominant male kyrios
lording it over others, undermines their benefit for women. The doctrinal-
mythologizing approach, which governs Catholic tradition, separates
Mary from all other women and gifts her with privileges far beyond their
ken: virginal conception, mothering of God, immaculate conception,
assumption into heaven. In a feminist sense these doctrines can be seen to
carry a double message, signaling as they do female power in both histor-
ical and heavenly realms. However, by making Mary here the exception
rather than the type, these doctrines, as we have seen, subtly disparage
women’s sexuality, holiness, and independence. Within the patriarchal
structure of the church they allow one glorified woman to function, which
inhibits the fullness of life for other women. “Only when Mary is no longer
the exception but rather has become the rule for the socioecclesial status of
women can her cult be credible and her image develop transformative
power for solidarity, justice, and liberation.”® The cultic-spiritual approach
of popular religion, finally, appeals not so much to reason and doctrine as
to emotion, the desire for security, and the intimate experience of divine
presence. Through feast days and private altars, candles and flowers,
visions and pilgrimages, Mary is celebrated as our loving mother, Queen
of Heaven, in such a way as to mediate an experience of divine goodness
and redemptive power in female form. The problem here is that official
theology insists that this so-called “feminine face of the divine” must
remain subordinated to an idea of God on analogy with the dominant
male. Even when recourse to intercession of the merciful mother Mary is
encouraged, her symbol remains fixed in a patriarchal cosmos and even
reinforces it by making a softer, more appealing approach to the patriar-
WOMEN’S THEOLOGICAL WORK 4]

chal God possible. The whole setup remains trapped in the inherited
framework of gendered masculinity and femininity, which does not offer
a way forward toward the liberation of women. Schiissler Fiorenza con-
cludes that only a genuine transformation of church structures and
rhetoric in the direction of a genuine community of the discipleship of
equals will provide the context in which mariological discourse can truly
be set free for the benefit of women.
A third attempt to organize the wealth of women’s work is the doctoral
dissertation by the Belgian scholar Els Maeckelberghe, published as Des-
perately Seeking Mary,® which lists eleven different approaches on three
continents. First she probes the work of Catharina Halkes, which employs
various disciplines such as comparative religion, history of religion, psy-
chology of religion, and theology to yield flashes of insight into the histor-
ical Mary, the basis for the symbolic Mary who reveals the Magna Mater,
the great divine mother. In more systematic theological fashion Rosemary
Radford Ruether deconstructs and then reconstructs the idea of Mary in
relation to women and redeemed humanity freed from patriarchy. Focus-
ing on tradition, Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza analyzes the Mary myth to
uncover its psychological and ecclesiological functions, querying whether
this story ever provided women with a new vision of equality and whole-
ness. Elizabeth Johnson’s earlier work on the symbolic character of theo-
logical discourse about Mary, proposing that speech about Mary actually
points to the graced existence of all believers, occupies a spot on the chart.
So too does the liberation mariology of Ivone Gebara and Maria Clara
Bingemer, who ally Mary with the struggle of poor people, especially
women, for justice and peace. There is the shifting work of Mary Daly, who
moves from rejecting Mary out of hand as an impossible model for women
of flesh and blood to perceiving a hidden, prophetic message in her figure:
a remnant of the ancient Goddess, she is also a precursor of a new age of
women’s divine power. Carol Ochs, Christa Mulack, and others identify
Mary with the feminine “side” of the divine, especially because she shares
major characteristics of the classical Goddess: mother of God, bride of
God, powerful virgin, mourner of the dead, Queen of Heaven, and source
of salvation. These authors promote Mary as revelatory of the divine
female in order to give women a foothold in the sacred according to their
own image. Maria Kassel undergirds this approach with Jungian psychol-
ogy, seeing Mary’s function as embodying the feminine archetype; in the
Catholic Church her presence provides a continuous link to the primeval,
 42 WOMEN’S VOICES IN A NEW KEY

all-embracing feminine divine principle. Then there are historical studies

by Marina Warner, P. Shine Gold, and Barbara Corrado Pope that show
how the history of marian thought has been ruled by images that corre-
spond to the society in which they function. Changes in economic, social,
and cultural arrangements bring about multiple variations in images of
Mary. Accordingly, one main interest of these researchers is to track the
effect of these changes on the status of women, for better or worse.
Corrado Pope, for example, analyzes how marian visions and pilgrimages
in nineteenth-century France promoted conservative nationalistic feelings
» at the same time that they offered a new measure of religious power to
poor and poorly educated women. After critical assessment of all these
approaches, Maeckelberghe’s own contribution is to offer a method drawn
from history and hermeneutics by which traditional symbols may be
appropriated. With the lens of symbolic imagination, she demonstrates,
the community of women may use sources as disparate as papal pro-
nouncements and popular holy cards to reinterpret Mary in an empower-
ing way.
There is much more creative work than these typologies have codified.
Asian theologians Chung Hyun Kyung and Marianne Katoppo limn the
contours of Mary as a prophetic woman and fully liberated human being
in Korean and Indonesian contexts, respectively. Maria Pilar Aquino and
Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz explore her image as not only liberated but liberat-
ing for Hispanic/Latina women who struggle against gender, ethnic, and
class bias.® Carol Frances Jegen edits a book of essays, Mary according to
Women, that presents the fruit of an entire festival built around marian
themes, including her significance for the afflicted and those who work for
justice and peace.’? Mary Grey calls for a new discourse of motherhood
that would honor the birthing energies in Mary and the rest of women,
while Patricia Noone pens a beautiful literary reflection on Mary’s rela-
tions to herself and others that culminates in claiming her as our sister.”!
The work of women’s theology in this field shows no sign of abating,
motivated by a spirituality whose hunger and thirst for justice includes
women in all their differences.

Within this chorus of women’s voices in a new key, I am going to explore

the option to consider Mary as a genuine human being who acted accord-
ing to the call of the Spirit in the particular circumstances of her own
WOMEN’S THEOLOGICAL WORK 43

history. This entails viewing her as a first-century Jewish woman living a

hard-scrabble life in a land occupied by a foreign empire. Naming the
grace of her choices in this context and the long-term influence of her life,
I propose that we situate her within the communion of saints and develop
a theology of her significance within this community. This will be a pneu-
matological mariology with emphasis on a dangerous memory that
encourages the whole community of disciples to ally themselves with the
reign of God, the God for whom Mary believed that “nothing will be
impossible” (Luke 1:37).
To pursue this option with clarity, I wish to address two other prevalent
interpretations. One, arising in the field of theological anthropology, views
Mary as the perfect embodiment of the feminine principle or essence,
which makes her the ideal face of “woman.” The other, working on the turf
of the theology of God, views her as bodying forth the feminine dimension
of the divine, which makes her the maternal face of God. At first glance,
these construals may seem beneficial to women. Indeed, when placed
within restrictive patriarchal settings, they do ameliorate women’s invisi-
bility and promote their dignity, at least symbolically. But a stance that
unapologetically affirms the full humanity of women sees through the
restricted boundaries of such approaches as they operate in the practical
order, so that they now appear to be cul-de-sacs. I do not call them dead-
ends because in traveling their length we can garner usable insights. They
are, however, roads that curve around and arrive back at their starting ©
point, nowhere going forward toward the goal of the understanding and
praxis of women’s equality. We need to map them clearly.
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RAGateryesge,
ce oni e
? PART 2

Roads Not Taken

SE

Cul-de-Sac:
The Ideal Face of Woman

ONE HUMAN RACE

s a result of rapid social changes, the traditional discipline of theo-

logical anthropology is today a field of dispute. At issue is the fun-
damental question of what it means to be a human being, or what it
means to be human together in a small ecological community of life in an
enormous universe created and energized by the Spirit of God. Within this
broad question lies the particular topic of what it means to be a male ora
female person in this one human race. It is hardly possible within the con-
tours of this book to give an account of the diverse views now being
argued. But the cul-de-sac in mariology marked out in this chapter uses
one precise interpretation that is easy to trace. Based upon an essentialist
view of gender, it ascribes to women and men two virtually separate kinds
of human nature, each gifted with its own characteristics, a position com-
monly described as dualistic anthropology or an anthropology of comple-
mentarity. Upon this grid it projects Mary as the ideal woman who
embodies the best of feminine nature, or what poets and philosophers
have called the Eternal Feminine.
For women to attain equal human dignity in a just and inclusive soci-
ety, this dualistic anthropology needs to be reordered into a multiple-term
schema, one that allows women and men of all races and classes to connect
in all their differences rather than constantly guaranteeing identity
through gender opposition. Toward this end feminist liberation theology
proposes an egalitarian anthropology of partnership, a set of ideas whose
parameters are still emerging in keeping with new facts of women’s
advance on the ground.! In this view of the human race, sexual difference

47
48 ROADS NOT TAKEN

is vitally important, but it does not become the sole, essential marker of a
person’s human identity. Rather, sex combines with other anthropological
constants such as race, class, family relations, social structures, historical
era, and geographical and cultural location to define persons as uniquely
themselves. Here Mary can take her place as the distinctive person she is in
solidarity with other women and men in all their diversity.

Dualistic Anthropology
Influencing centuries of marian theology, this view of the human race
starts out from the obvious biological sex differences between women and
men. Thinking in binary terms, it elevates sexual difference to an ontolog-
ical principle that cleaves the human race into two radically different types
of persons—men who have a masculine nature and women who have a
feminine nature. Each comes equipped with a distinct set of characteris-
tics. Masculine nature is marked by reason, independence, and the ability
to analyze, take initiative, and make judgments, while feminine nature is
marked by emotion, receptivity, and the ability to nurture, show compas-
sion, and suffer for love. Gender dualism then extrapolates from the qual-
ities endemic to each nature to assign men and women to different social
roles played out in rigidly preassigned spheres. This, it is claimed, is
according to the law of God laid down in nature.
This pattern of thought comes with a long historical pedigree. It first
appeared in theology when early Christian writers sought to speak intelli-
gibly about faith drawing on their own culture’s Hellenistic philosophy.
The medieval reappropriation of classical Greek thought gave this earlier
dualism a new lease on life. In each instance theology utilized a philosophy
that divided all reality into two spheres, spirit and matter. It also ranked
these spheres in order of importance with spirit, which signifies the higher
realm of light and eternal life, being prized over matter, which embodies
the lower realm of darkness, change, and death. Everything that exists
belongs to one sphere or the other. Regarding human beings, men are
classed with spirit while women are identified with matter, in the latter
case especially because of the obvious changes that take place in women’s
bodies through menstruation, childbearing, and menopause—female
flesh being forever the stumbling block to equality, in patriarchal thinking.
Consequently, men by nature are nearer to the divine, endowed with a full
measure of soul, while women for their own good need to be governed by
men who can guide them toward the higher realm. This dualistic vision
CUL-DE-SAC: THE IDEAL FACE OF WOMAN 49

results in a world where men function as the normative human beings fit
to exercise authority in the public realm while women are destined for the
private domain of childbearing, homemaking, and care for the vulnerable.
Even in this domain the man should ultimately rule because his innate
ability to reason and make decisions provides for smooth ordering of the
household. As Thomas Aquinas writes, “woman is naturally subject to
man, because in man the discretion of reason predominates.” Casting
women and men as polar opposites and defining women in terms unfit for
personal freedom let alone social leadership, gender dualism gives the
advantage, by nature and therefore immutably, to men. The only excep-
tions to this status quo are women who dedicate themselves to virginity. By
renouncing the exercise of their female genital sexuality with all it entails,
they are in fact taking leave of their feminine nature and “becoming male,”
thus moving closer to the divine. In Jerome’s view: “As long as woman is
for birth and children, she is different from man as body is from soul. But
when she wishes to serve Christ more than the world, then she will cease
to be a woman and will be called man (vir).”?
Such separatist thinking about the sexes gives rise to a series of equa-
tions that frames classical theology like a procrustean bed: men are to
women as spirit is to matter, as act is to potency, as mind is to body, as head
is to heart, as cool thought is to feeling and passionate sexual arousal, as
conscious is to unconscious, as initiating is to receiving, as call is to
response, as ruling is to obedience, as public is to private, as light is to dark-
ness, and, theologically, as heaven is to earth, as the Creator is to the world,
as Christ the bridegroom is to the church the bride, as the Spirit is to the
soul. Each of these pairs entails another in the practical order: as superior-
ity is to inferiority, as control is to subordination. Let it not escape notice
that the whole speculative edifice comes about because patriarchal struc-
tures have allowed educated men to commandeer the power of naming.
They have used this power to label those who differ in distinctly disadvan-
tageous terms. Given the chance, women would not define themselves in
these dichotomous designations even while claiming their own female
powers and needs.
A famous aphorism of Claude Lévi-Strauss quips that “women are good
to think with.” In the theoretical world of gender dualism, women do not
appear as historical agents in their own right but as rhetorical codes for
many other concerns, a phenomenon that we shall trace with Mary. Con-
structed as man’s “Other,” their feminine nature functions as a stand-in for
 50 ROADS NOT TAKEN

abstract theological concepts, cosmological powers, or distressing forces in

male consciousness. Whether they are placed on a pedestal as a symbol of
virtue or blamed as the originators of sin and death, however, they are
treated as symbolic representatives of male experience rather than as per-
sons in their own right. “The feminine figure shuttles between the sublime
and the debased, but always as the psychological ‘other’, and never as the
person who herself experiences spiritual anguish, who is fired by messianic
dreams, and who craves closeness with the creator.”* Some feminist analy-
sis suggests that, far from being accidental, opposition between masculine
and feminine is essential for the very existence of patriarchal discourse.
Carol Newsom argues that in patriarchal thinking it is woman’s lack of the
phallus and the privilege that men associate with its possession that
ground woman’s inferiority. Hence, male authority is established on body
symbolism. When the self is defined as male in this way, woman qua
woman enters all-male discourse possessing a strange and foreign quality,
either what discomforts and even repels the male or what attracts him and
inspires him to redouble his efforts. In either case, opposition between
male and female is fundamental to the symbolic order of patriarchy. With-
out such opposition and its construction of the female as the receptive or
mediating principle of male sovereignty, most serious patriarchal thought
would evaporate. But its use is not simply symbolic. When carried forward
in relation to concrete persons, symbolic statements implicate behavior.
All use of the patriarchal feminine in symbolic representation, therefore, is
freighted with significance for action toward actual women in the real
world.°

Egalitarian Anthropology
As early as 1838, during the first wave of feminism in the United States, the
Quaker Sarah Grimké penned a startling rebuttal to gender dualism.
Actively working for the abolition of slavery, she espied an analogy between
the condition of enslaved black people and that of white women like her-
self, subjugated by male dictates about their “proper nature” and “special
role.” Founding her argument on Jesus’ teaching, she argued that, contrary
to what the Massachusetts clergy might say, it revealed a message of free-
dom and equality. The emphases in the following citation are her own:
The Lord Jesus defines the duties of his followers in his Sermon on
the
Mount. He lays down grand principles by which they should be governed,
CUL-DE-SAC: THE IDEAL FACE OF WOMAN 51

without any reference to sex or condition. . . . | follow him through all his
precepts, and find him giving the same directions to women as to men,
never even referring to the distinction now so strenuously insisted upon
between masculine and feminine virtues: this is one of the anti-christian
“traditions of men” which are taught instead of the “commandments of
God.” Men and women were CREATED EQUAL: they are both moral and
accountable beings, and whatever is right for man to do, is right for woman.°

Drawing on this same resource, Catherine LaCugna echoes and broadens

this sentiment in contemporary language: “The life of Jesus Christ is at
odds with the sexist theology of complementarity, the racist theology of
white superiority, the clerical theology of cultic privilege, the political the-
ology of exploitation and economic injustice, and the patriarchal theology
of male dominance and control.”’ British theologian Janet Soskice reports
a more visceral response. To the Bishop of London’s painstaking elabora-
tion that the “masculine” is associated with giving and the “feminine” with
receiving, she replies that this is “a piece of gender construction as intoler-
able for men as it is dishonest about women, and among the latter is liable
to produce some hilarity in those who have become aware of and articu-
late about their role in securing the well-being of men without any firm
expectation that the converse will obtain.”® The laughter is a sign of dis-
missal. Women know that equating femininity with dependence inevitably
privileges men in terms of social, political, and spiritual power while leav-
ing women themselves to do the daily work that sustains life.
Moving to theory, egalitarian anthropology of partnership takes its cue
from the first chapter of the book of Genesis, where God creates human-
kind in the divine image and likeness, “male and female” (1:26—27).? Schol-
ars note that there is no assignment of masculine or feminine qualities here
but simply the fullness of being human persons in God’s image in one’s
distinctive sexuality whether male or female. We are one human race, and
attention must be paid to what we historically have in common as a
species. Most basically, all human persons share in being embodied spirits
in the world, who are conceived, at least as of this writing, when egg and
sperm unite to produce a growing organism that is ultimately delivered
from a woman’s body. Through the body all human beings are connected
to the earth in an ecological community that includes all other living crea-
tures in mutual interdependence on the life-supporting systems of the
planet. To stay alive all humans have common needs for breathable air,
drinkable water, nourishment, and sleep. Feminist theory is pouring atten-
 52 ROADS NOT TAKEN

tion on the vital importance of the body, so neglected in classical anthro-

pology but a starting point of commonality for all humans. All persons,
furthermore, starting in the first minutes of life are connected to signifi-
cant other persons and develop personality in and through these intimate
relationships. All interact with political, economic, and social structures,
for better or worse. All are shaped by their culture, geography, and the his-
torical time in which they live. And all are destined to die. When a plane
crashes into the tower where you work, you burn to death the same way.
When you breathe anthrax spores into your lungs, you die from the same
bodily breakdown whether male or female, of African, European, or Asian
descent, old or young, employed in a skilled or unskilled job. In all our dif-
ferences, we have more in common than what divides us.
In this matrix, personal identity is forged not only by sex but also by
race, class, family dynamics, ethnic heritage, social location, and political,
cultural, and ecological environment in interaction with the way each per-
son uniquely appropriates these markers.!° Diversity of personal charac-
teristics and gifts is not predetermined by sex but ranges across a wide
spectrum for women and men of all races and cultures. In fact, the range
of differences among women themselves can be just as great if not greater
than differences between some women and some men.!! This is not a uni-
sex anthropology that devalues sexual or heterosexual difference, even as it
insists that gay and lesbian persons are fully human persons who con-
tribute to the definition of what it means to be a woman or a man. Egali-
tarian anthropology recognizes that the sex chromosomes XX or XY with
their attendant differences abide in every cell of a woman’s or man’s body
and that biological sex difference is irreplaceable for healthy reproduction
of the species.'* It acknowledges that deep mutual love between a woman
and a man, where it is achieved and sustained, ranks as one of the most
profound relationships on earth, life-giving in literal and metaphorical
ways. Nevertheless, in contrast to dualistic anthropology, it argues that
male-female differences, rather than predestining persons to public or
domestic social roles, are compatible with social equality.
Here strategies differ. Liberal feminists interested in transforming
power arrangements tend to emphasize women’s capacity to function in
social roles traditionally denied them. Why, they ask, are courage, author-
ity, and rationality mainly properties of the male person rather than of
human persons, including mature women? By what criterion are the abil-
ities to relate, to respond, and to nurture primarily called female qualities
CUL-DE-SAC: THE IDEAL FACE OF WOMAN 53

rather than human ones, attributable also to mature men? Indeed, the sex-
ist stereotype of the feminine shrinks the vast diversity of women’s gifts
into a narrow set of characteristics. But nurturing and tenderness simply
do not exhaust the capacities of women; nor do bodiliness and instinct
define women’s nature; nor are intelligence and creative transformative
action beyond the scope of women’s power; nor can women simply be
equated with receptivity and mothering without suffocating their human
dignity. Respecting individual differences, such a stance calls for social
equality across the board. At the same time cultural feminists, seeking to
cherish and enhance female qualities typically demeaned in patriarchal
thought, emphasize that while each has a capacity for psychic wholeness,
women and men tend to perceive and integrate the relational and rational
elements of their lives in different ways. This leads to studies of women’s
moral development and psychology, women’s ways of knowing, women’s
ways of loving, and women’s ways of living bodily that promote the exer-
cise of autonomy with a care for relationships.!* Rather than the ideal of
the solitary, self-contained individual so prevalent in classical and con-
temporary patriarchal culture, the power to connect should pervade all of
society for the good of the whole. In symbol, ritual, and story, women’s
spirituality movements seek to tap into and let loose their nurturing pow-
ers of relationship, such as they are at this point in time, for themselves,
other persons, and the whole earth itself.!* Indeed, as Sara Ruddick argues,
maternal thinking itself is a boundless resource for social justice and peace,
requiring that the world’s business be done so as to nurture rather than
destroy what women have labored to bring forth.!° The obvious danger in
this approach lies in the ease with which it may cross over the line into gen-
der essentialism. With its uncompromising esteem for what has been den-
igrated, however, it stands as a sentinel against the idea that equality means
sameness. Both liberal and cultural feminist insights contribute vital pieces
to the still-developing egalitarian anthropology of partnership utilized by
feminist liberation theology in its quest for a world where women in all
their differences can flourish.
The position I espouse protests not difference between the sexes but the
patriarchal idea that these differences signify masculine and feminine
natures equipped with rigidly preassigned characteristics, which fact then
assigns women and men to play predefined, separate social roles. Even if
the two sexes are theorized to be equal and related in a complementary
way, the assignment of characteristics in traditional dualism does not
 54 ROADS NOT TAKEN

grant women an equal say in how the world is run, thus keeping them in
the status of a minor. In place of this gender dualism, so influential in the-
ology, an egalitarian anthropology envisions a redeemed humanity with
relationships between women and men marked by mutual partnership.
This signifies a relation of equivalence between persons, a concomitant
valuing of each other’s gifts however they are distributed, and a common
regard marked by trust, respect, and affection in contrast to assertions of
superiority. It is a relationship on the analogy of friendship, where a dialec-
tic of reciprocity and independence joins whole persons together for their
mutual benefit. In this egalitarian environment, sexual difference between
women and men assumes its rightful proportion and does not translate
into a strictly genderized division of human characteristics or labor. A
companionable community between the sexes on a broad scale then
becomes possible without detriment to the intense relationship that devel-
ops when a man and a woman form a coupling bond. Rosemary Radford
~ Ruether has beautifully described the journeys of conversion that need to
be taken to arrive at this kind of relationship. In a sexist society women
need to journey from socialized inferiority and lack of self-worth toward a
grounded personhood replete with self-esteem. Men must journey from
" overweening masculine pride toward a grounded self replete with humil-
ity. Then they can join hands in the struggle to create a way of being
together in mature mutuality that will humanize the world and salvage the
planet.’®

MARY AND THE PATRIARCHAL FEMININE

Time and again the fundamental pattern of gender dualism has formed a
grid for interpreting Mary. Theology has placed her, obviously, on the
distaff side of the human divide, envisioning her as the ideal embodiment
of feminine essence. Whether her perfection then serves to disparage other
women or to inspire them, her obedient, responsive, maternal image is at
play in the community as the norm for women in contrast to men. When
combined with an understanding of God and Christ as essentially mascu-
line, the result reproduces in theology, spirituality, and church polity noth-
ing less than the patriarchal order of the world, now with divine sanction.
The sampling of authors below demonstrates the problematic nature of
mariology done in this framework of the patriarchal feminine and illumi-
CUL-DE-SAC: THE IDEAL FACE OF WOMAN ao

nates why interpretations of Mary based on dualistic anthropology form a

cul-de-sac rather than a way forward.

Leonardo Boff
Doing theology in the Latin American context of enormous popular devo-
tion to Mary, Boff seeks to interpret this woman in the light of what he
takes to be a momentous contemporary event that occurs only once every
several thousand years. This is the emergence of the “feminine” from
humanity’s collective unconscious, apparent in our culture’s reappraisal of
the intuitive, of everything concerning subjectivity. “Recent decades have
seen a devastating assault on rationality and its airs. The ‘nonrational’ has
come into its own.” Part of this emergence entails women’s struggle for
recognition as persons who enjoy equality in social relationships. Wishing
to promote this equality, Boff defines his task as recasting standard patri-
archal mariology into a new mold defined by the broad horizon of the
newly emerging feminine. His project thus chooses “the feminine as the
basic mariological principle,”!” an organizing axiom that synthesizes all
marian privileges and interprets them as revelatory of the importance of
the feminine, even for God.
Given such a project, everything obviously stands or falls on the mean-
ing assigned to the feminine. Boff’s discussion is clear about the fact that
this idea is not a raw datum of experience but rather a construct drawn
from philosophy and the human sciences, especially depth psychology. His
all-important description proceeds in this manner. The feminine is the
ontological dimension of humanity that “expresses the pole of darkness,
mystery, depth, night, death, interiority, earth, feeling, receptivity, genera-
tive force, and the vitality of the human.” Its antithesis is the masculine,
which expresses the opposite pole of “light, sun, time, impulse, surging
power, order, exteriority, objectivity, reason.” Each expresses itself in traits:
the feminine shows itself in “repose, immobility, immanence, a longing for
the past, and a certain darkness,’ while “aggressiveness, transcendence,
clarity, the thrust toward transformation, the capacity to impose order and
project into the future” belong to the masculine.'® The feminine is allied
with the dark unconscious as opposed to the broad daylight of conscious-
ness; with the nonrational as opposed to the rational; with chaos as
opposed to order; with eros as opposed to logos; with the body as opposed
to the mind; with the desire to preserve and protect as opposed to risk and
challenge; with silence as opposed to the word.
56 ROADS NOT TAKEN

With this idea of the feminine clearly in view, Boff’s mariology then
interprets the traditional doctrines of Mary’s motherhood of God, virgin-
ity, immaculate conception, and assumption into heaven to demonstrate
that this woman embodies the best of this ontological principle. In keep-
ing with its social location, this is a self-described maximalist mariology. It
situates Mary, humble, silent, and given in service to others, at the apex of
the revelation of the very femininity of God to the world. As with all
mariology constructed on a dualistic anthropological foundation, Boff
encounters a problem with Jesus’ function as universal savior, namely, that
his humanity connects men to God in a more straightforward way than it
does women.
Jesus the male reveals God’s plan for the masculine explicitly. But he also
reveals God’s plan for the feminine (implicitly), since his reality, as the real-
ity of ahuman being, contains both the masculine and the feminine. ... But
Jesus’ humanity, being male, contains the masculine and the feminine in the
proportion proper to a male. Thus, while the masculine acquires an ulti-
mate, divine meaning in him directly, the feminine does so only implicitly,
as the recessive component. But if there has been a full and direct diviniza-
tion of the masculine—in Jesus—can we not expect the feminine to be
ordered to a full and direct divinization as well?!?

The answer fits with the way the question is set up. Just as the Son of God
became incarnate in the male Jesus of Nazareth and thereby divinized the
masculine, so too the Holy Spirit, whom scripture portrays as feminine,
has the mission of divinizing the feminine, directly and explicitly. The
Spirit has done so by entering into historical union with the Blessed Virgin
Mary. Thus Mary is cast as the salvific feminine complement to the mas-
culine Jesus—a theologically unacceptable place one arrives at by a com-
mendably stringent application of the logic of dualistic anthropology.
In an intriguing way, the logic of this argument falls apart in Boff’s
chapter “Mary, Prophetic Woman of Liberation,” which sojourns like an
alien in this book. Here he attends to the view of Mary newly arising from
small local faith communities (comunidades de base) in situations of
poverty, violence, and oppression, where poor people pray, discuss, and
carry out actions that express the political dimension of the faith. Such
Christians, committed to the process of liberation, discovered Mary’s
hymn of praise, the Magnificat, with a special appreciation. Her role of
denouncing oppression and critically proclaiming liberation in the name
of God’s mercy puts her in solidarity with their efforts and inspires their
CUL-DE-SAC: THE IDEAL FACE OF WOMAN By:

flagging spirits. Boff rightly notes that traditional mariology pays little or
no heed to Mary’s prophetic song or to her ethical indignation as she prays
of God to scatter the proud in the conceit of their hearts and feed the hun-
gry. The masculine—-feminine framework provides part of the explanation:
“Christian ideology, always in charge here, has had a difficult time decid-
ing between not ascribing any importance to Mary’s prophetic words,
superficially so male and so strange-sounding on the lips of a woman, and
spiritualizing them.””° Opting for a prophetic, liberating image of Mary,
Boff proceeds to abandon all the assumptions he has adopted. Instead of
the feminine expressing silence, darkness, repose, immobility, and a long-
ing for the past, this woman assertively and joyfully proclaims God’s word
about the coming messianic redemption, when the whole unjust order of
things will be overturned. In Boff’s artful description and despite his
intentions, this singer of the song of justice in the name of the God of Israel
reveals the feminine stereotype for what it is: a patriarchal construct that
has little to do with actual women. Boff’s illogic sounds a pleasing note.

Hans Urs von Balthasar

At the other end of the theological spectrum, this mystical, conservative
Swiss theologian also interprets Mary with the categories of dualistic
anthropology, appealing more to symbol and metaphor than to philoso-
phy or the human sciences. A guiding idea in Balthasar’s theology is that
the symbol of man and woman as a married couple provides a most effec-
tive way to illuminate the plan of God for the world’s salvation. The arche-
typal and final couple is Christ and his church, bridegroom and bride par
excellence. Prefiguring them is Yahweh’s covenant relationship with Israel,
whose people are depicted responding to God in various texts as virgin,
sinful and repentant spouse, and daughter Zion. Linking the two couples
is Mary, who brought forth the Messiah from one people to be head of the
other, his body the church. Her multivalent spiritual relationship to God
as virgin, spouse, daughter, and mother sets her up as the type of the
church par excellence. She does not just model the theological vocation of
church in an extrinsic way, but lives it out in her historical life and in
heaven as the symbol for the whole community. Thus Balthasar approaches
mariology with a deep christocentric vision and a strong ecclesial interest.
On the one hand are God and Christ, implicitly masculine; on the other
hand are Israel, Mary, and the church, explicitly feminine. The most pro-
found dimension of salvation is expressed when these two relate on the
58 ROADS NOT TAKEN

analogy of reciprocity between man and woman in a patriarchal conjugal

relation.
Within this framework Balthasar reflects on scenes from the gospels,
construing Mary with typically feminine virtues: she is silent, self-effacing,
self-giving, lovingly obedient, and so forth. One example is the wedding
feast at Cana. Mary notices the embarrassing lack of wine and brings it to
Jesus’ attention, revealing her awareness of the needs of the poor and her
instinctive feeling that her son could somehow provide help. Marching
toward his hour, Jesus tries to put her off. But her response, telling the ser-
vants, “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5), symbolizes the church at its
best. It expresses “her complete disinterestedness and surrender to his will,
but also her confident hope; and it is precisely by not making a fuss, by her
lack of self-will, that she wins and the hour of the Cross is anticipated.” By
appealing to Jesus despite his initial brushoff, Balthasar explains, Mary
gives evidence of the simplicity and cunning of a mother who knows how
to penetrate from the level of justice in God to the more profound level of
mercy; “and she is convinced that in this she is behaving correctly in a more
profound way than might be dictated by all the abstract justice worked out
by men for their state.” Balthasar pays tribute according to his own lights
with an encomium that is one of the most exquisitely weird statements
about Mary I have ever come across: “As a woman she has her heart where
it ought to be and not in her brain.””! The traditional dichotomy between
feminine and masculine, equated with heart and head respectively and fur-
ther equated with mercy and justice, is here on full display. It defies com-
mon sense to interpret Mary’s taking initiative in this story as lack of
self-will, her influence over her son as surrender to his will, and her smart
observation of need as love divorced from intelligence. Yet Balthasar is
more logical than Boff, and the feminine stereotype that governs this inter-
pretation allows for nothing else.
Gender-inflected complementarity of man and woman also governs
Balthasar’s symbolic use of Mary. Along with a constellation of other his-
torical figures, including Peter, John, and Paul, she is pressed into service
to represent what he calls “dimensions” of the church.”” The most impor-
tant dimension is the spiritual one of response to God’s gift of grace. Mary
symbolizes this dramatically. Her yes to God at the annunciation signals
the very beginning of the church. The responsive human consent of this
handmaid, one of Israel’s anawim, symbolizes the mystery of grace at the
heart of the church: “the bride is ‘prepared’ and ‘presented’ by the bride-
CUL-DE-SAC: THE IDEAL FACE OF WOMAN 59

groom to himself in such a way that the bride is solely for the bridegroom,
is offered to him as a sacrifice, is exclusively at his disposal . . . ”?3 Indeed,
it is too little to say that in this act of faith and in the unconditional, self-
effacing obedience to her Son that characterized the rest of her life Mary is
a model of the church. Rather, her fiat,“the maiden-saying of Mary by
which she consents to her total dispossession in order to become the recep-
tacle of the Holy Spirit,’** is the very form of the church, the inmost spiri-
tual reality that should mark every ecclesial person and activity. It is the
interior, receptive response to God that makes the church more than just a
sociological group. Balthasar argues that this “marian element holds sway
in the Church in a hidden manner, just as a woman does in the house-
hold.”*° Spreading a protective mantle of warmth, it shows itself in service,
humble love, and quiet being there for others. This “marian face of the
church” is deeper and closer to the center than any other aspect. It will last
for all eternity. Without it, the church would not be fruitful, for the femi-
nine bears fruit in response to the divine (read: masculine) gift of grace.
At the same time, the church needs “objective” means to promote this
all-important “subjective” holiness. Thus there is also Peter, charged with
leadership, mission, and, in the case of the petrine office itself, unity. The
petrine face of the institutional church is expressed through sacraments,
preaching, and administration of canon law, which assure members of the
church that they are encountering Christ in a stable way. “Institution is the
guarantee of the enduring presence of the bridegroom Christ to the bride
the Church. This is why it is entrusted to men who, although they belong
to the comprehensive femininity of the Church, are taken from her midst
and, while remaining in her, embody Christ who approaches the Church
to impregnate her-”° The marian tradition of holy obedience comple-
ments this petrine tradition of orderly hierarchical rule.
Mediating between these two dimensions stands the apostle John,
whom Balthasar conflates with the Johannine beloved disciple. John sym- 4
bolizes the archetypal experience of contemplative love. Receiving from
the dying Jesus the charge to become son and protector of Mary, on the
one hand, and frequently coupled with Peter in the missionary beginning
of the Acts of the Apostles, on the other, he “slides thereby into an unem-
phasized but fully indispensable mediating center (between Peter and
Mary, church of office and of men, and church of women) which points
out to both dimensions of the mystery of the church their place and their
proportion.””” In addition there is Paul, who expresses the missionary
60 ROADS NOT TAKEN

dimension of the church. Not having known Jesus during his public min-
istry, Paul witnesses to the step forward that must be taken after the resur-
rection. Faith that comes from hearing rather than one’s own seeing is now
the founding experience of the church. His archetypal encounter with the
risen Christ, and its expression in zealous proclamation guide the later wit-
ness of the church, always in submission to Peter. I note here that Mary
Magdalene, first witness of the resurrection, missioned to preach by the
risen Christ who presumably had a choice whom to send, does not appear
in this constellation of figures.
Compared to the usual patriarchal pattern of male over female, Baltha-
sar poses the petrine and marian dimensions in reverse order of impor-
tance. The marian dimension relativizes the hierarchy, he argues, pointing
it always to its primary purpose, which is to facilitate the encounter
between God and human beings in Christ. It cannot be forgotten that Peter
denied knowing Jesus at the moment of supreme crisis, while Mary’s fiat
lasted all the way to the foot of the cross. Thus the marian takes precedence
over the petrine in what is of ultimate importance: “Before male office
makes its entrance in the Church, the Church as woman and helpmate is
already on the scene.””®
Note how this kind of language allows marian symbolism to segue into
ecclesial symbolism to the erasure of the existence of actual historical
women in the church with their spiritual and political agency. Mary gets
equated with an idealized spiritual reality called church, which equates
with the abstract “woman,” which equates with receptive response to grace.
Framing the entire discussion is the all-male hierarchy, governing in the
name of the male Bridegroom, which this type of symbolism serves to
maintain. In a discerning essay James Heft notes the criticism that
Balthasar’s idea of the masculine-feminine polarity may be more rooted in
German idealism and modern psychoanalytic thought, especially that of
C. G. Jung, than in the scriptures.*? The concept of dimensions of the
church, furthermore, is a nonbiblical idea not at all necessary for ecclesiol-
ogy. In any event, this Swiss theologian’s symbolizing of different ecclesial
dimensions serves to clarify the unspoken agenda in the standard use of
Mary as model of the church. She may take precedence over Peter in spir-
itual matters and may be said to have no use for apostolic power because
she exercises a higher power, but the net effect of this symbolism is to rel-
egate women to nurturing the inner life of the spirit, which of course is of
no little importance, but to block them from participation in the public
ministry of the church.
CUL-DE-SAC: THE IDEAL FACE OF WOMAN 61

John Paul II

Departing from centuries-long tradition, Pope John Paul II teaches in no

uncertain terms that women and men are equal as persons before God:
“Both man and woman are human beings to an equal degree, both are cre-
ated in God’s image.”*° The power of this theoretical affirmation of spiri-
tual and metaphysical equality, however, is compromised in practice by the
pope’s commitment to gender dualism. His work consistently draws upon
the traditional view that men and women embody human nature in two
radically contrasting ways, which means that they must play distinct social
roles. The unique essence of “woman? lies in the notion that she is made
for the “order of love”: “Woman can only find herself by giving love to oth-
ers.”>! Given her orientation to love, the proper vocation for every woman
is motherhood, or the spiritual form of motherhood that is exercised in
virginity. Even here, however, the masculine-feminine dichotomy, inter-
preted as acting versus responding, prevents women from taking initiative
in love. As the pope conceives the dynamic, “The bridegroom is the one
who loves. The bride is loved. It is she who receives love in order to love in
return.” This is the case not because of personality or economic condi-
tions or any other social circumstance, but because of nature: “This con-
cerns each and every woman, independently of the cultural context in
which she lives and independently of her spiritual, psychological and phys-
ical characteristics, as for example age, education, health, work, and
whether she is married or single.” Consistent with the tradition of this
dichotomy, furthermore, the pope warns against women departing from
their own rich essence even when they muster “rightful opposition” to sin-
ful domination by men. This “must not under any condition lead to the
‘masculinization’ of women,’ he warns. Although never spelling out just
what that would mean, his writings make clear that this would entail
assertiveness, rational argument, and independent action. “In the name of
liberation from male ‘domination, women must not appropriate to them-
selves male characteristics contrary to their own feminine ‘originality.”°?
Instead, as woman, each one must live according to the “special qualities”
proper to the “fact of her femininity.”
What makes this papal position an advance from previous official
teaching is that he declares the two sides of the masculine—feminine divide
to be of equal value in the eyes of God, which must lead to equal respect in
human relationships. Especially in marriage, man and woman should
relate to each other in a communion patterned on the life of the Trinity,
which entails respect for each person’s dignity. This equality of essence as
62 ROADS NOT TAKEN

persons, however, does not mean that man abandons his leadership posi-
tion. To illustrate, the pope points to the ordained priesthood: “Since
Christ in instituting the eucharist linked it in such an explicit way to the
priestly service of the apostles, it is legitimate to conclude that he thereby
wished to express the relationship between man and woman, between
what is ‘feminine’ and what is ‘masculine.”* It is surely an idiosyncratic
interpretation of the gospel narratives, unsupported by biblical scholar-
ship, to posit that Jesus’ concern at the Last Supper was to teach the gender
difference between man who essentially acts and woman who naturally
receives. But to stay on point: equal in dignity but separate in social roles
stamps this new version of gender dualism.
When this pattern of thought deals with Mary, it produces the same dif-
ficulty we have already encountered in Boff and Balthasar. Mary is
intensely exalted, assigned feminine functions, and held up as the model
for women, with the result that women continue to be subordinated in fact
if not in intention. The main focus for John Paul II’s reflection is Mary’s
role as mother of God, which ineffable truth stands at the center of the
mystery of God’s plan of salvation. What is most important about this real
motherhood, to which she gave her free consent, is that it places her in
union with God, uniquely so on a physical level and also, in an archetypal
way representative of the whole human race, on a spiritual level through
grace. Since all of this happens to her precisely as a woman, she also signi-
fies “the fullness of the perfection of what is characteristic of woman, of
what is feminine. Here we find ourselves, in a sense, at the culminating
point, the archetype, of the personal dignity of women.”*° Anything true
said about woman’s dignity and vocation must remain within this marian
horizon. Her role in the divine plan of salvation “sheds light on women’s
vocation in the life of the church and society by defining its difference in
relation to man. The model Mary represents clearly shows what is specific
to the feminine personality.” Indeed, “Mary is the model of the full devel-
opment of women’s vocation.’*® Unpacking this specificity, the pope
declares that, like Mary, women have as their true vocation motherhood,
whether physical or spiritual. Like Mary, women should emulate a “style”
that makes no proud demands but maintains an attitude of humble ser-
vice. And like Mary, women should develop certain characteristics that will
enable them to live their true vocation to the utmost. In the encyclical
Redemptoris mater (Mother of the Redeemer) the pope lists these virtues
as follows:
CUL-DE-SAC: THE IDEAL FACE OF WOMAN 63

It can thus be said that women, by looking to Mary, find in her the secret of
living their femininity with dignity and of achieving their own true
advancement. In the light of Mary, the church sees in the face of women the
reflection of a beauty which mirrors the loftiest sentiments of which the
human heart is capable: the self-offering totality of love; the strength that is
capable of bearing the greatest sorrows; limitless fidelity and tireless devo-
tion to work; the ability to combine penetrating intuition with words of
support and encouragement.*”

Note that whatever may be the praiseworthy value of this list of virtues, the
fact that they are “feminine,” applied to women but not to men, makes
them suspect. They are the habits of the helper, the auxiliary, the hand-
maid, not that of the resister of oppression—let alone the self-actualizing,
creative leader. In situations of abuse where it is essential for women to say
NO, such sentiments can even be dangerous to life and limb. Assigning
these qualities to women in the private domain may challenge women to .
develop a spiritual life, but it also serves to block their mature growth as
active subjects of their own history and to deny them opportunities for
equal partnership in society.
Bringing Mary’s archetypal feminine function into ecclesiology, the
pope borrows explicitly from Balthasar to note the distinction between the
marian and petrine dimensions of the church.** The marian dimension,
seen most clearly in Mary’s fiat, symbolizes the church in its identity as the
handmaid of the Lord, as the one who believes, as the virgin dedicated to
God’s service, as the spouse made fruitful by the Spirit, and most of all as
mother, bringing forth new children of God in Christ. This marian, mater-
nal dimension functions in a discreet and hidden way. It is the field of spir-
itual union with Christ, of prayer, of self-giving service, of abiding faith. It
is, however, distinct from the petrine dimension. Mary “represents one
face of the Church, different from and complementary to the ministerial
or hierarchical aspect.*? Interpreting the scene where Mary prays in the
upper room in the midst of the disciples at Pentecost, the pope notes that
this was the moment when Peter and the apostles received power from on
high to preach the gospel to all nations. He then notes explicitly that “Mary
did not directly receive this apostolic mission.”*° Here dualistic anthropol- ©
ogy controls interpretation, glaringly so, because the biblical text makes no
such distinction but rather states just the opposite: “When the day of Pen-
tecost had come, they were all together in one place. ... And they were all
filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit
gave them utterance” (Acts 2:1, 4).
64 ROADS NOT TAKEN

On balance, John Paul II’s genuine desire to promote the dignity of

women is subverted by the unrelenting dualism of his thought. It holds
women in such idealized regard that they are judged to be too good to get
involved in the messiness of the public realm, being relegated to a discreet
if influential vocation. Many women respond to this romantic papal fem-
inism as did one of my college students in a paper on the encyclical The
Dignity and Vocation of Women: “As a young woman of the late twentieth
century do I want to be so highly exalted? No, I would rather be equal.”
One young man in that same class also had a fascinating insight: “Saying
that women are more fitted to love means that they are better able to fol-
low Jesus’ teaching to love God and your neighbor. Where does that leave
me? Second best?” The point being, of course, that by boxing women’s and
men’s abilities into innate differences based on traditional gender stereo-
types, dualistic anthropology inevitably compromises the human and
spiritual potential of both.

Myriads of Others
Hosts of additional thinkers across the theological spectrum accept and
use the masculine-feminine dichotomy for mariology without question-
ing whether or not it is an adequate tool of interpretation or even whether
it is true. In an article aptly titled “Mary: Miriam of Nazareth or the Sym-
bol of the Eternal Feminine?” John van den Hengel names, in addition to
Boff and Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, Leo Scheffczyk, Andrew Greeley, Claus
Newman, and Teilhard de Chardin, all of whom present Mary as the Chris-
tian personification of the eternal feminine.*! There are myriads of others.
In a meditation on the marian dimensions of life, Raimundo Panikkar sug-
gests that the relationship between human beings and God is none other
than that between a created femininity and a Creator. Mary the woman,
mother, and handmaid of the Lord, incarnates the eternal feminine and
thus best represents this feminine—that is, receptive, responsive—aspect
of life. “We see in tradition that Mary said practically nothing and did very
little,” he writes. “It is her ‘being, her existence that causes her to be called,
and truly, blessed among women.” It must be noted that this view of
Mary’s passive existence, her non-speaking and non-acting, does not
cohere with the testimony of scripture. Nor does the idea that women are
blessed because of their silence and inactivity remotely do justice to
women’s struggle for life and human dignity.
In a similar pattern of thought, John Macquarrie reflects “that it is pos-
sible to characterize the feminine in broad strokes—it is a type of mental-
CUL DE SAC: THE IDEAL FACE OF WOMAN 65

ity responsive rather than initiating, concerned with the whole, with the
inward, with the ideal, with what can be intuited rather than deduced,”
while the masculine style is opposite on every point. Applying this to Mary,
he notes how she is the pattern of womanhood because she as feminine
responds to the initiating activity of God (read: as masculine) and has
great inward depth along with the feminine capacity for patient endurance
of pain. But then, pointing to the Magnificat, he finds that there is also
“another side” to her personality. The only language on hand, that of gen-
der dichotomy, is barely adequate to his purpose: “Mary then did not con-
form to any stereotype and she sometimes showed characteristics that we
would normally call masculine, yet she is perfectly woman and perfectly
feminine.’*’ Why is Mary masculine when she utters prophecy against
powerful oppressors? Can a woman not speak in a critical vein? Not
according to the ideal of the feminine, which Macquarrie interestingly
admits is a stereotype. From the perspective of feminist liberation theol-
ogy, one must note that a woman who proclaims the downfall of the rich
and the feeding of the hungry in the name of God is a strong woman, period.
Yet another example exists in Jaroslav Pelikan’s sweeping study of Mary
in the history of culture. He raises the important question of how “this
humble peasant girl from Nazareth,” about whom the New Testament has
relatively few references, became the subject of such reams of sublime,
even theologically extravagant, speculation. With reference to the arts, in
particular music, painting, and church architecture, he finds the answer to
his query in a line from Goethe’s Faust: “the Eternal Feminine leads us
upward.’ To demonstrate this, his study observes that Mary has been the
subject of more discussion about what a true woman ought to be than any
other woman in Western history. He also takes passing account of the
problematic nature of that history for women today, citing critics such as
Elisabeth Schtissler Fiorenza and her conclusion that, since mariology has
its roots and development in a male, clerical, and ascetic culture in which
women were silent and invisible, the whole construction is a theology
“preached to women by men [which] can serve to deter women from
becoming fully independent and whole human persons.’* However,
Pelikan thinks to offer a “historical corrective” to feminist studies like this
on a number of points. He criticizes women’s scholarship that exposes the
invective hurled at women through the fallen figure of Eve by noting that
the same patristic and medieval authors heaped praise on a counterpart,
Mary, the second Eve. Here he avoids the critical analysis that reveals how
both the overwhelmingly negative portrait of women in Eve and the posi-
66 ROADS NOT TAKEN

tive portrait of the feminine in Mary are but two sides of the same coin,
namely, male projection ignorant of and dominant over the actual lives of
real women. By not critically analyzing the patriarchal bias of the history
in which the construct of the eternal feminine originates, Pelikan can revel
in its aesthetic outcome but ignore its effect on women struggling for
human wholeness who are not included in the “us” being led upward. A
little hilarity is in order.
In light of this tour of the perennial dualism that afflicts so much inter-
pretation of Mary, it is instructive to revisit Vatican II for a final example.
The conciliar treatment of Mary as model of the church, despite its ecu-
menical advantage, is hobbled by gender-inflected notions of masculine
and feminine. The wording of the key text contains the clue: “the Mother
of God is a model of the Church in the matter of faith, charity, and perfect
union with Christ” (Lumen Gentium $63). Beautiful and true though this
might be, what is not said is equally significant. Mary is not the model of
the church in its institutional aspects, most particularly in its exercise of
pastoral leadership. She is not the model of the church in its official role of
governing, preaching, and administering the sacraments. She is not the
model of the church’s ordained priesthood. Priests may look to her as the
model of their own faith and charity but not of their ministry, except inso-
far as they symbolize it as the maternal role of bringing persons to birth in
Christ. There were no debates about this during the council. It was simply
taken for granted, mentioned in speeches and commentaries, sometimes
rounded off by indicating that the complement to the marian model of the
church is Peter, model of the church in its formal structures and sacra-
ments. The underlying assumption is the split between men’s and women’s
natures characteristic of dualistic anthropology. The so-called feminine is
not fit for the public, official sphere, at least in the church. Put another way,
for the patriarchal imagination, women are by nature incapable of exercis-
ing the authority of Christ.

LIGHTING OUT FOR THE TERRITORY

The views presented above are not exceptions but are overwhelmingly typ-
ical of the way Mary is construed in patriarchal, dualistic theology. Now it
becomes clear why women’s negative assessments presented in chapters 1
and 2 are so strong and will not go away. It is not a question of this or that
CUL-DE-SAC: THE IDEAL FACE OF WOMAN 67

image or questionable virtue being assigned to Mary, but of the whole sys-
tem of gender dualism that frames the interpretation. Within that frame-
work, construals of Mary are inevitably shunted onto a track that runs
toward idealization of the feminine as opposite to the masculine. Caught
in this binary way of thinking, women’s lives are forever restricted. So long
as the essential connection between femininity and subordination stays
unbroken, so long as theology uses the feminine to mean the receptive
principle complementary to masculine initiative, Mary will signify a lesser
place in the world for women.
It is not possible to interpret Mary in a liberating way within the con-
fines of this traditional masculine-feminine dichotomy. An old American
expression from frontier days reflects what happens when staying in town
becomes too uncomfortably hot for unconventional characters: they light
out for the territory. Escaping the clutches of stereotyped definitions of the
feminine and taking Mary with us, women are doing just that. Our task
now Is to free theology from hierarchical power relations encoded in dual-
istic views of women, situating interpretation of Mary instead within an
egalitarian anthropology of partnership. The goal is to arrive at a place
where we can remember her as a blessing rather than a detriment to
women’s struggle for full human dignity in all their diversity, and ulti-
mately to allow her life to be part of the church’s word about God that
advances loving praxis for the good of the world.
Before leaving town, however, it will help to plant seeds for future trans-
formation to lay out the inadequacies in theory and practice of the dualis-
tic anthropology being left behind. '
- It originates in patriarchal society and reflects the status of women in
that setting. Women were said to lack reason, for example, in a society that
blocked them from receiving an education. Of course they were using their
powers of reasoning, but not in the way learned men did; the latter could
not recognize intelligence born of experience and the wit to survive. Cul-
tural expectations socialize children into specific ways of being male and
female. Change these, and new ways of being women and men emerge.
This is indeed happening in postindustrial society today—think of women
in sports, business or government, law or medicine, ministry or university
education.
* In addition to its unexamined roots in traditional societal structures,
which are passing away, gender dualism functions to maintain unjust dis-
tribution of social power between women and men. By defining the femi-
 68 ROADS NOT TAKEN

nine as dependent, devoted, and receptive, and thereby declaring the

essential woman incapable of representing any authority beyond herself, it
denies women access to the task of shaping the community’s cultural insti-
tutions, laws, and symbols. Indeed, the feminine ideal projected onto
women is vigorously defended because it functions so well to keep men in
positions of public power and women in service to them in predeter-
- mined, private, politically powerless roles.

* Gender dualism also suppresses the fact that persons actually exist
who are homosexual or bisexual or intersexed. This dualistic theory does
not do justice to their concrete humanity, basically rendering them invisi-
ble. Numerous empirical studies demonstrate that real gay and lesbian
persons do not fit the standard stereotypes of masculine and feminine, any
more than heterosexual persons do. But since their way of being human
more clearly departs from the traditional standard, the former provoke
fear and hostility. All too often, gross injustice results.*°
* Gender dualism is racist and classist. Womanist and mujerista theolo-
gians note how the patriarchal concept of the feminine reflects the societal
privilege of some women, those belonging to the race and class of the men
in elite positions who thought it up. In American society at this time, it is
white, middle-class women who can (if they wish) live out the feminine
ideal, for they have not known the struggle for survival engaged in by gen-
erations of slaves or marginalized immigrants. In fact the existence of such
“non-feminine” women to do the sexual and domestic scut work of soci-
ety is required if some women are to occupy positions of privilege. Poor
women have never had the luxury of staying home in their own domestic
realm, even if they wanted to. Sojourner Truth, a nineteenth-century freed
slave, tellingly put her finger on this racist and classist underbelly of the
notion of the feminine in her famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech:
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages and
lifted over ditches. . . Nobody ever helps me into carriages or over mud
puddles, or give me any best place. And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look
at my arms! I have ploughed and planted and gathered into barns, and no
man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as
much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well. And ain't I
a woman I have borne thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off to
slavery and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard
me! And ain’t Ia woman?*”
CUL-DE-SAC: THE IDEAL FACE OF WOMAN 69

Indeed, what is awoman? And—the vital subtext here—who gets to decide?

Sojourner Truth’s poignant and challenging query, born of suffering, dis-
rupts patriarchy’s discourse about the ideal feminine, as does the concrete
historical reality of millions of other women.
* Finally, gender dualism fosters the development of distorted human
psyches. “Men fail to integrate into their own identity those repressed
capacities which they project onto women. Women in turn are denied
those capacities for autonomous selfhood, decision-making, and critical
intelligence monopolized by males.’** The result is truncated human
beings whose relationships, even the most intimate, can only be less than
mature. Two role-playing halves trying to make a whole never succeed, for
authentic relationship requires two fully human persons in all their dif-
ferences standing independent from and lovingly responding to one
another.
Historically outdated, unjust to women, exclusive of those who do not
fit the norm, racist and classist, and productive of psychological immatu-
rity, patriarchal gender dualism is an obstacle on the journey toward a
liberating future. Governing all of these failings is the need patriarchal dis-
course has to think by means of opposition to what is “other.” As Newsom
observes, “So long as a society’s discourse is carried on by males alone, that
fact is scarcely noticeable. But as women enter into public discourse as
speaking subjects, the habit of patriarchy to think symbolically by means
of woman is thrown into confusion. Woman cannot occupy the same sym-
bolic relation to herself that she does to man. With that change the long,
slow crisis of the symbolic order is at hand.”? It is this crisis, now at a full
boil, that leads women to reject those construals of Mary that have been
created by traditional dualistic thinking. In this new moment of the living
tradition, the uprising of women’s consciousness is refusing such defini-
tions of female reality. Crafting a view of Mary from the perspective of the
poor, Latin American theologians Ivone Gebara and Maria Clara Binge-
mer provide a helpful description of the view of the one human race so
needed to arrive at the territory ahead. A truly liberating mariology, they »
reflect, must move from a male-centered to a human-centered anthropol-
ogy; from a dualistic to a unifying one; from an idealistic to a realistic, .
historical view of human nature; and from a one-dimensional to a pluri-
dimensional view of humanity that includes but goes beyond sex.*? The
poet Irene Zimmerman expresses best what lies ahead in this territory for
marian theology:°!
70 ROADS NOT TAKEN

All the way to Elizabeth

and in the months afterward,
she wove him, pondering,
“This is my body, my blood.”
Beneath the watching eyes
of donkey, ox, and sheep
she rocked him, crooning,
“This is my body, my blood.”
In the moonless desert flight
and the Egypt-days of his growing
she nourished him, singing,
“This is my body, my blood.”
In the search for her young lost boy
and the foreboding day of his leaving
she let him go, knowing,
“This is my body, my blood.”
Under the blood-smeared cross
she rocked his mangled bones,
remembering him, moaning,
“This is my body, my blood.”
When darkness, stones, and tomb
bloomed to Easter morning,
she ran to him, shouting,
“This is my body, my blood.”
And no one thought to tell her:
“Woman, it is not fitting
for you to say those words.
You don’t resemble him.”
By now it is clear why considering Mary the ideal face of woman or the
feminine face of the church is a cul-de-sac that this book will not take. Our
proposal to interpret Mary within the communion of saints will certainly
honor the fact that she is a woman, a Jewish woman of a particular time
and place, with her own familial and social relationships, her own journey
toward God, and what turned out to be her historic vocation to partner
God in bringing to birth the Messiah. It will not, however, interpret her in
terms of the patriarchal feminine. As women claim the power of naming
themselves in their own right, an egalitarian anthropology of partnership
is emerging to the fore. This is the fresh context for theologizing about
Mary as a woman with her own originality in the community of the saints.
 :
@
Cul-de-Sac:
The Maternal Face of God

MINING A RICH LODE

\ second road that this book will not take interprets Mary as the
woman who in her merciful, ever-loving care makes present to
people the maternal face of God. This is a fascinating idea that goes
a long way toward illuminating the dynamics of marian devotion. The
exuberance of this tradition indicates that much of its growth is not
explainable by the needs of preaching the gospel alone. Despite correct
official formulations of doctrine, more is going on here than immediately
meets the eye. A surprisingly diverse number of women and men scholars
have proposed that, since standard images of God as lord and king along
with the trinitarian formula of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit inevitably set
up in the human imagination the notion of a male person or persons, the
human psyche seeks intuitively to balance this one-sided relationship with
other images that mediate the divine in female form. Teilhard de Chardin,
for example, gave voice to this view when he defended the veneration of
Mary because it served to satisfy an “irresistible Christian need” in the
church, namely, the need to correct “a dreadfully masculinized” concep-
tion of the Godhead. When the dogma of Mary’s Assumption into heaven
was defined, he wrote that he was “too conscious of the bio-psychological
necessity of the Marian—to counterbalance the masculinity of Yahweh—
not to feel the profound need for this gesture.”' Even though female images
of God are present in the Bible and in Jewish and Christian mystical tradi-
tions, they have been excluded from the church’s official language about
God. Thus, the explanation goes, these divine images have migrated to the
figure of Mary.
Thanks to this dynamic, Mary has functioned beautifully as an icon of

Tk
qe ROADS NOT TAKEN

God. For innumerable believers her persona has revealed divine love as
merciful, close, interested, always ready to hear and respond to human
needs, trustworthy, and profoundly attractive, and has done so to a degree
not possible when one thinks of God simply as a ruling male person or
persons. Consequently, in devotion to her as a close, compassionate
mother who will not let one of her children be lost, what is actually being
mediated is a most appealing experience of God’s saving love. The crite-
rion for discerning where marian symbolism is actually harboring a word
about the living God, rather than the woman of Nazareth, is the prayerful
movement of the human spirit in adoration. Wherever Mary is described
or addressed so as to evoke the ultimacy of God as expressed in scripture,
liturgy, and creed, or wherever people direct their trust to her with ulti-
mate devotion, there it can be supposed that, rather than idolatry taking
place, the reality of God is being named in female metaphors.
Most scholars who have posited this relation between the figure of Mary
and the need for some feminine quality in the divine have been content to
let the issue rest there. Feminist theology takes a further step, proposing
that thinking of God in exclusively male images is the result of patriarchy
and subject to reform, rather than a necessary state of affairs in need of
compensation. Holding strongly to the claim that women are created in
the image and likeness of God and affirming with equal vigor the incom-
prehensibility of the living God who can never be captured literally in
finite words or symbols, such theology argues that the holy mystery of God
can be represented by female symbols in as adequate and inadequate a way
as by male symbols.
In view of this conviction, the ordinary habit of Christian language that
uses a few male images for the divine to the exclusion of all others appears
restrictive and even distorted. Theologically the words tend to be reified so
that God is wrongly understood to be masculine in a literal sense, however
subliminally. The human heart thus creates an idol. Spiritually and psy-
chologically, all male imagery of the divine also deprives women of seeing
themselves as created directly in God’s own image and likeness unless they
abstract themselves from their own bodies. They are thereby deprived of a
source of spiritual power. Socially and politically this language maintains
the patriarchal arrangement of church and society, legitimating men’s
domination over women and nature since they rule in “his” image as king
and lord. Indeed, the long omission of female images from standard
speech about God has not been accidental. Historically it has been wedded
CUL-DE-SAC: THE MATERNAL FACE OF GOD 5,8)

to a view of humanity that holds that men alone embody the fullness of
God’s image and likeness. Compared to them women are defective in body
and spirit, which makes them less than worthy as reference points for the
divine. It is good to report that no reputable theologian today holds this
position, which has been so harmful that it has even drawn a papal apol-
ogy.” The implications for God-talk have not been as quick to follow, but
they are clearly in view. Reclaiming the basic revolutionary teaching that
precisely as female they are created with unsurpassable dignity in the
image and likeness of God, women today are proposing that female images
along with cosmic ones be used, not exclusively, but to enrich the poverty
of the traditional vocabulary about the holy mystery of God.
Given this program, the insight that divine images have clustered
around the figure of Mary affords a new opportunity. Rather than leave
them there, we can invite them to travel back to their source, where they
belong. The marian tradition then becomes a rich mother lode that can be
“mined” in order to retrieve maternal and other female imagery and lan-
guage about the living God.’ Relieved of bearing this burden, the figure of
Mary is freed to return to her own history as a woman of faith and to rejoin
us in the graced community of struggle in history. Toward that end, our
trip around this cul-de-sac explores key instances where female images of
God that were going homeless in official doctrine found a place in Mary’s
image to shelter and thrive.

HISTORICAL SOUNDINGS

Early Christian Centuries

It is commonplace today for scholars to note the similarities between the
veneration of Mary in the early Christian centuries and the pervasive ven-
eration of the Great Mother Goddess in the Mediterranean world into
which Christianity was moving. Very little is known precisely about how
elements of the Hellenistic cults of female deities accrued to the person of
Mary, but, as Hugo Rahner notes in the course of his argument for the
essential differences between them, such similarities at least in superficially
observable matters are simply a matter of historical fact.* The church was
not fashioned in a vacuum but absorbed many of the assumptions, verbal
and visual imagery, and rituals of the surrounding culture into its own the-
ology and liturgy.
74 ROADS NOT TAKEN

In his classic study of this adaptation in the case of Mary, Jean Daniélou
stresses the radical distinction between the mystery cults and the Christian
veneration of Mary.° Insofar as the latter originated in a historically unique
revelation of God in Jesus Christ, and furthermore portrays Mary as vir-
ginal rather than as the sexually fecund Earth Mother, there is more dis-
similarity than similarity between them. Once these essential differences
are established, Daniélou argues, one is then free to examine the ways in
which Christianity’s marian cult adapted elements from the mystery cults
and substituted itself—historically in the fourth-century world, and psy-
chologically in the human spirit—for the cults wherein the female deities
played an absolutely central role. The officials of the church allowed this
assimilation of pagan elements for two reasons: it was an excellent mis-
sionary strategy in a world where goddesses were highly honored; and it
reflected a sacramental view of reality in which, once “baptized,” female
images could evoke the God revealed in Christ. Among the people, how-
ever, it must be asked whether such purification was actually accom-
plished, or whether instead in a form of syncretism the cult of Mary simply
continued the veneration of the maternal power of the goddess. In either
case, Daniélou concludes, the power of the marian cult lies in the fact that
it corresponds to the aspirations of the human heart, by which it seems he
means the desire for a mother’s love.
Starting in the fourth century, devotion was transferred to Mary in
innumerable ways. Places in nature where female deities had been honored
with pilgrimage and prayer, such as grottoes, springs, promontories,
mountains, lakes, and woods, became associated with Mary.® Shrines and
temples to the goddess were rededicated to Mary the Mother of God, out-
standing examples being found in Rome, Athens, Chartres, and Ephesus.
Artistic symbols of the goddess accrued to Mary: her dark blue cloak, tur-
reted crown, link with the moon and the stars, and with water and the sea.
The iconography of Mary seated with her child facing outward on her lap
is patterned on the pose of Isis with Horus, the mother herself an upright
royal throne that holds the god-king facing the world. Hymns reminiscent
of the self-praises of Isis acclaimed Mary with familiar titles and attributes
of female deities, such as Queen of Heaven, all-holy, merciful, wise, the
universal mother, giver of fertility and the blessings of life, protector of
pregnant women and their children, sailors at sea, and all who call to
her in need. The still-venerated statues of the black madonna at Le Puy,
Montserrat, Chartres, and elsewhere derive from ancient black stones con-
CUL-DE-SAC: THE MATERNAL FACE OF GOD 75

nected with the fertility power of earth goddesses, black being the benefi-
cent color of subterranean and uterine fecundity. Adapted into the iconog-
raphy of the classic Gallo-Roman mother goddesses, this symbolism was
then conserved in the sculpted images of the black madonna.’
The earliest written trace of this devotion is the prayer Sub tuum prae-
sidium, a papyrus fragment of which is variously dated to the late third or
fourth century. Used for centuries as a liturgical antiphon in the churches
of East and West, the prayer casts Mary in the role of divine protector: “We
fly to your patronage (or protection, shelter), O holy Mother of God;
despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us from all dangers,
O glorious and blessed Virgin.” Hilda Graef notes that this prayer dares to
use the same verb (rhyomai) as does the Lord’s Prayer when asking Our
Father in heaven to “deliver us” from evil, suggesting that the mother of
God has access to divine power and will use it for merciful purposes.’ The
same plea for deliverance from calamity resounds through the Akathistos
Hymn developed in the sixth century, a magnificent exuberance of twenty-
four stanzas, each in dazzling poetry hailing Mary worthy of all praise for
having brought forth the Logos.’
The mass demonstration that took place during the council held in
Ephesus in 431 gives further evidence of this transfer of devotion. When it
became clear that the bishops would decide in favor of the disputed mar-
ian title Theotokos, or God-bearer, the populace, which had been demon-
strating outside the church, greeted the verdict with an explosion of joy.
They led the bishops to their lodgings with torchlight processions and
shouts of “Praised be Theotokos!” This outpouring is reminiscent of an
enthusiastic rally in this same city several centuries before, when Paul’s
preaching threatened the livelihood of the silversmiths who crafted like-
nesses of the city’s goddess. As reported in Acts, enraged crowds shouted
for hours, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians” (Acts 19:23—24), practically
forcing a riot and causing Paul to leave. Four centuries later the scene
repeats; Theotokos had taken Diana’s place in the hearts of the people.'° In
at least one instance, popular assimilation of the goddess cult seemed to
destroy the fundamental structure of Christian faith. The fourth-century
sect of the Collyridians, made up mostly of women, worshiped Mary as
herself divine. Devotees sang, prayed, and offered sweet breads before her
throne as had so many before them to the Great Mother. Against them
Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, inveighed, “The body of Mary is holy but
she is not God... . Let no one adore Mary.”"!
76 ROADS NOT TAKEN

For all the real differences in structure and content between Christian
devotion to Mary and the veneration of the goddess, the evidence at hand
indicates a strong process of assimilation and adaptation of ideas, texts,
and artistic imagery in the case of the emerging marian cult. As Daniélou
argues, while remaining independent, Christianity yet used the rich sym-
bols of paganism purified of their ancient content to express its own reve-
lation and thereby to insinuate itself into the hearts of new believers so
recently accustomed to the beneficence and maternal power of the god-
dess. This comparative approach to the origin of marian symbolism yields
a clear insight: the marian tradition is one conduit of imagery and lan-
guage about divine reality flowing from the veneration of the Great
Mother in the pre-Christian Mediterranean world. Even when well inte-
grated into a Christian gestalt, the historical origin of this symbolism
opens up the possibility of drawing upon Mary to reflect upon the mystery
of God in female metaphors.

Medieval Growth
Scholars of the medieval European period, documenting its extensive
growth in popular devotion and learned speculation about Mary, note that
by the sixteenth century the figure of Mary had taken on attributes and
functions borrowed not only from the ancient goddess but from the Chris-
tian Trinity itself.'* While the Protestant Reformers roundly criticized this
development and while the Catholic reform sought to correct it, more con-
temporary interpreters perceive it as a quest for religious experience
through the compassionate feminine image, an experience not available
through the patriarchal idea of God at the time. On a popular level
supported by religious orders and bishops, these centuries saw the multi-
plication of marian feasts, prayers, hymns, sculptures, paintings, and mag-
nificent cathedrals, expressions of devotion that still stand. The marian
theology that arose in this context is complex. Theologically, scholasticism
drew on the Hellenistic idea that feminine/maternal qualities were and
perforce had to be totally absent from God, for it was intrinsic to the fem-
inine to be passive and receptive; technically, to be potency rather than act.
Since God is Pure Act, only the active power of the masculine/paternal
could be allowed to enter the notion of “Himself.” As the scholarly
medieval idea of God consequently became ever more rigorously andro-
centric with no room for anything feminine, views of Mary became com-
mensurably ever more laudatory. Her privileges and honors grew
CUL-DE-SAC: THE MATERNAL FACE OF GOD i

according to the premise potuit, decuit, fecit: God could do great things for
his mother, he should do them, therefore he did them. Freed by the logic
of this axiom to imagine what they would give their own mothers if they
could, the minds of medieval male theologians generously heaped gifts of
personal perfection and public influence on the mother of God.
In the process, Mary at first paralleled and then occasionally outshone
the Godhead. The creative power of God the Father was mirrored in Mary,
who at the incarnation gave the world the Savior, thereby becoming the
source of the world’s renewal. As Anselm praised, “So God is the Father of
all created things, and Mary is the Mother of all recreated things.”!* Psalms
were rewritten substituting Mary for God as the acting subject of divine
deeds: “Sing to Our Lady a new song, for she hath done wonderful things.
In the sight of the nations she hath revealed her mercy; her name is heard
even to the ends of the earth” (Psalm 96/97).'4 Standard hymns of divine
praise such as the Te Deum were refashioned to honor Mary:
We praise thee, O Mother of God; we confess thee, Mary ever Virgin... .
Thee all angels and archangels, thrones and principalities serve. Thee all
powers and virtues of heaven and all dominations obey. Before thee all the
angelic choirs, the cherubim and seraphim, exulting, stand. With unceasing
voice every angelic creature proclaims thee: Holy, holy, holy, Mary Virgin
Mother of God!!*

In time, Mary was gifted with omniscience and a certain omnipotence over
earth, heaven, and hell. Biblical affirmations of God the Father were attrib-
uted to her, such as she so loved the world that she gave her only Son (John
3:16).!° She was addressed as Our Mother who art in heaven, and asked to
give us each day our daily bread and deliver us from danger. In moments
of critical reflection there was universal insistence that these and similar
honors redounded to the glory of God, who “himself” had so honored
Mary. In effect, however, this kind of devotion to the Mother of God was
actually devotion to God the mother, to the ultimate mystery of the cre-
ative and recreative God glimpsed in female form.
While Jesus Christ was acknowledged as gracious Savior, the increas-
ingly juridical penitential system in the church led to the sense that his role
as judge superseded his mercy. The latter in turn was attributed abun-
dantly to Mary. She was depicted as restraining Christ’s wrath, placing
back into its sheath his sword, which was raging against sinful humanity.
She was particularly kind to the undeserving, saving all manner of rogues
and wrongdoers so long as they called upon her. As the period progressed,
 78 ROADS NOT TAKEN
Og
Seea

she went from being merciful mediatrix with the just judge, to being sharer
of common dominion with Christ through the pain she suffered on Cal-
vary, and thence to having power over the mercy of Christ, whom she com-
manded by her maternal authority. So great was the essential role of Mary’s
mercy that medieval theologians wrote of her what biblical authors wrote
of Christ: in her the fullness of the Godhead dwelt corporeally (Col. 2:9);
of her fullness we have all received (John 1:16); and because she had emp-
_ tied herself, God had highly exalted her, so that at her name every knee
should bend (Phil. 2:5—11). Medieval parallels between Mary and Christ in
nature, grace, and glory, in virtue and dignity, resulted in the figure of
Mary assuming divine prerogatives. As co-redemptrix, she merited salva-
tion; as mediatrix, she obtained grace for sinners; as queen and mother of
mercy, she dispensed it herself. All of this power resided in Mary as a
maternal woman who represented ultimate graciousness over against
divine severity. While theology today criticizes the deficient christology
that made this compensation necessary, it is nevertheless clear that the fig-
< ure of Mary functioned more than adequately as a female image of the sav-
ing mystery of God.
In scripture the activity of the Spirit of God is pictured in a multitude
of metaphors taken from the natural and human world. One such constel-
lation of images centers on the bird and her wings, long a symbol of female
deity in ancient Near Eastern religions. Whether hovering like a nesting
mother bird over the egg of primordial chaos in the beginning, or shelter-
ing those in difficulty under the protective shadow of her wings, or bear-
ing the enslaved up on her great wings toward freedom, the Spirit's activity
Vv is evoked with allusion to femaleness.!’ Early Syriac Christianity kept this
connection between the Spirit of God and female imagery, consistently
depicting the Spirit as a brooding or hovering mother bird, mothering
Jesus into life at his conception and into mission at his baptism, and bring-
ing believers to birth and mission in the waters of baptism. This doctrine
of the motherhood of the Spirit fostered a spirituality of warmth which
found expression in characteristic prayers: “As the wings of doves are over
their nestlings, and the mouths of their nestlings toward their mouths, so
also are the wings of the Spirit over my heart.”'® In time this biblical and
patristic imagery migrated away from the Spirit toward the church, called
holy mother the church, and by the Middle Ages to Mary, the mother of
Jesus, venerated as mother of the faithful as well. The Spirit’s outstretched
wings “morphed” into the outstretched cloak of the strong medieval
CUL-DE-SAC. DHE MATPERNAL- PACE OF GOD ie

Madonna of the Protective Mantle, and the Spirit’s birthing and renewing
powers were attributed to her gracious work in salvation. The figure of this
woman became the bearer of profoundly important characteristics of the
Spirit of God.
As this brief sampling shows, those who were devoted to Mary experi-
enced first and foremost a relationship of trust to a transcendent, power-
ful mother figure ready to hear human needs and profoundly sympathetic
to human weakness. In her symbolism, the maternal, merciful, caring
metaphors that the Bible uses to describe God’s unbreakable love for the
people of the covenant found continuing, concrete expression.

European Theology
As the Roman Catholic tradition developed after the Protestant Reforma-
tion, the priority of God and the centrality of Christ in the mystery of sal-
vation were made officially clear. There was still more than enough room,
however, to attribute to Mary important functions in the mediation of
God’s saving love. The pressure to do so built up into a “marian move-
ment” from the nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, a period marked by
marian apparitions, innumerable treatises on her privileges, and papal def-
inition of two marian dogmas, the Immaculate Conception and the
Assumption. In a highly influential work, Mary, Mother of the Redemption,
written at the peak of the marian movement a decade before Vatican II,
Edward Schillebeeckx sought to provide a theoretical foundation for the
church’s actions. He reasoned that while God’s love is both paternal and
maternal, the latter quality is not and cannot be fully expressed in the man
Jesus because he is a male. Thus God chose Mary to embody the feminine Be

qualities of the divine, namely, all that is tender, mild, simple, generous,
gentle, and sweet in divine love. “Mary is the translation and effective
expression in maternal terms of God’s mercy, grace and redeeming love |
which manifested itself to us in a visible and tangible form in the person of /
Christ, our Redeemer.”!? What is so interesting in this treatment of the
theme is the choice of active verbs to express a relationship: Mary repre-
sents, makes manifest, explicates, translates, effectively expresses some-
thing of God that cannot come to light in Jesus Christ. This quality is the
feminine, maternal aspect of divine love which needs expression through
the figure of a woman. Schillebeeckx’s statement is one of the most explicit
preconciliar treatments of the Mary—God connection. While he clearly
would not treat the subject the same way today, having criticized his own
 80 ROADS NOT TAKEN

position and wishing, after his monumental work on Jesus, to hew to a

more biblical approach;”° and while his reduction of the feminine to the
maternal and of the maternal to mildness and sweetness is highly ques-
tionable from a feminist viewpoint, his thesis is still being used by the-
ologians who wish to affirm Mary as the maternal face of God. In an
interesting development, some Anglican and Lutheran scholars have
favored this idea, finding in Mary a life-giving symbol of divine creativity
and saving love that helps to correct Christianity’s heavy masculine
emphasis with reference to God.*!
In the ecumenical climate after the Second Vatican Council, theologians
such as Yves Congar, René Laurentin, Heribert Miihlen, and Léon Ja@ardi-
nal Suenens paid careful attention to the Protestant critique that in the
Catholic tradition Mary has substituted in a particular way for the action
and experience of God the Holy Spirit.22 Catholics have said that Mary
forms Christ in them, that she is spiritually present to guide and inspire,
that she is the link between themselves and Christ, and that the spiritual
seeker goes to Jesus through Mary. But are these not precisely the roles of
the Spirit of Christ? Furthermore, Mary is called intercessor, mediatrix,
helper, advocate, defender, consoler, counselor. But are these not titles that
belonged originally to the Paraclete? Catholics have thought and preached
that all grace comes from God through Christ by way of Mary. But is this
not a dislocation of the Holy Spirit, who is essential to the trinitarian gift
of grace in this world? The observation of Protestant student Elsie Gibson
is frequently quoted as Catholic thinkers attempt to come to grips with this
issue: “When I began the study of Catholic theology, every place I expected
to find an exposition of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, I found Mary. What
Protestants universally attribute to the action of the Holy Spirit was attrib-
uted to Mary.”
Finding this critique basically substantiated, Laurentin has observed
that Mary occupied spaces left vacant by an undeveloped pneumatology in
medieval Latin theology and even more in post-Tridentine theology. The
way forward, he suggests, is to be found by a return to the scriptures. There
the Spirit has obvious primacy, while Mary is overshadowed by, filled with,
made fruitful by, and enabled to prophesy in the power of the Spirit. Con-
sequently, the privileged sign and witness to the Holy Spirit in the com-
munity of the church is the person of Mary, whose role of mediation and
intercession occurs only within the primordial role of the Spirit.
At the
same time, the consistency with which Mary has been conflated with the
CUL-DE-SAC: THE MATERNAL FACE OF GOD 81

Holy Spirit, the person in the Trinity most connected with divine intimacy
and presence to human beings, suggests that here again the figure of Mary
is expressing important but overlooked aspects of the reality of the living
God.
To summarize our explorations to this point: soundings of the marian
tradition’s historical origin, medieval growth, and modern European inter-
pretation reveal workable connections between the figure of Mary and the
creating, redeeming, and sanctifying God in both popular piety and theo-
logical reflection, and often there is not a hard and fast distinction between
these two. The need to compensate for an overly masculinized idea of God,
seen especially in a deficient christology and a woefully undeveloped the-
ology of the Holy Spirit, is never far from the surface. Rounding the bend
into our contemporary era, we find the same insight being articulated by
theologians in the southern and northern hemispheres of the new world.

South and North American Theology

Interpreters of Latin American Catholicism universally note that massive
devotion to Mary is one of the most popular, persistent, and original char-
acteristics of its peoples’ piety. Seeking to ground this piety, Brazilian the-
ologian Leonardo Boff proposed a daring hypothesis: just as the Word
became flesh in Jesus Christ, so too Mary is the embodiment of the third
person of the Holy Trinity. “We maintain the hypothesis,” he wrote, “that
the Virgin Mary, Mother of God and of all men and women, realizes the
feminine absolutely and eschatologically, inasmuch as the Holy Spirit has
made her his temple, sanctuary, and tabernacle in so real and genuine a
way that she is to be regarded as hypostatically united to the Third Person
of the Blessed Trinity.’”4 This union is an ontological one so profound that
the Spirit can be said to have taken flesh in the Virgin Mary, who in turn
personifies the Spirit.
Two major presuppositions underlie Boff’s hypothesis. One is the ven-
erable Catholic understanding that human nature as such is created with a
capacity for the hypostatic union, so it is not unthinkable for divine nature
to be ontologically united with a woman, provided women be understood
as fully human. The other is the more controverted idea that the Holy
Spirit is the feminine divine person in the Trinity. While in the incarnation
Jesus Christ assumed human nature in its totality, Boff argues, still it is the
“masculine” that-is assumed in direct and immediate fashion, while the
feminine is assumed and divinized only indirectly as a secondary compo-
 82 ROADS NOT TAKEN

nent of the male. Conscious of the long-standing subordination of women,

he proposes that it is only fitting that the feminine itself should also be
assumed and sanctified directly and immediately. This occurs in Mary,
immaculately conceived, virgin mother of God, assumed into heaven, and
co-redemptrix and co-mediatrix of salvation. In her, the feminine is
“hypostatically assumed” by the Spirit, with the result that the created fem-
inine is now eternally associated with the mystery of the being of God and
is a vehicle of God’s own self-realization. Mary rightly belongs not subor-
dinate to Christ but by his side. Widespread attribution to her of the func-
tions of the Holy Spirit is legitimate.
While obviously reflecting the pattern of prayer of millions of people in
the Latin American churches, Boff’s hypothesis has come in for severe crit-
icism.”° The point to note for our purpose is that, unlike theologians who
would judge exalted tendencies in the veneration of Mary negatively, Boff
‘
sees them as revelatory of a neglected aspect of God. His work underscores
the clue we have already been following, namely, that it is especially in
maximalist marian development that female images of the divine are com-
ing to expression.
In the United States a rich body of theological work is growing as schol-
ars from Hispanic communities interpret the revelation encoded in popu-
lar religious practices.”° Central to this experience is the figure of Mary,
more precisely of different images of Mary, according to various commu-
nities’ countries of origin. The marian configurations from Cuba, Domini-
can Republic, Colombia, Mexico, and other countries differ, reflecting as
they do the particular histories in which they arose. But they all inspire a
spirituality of struggle for life that stretches from their countries of origin
to the challenge of struggling for life within a dominant Anglo culture.
Mexican American theologian Virgil Elizondo’s detailed interpretation
of Our Lady of Guadalupe is particularly illustrative of the connection
between marian imagery and the idea of God. He advances the thesis that
the origin of devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe involved resistance by
conquered native people not only to the European invaders but also to the
V all-male God in whose name they conquered. In the process of this resis-
tance, the poor and vanquished people became the recipients of a major
disclosure in the development of the Christian understanding of God,
namely, that the mystery of God embraces both male and female identities.
Consequently this living marian symbol has significance not just for
Mexican Americans but for the whole church: it liberates everyone froma
restrictive, masculinized view of God.
CUL-DE-SAC: THE MATERNAL FACE OF GOD 83

Analysis of the genesis of this Mexican gestalt of Mary supports this

contention. The place of the original sixteenth-century apparition was the
site of an ancient temple dedicated to Tonantzin, the Indian virgin mother
of the gods. The flowers and music of the vision were part of Tonantzin’s
temple worship. The dark skin of the woman of the apparition, the lan-
guage she spoke, the colors she was wearing, and the celestial symbols sur-
rounding her were all reminiscent of the goddess of the defeated people.
Yet it was not Tonantzin who was appearing, but the virgin mother of the
Christian God. As Elizondo interprets the creative result of this cross-
cultural encounter, the figure of Our Lady of Guadalupe combined the
Indian female expression of God, which the Spanish had tried to wipe out
as diabolical, with the Spanish male expression of God, which the Indians
had found incomprehensible, since everything that is perfect in the Nahu- ,
atl cosmovision has a male and a female component. Here “the male Father
God of militaristic and patriarchal Christianity is united to the female
Mother of God (Tonantzin), which allows the original heart and face of >
Christianity to shine forth: compassion, understanding, tenderness, and
healing.”’” Each understanding of God was expanded by the other, yield-
ing a new mestizo expression that enriches the very understanding of the
selfhood of God.
At the same time, at the very moment when imperial conquerors
imbued with religious absolutism on one side were meting out death and
defeat to indigenous peoples considered “pagans” on the other, this mar-
ian revelatory event signals the birth of a new reality, a new humanity, a
new church, in continuity with both traditions and yet transformative of
both into something new. “Both had so much to offer to each other, but
rieither could see it or even think about it. God breaks through—with
flower and song! This is no longer an exterminator God but is, rather, the
God of pleasure and harmony.””’ In order to appreciate this, one must pro-"\
ceed through the ways of thought of the oppressed people of the new |
world. Then one discovers that God is on the side of the poor, the raped,
the defeated, the exploited, pouring out compassion and challenging con- »
sciences.”? The figure of Guadalupe is a living locus of the experience of the
compassionate God in female form.
Shifting focus, Orlando Espin ventures a different, intriguing theologi-
cal interpretation that keeps Guadalupe’s connection with divinity while
setting Mary free into history. Using Hispanic theological method, which _
attends to popular religion as a genuine expression of faith, Espin argues
that the profound devotion to Guadalupe should be mistaken for neither
 84 ROADS NOT TAKEN

heresy nor idolatry, for this figure is not identical with the historical Mary
of Nazareth, mother of Jesus. “When I am confronted by the depth of trust
and affection that Latinos have for the Virgen, and when I see the beauti-
ful, reverential relationship they nurture with her, and also how deeply
touched and empowered they are by her, then as a theologian I have to
wonder.”*? His wonder leads him to question whether the ecclesiastical
insistence that this is a marian apparition does not fly in the face of the sen-
sus fidelium of everyday people. It leads him to suggest that instead of an
experience of mariology, what we have here is a superbly inculturated
experience of the Holy Spirit. Espin is not implying that Mary is the Holy
Spirit, or that Mary of Nazareth appeared in Indian guise and mediated the
maternal or feminine face of God. He is implying that the historical Mary
has nothing much to do with this phenomenon at all. It is not the Jewish
woman Miriam of Nazareth whom Latinos venerate in their devotion to la
Virgen de Guadalupe. It is rather the Holy Spirit of God, expressed not in
the categories of Greek myth or European culture and philosophy but in
culturally meaningful marian categories borrowed from the conquerors
and transferred in a colonial Mexican context to the indwelling, reconcil-
ing Creator Spirit. Theological and ecclesiastical elites at the time of Juan
Diego’s encounter insisted on a marian interpretation in an understand-
ably defensive move to protect doctrinal purity, since the only female
imagery for the divine they knew was associated with the religion they
were trying to stamp out. Besides, too much talk of the Holy Spirit could
bring you to the attention of the Inquisition! But in the experience of the
people then and now, references to the Mary of the gospels is notably
absent in connection with devotion to Guadalupe. What is mediated
instead is a profoundly engaging experience of God present in their midst
with love and compassion. Therefore, is it not the case that “what we have
here is not mariology but pneumatology in an unexpected and brilliantly
achieved cultural mediation?”*! The marian practices of Latino Catholi-
cism thus come to signify an orthodox popular pneumatology.
To support his thesis, Espin lists a growing number of thinkers who are
making similar suggestions that manifestations of the Virgen are not
always the same as manifestations of Mary the mother of Jesus but signify
the presence of the Spirit.” The net effect of this way of positing a deep
connection between the strong marian symbolic presence in Hispanic
faith experience, prayer, and liturgy and the actual presence of the Spirit of
God is to make this phenomenon a locus theologicus for pneumatology
CUL-DE-SAC: THE MATERNAL FACE OF GOD 85

rather than for theology of Mary. This is an interpretation that simultane-

ously respects the orthodoxy of the religious experience of millions of peo-
ple while allowing the proposal to view Mary as a friend of God and
prophet in the graced community to go forward.
As Miguel Diaz observes, one would be hard pressed to find a theologi-
cal consensus among U.S. Hispanic theologians about the referent of the
marian symbol. However, it is always and everywhere a symbol of grace, of
God’s faithful solidarity in the midst of struggle. “Whether understood as
the female face of God (Rodriguez, Elizondo), a symbol of the Holy Spirit
(Espin), the poetry of the trinitarian God (Garcia), or the mestizo face of
the divine (Goizueta), it is clear that U.S. Hispanic theologians understand
Marian symbols as mediators of the life of grace, especially to and within
the experience of the poor and marginalized.”** In other words, the figure
of Mary mediates an encounter with the liberating, compassionate God
herself in female form.
In view of its basic tenet that the full human dignity of women makes
female imagery of God both legitimate and necessary, feminist theology is
at ease with the interpretation that the marian symbol portrays the female
face of God. Reflecting on her own childhood in Catholic Bavaria, Elisa-
beth Schiissler Fiorenza analyzes the local experience of marian devotion
in this light.** In postwar southern Germany, the God presented for belief
had been shaped by a long process of patriarchy and militarization to
become ever more remote and judgmental. Enormous devotion was
poured out toward Mary, the beloved “other face” of God. She became the
figure who bore the life-giving, compassionate love so characteristic of the
Abba whom Jesus preached. On the intellectual level pastors insisted on the
distinction between adoration of God and veneration of Mary; but on the
affective, imaginative level, the Catholic child experienced the saving love
of God in the figure of this woman. Schiissler Fiorenza’s analysis leads her
to conclude that the Catholic cult of Mary is one fruitful source of theo-
logical discourse that speaks of the divine in female terms, images, and
symbols. Following that thread, she suggests, will enable divine compas-
sion, power, and care to be spoken about in female terms directly, in the
full light of day.
One critical point where feminist liberation theology takes issue with
most other approaches canvassed above is the idea that Mary represents
the feminine “dimension,” “side,” “aspect,” or “traits” of the divine. Theo-
logically speaking, God does not have a feminine dimension, or a mascu-
 86 ROADS NOT TAKEN

line dimension, or an animal dimension (think of the winged bird, the

angry mother bear), or a mineral dimension (the rock). God is simple.
Names, images, and symbols do not aim at part of the divine mystery, were
that even possible, but intend to evoke the whole. Consequently, female
imagery by itself points to God pure and simple and has the capacity to
represent God not only as nurturing, although certainly that, but also as
powerful, creating-redeeming-saving. This entails, obviously, that women’s
capacities not be reduced by gender stereotyping to what is sweet and mild
or compassionate alone. When this happens, as can be seen in the exam-
ples of Congar, Schillebeeckx, and Boff cited above, the predominant
image of God remains that of the ruling lord, but now one whose sternness
is tempered by the nurturing, maternal traits reflected in Mary. Problem-
atically, the female is not allowed to function as an icon of the divine in all
fullness but only supplements what remains an overarching male image.
To the contrary, if women are created in the image of God, then God can
be imaged in female metaphors in as full and as limited a way as God is
imaged in male ones, without talk of feminine dimensions or sides or traits
reducing the power of this language.

GIVING BACK: THE MIGRATION BEGINS

This exploration of diverse ways in which the marian symbol bears images
of the divine indicates how strongly the Mary—God connection has been
welded. Historians of the development of doctrine, Catholic theologians
with a classical doctrinal interest, ecumenically minded theologians of the
Reformation tradition, liberation, Hispanic, and feminist theologians all
affirm in different ways that marian devotion and theology are sources of
female language and symbols for God. Certainly not all would agree that
this phenomenon is due to the patriarchal tenor of the dominant idea of
God, nor that there is pressing need to change the status quo. To my mind,
however, it makes no lasting theological sense to use Mary as a coverup for
defective notions of God, Christ, or the Spirit. Rather, this female imagery
should be allowed to travel back to its source and begin to fertilize the
church’s imagination and piety in relation to the mystery of God,
who is
beyond gender but Creator of both women and men in the divine image.
Without claiming to be comprehensive, at least five marian elements
pre-
sent themselves as viable candidates for this return: maternity with
its
CUL-DE-SAC: THE MATERNAL FACE OF GOD 87

nurturing warmth and fierce protection; compassionate love; power that

empowers, heals, and liberates; all-pervading presence; and energy that
recreates the earth.
The first and most obvious transfer is the symbol of God as mother. The
metaphors of birthing and maternal care that the Hebrew scriptures use to
describe God’s unbreakable love for the covenanted people have been con-
cretized and carried forward in the figure of Mary. Throughout tradition
she has been portrayed predominantly as the mother par excellence. Trans-
ferring this maternal language back to its source enables us to see that God
Herself has a maternal face. All that is creative and generative of life, all that
wills the young to live, all that nourishes and nurtures, teaches and cor-
rects, cherishes and sustains, all that is full of solicitude and sympathy orig-
inates in Her. Warm, indispensable mother-love flows from God the Mother
toward all creatures. As Sallie McFague points out, this symbol points
intrinsically to God’s option for the poor and fierce desire that those who
are threatened be safeguarded, for do not mothers care for the most vul-
nerable among their brood and want all at their table to be fed?°° All moth-
ering on earth has its source in Her. She exercises a maternity that does not
leave us orphans. As Pope John Paul I declared in a Sunday talk, God is our
Father but even more God is our Mother, the one who comes to our aid
especially when we are bad or feverish with war.*° The image has the capac-
ity to release profoundly attractive characteristics of God long suppressed
in a patriarchal system. Notice that what is overcome here is a popular con-
cept of heavenly interaction modeled on a patriarchal household in which
a distant and judgmental God the Father is inclined to be approachable
and more lenient through the intercession of Mary the mother on behalf
of wayward children. Praying to and speaking about God our Mother
rearranges that whole scenario. Maternity itself is predicated of God equally
with paternity, and female images of the creative caring intrinsic to healthy
mothering evoke the reality of God.
Another, closely related element that has been cherished in the marian
tradition is divine compassion. As Phyllis Trible’s biblical studies have
shown, the Hebrew word for mercy is linguistically rooted in the term for
a woman’s womb. Traveling from the wombs of women to the compassion
of God, the metaphorical resonance of divine compassion evokes the idea
of God’s “womb-love” for the ones whom she has carried and shaped from
her own flesh.*” Despite the New Testament’s overwhelming witness that
the mercy of God is made effectively present in Jesus Christ, and the sym-
 88 ROADS NOT TAKEN

bolizing of that fact in such images as Jesus as the mother bird gathering
her brood under her wing (Matt. 23:37-39), the medieval split of the king-
doms of justice and mercy resulted in the marian tradition being the pri-
mary bearer of this good news. In much preaching and piety Mary has
been presented as more approachable than Christ, especially when one is
conscious of human weakness. In this vein the classical marian antiphon
Salve Regina salutes Mary as “mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and
our hope”; to her the poor banished children of Eve send up their sighs and
pray: “turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us.”
In the end Mary is asked to show us Jesus, but the form of the prayer itself
casts her in the life-giving role of the merciful one. Returning this language
to God to whom it properly belongs enables us to name God’s own self as
essentially and unfathomably merciful.
In her insightful essay entitled “Mother of Mercy: Reclaiming a Title for
God,” Australian theologian Patricia Fox models this reclamation, showing
how reimagining mercy flowing from God who is Mother of Mercy gives a
new, strong impetus for commitment to living lives of mercy in this bro-
ken, needy world.** God is the Mother of mercy who has compassionate
womb-love for all her children. We need not be afraid to approach. She is
brimming over with gentleness, loving-kindness and forgiveness, lavishing
love and pity on the whole sinful human brood. Her judgment is true,
most devastating to those who refuse the call for conversion to the same
kind of mercy toward others: their self-righteousness is to no avail. Yet to
the most ordinary as well as to the most blatant of wrongdoers who wish
to repent, she is a true Refuge of Sinners (a marian title). In addition to
mercifully forgiving sin, God consoles in all troubles and, bending with
care over those who suffer, is the true Comforter of the Afflicted (another
marian title). It is simply not the case that God is essentially just with a
justice that needs to be tempered by Mary’s merciful intercession. Rather,
compassion is primordially divine, as is suitably disclosed in the divine
symbol of the merciful mother.
The marian tradition also carries images of divine power and might.
In
this instance it is not a power that dominates but a strength that seeks
to
protect and to save. There is a persistent sense that Mary’s power is
not
restricted by the demands of ecclesiastical law, or bound by the power
of
Satan, or even by the male God-figures of Father and Son to whom she
is
supposedly subject. Her sovereignty is unbounded, saving whom
she loves
if they but turn to her.*° This is graphically illustrated by the widespread
CUL-DE-SAC: THE MATERNAL FACE OF GOD 89

medieval iconography of the Madonna of the Protective Mantle. Under the

umbrella formed by her draped, outstretched arms huddle a family, a reli-
gious order, a king, even a whole town’s populace. There they find protec-
tion from evil which threatens, be it plague, war, temptation, or even God’s
eternal judgment. Understanding all of this as primarily imagery of the
divine unlocks the realization that the power of God is neither destructive,
aggressive, overbearing, or bound by law. Rather, divine power comes forth *
as an expression of unbounded love and operates wisely and justly in a
form of advocacy for human beings who suffer. Her might is effective in
breaking the stranglehold of evil and freeing those whom it has held in
bondage, putting down the mighty from their thrones and exalting those
of low degree. Like the Gospel homemaker searching for her lost coin, she
powerfully seeks and finds what is lost (Luke 15:8-10). This kind of power,
carried in the imagery of a female figure of “might and mercy,”*! most
accurately belongs to God’s own being.
The immanence or indwelling nearness of God, attributed to the Holy
Spirit and so often underplayed in classical theism, is yet another element
emphasized in the marian tradition. Indeed, it is a traditional Catholic
experience that, as John Paul II tellingly observes, the eternal love of the
Father manifested in history through the Son “comes close to each of us
through this Mother and thus takes on tokens that are of more easy under-
standing and access by each person.””” This closeness of the love of God,
this sense of the divine presence surrounding and pervading the creature,
is given striking expression in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem “The
Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe”:
Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere...
Minds me in many ways
Offers:
I say that we are wound
With mercy round and round
As if with air: the same
Is Mary, more by name.
She, wild web, wondrous robe,
Mantles the guilty globe...
And men are meant to share
Her life as life does air...
Be thou then, O thou dear
 90 ROADS NOT TAKEN

Mother, my atmosphere...
World-mothering air, air wild,
Wound with thee, in thee isled,
Fold home, fast fold thy child.”
The imagery of this stunning poem refers most properly to the Spirit of
God. Redirecting it enables us to realize that it is the wild Spirit who is our
true atmosphere, surrounding and nestling us. Most truly it is in her that
we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). God the Spirit is closer
to us than we are to ourselves. She holds fast to all who spring from her
being, continuously creating them into life. All beings awaken and sleep,
develop and decay in the presence of her holy love. In the end, all are finally
enfolded into her eternal presence. Rather than Mary being the figure who
functions to make a distant patriarchal God close, a more adequate theol-
ogy of the Spirit makes clear that God already is inexpressibly near. This
interiority of God to creation can be effectively evoked in the image of a
woman, matrix of all that is gifted with life.
Lastly, the understanding of God as source of recreative energy is one
more element that can be drawn from the marian tradition. “May is Mary’s
month,” writes the poet Hopkins, and all that is swelling, bursting, and
blooming so beautifully does so under her aegis. Marian symbols entwined
with earth and water, vines, flowers, eggs, birds, and young animals evoke
her connection with fertility and the motherhood of the earth.“4 The theme
of overturning the ancient sin and beginning again, so connected with her
historic pregnancy, finds its parallel in the springtime renewal of the earth.
As Anselm praised: “plenty flows from you to make all creatures green
again.”* Attributing this imagery directly to God allows us to affirm that
it is God’s own being that is the source of transforming energy among all
creatures. She initiates novelty, instigates change, transforms what is dead
into new stretches of life. Fertility is intimately related to her creative
divine power. It is she who is ultimately playful, fascinating, pure and
wise,
luring human beings into the “more.” As mover and encourager of what
tends toward stasis, God herself is ever young and imaginative, taking joy
‘ In creating and recreating all that exists.
Maternity with its nurturing warmth; unbounded compassion; power
that protects, heals and liberates; all-embracing immanence; recreati
ve
energy—thus is borne out the hypothesis that the marian tradition
is a
rich source of divine imagery. Not just “feminine dimensions” but
analo-
gies for the whole incomprehensible mystery of the divine are availabl
e
CUL-DE-SAC: THE MATERNAL FACE OF GOD 91

here. In a manner of speaking, Mary has treasured these things in her heart
(Luke 2:19), awaiting the day when what has been guarded in her symbol-
ism can find its rightful place in the living God again.

PASTORAL JUDGMENT

This chapter has proceeded under the rubric of the cul-de-sac, tracing an
influential path of contemporary interpretation that this book’s proposal
to understand Mary in the communion of saints will not take. We will not
seek to understand Mary as the maternal or feminine face of God because
this stops female images from pointing all the way to the loving God who
is their true source. Such limitation allows patriarchal construals of the
divine to perdure and blocks women from their full identification with the
divine image and likeness. At the same time, there is a hugely important
lesson to be learned from this whole development, namely, the capacity of
the female figure to represent God. The fact that divine mercy and power
have indeed been successfully carried in the image of Mary reveals how
theomorphic women actually are. Not just Mary’s face but the face of every
woman is created in the image and likeness of God. Not just Mary’s voca-
tion but that of every woman and man is to partner with Holy Wisdom in
bringing about the reign of mercy and peaceful justice. Such a strategy
does no dishonor to Mary, for beneath the rich evocations of the divine
feminine which Catholic devotion has celebrated in her symbol for cen-
turies exists an actual, powerful female model of holiness.*° Relieved of her
historic burden of safeguarding female images of the divine and positively
signaling the depth of women’s dignity vis-a-vis God, Mary becomes free
to rejoin the community of saints.
Fully aware of the logic of this approach, some of my colleagues have
nevertheless sounded a salutary warning. If one redirects all this female
symbolism back to God in a church that remains institutionally patriar-
chal, then will it not get lost again? The marian shrines, devotions, titles,
sacramentals, and elaborate theologies of maternal mediation are all keep-
ing something womanly alive at a time when it still has no other official
place to go. Transferring these symbols to God without reforming the
church’s language and practice could result in a totally masculine public
square, similar to the Protestant churches before women moved into offi-
cial ministry.
 a2 ROADS NOT TAKEN

In a pastoral sense I think this criticism is well taken. I recall one Sun-
day evening in Munich after the devotion of benediction of the Blessed
Sacrament had concluded in a great baroque church. Most people left; the
lights were all but turned out. In the marian chapel at the back, however, a
small knot of people knelt or stood. One man buried his face in his hands;
others prayed with an intensity that was palpable. The silence was absolute,
the darkness broken only by flickering candles. For a long moment it
seemed as if no one even breathed. Here, I thought, an encounter with the
living God is taking place. The high altar is abandoned; the clergy have left.
In this cavelike setting the loving Mother who gains the heart’s absolute
trust is found.
On another day in Mexico City, I sensed the same experience happen-
ing in the great plaza outside the cathedral wherein the original image of
Our Lady of Guadalupe resides. It was December 12", the feast day of la
Morenita. Under a blazing sky, bands of people arrived from different vil-
lages. Entering the plaza from all directions, each group announced its
arrival with live music; all carried bright red flowers. Processing across the
plaza, faces concentrated, lips moving, people dropped to their knees,
crossing the cobblestones in this difficult position of humility and need.
Amid the sun and the mariachi music, these people, mostly poor, honored
their Guadalupe with an ardor that was palpable, a sense that only intensi-
fied when they finally gained the presence of the sacred image inside.
Clearly it would not do to take away these places and experiences in the
present patriarchal situation of the church and secular condition
of the
world. Seeking the living God in prayer and letting oneself be found
by the
Spirit are precious acts, and there are times and places where devotion
to
Mary mediates this encounter. All the same, many people do not
resonate
with this pattern of mediation, especially the young in postindustrialized
society. And some, especially women, are becoming increasingly comfort-
able with prayer to God herself mediated in female imagery. Thus I
am not
making a judgment about pastoral practice, which needs to be done
with
wisdom and prudence in accord with the needs of local people.
But I am
making a theological judgment, the practical effect of which will work
out
over time. For the renewal of the doctrine of God liberated from the
restric-
tions of patriarchy, for empowering women to claim their own
dignity
made in her image and likeness, and for the transformation of the
church
into a community of the discipleship of equals, this female imagery
needs
to disperse beyond Mary back to its source. Let God have her own
maternal
face. Let Miriam the Galilean woman rejoin the community of
disciples.
? PART 3

A Way Forward
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A Modest Proposal

FROM TRANSCENDENT SYMBOL

TO HISTORICAL PERSON

[i proposing that one fruitful way to work out a liberating feminist

theology of Mary is to locate her in the communion of saints and there
to remember her, dangerously and consolingly, as a woman with her
own particular history among her contemporaries and before God. At first
glance placing Mary in the company of the saints may seem strange to
those accustomed to more traditional Catholic practice, even though the
title “Saint Mary” adorns many churches, schools, and other institutions.
It may even seem a diminishment of the honor that is her due as the
Theotokos, or bearer of God. But at root it grants her the greatest honor the
Christian tradition acknowledges for a human being, namely, the core dig-
nity of being created in the divine image and likeness and gifted, in com-
munity with others, with a graced relationship to the living God.
The idea that this woman should be thought of in historical terms bears
closer scrutiny because the history of marian doctrine and devotion gives
clear evidence that this has not been standard practice. The fact that Miriam
of Nazareth has been depicted in so many diverse ways, from the humble
handmaid to the powerful Queen of Heaven, indicates that the human
imagination has been at work crafting symbols. This holds true not only
for artistic and literary depictions but also for some biblical and doctrinal
texts. By contrast, situating this woman in the communion of saints
focuses on the fact that she is in truth a very concrete historical human
being with her own ultimate destiny in God. A basic issue that arises at the
outset, then, is whether and to what extent the figure of Mary is or should
be symbolic. Over the years my mind has changed considerably on this
issue.

95
 96 A WAY FORWARD

One of the most promising approaches of recent years for both ecu-
menism and spirituality has been the move to symbolize Mary as the ideal
or perfect disciple. Writing in the late 1960s from a Protestant perspective,
theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg mounted an intriguing argument in
favor of this idea. There is a significant formal difference between christol-
ogy and mariology, he suggested. This difference lies in the fact that chris-
tology is the explication of the meaning of a historical event, namely, the
life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ, while mariology, possess-
ing no such historical basis, is the personification in symbolic fashion of
the characteristics of the new humankind of faith.! In other words, because
so very few historically attested events surround the figure of Mary, her
persona is more open to being shaped by diverse projections regarding the
virtues and values of the ideal believer.
This insight triggered biblical scholar Raymond E. Brown’s interest to
the point that he decided to test it by a quest for the historical Mary. After
scrutinizing the four gospels and other biblical data, he returned from his
travels rather empty-handed, declaring “I find confirmed more than I had
ever expected Pannenberg’s contention that the NT does not give us much
knowledge of Mary as a historical character”? It is precisely this lack of
knowledge, he continued, that allows the figure of Mary to lend itself more
freely than that of Jesus to a symbolic trajectory through Christian history.
Luke and John took the first step in this direction by depicting Mary as the
ideal disciple both at the annunciation (Luke) and at the foot of the cross
with others (John). In later ages the church continuously translated the
virtues of discipleship into descriptions of Mary’s character. In the fourth
century, when martyrdom had ceased and asceticism was on the rise, Mary
became the model of virtuous women who withdrew into the desert to
lead the abstinent life of the nun: voice low, eyes shut when
undressing,
heart always in prayer. In the Middle Ages she became the fair lady of the
knights, the symbol of chaste love. The Renaissance saw her
become the
tender mother caring for her spiritual children. In the early twentieth cen-
tury she appeared as part of the “holy family,” the church’s rebuttal to
divorce. Influenced by the women’s movement in the 1970s, the U.S. Cath-
olic bishops hailed her as model of the liberated woman. Brown’s survey
led him to conclude: “One cannot historicize all these diverse and even
contradictory pictures of Mary; but in having her assume these symbolic
roles, the Church has been contemporizing the ideal of Christian
disciple-
ship. The Church has been diagnosing a way in which Christians
of vari-
ous times needed to hear the word of God and keep it.”
A MODEST PROPOSAL 97

This insight is a valuable tool for critical interpretation as far as it goes.

For one thing, it connects Mary deeply with the community of believers
rather than letting her stand alone as an exotic character. For another, it
places emphasis on her active relationship to God in faith and charity
rather than to the gendered roles of handmaid, virgin, and mother that
women find so problematic. Intellectually, the symbolic interpretation of
Mary as the ideal disciple sheds light on all manner of marian statements,
images, and practices that through this filter can ultimately point to
humanity’s graced relationship with God. Reflecting the custom of honor-
ing Mary with special prayers and ceremonies during the fertile month of
-May in the northern hemisphere, Karl Rahner expressed this in memo-
rable fashion: “It is quite possible to say that when we are involved in our
May devotions, we are engaged in a Christian understanding of the human
situation. It is God’s word concerning us that we are there concerned with,
a blessed and holy understanding of our own life.’* By honoring Mary we
are ultimately saying something about ourselves, namely, that God has
addressed us with a word of grace and called us to discipleship.
The Second Vatican Council took the idea of Mary as the ideal disciple
and cast it into an explicitly ecclesial framework. It teaches that Mary is a
model or type of the church, the one who signifies to all the people of God
their own call to be fully committed “in the matter of faith, charity, and
perfect union with Christ.”° Indeed, the council writes, while celebrating
the annual liturgical cycle focused on the mysteries of Christ, the church
also gazes at Mary. There the church “joyfully contemplates, as in a fault-
less model, that which she herself wholly desires and hopes to be.” Carry-
ing this insight forward, the U.S. Catholic bishops teach in a pastoral letter
that “the Church saw herself symbolized in the Virgin Mary. The story of
"Mary, as the Church has come to see her, is at the same time the record of
the Church’s own self-discovery.” This means that “what the Church has
said about the effect of redemption in Mary, she has affirmed in other ways
and at other times of us all.””? Theology of Mary is thus closely linked to
ecclesiology insofar as she typifies the community redeemed by God’s
grace. This approach has been enormously fruitful for ecumenical under-
standing, giving Protestant thinkers a way into the conversation about
Mary, the figure and symbol of the church, while safeguarding the Refor-
mation sensibility that Christ alone saves by grace through faith alone.’
Despite its subliminal androcentrism, as we have seen, it has also borne
fruit in feminist theology. Rosemary Radford Ruether reasons, for exam-
ple, that as “the feminine face of the church,” the symbol of Mary serves to
 98 A WAY FORWARD

criticize ecclesiastical sexism and points to the full participation of women

in the church’s life and ministry.?
Some time ago, enthusiastic about this idea of Mary as a symbol of dis-
cipleship in the church, I joined the conversation with an essay about lan-
guage. I saw a problem in the way Catholic speech about Mary tended to
be taken literally in a historicized way, while Protestant speech about Mary,
what little there was of it, tended to reduce statements about her to mere
meditations, as if she herself had nothing to do with the history of God
with the world. Seeking a more satisfactory middle ground between these
two, my study sought to illuminate the meaning of talk about Mary, from
popular hymns to official doctrines, by using Paul Ricoeur’s analysis of the
symbol. In brief, the thesis of my argument stated:
Theological statements about Mary have a symbolic structure, so that while
they refer immediately and in an obvious way to this one woman, they reach
their intended theological referent when interpreted finally as statements
about the church, the community of faithful disciples, of which she is a
member and in which she participates.”
Unlike a sign, a symbol participates in the reality which it signifies. Accord-
ing to Ricoeur, furthermore, a symbol has a structure of double intention-
ality which carries the human subject beyond the literal intent of an image
or word into the surplus of meaning conveyed by it. For this to happen,
one must first make a wager that the symbol will prove of value and so
enter into its circle. Dwelling in its first level of meaning, one is carried
through the literal reference by its surplus of meaning to what it signifies,
which in the case of religious symbols is the infinite mystery of the living
God. So too, I aimed to show, does the symbol of Mary serve the life of
faith. This symbol itself is created from the church’s experience of
encounter with a gracious God.
When we dwell with this symbol it gives rise to thought about the life of
discipleship lived in response to God’s salvific approach in Jesus Christ. My
examples drew on language about Mary as mother, virgin, pilgrim of faith,
prophet, and disciple, all of which ultimately deliver awareness of the
graced life and calling of the people of the ekklésia. “Such speech does so
not by sleight of hand,” I argued, “but by its very character as symbolic
speech whose origin lies in the graced reality of the church finding expres-
sion in the image of this key member.”!!
Such a hermeneutic, I suggested, can be especially helpful in giving an
intelligible reading of the two much disputed marian dogmas declared in
A MODEST PROPOSAL 99

the modern era. The U.S. Catholic bishops recommended this interpretive
key when they wrote that the Immaculate Conception and Assumption
“are not isolated privileges but mysteries filled with meaning for the whole
Church.” At the beginning of life, the Immaculate Conception witnesses
to the grace of God freely offered without merit to every human being who
comes into the world, a grace that is always more powerful than sin. At the
end of life, “Mary in her Assumption, as in other aspects of her God-gifted
personality, is a figure of the Church as perfected through union with
Christ.”!° This point had already been made by Vatican II, which sees in
Mary in heaven “a sign of sure hope and solace for the pilgrim people of
God,”!* signaling as she does that the corporate human journey will reach
its blessed goal.
Despite the benefits of interpreting Mary as a symbol of discipleship, I
have grown increasingly dissatisfied with this position taken as a first, only,
or predominant step.!° One reason lies in the inability of this symbol, given
its emphasis on Mary’s perfect response to grace, to name and account for
sin in the life of the graced individual. When this symbol is placed in an
ecclesial context, furthermore, it whitewashes the sinfulness of the church
of which there is such ample, scandalous, public evidence. Nor can it
account for all the data of tradition. In numerous instances marian images
have clearly functioned not as symbols of discipleship but as symbols of
either the eternal feminine embodied in the ideal woman or the maternal
face of God.
My greatest dissatisfaction arises from the fallout of a symbolic Mary on
the flourishing of women in all the concreteness of their actual histories.
What happens to a woman when she is made a symbol? How much of her
own reality is lost? One amazing loss that has resulted in Mary’s case is her
historical Jewish identity. This is totally eclipsed in the symbol of Mary as
the ideal Christian disciple. Perhaps some would say that this is not too
important. But, to engage in a thought experiment, if someone in the
future were to lift up the story of my life for inspiration and omit my com-
mitment to the Christian faith or, even more strangely, describe me as a
member of a community with highly developed doctrines and structures
that evolved only long after my lifetime, I would be uneasy. I would feel
that something important had been left out, indeed, that the depiction
lacked a certain truthfulness regarding the life I actually led.
And what happens to all other women when one woman is made a sym-
bol of discipleship? I have in mind Mary Magdalene, whose discipleship
 100 A WAY FORWARD

entailed following Jesus on the roads of Galilee, using her own resources to
support his ministry, going up to Jerusalem on his last trip, keeping vigil
by the cross while he died, being part of the burial party, leading the other
women to the surprisingly empty tomb, encountering the risen Christ in
her grief, and preaching the good news to the disbelieving, ridiculing male
disciples. Without her courageous initiative and witness and that of the
“many other women” (Mark 15:41) with her, there would be no continu-
ity in the story surrounding the end of Jesus’ life, no paschal narrative.
Holding up a mirror to the struggle over women’s ministry in the early
church, later apocryphal gospels depict Peter’s attempts to suppress her
leadership in the community. Losing Magdalene into the false fog of a
fallen but repentant woman has had incalculably negative consequences,
which is why women greet the recovery of her image as “apostle to the
apostles” so intensely. Many others too, outstanding among them Martha
of Bethany, Joanna, and the Samaritan woman, along with church leaders
such as deacon Phoebe of Cenchreae, apostle Junia of Rome, and mission-
ary Prisca with her husband Aquila also model discipleship in excellent
ways. Does not loading the ideal disciple image on one woman lead to the
exclusion of all the others—another version of the “alone of all her sex”
critique?
Moreover, we have seen what happens to a woman who is made a sym-
bol largely through the male imagination in a patriarchal context. A large
portion of men’s own experience and needs shapes the symbol to the detri-
ment of actual women’s human and religious well-being. Insofar as this
symbolizing has gone on in an institution publicly governed solely by men,
it also has social-political effects, idealizing one woman as the flip side of
marginalizing the rest. Symbolizing is rife with problems. In truth, I know
that religious worldviews are inevitably symbolic, reaching beyond the
immediate here and now to encounter divine presence in the depths of the
concrete world and beyond it. Speech about Mary arising within a reli-
gious milieu will therefore always have a symbolic character. But my view
now is that to be true to this woman who actually lived a life some two
thousand years ago, and to honor her in a liberating way, whatever we say
should be tightly moored to her historical reality at every point.
Hence, the proposal to interpret Mary within the company of the saints
entails this corollary: First and foremost Mary is not a model, a type, an
archetype, a prototype, an icon, a representative figure, a theological idea, an
ideological cipher, a metaphor, a utopian principle, a feminine principle, a
A MODEST PROPOSAL 101

feminine essence, the image of the eternal feminine, an ideal disciple, ideal
woman, ideal mother, a myth, a persona, a corporate personality, an every-
woman, a cultural artifact, a literary device, a motif, an exemplar, a para-
digm, a sign, or in any other way a religious symbol. All of these terms are
drawn from contemporary religious writing. To the contrary, as with any
human being, as with every woman, she is first and foremost herself. | am
not saying that the contemporary religious imagination cannot make use
of her in a symbolic way. But it is the luminous density of her historical
existence as a graced human person that attracts my attention. As Rahner
argues, “We, however supremely elevated our spiritual nature may be, still
remain concrete historical beings, and for this reason we cannot consider
this history as something unimportant for the highest activity of our spirit,
the search for God.”!®
Mary is a concrete woman of history who had her own life to figure out,
a first-century Jewish woman in a peasant village with a culture very dif-
ferent from twenty-first century, postindustrial society, though similar to
peasant culture in those countries where it still exists. About the chronol-
ogy and psychology of her life we know very little. We need to acknowledge
this void in our knowledge, respect it, and inhabit it knowingly. Then we
can rightly interpret the Christian discourse of the gospel writers who pre-
sent glimpses of her life connected with the coming of the Messiah and his
community. This location in the gospels offers good reason to think of her
as a woman of faith, one whose life was a “pilgrimage of faith,” in the poetic
words of Vatican II.!” Even these gospel depictions, of course, have a sym-
bolic character, reflecting the theology of the different evangelists. There is
no raw historical data. The construals of later interpreters, including
women today who constructively ponder the meaning of her story for life
and faith, also enter into the realm of the symbolic, being a type of reli-
gious discourse. My point is not that we can dispense with symbolic con-
struals, but that because we are dealing with an actual person, however
much unknown, her historical reality should tether down insight at every
point.

A PNEUMATOLOGICAL THEOLOGY OF MARY

The proposal to interpret Mary in the communion of saints situates our

thinking in the third article of the creed, which testifies to God the Holy
 102 A WAY FORWARD

Spirit. “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the com-
munion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and
life everlasting,” the Apostles’ Creed affirms. The nonbiblical phrase com-
munio sanctorum was a late addition to this creed, but in the west its sweep-
ing, inclusive meaning was ancient. As Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana,
explained to his people in the fifth century:
What is the church but the congregation of all saints? From the beginning
of the world patriarchs, prophets, martyrs, and all other righteous people
who have lived, or who are now alive, or who shall live in time to come, com-
prise the church, since they have been sanctified by one faith and manner of
life, and sealed by one Spirit, and so made one body, of which Christ is
declared to be the head, as the scripture says. .. . So you believe that in this
church you will attain to the communion of saints.!8
Clearly here the communion of saints stands for a relationship among all
holy people of all ages, including the whole company of heaven, which is
anticipated and partially realized in the community of the church on earth.
In addition to this text’s recognition of illustrious persons who have died,
Jewish and Christian alike, it also includes the future in a fascinating way,
for generations as yet unborn also belong to this community. Similarly, the
whole company is not settled in the present but moving toward the escha-
tological fullness yet to come—“you will attain” The whole church
through time shares in a communion of hope in the Spirit.
Placing a theology of Mary within the communion of saints in this
creedal framework has a double advantage. It profoundly connects her life
to that of other women and men whose lives are shaped by response
to the
Spirit of God. And it allows female imagery of God, traditionally associ-
ated with the Spirit, to play a guiding role in interpretation. Already the
structure of this proposal prevents major problems of the patriarc
hal
marian image from arising, chief among them the idealized isolation
of a
patriarchally feminine Mary and the gender system that interprets
her
relationship to God in masculine/feminine stereotypes. We
are seeking to
understand her meaning in light of the third article of the creed, which
professes belief in the Holy Spirit, Lord and Giver of life, who
makes peo-
ple holy and who in the end raises the dead to life, which article at the
same
time is never separated from the first article of the creed regarding
God
who creates the world out of love, nor from the second article
regarding
Jesus the Wisdom of God, born of Mary, crucified, and risen for
the world’s
salvation. Taken together, all three articles of the creed constitu
te the
framework for this book’s theological interpretation of Mary:
 A MODEST PROPOSAL 103

* First and last there is God, Creator of heaven and earth, whose care is
bent on the well-being of the world, humankind and the natural world
together. When the antagonistic forces of evil tear apart the world that God
so loves, the divine response is to “be there” in order to heal, redeem, and
liberate. The voice from the burning bush reveals as much: “I have seen the
misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account
of their taskmasters; I know well what they are suffering; therefore I have
come down to deliver them . . .” (Exod. 3:7-8). In the history of suffering
and joy on this planet, the bitter question of whether life has any meaning
has received a positive and unique answer: God’s own faithfulness guaran-
tees the good purpose of life. Identifying especially with the poor, the
exploited, those stunned by meaningless agony, the sinner, and the dead,
divine concern wants to re-create and save. The flaming bush made clear
that God’s name is YHWH, “I am who I am,” the dynamism of which means
“T will be with you.” Divine honor lies in the flourishing of what God freely
created out of love.
* The nucleus of God’s saving history with the world lies in the person,
life, and destiny of Jesus, God’s only beloved given as a gift to humankind.
His message and lifestyle embody divine care for the world, especially
those most marginalized and in need; his ministry sounds the call to oth-
ers to join in solidarity with this way of loving. Jesus advocated for human
beings as God’s cause and suffered for it, even unto death. The great Amen
resounding in his resurrection from the dead affirms God’s solidarity with
the suffering of the world beyond all expectations. Now it is disclosed that
God indeed is love; that sin, suffering, and meaninglessness do not ulti-
mately define the future. New life awaits.

- The continuing presence of God in Christ is accomplished through

the power of the Holy Spirit. Effective throughout the world and in the
heart of every person, the Spirit in the church awakens discipleship, which
allows the history of Jesus the Living One to continue through time.
Remembering his life, death, and resurrection, the church is empowered to
follow him in passion for God and loving care for the world: “the living
community is the only real reliquary of Jesus.”'? Gathered together by the
Spirit, this “little flock” has as its mission to witness to the effective pres-
ence of Christ, bent over suffering. “By following Jesus, taking our bearings
from him and allowing ourselves to be inspired by him, by sharing in his
Abba experience and his selfless support for ‘the least of these; and thus
entrusting our own destiny to God, we allow the history of Jesus, the living
104 A WAY FORWARD

one, to continue in history as a piece of living christology, the work of the

Spirit among us.””° In the course of history, suffering multiplies, massive
public evil has its day, the death of each individual keeps breaking the
threads of human flourishing. Therefore the work of the Spirit does not
stop in this known world. The church treasures the word of future resur-
rection as an eschatological promise. While final salvation reaches far
beyond words or imagination, hope is awakened here and now in frag-
ments of healing, liberation, justice, peace, and love. Without the media-
tion of these human experiences, the word of promise is illusory. With
them, hope is carried forward in history to that day beyond time when
God will wipe away all tears.
I propose to read Mary’s story in light of the mystery of salvation com-
ing graciously from God through Jesus in the power of the Spirit, made
present in the community of disciples for the world, and oriented, through
fragmentary experiences of salvation in the midst of suffering, to an escha-
tological future that exceeds all expectations: a world without tears. The
paradigm of Mary as Spirit-filled friend of God and prophet within the
circle of disciples, this grand company of saints living and dead, situates
her within the basic Christian confession without distortion and with new
potential to empower the praxis of liberating faith to the benefit of
women’s flourishing, even now. The primary angle of vision will be pneu-
matological, seeing Mary as a graced woman. Since she is embraced by and
responsive to Spirit-Sophia, she is a sister to all who partner with the Spirit
in the struggle for the coming of the reign of God.

ISSUES OF INTERPRETATION

I want to flag two danger zones where this project could run aground. One
is the tendency to make Mary into someone like the intended audience of
this book, educated, mostly middle-class Christians. The other is the idea
that the privileges defined for Mary in the course of the development of
doctrine, especially her freedom from original sin, entail her removal from
the struggles of life.

Retrieving the Historical Woman

Working out this proposal requires that we critically remember Mary with
her own concrete story. This woman shares with the vast majority of
A MODEST PROPOSAL 105

people, women in particular, the circumstance that most of their historical

life has been little recorded in official versions of important events. Our
main sources for her life are the gospels of the New Testament, which carry
early Christian depictions of her words and deeds in the context of their
witness to Jesus Christ. How to read these texts? Today, the field of femi-
nist biblical hermeneutics is vigorously developing methods that tease out
the significance of women mentioned in patriarchal texts and discover
new, liberating meaning in their struggles and victories. At the same time,
ongoing archaeological discoveries, historical-critical and literary meth-
ods, and use of the social sciences and comparative anthropology, which
coalesce in the contemporary quest for the historical Jesus, also serve the
search for other historical figures. Crafting a theology of Mary in the com-
munion of saints will entail working with all of these scholarly approaches
for a glimpse of the historical Galilean Jewish woman. In the process, her
socioeconomic, religious, and cultural difference from ourselves will
become overwhelmingly clear.
The gap between her world and ours can be bridged, cautiously, by the
notion of “solidarity in difference,” developed in political and feminist the-
ology to describe the optimum relationship between persons in situations
that differ. Both words in the phrase are crucially important. More than
simple association with other like-minded people, solidarity has an edge.
It is a type of communion that forges deep connection between people in
such a way that the sufferings and joys of one become part of the personal
concern of others and a spur to transformative action. In situations of
tremendous injustice, solidarity among the oppressed themselves leads to
actions that resist, hope, and celebrate even in the midst of suffering. For
those not directly affected by the particular situation, solidarity is expressed
in conversion toward those who suffer, not just being affected emotionally
by their pain but choosing to be responsible by joining the struggle for life.
In the process, a liberating community of common interest is created. A
fascinating aspect of solidarity that makes it useful for this project is that it
can also create an alliance between the living and the dead. By emphasiz-
ing the common character of human destiny and its unfulfilled promise,
solidarity stretches backward through time to affirm that the dead, even
the most insignificant and wiped out, are important in their lives, which
thereby encourages the living who are still struggling to bring about a
more beneficial future. Women struggling for equal human dignity today
are tapping into huge reserves of energy by discovering links with women
106 A WAY FORWARD

of previous generations. Identifying parallel experiences of suffering and

victory under civil, ecclesiastical, and multiple other oppressions that
weigh them down, they touch spirit to spirit and draw strength to con-
tinue the struggle. For Christian faith, the communion of saints is a sym-
bol of this solidarity that transcends time. Placing Miriam of Nazareth in
this community creates a graced connection between her life and our
own.
At the same time, there is a danger in the practice of solidarity. Without
critical analysis of their own social location, persons of dominant groups
tend to project their own way of being in the world onto everyone else,
thus erasing the actual suffering of those who differ. African American the-
orists were the first to level this critique at the tendency of women in the
majority race and class to overlook differences among women, assuming
their own experience to be universal and folding others into their descrip-
tions. In Australia the aboriginal womanist voice rings with the same cri-
tique.*’ By so doing, majority women ignore their own position as
oppressors, the complex power relations between privileged and non-
privileged women, and their complicity in the racial stereotyping of men
of oppressed groups. From the standpoint of women in poor, marginal-
ized, and oppressed communities, a universal, nonproblematic solidarity is
tantamount to a stifling manipulation of their truth, while racism and
classism perdure uncontested in the hearts of their white, middle-class
sisters. Thanks to this critique, and despite some backsliding, feminist lib-
eration theologies now attempt to hold themselves accountable to differ-
ences among women’s situations and practical concerns worldwide,
appreciating the fact that for the sake of both truth and justice, as Lisa
Cahill writes, “the experience of privileged, educated women, those with a
voice in politics or the academy, should not merely be projected onto the
lives of other women who differ by class, race, ethnicity, or even historical
era.” The challenge now becomes to respect the full play of women’s
diversity, summed up in the notion of difference, a concept that is an
intense focus of contemporary feminist theorizing.
Shawn Copeland notes how unfortunate it is that the term “difference”
rings with negative connotations in our culture, where it points to the
presence of a factor disruptive to the harmony of the community and
labels those to be avoided or treated with suspicion and disdain.” By con-
trast, feminist critical theory maintains that difference is an existential
principle that honors the integrity of the person by giving full play to her
A MODEST PROPOSAL 107

historical concreteness. There is no ideal, archetypal “woman.” There are

only real women whose lives are embedded in various bodily, interper-
sonal, economic, political, and social relations in historical times and
geographic places, for better or worse. When acknowledged within a rela-
tionship of solidarity, difference, far from being a regrettable obstacle to
community, can be a creative, enriching, community-shaping force.
Rather than construing otherness in a hierarchical rank of better and
worse, feminist theory envisions that we can learn to grant equal worth to
all persons in their concrete difference. Honoring difference cares for life
in all its uniqueness and celebrates the rich, radiant combinations that
constitute women as well as men and children as images of God. Commu-
nity then comes about not as the result of suppressing differences and
homogenizing everyone into sameness, but by respecting and celebrating
persons in all their differences within multiple larger narratives and
actions for the common good. The poet Audre Lorde evokes this truth
with her koan-like words: “Difference must not be merely tolerated, but
seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can
spark like a dialectic. .. . Difference is that raw and powerful connection
from which our personal power is forged.””4
With this understanding, we guard against a major pitfall that bedevils
retrieval of the historical memory of Mary within the communion of
saints, namely, erasing her cultural difference. As Bernadette Brooten points
out, “A twentieth-century Palestinian Muslim woman may live in greater
historical continuity with a second-century Palestinian Jewish or Christian
woman than does a North American Christian or Jewish woman.””° As with
the whole company of the saints, what each woman suffered and accom-
plished, what each one meant for the hope and self-understanding of oth-
ers in her world, cannot be repeated and may even strike us as strange.
Likewise, the present situation with its possibilities and terrors has never
existed before. The category of “solidarity in difference” works to prevent
memory from making women of old, Miriam of Nazareth included, into
merely mirror images of ourselves. It promotes instead appreciation rather
than rejection of the otherness of their ways. Creative action in the Spirit
can then spring from this deep, nonviolent connectedness.

Retrieving the Human Woman

Working out this proposal also requires that we grant full credence to
Mary’s genuine engagement in human life. The glorifying and maximaliz-
108 A WAY FORWARD

ing tendencies apparent in much traditional thought credited her with

supernatural gifts that effectively removed her from the human condition.
These proclivities have taken the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception,
which declares that Mary was conceived without original sin, to mean that
she lived a life like that of Adam and Eve in the garden of paradise before
the fall. She had special privileges that enabled her to negotiate the trou-
bles of life effortlessly in a world whose historical struggle was not her own.
Exempt from human passions, preserved from temptations, especially
those of a sexual nature, immune from wrestling with issues, spared ambi-
guity when it came to decisions, always in full possession of her wits,
clearly knowing God’s plan for herself and her son and more than willing
to carry it out, she moved through life with unearthly ease. The one allow-
able exception is the sorrow she felt at the cross, but even here, it is said, she
willingly sacrificed her son for the redemption of the world. In this inter-
pretation Mary’s uniqueness dehumanizes her. She was perfect. Cocooned
in a bubble of privileges, her very humanity is bleached of blood and guts.
A more promising avenue opens up when we realize that being con-
ceived without original sin does not mean being conceived in a vacuum.
The opposite of sin is grace, and the Immaculate Conception means that
Mary was uniquely blessed at the outset with the gift of grace, God’s own
self-communication. She was enveloped from the beginning in the love of
God. One German phrase for the December 8" celebration of such mercy
felicitously captures this meaning, calling it “the feast of the be-gracing of
Mary.’ Working this out in categories of theological anthropology, Rahner
points out the ramification that whatever Mary has ultimately reveals
something of God’s way with all human beings. Her own situation as first
of the redeemed in Christ anticipates the gift of grace offered to all
humankind in the incarnation. “We too are those who are called, who are
enveloped from beginning to end by God’s power, love, and fidelity to us
even in what is most individual and our own.” In its broadest reach the
Immaculate Conception means that God takes the initiative to surround
the life of all human beings with redemptive love and unrepentant fidelity.
The point is, while this doctrine speaks in the language of the absence of
sin, in essence it is all about the presence of grace.
Mapping the meaning of grace in contemporary Catholic theology, one
is struck by how clearly it holds up uncreated grace as of first importance.
This is in marked contrast to the neoscholastic theology of the preconcil-
iar era, which dealt primarily with created grace. The latter refers to a gift
A MODEST PROPOSAL 109

given to the creature by God, especially sanctifying grace, a habit or qual-

ity infused into the human soul that removes the stain of sin. By contrast,
uncreated grace, as the term suggests, refers to God’s own self-communi-
cation offered as gift to human persons: “grace is first and foremost God’s
self-communication and presence to human existence.”?” In grace the
mystery of the living God who is infinitely gracious becomes present not
as origin of the world and not as incarnate Word but as Spirit dwelling at
the heart of human existence. Put more biblically, “the love of God has
been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”
(Rom. 5:5).
The change of focus from created to uncreated grace, from grace being
first and foremost a spiritual “substance” to grace being God’s own self-
communication, completely reorients thinking. Rather than grace being a
measurable quantity that connects human beings to God, it is the inter-
personal gift of the Spirit of God herself at the heart of existence; in
Rahner’s inimitable phrasing, “The Giver himself is the gift.’’ Rather than
something that can be rather easily lost by sin and regained by repentance,
grace remains as God’s permanent offer of love and thereby of salvation to
the creature, an offer that cannot be extinguished by the grossest sin.
Rather than something extrinsic added on to natural human life, grace is
constitutive of the human condition, meaning that God’s presence as offer
of salvation is historically part of human existence. Therefore, rather than
grace being scarce or available only within the Christian sphere, grace is
universal, offered always and everywhere to all people thanks to God’s uni-
versal saving will. Rather than something ethereal that cannot be experi-
enced, grace can be tasted indirectly through the mediation of created
things and events. Rather than diminish or subvert the wholeness of
human nature, grace enhances and fulfills it through union with the living
God who is the goal of all creation including the human heart. Finally,
rather than detaching people’s interest from the world on the assumption
that a dichotomy exists between divine interest and earthly matters, grace
turns persons toward the world as the locus of God’s presence and, given
the drama of redemption, the place that really does matter in the end. This
gives importance to all things human: joys and sufferings, the body and
sexuality, relationships of intimacy and community, creativity and intel-
lectual effort, formation of beneficial social structures, struggle and resis-
tance against oppressive forces, and action for long-term peace, justice,
and the integrity of creation.
110 A WAY FORWARD

The major effects of this shift in the “cartography of grace””’ continue

to reverberate throughout all of theology and ethics, not least in reflection
about Mary. The “singular grace” which, according to the doctrinal defin-
ition, Mary received at her conception refers to what the community
affirms to be God’s self-communication, which is unfathomable. Since
grace humanizes rather than dehumanizes, since in Rahner’s equation
“nearness to God and genuine human autonomy grow in direct rather
than inverse proportion,”*’ then Mary’s relationship to the Spirit creates
her as a free, fully human being. She has to accomplish her life in the midst
of the struggles of history, not angelically outside them. And since when
did God’s love ever preserve anyone from struggle? Rahner again makes
the point: “The fact is, we often think holiness and absence of sin incom-
patible with ordinary life on this solid earth, where people laugh and cry,
are born and die. We think holiness, when it actually exists, must take a
‘heavenly’ ethereal form, or at least can only prosper far removed from the
sturdy everyday world of the ordinary human being, perhaps behind the
walls of a cloister.”*! To the contrary, the grace of God plunges us into the
heart of the world. Hence Mary’s life was a real human journey. She
searched, she felt anxious, she did not understand everything, she had to
find her way from stage to stage of her life’s passage.>? Viewed from the
outside, hers was a really commonplace and obscure life, that of “any aver-
age woman in any odd corner of a small country, far from the great stream
of history, of civilization, and of politics.’*? Life did not treat her gently.
She lived through the common human lot, “tears and tedium, distress and
bitterness, agony and death, joy and light, courage and greatness, a whole
long and always unprecedented human life.”*4 Thérése of Lisieux pointed
to this truth when she pondered why she loved Mary. It was not because
the mother of God received exceptional privileges that would remove her
from the ordinary condition, “ravishings, miracles, ecstasies,” and the like,
but because she lived and suffered simply, like us, in the dark night of
faith.*° For all his marian maximalism, Boff likewise does not hesitate to
involve Mary in all the existential contradictions of this life:
Of course, to believe that Mary, by mystery’s design, is without sin is not to
believe that her life was a bed of roses. She partook of the blind, seemingly
meaningless character of human existence. To say that she is immaculate
does not mean that she did not suffer, that she was never troubled, or that
she had no need for faith and hope. She was a daughter of earth, albeit
blessed by heaven. She had human passions. Everything authentically
human was present in her.*°
A MODEST PROPOSAL LL

To profess that Mary is graced in a special way is not to deny this but to
affirm, in view of her vocation to be the woman through whom God
became a child of earth, that God’s personal, living presence was given to
this woman of the people from her beginning.
This interpretation of what the Immaculate Conception does not mean
finds a strong buttress in contemporary developments in christology. Here
biblical scholarship and post-neoscholastic philosophies have opened up
new awareness of the truly human reality of Jesus Christ. Rather than
being an abstract individual with an ersatz human nature, he is “a real, gen-
uine, limited human being with his own experience, an obedient human
being, like us in all things except sin.”’” Despite his many gifts he needed to
grow in self-awareness, discerning his vocation through his own historical
experiences. His ministry and death were not preprogrammed but the
result of decisions freely if not always easily made—recall the temptations
in the desert, the agony in the garden, the cry of abandonment on the
cross. His life was not playacting. Now it becomes harder to maintain a
“Superman” model of Jesus’ life that would see him as a mild-mannered
worker in wood and stone on the outside, with secret, souped-up divine
powers on the inside, as if his human mind and will were not utterly
affected by his social location in history. All this is affirmed as a way of
honoring, not denying, the powerful Christian belief in the Wisdom of
God incarnate and casting it in an undeniably salvific mode: “For because
he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those who are
tempted. ... For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize
with our weakness, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we
are, yet without sinning” (Heb. 2:18 and 4:15).*°
If this is the way the presence of God in nature and grace works in the
case of Jesus, whom doctrine affirms as hypostatically united to the Word,
then how much more so in the case of Mary, who is doctrinally always
completely human. Deep relationship to God did not erase her humanity.
Firmly rooted in history, this first-century woman lived with all the limi-
tations and difficulties that being human inevitably entails. John Paul II’s
repeated references to Mary’s own need for religious faith bear this out: her
life was a pilgrimage of faith; she gave herself to God’s word in the “dim
light of faith”; like Abraham she had to “hope against hope”; though the
mother of Christ, she was in contact with the mystery of his truth only
through a “veil,” having to be faithful even through the “night of faith.”
In other words, even where it is most religiously crucial, she struggled
through without extra advantages. Patricia Noone’s humorous comment
bi A WAY FORWARD

is particularly apt: Mary did not have the doctrine of the Immaculate Con-
ception framed and hanging on her kitchen wall, assuring her that she was
sinless and free from error.*° Appreciating this historical slant, Iwould add
a theological point: even if she did, it would not lift her feet off the ground.
Understood as the personal, living, self-communication of God’s Spirit to
Mary at the outset of her life, the Immaculate Conception does not extract
her from the challenges that come with life on this planet. Rather, in its
peculiar, time-conditioned way, it fundamentally asserts the living God’s
self-gift to this woman who is called to a special vocation in salvation his-
tory. In so doing, it signals that when it comes to God’s intent, grace is
more original than sin.

To sum up: I propose a pneumatological interpretation of Mary, the his-

torical, graced, human woman, that remembers her as our companion in
the communion of saints. Entirely particular, lived out within the con-
straints of first-century patriarchal society, her life with its concrete details
in no way functions as culturally normative for women’s lives today, lives
racing along in a world she never dreamed of. But the memory of her part-
nership with God through the power of the Spirit can create liberating
energies for justice, especially given her low estate as poor and as female.
In all her difference, Miriam of Nazareth abides in the circle of disciples as
our sister, a poor woman of the people to whom God has done great
things; a young Spirit-filled Jewish woman finding her joy in God; a
woman vulnerable to violence in a patriarchal setting; a friend of God who
made her own difficult choices with courage; a prophet whose word
announced the awesome changes God’s coming would bring about in this
world; a God-bearer who had divinity dancing under her heart in devel-
oping human flesh; a married woman who with her husband toiled hard
to provide for their family; a woman with a questioning mind who pon-
dered what God was doing in the midst of her life; the mother of the itin-
erant preacher Jesus, terribly worried about his ministry; a middle-aged
woman whose agonized grief over the public execution of her firstborn
connects her with legions of bereaved women; an elder in the budding
community of the church. She kept faith. We remember her. We connect
her story with our own amid the searching narrative of the human race in
its history of suffering and hope. We thereby find courage to enact the crit-
A MODEST PROPOSAL he ed

ical dream of God for the world. The wager I am making at the outset is
that interpreting Mary in relation to the Spirit as a graced, concrete his-
torical person amid the company of saints in heaven and on earth crafts a
theology capable of promoting action on behalf of global justice and lib-
eration, particularly empowering to the flourishing of women, coherent
with elements of biblical, classical, and conciliar teaching, and productive
of religious sense for our time.
——

Precedents

TWO MILLENNIA, TWO PATTERNS

Tos danger of painting history with large brush strokes is that one
omits particular distinctions and nuances, thereby ignoring the plu-
rality and ambiguity inherent in any tradition and risking distortion.
However, given the immense sprawl of the marian phenomenon, the
search for precedents for this book’s project makes such large brush strokes
necessary. Aware of the distinction between popular devotion, reflective
theology, and official doctrine, I am focusing here on theology, or the sys-
tematic ideas about Mary and her role that shaped prayer and preaching.
Painting a big picture, I postulate that over the two thousand years of
western Catholic Christianity, thought about Mary fell into two roughly
different patterns. During the first millennium, especially in its earlier cen-
turies, theology, if it attended to Mary at all, understood her significance to
lie largely within the economy of salvation centered on the mercy of God
given in Christ through the Spirit. By contrast, the second millennium,
especially in its later centuries, saw an increasing tendency to divorce Mary
from this context, resulting in ever more rarified reflections on her privi-
leges, powers, and glories. While the second millennium’s isolating ten-
dency can be found in the first, and while at its best the second millennium
preserved an integrated view of Mary, these two patterns describe recog-
nizably distinct patterns of marian theology in each era.
Continuing with large strokes, I submit that at the Second Vatican
Council, the distinctive patterns of the first millennium and the second
millennium came into conflict with each other. The first millennium won.
Occurring as it did practically at the start of the third Christian millen-
nium, the council’s teaching points the way toward new interpretations of
Mary more in accord with ancient patterns of belief while tempered by

114
PRECEDENTS 15

contemporary intellectual assumptions, struggles, and spiritual practice.

In this perspective, the immediate precedent for my proposal is Vatican II,
whose major decision to integrate teaching on Mary into the document on
the church opens a door through which feminist reflection can pass.

The First Millennium

The proposal to interpret Mary as a woman within the company of

believers comes with an ancient pedigree in scripture, liturgy, and early
Christian theology. None of these sources is created from an explicitly fem-
inist stance; each in fact bears the stamp of the patriarchal context in which
it was created. When interpreted with a feminist hermeneutic with its
movements of both suspicion and remembrance, however, these sources
turn out to be precedents that provide backing in the tradition for the the-
ological placement of Mary among other women and men made holy by
the Spirit.
The New Testament stories that mention Mary form a primary source
from which all later interpretation arises. Whether seeing her along with
Jesus’ brothers in a negative light outside the circle of disciples as Mark
does, or placing her in a genealogy of Jewish and Gentile ancestors as
Matthew does, or presenting her as a woman of faith as Luke does, or sym-
bolizing her at Cana and the cross as John does, the gospels mention her as
part of the messianic coming of God’s salvation. In this she does not stand
alone but is one of many characters whose free participation is important
for the total message of the gospel. Luke in particular sees Mary as a Spirit-
filled woman deeply connected to the people of Israel and the emerging
Christian community of disciples. The last Lukan depiction of Mary places
her in the upper room along with 120 women and men disciples and the
brothers of Jesus, all in prayer awaiting the coming of the Spirit. The last
Johannine depiction of the mother of Jesus sees her joined in relationship
to her sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, Mary Magdalene, and the disciple
whom Jesus loved, forming one community born of the cross. In each
gospel, Mary’s particular relation to Jesus as his mother is explicitly men-
tioned. Her history is no one else’s history. At the same time, in both liter-
ary and theological terms, her story is woven into the gracious work of the
redeeming God along with the others present at the birth of the church. In
the biblical view Mary is found within the great cloud of witnesses, a basic
precedent for our proposal.
From the early centuries onward, the liturgy has addressed prayer to the
 116 A WAY FORWARD

trinitarian God according to a clear pattern: “to the Father through the Son
in the unity of the Holy Spirit.” In the age of persecution under the Roman
empire, the community on earth began to think that the martyrs in heaven
joined their eucharistic praise of God. Ever since, the central eucharistic
prayer has made mention of the host of people who have died in Christ
and whose memory swells the chorus of the church’s worship. In its many
permutations, this mention evokes mutual kinship between the people
gathered on earth and the community in heaven. To cite texts currently in
use in the Catholic Church: the first Eucharistic Prayer, which itself is
based on the ancient Roman canon, twice remembers the saints in heaven.
The first time, we pray in union with Mary; her husband, Joseph; certain
apostles and martyrs who are called by name; and “all the saints.” The sec-
ond time, the prayer continues, “For ourselves, too, we ask some share in
the fellowship of your apostles and martyrs, with John the Baptist,
Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander, Marcellinus, Peter, Felic-
ity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia, and all the saints.”
The sense arises of a whole community of God-seekers linked through
time, praising the living God together. The mother of Jesus is part of this
group. Eucharistic prayers of more recent vintage are replete with this
same insight. The texts of the Mass of Reconciliation pray to the triune
God: “Help us to work together for the coming of your kingdom, until at
last we stand in your presence to share the life of the saints, in the company
of the Virgin Mary and the apostles, and of our departed brothers and sis-
ters whom we commend to your mercy” (I); and, “You have gathered us
here around the table of your Son, in fellowship with the Virgin Mary
Mother of God and all the saints. In that new world where the fullness of
your peace will be revealed, gather people of every race, language, and way
of life to share in the one eternal banquet with Jesus Christ the Lord” (II).
Liturgical prayer places Mary in the company of the believers, living and
dead, providing another precedent for our proposal.
In light of what was to come later in marian theology, the relative silence
of the first three Christian centuries is remarkable. Most theologians do
not even mention her. Even more striking, there was in those centuries no
public, official veneration of Mary. The church celebrated feast days in
honor of the martyrs who had witnessed to Christ even to the shedding of
their blood, thereby encouraging faith in the rest of the people. Since Mary
was not a martyr, she did not receive the community’s regard in this for-
mal way.
PRECEDENTS 7:

The main vehicle for driving theological attention to Mary in those

years was the growing discussion about the identity of Jesus Christ. In that
increasingly heated debate, ideas about her maternity were pressed into
service to defend first the humanity and then the divinity of the Messiah.
The earliest christological heresy, docetism, held that the body of Jesus was
not true human flesh but only appeared to be so. Seeking to honor the
transcendent dignity of God by protecting divinity from contact with the
material world, this view argued that Jesus’ body was a kind of camouflage
that allowed God to be seen and heard on earth, but it was not the same
stuff of which Adam and Eve and their descendants were made. To counter-
act this idea, which strikes at the very reality of the incarnation, theolo-
gians turned to Mary. They evoked her historic pregnancy to ensure the
human authenticity of Jesus’ body. One docetic group, the Valentinians,
had advanced the notion that Jesus passed through Mary the way water
passes through a tube: two different substances, one not affecting the
other.' In contrast to this view, the Apostles’ Creed incorporated the phrase
that Jesus was born ex Maria virgine, “of or from the Virgin Mary,” that is,
out of her body. He is made from the same human stuff she is. Conse-
quently, he is in solidarity with the rest of humanity according to the flesh.”
Once the divinity of Christ had been formally confessed at Nicaea in
325, conflict flared up over how to understand the unity of human and
divine natures in the one person of Jesus Christ. In one corner, the school
of Antioch endorsed a moral view of the unity of his two natures, seeing
Jesus Christ as the human being in whom the divine Word dwells, similar
to the way God dwells in the temple. While presenting a rather weak view
of unity in Christ, so that he could be said to act at times through one
nature (hungry in his humanity) and at times through his other nature
(working miracles through his divinity), this christology had the advan-
tage of preserving the distinction of natures and thereby guaranteeing
Jesus’ genuine humanity. In this school the preferred title for Mary was
Christotokos, or Christ-bearer, meaning that she was mother of the human
being who is indwelt by the Logos and who is thereby the Christ. In the
other corner, the school of Alexandria argued for a stronger, ontological
form of union in which the divine Son of God personally united himself
to human nature. While safeguarding the unity of natures in the person of
Christ, this notion tended to dilute his humanity, seeing it as somehow
mixed with or swallowed up by transcendent divinity. In this school, the
passionately preferred title for Mary was Theotokos, or God-bearer, mean-
118 A WAY FORWARD

ing that she was mother of the one who is personally the Word of God.
Although the essence of the controversy was christological, the marian title
itself bore the brunt of the dispute. When the Council of Ephesus in 431
opted for the title Theotokos, it spread like wildfire, keeping its original
form in the East and being transmuted into the more colloquial “Mother
of God” in the West. According to most scholars, the impetus from this
council allowed the development of the marian cult to go public in the
church. Although discourse about Mary had been in play to express chris-
tological truths, it opened up the later trajectory where attention was
focused on Mary in herself.
The difference between East and West as these centuries progressed is
significant. Numerous instances of fervent, enthusiastic reflection and
imaginative interest in Mary originated in the eastern, Greek-speaking
church. The western Latin-speaking church, by contrast, displayed a sobri-
ety rather more parallel to the gospels and the earliest eastern theologians.
Time after time when these marian creations of the East arrived in the
West, they quickly took root and flourished. But in the early centuries the
West did little to generate fervent, poetic ardor, thinking instead about
Mary largely in relation to the mystery of Christ and the community’s life
of grace. One good example is the fifth-century preaching of Augustine.
Nothing if not complex, his view of Mary is intertwined with his doctrinal
positions on sin and redemption as well as his dubious philosophical idea
of passive feminine nature and the role women should play. Interestingly
enough, he refrained from using the title Theotokos for fear the people
would confuse Mary with the Great Mother Goddess of Mediterranean
religions, the Mother of God who is herself divine. On the subject of
Mary’s relation to other Christians, however, he established a vivid con-
nection that provides another precedent for my proposal. He clearly
preached that Mary belongs to the community of believers: “Mary is holy.
Mary is blessed, but the Church is something better than the Virgin Mary.
Why? Because Mary is part of the Church, a holy member, a quite excep-
tional member, the supremely wonderful member, but still a member of
the whole body. That being so, it follows that the body is something greater
than the member,”’ the whole body which has Christ as its head. In this
light, her relationship to Jesus as his biological mother is important to the
Christian confession more because of the faith with which she bore him
than because of her maternity itself. Take the scene where Jesus’ mother
and brothers stand outside asking to speak to him while Jesus, inside,
PRECEDENTS 119

replies that “whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is brother and
sister and mother to me” (Matt. 12:46-50). Augustine argues that Mary’s
faith obviously qualifies her to be his mother. Indeed, “it means more for
her, an altogether greater blessing, to have been Christ’s disciple than to
have been Christ’s mother.”* Feminist interpreters flag the danger here of
disparaging women’s sexual activity, which Augustine saw as a violation of
female integrity leading to an impairment of virtue; virginity was much
preferred as the path of a holy life.* But ironically, his emphasis on disci-
pleship over biological maternity, when read today, has the effect of reliev-
ing the traditionally strong emphasis on motherhood, linked with Mary, as
the sole vocation of women. Furthermore, it makes Mary’s vocation acces-
sible to all in the church. Augustine preached on the same text: “we do have
the nerve to call ourselves the mother of Christ.’ Why? Because by being
heavy or pregnant (gravida) with belief in Christ, by carrying him in our
hearts full of love, we bring forth the Savior into the needy world.
The theme of Mary’s participation in the story of salvation through her
mothering of Jesus and her own faith and discipleship was parsed in sim-
ilar ways by a number of other theologians in the early Christian centuries.
By keeping our gaze fixed steadfastly on theology I have, of course,
neglected other dynamic factors that also shaped the first millennium’s
marian tradition. Chief among these was popular piety, a veneration not
confined to simple people, the rudes, but shared by priests and bishops as
well. Historian E. Ann Matter makes the wise observation that “the prac-
tice of the pious often takes its own course and can sometimes be strong
enough to draw theological theory after it. This is the case with devotion
to Mary; in no other realm of Christian theology does theory so closely,
and it may even be said, so unwillingly, follow practice.”’ The point for our
interest, however, is the way early Christian theology in the West config-
ured itself to scripture and liturgy in situating Mary in the midst of the
community rather than above it, seeing her as one among many notable
models of faith including the apostles and martyrs. This pattern has led a
number of scholars to characterize western marian theology in the first
millennium as “objective,” insofar as it did not require enthusiastic per-
sonal devotion to Mary but honored her along with other saints in the spa-
cious framework of biblical and creedal faith.’ A quite different mood
takes over in the second millennium, when a more “subjective,” emotional
type of relationship increasingly glorifies Mary in her own right, especially
her ability to obtain and dispense mercy.
120 A WAY FORWARD

The Second Millennium

New factors at work in the church, particularly the growing juridical char-
acter of church office, an increasingly severe penitential system, and a cor-
responding remoteness of the risen Christ in medieval theology and art
caused a noticeable shift in the West’s theology of Mary during the second
millennium. Given the human propensity to sin and the ecclesiastical
apparatus that confronted the sinner, the possibility of gaining eternal sal-
vation was thought to be exceedingly difficult to achieve; the torment of
hell beckoned. In this situation the mother of God came to be seen as a
particularly potent help to sinners, a heavenly power who because of her
maternal heart would take the sinner’s side. Since she was also the mother
of the Judge who was bound to honor her with filial piety, she was uniquely
positioned to persuade him to save poor sinners. As this trajectory spun
out, marian reflection became detached from the gospel story of salvation
history, proceeding in an isolation that grew more intense as the millen-
nium progressed.
The idea of Mary as mediatrix is a case in point.? In earlier theology the
idea of Mary as a mediator had barely been mentioned. When it was, it was
rooted in her singular role in the incarnation whereby the Son of God
became a human being. Having given her free consent in faith, she con-
ceived him in her body and, through her physical pregnancy and child-
birth, delivered to the world its Savior. Thus she was understood to be the
means by which God came to earth, the female “mediator,” so to speak, of
Christ’s saving presence in history. Now, however, her mediation began to
function in reverse to effect sinful humanity’s going back to God. As the
theologian Peter Damien wrote, “Just as the Son of God has deigned to
descend to us through you, so we also must come to him through you. ...”!°
This insight found expression in the popular images of Mary as the “neck”
connecting Christ with his body the church, and as the “aqueduct” through
which the graces of Christ flow. With eloquent rhetoric Bernard of Clair-
vaux preached that it is God’s wish that we venerate Mary with great ten-
derness, for God “wills us to have everything through Mary”!!—a line that
would be quoted in the marian teaching of later popes and would become
a classic axiom in the literature of mariology. True, he goes on, the Father
has given us Jesus as our efficacious Mediator; he is our merciful brother,
made of our flesh. But we might tremble to approach him, for he is also
God of awesome divine majesty. If we wish to have an advocate with him,
PRECEDENTS 121

let us have recourse to Mary, for she is wholly sweet and gentle, full of
mildness and mercy. The Son will hear his mother, the Father will hear his
Son, and so we will all receive divine favor.
A fearsome edge was given to this mediating role of Mary by emphasis
on Christ the Just Judge. Being the mother of the Judge as well as of the
ones on trial, Mary could soften the heart of her Son and obtain mercy for
sinners, undeserving though they be. The epitome of the felt contrast
between Christ and Mary was expressed in an influential sermon by an
unknown author, thought until the twentieth century to be Bonaventure:
“The Blessed Virgin chose the best part because she was made Queen of
Mercy, while her Son remained King of Justice; and mercy is better than
justice.”!? Mary, then, was a potent protector of her clients, warding off the
just anger of Christ. Given her power to influence even Christ the Lord, she
was also credited with being able to protect people from the attacks of the
devil and the earthly misfortunes of famine, plague, and war. In the fif-
teenth century, Bernardine of Siena trenchantly summed up the general
perception:
Every grace which is communicated to this world has a threefold procession.
For from God to Christ, from Christ to the Virgin, from the Virgin to us, it
is dispensed in a most orderly fashion. .. . I do not hesitate to say that she
has received a certain jurisdiction over all graces. ... They are administered
through her hands to whom she pleases, when she pleases, as she pleases,
and as much as she pleases.”

Theologians today note how Mary regrettably replaces the Holy Spirit in
this divine bestowal of grace. But given the prevailing understanding, it is
little wonder that devotion to Mary blossomed in a profusion of prayers,
hymns, cathedrals, pilgrimages, poems, miracle stories, dramas, songs,
images, and practices in an outpouring that is impossible to codify.
The Reformation in sixteenth-century Europe happened when theol-
ogy and piety were at a low ebb. Marian devotion was by turns sentimen-
tal and superstitious, filled on the one hand with a coy, simpering virgin,
beautiful but not sacred, and on the other with a powerful mother who
promised salvation despite the lack of ethics in one’s life. The situation had
deteriorated to the point where, according to Laurentin, “repelled by a des-
iccated intellectualism, people sought life on the imaginative and senti-
mental plane. Throughout this period of decadence, popular enthusiasm
for the Blessed Virgin never faltered, but the adulterated fodder it was
122 A WAY FORWARD

nourished on consisted of trumpery miracles, ambiguous slogans, and

inconsistent maunderings.”'* The Reformers’ criticism was largely justi-
fied, and the reforming Council of Trent called for correction of abuse.
Over time, however, Protestant leaders, who focused on Christ alone as the
mediator between God and sinful humanity, thought that Catholic reform
did not go far enough. In the spirit of the day, a war psychology developed,
with each punch met by an ever stronger counterpunch. Among Catholics,
devotion to Mary became a badge of identity; polemic against those who
did not honor her was elevated into an act of fealty; a virtue was made of
aggressiveness in promoting her glories. The centuries that rolled on from
that split in the western church saw positions polarize. Regarding Mary,
Catholics developed a severe case of fixation, while Protestants developed
a severe case of amnesia.
In the seventeenth century, new marian feasts, titles, institutions, and
forms of piety blossomed; specialized literature running to thousands of
volumes appeared in profusion. This was the existential setting for the ori-
gin of the scholarly discipline that technically came to be called “mariol-
ogy.’ The term itself was coined by Nicholas Nigido in his treatise Summa
sacrae Mariologiae written in 1602. Inspired by the rational approach of
the age of the Enlightenment, this treatise began with a basic principle,
Mary’s maternity, and from it deduced as corollaries all manner of glori-
ous privileges that accrued to her person.’° This type of mariology, which
spread rapidly, took to itself the piety of the day and gave it a theoretical
basis. The effect was to cut thought about Mary off from the rest of theol-
ogy, especially treatments of Christ, salvation, the Holy Spirit, and the
church, which in any event had lost their creative edge. Thus, as Patrick
Bearsely writes, “we have a picture of a vigorous mariology growing luxu-
riantly in an otherwise impoverished theological garden.”!®
This river crested in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with the so-
called marian movement, an upsurge in enthusiasm marked most strik-
ingly by papal proclamation of two marian dogmas, the Immaculate
Conception (1854) and the Assumption (1950). Themes of Mary’s univer-
sal mediation of God’s grace and her protection of the sinner resounded in
the writings of theologians, spiritual guides, preachers, and popes. Leo
XIII, for example, devoted eleven of his forty-two encyclicals to the subject
of Mary.'” New expressions of honor proliferated, including apparitions
and pilgrimages to marian shrines such as Lourdes and Fatima. Religious
orders dedicated in her name blossomed—Laurentin counts sixty-five
PRECEDENTS P23

founded in the hundred years following 1835.'® Militant lay associations

such as the Blue Army and the Legion of Mary attracted millions of mem-
bers. Consecrations, crownings, medals, scapulars, holy pictures, and itin-
erant statues became ubiquitous. Marian journals and scholarly societies
proliferated, along with marian congresses on the national and interna-
tional levels; there were over seventy such meetings in the ten years fol-
lowing 1947.
In terms of systematic theology, mariology was by now a clearly marked
independent subject founded on the principle of Mary’s maternity and
governed by a set of rules: the rule of singularity (Mary is unique); the rule
of analogy (in her own way Mary parallels Christ in all things); the rule of
eminence (Mary surpasses other Christians in all things so that de Maria
numquam satis, which loosely translated means “about Mary one can
never say enough”); and the rule of suitability, expressed in the axiom
derived from Duns Scotus, potuit, decuit, fecit, or God “could have, should
have, and therefore did” do great things for his mother. The result was a
view of Mary as the unique, immaculately conceived virgin mother of God
par excellence, graced with perfect virtue, the totally obedient, humble
handmaid who was also the Queen of Heaven with power to intercede for
our salvation, and who was assumed body and soul into heaven. Internally,
the Achilles heel of this pattern of thought was its isolation from theology
as a whole; mariology had indeed gone off on its own track Externally, it
lacked resonance with modern forms of thought and spirituality. However,
filling a great need, it flourished.

VATICAN II: CLASH OF THE TITANS

Eve of the Collision

After 1950 a split occurred between those who wished to go on making
new conquests for Mary with more titles, privileges, and dogmatic defini-
tions and those who desired to renew marian theology and devotion by a
return to the original sources. The latter position was the result of three
movements that had started up earlier in the twentieth century, namely,
the biblical, liturgical, and ecumenical renewals. Originally opposed by the
hierarchical church, these movements were now beginning to bear fruit.
Reading biblical books according to the integrity of their genre rather than
proof-texting, the biblical movement brought the good news of God’s gra-
 124 A WAY FORWARD

cious ways in salvation history once again to the forefront. Promoting

prayer to the trinitarian God by the worshiping community, the liturgical
movement placed the Eucharist at the center of the church’s public life,
aligning Mary and the saints as part of the praying community. Opening
dialogue with separated brothers and sisters, the ecumenical movement
brought reforming intuitions to light and allowed Catholics to hear how
deviant marian maximalism sounded to Protestant ears. In addition to
these three movements, impetus for reform also came from Catholic
scholars who for some decades had been returning to the sources of early
Christian theology and its more gospel-oriented approach to Mary. Each
of these developments in its own way reestablished the powerful truth that
salvation comes copiously from God through Jesus Christ and reaches us
even now through the power of the Spirit. Each one positioned Mary back
into the community of believers.!°
One early skirmish gave a portent of things to come. During this decade
theologians involved in writing traditional treatises on mariology got
embroiled in a controversy over what they called the “fundamental princi-
ple” of their discipline. Most of the major players argued that Mary’s
maternity, the role she played as mother of God, should provide the guid-
ing idea for all subsequent privileges and powers. They expressed this prin-
ciple in various ways, favoring her divine motherhood, her universal
motherhood of the whole Christ including head and members, her physi-
cal motherhood, her spiritual motherhood, or her bridal motherhood.
Taking issue with his colleagues, Karl Rahner proposed that grace rather
than maternity should be the founding idea of marian theology. Speaking
“simply and soberly,’ he reminded his listeners of the reality to which
Christians entrust their lives: the living God gives human beings a gift of
grace that justifies and forgives. This grace is not a created gift, however,
but God’s own self-communication, which comes to human beings and so
influences them that they freely become ready “for the whole glorious infi-
nite life of the triune God to enter the poor heart of this tiny creature.”2
From God’s side this is God’s love for human beings. From our side, this is
love for God, which also in the teaching of Christ includes love for neigh-
bor. Christian life chiefly consists “in our receiving the whole divine life by
the power of God’s grace, with faith and love, into the depths of our heart
in such a way that it extends and redounds to a blessing for others who by
our side and like us are to receive the one and only salvation from the eter-
nal God.”?!
PRECEDENTS £25

Placing Mary in this context, Rahner sees her as an actual realization of

this mystery. She receives God’s saving, merciful grace and, as part of
human history, as “entirely one of us,” she accomplishes her own life story.
This story takes on a unique importance for our salvation in view of Jesus
Christ, whom she conceived by the free consent of her faith and the phys-
ical reality of her motherhood. Chosen by God to carry out this role, she is
gifted with grace commensurate with her task. In the process, she realizes
in herself what faith says about the fullness of grace and salvation radiat-
ing in service to others. Mary is the figure who actually typifies the mean-
ing of grace with unsurpassed holiness and dignity. “Yet what Mary has
must in the ultimate resort be ours too. We too are to become what she
is,?? namely, those who hear the word of God and act upon it with all our
heart. The living God who self-communicates through Jesus Christ in sav-
ing grace, concludes Rahner, is the ultimate reality. This idea should orga-
nize and ground our reflection, which would integrate Mary back into
theology.
On the eve of the Second Vatican Council the expansive trajectory of the
second millennium was clearly coming into tension with more sober facets
of the first. In the parlance of the day that served to crystallize the con-
trasting schools of thought, the second-millennium marian movement
position was called maximalist. Its mariology was labeled christotypical
because it envisioned Mary as an altogether special creature whose privi-
leges paralleled those of Christ. By contrast, the position marked by return
to the first millennium in the biblical, liturgical, and ecumenical move-
ments coupled with the patristic renewal was called minimalist. Its mari-
ology was labeled ecclesiotypical because it envisioned Mary as herself
simply the recipient of grace and a special member of the community of
the church. As characterized by Laurentin, christotypical mariology was
spiritually mystical in tone, driven by love, focused on the glories of Mary,
full of emotional fervor, and dedicated to seeing Mary as the neck con-
necting the head and members of the body of Christ. Ecclesiotypical mar-
iology was critically rational in tone, driven by a search for truth, focused
on Jesus Christ, full of clear-sightedness regarding the needs of the mod-
ern world, and appalled by: the neck metaphor. Behind each position lay
prior theological commitments centuries in the making that commanded
deep loyalties. Given the success of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
in glorifying Mary, it is little wonder that going into the council marian
enthusiasts looked forward to placing another jewel in the crown of the
126 A WAY FORWARD

mother of God by having the council declare as dogma that she was medi-
atrix of all graces. Just as insistently, those who were leading the renewal
movements in view of the modern world wished to brake mariological
exuberance and restore a gospel orientation. Their clash was the wildest,
most emotional fight of the whole council.

Clash of the Titans

Should the teaching on Mary be dealt with in the schema on the church
or not? This seemingly simple and straightforward question was the occa-
sion of a bitter dispute in which the titanic differences between the two
millennia came into open conflict.”? The issue was joined during the sec-
ond session of the council in autumn 1963. Obviously, those promoting
the glories of Mary opposed the move to include, supporting instead a sep-
arate document that would give Mary due regard as superior to the church.
Those in favor of inclusion thought it would be more ecumenically prof-
itable as well as in keeping with the main theme of the council itself to
check exaggerations by bringing Mary back into the theology of the church.
National characteristics played a role in this division, with Spanish, Italian,
and Polish personalities favoring the maximalist heartfelt, enthusiastic
strategy, while German, English, French, Belgian, and Dutch tempera-
ments tended toward a more biblically based, theologically rigorous out-
look. During discussion the atmosphere became explosive. Laurentin
describes it as almost violent.”4 The privileges party denounced the move
to include as a plot against Our Lady, using passionate accusations and
sentimental appeals to make their case. The reform party rejected the char-
acterization of their idea as a devious plot, arguing that veneration of Mary
could be all the more ardent if it were based on a more enlightened foun-
dation. The whole assembly was pervaded with distress.
To reach a decision in a calmer, more fully informed manner, a plenary
session debate was arranged. Cardinal Rufino Santos of Manila spoke for
the “separate schema” party and Cardinal Franz Konig of Vienna for the
“inclusion in the church” party. Marshaling the best arguments for their
positions, they gave presentations whose difference could hardly be exag-
gerated. Santos gave ten arguments in favor of a separate schema. These
included the theological argument that, given her relations to the Trinity,
Mary has a position of priority with regard to the church beyond the level
of the laity and hierarchy; the pastoral argument that the faithful would see
her inclusion in the church as reduction and loss; and the practical one
PRECEDENTS 27

that the constitution on the church as already composed had no place

where she might be harmoniously added. K6nig in turn articulated four
reasons why teaching on Mary should be incorporated into the schema on
the church. These included the theological one that Mary belongs there
because she is a type of the church, prefiguring its eschatological fulfill-
ment; the pastoral one that the faithful were being encouraged to purify
their devotion to Mary and get back to essentials based on scripture; and
the ecumenical one that an ecclesiotypical mariology made possible a con-
versation with the Oriental and Protestant traditions. The issue was joined,
and not just on the intellectual level. As Gérard Philips observed, while
“both speakers maintained a remarkably high level of thought, the general
mood was anything but dispassionate.””°
In the days between this debate and the vote of the assembly, the atmos-
phere grew ever more tense. Partisans of each position distributed pam-
phlets, duplicated materials, and propaganda booklets and engaged in
dirty tricks to promote their side. “A Ukrainian bishop distributed pam-
phlets in front of the Aula; the Spaniards distributed printed leaflets every-
where; Roschini produced a brochure; people were talking of a battle for
and against the Madonna; Bali¢ distributed a lengthy booklet printed by
the Vatican Press in the form of a schema,” the latter implying that what
was actually his own tract was an official statement. Because he circulated
a note favoring inclusion, Abbot Butler was violently insulted in the con-
servative daily newspaper II Tempo. Spearheading the mariology of privi-
leges party, Bali¢ roundly attacked the noted theologian Yves Congar, who
had criticized “galloping mariology,” accusing him of being a dishonest
Catholic. The simple question of placement developed into a bitter melo-
drama.
On October 29, 1963, the vote was finally taken. It was the closest vote
of the council: 1,114 in favor of incorporating marian teaching into the
schema on the church, 1,074 against. The motion passed with a legitimate
and sufficient majority of forty votes, but if only twenty bishops had
declared differently it would have been a tie. The vote was met with
stunned silence, “a moment of dazed amazement.””” Accustomed as they
were to deciding issues with near unanimity up to that point, the bishops
were terribly dismayed. How could it be that the mother of God, in whose
womb the fundamental union of God and humanity was achieved, had
become the source of such great division?
Commentators on this vote note that, seen theologically, the mentality
 128 A WAY FORWARD

of nonhistorical, authoritarian orthodoxy accompanied by a piety that

focused on the world to come was outvoted by the forces for renewal that
called the church to enter into history and engage the social and political
implications of the gospel. Seen politically, the curialist representatives of
the “Age of Mary” had lost to the northern European alliance, which advo-
cated dialogue with the modern world. My own view holds that what hap-
pened was a kind of seismic upheaval in which the strained, bulging
theological earth shifted back to realignment with the pattern of the first
millennium. It is important to note that one year, numerous drafts and
amendments, and many arguments later, the final version of the Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) with the marian schema
firmly ensconced as its last chapter was affirmed in solemn assembly with
only five negative votes.

FROM MEDIATRIX TO MODEL

The heated and far from academic atmosphere that surrounded the vote
on placement made it difficult to write a text that would satisfy both sides.
Controversy continued; a series of drafts succeeded one another as
each
side vied to influence official teaching. The christotypical group continued
to urge the council to solemnly define the dogma that Mary is mediatrix of
all graces who is closely engaged in the work of redemption as associate
of
her Son, or at least to declare the doctrine that she is mother
of the church.
On the other side were those who urged that the cause of unity would
be
hindered by new dogmas; what was needed was to learn to utter
the name
of Mary, woman of faith, as part of the vision of the
church. Out of the
“spirited clashes,” “angry speeches,” “fiercely emotional debates,
” and
“great conflicts” that marked discussion of the penultimate draft, the
final
text crafted a middle ground that despite compromises
still managed to
restore Mary to a first-millennium pattern. Entitled “The Role
of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, in the Mystery of Christ
and the
Church,” it offers precedent for the proposal we are pursuin
g here in both
its placement and its content.
As to placement, the Constitution on the Church opens with
the ring-
ing proclamation that “Christ is the light of all nations,’ or lumen
gentium
($1). Radiant with this light and reflecting it the way
the moon does the
sun, the church helps to shed this light on the world by procla
iming the
gospel to every creature. This, then, is the foundational relati
onship which
PRECEDENTS 129

constitutes the very essence of the church: Christ the Redeemer and the
church as the assembly of all those who believe in him and witness him to
the world. Subsequent chapters consider aspects of this community on
earth: the church moving through history as the pilgrim People of God,
the episcopacy and clergy, the laity, the call of the whole church to holiness,
and the religious orders. But the reality of the church is not exhausted here,
in those who are still alive at any given moment; one does not leave the
church by dying. Therefore, the constitution goes on to consider the faith-
ful dead, those “friends and fellow heirs of Jesus Christ” ($50) with whom
the living form one community. Then within this context of the whole
church, living and dead, the constitution discusses Mary, a preeminent
member of the church and faith-filled mother of Jesus Christ, once a pil-
grim on earth herself and now with God in glory. Be it noted that this
placement is a precise delineation of the program to develop a theology of
Mary amid the communion of saints.
As to content, the marian chapter returns to biblical and early Christian
sources to sketch out Mary’s significance in relation to Christ and the
church. First, it tells the story of her life in relation to Christ by running
together in a harmonious narrative various gospel stories. Emphasis is
placed on her maternity, by means of which the Redeemer entered the
world, and her faith, which led her to respond creatively to the call of God
in different situations. The dynamism of her life is said to lie in the way she
advanced in her “pilgrimage of faith” ($58) from the announcement of
Christ’s birth to the upper room at Pentecost. Ultimately this pilgrimage
led her into the glory of God. The reality of her life, then, is intertwined
with the great events of the coming of salvation. The struggle between the
two schools of thought can be seen by the “nevertheless” structure of many
paragraphs. For example, the document states that Mary’s unique role in
salvation as mother of the incarnate Redeemer gives her a special relation-
ship to the triune God (christotypical). “At the same time, however,
because she belongs to the offspring of Adam, she is one with all human
beings in their need for salvation” (ecclesiotypical, §53). United with her
Son in the work of salvation from his birth to her presence at his side in
heaven (christotypical), she nevertheless did not understand his reply
when she found him in the temple but pondered it in her heart (ecclesio-
typical, $57).
Besides relating Mary to Christ, the chapter also positions Mary as a
member of the church. Here the council bit the bullet in the vexatious
mediatrix dispute which had continued to simmer. It carefully declared
 130 A WAY FORWARD

that “the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advo-
cate, Auxiliatrix, Adjutrix, and Mediatrix. These however are to be so
understood that they neither take away from nor add anything to the dig-
nity and efficacy of Christ the one Mediator. For no creature could ever be
classed with the Incarnate Word and Redeemer” ($62).?8 Instead of a doc-
trinal definition, the title Mediatrix is relativized here in three ways: it is
placed in a row of other titles; it is set in the context of piety rather than
doctrine, thus being descriptive of practice rather than prescriptive; and it
is hedged about with christological reservations. In place of Mary as medi-
atrix, the council reached back to early Christian theology and emphasized
the idea that Mary is a model of the church: “As St. Ambrose taught, the
Mother of God is a model of the Church in the matter of faith, charity, and
perfect union with Christ” ($63). As a model, she signals what the church
is called to be at its spiritual best. This idea also shapes the document's final
point about venerating Mary. Avoiding false exaggeration as well as
narrow-mindedness, people should remember that “true devotion consists
neither in fruitless and passing emotion, nor in a certain vain credulity.
Rather, it proceeds from true faith, by which we are led to know the excel-
lence of the Mother of God, and are moved to a filial love toward our
mother and to the imitation of her virtues” ($67).
Critics of the marian chapter note the inadequacy of its biblical exege-
sis, which merges all marian texts together without regard for genre or
author and which conflates biblical narrative with later dogmatic state-
ments, as if one could indeed write a biography of Mary. Another serious
weakness is the chapter’s self-absorbed character, neglecting as it does to
place marian theology in dialogue with the modern world, a move central
to the council’s most significant documents.”? The chapter is also criticized
for its almost complete lack of robust pneumatology, an absence that
causes functions of the Holy Spirit to be attributed to Mary’s maternal
mediation. And there is no use of the liberating mariology creatively devel-
oped by the church of the poor. Asking what was at stake for women in the
fiercely emotional conciliar debate, Anne Carr commends the placement
of Mary within the wide framework of the whole economy of salvation,
which makes possible a new connection between Mary and women. At the
same time, however, the text idealizes this one woman, overuses the lan-
guage of perfection, sees her as a model of receptivity to God’s grace but
not of agency and power, uses the harmful Eve—Mary dichotomy, and
employs the language of subordination.*° Kari Borresen points out the
fundamental problem that “the female still represented humankind in its
PRECEDENTS 3k

subordinate relation to the male, Christ.”>' Nevertheless, as Carr acknowl-

edges, it is an “amazing thing” that Catholicism affirms that a woman is an
authentically religious figure on the community’s spiritual horizon.
On balance, by returning to original sources and checking the isolating
trajectory of the second millennium, the council advanced the renewal of
marian theology for the third millennium. In particular, the council’s
conscious, hard-won choice to include its teaching on Mary within the
doctrine of the church, thus connecting her once again to the whole com-
munion of saints living and dead, signals a new point of departure. Work-
ing in this reconfigured landscape, the theological investigation under way
in this book relies on the council’s basic decisions as precedent.
One aftermath was unexpected and leads to the last precedent I will
claim. After the council, interest in things marian rapidly diminished in
industrialized countries. On the one hand, theology became intensely
occupied with questions of Christ and faith in God along with the social,
moral issues arising in the modern world. The torrent of mariological
writings slowed to a trickle. Assessing the worldwide picture twenty-five
years later, Stefano De Fiores demonstrated that traditional mariology had
run into a deep crisis, both its method and content having been passed by.
Amazingly, even those few who continued to write in this field ignored the
council’s approach: “not one of the postconciliar mariological manuals
adopts the methodology indicated by the Council.”*” On the other hand,
among priests and laity, the council’s reorientation of Catholic spirituality
along the lines of scripture and the Eucharist began to take root. As a
result, the superabundant marian devotions that had so marked the pre-
conciliar era quietly imploded. The council had intended that these devo-
tions be reformed, not that they be eliminated. But disappear they did,
to the extent that one scholar could even refer to “the wreckage” of post-
conciliar devotion to Mary.** One might wonder at the very least why the
conciliar breakthrough regarding Mary as model of the church did not
catch the imagination of the faithful. It is a case study in the truth that solv-
ing an internal contest between two elite groups in the church does not
necessarily translate into engaging the religious interest of the wider com-
munity grappling with faith in a rapidly shifting cultural context.

“TRULY OUR SISTER”

Ten years after the council, aware that traditional veneration of Mary was
in steep decline, Paul VI penned an apostolic letter Marialis Cultus to
2 A WAY FORWARD

encourage renewed marian devotion according to conciliar norms.** Rec-

ognizing that changes in social behavior, literary and artistic expressions,
and the communications media have influenced the religious spirit in our
time, he acknowledged that certain pious practices that not long ago
seemed suitable are now being rejected. He does not promote these devo-
tions because they are linked with social and cultural patterns of a past age.
But rather than allow honoring Mary to wither because devotional forms
show “the ravages of time,” Paul VI remarkably called upon the whole
church to act creatively to renew these forms in accord with contemporary
sensibilities:
This shows the need for episcopal conferences, local churches, religious
families, and communities of the faithful to promote a genuine creative
activity in proceeding to a careful revision of expressions and exercises of
piety directed toward the Blessed Virgin. We would like this revision to be
respectful of sound tradition and open to the legitimate desires of today’s
people. ($24)

To speed along the process, Paul VI set forth four guidelines based on
the teaching of the council. These guidelines would enable the faithful to
appreciate more easily Mary’s connection to the mystery of the church and
“her pre-eminent place in the communion of saints” (§28), and so enable
them to renew devotion in a creatively faithful way. In my view the fault
line between the two millennia becomes radically clear if one compares
these four papal guidelines with the four principles noted above that gov-
erned the construction of preconciliar mariology. We leap from the prin-
ciples of singularity, analogy, eminence, and suitability to biblical,
liturgical, ecumenical, and anthropological criteria.
First, instructs this letter, veneration of Mary should have a biblical
imprint. This does not entail merely making skillful use of certain relevant
texts but steeping devotion to Mary in the great themes of the Christian
message of salvation. Next, practices of piety that honor Mary should also
be liturgical. This means that they should flow from and lead back to the
prayer of the Eucharist and harmonize with the liturgical seasons, Advent
and Christmas being especially suited. Third, honoring Mary should also
be ecumenical, that is, rooted in a sound scriptural basis and clear about the
centrality of Christ: Desiring full communion in faith among all Christ’s
disciples, the church desires that in devotional life “every care be taken to
avoid any exaggeration which could mislead other Christians about the
true doctrine of the Catholic Church” (§32). Fourth, and particularly
PRECEDENTS 133

pertinent to feminist reflection, renewed devotion to Mary should also be

anthropological, that is, closely attuned to the human sciences that chart
the changed psychological and sociological conditions in which modern
persons, especially women, live. Paul VI’s description is accurate:
In the home woman’s equality and co-responsibility with man in managing
the family are being justly recognized by laws and the evolution of customs.
In the sphere of politics women have in many countries gained a position in
public life equal to that of men. In the social field women are at work in a
whole range of different functions, getting daily further away from the
restricted surroundings of the home. In the field of learning new possibili-
ties are opening up for women in scientific research and intellectual activi-
ties. ($34)

As a consequence, he surmises, contemporary people, and women in par-

ticular, feel alienated from Mary because traditional piety presents her as a
“timidly submissive woman or one whose piety was repellent to others”
($37), a woman whose life was bounded by ever-so-restricted horizons.
One would think he had read the previous chapters of this book. This pic-
ture, he goes on to say, was formed by previous generations who drew on
their own cultural norms regarding women, norms that are not eternal.
While rejoicing at the long history of marian devotion, the church “does not
bind herself to any particular expression of an individual cultural epoch or
to the particular anthropological ideas underlying such expressions” ($36).
Rather, the task now is to employ our own awareness, name the problems
honestly, and offer an attractive presentation suitable to this age.
Jump-starting the task, Paul VI describes Mary as a strong and intelli-
gent woman, one who had the wits to question back when the angel
addressed her, one who experienced poverty and suffering, flight and exile.
In the midst of these troubles she consistently gave active and responsible
consent to the call of God, made courageous choices, and worked to
strengthen the faith of others. Rather than being submissively pious, “she
was a woman who did not hesitate to proclaim that God vindicates the
humble and the oppressed, and removes the powerful people of this world
from their privileged positions” ($37). In the most quoted passage from
this letter, the pope then declares that far from endorsing the particulars of
Mary’s own life as exemplary, the church proposes her to the faithful as an
example to be imitated:
not precisely in the type of life she led, much less for the socio-cultural back-
ground in which she lived and which today scarcely exists anywhere. Rather,
134 A WAY FORWARD

she is held up as an example for the way in which, in her own particular life,
she fully and responsibly accepted God’s will (see Lk 1:38), because she
heard the Word of God and acted on it, and because charity and a spirit of
service were the driving force of her actions. She is worthy of imitation
because she was the first and most perfect of Christ’s disciples. (§35)*°

In other words, the social location of this woman in first-century Galilee is

not determinative for women’s ways of being and acting in the world
today. What has a permanent, universal, exemplary value is the way she
walked the path of her own life before God, which can instruct and inspire
people’s own creative responses in this new era. We can be inspired by her
example because we are all human together. Mary is “one of our race,” “a
true daughter of Eve,” indeed “truly our sister, who as a poor and humble
woman fully shared our lot” ($56).
This apostolic letter ends with a sustained reflection on the value of the
rosary, a gospel-inspired prayer that fits the four guidelines. Its quiet pace
and lingering repetitions concentrate the mind and allow for contempla-
tive attention to the mysteries of salvation. Even here, however, a vital
point is emphasized: “We desire at the same time to recommend that this
very worthy devotion not be propagated in a way that is too one-sided or
exclusive. The rosary is an excellent prayer, but the faithful should feel
serenely free toward it” ($55). Since it is a matter of spirituality, people are
led by the Spirit to pray in different ways, which must be respected.
Paul VI’s four guidelines presented so persuasively to the church deal
primarily with concrete expressions of devotion. Because of the organic
connection between spirituality and theology, I think they also form a
precedent for the project at hand. If these guidelines can serve to orient
prayer in a right direction, then they can also direct thought. Along with
the biblical, liturgical, and early Christian theological precedents from the
first millennium and with the precedent of the late second millennium
council whose teaching these papal guidelines seek to apply, they give
backing to the theological direction of this book, namely, a theology of
Mary whose unifying vision lies in interpreting her as a friend of God and
prophet within the circle of all those who seek God, the company of saints
living and dead.
? PART 4

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Galilee: The Political-Economic World

PICTURING A WORLD

|n the companionship model of the communion of saints, remembering

the story of a person’s graced history in ways that empower our life
today assumes primary importance. The task now becomes to explore
that history in the case of Mary. A problem immediately arises. In terms of
a rolling series of life incidents and her own psychological responses to
them, materials that would go to make up the usual kind of biography, we
know very little. In this Mary has much in common with the vast number
of human persons, poor women in particular, whose lives are lost in the
mists of unimportance. It is true that the Christian gospels paint portraits
of Mary as the mother of Jesus, weaving glimpses of her story into key
moments of their proclamation of the good news of salvation. With clear
theological interest, Mark associates her with neighbors and family mem-
bers who do not understand and even reject Jesus’ ministry; Matthew and
Luke dwell on details of Jesus’ birth; John alone brings her onto the scene
at the wedding in Cana and again at Jesus’ death; and in a move important
for later tradition, Luke also places her in the post-resurrection company
of Jesus’ women and men followers gathered in Jerusalem to await the out-
pouring of the Spirit. When analyzed critically, each of these portraits pro-
vides a small tethering point. Given the nature of the gospels, however, the
authors’ main interest is neither historical nor focused on this woman in
her own right, and much is omitted.
Sensing this, later apocryphal writings sought to satisfy the curiosity of
the popular Christian mind by filling in the gaps left by the canonical
gospels. The Protoevangelium of James, the most influential of these writ-
ings, informs the reader that the parents of Mary were named Joachim and
Anna; that they were old and childless; that when Anna gave birth to the

137
138 PICTURING A WORLD

girl she said, “My soul magnifies the Lord”; that they dedicated her in the
temple at the age of three, where the priest “placed her on the third step of
the altar, and the Lord God put grace upon the child, and she danced for
joy with her feet, and the whole house of Israel loved her.”! The story goes
on that Joseph, an older widower with children from his previous mar-
riage, was chosen as her husband when a dove flew out of his staff; that
when Jesus was born, all motion on earth stopped for a moment, birds
stopped flying in mid-air, and a bright cloud overshadowed the cave.
Shortly thereafter Mary underwent a gynecological exam that proved the
marvel of her virginity after childbirth. The midwife had reported to
Salome that a virgin had given birth. Like Thomas at Easter, Salome
demurred, “Unless I put forward my finger and test her condition, I will
not believe.” She did so and her hand shriveled, but was healed when she
touched the child.” Scholars do not consider the Protoevangelium of James
and other such texts, written in the second and later centuries, to contain
historically reliable testimony. They are a combination of Christian apolo-
getic, doctrinal reflection, and fabulous imagination. At substantive points
they mirror issues that troubled the church in those centuries, such as the
struggle over women in ministry, but they add little historical information
about Jesus or other first-century persons beyond what is given in the
canonical gospels.
Is there another avenue that will lead to understanding? At a minimum,
we know that Miriam of Nazareth was a Jewish woman, married and a
mother, living in Galilee in the decades before and after the year “1,” by
which the Western calendar now divides the eras. Thanks to contemporary
scholarship, this small handful of facts opens a sizable window.
Since the 1980s, scientifically conducted archaeological excavations
have produced a veritable explosion of information about ancient Galilee
in Roman times. This painstaking work uncovers the material culture of
the place, which in turn helps scholars assess what life was like: settlement
patterns, agricultural practices, religious affiliations, economic forces, cul-
tural influences, incidents of violence. Jonathan Reed, a key practitioner of
this art at the Galilean city of Sepphoris, points out that unlike literary
texts, which intentionally set out to tell a story or make a plea from a defi-
nite point of view, archaeological evidence uncovers not only the inten-
tional witness of public architecture but also many unintentional
witnesses to everyday life in antiquity. “Sherds from pots and pans, hidden
coins, discarded kitchen scrap—all afford a glimpse behind closed doors of
GALILEE: THE POLITICAL-ECONOMIC WORLD 139

antiquity.’ Even here, of course, interpretation of the data is affected by

the questions the researcher is asking and the models employed to frame
an answer. What results is not a set of naive “pure facts” but inferences
drawn from the material evidence. Still, archaeology is providing a new
window into this place and time.
Scholars have married this knowledge to other disciplines to amplify
their understanding of the social world of Galilee. The very idea that
Galilee is a distinct region with its own history and viable subculture to be
investigated is itself relatively recent.* Studies of cross-cultural anthropol-
ogy that analyze the relations between different social classes, including
gradations among the poor, now combine with studies of how the econ-
omy worked in Galilee during the Roman empire. This knowledge con-
nects with literary, political, military, and historical sources to help
reconstruct a general picture of its village society. For many scholars, a
strong motivation driving this investigation has been the desire to picture
the environment in which Jesus and his followers make historical sense,
both before and after his violent death. While disagreeing vehemently
about specifics, no scholar dealing with this material seriously doubts that
first and last Jesus was a Galilean villager living out a Jewish vocation, as
the titles of recent works suggest: Jesus the Jew, a marginal Jew, a Mediter-
ranean Jewish peasant, Jesus and Judaism, Jesus’ Jewishness, the Galilean
Jewishness of Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. The result has
been an unprecedented number of studies of the Jesus of the gospels in the
light of all this concrete evidence about his historical context. Yet another
motivation driving this research is the desire to depict the later social
world of Galilee in which rabbinic Judaism arose after the disastrous Jew-
ish revolts against Rome starting in 66 C.z.°
This wealth of knowledge about the ancient land of Palestine can be put
to work to illuminate the life Miriam of Nazareth actually lived. Our
knowledge about her history as a specific human person may be minimal.
But we are now in a position to draw a concrete picture of the world she
inhabited and to allow this picture to shape our imaginations of the warp
and woof of her life. Doing so focuses attention beyond immediate Jesus
research in at least two ways. Insofar as Miriam of Nazareth was alive
before him, probably from twelve to fifteen years prior to Jesus’ birth, this
investigation includes the situation of those years, especially the traumatic
events surrounding the death of Herod in 4 B.c.z. when she was a young
adult. Given the importance of gender, our exploration also raises the
140 PICTURING A WORLD

question of what it was like to be a woman in this Galilean world. Once

anchored by this historical context, our dialogue with gospel portraits of
her faith can then yield understanding with fresh concreteness. As a first
step, this chapter will scan economic, social, and political features of the
world she inhabited.

THE LAY OF THE LAND

As the northern part of the ancient land of Palestine, Galilee forms its own
distinct, landlocked region. One adjective repeats over and over again in
ancient and modern descriptions: fertile. Josephus, the first-century Jew-
ish historian, writes, “The land is everywhere so rich in soil and pasturage
and produces such variety of trees, that even the most indolent are
tempted by these facilities to devote themselves to agriculture.”” John
Dominic Crossan depicts the 470 square miles of Lower Galilee as “rich
with grain and cereal on valley floor and with vine and olive on hillside
slope.’ This lush farmland does not cover the whole region, however, for
Lower Galilee, the focus of our attention, is crossed by a series of rugged
hills. While some hills rise up abruptly from the plain, making good spots
for fortresses, the general pattern is a series of four continuous ranges
marked by sharp ridges and curving basins that march across the land in
an east—west direction. In between, dotted with farming villages, are the
broad, fertile valleys. The growing season is long and allows for three har-
vests, thanks to the rainy, temperate season in winter coupled with the dry,
sunny season in summer. When the rains begin each October bringing
wild flowers to bloom in profusion, the landscape is nothing short of beau-
tiful. At the eastern edge of the region, the land suddenly sinks into a huge
basin that contains the Sea of Galilee, a freshwater lake that flows into the
Jordan River. The lake, river, and their surrounding lands are all below sea
level, part of that great cleft in the earth’s crust that runs from Lebanon
into Africa, where it is known as the Great Rift Valley, the place of the emer-
gence of the human species. Since the Galilean lake is below sea level, the
weather around it is subtropical, relatively dry, and almost always warm.
Here, too, grew a wealth of plants including, according to Josephus, “the
walnut, a tree which delights in the most wintry climate ..., palm trees
which thrive on heat, and figs and olives which require a milder atmos-
phere. ... Not only has the country this surprising merit of producing such
GALILEE: THE POLITICAL-ECONOMIC WORLD 141

diverse fruits, but it also preserves them: for ten months without intermis-
sion it supplies those kings of fruits, the grape and the fig.””
Nazareth, the place where Miriam lived, was a relatively small village
located on the slope of a broad ridge in southern Galilee. It could nestle up
the hill because the rock was soft and porous, which allowed for springs of
water to gather and flow even at some altitude. As Crossan observes, “The
village of Nazareth, then, at an elevation of over a thousand feet and with
its single ancient spring, is exactly what the terrain dictated. But that, of
course, isolated the village off the beaten track.”!° Most of the hard remains
uncovered there by archaeology have to do with farming: olive presses,
wine presses, cisterns for water, millstones for grain, holes for storage jars.
From this it is inferred that “the principal activity of these villagers was
agriculture. Nothing in the finds suggests wealth.”'! Scholarly estimates of
the population have varied widely. Based on the carrying capacity per head
of the surrounding land and also on the location of tombs, always placed
outside residential areas, a likely number would be 300 to 400 people. They
would consist of peasants who worked their own land, tenant farmers who
worked land belonging to others, and craftspersons who served their
needs. It should be noted that this Jewish agricultural village was only three
to four miles from the growing, gleaming Herodian city of Sepphoris, built
on a 325-foot ridge to the northwest. A walk of only an hour or two sepa-
rated them, but Nazareth was off the main road that funneled most people
to this administrative center. The identity of the village as an agricultural
hamlet of little consequence would seem to be borne out in the literary
record. The Hebrew scriptures do not mention Nazareth, nor does Jose-
phus, who names forty-five villages in Galilee, nor does the Talmud, which
refers to sixty-three Galilean villages.'* As Richard Horsley observes,
“Judging from its somewhat out of the way location and small size, it was
a village of no special importance.”!”
This was a multilingual world. Latin was the native tongue of the
Romans; Greek was the lingua franca of the educated, business, and ruling
classes throughout the empire and had made massive inroads in Palestine;
and Hebrew was the ancient language of the Bible, heard when the Torah
scrolls were read and their fine points debated. In the households and vil-
lages of Galilee, the ordinary, everyday language was Aramaic." This is
borne out in snippets of Aramaic which appear so strikingly in the gospels:
talitha koum (young girl, arise, Mark 5:41); ephphatha (Be opened!, Mark
7:34); abba (father, Mark 14:36); and eldi, eloi, lema sabachtham (My God,
142 PICTURING A WORLD

my God, why have you forsaken me?, Mark 15:34). The gospels were writ-
ten in Greek decades after Jesus’ lifetime, but these expressions point to the
substratum of Jesus’ Aramaic speech embedded in memory. It would
seem, in addition, that Galileans spoke Aramaic in a style distinct from the
people in the great city of Jerusalem. During Jesus’ trial a bystander accosts
Peter in the courtyard saying, “Certainly you are one of them, for your
accent betrays you” (Matt. 26:73). All evidence points to the fact that, along
with her neighbors, the peasant woman Miriam of Nazareth spoke Ara-
maic with a Galilean accent.
In agricultural Lower Galilee there were about two hundred villages
ranging in size from tiny hamlets of a few dozen people to larger towns of
a thousand or more. Most, like Nazareth, held several hundred. Archaeo-
logical evidence indicates that free-standing, beautifully furnished single-
family houses such as those found in wealthy cities like smallish Sepphoris
and grand Jerusalem were virtually nonexistent in these villages. Rather,
excavations make clear that dwellings were small and clustered together.
Each family occupied a domestic space or “house” of one or two small
rooms. Three or four of these dwellings were built around a courtyard
open to the sky, forming a compound similar to those found in some peas-
ant communities in warm climates even today. Circled together around a
courtyard, the space between their outer walls filled in with a thick stone
wall, the units formed a secure living space. There would be a single
entrance, able to be closed off by a door, which opened onto an alleyway.
Regarding these passageways or “streets” that ran crookedly around the
domestic enclosures in one village, Reed notes that “none had channels for
running water or sewage, which must have been tossed in the alleyways.
Instead, the roads in Capernaum bend at the various clusters of houses,
and were made of packed earth and dirt, dusty in the dry hot seasons and
muddy in the short rainy seasons, but smelly throughout.”®
The walls of the one- or two-room family dwellings were built of native
stone, either black basalt or white limestone, held together by a mortar of
mud and smaller stones. Doorways were framed in wood and most likely
hung with straw mats or curtains for privacy. Floors were made of packed
earth. The absence of roof tiles and stones shaped as arch or vault pieces
leads scholars to conclude that the roofs were thatched, constructed of
thick bundles of reeds tied over beams of wood, most likely covered with
packed mud for additional protection. Reed observes that in the two ver-
sions of the story of Jesus healing the paralyzed man whose friends let him
GALILEE: THE POLITICAL-ECONOMIC WORLD 143

down through the roof, “Luke’s ‘through the tiles’ (5:19) is less appropriate
to the actual milieu than Mark’s more probable ‘they dug through the roof’
(2:4), which made no sense in Luke’s urban setting where roof tiles were
common.”!¢
The enclosed family rooms were used for sleep and sex, giving birth and
dying, and taking shelter from the elements. In the unroofed, common
courtyard, inhabitants of the domestic units, most likely an extended fam-
ily or close kinship group, shared an oven, a cistern that held water, and a
millstone for grinding grain, indicating that this was the kitchen where
food was prepared and cooked in the open air. Domestic animals also lived
here. The people of the village as a whole shared larger food-preparation
facilities such as a threshing floor, olive press, and wine press. The diet was
mainly grain and olive oil with some fruits, vegetables, and wine filling out
nutritional needs, along with occasional milk products if one had a flock
of sheep, or fish if one lived near the lake. Living at a subsistence level,
households by and large grew their own food, did their own building, and
sewed their own clothes from cloth that they spun and wove, mostly
woolen cloth from sheep.
The domestic architecture of Galilean village homes indicates that these
agricultural peasant communities occupied the lower rung of the social
and economic ladder. Poverty with its accompanying illness, infant mor-
tality, and short life expectancy would be a fact of life. Comparing the
material finds in the region’s villages to those in the city of Sepphoris, Reed
makes a telling observation by noting what is not present in the villages.
Missing from first-century Capernaum are defensive walls and any civic
buildings in public spaces. There is no major paved road through the vil-
lage, no agora or marketplace, no shops or storage facilities, no plaster,
mosaic, or fresco decorations. There are no signs of private wealth such as
imported wine vessels, perfume bottles, finely decorated containers, or
even simple glass.!” This is typical of the villages in the region. In Nazareth,
too, the material culture proves to be simple and more than modest. From
the early Roman period there are no paved streets, no public buildings, no
public inscriptions, no marble or mosaics or frescoes:
The fact that so little has been found leads to the conclusion that the houses
themselves were rather poorly made of fieldstones and mud, with thatched
roofs and coverings over caves. The entire area seems to have been preoccu-
pied with agricultural activities. On the outskirts of the village, traces of ter-
racing have been found, as has evidence of a vineyard tower. Inside the
144 PICTURING A WORLD

village, wine-pressing vats with straining depressions, fermenting vats, and

depressions to hold storage jars, along with grinding stones and silos are
complemented by simple locally made pottery and household items, with-
out any trace of imported or fine wares from the earlier periods. There are
no luxury items of any kind.!®

Reed concludes that the pejorative question in John’s gospel, “Can any-
thing good come out of Nazareth?” (1:46) seems apt: “It was a small Jew-
ish village, without any political significance, preoccupied with agriculture
and, no doubt, taxation.”!? For most of her life, Miriam of Nazareth lived
in this village.

ECONOMIC STRUCTURES

In addition to archaeology, scholars employ the social sciences including

economic anthropology, modern rural sociology, and peasant studies to
gain a clearer picture of the economic life of Galilee. As a province within
the vast world of the Roman empire, Galilee was part of a traditional
agrarian society in which land was the primary source of wealth. Hence
control of land and its products constituted a central political question.
Characterized by use of the plow, agricultural production in this society
depended primarily on human and animal energies. The low-level tech-
nology combined with meager energy resources resulted in generally low
yields. As Douglas Oakman comments, “this means that as a rule there is a
very narrow margin between what can be harvested and what is needed by
the majority of agriculturalists for food, seed, or animal fodder. There
might be just enough, but not much more.””° The harvest, however, did
not belong completely to the Galilean growers to use as they needed. Since
they were part of the Roman empire, a goodly portion of the fruits of their
labor, adequate but not superabundant to begin with, did not remain
among those who toiled on land and lake but was siphoned off to support
a small ruling elite. Technically, then, Galilee was a peasant society, mean-
ing not only that most people worked the land but also that their produc-
tivity was extracted for the benefit of rulers without an equivalent
economic recompense. The basic economic structure of this society, in
sum, was that of a redistributive network. “This means that taxes and rents
flowed relentlessly away from the rural producers to the storehouses of
cities (especially Rome), private estates, and temples.””! The little “surplus”
GALILEE: THE POLITICAL-ECONOMIC WORLD 145

that might exist from such subsistence farming was taken by the ruling
groups to support their cultured lifestyle. More often than not there was
no such surplus, placing the rural population on a narrow margin between
subsistence and famine.
One of the most useful and influential analyses of this system has
proved to be the model of traditional agrarian society developed by
anthropologist Gerhard Lenski. Synthesized from his study of a number of
agrarian societies across different cultures and historical periods, this
model charts how wealth is distributed in such an economic order. When
interfaced with archaeological and literary evidence, it can illuminate the
structure of the economic world inhabited by Miriam of Nazareth as well
as her consequent position on the social scale.
According to Lenski’s model, agrarian societies have basically two
classes, upper and lower, with an enormous gap between them. Within that
division there are distinct classes as depicted in this chart, with upper class
on the left:
ruler
governing class peasant class
retainer class artisan class
merchant class unclean and degraded class
priestly class expendable class
The ruler was really in a class by himself, with proprietary rights to prop-
erty, water, and crops throughout his domain. The governing class, com-
prised of the nobility and members of court as well as lesser officials,
surrounded the ruler’s administration with an ambience of power and
glory. Although comprising about one percent of the population, these
two top classes were awash in the wealth of the national income: “the gov-
erning class and ruler together usually received not less than half”** The
retainer class was made up of scribes and bureaucrats as well as military
personnel, about 5 percent of the population; they supported and
defended the ruler and governing class, making their very existence possi-
ble. The wealthy merchant class and the priestly class rounded out the
ranks of the privileged, allied as they were with the governing class. Over-
all the upper class comprised about 10 percent of the population. Most
often they lived in urban communities.
On the other side of the chasm was the peasant class, numerically the
largest group of all. Peasants were the fundamental engine of production,
working the land, either their own little plot or the estates of wealthy
146 PICTURING A WORLD

landowners. “The burden of supporting the state and the privileged classes
fell on the shoulders of the common people, and especially on the peasant
farmers who constituted the majority of the population; .. . the great
majority of the political elite sought to use the energies of the peasantry to
the full, while depriving them of all but the basic necessities of life.’?? Even
these necessities could be sacrificed. If the harvest did not produce suffi-
cient surplus, the extracting knife of the governing class’s tax machine
could cut into what peasants needed for sheer survival. The artisan class
(including, be it noted, carpenters), consisting of around 5 percent of the
population, had a lower median income than the peasants; lacking land,
they could not rely on a steady supply of food. The two groups did over-
lap, however. In the villages farmers could engage in artisan work espe-
cially during the brief winter; artisan families may also have worked a plot
of land. The unclean and degraded classes were those separated from the
mass of peasants and artisans by circumstances of birth or occupations
such as prostitution. Finally, with the most terrible circumstances of all,
was the expendable class, about 5 percent to 10 percent of the population.
“These included a variety of types, ranging from petty criminals and out-
laws to beggars and underemployed itinerant workers, and numbered all
those forced to live solely by their wits or by charity.”*4
The social stratification based on wealth described in this model was
not absolute, but, given the relative power of the upper classes and the rel-
ative powerlessness of the lower, downward mobility was much more fre-
quent than upward. Lenski’s observation on the whole setup alerts us to
the dynamic at work: “One fact impresses itself on almost any observer of
agrarian societies. ... This is the fact of marked social inequality. Without
exception, one finds pronounced differences in power, privilege, and
honor associated with mature agrarian economies.”*> One to two percent
of the population, backed up by force, takes half of society’s annual agri-
cultural production; a tiny minority of elites controls the vast majority,
extracting from them the fruits of their industrious labor. The relationship
is not genuinely reciprocal: aristocrats live off peasants. While the former
may claim to be providing law, peace, and protection in return, peasants
have no choice but to submit to the exploitation of their land and produc-
tivity. Or, we should say, they do have a choice, either to submit or revolt,
which explains the recurrence of peasant rebellions exploding throughout
history.
Applying this economic lens to the first-century villages of Lower
Galilee, including Nazareth, we see that these were peasant villages charac-
GALILEE: THE POLITICAL-ECONOMIC WORLD 147

terized by subsistence farming. Archaeological field surveys have found

only minor variation in the size of individual plots. “This relative unifor-
mity in families’ holdings suggests a limited economic stratification
among villagers (no extremely wealthy villagers) and a relative uniformity
of land use.””° Food was their primary product. Each village produced and
consumed grain, wine, and oil, working through all stages of production
from planting to harvesting to processing. They also wove their own cloth-
ing, tanned leather to make sandals, and engaged in other crafts necessary
to maintain the households. Except for metal instruments and tools, they
were basically self-sufficient. The fabric of village life involved a network of
interrelationships. Not only did the whole village share common equip-
ment for processing the harvest, and not only did households share com-
mon kitchens for cooking it, but their economic life at a subsistence level
also entailed numerous interactions such as borrowing and lending imple-
ments, helping out in each other’s fields, repairing a home, midwifing,
attending to the sick, and other contingencies. If something was needed by
someone else, local householders bartered among themselves, making
exchanges in goods rather than coins, for example, three loaves of bread for
a basket of figs. No archaeological or literary evidence points to Galilean
villages’ having craft workshops, stores, or a small market. This was not a
market economy such as we know in capitalism. Rather, the villagers were
linked to the soil “in terms of day-to-day drudgery and all seasons cultiva-
tion in order to procure the necessities of life and meet their various oblig-
ations.”””
As the wife of a village tekton, the Greek word used in the gospels to des-
ignate a carpenter, stonemason, cartwright, and joiner all rolled into one,
Miriam of Nazareth belonged to this peasant world and, using Lenski’s
model, to the lower bracket of the artisan class. In addition to carpentry
work the family probably also cultivated some plot of land for basic food-
stuffs. This might explain why many of the images in Jesus’ parables are
taken from farming rather than carpentry.”* Referring to Jesus in words
that might just as well apply to Joseph, John Meier paints a lucid descrip-
tion of what being a tekton entailed:
Some of Jesus’ work would have been carpentry in the narrow sense of the
word, i.e., woodwork in constructing parts of houses. But in Nazareth the
ordinary house would have had walls of stone or mud brick. Wood would
be used mostly for the beams in the roof, the space between beams being
filled in with branches along with clay, mud, and impacted earth. The peo-
ple of Nazareth could not have afforded the use of wood to build whole
148 PICTURING A WORLD

houses, or even the floors in them. However, doors, door frames, and locks
or bolts were often made from wood, as at times were the lattices in the (few
and small) windows. Beyond carpentry in this sense, Jesus would have made
various pieces of furniture. ... Thus, while Jesus was in one sense a common
Palestinian workman, he plied a trade that involved for the ancient world a
fair level of technical skill. It also involved no little sweat and muscle power.
The airy weakling often presented to us in pious paintings and Hollywood
movies would hardly have survived the rigors of being Nazareth’s tekton
from his youth to his early thirties.”

We need to guard against romantic images of the carpenter shop, for

being an artisan in an agrarian society like that described by Lenski did not
give one the same economic and social standing that being a skilled car-
penter in an advanced, industrial market economy like our own bestows.
Consulting an ancient “lexicon of snobbery,’ Ramsay MacMullen found
tekton among the slurs the literate upper classes could throw to disparage
someone of plebeian origins.*? When the gospels record Nazareth’s deri-
sion over Jesus’ teaching, the villagers latch on to his work as a basis to
brush him off: “Is this fellow not the woodworker (tekton), the son of
Mary?” (Mark 6:3), or in Matthew’s version, “Is this fellow not the son of
the woodworker?” (13:55). Luke seems to find any mention of woodwork-
ing offensive, dropping it altogether and changing the jibe to, “Is this fel-
low not the son of Joseph?” (4:22). In any case, neither Jesus’ parents nor
his work gained him any automatic respect. The family was a village fam-
ily of the artisan class, no more respectable than anyone else. They
belonged to the poor, who had to work hard for their living. It is true, as
Meier argues, that theirs “was not the grinding, degrading poverty of the
day laborer or the rural slave.”*! But it is equally misleading to compare, as
Meier does, their economic status, however hazily, to “a blue-collar worker
in lower-middle-class America.’*? The analogy does not work because
there was no middle class. The family of Miriam of Nazareth lived on the
economic underside of a two-sided system.
Recall that in a mature agrarian society, the upper classes extract their
wealth from the labor of the lower ones. During the period of Roman
occupation, which covers Miriam of Nazareth’s lifetime, Galilean villagers
were triply taxed. They had to pay the traditional tithe, or 10 percent, of the
harvest for support of the temple and its priesthood in Jerusalem, though
some scholars question whether this was completely enforceable in Galilee
at this point. They were also required to pay tribute to the Roman emperor,
plus taxes to the local Jewish client-king through whom Rome ruled by
GALILEE: THE POLITICAL-ECONOMIC WORLD 149

proxy. These monies were skimmed off as a certain percentage of the vil-
lagers’ crops, flocks, or catches of fish. The peasant communities worked
intensely hard just to stay afloat, but the power of the governing class to
extract payment ground them down. Drained of resources during these
years, many fell into increasing indebtedness to the wealthy. As a result,
they lost their land and became truly impoverished. In this context, Jesus’
proverb rings bitterly true: “I tell you that to everyone who has, it shall be
given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away”
(Luke 19:26). The poverty and hunger in Galilee acted as a spawning
ground of first-century revolts against the repressive Roman occupation
and the taxation it engendered. Miriam of Nazareth labored in this world
of social stratification marked by great disparities in wealth, power, and
privilege. Her life is typical of that of countless women throughout the ages
who experience civic powerlessness, poverty, and the suffering that results
from low status and lack of formal education.*°
To show the theological relevance of this kind of economic analysis, I
digress for a moment to the interpretation of marian doctrines worked out
by Brazilian theologians Ivone Gebara and Maria Clara Bingemer. The
Immaculate Conception and the Assumption carry the memories of other
generations, they write, and true though they be, their relevance is not
immediately apparent today on a continent marked by the suffering of
millions of poor people. Yet these doctrines carry a liberating impulse and
can be made to work as allies in the struggle for life. For the Immaculata
venerated on our altars is the poor Mary of Nazareth, insignificant in the
social structure of her time. This Mother of the People bears within herself
the confirmation of God’s preference for the humblest, the littlest, the
most oppressed. “The so-called Marian privilege is really the privilege of
the poor.”*4 Similarly, believing in Mary’s Assumption means proclaiming
that the woman who gave birth in a stable among animals, who shared a
life of poverty, who stood at the foot of the cross as the mother of the con-
demned, has been exalted. “The Assumption is the glorious culmination of
the mystery of God’s preference for what is poor, small, and unprotected
in this world.” It sparks hope in the poor and those who stand in solidar-
ity with them “that they will share in the final victory of the incarnate
God.> To understand these doctrines aright, we cannot forget that they
talk of God exalting a woman who lived in poverty and anonymity. As
Mary sang in the Magnificat, they reveal the ways of God whose light
shines on what is regarded as insignificant and marginal.
150 PICTURING A WORLD

POLITICAL RULERS

In addition to situating Miriam of Nazareth in a particular geographic

place and economic system, we can also situate her in a political time.
Scholars are generally agreed that Jesus was born around the year 4 B.C.E.,
if not a few years before that in 6 or 7 B.c.E.°*° Given the detail that he was
“her firstborn son” (Luke 2:7) and the custom that young women married
at the age of menstruation when their bodies were able to bear children,
she was then most likely in her early teens. This locates her own birth in the
second decade before the year “1” as we now count time, around 20 B.c.£.
The death of Jesus, by then in his thirties, took place at Passover on the
watch of Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect who ruled Judea from 26 to 36
C.E. Say it was around the year 30. Small bits of evidence indicate that Jesus’
mother was still alive at that point. She would have been getting on in
years, facing old age according to the life expectancy of the poor in that era.
We have no idea how old she was when she died.
This rough time frame of her life span makes it possible to know who
the political rulers of the land were during her lifetime and to picture the
impact of their public actions on her life and that of her family and neigh-
bors. Under the general Pompey, the Roman empire had conquered the
land of Palestine in 63 B.c.£. Thus, during her lifetime the Jewish homeland
was an occupied, colonialized territory under imperial control. This does
not mean that there were Roman soldiers stationed in every village or vis-
ibly spread throughout the countryside. The major concentration of
troops for the region was in Syria just to the north, where four legions plus
cavalry stood in readiness to be deployed as needed. In emergencies these
forces could and did come south to Palestine to restore order. Over on the
Mediterranean coast in the Herod-built city of Caesarea, the Roman gov-
ernor immediately responsible for Palestine had a garrison of three thou-
sand troops. In addition, in the major city of Jerusalem a small contingent
of soldiers was permanently garrisoned in the Antonia Fortress next to the
temple. During the three major Jewish religious festivals, when pilgrims by
the thousands streamed into the city and gathered at the temple, the Roman
governor and his troops would march in from the coast to bolster this
small brigade (this explains Pilate’s presence in the city when Jesus was put
to death).
The visible absence of occupying troops in Galilee, however, did not
GALILEE: THE POLITICAL-ECONOMIC WORLD P51

indicate the absence of Roman rule. As we have seen, Rome exacted mon-
etary tribute from the conquered land of the Jews. Their governing policy
kept the occupied populations pacified, working, and paying, while allow-
ing enough freedom for the exercise of their traditional customs so as
to prevent open revolt. To carry out this program, Rome customarily
appointed client-kings from the conquered population, rulers who were
charged with keeping their own people under control. If they failed, the
Roman method called for a military response including wholesale burn-
ing, slaughtering, and enslaving, carried out with a level of violence calcu-
lated to terrorize the surviving populace into submission. This policy of
indirect rule through native aristocracies backed up by Roman military
might brought three generations of the Jewish Herod family to power.
Each is mentioned in the Bible. At least the first two and perhaps the third
affected the life of Miriam of Nazareth.

Herod the Great

This client-king came to power in 37 B.c.E. and ruled until his death in
March or April of 4 B.c.£.°” Miriam of Nazareth was born and grew up
under his reign. Politically savvy about how to deal with the Romans,
Herod was a cruel tyrant at home and ruled with an iron fist. The people
hated him. The incident recounted in Matthew’s gospel of Herod’s killing
all the male children under the age of two in Bethlehem, even if not strictly
speaking historical, fits with the way he was remembered. His brutality was
matched by a love of luxury. He advertised his own magnificence by mak-
ing grand, monumental statements in stone. A master builder, he launched
enormous, grandiose construction projects the remains of which can still
be admired. Archaeological excavations are uncovering the port city of
Caesarea, which he founded and dedicated to the emperor Caesar Augus-
tus. This project alone entailed developing a deep harbor, building a the-
ater, temple, hippodrome, and other public structures, capped with a huge
statue of Caesar visible from far out to sea. To stand here on the ornate bal-
cony of Herod’s palace cantilevered over the blue Mediterranean, and to
imagine him entertaining guests as the sun sinks into the sea, is to glimpse
a luxurious lifestyle that was the complete opposite of that of the Galilean
villagers. This Jewish client-king also created smaller cities such as Gaba
and Agrippias; rebuilt the important city of Sabaste; built the fortress-
residence Herodion, where he was finally buried; and refortified and lav-
ishly furnished numerous strong bastions for himself, such as the one at
52 PICTURING A WORLD
eSSS

Masada, still impressive for its water-delivery system, its mosaics, and its
magnificent view high over the desert and the Dead Sea. Above all, in
Jerusalem Herod embarked on a massive project to expand and rebuild the
temple complex, the sacred center of Jewish worship. The plans for
redesigning its outer walls and courtyards and reconstructing its inner
sanctum in the Hellenistic Roman style were so massive that they took
nearly eighty years to complete. Part of the western wall, enormously
strong and showing beautiful craftsmanship, is now a center of Jewish pil-
grimage and prayer.
Somebody had to pay for all of this—the construction, the lavish court
life, the costly gifts, and of course the royal army. This king of the Jews
found the resources he needed through increasingly heavy taxation. In
Galilee he took the already existing town of Sepphoris and, although he did
not live there, fortified it as the center from which to tax the countryside.
Pressure to pay was intense; collectors showed up at the village threshing
floors to scoop up the king’s portion; no one escaped. To the peasants in
the villages the already burdensome triple tax load became next to unbear-
able as Herod’s portion was jacked up. They were being squeezed dry,
tipped over from subsistence living into penury and loss of family land.
“The indebtedness of small farmers and expropriation of their land are
hallmarks of this Roman epoch. Hence one can speak of a regular process
of pauperization.”*® This created a climate for rebellion. People yearned for
a messianic king like David who would have the good interests of the peo-
ple at heart.
When Herod died in 4 B.C.E., resentment exploded in revolt all over
Palestine. In Galilee the insurrection was led by a popular leader named
Judas, whose father had been killed by Herod many years before. According
to Josephus, “Judas, son of the brigand-chief Ezekias ... when he had orga-
nized a large number of desperate men around Sepphoris in Galilee raided
the royal fortress; having seized all the weapons stored there, he armed all
his followers and made off with all the goods that had been seized there.”*?
Facing widespread uproar, the Romans responded with brutal efficiency.
The Roman legate Varus marched down from Syria with three legions and
numerous auxiliary troops and quashed the uprising. In Jerusalem, Jose-
phus notes, they crucified “two thousand” Jewish men outside the city
walls.*° In Galilee they recaptured Sepphoris and, in Josephus’s succinct
summary, “burned the city and enslaved its inhabitants.”*! Recent excava-
tions at Sepphoris do not as yet show any evidence of fiery destruction
GALILEE: THE POLITICAL-ECONOMIC WORLD 153

from this period. Scholars surmise that Josephus used Sepphoris as a proxy
for the surrounding villages, which would have been leveled to punish the
rebels among their inhabitants. Villages were burned; people were sold
into slavery. Horsley points out that, “in the villages around Sepphoris
such as Nazareth the people would have had vivid memories both of the
outburst against Herod and the Romans, and of the destruction of their
villages and the enslavement of their friends and relatives . . . the mass
enslavement and destruction would have left severe scars on the social
body of the Galilean village communities for generations to come.” Liv-
ing in Nazareth, Miriam would have been around fifteen or sixteen years
old at the time, a young married woman with a new baby. She obviously
survived the damage inflicted on her neighborhood by brutally efficient,
rampaging Roman legions. Did she hide with other village women in a
cave in the Nazareth ridge as the tidal wave of violence came sweeping
down? What terror, what loss from deaths, rapes, and looting had to be
coped with? How much rebuilding absorbed their energy when psychically
they were at a low ebb and materially they had so little to begin with? Sad
to say, the wretched wars of the late twentieth and early twenty-first cen-
turies, reported in the press and shown on television, leave little work for
our imagination. Watching village women over the years in Vietnam, El Sal-
vador, Bosnia, Indonesia, Congo, Afghanistan, and elsewhere flee, hide, be
injured, all the while trying to protect their children from forces intent on
their destruction conjures their courage and suffering in real time. The
world of Miriam of Nazareth was no stranger to such violence and social
disruption. “From the Roman point of view, the slaughter of people, devas-
tation of towns and countryside, and enslavement of able-bodied survivors
after the rebellions in 4 B.c.£. and the widespread revolt in 66 C.E. were all
pointed attempts finally to terrorize the populace into submission.”

Herod Antipas
Once they had crushed this popular Jewish insurrection, the Romans
carved up Herod’s kingdom among his three sons. Archelaus received
Judea and Samaria, the southern and central regions, respectively; Herod
Philip was given the far north territories; and Herod Antipas became ruler
of Perea to the east of the Jordan River and Galilee in the north.
“To be Antipas was to be sorely disappointed.”** Thus does Crossan rue-
fully describe the frustration of this ruler at being named tetrarch or ruler
of only a part of a country, and his all-too-human efforts to become full-
,
154 PICTURING A WORLD

fledged king of all Palestine like his father. In all his long reign from 4 B.C.E.
until he was deposed by the emperor in 39 C.k., he never succeeded. Like
his father, Herod Antipas ingratiated himself with the Roman emperor not
only by collecting and funneling the required monetary tribute but also by
grand building projects. First he focused on Sepphoris, damaged in the
peasant uprising and Roman reprisals. Making it his capital city, he
launched a huge construction project designed to fortify and beautify Sep-
phoris “to be the ornament of all Galilee,’ in Josephus’s memorable
phrase. Twenty years later and twenty miles away on the shore of the Sea of
Galilee, he founded a brand new capital city named, in typical client fash-
ion, after the new Roman emperor. As Josephus describes it, “The Tetrarch
Herod, inasmuch as he had gained a high place among the friends of
Tiberius, had a city built, named after him Tiberias, which he established
in the best region of Galilee on Lake Gennesaritis.’“° What is most inter-
esting for our purpose of picturing Miriam’s world is to observe the impact
of these burgeoning cities on the surrounding countryside. Politically,
these cities were aggressive symbolic statements celebrating the power of
Rome. Galilean people who under Herod the Great had been governed
from a distance now had the Roman client-ruler and his entourage present
in their territory for the first time, breathing down their necks, so to speak.
Most villages were no more than a day’s walk from either Sepphoris or
Tiberias. Insofar as these Herodian centers represented the alien cultural
and religious values of the empire and the willingness of some hellenized
Jews to collaborate with that system, they were intrusions into the tradi-
tional loyalties of the villagers. Economically, too, the heavy demands for
money to finance the building and for foodstuffs to feed the residents of
these growing cities made increasingly onerous demands on the produc-
tive peasantry. As tetrarch and not king, Antipas was ambitiously drawing
on a much more limited economic base than his father had. Tensions
between town and countryside inevitably grew strong.
Archaeological excavations at the ruin of Sepphoris got under way in
the 1980s and as of this writing are still in progress. Architecturally it has
the earmarks of a good Roman-Hellenistic city: fortified city walls, a large
paved main street (the ruts made down the middle by the wheels of heavy
carts are still visible), planned side streets, colonnaded and roofed side-
walks lined with shops, a water-delivery system and a sewer system, a
palace that served as the residential and administrative seat of power, an
armory, a large basilica used as a court or market, a theater (whose date is
GALILEE: THE POLITICAL-ECONOMIC WORLD 155

fiercely contested) and, in addition to other public structures, affluent pri-

vate homes with fresco and mosaic decorations, cosmetic items, and fine
tableware. The population can be numbered around 8,000 to 10,000 per-
sons. The majority seem to have been Jewish: witness the presence of
numerous miqva’ot, or pools for ritual purification according to the Torah,
along with the archaeological absence of any temple to the Roman gods,
the absence of large public statues, and the absence of human images on
the coins Antipas minted (the first commandment of Moses forbade
graven images). At the same time, Roman and other Hellenistic represen-
tatives of the empire engaged in business, government, and the military
would also reside in this administrative city, giving its population an eth-
nically mixed character. Excavations have been much more limited at
Tiberias because, unlike the ruin of Sepphoris, it is a still lively, inhabited
town hostile to efforts at disrupting contemporary life to get at older lay-
ers of civilization. Literary records describe Herod Antipas’s palace there as
luxuriously constructed but decorated with images of animals in an alien
fashion. Government and military officials lived lavishly nearby. The city’s
position on the lake near trade and pilgrimage routes made it a bustling
commercial center. It should be noted that these were not great cosmopol-
itan cities but minor provincial capitals. Nevertheless, their cosmopolitan
population and display of wealth and power set them clearly apart from
the “country people” in the Galilean villages that surrounded them.
Since the Sepphoris excavations began, a number of intriguing ques-
tions have arisen that have yet to find a settled answer in scholarship. Why
is Sepphoris, such a big important place and so close to Nazareth, not men-
tioned in the New Testament? Why is Tiberias named only once in passing
(John 6:23), though it is not far from the lake village of Capernaum where
Jesus centered so much of his ministry? Why is neither city mentioned as
a stop on Jesus’ itinerant ministry around Galilee? Perhaps Jesus avoided
these cities to avoid coming into contact with Herod Antipas, “that fox”
(Luke 13:32). Antipas had already arrested John the Baptist and, at his infa-
mous birthday party, had him beheaded. Rather than walk precipitously
into the line of fire, some think, Jesus directed his message of the kingdom
of God away from the two cities and toward the poor where they lived and
worked. There is the added consideration that rather than espousing the
values of the urban elites, Jesus consistently criticized the accumulation of
wealth and what it did to the soul. Recall his comparison of the rich with
John the Baptist, the greatest person ever born of woman: “What then did
156 PICTURING A WORLD

you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Behold, those who put
on gorgeous apparel and live in luxury are in royal palaces” (Luke 7:25).
The implied sharp criticism of the Herodian court indicates that Jesus
knew of their existence but opposed their ethos in favor of God’s passion
for the farmer, the vinedresser, the poor widow, the shepherd, the children,
and other peasant folk of the Galilean villages.
More speculative questions surround the “hidden” years of Jesus. As a
village tekton did Miriam’s husband Joseph get a job in the rebuilding of
Sepphoris? Did her son Jesus? Nazareth was a one- or two-hour walk from
Sepphoris, and they could have commuted. Unlikely say others; as a con-
servative Jewish family they would have avoided the Gentile culture of the
city. No, comes the rebuttal; Sepphoris was a basically Jewish city even if
open to Roman influence. Did the young Jesus at least visit the city? If so,
he may have been more cosmopolitan than the gospels portray him. The
controversy over the date of the theater, whether built during or after
Antipas’s reign, engages this same issue. Did Jesus ever go to the theater? If
so, he was a hellenized man exposed to international urban culture. No,
argue others; the theater was built late in the first century, and besides,
entertainments were mounted for Antipas’s scribal retainers, administra-
tive officials, and other elite city personages. The last people welcome there
would be the lower social classes from the outlying villages. Trying to pic-
ture the world inhabited by Miriam of Nazareth, we do not have to settle
all these questions. From a historical perspective, the most distinctive fea-
ture of Galilean life during her adult years was the political-economic
impact of the rebuilding of Sepphoris and the founding of Tiberias.*”
Enough to know that she lived in a poor village while nearby this beautiful
city was going up, perched on a hill like a little bird, with the function of
administering Miriam’s village in a new and disruptive way.
Let us focus attention on this circumstance more carefully, to make sure
we appreciate its significance. The two cities, Sepphoris and Tiberias, were
culturally worlds apart from the Galilean villages. The inhabitants differed
not only in dress, language, and lifestyle but also in wealth and power
owing to the basic political-economic system in which they functioned.
The cities were centers from which Herod Antipas orchestrated the gath-
ering of taxes and supplies, passed onto Rome its share of the tribute, and
used the rest to enhance his reign. The village communities formed the
economic base of the two cities, providing tax monies for their massive and
prolonged construction and food to feed their inhabitants. If this were a
GALILEE: THE POLITICAL-ECONOMIC WORLD P5/

market economy the cities’ needs might, just might, have worked to bene-
fit the small landowners, provided they could grow more than they
required and go into the city markets to sell the surplus. But this was a sit-
uation of subsistence farming in an agrarian economy. The villagers were
basically poor, living on the edge between hunger and satisfaction of nutri-
tional needs. And now here were these two Roman-Hellenistic royal cities
whose powerful presence was tipping the people from subsistence farming
to commercialized farming, a scene that repeats in our own day when
global development disrupts the livelihood of indigenous populations.
Horsley’s description of the result is illuminating:
Subjection to these heavy demands for tribute, tithes, and taxes by three dif-
ferent levels of rulers would almost certainly have affected the Galilean vil-
lagers’ economic and social life adversely. Peasant plots were traditionally
barely large enough to provide a subsistence living for a family of five or six
as well as meet the dues imposed from above. The peasant producers had
first to meet the demands for taxes and then to live until the next harvest on
what was left. Tithes, and apparently tribute and royal taxes as well, were
taken right from the threshing floors. Conceivably over one-third of their
crops may have been taken with the combination of the three different
demands. With insufficient food to live on until the next harvest, many
would have found it necessary to borrow. .. . The viability of the peasants’
tenure on traditional landholdings was thus seriously and steadily under-
mined by the imposition of heavy tax burdens.*®

Taxes might also be paid in goods other than crops, but the outcome was
the same. In the case of fish and fish sauces, for example, Herod contracted
fishing rights to brokers who in turn leased them to village fishers who, in
addition to monies needed for nets and boat repair, were now also indebted
to these “publicans” for their rights to fish. Not much was left for villagers
to consume. In the case of woven cloth, Marianne Sawicki notes that the
cities’ demands extracted this fruit of women’s labor from their village kin-
ship circles and drained it off into the empire’s economy, thus turning
“womenpower into imperial wealth and might.’*? However taxes were
paid, social elites were extracting materials and monies that the peasantry
could ill afford. Exploitation is not too strong a word to name the situa-
tion. Borrowing led to debt, which led to land being confiscated by credi-
tors, which led to independent farmers becoming tenant farmers, which
might ultimately lead to loss of land altogether, with persons reduced to
penury as day laborers, bandits, or beggars. Scripture scholars suggest that
158 PICTURING A WORLD

this situation is credible as the immediate context in which to understand

the ministry of Jesus with his compassion for the poor, the scandal of his
association with tax collectors, and the emphasis in his parables and apho-
risms on wealth and poverty, moneylending, wages, and debts.
Some scholars such as John Meier, E. P. Sanders, and Paula Fredriksen
argue that under Herod Antipas the economic situation was not all that
dire. They point to the fact that there was indeed no peasant uprising dur-
ing his reign. Others such as Richard Horsley, Jonathan Reed, and John
Dominic Crossan make the case that the heavy economic burden created
pressures that progressively disrupted traditional patterns of Galilean vil-
lage life. Even Sanders agrees that the peasantry were “hard pressed,” even
oppressed, by heavy taxation administered from the cities.°° As Reed
explains judiciously,
It is not necessary to envision an extreme crisis in Galilee—peasant life in
antiquity was difficult enough and need not be exaggerated. It is, however,
important to stress that Antipas’ urbanization of Galilee [the economic
strain that his building of Sepphoris and Tiberias placed on the rest of
Galilee] began a process in which the latter state was perceived as worse than
the former by the vast majority; in other words, the peasants’ relative state
of deprivation, not their poverty in any absolute terms, is the decisive
factor.”>!

To fast-forward in time: hostility to the two cities from which they were
ruled and taxed, expressed in small uprisings, finally erupted in a major
peasant insurrection in the year 66 C.E., the beginning of the disastrous
general Jewish revolt against Rome. Speaking of Sepphoris, Josephus
recounts:

The Galileans, seizing this opportunity, too good to be missed, of venting

their hatred on one of the cities which they detested, rushed forward with
the intention of exterminating the populations, aliens and all. Plunging into
the town they set fire to the houses, which they found to be deserted, the ter-
rified inhabitants having fled in a body to the citadel. They looted every-
thing, sparing their countrymen no conceivable form of devastation.”

In Tiberias, too, the anger of the landless spilled over into violence: “Jesus,
son of Sapphias, the ringleader of the sailors and destitute class, joined by
some Galileans, set the whole palace on fire expecting, after seeing that the
roof was partly of gold, to obtain from it large spoils. There was much loot-
ing. ... Jesus and his followers then massacred all the Greek residents in
GALILEE: THE POLITICAL-ECONOMIC WORLD 159

Tiberias. . . .”°’ The countryside’s long pent-up resentment against these

two cities, nurtured over two or three generations of being depleted by tax-
ation, is summed up by Josephus: “For they had the same detestations for
the Tiberians as for the inhabitants of Sepphoris.”™ This loathing did not
spring up overnight.
It is doubtful whether Miriam of Nazareth lived long enough to experi-
ence this repeat of the peasant uprising and violent Roman suppression
that had marked her youth. But we can picture the ways her life in Naza-
reth was affected by the processes that led to such fierce fighting. Her vil-
lage was not immune from the increasing debt-load that disrupted
traditional patterns of village life. Did neighbors or friends lose their land?
Did young acquaintances become socially uprooted and violent? Did the
“downward spiral of indebtedness”°° affect her own household in some
way? Did they go hungry after paying their taxes? Did her kin utter prayer
to God to “give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts ” with
a terrible concreteness? Historically Miriam of Nazareth lived in a peasant
society in a rocky, troubled time. Whatever the situation in her immediate
family, the political-economic pressures of Roman administration
through client rulers ground down the village poor to which she belonged
and only got worse over time.

Pontius Pilate
In Judea, the misrule of Archelaus, Herod the Great’s son, resulted in this
province coming under direct Roman rule in 6 C.£. Instead of being
administered by a Jewish client-king, Rome appointed a colonial governor
called a prefect, later a procurator, to take the helm. Pontius Pilate was the
fifth such Roman governor. He oversaw affairs in Judea from 26 to 36 C.E.
before being himself removed for excessive violence, culminating with the
slaughter of unarmed pilgrims gathered on Mount Gerizim in Samaria.
The first-century philosopher Philo of Alexandria describes Pilate’s per-
sonal character as being of an “inflexible, stubborn, and cruel disposition,”
and his government as being marked by “venality, thefts, assaults, abusive
behavior, and his frequent murder of untried prisoners.”°° Brutal and
insensitive to Jewish religious convictions, his rule provoked repeated pub-
lic protests from large numbers of Jews, many of whom died as a result of
his armed response. One particular Jew who “suffered under Pontius
Pilate” was Miriam of Nazareth’s son, who came under the Roman gover-
160 : PICTURING A WORLD

nor’s direct power by going to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover. During
Jesus’ trial, in Luke’s version, Pilate hears that Jesus is a Galilean:

And when he learned that he belonged to Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him

over to Herod, who was himself in Jerusalem at that time. When Herod saw
Jesus he was very glad, for he had long desired to see him, because he had
heard about him, and he was hoping to see some sign done by him. So he
questioned him at some length; but he made no answer. ... And Herod with
his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him ... then he sent him
back to Pilate. And Herod and Pilate became friends with each other that
very day. (Luke 23:6—12)

As far as Miriam of Nazareth, a unknown woman from a peasant village,

would have been concerned, the friendship between these elite personages,
the tetrarch from Galilee and the governor from Rome, was forged over the
tortured body of her firstborn son.

Herod Agrippa I
A third-generation Herod, named Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great,
succeeded his uncle Antipas in Galilee in 39 c.£. Before he died prema-
turely in the year 44, Agrippa had become king of all the Jews of Palestine,
like his grandfather before him. If Miriam of Nazareth was still alive,
whether she returned to her village in Galilee or, as some think likely,
remained with the circle of Jesus’ disciples in Jerusalem, a Herod was again
in power. The violence continued. This time it was directed against the
post-resurrection circle of Jesus’ disciples, among others. “Herod the king
laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He killed James
the brother of John with the sword” (Acts 12:1—2). James and John were
sons of Zebedee, fishermen on the Sea of Galilee who had followed Jesus.
Now James lay beheaded. To close this chapter, let us perform a thought
experiment. In Matthew’s account of the death of Jesus, all the male disci-
ples “forsook him and fled” (26:56), but the women disciples who had fol-
lowed him from Galilee looked on while he was crucified. Among these
was “the mother of the sons of Zebedee” (27:56). The sons ran, the mother
stayed. Did this unnamed but faithful woman stay in Jerusalem after Jesus’
death? Can she be counted among the women who formed part of the
group of believers depicted in the upper room before Pentecost, praying
for the Spirit? This is not unthinkable, especially if she was widowed.
Perhaps the account of Herod’s killing of James leaves us with this last pic-
GALILEE: THE POLITICAL-ECONOMIC WORLD 161

ture of Miriam of Nazareth: the old mother of a crucified boy consoling

the mother of a newly murdered son.

Using archaeological, social-scientific, and literary sources to picture the

world that Miriam of Nazareth concretely inhabited is not easy. The limi-
tation of our sources, the inevitable disputes among scholars over the
sources that do exist, and the enduring tendency to project our own expe-
rience in an advanced industrial society back upon the first century leaves
us with a portrait framed by “probably” and “presumably” and “most
likely.” One thing, however, emerges from the ambiguities, and this is the
social location of Miriam of Nazareth in an economically poor, politically
oppressed, Jewish peasant culture marked by exploitation and publicly
violent events. Commenting on how the ruling classes of medieval Euro-
pean Christendom who patronized art and literature had turned the
mother of Jesus into one of themseives, the pioneering biblical scholar
John L. McKenzie noted, “About Palestinian housewives they knew noth-
ing; if they had, they would have found her like the maids of their palace
kitchens or the peasant women of their domains. They were not going to
hang pictures of these humble common folk on their walls or sing hymns
praising their beauty or virtue.’’’ Therefore, before they could venerate
Mary, they had to extract her from her own historical life and turn her into
the ideal woman, a high-class gentlewoman like themselves, “Our Lady.”
Carrying out the proposal to honor this woman in the communion of
saints, our path is distinctly different. Far from being a member of the
upper class in Sepphoris, let alone in medieval France, the actual historical
person was a woman of the peasant society of Galilee. Here her concrete
reality in this social context intrigues us as the locus of her encounter with
God. The next chapter continues to build a picture of her world in terms
of its religious dimension.
ee cee

Second Temple Judaism:

The Religious World

ON BEING JEWISH

A s the picture of the political-economic world of Galilee has already

made clear, Miriam of Nazareth was a Jewish woman. This is meant
not only in the ethnic sense that she was born into the people who
trace descent from Abraham
and Sarah, but also in the religious sense. Her
faith in God was shaped by the covenant forged at Mount Sinai, nourished
by dramatic Jewish narratives of God’s saving deeds in history, and
expressed in the prayers, festivals, rituals, and ethical observance of Torah
characteristic of this religious tradition. At first glance this view may seem
strange to the Christian imagination, which for centuries has depicted
Mary as a leading member of the Catholic Church, on earth and in heaven.
It should be noted that placing her in the Christian community is not
without basis insofar as Luke depicts her praying with the circle of Jesus’
disciples assembled in Jerusalem after his death, awaiting the Spirit. While
this community indeed developed into a church separate from Judaism
and can even be called the “early” church, it was in those early decades still
a recognizably Jewish group. Picturing the religious world inhabited by
this woman of the peasant-artisan class, then, leads us to center our vision
on her enduring Jewish identity.
Diversity was a hallmark of the pre-70 c.£. Jewish religion. In addition
to the core population in Palestine, there were Greek-speaking, hellenized
Jews living in major cities throughout the Roman empire. In Palestine
itself, political and economic differences separated rural Galilee, ruled by a
lay aristocracy, from Judea with its urban center Jerusalem, a temple state
ruled by a priestly aristocracy. Different groups including Pharisees, Sad-
ducees, and Essenes among others contended for the true interpretation of

162
SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM: THE RELIGIOUS WORLD
e na at eS SN a ie) 163
Jewish tradition with a ferocity that can only be compared to “the full-
throated feuds of family dissent.”! For all of this documented pluralism,
however, the Jews were a single people. No matter where they lived they
were distinguished from their neighbors by the binding power of a com-
mon religious culture, a clearly definable religious orientation that was
protected by Roman imperial decrees.
At the center of this religion is a profound relationship between the peo-
ple and the one God, the incomparable Creator of the Universe, who acts
in history to redeem and to save.” The biblical confession of faith that
expresses this conviction is sung or recited with deeply felt conviction:
Shema—“Hear O Israel the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your strength” (Deut. 6:4—5). Feeling compassion, knowing what they
were suffering, this God of their ancestors had led them out of bondage in
Egypt. Even more, the Holy One had entered into covenant with them,
choosing them as a “treasured possession” (Deut. 14:2) and promising
them land and a future full of hope: “You shall be my people and I shall be
your God” (Jer. 30:22, paraphrasing Lev. 26:12). The sacred gift of the Law,
Torah, functioned at the heart of this relationship. With its life-shaping
commandments, including the famous Ten, and its identity-giving fea-
tures such as observance of the sabbath, food laws, and male circumcision,
it gave definite shape to the people’s life with God. Over time the broad and
deep stream of Jewish religious tradition came to include the prophets
with their passionate calls for justice, the psalms with their cries of thanks-
giving, lament, and praise, and a growing narrative of divine involvement
in their history of success and suffering. This was a religious world of rev-
elation and redemption, of calls to repentance and renewal, and of hope
for the future. In the first century, messianic hope was neither uniform nor
universal, but it was certainly well established and articulate. It was linked
to the coming of the kingdom of God, desire for which increased in pro-
portion to desperation of Roman occupation.
Jewish faith enjoyed a concrete geographic focus, the temple in Jeru-
salem, rising up in new splendor under Herod’s building plan. The God of
the universe whose spirit pervaded the whole world dwelt in this place in
a particular way. Here the daily priestly ritual of prayer, animal sacrifice,
and burning of incense was enacted; here people offered their own sacri-
fices in repentance and thanks to God; here thousands thronged during
festivals, joyfully reaching the goal of their pilgrimage; here every Jewish
164 PICTURING A WORLD

male was to send an annual one-half shekel tax for upkeep. This locus of
divine presence, however, focused only part of Jewish observance. Day in
and day out, ordinary life was affected by Torah piety with its prayers and
practices and its summons to the righteous life in the light of the covenant.
In home and village the rhythm of the week was blessed by sabbath obser-
vance from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, a time of rest and
prayer perhaps accompanied by attendance at synagogue. The annual cal-
endar marked the seasons with feasts that could be observed locally. In
first-century experience this religion was not a privatized individual mat-
ter but was embedded in the social life of the community.
Recent archaeology has turned attention anew to one aspect of concrete
observance, namely, the purity laws. Numerous miqva’ot are dug into the
bedrock all over the land of Israel. These are pools or relatively narrow
tanks with plastered walls into which one descends by a series of steps.
Many such pools are built into the temple complex, mute witnesses to
great numbers of Jews who used them on their way to the altar. They are
found in the homes of the wealthy in Jerusalem, Sepphoris, and elsewhere.
In the poorer villages one pool, usually located near the olive press or other
public spot, would served the whole community. These constructions are
meant for immersion in water. According to the Law, certain actions or
contacts cast a person into a state of ritual impurity, making one unfit to
approach the temple and its altar dedicated to the all-holy God. One might
contract impurity, for example, through contact with human corpses or
lepers, or through bodily processes such as ejaculation, menstruation, or
childbirth. Scripture, which delineates these circumstances, also prescribes
the remedy. Immersion in water and then waiting a set period of time,
sometimes accompanied by sprinkling with ashes or offering sacrifice, rec-
tified the situation. It is important to note that neither economic class nor
gender made one more or less ritually impure. Paula Fredriksen points out
that “the fussiest Pharisee, the highest high priest, would be neither more
nor less impure after sexual intercourse than the scruffiest Galilean fisher-
man”; and again, “a healthy adult Jewish female would incur impurity on
a regular basis, through menses; but so would her husband, through his
own semen.”’ Furthermore, since the principal function of ritual purity
was to regulate access to the temple, these laws had less stringent effect on
the daily life of persons living far from Jerusalem. They certainly did not
keep women from participating in synagogue services. Against Ben With-
erington III and others who interpret the purity laws as having fiercely lim-
»
a
SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM: THE RELIGIOUS WORLD 165

ited women’s participation in the public sphere, Amy-Jill Levine acer-

bically notes, “Society did not shut down during their menstrual cycles.”
Perhaps for contemporary Christians the most vital point to appreciate is
that being in a state of ritual impurity, which scripture assumes will occur
as a matter of course, is not equivalent to being in a state of sin. “Purity
enables proximity to holiness,” Fredriksen explains; “an impure person—a
menstruant, a leper or a mourner—is not thereby a sinner, nor is a pure
person necessarily righteous.”° Rather, as part of the warp and woof of
honoring the transcendent holiness of God, the purity rituals enact a per-
son’s dedication to the God of Israel: “For I am the Lord who brought you
up from the land of Egypt, to be your God; you shall be holy, for Iam holy”
(Lev. 11:45).
One cannot do justice to this complex faith with such a brief descrip-
tion. The point is that a relatively clear combination of belief and practice
identified the Jews as following a particular religious path, even when they
were widely scattered in the cities of the empire. This was the religion of
Jesus, which he never repudiated, and of his family, including Miriam of
Nazareth. Theirs was an observant Jewish household that lived their faith
in the one God of Israel in the daily rounds of ordinary life in Galilee, in
sabbath rest and prayer, and, occasionally, in festival pilgrimages to the
temple in Jerusalem. Understanding the deeply Jewish roots of Miriam of
Nazareth’s piety is critically important to the integrity of her historical life.
As Norman Pittenger points out, her faith was not shaped by the devotion
to Christ characteristic of the post-Nicene church; “inevitably and natu-
rally, she remained in her own time and place.”°
One other time-conditioned element needs to be added to this picture.
In the first century, the Jewish religion in the land of Israel was on a colli-
sion course with Roman imperial might. Passionate belief in one God
whom no graven images could capture clashed with the strange god now
brought into the land—Caesar, the emperor, full of power, glory, and
divinity. Herod the Great had a golden eagle, a symbol of Rome, enshrined
over the main gate of the temple. Two students in a suicidal act tore it down
in the uprising after Herod’s death. There were repeated protests over
Pilate’s attempt to display imperial standards with their connotations of a
different god. Voices were raised “articulating the feeling of distress among
the people that they now had a foreign ‘lord and master’ in addition to
their one true master, the God of Israel.”’ Roman religious belief, which
was inseparable from Roman political practice, continually violated the
166 PICTURING A WORLD

religious sensibilities of devout Jews. In an economic sense, too, the

increasing impoverishment of the peasantry had religious ramifications.
Rooted in the belief that the land ultimately belongs to God, the Bible
holds out a strong vision of justice. The tradition of the sabbatical year and
the jubilee year, when debts are canceled and land restored to its rightful
inhabitants, carries this ideal even if observed in the breach. John Dominic
Crossan makes the case that far from being a superficial element, the
notion that God was committed to establishing justice on earth pervades
the whole tradition. When Jews prayed to God to “give justice to the weak
and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and destitute; rescue the
weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked” (Ps.
82:34), they were appealing not only to divine mercy but to what had
been revealed as the very character of God. Jewish resistance to Roman
rule, then, was more than a people’s generic resistance to a state of oppres-
sion. In both religious-cultural and economic-political senses, the lordship
of Caesar conflicted in a particularly poignant way with traditional Jewish
religious loyalties.’ When the clash finally broke into the open in 66 C.E.,
Caesar triumphed. Little that was recognizable was left of the central insti-
tutions of ancient Judaism.

IN GALILEE

Among scholars there is ongoing dispute over just how Jewish the village
residents of Galilee actually were. A history of warfare starting in the
eighth century B.C.E. had decimated the ten tribes of Israel that had settled
in the north, leaving Galilee open for foreign inhabitants. In addition,
Roman rule coupled with the building of Herod’s two cities had imported
Hellenistic culture to the province. How deep did this overlay of pagan cul-
ture extend? Based on diggings in village households, Jonathan Reed argues
for an indigenous Jewish population: “wherever archaeologists have exca-
vated, Jewish religious indicators permeate Galilean domestic space in the
Early Roman Period.”? Pointing to the material culture left by first-century
residents as evidence, he lists four archaeological indicators of Jewish reli-
gious identity: numerous miqva@ot used for ritual immersion; stone vessels
made of soft limestone rather than clay, also tied to a concern for ritual
purity; ossuaries or bone boxes, indicating the Jewish burial practice of
collecting and reburying a corpse’s bones after the flesh has decomposed;
SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM: THE RELIGIOUS WORLD 167

and a diet without pork, which information is gleaned from analysis of

those human bones. The first three of these have been found in Nazareth.
When you couple this evidence from private life with the absence of pagan
cultic shrines in the public setting, it seems right to conclude that the peo-
ple of Galilee in the north shared the same socialized patterns of religious |
behavior as the Jews of Judea in the south.!°
One relevant structure that archaeology might be expected to turn up
but which is almost entirely missing is the synagogue. The remains of one
have been found in Gamla, a village near Capernaum, and possibly one or
two more. But constructed synagogues as a whole in pre-70 C.£. Galilee are
absent (so far). Given the Jewish character of the region, this is vastly puz-
zling; it is equally curious in view of the gospels’ picture of Jesus of
Nazareth preaching and healing in the synagogues of Galilee. Scholars
explain that while our imagination conjures up a building when we hear
the word synagogue, the original Greek term synagdgé means an assembly \
or a congregation of people. It is similar to the word “church,” which,
though it now usually denotes a building used for Christian worship, orig-
inally in Greek, ekklésia, referred to the assembly of persons consecrated by
baptism: the people are the church. So too, the synagogue in first-century
Galilean villages was the local village assembly: the people were the syna- >
gogue. A concrete form of social life that conducted community business,
the synagogue could meet in an open space, a public square, under the
trees, or in a private house. Entitling his chapter on this matter “Before
Synagogues Were Buildings,” Horsley suggests some of the purposes of
these assemblies. They functioned as means of local self-government,
decided disputes in sessions like a local court, watched over tax revenues,
announced lost property, collected charity, celebrated events of local sig-
nificance, and dealt with other community affairs. In this context they also
functioned as an assembly of the people for religious purposes. On the sab-
bath the people gathered to read Torah, recite it, interpret it; they offered
prayers of praise and petition to the Holy One of Israel, and took care of
other religious business. They would also gather together throughout the
year to observe fast days and celebrate religious festivals.'' In a word, in
Galilee the synagogue was usually not a building dedicated to religious ©
observance but a concrete form of social life consisting of an assembly of
village people who shared a common faith.
In Judea as well as in the Diaspora outside of Galilee, the assembly (syn-
agogue) was more likely to construct a building (synagogue) to use as a
168 PICTURING A WORLD

community center and locale for religious activities. Writing of Jews in the
cities of Asia Minor, Josephus notes that such communities “had an asso-
ciation of their own in accordance with their native laws; and they had
their own place, in which they decide their affairs and controversies with
one another. .. . [At this same place] they gather together with their wives
and children and offer their ancestral prayers and sacrifices to God.”
Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, written at about the same time, likewise
declares, “For in every city, for generations past, Moses has had those who
proclaim him, for he has been read aloud every sabbath in the synagogues”
(Acts 15:21). Here we see the synagogue in an urban setting as a building,
similar to its meaning today. Recall, however, that the Galilean villages
engaged in subsistence farming were poor; their inhabitants were also rel-
atively small in number. Their synagogues were simply themselves, assem-
bled as a social grouping.
A significant factor with regard to women’s status in the synagogue lay
in the absence of a priesthood in Galilee, the priests being centered in the
temple in Jerusalem. Without the practice of sacrifice with its accompany-
ing requirement for ritual purity, which restricted the access of women,
local custom could prevail. Consequently, the Galilean villages conducted
their public communal activities with local leaders and “without restric-
tions on women’s participation beyond those indigenous to the patriarchal
peasant family.”!> Presumably, male heads of households would chair vil-
lage assemblies, lead synagogue services, and conduct the proceedings of
the local court. But women would be included among those assembled and
would contribute to the public business according to popular custom. Cel-
ebrations of the life cycle such as circumcisions, marriage feasts, and
funerals would also entail the participation of women according to local
tradition. Thus the synagogue was not an all-male affair. This understand-
ing is borne out by the discovery that there is virtually no archaeological or
literary evidence from this period to suggest that Jewish men and women
had segregated seating in synagogues, with women in balconies or separate
first-floor areas. In addition, Bernadette Brooten’s pioneering research
into inscriptions on synagogues in the Diaspora indicates that some
women served as principal officers of local congregations.'* Horsley’s con-
clusion seems apt:
While women as leaders in Galilean village assemblies should not be ruled
out, pending inscriptional evidence from archaeological explorations, this
seems unlikely for patriarchal village communities in Galilee. What seems
SECOND
ee TEMPLE JUDAISM: THE
es RELIGIOUS
oe
WORLD
a 169

highly likely, however, given the evidence from diaspora communities and
the portrayal of young women as well as young men running to the assem-
bly in the Book of Judith, is that women participated actively in Galilean vil-
lage assemblies.!°

Let us depict in an imaginative way the religious life of a typical Galilean

family, placing Miriam of Nazareth in this setting. Everyday piety was
anchored by two institutions, the family household and the public assem-
bly or synagogue.'° The environment of the home formed the primary set-
ting for the worship of God. Here personal prayer ascended to God in the
morning and evening. Here children were instructed in the Law. Here the
purity laws regarding food and sexual intercourse were kept. And here the
sabbath was observed in rest and prayer. The Shema, quoted in part above,
recapitulates these defining aspects of Jewish life:

Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your
might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your
heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall speak of
them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when
you lie down, and when you rise up. (Deut. 6:4—5)

Praying twice a day was common practice. The phrase that enjoins remem-
bering God’s word “when you lie down and when you rise up” led to the
practice of reciting the Shema itself twice a day in the home, at dawn and
in the evening. People could certainly pray more often, and no doubt did,
encouraged by scripture and the example of biblical characters to bless
God for many divine gifts, to offer thanks, and to petition for help in time
of need. Home-schooling children in the commandments “when you sit in
your house” was abetted by the rhythm of the week, with the sabbath reg-
ularly focusing attention on the word of God. On this seventh day when
even God rested, no fields were worked, no weaving was done, no business
was transacted. Women baked bread and cooked other foods the day before,
keeping them warm on a fire lit before sunset on Friday, thereby opening
up time and space for their own reflection on the word of God written “on
your heart.” In subsequent centuries it became customary for the leading
female of the family to welcome the sabbath by lighting the sabbath can-
dles and for the male head of household to bless bread and the cup of wine
at the joyous evening meal.!? Whether this custom was followed in first-
century Galilee is difficult to say. In any event, Miriam of Nazareth would
170 PICTURING A WORLD

make sabbath preparations and join with her family for sabbath rest and
prayer.
Here the second institution, the synagogue, plays a role, all indications
being that villagers from different households assembled for public read-
ing of the scripture and prayer. Special attention was paid to the five books
of Moses, the Torah, but the scrolls of the prophets and other writings were
also heard. The point of such weekly reading and its accompanying instruc-
tion, explains Josephus, was that the people might “listen to the Law and
obtain a thorough and accurate knowledge of it.”!® Paula Fredriksen makes
the important observation that the synagogue, precisely through its
emphasis on public reading, diminished the need for literacy along with
the monopoly a literate elite might exercise when approaching the sacred
text. The individual Jewish man or woman did not have to be capable of
reading in order to be involved in interpreting scripture. “Hearing the Law
at least once a week, completing the cycle of the Torah time and again
throughout one’s life, provided text enough. The bible, through commu-
nity study, permitted the growth of a kind of secondary literacy, whereby
Jews could be very familiar with a text without necessarily being able to
read.”!? This secondary literacy fostered personal involvement with the
word of God. People could discern its meaning in the light of their own life
experience and could exercise their individual flair in interpretation. With-
out doubt it also forged the historical identity of the Jewish community as
a whole, everyone sharing a basic sacred text. In this setting Miriam of
Nazareth heard the word of God over and over again and participated
according to local custom in the synagogue’s deliberations.
Gathered at home with family members carrying out their sabbath rit-
uals, and gathered with other villagers in “synagogue” listening to scripture
readings, participating in instruction, offering prayer, and probably join-
ing in the singing of psalms, a Nazareth family entered into the centering
peace of the sabbath week after week. They would then return to the every-
day grind, taught not only to bless God but also to deal lovingly with their
neighbors. The Law commands them not to kill, steal, commit adultery, or
lie. The biblical laws of charity also mandate generosity to the poor. Dur-
ing the harvest, farmers should leave gleanings of grain for the hungry to
pick up; and “you shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen
grapes from your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the
stranger: I am the Lord your God” (Lev. 19:10). The same goes for olives.
The faithful Jew is commanded not to oppress others, not to hate, not to
SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM: THE RELIGIOUS WORLD Lok

bear a grudge, to care for those in need, and to watch out especially for the
most vulnerable in their midst, the widow and the orphan. The Torah
summarizes all the commandments that should govern their relations in
the one memorable law: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the
Lord” (Lev. 19:18).
This is a way of life meant to be interiorized, written on the heart and
observed with gratitude because one’s deepest spirit is in tune with the gra-
ciousness of God. E. P. Sanders rightly argues that fundamental to Jewish
piety is the view that God’s gracious gift, which Christians call grace, pre-
cedes the requirement of obedience. Scripture narratives teach this over
and over: God creates the world and blesses its yield before giving the com-
mandment not to eat from one tree; God freely chooses Israel and redeems
the people from Egypt before giving the Law on Sinai.”° Torah itself is
cause for gratitude because it sets forth a sure path by which one can walk
as a faithful covenant partner. Faithful, abounding in kindness, wishing
not to condemn and destroy, calling to repentance, displaying abundant »
mercy, surrounding the people with loving care, the God of Israel was gra-
cious to the thousandth generation. In the midst of long days of hard work
and the multiple relationships of her life, a village woman’s spirit could
soar with joy in such a saving God as this. Picturing Miriam of Nazareth’s
religious world, it is not enough to say that Jewish belief and practice
formed a mere “background.” Loyal to the traditions of her ancestors, she
inhabited this faith foursquare. Our memory risks multiple distortions if ,
we forget the deeply Jewish roots of her own piety.

GOING UP TO JERUSALEM

The Jewish calendar punctuated the daily work and sabbath rest of the
Galilean villages with annual festivals. Rooted in ancient agricultural ritu-
als, these feasts took on added depth of meaning as they narrated and cel-
ebrated foundational events in Israel’s history. Normally these feasts were
kept in the home, where special foods such as lamb and unleavened bread
along with special prayers and songs during the meal told the story to the
next generation. But there was another option, to go to Jerusalem. While
several lesser feasts were sprinkled throughout the year, three major ones
were the occasion for pilgrimage. Passover/Pesach in the spring commem-
orated the people’s liberation from bondage in Egypt; Pentecost/Shavuot
v2 PICTURING A WORLD

in early summer gave thanks for the giving of the Law on Sinai; and Taber-
nacles/Sukkot in early fall remembered the people’s post-exodus passage
through the desert when they lived in tents or makeshift booths of
branches. These three festivals saw Jews by the thousands from both home
and abroad travel to Jerusalem to offer sacrifice in the presence of God.
Picturing the religious world of Miriam of Nazareth places her at the cen-
ter of planning and celebrating these feasts with members of her house-
hold. It also puts us on the road to this magnificent sanctuary.
Scholars debate how many of the Galilean peasant population would
have been able to make this trip, and how often. Since the distance to be
covered is about eighty miles, the journey took roughly four days to one
week by foot each way, less if one rode by donkey. Another several days
would be spent in and around Jerusalem for the purification and sacrifi-
cial rituals. Their economic situation made it unlikely that they could
afford the expenses of such a trip repeatedly, let alone take time off from
their fields in spring and summer when their work was most productive.
In addition, the festivals were, first of all, family affairs, primarily cele-
brated in the home. Nevertheless, Jerusalem, the City of David, was the
lodestone of Jewish history, and its temple was the only place where ritual
sacrifice could be offered. It is likely that Galileans went back and forth for
the pilgrimage festivals, but not in great numbers. Some families may have
gone once in their lifetime; some once a year. The total was probably hun-
dreds for each feast.?!
They traveled in groups, camping out along the way. The usual route
took them east to the Sea of Galilee, then south along the flat valley of the
Jordan River. Once near Jerusalem they would begin to climb out of the
great rift, up, up through the Judean hills, singing hymns to God until they
glimpsed the walls of the temple at the edge of the holy city. Jerusalem is
south of the region of Galilee, but speaking colloquially the people went
“up” to Jerusalem both because of the climb required and the way this
exertion became a physical metaphor for the ascent to God:
I rejoiced when I heard them say, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
And now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.
Jerusalem, built as a city with compact unity:
To it the tribes of the Lord go up, according to the decrees of Israel,
To give thanks to the name of the Lord. (Ps. 122:1—4)

The goal of pilgrimage was to arrive at the temple in order to offer sac-
rifice to God. Recall that Herod the Great had expanded the area occupied
SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM: THE RELIGIOUS WORLD 173

by the temple on a vast and lavish scale. It was now an enclosure of some
thirty-five acres, most of it unadorned, expansive space open to the sky.
One archaeologist has estimated that twelve soccer fields could fit neatly
within its borders.’* The outer walls of the complex were beautifully con-
structed of dressed limestone blocks, some weighing two to five tons; even
today the huge remaining stones of the western wall glow golden in the late
afternoon sun. The great open space of the Temple Mount was organized
like a series of nesting boxes, with the open-air altar of sacrifice and the
enclosed Holy of Holies at the very heart of the complex. Worshipers first
entered the temple up a monumental stairway, through a triple gate, and
then up a long tunnel that emptied them into the outermost and largest of
the plazas, the Court of the Gentiles. This enormous area could hold tens
of thousands of people. It was open to the public, except for those who
were unclean according to the Torah. Here everyone mingled; civic affairs
were conducted; money-changers and sellers of birds clustered along the
walls in the shade provided by huge colonnaded porticos. This Court of
the Gentiles was separated from the next section by a four-foot high
balustrade posted with warning notices to foreigners not to proceed fur-
ther. Moving through a gate in the railing, Jewish pilgrims entered the
Court of the Women, “open,” as Josephus describes, “for worship to all Jew-
ish women alike, whether natives of the country or visitors from abroad.”
Here is where the women stopped. Jewish men continued into the next
open area, the smaller Court of the Israelites. This rectangular space was
set off from the next Court of the Priests by a low stone railing. It was in
the priestly court that sacrifice was actually performed. Its most notable
accoutrement was a huge altar with a roaring fire where choice portions of
the sacrificed animals were burned, the smoke going up and returning
them to God. Josephus’s description of the Court of the Women indicates
that it had an elevated gallery or balcony, which is a good thing; otherwise
the women would not have been able to see over the heads of men in the
next court to what the priests were doing.
At the far end of the Court of the Priests beyond the altar was a tall, 150-
foot high, beautifully constructed two-room stone sanctuary—along the
lines of a free-standing chapel—with golden doors. This was the inner
sanctum where the holy God of Israel dwelt in a special sense. Its outer
chamber held a gold seven-branched menorah with continually burning
flames, a gold table for the showbread, and a small altar for burning
incense. The inner chamber, separated by a veil, contained, stunningly,
174 PICTURING A WORLD

“nothing whatever.’”4 In the temples of Greece, Egypt, and Rome this is

where the statue of the deity would reside. But Israel’s God, the incompre-
hensible, invisible Creator and Redeemer of the universe, had no cult
image. Into this empty Holy of Holies the high priest alone entered once a
year on the Day of Atonement. Otherwise, it was inviolate. This unspeak-
able “nothingness” signifying the unimaginable plenitude of the Holy One
was at the center of the entire Jewish faith.
The observable action of worship, both on a daily basis and massively so
during pilgrimage festivals, took place in the Court of the Priests. In com-
mon with other religions at the time, Jews offered animal sacrifice to their
God in addition to grain, oil, and first fruits. Doves and pigeons, lambs,
rams and bulls were killed to atone for sin, to give thanks, or to remove the
impurity of childbirth, according to the norms laid down in the Torah. As
in many ancient societies, blood had a sacred character. It was the seat of
life and so belonged to God alone, the author of life. Shedding it in this
majestic setting, yards from a flaming altar, after due preparation, in
accord with the Law, with personal prayer and awareness of divine pres-
ence, was a religiously meaningful act charged with awe and mystery. In
the Court of the Israelites, Jewish men would approach the railing with
their animals; on the other side the priests, working in shifts, would receive
and sacrifice them. If a woman came without a male companion, one of
the Levites, a secondary order of priests who performed essential auxiliary
services, would ferry her offering from the Court of Women to the priests.
Sanders’s description of the scene is illuminating:
The work of the priesthood proper, put in terms of tasks known today, was
a combination of liturgical worship and expert butchery, mostly the latter.
The priests heard confessions and accepted sacrifices and offerings in the
name of God. They slaughtered animals and birds and flayed (skinned) the
animals and cut them up for distribution. They sprinkled or poured blood
on and around the altar. They put the principal fatty pieces on the altar, ...
separating the remaining parts for their own use or that of those who
brought the sacrifices.”°

An ancient observer adds the detail that the priests who carried pieces of
flesh to the altar to be burned exhibited “a wonderful degree of strength.
For they take up with both hands the limb of a calf, each of them weighing
more than two talents [175 Ibs.], and throw them with each hand in a
wonderful way on to the high place [of the altar] and never miss placing
them on the proper spot.”” It is clear from this description that the priests
SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM: THE RELIGIOUS WORLD 175

were physically fit. Since only priests were allowed in the sacrificial area,
they also had to do all the menial tasks such as carrying firewood, stoking
the large open fire, and washing down the whole area every evening. They
worked barefoot. To enable them to move nimbly, “the sleeves of their
tunics were tightly laced around their arms, and they wore breeches for
greater modesty.”’’ By the end of their shift they would be spattered with
blood.
In addition to the sacrifices brought by pilgrims, the temple priests also
conducted daily morning and evening sacrifices on behalf of the commu-
nity, accompanied by a prayer service during which they recited portions
of scripture and burned incense. Music for these rituals that opened and
closed the day was provided by the Levites. Their hymn book was the Book
of Psalms written on heavy scrolls, which they held while they sang, stand-
ing on a platform outside the Court of the Priests. They clanged cymbals
and blew trumpets as the music required. In all of this, according to Aris-
teas, “Everything is carried out with reverence and in a way worthy of the
great God.””®
In our mind’s eye, let us follow a family coming up to Jerusalem for one
of the feasts.”° Arriving after several days’ trek from Galilee, they and their
neighbors join the throngs who set up camp outside the city walls. Or if
they have relatives in the city they lodge with them; or they rent space, per-
haps a flat rooftop. The afternoon before offering sacrifice the adults
immerse in a public miqveh and abstain from sex that night. In the morn-
ing, leaving their baby and toddler with a relative, the couple with their
older children head for the temple. After purchasing a lamb in the colorful
market below the great walls, they enter by the beautiful, majestic gates,
emerging into the Court of the Gentiles. There under the far portico they
buy a basket with two doves, inspected and approved, for the woman's
offering after childbirth. Under a brilliantly sunny sky they cross the
expansive Court of the Gentiles and come to the balustrade that warns for-
eigners to go no farther. Assuring one of the Levites on duty of their status,
they enter the Court of the Women. While the woman with her daughters
climbs the stairs to the gallery, her husband and sons go right through into
the Court of the Israelites. The woman finds a Levite to take her birds to a
priest. She keeps an eye on their progress and watches while they are sacri-
ficed. Meanwhile, another Levite helps the man lift his lamb up, suspend-
ing its forelegs, breast, and head over the low railing that marks off the
priestly sanctuary. A young priest approaches. Placing his hand upon the
176 PICTURING A WORLD

lamb’s head and uttering a prayer, the man bares its neck to the blade.
Quickly slashing the arteries of its neck, the priest collects the gush of red
blood in a basin, then walks over and splashes it around the base of the
flaming altar. He comes back to retrieve the animal’s carcass, removing it
to a section of the court where he will flay and butcher it. In the interim the
womenfolk above and the menfolk at ground level are silent with their
own thoughts, musings, prayers. A short time later the priest returns with
the result of his handiwork. The man takes the pieces of lamb, offers
thanks, gives a portion to the priest, then leaves with the remainder. Meet-
ing back outside the Court of Women, the couple and their children cross
the massive outer court and walk down from the temple together. They
head back to their campsite with thanksgiving in their hearts after this far-
from-routine, close encounter with the all-holy God. Joining up with their
extended household, they prepare for the evening’s feast.
Imagining such a family grouping celebrating with their lamb at the
Passover meal, Paula Fredriksen describes the evening scene. Tired though
the adults may be, the excitement of the exodus story eventually grips them
all. “Slavery—then freedom; Pharaoh—but Moses! God’s strong arm and
mighty hand, leading them out, out past the sea, out into the desert, out to
the Jordan, finally into the Land. The songs and laughter of other house-
holds mingled with their own; all Jerusalem sang its prayers of praise as the
sounds of the feast ascended up the valley, up the hillside, up into the starry
silver night, the huge full moon, up, up to the throne of God himself???
Just such a scenario of ritual sacrifice and joyful family feasting would have
comprised part of the religious world in which Miriam of Nazareth par-
ticipated.
On these occasions, danger was always present. Not only did Roman
soldiers stand guard, observing the pilgrims from their fortress built flush
to the side of the Temple Mount. Not only could the spirit of national
redemption carried in the festivals awaken strong resistance to the imper-
ial occupying power. Not only could the Court of the Gentiles get so
crowded with people from all over the world that incidents of “rabble rous-
ing,” meaning rebellion, easily broke out, bringing a swift and violent
response. There was indeed tension in the air on the Temple Mount, should
a pilgrim from Galilee choose to notice it. But more profoundly, the polit-
ical role of the temple priesthood cast their leadership into alliance with
the foreign occupiers rather than their own people. Like the client-king in
Galilee, the high priest of the temple ruled as proxy for Rome in Judea.
SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM: THE RELIGIOUS WORLD a7/

Appointed or removed by the Roman governor and accountable to him,

the high priest was responsible for the orderly public operations of the
temple, the city of Jerusalem, and the wider region. He commanded a
brigade of several thousand temple guards, who also served as Jerusalem’s
police force. He oversaw the collection and expenditure of the wealth accu-
mulated from the offerings of pilgrims, the donations of the rich, and the
temple tax paid by Jews even in the Diaspora. The tight combination of
political, military, and financial power with religious power, therefore,
positioned the Jewish high priest as a key instrument in Rome’s designs.
Like it or not, he had to preside over the acquiescence of his people or they
would suffer severe Roman retaliation and he, of course, would lose his
own wealth and standing. When John’s gospel depicts the high priest
Caiaphas arguing in the case of Jesus that it was expedient to do away with
one troublemaker rather than have the Romans come and destroy their
holy place and their cities (John 11:47—50), he was but exercising the
administrative judgment proper to his role. Miriam of Nazareth was to
suffer much from this political arrangement.
On balance, people who lived in the villages of Galilee spent very little
of their lives going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, celebrative though these
trips were. Their faith in God was lived out in home and village synagogue,
far from priestly hierarchy, sacrificial rituals, or the religious separation of
the sexes. Observance of Torah, daily prayer, weekly sabbath, and celebra-
tion of the festivals in their times and seasons embedded their covenant
relationship with God in the social rhythms of their agrarian communi-
ties. From this distance, the northern biblical tradition of prophets who
criticized the temple and its burnt offerings in favor of letting justice for
the poor roll down like a mighty stream would have resonated to a great
degree.

JEWISH CHRISTIANS / CHRISTIAN JEWS

Scripture’s last glimpse of Miriam of Nazareth in terms of her chronolog-

ical years depicts her in Jerusalem in the circle of the disciples awaiting the
Spirit. After naming Peter, John, James, and other men disciples, the text
continues, “All of these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer,
together with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers”
(Acts 1:14). Though the women are unnamed, the reference is most likely
 178 PICTURING A WORLD

to those women disciples whom Luke, the author of Acts, had already
depicted in his gospel as following Jesus in Galilee, coming up with him to
Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and becoming key witnesses to his
death, burial, empty tomb, and resurrection. These included “Mary Mag-
dalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women
with them” (Luke 24:10). Numerous people unknown to us formed part of
this circle: “the company of persons was in all about a hundred and
twenty” (Acts 1:15). When during the feast of Pentecost/Shavuot the Holy
Spirit came upon “each one of them” in wind and tongues of fire, they
launched the mission that would spread the good news throughout Judea
and from there to the wider Hellenistic world. A core group stayed in
Jerusalem as a kind of headquarters for the movement while others began
to travel.
The scholars who wrote Mary in the New Testament judge that placing
Miriam of Nazareth in this core Jerusalem community is “a tradition
which should be accepted as reliable.”>! Since Luke does not place the
mother of Jesus in the earlier crucifixion scene and is silent about later
details of her life, the fact that he affirms her by name in the midst of this
post-resurrection group of Jesus’ followers is not most likely haphazard
but reflects a community memory that she was there.°2 Working with this
judgment, our last step in picturing the religious world of Miriam of
Nazareth entails looking at the early years of the community gathered in
Christ’s name in Jerusalem.
This group is labeled in various ways: the early church, the mother
church, the early Christian disciples, primitive Christianity. They carried
forward into history the living memory of the life, death, and resurrection
of Jesus, imbued with the growing belief that he was the Messiah of God,
the conviction that lies at the heart of the Christian faith. Looking back, we
see that they were already the church in its beginnings. Part of the difficulty
with such terms as church and Christianity, however, is that
they tend to
obscure the fact that this was a group of Jews who did not think of
them-
selves as a church separate from Judaism. Rather, they were Jews who joy-
fully proclaimed that in Jesus the Messiah, God’s promise of redempti
on,
which Judaism had long cherished, was now being fulfilled.
Let us depict this community of women and men disciples in
Jerusalem
in the thirties and forties, the first decades after Jesus’ death.
By all observ-
able measures they continued to cling to their ancestral Jewish faith,
most
notably by worshiping in the temple. After Jesus ascended into heaven,
the
SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM: THE RELIGIOUS WORLD 179

last words of Luke’s gospel leave us with this picture: they “were continu-
ally in the temple blessing God” (Luke 24:53). In the period after the Spirit
descends in wind and fire, a dramatic incident in the temple calls their
group to the attention of the temple authorities. “Now Peter and John were
going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour,” when they
passed a man lame from birth who begged alms every day “at that gate of
the temple which is called Beautiful” (Acts 3:1-16). “Seeing Peter and John
about to go into the temple,” he asked for money but, wonderfully, received
instead the gift of healing. “And leaping up he stood and walked and
entered the temple with them, . . . praising God.” When a crowd of people
gathered around them “in the portico,” Peter and John begin to preach that
in Jesus, God was fulfilling the promise made to Abraham. “And as they
were speaking to the people, priests and the captain of the temple guard”
came up and arrested them for “teaching the people and proclaiming in
Jesus the resurrection from the dead.” Not every detail of this account may
be accurate, but it shows in summary fashion how this early community
was perceived. They were observant Jews, filled with the Holy Spirit, who
worshiped the one God in the temple, prayed the Shema morning and
evening, followed the food and other purity laws, and obeyed Torah in the
spirit of the covenant. Speaking of this early community, historical studies
have brought about a scholarly consensus that “there is no reason to doubt
the ongoing Jewish identity of the followers of Jesus and their loyalty to the
institutions and basic convictions of Israel.”*°
What marked them off from their neighbors was their relationship to
Jesus of Nazareth. Following him in his lifetime, agonized over his death,
they now experienced him risen and present in their midst in a radically
new, transcendent mode of existence. The righteous sufferer vindicated by
God dwelt among them anew by the power of the Spirit. Ransacking their
scriptures for ways to express his significance, they gave him many titles,
including “Christ,” the Messiah or anointed one. By so doing they placed
Jesus squarely at the center of the God of Israel’s saving activity in the
world, hidden and mysterious, yet present and living. The crucified Jesus
is risen! Jesus is the Christ! Far from causing them to leave their religion,
this conviction was cause for joy. For the messianic hopes so alive in the
Jewish tradition were now being fulfilled: God was acting to bring new life
to the tortured world. This in fact was the very conviction that led them to
stay in the city rather than return to life as they knew it in Galilee.
Jerusalem was where the apocalyptic consummation of the world was
 180 PICTURING A WORLD

expected to take place. Time was short. The kingdom of God was near.
Jesus, who had been exalted to the right hand of God, would return soon
to judge the world. He was already sending the eschatological Spirit upon
his followers. Shaped by Isaiah’s prophecies, Jewish hope envisioned even
the Gentiles being converted. “The word of the Lord goes forth from
Jerusalem” (Isa. 2:40), and when it is victorious the Gentiles will stream
toward the holy city for the final day of the Lord. To hasten that day, the
disciples sent members forth on mission.
This Jewish community of believers-in-Jesus also developed certain rit-
uals that identified them as a particular movement within Judaism. As a
ritual of initiation they adopted baptism, after the manner of the Jewish
community of Essenes at Qumran and John the Baptizer. And, on a regu-
lar basis, they celebrated a common ritual meal, which became recognized
early on as a prominent feature of their community. These gatherings took
place out of public view in private homes, later called “house churches,”
rented or opened by owners for the occasion, thus carrying on the tradi-
tion of Torah piety lived out in a domestic context. Some scholars now
make the case that some house churches were led by women, even in
Jerusalem, where Mary the mother of John Mark hosted a gathering for
prayer (Acts 12:12).** The ritual meal was an important setting for the
developing tradition. During it they remembered what Jesus had done at
table on the night before he died. They cried out with longing, Maranatha,
Lord come, in anticipation of the messianic banquet in the kingdom that
was fast approaching. Luke’s idyllic snapshot captures both what would
later disappear and what would grow into a central sacrament: “And day by
day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they
partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God” (Acts
2:46-47).
Christianity came into being as this kind of small movement within the
Jewish faith. It did not spring full-blown into the world complete with the
scripture, liturgy, creed, doctrine, moral code, and governing structur
es
that were known to a later age. These things evolved over time. The
move-
ment surged from its rural roots to urban headquarters, from Palestin
ian
to Diaspora Jews, and from the Aramaic language of the first disciple
s to
the Greek language of the wider world. The disciples’ preaching
soon
attracted Gentiles, a few at first and then a torrent. Tensions then
arose
within the core community over this windfall. Should new
Gentile male
converts have to be circumcised? How carefully should the
Gentiles observe
SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM: THE RELIGIOUS WORLD 181

the food laws? In addition to these disputes over Torah observance occa-
sioned by the spread of the good news to non-Jewish populations, more
tensions flared at home between this group of messianic Jews and others
such as Pharisaic Jews, who found their ideas deviant. The believers-in-
Jesus became part of the full-throated family feud of intra-Jewish strife so
typical of the pluralistic first century. Still, while harboring a tremendous
newness, they saw themselves embedded within the Jewish people bound
to God in covenant.
We do not know how long Miriam of Nazareth remained with this com- |
munity. Perhaps she lived out her years in Jerusalem; the Church of the
Dormition there claims to honor the place where she fell asleep in the
Lord. Perhaps she went back home to Galilee, an old widow living in an
extended household. Tradition has it that she went to the city of Ephesus
with John the apostle and evangelist; the Church of St. Mary there also
honors the place where she died. There is simply no historical evidence.
Picturing the world of her old age in Jerusalem, however, is possible to do,
given what we know about that community. Coherent with their Galilean
roots, they were poor in material possessions. The need to take up a col-
lection to alleviate the real poverty of the mother church is consistently
emphasized later by Paul in his letters (Gal. 2:10; 1 Cor. 16:14; Rom.
15:25—26). Together they went daily to the temple at the hour of prayer,
where incense and song enhanced the sacredness of sacrifice. They broke
bread in their homes with glad and generous hearts in memory of Jesus,
with joy in his presence in the Spirit, and in anticipation of his return. They
preached vigorously in anticipation of the last day. The point is that for
decades, the original community springing from Jesus belonged to the
Judaism of the land of Israel on the basis of their own self-understanding, )/
lifestyle, social membership, and geographic anchoring. They certainly
developed theological positions that increasingly differentiated them from
other Jewish groups. Still, they preserved their Jewish identity, as did the
mother of the Messiah in their midst.
Flashing forward one more time, we see that the separation of this
group from their fellow Jews was a long and complex process. There was
no single moment of divorce but a series of crises that stretched well into
the second century. In The Partings of the Ways, biblical scholar James D. G.
Dunn proposes that at least three significant controversies inched the
believers-in-Jesus out onto their own path: debate over the temple and its
sacrifice, with Paul for example writing to the baptized in Corinth, “Do
182 PICTURING A WORLD

you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in
you?” (1 Cor. 3:16—17); the controversy at Antioch in the middle fifties that
resulted in the boundary markers of circumcision and food laws being
waived for the Gentiles; and most especially the ongoing growth of chris-
tology, which resulted in Jesus being confessed as the divine Word of God
and Wisdom-made-flesh.*°
While these Christian Jews were evolving in their own way, a terrible
event took place that also redefined the Jewish religion itself. Starting in 66
C.E. violent rebellion against the Roman occupation spread like a brush fire
across the land of Israel. The might of Rome responded in typical fashion
with slaughter, devastation, and enslavement. The climactic moment came
in 70 C.£., when the Romans finally destroyed Herod’s magnificent temple.
Paula Fredriksen’s dramatic rendering of Josephus’s account catches the
terror:
Jerusalem was burning.
The fire fused with the dry August heat. A thick mass of sounds and
smells signaled the end of the siege—stone and burning timbers crashing,
soot and dust everywhere, the screams of victim and victor, the dense mix
of sweat, blood, and fear from the bodies of the living, the stench from the
unburied dead. Above, the white-blue bowl of heaven arched, remote and
unmoved by the huge confusion below. Rome’s legions, furious, implacable,
consumed the ravaged Lower City... .
Even the beautiful white-and-gold Temple to the God of the Universe,
the heart of the city and of the far-flung Jewish nation, finally succumbed to
the devouring flames. The intense heat melted precious metals; even lime-
stone burned and burst. The huge stone expanse of the Temple courtyards
choked on carnage and confusion as priests, soldiers, terrorists, and civilians
all surged toward the sanctuary, the Holy of Holies. In the austere emptiness
of this innermost chamber abided the earthly presence of God... . Now
it
too perished; and in their grief, defying Rome to the last, two priests—Meir
ben Belgas and Joseph ben Dalaeus—flung themselves into its fires and so
perished with it. The entire mountain that it had crowned . . . was so
“enveloped in flames from top to bottom,” an eyewitness later wrote,
that it
“appeared to be boiling up from its very roots”...
In the heat of the Roman assault, with frenzied legions surging about
them and the Temple collapsing in ruin, some six thousand Jews, a mixed
crowd of men, women, and children, managed to climb to the roof of
the
last colonnade in the outer court. . . . The soldiers, undeterr
ed, fired the
columns. None escaped.
The Upper City capitulated. Titus ordered everything razed to
the
SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM: THE RELIGIOUS WORLD 183

ground. One legion remained behind; the rest moved off. Survivors trickled
away in their different directions to slow death or servitude in Egypt, Asia
Minor, or Italy. The massive gold table and menorah from the sanctuary,
together with a captured scroll of the Law, made their way to Rome, spoils
of the war. What was once Jerusalem stood at the smoking epicenter of a
blasted landscape. The surrounding territory, devoured by Titus’ need for
war machines, had been stripped of trees for miles around. Hill and coun-
tryside, once green, now denuded, gave way to inevitable erosion. It was
Rome’s way with rebels. They make a desert, a Roman historian commented
later, and they call it peace.*®
Imagine trying to keep a religion alive after this shocking disaster, with
its central and only place of worship completely ruined, its functioning
priesthood destroyed, and its people scattered from the holy city, which
was no more than charred ruins. Would the Jewish religion now join so
many others that have disappeared into the dustbin of history? Rabbinic
Judaism was the brilliant response. Centered more than ever on home and
local synagogue, honoring a clearly defined scripture, observing Torah in
terms of the righteous life, and led by rabbinic teaching authority, this new
form of Judaism coped with the loss of temple, priesthood, and ritual sac-
rifice by transforming the heart of Jewish covenant faith into a newly
“portable” form. In this tumultuous context, preserving a people’s identity
meant drawing careful boundary lines. Before, the followers of Jesus had
offered one colorful option within pluralistic Judaism along with the Phar-
isees, Essenes, and other definable groups. After 70, you were either with
the mainstream or you were out, especially if you held such a widely dissi-
dent view that Jesus was the Messiah. Bitter infighting ensued as the two
groups gradually and in different places separated and mutually excom-
municated each other; the believers-in-Jesus left, were put out of the syn-
agogue, or removed themselves. The gospels were written in this climate
and reflect the acrimonious state of relations in their aspersions against
“the Jews.”>”? Meanwhile, the rabbinic strategy worked to consolidate Jew-
ish tradition and keep it alive and thriving in entirely new circumstances.
By the end of the second century, two great world religions had moved
into their separate trajectories: Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. Where
once there was the ancient Jewish religion, there were now two offspring.
At this point in the literature, metaphors abound. While the temple was
still standing, Paul, the Pharisaic Christian Jew, had used the olive tree:
Gentiles who came to believe in Jesus were branches of a wild olive tree cut
and grafted on to “share the richness” of the cultivated, deeply rooted olive
 184 PICTURING A WORLD

tree of Jewish faith (Rom. 11:17). After the split, forgetting Paul’s teaching
that “God has not rejected his people” (Rom. 11:2), Christians used the
metaphor of succession to imply that they had inherited the richness
which the Jews had lost.** By contrast, Dunn, drawing on contemporary
historical studies, suggests that we think of pre-70 Judaism as a broad
stream with diverse and often conflicting currents; then “two strong cur-
rents began to carve out divergent channels for themselves.” Using the sci-
ence of genetics, he also suggests that “the major strand that was to become
Christianity pulled apart on a sequence of key issues from the major strand
that was to become rabbinic Judaism.”*? Given the bloody history that now
haunts the two communities, Alan Segal proposes the most challenging
metaphor, which if adopted would help to chart a different future: born of
the same parent, rabbinic Judaism and Christianity are twin siblings.”
This thumbnail sketch, though not without nuance, has necessarily
compressed a complex process into a single story line. Something of the
same thing happened in subsequent centuries as Christians condensed
the story of their evolution into the single narrative of the church’s being
founded by the direct word and deed of the historical Jesus during his life-
time. The documented evidence, however, seems to be much more inter-
esting. Not the single act of Jesus of Nazareth alone but, under the impact
of his life, death, and resurrection, the guidance and inspiration of the
Holy Spirit in multiple minds and hearts amid the decisions of history
created and continue to create the church into being. This history com-
pletes the framework of the religious world of Miriam of Nazareth. Since
it is exceedingly doubtful that she lived until 70 c.z., let alone after that
terrible year, it is fair to conclude that she lived out her later life as a Jew-
ish believer who continued to trust in the God of Israel through whose
mercy she had borne the child now seen to be the Messiah who would
soon return: Miriam of Nazareth, on the cusp of the divide between two
world religions.
 9
j
Women: The Social-Cultural World

A PERNICIOUS CONTRAST

\ sarural Galilean Jewish woman, known in the social roles of virginal

girl, married wife, hard-working nurturing mother, and older widow,
Miriam of Nazareth was also shaped by her society’s laws, customs,
and expectations regarding the respective roles of women and men. To
round out the picture of her world, we turn to contemporary accounts of
the daily lives of first-century Jewish women as these can be gleaned from
ancient sources. Adding this sketch to the political, economic, and religious
lines already on the canvas will complete the picture of Miriam of
Nazareth’s historical world, which in turn will form the historical matrix
for interpreting the biblical scenes in which she appears.
An important question plagues the work of how to interpret the rele-
vant sources. In an effort to demonstrate that the new religion of Chris-
tianity was superior to the older Judaism in its attitude toward women,
some researchers have resorted to a questionable ploy. Describing first-
century Judaism in unrelievedly patriarchal terms, they then compare this
with the enlightened, open approach of Jesus toward women. Instead of
acknowledging that “patriarchy is not particularly Jewish and that Jesus
was interpreting his critical views in the light of the prophetic and escha-
tological horizon of Jewish faith itself;”! this strategy of overblown contrast
is patently unfair. It depicts a highly misogynist Jewish society, and then
puts into high relief Jesus’ liberating interactions with women made all the
more remarkable, it is said, insofar as he departed from the demeaning
customs of his day. He called women to be his disciples; he spoke to women
in public places such as the well and the roadside; he shared table com-
panionship with women disciples as well as prostitutes; he allowed a
woman with an issue of blood to touch him, thus becoming unclean him-

185
 186 PICTURING A WORLD

self, and so forth. In all of this, the argument goes, he was rejecting Judaism
and bringing the freedom of the “new law” to the oppressed situation of
women. The early church, the claim continues, attracted so many women
precisely because they understood and desired the emancipating possibil-
ities that lay in being a Christian rather than a Jew. “Oppressed, repressed,
suppressed, and therefore depressed by patriarchal socio-cultural con-
trols,” Amy-Jill Levine ironically mocks, “Jewish women of course were
attracted to the ‘community of equals’ of the Sophia-Christ.”? Obviously,
the greater the contrast that can be drawn, the more successful such a strat-
egy turns out to be. Latch onto certain derogatory statements and customs
of first-century Judaism that subordinate women; highlight certain eman-
cipatory words and actions of Jesus that value women; then pull both out
of context and compare. Voila! It is no surprise that the Christian heritage
appears in a more favorable light. If we were to follow this method, we
would describe the early life of Miriam of Nazareth as burdened with the
insults of patriarchy until her later years, when the redemption wrought by
her son began to have an effect on her status. But this is hardly the case.
There are two problems with the strategy of contrast, one ethical, the
other intellectual. Regarding the first, the contrast promotes a thinly veiled
anti-Judaism, which is a defect that has long marred the history of Chris-
tian theology. Sensitive to the ravages of anti-Semitism and hearing this
argument from within their own tradition, Jewish feminist scholars of reli-
gion were the first to raise this moral issue. Judith Plaskow’s essay “Chris-
tian Feminism and Anti-Judaism” sounded the alarm, analyzing how, as a
consequence of its stereotyping of patriarchal Jewish religion, “feminism is
turned into another weapon in the Christian anti-Judaic arsenal?3 Fur-
thermore, naming Judaism as a primary source of Christian women’s
oppression not only feeds a pernicious prejudice but also prevents Chris-
tianity from taking responsibility for its own sexism, which indeed inheres
at all levels of its own traditions. “Blaming the Jews” for patriarchy sets up
a scapegoat. Its dynamic defames one group in order to privilege another.
But in light of patriarchy’s historic habit of accusing women from Eve
onward for the evil in the world, Susannah Heschel poignantly observes,
“if there is any single most important point promoted by feminism, it is to
cease the projection of evil onto others.” As recent scholarly discussion
makes clear, neither respect for the Jewish religion nor the promotion
of
the human dignity of all women is served by this disreputable strategy.5
In addition to ethical justice, historical accuracy is another casualty of
this ploy. For one thing, it usually entails a use of sources from a later
period
WOMEN: THE SOCIAL-CULTURAL WORLD 187

to describe the situation of women earlier on. Those who cite rabbinic
sayings that restrict and demean women customarily quote from the Mish-
nah, assembled around the year 200 C.£., or the various Talmuds, assem-
bled in the fifth to sixth centuries, to establish the role of women in Jesus’
time. This is a scholarly mistake because these compilations of Jewish teach-
ings and legal opinions are the product of a later historical period and thus
are not reliable evidence for conditions in first-century Judea and Galilee.
While some of these passages do reflect first-century conditions before the
temple was destroyed, most reflect the situation after the Roman war when
rabbinic Judaism was taking shape and gaining authority. Plaskow makes
the insightful suggestion that the talmudic writings ought to be compared
not with Jesus or the gospels but with their true contemporaries, the
church fathers of the second to sixth centuries, an exercise that would leave
“neither Christians nor Jews much room for self-congratulation. Rather,
what is immediately striking is the similarity between the two traditions—
in both, the developing association of women with sexuality and the fear
of women as temptress.”° Even were one to use the Mishnah and the Talmud
ever so carefully as sources, in all fairness one should cite the stories and
sayings that are beneficial to women along with those that disparage. These
works contain multiple voices; one must establish which represent norma-
tive opinion and which exist only to be contradicted.’
Rather than retroject later conditions reflected in the Talmud into the
first century, historical research does better to consult sources contempo-
raneous with Christian origins. In the process, one must be careful to dis-
tinguish between what women were actually doing and the history of
men’s attitudes and writings about women, especially regarding points
where the latter intruded into their world. Feminist scholarship makes
clear that statements about women that emanate from a male-centered
thought system do not correspond to historical reality, where the complex
fullness of women’s existence actually goes forward and contributes. Tak-
ing these considerations into account, researchers are discovering that
within the patriarchy common to the whole ancient world, Judaism dis-
played a surprising diversity. There were differences between the condi-
tions of women living in the Diaspora and in the land of Israel itself;
differences between women in rural and urban areas; differences between
rich and poor women; and differences among women aligned with the
various groups in the first century, such as Essenes, Pharisees, the Baptist’s
disciples, and the Jesus movement. Such diversity makes it almost impos-
sible to deliver a monolithic judgment about the status of first-century
 188 PICTURING A WORLD

women in this extended community. The variety of Jewish women’s expe-

riences makes it not at all evident that Jewish women in the first century
were more oppressed than early Christian women, whether Jewish or Gen-
tile. Indeed, both shared the limitations and diverse opportunities that
existed in the ancient Greco-Roman world.®
On the positive side, both literary and nonliterary sources bring to light
the presence of liberating trends within the Judaism of this time. The Book
of Judith, composed around the second or first century B.C.E., depicts a
heroine who possesses great wealth and commands authority in the com-
munity. Being both wise and brave, she executes a risky maneuver that
saves Israel from a fierce foe, earning the praise of the people, who thank
God exuberantly for her actions. Other popular apocryphal works written
around roughly the same time feature similarly self-directed women
whose response to revelatory experiences of the holy God of Israel impacts
their community and its future. Examples include the role of Rebekah in
Jubilees, Aseneth in Joseph and Aseneth, and Job’s wife in the Testament of
Job.’ Thus, the picture was not totally bleak when Jesus arrived. With some
irony Ross Shepard Kraemer argues that Jesus’ own conduct toward
women, rather than distinguishing him from first-century Jewish men,
opens a window on what was considered acceptable rather than alien
behavior, especially since the gospels carry no explicit outside criticism of
his being accompanied by women disciples. Indeed, the gospels show us
that the presence of Jewish women in a variety of public venues was taken
for granted. “Precisely because we are dealing with the attraction of Jewish
women to a new Jewish charismatic leader [Jesus], and to a movement
around that leader that consists virtually, if not entirely, of other Jews and
expresses itself wholly within the broader framework of first-century
Judaism,”’? early Christian writings themselves may be a source of
infor-
mation regarding the situation of women in Judaism.
A variety of archaeological remains, papyrus letters, legal docume
nts,
and durable inscriptions on stone and marble demonstrate women’
s pres-
ence in communal life and even allow us to hear their voices. We
have
already seen that evidence for segregated seating in the synagogue is
virtu-
ally nonexistent, making it no longer impossible to imagine that
women
could have served in liturgical functions. Bernadette Brooten’s
original
study of synagogue inscriptions analyzes nineteen Greek and Latin carving
s
in which women bear the titles “head of the synagogue,”
“leader,” “elder,”
“mother of the synagogue,” and “priestess.” These encomiums indicate
that
some women served in important administrative leadership
in at least
WOMEN: THE SOCIAL-CULTURAL WORLD 189

some synagogues, mostly in the Diaspora.'! We would love to know more

than we do about these female synagogue leaders, but their very presence
subverts the old Judaism-versus-Christianity ploy. Other inscriptions pay
tribute to women who gave donations for the building or decorating of
synagogues, demonstrating that some Jewish women also amassed wealth
and deployed it for the benefit of their community. Ross Kraemer’s com-
pilation of epigraphs from cemeteries and a wide variety of other venues
allows further glimpses into women’s activities across a wide societal
expanse.’ In addition to being leaders in synagogues, financially indepen-
dent landowners, businesswomen, and owners of their own homes, some
women acquired religious education and even devoted their lives to the
study of Torah.
There is no doubt that first-century Judaism, in tune with the rest of the
ancient world, had its patriarchal, androcentric mores and that many, even
the majority of women, were legally disadvantaged and powerless. There is
also no doubt that, as a result of this, we suffer from a paucity of data about
Jewish women’s lives both in Palestine and in the Diaspora; Brooten’s
image of women’s history as prehistory and of women’s historical research
as detective work is unfortunately apt.!’ The sources we do have make
clear, however, that no homogeneous definition will fit all groups. Like
their non-Jewish sisters in the empire, Jewish women in the first century
engaged in a broader range of activity than that suggested by a narrow
patriarchal stereotype. In the turbulent years leading up to the first war
with Rome, women in Palestine may well have had more than the usual
opportunities to assume nontraditional roles. “Certainly the data suggest
that one can find models for the leadership positions held by women in the
early church both in Jewish and non-Jewish communities, and probably in
classes of Roman and Jewish women who shared, at least in part, similar
power and opportunities.”"* If some women in the Judaism of this period
were powerless but some were leaders, if some were legally disadvantaged _
but some enjoyed certain rights, then the Jesus movement, insofar as it
embodied new visions of human equality and new opportunities for
women’s leadership, can be seen as carrying forward liberating trends pres-
ent in Judaism itself. Comparison should then be made not between Jesus
and Judaism but between, on the one hand, the Jesus movement as one
among several prophetic emancipatory movements in Judaism and, on the
other hand, entrenched systems of domination in antiquity that crushed
human beings. “Only if one recognizes the egalitarian forces in Judaism
can one... argue that Jesus as a Jew was egalitarian.”
 190 PICTURING A WORLD

This discussion underscores the importance of method when picturing

the cultural world that Miriam of Nazareth inhabited, including the para-
menters imposed by gender. The all-too-easy contrast of Christianity
against Judaism will not serve our purpose. Rather, we seek to discern the
actual contours of the gendered world Miriam inhabited in her Galilean
village.

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY

In Palestine at this time, as indeed for most of human history, young peo-
ple entered into marriages arranged by their families. The unions were
most often negotiated by the couple’s fathers or between the bride’s father
and her future husband, though in Galilee mothers may have had a say
about daughters’ marriages; widows could take a more active role in their
own remarriages.'° According to contemporary Roman law, the minimum
age of marriage for girls was twelve, for boys fourteen. Jewish practices
were comparable, so that marriage for a girl usually took place at or just
before puberty, usually between the ages of twelve and thirteen. This not
only allowed maximum use of her childbearing years but also served her
father’s ability to guarantee her virginity, a heavy cultural and economic
duty as required by law and custom. Schalom Ben-Chorin relates that this
age remained so customary that when the modern state of Israel set the
minimum marital age at eighteen, “among Yemenite Jews this met with
total incomprehension.”!” Without knowing any details of when, where, or
how, we can surmise that Miriam married Joseph at this (to us) young age.
According to Jewish custom at this time, marriage was a process that
took place in two stages.!* The first stage was the betrothal. This involved
a formal exchange of the couple’s consent to marry, made in the presence
of witnesses and accompanied by the payment of the bride price from the
bride’s family to the groom. Unlike our culture’s practice of getting
engaged, betrothal constituted a legally ratified marriage even though the
girl would remain in her own family’s home for about one more year. After
betrothal the two persons were henceforth husband and wife. The man
had legal rights over the young woman. Any infringement of his marital
sexual rights could be punished as adultery; their union could be broken
up only if he initiated a formal procedure of divorce. Betrothal also gave
the girl the status of a married woman for many purposes. She was called
the man’s wife and could become his widow. In a year’s time the
second
WOMEN: THE SOCIAL-CULTURAL WORLD 191

stage occurred with the transfer of the young woman physically from her
family home into her husband’s family home, a formal move accompanied
with some ceremony. They now shared bed and board. He assumed
responsibility for her financial support, and they began to have sexual rela-
tions. Both Matthew and Luke reflect these marriage customs when they
depict Mary’s pregnancy beginning while she was betrothed to Joseph but
“before they began to live together” (Matt. 1:18), that is, before the second
stage of their marriage took place. Knowing the baby wasn’t his, Joseph's
initial decision to divorce her rather than complete their marriage with the
home-taking made legitimate use of one of the options open to him. But
note that he was going to divorce her, not break their engagement: they
were legally married.
By the fourth century the idea became popular that Mary had taken a
vow of virginity prior to getting married, a vow that Joseph had pledged to
honor. The oldest mention of this theory in the East is from Gregory of
Nyssa in 386. In the West it spread though the teaching of major figures
such as Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine, becoming a classic position. The
context for this idea was the new spread of asceticism, including lifelong
virginity as a path of sanctity that replaced martyrdom. Numerous women
flocked to orders or monasteries where they could live a celibate life. As we
have seen, reflecting the new ideal of holiness, the belief intensified that
Mary remained a virgin all her life, even after the birth of Jesus. To ensure
this, it was proposed that she made a vow of virginity as if she were a nun.
Given our historical and literary knowledge of first-century Galilee, how-
ever, such a vow is “totally implausible,” as Brown argues. “In our knowl-
edge of Palestinian Judaism, there is nothing that would explain why a
twelve-year-old girl would have entered marriage with the intention to
preserve virginity and thus not to have children. ... This theory really only
makes sense in subsequent Christianity where the virginal conception,
plus the virginity of Jesus and Paul, have led to a re-evaluation of celibacy.”!?
Some scholars have pointed to the reputed practice of celibacy among
some of the Essenes at Qumran or among the Therapeutae, a respected
group of Egyptian Jews, as evidence that Mary could have made that vow.
But “such celibacy practiced in an ascetic, quasi-monastic community
withdrawn from the mainstream of Palestinian life throws no light what-
soever on the supposed resolve of virginity made by a young village girl
who had entered matrimony,2° We are discussing here not the doctrinal
teaching about Mary’s virginity but the plausibility that she took a vow of
virginity along with her marriage vows. This is not attested in scripture
 192 PICTURING A WORLD

nor, since it involves her historical intentions, is it accessible without a let-

ter, diary, or other documentation. Given contemporary knowledge of
Palestinian marriage customs, the likelihood of such a vow distinctly fades.
Once Miriam did transfer into the household of Joseph, she most likely
would have become part of an extended family. About their household
arrangements we have no concrete information, but it is virtually certain
that they did not live in the modern type of nuclear family ideally com-
prised of two parents and their offspring. In rural Palestinian villages, sur-
vival was closely linked to the hard labor and expertise of a whole family
unit. In view of all the skills necessary for economic well-being, the efforts
of a conjugal pair alone would hardly be sufficient. While complex and
changing, households ordinarily consisted of multigenerational groups of
people linked by marriage and descent. “A senior couple would have
resided with their adult sons, their unmarried daughters (for daughters left
home upon marriage), their sons’ spouses, their grandchildren, and per-
haps also an orphaned niece or nephew or a widowed sibling.”*! Calling to
mind the typical domestic architecture of Galilean villages, we can envi-
sion one or more extended families sharing a compound with common
walls, courtyard workspaces, water cisterns, ovens, and rooftop areas. They
would lend tools, utensils, and food materials back and forth; there is some
evidence from later in the first century that families living next to each
other would share a meal on sabbath or holidays. Life would be character-
ized by interrelationships within “a network of social units” incorporating
the nuclear families embedded in the extended family along with “court-
yard neighbors, neighbors of the same alley, and fellow villagers.””* In this
setting the segregation and seclusion of women, typical of higher-status
families, was hardly possible. Nor did the family homestead function
as a
private space for living distinct from the public sphere of work. Rather, the
family was a working group and its domicile a nexus of social
and eco-
nomic relations. Lack of privacy was a constituent feature of life.
Miriam
hardly had a room of her own.

Joseph, Husband of Mary

As a married woman, Miriam’s relationship with her husban
d would bea
highly significant element of her life. Very little, however, is known
about
her life partner or their marriage. Historically he would appear
to be a
faithful, Torah-observing Jew who supported his family
as a tekton, a
worker in stone and wood, of the artisan-peasant class.
The critical factor,
WOMEN: THE SOCIAL-CULTURAL WORLD 193

according to the gospels, lay in the way he offered the protection of legal
paternity to her firstborn son whom she conceived in what appeared to be
dubious circumstances. While hard for us moderns to understand, the cus-
tom of declaring paternity had a strong force in this culture. When a man
acknowledged a child as his own, that in fact made him the legal father.
Joseph’s action regarding Jesus came as a saving grace, providing a home
and long-term provision for this young mother and her child. (Once in a
discussion group in Harlem I heard a woman declare that the church
should preach less about Mary and more about Joseph, “because he raised
that boy like his own kid, which he wasn’t.”) Together Miriam and Joseph
formed a family unit, carried out parental responsibilities of nourishing
and teaching, and participated in household and village life. From the fact
that he does not show up in any later scenes of the ministry which do
record the presence of Jesus’ mother along with his brothers and sisters,
scholars deduce that sometime before Jesus reached the age of thirty
Joseph died, leaving his wife a widow. :
The portrait of Joseph in the infancy narrative of Matthew’s gospel adds
depth of character by modeling him on the image of Joseph in the book of
Genesis, he of the coat of many colors.”’ Not only are they both sons of
men named Jacob, but also both dream dreams and go into Egypt. Just as
the original Joseph is called a “man of dreams” or specialist in interpreting
dreams, the husband of Mary four times receives revelation in dreams
which he acts upon in a life-saving manner. And just as the first Joseph
goes down to Egypt, setting the stage for the escape drama of the exodus,
so too Joseph of Nazareth flees Herod’s murderous wrath by taking “the
child and his mother” into Egypt, from which they come forth in a way
symbolic of Moses’ journey. Through it all, the later Joseph is characterized
as a “just man,” meaning upright, honorable, trustworthy, a faithful Jewish
observer.
Both Matthew and Luke present a genealogy for Jesus, the former trac-
ing his ancestry down from Abraham, the latter back to Adam and thence
to God. Different though their theologies are, they both sound an impor-
tant note by placing Joseph squarely within the lineage of the house of
David. By publicly, officially, and formally accepting the child as his own,
Joseph gives Jesus a Davidic heritage that becomes part of the foundation
of his acclamation as Messiah in later Christian reflection. One long-
standing debate has roiled over the different names the two genealogies
give to Joseph’s father. According to Matthew, “Jacob was the father of
Joseph, the husband of Mary” (Matt. 1:16), while in Luke’s version Joseph
 194 PICTURING A WORLD

is “the son of Eli” (Luke 3:23). This leads Brown to query half in earnest,
“Did Jesus have too many grandfathers?”** Neither genealogy is necessar-
ily historical, their function being not to present strict biological kinship
but to illuminate a theology of God’s providential design that promises
and brings about the Messiah in the history of Israel. In our project of pic-
turing the world of Miriam of Nazareth, these lists lead us to understand
that she did indeed have in-laws including a father-in-law, whatever his
name.
The lack of historical knowledge about the person and career of Joseph
permits only sober speculation about the relationship between Miriam
and her husband. The old axiom regarding arranged marriages—marriage
comes first, love later—would be in force here, with no extant information
about the quality of their love. In a thriving conjugal partnership spouses
mediate to one another the very love of God. Through loving acceptance
of each other’s deepest selves, joy and delight in their differently unique
ways, and forgiveness of fault, they bring forth in each other the grace of
secure confidence from which their love spills over to others beyond their
immediate circle. This outflowing love of the partners in turn mediates the
very love of God to the world.
Such a relationship demands generosity in the give-and-take of daily
events and decisions, a fundamental self-giving that partakes at times of
deep asceticism. In the process of sharing life together, the partners mature
both as a unit and as individuals, becoming strong in wisdom, age,
and
grace through the healing power of shared love. Miriam and Joseph were
married for at least twelve years, according to chronology of when
Jesus was
lost and found in the temple in Luke’s gospel. Did they share a love
like this,
or remain somewhat distant in kind mutual regard, or did they aggravat
e
each other? How did they handle the inevitable tensions of everyday
living?
Did his voice gladden her heart, her presence quicken his spirit?
Or did the
exhaustion of work and anxiety of child-rearing dilute their
affection? Was
she cast into deepest grief at his death, or resigned, or relieved,
or filled with
ambiguous feelings of all three? We will never know. Some thinkers
point to
the loving, compassionate qualities of the adult Jesus and deduce
that his
character would be most likely to emerge from a househol
d of the same cal-
iber—the apple does not fall far from the tree. Others
speculate that in sim-
ple human terms Joseph, whom the historical
child Jesus would have
literally called Abba, served as the concrete reference for the
gracious God
of compassion whom Jesus called by the same name. Despite
the paucity of
WOMEN: THE SOCIAL-CULTURAL WORLD 195

details, the historical picture of Miriam’s world as a woman must grant her
the legitimacy of her marriage and her husband.

Brothers and Sisters of Jesus

An historical picture of the Galilean household that the adult Miriam
inhabited needs to account for the persons whom the gospels call Jesus’
brothers and sisters. Some of them appear early in Mark’s gospel, with par-
allel accounts in Matthew and Luke, when Jesus’ mother and brothers
show up outside the house where he is teaching and ask to speak with him.
In John’s gospel his mother and his brothers go down with him to Caper-
naum after the wedding at Cana. After the resurrection they are present
again in the upper room, where the company of Jesus’ disciples awaits the
Spirit. In subsequent years, James “the brother of the Lord” (Gal. 1:19)
becomes a leader of the Jerusalem church. The most extended entry about
the brothers and sisters comes in the scene where Jesus returns to his own
village to teach in the synagogue on the sabbath. As Mark relates the event,
many people of Nazareth took offense at him, wondering where he got all
this wisdom. They said, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and
brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters
here among us?” (Mark 6:3). Matthew adapts the Markan version slightly
to focus on his father’s trade and expand the number of sisters, having the
villagers say, “Is not this the son of the carpenter? Is not his mother called
Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph, Simon and Judas? And
are not all his sisters here among us?” (Matt. 13:55—56).
Who are these four brothers and the multiple “all his sisters,” unfortu-
nately not named, as is all too customary in androcentric literature? In the
first five centuries of the church, as Mary’s virginity was increasingly seen
as having lasted her whole life, there were some bitter disputes about this
question. John Meier notes that during these early centuries, “different
views on this question were held by various Christians, who were not for-
mally excommunicated by the church of their day for their differing posi-
tions”25 Recent decades have seen a revival of controversy in the light of
contemporary biblical scholarship, attitudes about sexuality, and feminist
interest in a holistic image of Mary. Three positions existed in the early
church; these roughly correspond to positions taken by Christian churches
today.
 196 PICTURING A WORLD

1. The brothers and sisters are the children of Mary and Joseph, born
after the birth of Jesus. From Hegesippus in the second century through
Helvidius in the fourth, a number of thinkers including Tertullian took the
position that these children were siblings in the normal sense. They
appealed to texts in the gospels that point to Mary’s having children after
Jesus was born, especially Luke’s statement that “she gave birth to her first-
born son” (Luke 2:7), implying that others followed, and Matthew’s com-
ment that Joseph, waking from his dream, took Mary as his wife “but he
knew her not until she had borne a son” (Matt. 1:25), implying that sexual
relations came later. Neither of these implications is necessary. A woman
who bears only one child can always call this child her firstborn; not hav-
ing sex until a child is born tells us nothing about marital relationships
after. Still, the sense of the texts points in that direction. The ecumenical
team of Mary in the New Testament notes that, while these two gospel writ-
ers do depict the virginal conception of Jesus by the power of the Spirit,
they do not propose Mary’s perpetual virginity. Indeed, if we combine
Matthew’s “until” with his texts on Jesus’ mother, brothers, and sisters, “a
likelihood arises that according to Matthew’s understanding Joseph did
come to know Mary after Jesus’ birth and that they begot children.” In
other words, this is what the gospel writer thought. The fact that the broth-
ers are consistently paired with the mother of Jesus in later gospel scenes
also needs explanation if they are not her own children. “If they are Jesus’
cousins, are they Mary’s nephews who are taking care of their widowed
aunt? If they are Jesus’ half-brothers, now that Joseph is dead, is Mary
responsible for these, his children by a former marriage?”*’ Neither sce-
nario seems likely. Aware that the perpetual virginity of Mary after the
birth of Jesus is not a question raised directly by the New Testament, Prot-
estant thinkers since the Enlightenment have generally tended to assume
that these children belong biologically to Mary and Joseph. In this sce-
nario, Jesus would be the oldest in a family of at least seven
children: “a
large family, a small income.””8 The biblical evidence leads German femi-
nist scholar Uta Ranke-Heinemann to level the scathing critique that tra-
dition’s anti-sex, anti-woman bias has actually robbed Mary of her own
children: “And so she was disallowed her children, with the exception
of
her one son, Jesus. They were taken away from her and, at first, declared
to
be the children of a fictitious first marriage of her husband, Joseph.’
Still,
the gospels leave room for debate about this position on the parentage
of
the brothers and sisters: Mary is never called their mother.
WOMEN: THE SOCIAL-CULTURAL WORLD 197

2. The brothers and sisters are Joseph’s children by a previous marriage.

Appearing first in the apocryphal gospel the Protoevangelium of James in
the mid-second century, this view was still being endorsed by Epiphanius
in the fourth. The salient passage in the Protoevangelium occurs after the
high priest, guided by a sign from heaven, chooses Joseph to be Mary’s hus-
band. Joseph protests, “I already have sons and am old, but she is a girl”
(9.2).°° Assured that he should obey the Lord rather than think of his own
circumstances, Joseph agrees to the marriage, bringing his children with
him. In this interpretation, the brothers and sisters mentioned in the
gospels are Jesus’ stepbrothers and stepsisters. They are not Mary’s natural
children; rather, she is their stepmother. Picturing the household of
Nazareth in this framework, Jesus would be the youngest of at least seven
children, with four older stepbrothers and at least two older stepsisters.
The ecumenical team of authors of Mary in the New Testament cautions
that the Protoevangelium itself is not a reliable historical document on
most other details; consequently it does not inspire much confidence on
this matter, widespread though this view was in the early church. It is still
the favored explanation of Orthodox Christianity.
3. The brothers and sisters are actually Jesus’ cousins. This view, first
championed by Jerome in the fourth century, originally held that the chil-
dren were born either to Mary’s sister or to Joseph’s sister or brother, thus
allowing not only Mary but also Joseph to remain forever virgin. With no
attempt to specify the relationship, the idea that the brothers and sisters
were cousins became widespread in western Christianity during the Middle
Ages. Functioning in support of the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity,
the “cousins” position was adopted by the Roman Catholic Church and
remains the official teaching of the church. Philological analysis gives some
support. The Greek term for brother, adelphos, which normally means
blood brother in the natural sense, can also mean kinfolk or relative. More
broadly still, it can also designate members of the same tribe, clan, or
nation. In the New Testament, Christians are called “brothers” over one
hundred times in the sense of members of the same religious group, as
preachers even today might begin a homily with “my brothers and sisters
in Christ.” According to this position, it is in one or other of these senses
that the gospels use the words adelphoi (brothers) and adelphai (sisters) of
Jesus’ relatives.
Contemporary biblical scholars raise doubts about this argument,
pointing out that there is a perfectly good Greek word for cousins, ane-
 198 PICTURING A WORLD

psios, which appears elsewhere in the New Testament (Col. 4:10) and
which Paul and the gospel writers could have used if that is what they really
meant.*! Furthermore, while the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the
Hebrew Bible, did indeed translate the Hebrew term for “cousin” or “rela-
tive” with the Greek word for “brother,” the authors of the New Testament
were not translating but writing in the language they used every day. In
their Greek, adelphos means brother or half-brother in the flesh, a sharing
of parentage. All other passages in the gospels that use “brother” or “sister”
to describe family relationships use the terms in this sense of shared
parentage rather than “cousins”; recall the Zebedee brothers James and
John, the sisters Martha and Mary, their brother Lazarus, and Andrew with
his brother Peter. There are the added problems that the use of “sisters” to
designate cousins is exceedingly rare, and that “there is no instance of the
use of brothers or sisters for more remote kinsmen and kinswomen when
the words accompany an enumeration of names,” as occurs with the
gospel list of the names of Jesus’ brothers. Prescinding from faith and on
purely historical and philological grounds, exegete Meier judges that in the
case of New Testament language about Jesus’ relatives, “the most probable
opinion is that the brothers and sisters of Jesus were true siblings.”*> Other
scholars such as John McHugh, however, defend the opinion that these
children were born to Joseph’s sister but brought up by Joseph after his
brother-in-law died.*4
What interests me here is the historical point that all three of the inter-
pretations described above, including the official Catholic “cousins” posi-
tion, militate against Mary mothering a one-child family. The cousins, or
four brothers and all the sisters, did not just appear when Jesus was thirty
years old. The manner of their appearance in Jesus’ public life indicates
relationships of long standing, leading even some proponents of the
cousins position to think that they formed part of his family during his
years of growing up. Even if these cousins did not live in the immediate
household but perhaps shared a courtyard, their repeated presence
yoked
to the mother of Jesus in the gospels indicates a closeness of multiple
chil-
dren in this blended family. This means that during her own adulthood
Mary engaged in a great deal of direct or indirect parenting of a large
brood. Along with the physical labor involved, this entailed all the reserves
of energy and intelligence required in good child-rearing.
When these
other children are taken into account, the romanticized picture
of an ideal
“holy family” composed of an old man, a young woman, and one
perfect
child does not hold up. There is a lot of noise, a lot of mess,
a lot of work,
WOMEN: THE SOCIAL-CULTURAL WORLD
1 EE SE iS ae ath 2 199
lA
a lot of conversation, perhaps a lot of laughter. Leo Gafney takes this
insight into an interesting sideline. Musing on the gospels’ picture of Jesus’
public skill in speaking, confidence in debate, and ease with people of all
description, he queries how Jesus of Nazareth might have developed such
qualities. Being at dinner throughout his youth “with nine or ten family
members heatedly discussing politics, religion, the law, the prophets—
might this also have played a role?”35
Shifting to Mary’s later years, which she may well have spent as part of
the post-resurrection Jerusalem community, scripture indicates that not
only were the brothers present at Pentecost but that one of them, James,
assumed an important leadership role in the new community. Paul men-
tions him in his letter to the Galatians: “I went up to Jerusalem to visit
Cephas and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other
apostles except James the brother of the Lord” (Gal. 1:18-19). Known in
later tradition as James the just, this man was dedicated to a conservative
form of Torah piety. He felt that all who were baptized into Christ had to
be circumcised first, a conviction that caused Paul, working among the
Gentiles, no little grief. Ironically, this devout Jewish brother of the Lord
was executed in the year 62 C.z. by the high priest Ananus on a trumped-
up charge of flouting the Law. As Josephus tells it, Ananus “called a meet-
ing of judges and brought into it the brother of Jesus who is called Christ,
James by name, and some others. He made the accusation that they had
transgressed the law, and he handed them over to be stoned.”>© The phrase
“brother of Jesus” in this text is an extrabiblical witness to the view that the
two were perceived to be blood brothers, because Josephus, writing history
and not theology, certainly knew the word for cousin and had no religious
point to make by not using it. James met a violent end, as did his more
famous crucified brother. We do not know, but it is doubtful that Mary was
still alive to mourn this final cruelty.

EVERYDAY LIFE

In the villages of Galilee, surviving as they did through intensive agricul-

ture, it was not efficient for both men and women to develop expertise in
all aspects of daily work. In the division of labor by gender that developed,
women’s economic, maternal, and religious roles intertwined in a series of
activities requiring vast investments of time and considerable expertise. In
an essay on women’s lives in the villages of Palestine that draws on archae-
 PICTURING A WORLD
200
in chapter
ology and social analysis of economic systems as laid out above
es shoul-
7, Carol Meyers describes the scope and kinds of responsibiliti
year.*” These are analog ous
dered by village women throughout a typical
many
to the work of women in communities of subsistence agriculture in
pate in the
parts of the world even today, where women and men partici
Miriam
chores of food production in equal measure. Picturing the world
we can
of Nazareth actually inhabited with her extended family household,
ing,
envision her engaged in some or all of these tasks: producing, process
and preserving food, making clothing, teaching, training, and caring for
children.
The work of providing food was a major factor in women’s daily sched-
of
ule. Even families of craftsmen like Joseph the tekton cultivated a plot
land for basic foodstuffs, including grains (mostly wheat, but also some
barley), olives for oil, and grapes for wine. A kitchen garden near the com-
pound would supply legumes, vegetables, and leeks, while orchard trees
producing figs, dates, and nuts supplemented the basic diet. Most families
kept a number of small animals, mostly sheep and goats but perhaps also
some cows. These provided dairy products, occasional meat, and skins and
wool for making clothing. While women worked in the distant fields at
planting and harvest times, the usual locale of their daily work was closer
to home to accommodate child care. “The gardening work—cultivating
fruit trees, vines, vegetables, and herbs as opposed to field crops—occu-
pied a significant portion of women’s outdoor time. Those commodities
were grown in plots adjacent to the living quarters, which made it easier
for women to tend to both children and crops.”*®
Once picked, some foodstuffs needed to be preserved for long-term
storage. The plethora of storage jars and pits uncovered in Galilean village
compounds testifies to the work that went into transforming harvested
crops into forms that would not spoil and would be available out of sea-
son. “Women were responsible for many, if not most, of these food preser-
vation tasks. They did much of the threshing, drying, pounding, and
pitting of foodstuffs to ensure a year-round food supply.’*” Other food-
stuffs needed to be prepared for immediate consumption. Grain, the
dietary mainstay, required a series of time-consuming operations to
become edible. It had to be soaked, milled, and ground; then the flour had
to be mixed with yeast, set to rise, and baked. This daily work was unceas-
ing, since bread was the main staple of the family diet, the true “staff of
life” In addition, olives had to be pressed for oil, grapes fermented, and
WOMEN: THE SOCIAL-CULTURAL WORLD 201

milk, where available, processed into yogurt or cheese. Routine care of the
domestic animals stabled in the courtyard or nearby was also women’s
responsibility.
And then there was the actual meal preparation. Jacob Neusner
observes that women’s work of providing nourishment to their families,
when done with the intent of observing the Torah’s dietary laws, gained an
added point of honor. By preparing food in accord with these require-
ments, “women gained a central role in the correct observance of the rules
governing cultic cleanness. . . . It follows that women now enjoyed the
power to secure sanctification.”*° Women’s work of feeding gained yet fur-
ther importance in Jesus’ parable about making bread, a process he no
doubt observed innumerable times during his years of growing up: “The
kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three
measures of meal, til it was all leavened” (Matt. 13:33). In Luise Schottroff’s
analysis, the large amount of flour reflects common practice whereby
bread was made in one batch for several families sharing a single courtyard
oven. A woman would leaven one-third of the dough, let it rise overnight,
and then knead in the rest and bake the loaves. In the parable this women’s
work becomes a picture of God’s work of renewing and saving the world.
“Her hands which knead the bread dough become transparent for God’s
actions. ... Bread and God, the hands of a woman baking bread and the
hands of God, are brought into relation.”*! The point of the parable in
Jesus’ telling is that in the eschatological situation in which he and his dis-
ciples live here and now, the leaven has already been worked in, the reign
of God is already at hand, so wait with calm but eager anticipation. But the
image that equates this women’s work with divine activity takes on added
resonance in a situation of poverty, where the product of mixing flour with
water and kneading in leaven is the raw material of life itself: “give us this
day our daily bread.” Baking bread, seeing that their people actually have
food to eat, women symbolize, and Mary would have actually enacted, the
life-giving power of God.
Another whole arena of women’s labor was the provision of most items
of clothing used by the family. While men most likely sheared the sheep,
women engaged in the time-consuming and complex tasks of carding and
spinning thread, weaving the cloth, and sewing the garments. Resembling
the homespun garb of American colonial or frontier days, the resulting
clothing would be sturdy but not elegant nor highly ornamented. In addi-
tion to textile production, women’s hands probably also made baskets used
 PICTURING A WORLD
202

the pots commu-

as containers and pottery for household needs, firing
e the vil-
nally. Only metal implements and tools had to come from outsid
househ old
lage. All of these life-supporting contributions to the family
ed for
absorbed most waking hours of a woman’s day. “The time requir
al variation, was
indoor, courtyard, and outdoor work, with some season
l skill
surely more than ten hours a day.’ The degree of technologica
high level of
required for most of these tasks, furthermore, points to a
was cer-
sophistication both in planning and execution. Some of the work
involved skill,
tainly repetitive, but the overall pattern of accomplishment
experience, and organizational prowess.
This high level of responsibility and expertise affected women’s parent-
ing role. While help would be available from older children, grandmoth-
ers, and childless aunts present in the household, a mother was primarily
in charge of the care of small children. Rather than compete with her other
workday obligations, this care was subsumed into the routine of daily
tasks, the children being present where the mother was working. “With
more of a woman’s time than a man’s being spent within the household
and its contiguous gardens and courtyards, women spent more time than
did men with children of both genders. Until boys were old enough to
accompany their fathers . . . and keep up with their strenuous activities,
they along with their sisters were cared for mainly by their mothers.” In
the absence of any formal institutionalized education, women socialized
young children. They created the atmosphere breathed in by these young
lives. They transmitted to them the culture, beliefs, and values of their Jew-
ish heritage. Meyers points out that this educative task is not visible in
scripture, which gives the impression that a cadre of elders and sages exer-
cised a male monopoly on teaching traditional practices and beliefs. “Yet
the day-to-day interactions of mothers with children in the household
were of foundational significance in passing most aspects of Israelite cul-
ture from one generation to the next.’** As women aged in multigenera-
tional households, their role as mothers also included managing the duties
of those junior to themselves, be they older children, daughters-in-law, or
nieces. The multiplicity of tasks required to keep the family alive could not
be done by one woman alone. Thus, senior women in an extended family
assumed managerial responsibility. “They not only taught younger family
members ... how to perform certain tasks; they also assigned jobs and saw
that they were accomplished.’* As a consequence of her success in fulfill-
ing the roles assigned to females in running a complex household, a
WOMEN: THE SOCIAL-CULTURAL WORLD 203

woman was likely to share strong parental authority with her husband.
Their partnership made life possible. Religious observances in the home
carried few gender-based restrictions. As organizers of family celebrations
of religious feasts, women contributed to the spiritual life of the whole
household. Their own prayer could be carried out morning and evening;
they sat together with their menfolk and children in the synagogue assem-
bly. While it is not likely that they led synagogue services in Galilee (unlike
some places in the Diaspora), some women did perform publicly during
funerals, composing and reciting traditional laments for the dead.
From these descriptions of village life, Carol Meyers draws out interest-
ing implications for the status of rural women. The importance, intricacy,
and time-consuming aspects of women’s work meant that village women
exercised control over critical aspects of household life. Rather than their
lives being governed by Western dichotomies of female submissiveness and
passivity in relation to male aggressiveness and action, they may well have
achieved a more relatively balanced form of social unity with men in
household settings. They may well have had a say, for example, in arrang-
ing marriages, especially for daughters. Girl children, too, were valuable in
view of the array of tasks facing female members of a household. Thus the
sense of girls being disadvantaged may not have been all-pervasive. It is
undoubtedly true that Israel was a patriarchal society with patrilineal
descent and male control of economic resources along with legal and polit-
ical power. Still, our growing knowledge of the social reality of the village
in settings of subsistence agriculture tempers the judgment that women
were totally oppressed.
Indeed, the household context of women’s lives was so rich in its relational
and occupational dynamics that the category “woman” was of little signifi-
cance. Women were mothers, daughters, sisters, wives; they were also bak-
ers, cooks, weavers, managers, teachers, worshipers, and so on. All these
roles involved some combination of social, economic, and biological func-
tions. Only when separated from households might sexuality, and thus the
category “woman,” emerge as a salient factor in their identity.*°
Such a situation in fact developed in urban settings, where female enclo-
sure and other restrictions were observed in upper-class households,
which no longer functioned as self-sufficient economic units.
All the evidence points to the fact that Miriam of Nazareth, wife of a
carpenter in the farming village of Nazareth, lived the bulk of her child-
bearing years along the rigorous lines described here, engaged in the labor
of maintaining a Jewish household in a rural village overlaid with the eco-
 PICTURING A WORLD
204 i e Se
S
BME yo oo

nomic pressures of dominant Roman authorities and their Herodian

client-kings. Once she was widowed, her situation would have become
her
economically more precarious, depending on the composition of
household and the ability of others to assume her husband’s share of the
life-sustaining work. If in her older years she moved to Jerusalem, as seems
indicated by Acts, she would have left country life behind and transitioned
labor but
to urban customs, which involved, at the very least, less manual
more segregation by gender, beginning with temple worship.
It seems odd to emphasize this, but so much Christian art from
medieval times on has depicted Mary beautifully dressed and living ina
palace, upper-class room, or monastery, that our memory needs to be
refreshed about the fact that her historical life was shaped by the limits of
literacy.
her time, place, and class. One other aspect where this is the case is
Medieval European art created by and for the upper classes often depicts
Mary absorbed in reading. What was Mary doing when the angel came?
She was reading a book!*” The book is scripture, and the artist thereby
skillfully symbolizes her piety and her readiness to write the next chapter
of the divine plan of salvation by mothering the Messiah. In the context of
the economic and cultural analysis presented above, however, such literacy
is highly unlikely. Numerous studies put the literacy rate in the Roman
empire at or below 10 percent. In Pompeii, for example, that thriving first-
century Roman town destroyed by Mt. Vesuvius, whose excavated homes,
courtyards, and frescoes show a high standard of culture, it is estimated
that 2 to 3 percent of the 100,000 people were literate.** As Meier points
out, “the ability to read, and even more the ability to write, lengthy works
in any language was a relatively rare skill in the Greco-Roman world, a skill
restricted largely to scribes and an intellectual elite . . . the vast majority of
ordinary people were functionally illiterate.” As in the rest of the empire,
so too in Palestine: literacy was concentrated in the political and cultural
elite, who formed a small percentage of the land’s inhabitants. Nor is this
situation peculiar to ancient times. John Dominic Crossan observes that in
a cross-cultural perspective, peasants almost by definition are illiterate.
Studies in the twentieth century bear him out: in India in 1921, the illiter-
acy rate was 90.5 percent; South Africa in 1921: 90.3 percent; Egypt in
1927: 85.7 percent; Turkey in 1927: 91.8 percent; Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq,
Saudi Arabia before 1950: above 90 percent in each case.”°
Some would argue that the Jewish people had more reason than others
to promote the ability to read insofar as their religious tradition revered
the Torah and the prophets, sacred texts which were written on scrolls,
WOMEN: THE SOCIAL-CULTURAL WORLD 205

copied, and publicly read. Certainly, there was a cadre of people for whom
this was true, most notably the scribes and the Pharisees. But in the
Galilean peasant villages living at a subsistence level, it seems highly
unlikely that many people were literate. Jonathan Reed points out that the
fact that no inscriptions have yet been found in village excavations also
points to an illiterate population.°! Even if some young boys were
instructed to read and write for religious purposes (highly debated), the
chances that peasant girls were afforded that opportunity are minimal.
Low literacy rates, however, did not hamper success in everyday life. We
who live in a culture inundated with the written word in books, newspa-
pers, magazines, and computers, to say nothing of video images, can hardly
imagine how effective an oral culture can be. Oral exchanges passed on
technical knowledge such as agriculture and navigation as well as histori-
cal knowledge of the great deeds of the past. Songs, stories, and poems,
recited from memory, communicated cultural knowledge. In the home
parents taught their children the sacred traditions of their people as well as
key prayers and rituals. In village festivals the tradition of the people would
be ritualized and expressed.°* Though she was hardly likely to be reading a
book when the angel came, or at any other time, Miriam of Nazareth, like
illiterate peasant women everywhere, could participate in a rich cultural
and religious tradition through the power of the spoken word in an oral
culture.
We have not spoken yet of Miriam of Nazareth’s physical appearance,
but it has become obvious that not only are the blond hair and blue eyes
typical of so much European and North American art inappropriate, but
so too is the delicate, unworked physique of a privileged, teenage beauty
queen. Art critics note that Renaissance portraits depict women with
exquisitely beautiful features whether they were actually beautiful or not,
because of the philosophical principle that great beauty implies lofty
virtue and, conversely, that spiritual beauty shows itself in physical ways.
Given this convention that beauty adorns virtue, artists also painted Mary
along the lines of the most ideally beautiful women they knew. These
depictions, however, are not accurate, and our culture has altogether aban-
doned this correlation. “Getting tumbled in a wave of neo-Platonic fanta-
sizing about how outer shape mirrors inner essence—'For Soule is Forme,
and doth the Bodie make, wrote the poet Spenser in 1596—may be great
for the figure and complexion when court painters like Botticelli . . . are
watching, but it’s not so good for documentary truth.”*? Was Miriam of
Nazareth beautiful? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Along with the women of her
 PICTURING A WORLD
206 mg egre
e
ND
rranean dark
class and ethnic heritage, she had Semitic features, Medite
hair and dark eyes. Given her everyday life, she also would have had a mus-
cular body shaped by the routines of hard daily labor. Poet Kathleen Norris
identifies the need for artists today to produce more work that envisions
y of
Mary as a strong peasant woman “capable of walking the hill countr
Judea and giving birth in a barn,” a woman with a robust physique both
in youth and in old age.

The project of questing for the historical Mary has entailed using the spade
of archaeology, the measuring tools of social science, and the quill of
ancient authors, all interpreted by contemporary scholars, to construct a
picture of the world she inhabited. My purpose has been to describe first-
century Galilee with its political-economic, religious, and social condi-
tions in order to picture the actual historical world that Miriam of
Nazareth inhabited. The discipline of historical work has required that the
past be allowed to stand in all its differences from our own era, rather than
erasing that strangeness. I am not interested in this picture simply for his-
torical reasons, however, but am motivated by a theological interest. It is
my conviction that remembering Mary as a distinct friend of God and
prophet within the communion of saints can generate rich religious mean-
ing in the contemporary church. Picturing her world is the first step in
shaping a critical memory within the Christian community that can open
up a liberating future. The second step is reading scripture, in particular
the scenes in which Mary appears. As we do so, the circumstances pictured
above come forward not as mere historical background but as the warp
and woof of the world in which the revelation of God took place. For it is
precisely in this economic, political, and cultural setting, living out her
Jewish faith as a peasant woman of the people, that she walked her journey
of faith with enormous consequence. It is precisely to such a woman that
Sophia-God has done great things, pouring out divine favor on a margin-
alized, illiterate villager and calling her to participate in the work of
redemption. It is precisely such a woman who rejoices in God and sings
prophetically that God is coming to overturn oppression in favor of the
poor of the earth. Reading the gospels within the matrix of her actual
world is one way to ensure that the way we remember her releases the
power of the God of life.
Q rant 5

Mary in the Communion of Saints

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a10

The Dangerous Memory of Mary:

A Mosaic

THEOLOGICAL MEMORY

‘Srafting a theology of Mary means seeing the significance of her per-

son and her vocation within the logos of faith for our time. Thus, our
quest goes beyond historical research to explore the memory of
Mary within the great cloud of witnesses made holy by God’s Spirit, seek-
ing the import of her story for faith and its practice, including the practice
of women and the church’s practice regarding women. In keeping with this
book’s modest proposal, I envision the magnetic center of this memory to
be Mary as a woman of Spirit. The presence and power of the Holy Spirit
of God, Spirit-Sophia, surround her particular, concrete life, fraught with
moments of intense joy and suffering along with stretches of unremark-
able, graced dailiness, calling her ever forward. Walking by faith, not by
sight, she composes her life as a friend of God and a prophet, one who
actively partners the divine work of repairing the world. Her life gives us
“lessons of encouragement” not in the sense of laying down precise tracks
that other believers in God must necessarily walk. As is obvious from the
previous chapters, the circumstances of her actual life can never be
repeated. But the style and spirit of her responses reverberate through the
centuries to encourage the practice of discipleship in today’s different cul-
tural contexts. This is more than giving example. In solidarity with her in
the one community of grace, contemporary people experience the impe-
tus to face up to their own encounters with the Spirit and go forward with
the best of their faithful wits. This experience receives a critical edge when
we remember Mary within women’s experiences of historical and religious
domination and their struggles to resist and be free. Then the vital mem-
ory of this woman empowered by Holy Wisdom challenges, consoles, and

209
210 MARY aIN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS
BEN a oh I ee

sparks hope in present-day contending against ancient patterns of injus-

tice, itself a work of salvation.
How do we remember her? Keeping the findings from archaeology, the
social sciences, and ancient history and literature in view and now refram-
ing them in a theological context, this stage of our inquiry turns to scrip-
ture as a primary resource. Composed over many decades after Pentecost,
the books of the New Testament bear the early church’s witness to what
God has done in Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world. Rooted in his-
tory, these are profoundly theological writings. Within them there are at
least thirteen scenes where Miriam of Nazareth, identified either by her
own name or as the mother of Jesus, speaks, takes action, or is described as
an essential part of the action.! In probing these scenes for the theological
memory of Mary they carry, I will employ two areas of scholarship as pri-
mary tools, namely, modern biblical studies and feminist hermeneutics.
Each provides assumptions and methods that shape this theological inter-
pretation of her memory.
Modern biblical scholars hold a fairly solid though not uncontested
consensus that the canonical gospels came into being in three stages, start-
ing with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth witnessed by
his disciples, moving to the oral preaching of the early church, and peak-
ing with written composition of the gospels by the evangelists in view of
the needs of their churches. While there is some dispute about chronology,
a fairly broad agreement also exists that Mark wrote first in the seventies;
a decade or so later Matthew and Luke adapted his work, adding sayings of
Jesus from a common source (Q) along with their own diverse materials;
and John composed last toward the end of the first century, using his own
original sources. Since most of the marian material appears in the first two
chapters of Matthew and Luke, the genre they used there known as infancy
narratives comes in for special attention. Obviously there were no apos-
tolic eyewitnesses to the events of Jesus’ conception and birth, nor did
these events enter into the early kerygma of the church, which focused on
the paschal mystery. The provenance of these infancy stories is a skein of
small strands of oral tradition, colored by pigment from narratives from
the Hebrew Scriptures, which the evangelists wove into imaginative, theo-
logically powerful scenes that proclaim the identity and mission of Jesus
the Christ. Composing these narratives last after the main body of their
gospels had been written, but placing them first, Matthew and Luke in
effect created christological overtures that sound all the themes that will
show up later in their gospels.’
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 2h

One of the major achievements of modern biblical scholarship is the

clarity with which it emphasizes that these gospels are all faith documents.
All four gospels have as their purpose to announce the good news of sal-
vation coming from God in Jesus through the power of the Spirit, and to
bring this story to bear on the spiritual and practical needs of a particular
community of believers. Their intent is not simply historical or biograph-
ical but missionary and community building: to provide the church with
witness to God’s gracious mercy in Jesus and to provide guidance for walk-
ing in the “Way” according to the Spirit. Consequently, all the gospel writ-
ers read the post-resurrection situation back into the ministry and origin
of Jesus, interpreting the traditions they received about his words and
deeds in light of what they now knew to be the marvelous, God-given out-
come of the story of his defeat. They chose certain memories, omitted
others, paraphrased his words, and interpreted his healings, companion-
able suppers, and conflicts so as to grapple with the meaning of his iden-
tity and mission. Knowing that post-Easter faith in Jesus as Messiah, Lord,
and Savior shaped the gospels’ presentations, as did the current challenges
and conflicts faced by the different local churches which were the intended
audience, biblical exegetes encourage an appreciative approach to the
diversity of the gospels. Rather than trying to harmonize their different
theological perspectives, let alone concrete points of narrative, we need to
understand that each evangelist’s voice is important.
Traditional mariology achieved a synthesized view of Mary by harmo-
nizing the diverse gospel texts into a smooth-running narrative of her life,
sometimes even rounding things out by adding the postbiblical doctrines
of the Immaculate Conception at the beginning and the Assumption at the
end.* New methods bring new results. Departing from centuries of literal
exegesis, a contemporary approach precludes writing a historical biogra-
phy or psychological study of Mary. In place of such a unifying schema, we
acknowledge and honor the fact that the gospels have distinctly different
views of Mary, reflecting the evangelists’ diverse theologies of world his-
tory and understandings of Jesus, and the needs of the local churches in
which they wrote. Drawing on these various gospel portraits, conse-
quently, does not produce material for a complete biography but gives dif-
ferent glimpses, snapshots, vignettes, or brief portrayals of incidents in
Mary’s life, scenes already interpreted as part of each gospel’s testimony of
faith in God. The biblical portrait of the Galilean Jewish mother of Jesus is
shaped by the needs of proclaiming the gospel and is laced through with
DA MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

faith interpretation in the light of Christ’s resurrection. It is already a the-

ological memory.
The field of feminist interpretation, working with these standard bibli-
cal methods, raises the further critical question of gender bias in both
composition and interpretation of texts. The gospels, while part of
inspired scripture in the church, are also marked by the sin of the society
in which they were crafted, including acceptance of slavery, violence, and
patriarchy. They were written by educated men who apparently did not
suffer directly from these abuses and whose work tends to erase the expe-
rience of those who did. Recall the classic statement in Matthew’s account
of Jesus feeding the multitudes. The story concludes: “And those who ate
were about five thousand men, not counting women and children” (Matt.
14:21).* Surely this is not because their appetites were so small as to be
unworthy of mention; it is because their persons were unimportant. In the
view of the world held by ruling men, such persons literally did not count.
This pattern holds true throughout the Bible: the presence and creative
activity of women are consistently omitted, played down, or criticized by
the patriarchal orientation of the authors. We read these texts, further-
more, through a history of translation, commentary, and preaching
shaped by the clerical culture of the church that has given rise to interpre-
tations oppressive to women, including the construals of Mary that
women resist today. A venerable axiom would have it that the Bible is the
word of God in the words of men. All too true.
To free up the word of God so that it stands in alliance with the flour-
ishing of women, a wide variety of exegetical methods of interpretation
come into play. A recent compendium of these methods collected by
Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza brings together two centuries of women’s
biblical scholarship under the rubric of Wisdom Ways.° Questioning the
biased point of view of the authors and making the strategic move of plac-
ing women at the center of attention, such methods break through inher-
ited patriarchal understandings that run so deep as to be taken for granted.
Corrective methods seek to remedy uses of the Bible that prohibit women’s
equal rights by showing that both testaments, if understood correctly,
authorize women’s full participation in the world. Historical reconstructive
methods seek to recover forgotten traditions about women, both their
accomplishments and the memory of their struggles and defeats, by work-
ing with an angle of vision that makes the marginalized visible and their
silences audible. Imaginative interpretive methods use midrash, story-
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 213

telling, song, dance, and prayer to bring out the emancipatory potential of
the text in dialogue with the emotions of the interpreters. Within these
three overarching methods, a rich array of steps can be employed, dance
steps that interpret the text according to Wisdom’s ways. A hermeneutics
of experience consults women’s personal and political experiences of the
text in order, if necessary, to read “otherwise.” A hermenutics of social
location critically analyzes the workings of power, both oppressive and lib-
erating power, in the text, its tradition, and its contemporary readers. A
hermeneutics of suspicion queries and demystifies structures of domina-
tion that are internal to the biblical text and its traditional interpretations.
A hermeneutics of critical evaluation makes judgments about the ethical
quality of biblical teaching in light of women’s human dignity. A her-
meneutics of creative imagination generates utopian visions of female
emancipation, for what we cannot imagine cannot take place. A herme-
neutics of reconstruction retrieves the hidden histories of women, tracing
clues buried in the text that indicate they were active subjects of history.
And a hermeneutics of transformative action for change explores avenues
and possibilities for changing relations of domination inscribed in the text
and in everyday life, being particularly accountable to women who strug-
gle at the bottom of the pyramid of discrimination. Like the woman of the
gospel looking for her lost coin, these methods search diligently “for sub-
merged meanings, lost voices, and authorizing visions”® that will inspire
religious imagination for a different future. These methods have already
guided the work of retrieving the kind of liberating theology of Mary seen
above in chapter 2, and they will be in play in the sections ahead.
One example is worth a thousand words of description. Luke’s story of
Martha and Mary hosting Jesus in their Bethany home offers a good illus-
tration of feminist hermeneutics at work. Since Luke’s infancy narrative is
the main source of the image of Mary the mother of Jesus in Catholic tra-
dition, discussion of this passage also flags problems we will face in the
Lukan section ahead. To begin with, feminist scholars highlight the enor-
mous ambiguity in Luke’s treatment of women. On the positive side, he is
interested in affirming women in his mostly Gentile community and edu-
cating them in the Christian way. Hence he includes more stories about
women than any other gospel. Indeed, throughout subsequent centuries
Luke’s gospel has played a key role in the development of women’s spiritu-
ality and Christian self-understanding. On the negative side, however, he
is interested in presenting this new religion in a pleasing, nonalarming way
Da MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

to educated readers in the Roman empire. Hence, to defend it from the

charge that it threatens society’s patriarchal social conventions, Luke hands
public leadership in the church to men and tends to silence the women in
his stories, stifling their prophecy, diminishing their leadership, and cast-
ing them into socially acceptable, obedient roles. Recall how when Jesus’
parents present him in the temple, two elders come forth to bless him.
Simeon utters a canticle that is still recited as part of the night prayer of the
church. Anna the prophet, however, is given no words or speech, even
though Luke reports that “she gave thanks to God and spoke of [the Mes-
siah] to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38).
We hear the man speak, but not the woman. This paradigm persists right
through Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, where the Spirit is poured out upon
the whole community, “your sons and your daughters” alike (Acts 2:17, cit-
ing Joel 2:28), but the stories that follow tell only of the sons who preach
and prophesy, not the daughters. While the presence of women prophets,
apostles, and missionaries is alluded to, we never hear their voice.
Knowing this pattern alerts us to the dynamic at work in the Martha-
Mary scenario (Luke 10:38—42). Luke has Jesus praise the choice Mary
makes to sit at his feet listening to his words, thus establishing her role as a
disciple. This is a valuable affirmation; but he also has Jesus rebuke Martha
for her active service, telling her that Mary has chosen the better part.
Preachers have traditionally seen here a contrast between the active and
contemplative life, with Jesus giving his blessing to the latter. Feminist
scholars detect a different message. The Greek text describes Martha’s work
with the word diakonia, or service, a term that elsewhere epitomizes the
mission of Jesus and describes a variety of leadership ministries in the early
church. We are not talking about housework here. Within this text lies
buried the memory that Martha the “deacon” was a leader in the early
church. Confirmation for this idea comes from John’s gospel, which
depicts Martha as the spokesperson for the christological faith of the com-
munity. She rather than Peter utters the community’s pivotal confession
that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the
world” (John 11:27).’ Martha and her sister Mary were originally close
friends and disciples of Jesus and, in their different ways, ministers in the
early Christian church. Because of his political concern about outsiders’
perception of social disorder in the community, however, Luke attempts in
this story to denigrate Martha’s leadership role. He encourages respectable
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY ABs)

women to choose “the better part,” which consists in receptive listening

alone.
In her study of Luke’s gospel, Barbara Reid argues that rather than try-
ing to rescue this text in itself, the best approach to this story today is to
recognize the late-first-century historical situation it reflects. Women were
active in many ministries. Concerned about the community’s acceptance
in the wider society, some men wanted to stop this and return women to
traditional gender roles. “It is important to know that the Lukan approval
of silent, passive women is only one side of the early Christian debate,” she
advises. The other side is represented by John’s gospel, which “understood
Jesus to commission all Christians, women as well as men, to express their
faith in the performance of all manner of deaconal ministries.”® Recogniz-
ing Luke’s patriarchal bias, readers today need to challenge his prescrip-
tions of gender roles and uncover the hidden history of women’s ministry
buried in this story. “Choosing the better part would be to read with new
eyes against Luke’s intent.”
Mary Rose D’Angelo concurs that Luke-Acts, while not denying that
women are engaging in Spirit-filled ministries, is written with the intent
“to change that practice, to restrict the participation of women to the
bounds of discreet behavior,” making Luke’s portrayals of women “at once
a means of edification and of control.”!° Still, when informed by contem-
porary critical methods and by the concerns of women, the historically
ongoing process of interpretation in the community of believers allows for
new, liberating messages to escape even against Luke’s intention. Exploring
the oppressive dynamics of this gospel, so powerful because done so artis-
tically, Jane Schaberg challenges the reader to approach this text with an
ambivalence commensurate to its own: enter into the text to appreciate it,
and stand apart from it in order to assess its truth and helpfulness. In terms
of women’s struggle for equality, Luke is a “formidable opponent” bent on
legitimating male dominance in the Christianity of his day. However,
“once the negative side of this ambivalent tradition is recognized and
worked with, the reader is freed in relation to the text. What is positive and
promising in Luke’s Gospel can be explored with enthusiasm and even
respect.”!! When women find their voices and query the text from the
depth of their struggles, their reading may even bring to light egalitarian
traditions preserved in the sources of this gospel. Wrestling with the text to
gain its blessing, like Jacob with the mysterious angel (a favorite metaphor
 216 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

for the work of feminist biblical interpretation), women discover mean-

ings that nourish their discipleship in this new age. In D’Angelo’s felicitous
observation, “Like many another Christian author, Luke may have reck-
oned without the subversive potential of telling women stories of them-
selves.”!* The story of Mary of Nazareth is one such story. Even though
Luke presents her in positive fashion in his infancy narrative, she subse-
quently sinks into silence along with the rest of the women in the gospel
and Acts. If we are to seek out the liberating power of her memory in
alliance with women’s struggle for true human dignity, we need to connect
her with other women then and now and tell her story subversively.
I submit that the work of crafting a mosaic provides a productive
metaphor for the work that lies ahead. Unlike a coherent sweep of line that
shapes a traditional painting, a mosaic is made up of small fragments of
colored stone or marble, called tesserae in the language of art. Each sliver
alone is no more than a spot of color or a minute marking. Working
according to a pattern, artists inlay these chips in plaster or cement. Assem-
bled together they display a picture or intelligent design, ever more clearly
the further back you stand. But it is always possible to move in again and
see the individual bits of stone. Like chips of a great mosaic, the marian
texts of scripture are discrete images that do not form a complete picture
on their own. They are glued into the story of Jesus, which itself presumes
the whole biblical sweep of God’s gracious history with the world from
creation to final redemption, together with its narration of human
responses through sin and suffering, fidelity and joy, lament and praise, the
struggle for righteousness and profound thanksgiving. They are also
refracted in contemporary women’s experiences of the Spirit of God in dif-
ferent global locations, women whose conversation with biblical texts gen-
erates new angles of vision. Constructing this mosaic, we allow what
scholars call the “worlds” of the biblical text to interact to create a living,
liberating memory. We attend to the world behind the text, or the actual
historical world that Miriam of Nazareth inhabited, as explored in the pre-
vious three chapters; the world of the text, which is the theological view of
Mary crafted by the gospel writers as they proclaim salvation in Jesus the
Christ in their own time and place; and the world ahead of the text, or the
ongoing struggle of women today for full participation in every dimension
of life. We study tesserae, then, these individual theological memories of
Mary, as flashes of color that form part of the texture of the story of the liv-
ing God’s engagement with the flesh and matter of the world, including in
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY Dadwg

our day the uprising of women into full humanity. The goal is a multi-
faceted, living, memory-image of Mary within the cloud of witnesses that
shares in the quality of “danger” insofar as it awakens resistance, births
wisdom, and inspires hope for the flourishing of women, indeed of all
human beings and the earth, as beloved of God.

OUTSIDE
(MARK 3:20-21 AND 31-35)"

The first tessera for this marian mosaic comes from the earliest gospel,
Mark. The story is set in the lake village of Capernaum, where Jesus has
begun a ministry of preaching and healing that is drawing large, enthusi-
astic crowds. Hearing of this, “his own,” also translated as his family or his
relatives, set out to seize him and bring him home to Nazareth because
they think he has lost his mind. Mark fills in the time it takes for them to
arrive with a hostile exchange between Jesus and some scribes from Jeru-
salem, who accuse him of being in league with Satan. As that dispute winds
down, Jesus is told that his family has arrived: “your mother and your
brothers are outside, asking for you.” Tension fills the air. Instead of rising
at once and greeting them as custom and law requires, he emphatically
“rejects,!4“repudiates,”!°“disowns”'® his family using characteristic Jew-
ish dialogue: Who are they?
“Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking around on those who
sat about him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does
the will of God is brother and sister and mother to me.”
Jesus’ words are rife with new vision. Blood ties do not guarantee a place
in his community of disciples, but loving and acting on behalf of the reign
of God do. The blessedness he offers is open to anyone who wants it, with-
out distinction of sex or gender, infertility or maternity, physical kinship
or family connections, so long as they seek the will of God. As Mark struc-
tures it, the scene draws a strong contrast between Jesus’ biological family
and a new kind of inclusive community, the eschatological family called
into being by shared commitment to doing the will of God. According to
this criterion, the mother and brothers of this popular preacher-healer
stand outside, not inside with his disciples. Jesus “emphatically distances
himself from his blood family.”!’ In their stead, “looking around on those
who sat about him,” he visually and verbally embraces the people in the
 218 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

house, who, unlike his family, do not think he is beside himself nor pos-
sessed of a demon. These are his true kin, the authentic family of God.
They replace his natural family in importance.
Biblical scholar Joanna Dewey points out that Jesus’ redefinition of kin-
ship “is extremely radical in its first-century context,”!® especially for
women. The eschatological family depicted here is not patriarchal, not
ruled by or even defined by a male head of household. There are no fathers.
Even Jesus himself does not assume patriarchal authority but interprets
himself as a brother and a son to all in the group. Women are redefined as
his sisters and mother. In place of obedience to husband and father, they
owe fidelity only to God in a community built up not by subservience but
by nurturing and collegial relationships. In this context Mark’s gospel goes
on to depict a cast of strong women who interact dynamically with Jesus
in ways that benefit themselves and also challenge and change him. Con-
sider the Syro-Phoenician woman, fighting for her daughter, who teaches
this Jewish prophet to think more inclusively about his mission (Mark
7:24-30); the unnamed woman who prophetically anoints his living body
for burial, receiving the encomium that “wherever the gospel is preached
in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her”
(Mark 14:39); and the women disciples from Galilee whom the gospel
describes during the passion as looking on, watching, and seeing—classic
verbs describing those who bear witness (Mark 15:40, 47).!9 By contrast,
the mother of Jesus here is a foil for authentic discipleship.
This negative portrait is strengthened by a later Markan scene that
depicts Jesus’ rejection when he does go back to preach in his home village
of Nazareth. Responding to the neighbors who take offénse at him, the son
of Mary says, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country
and among his own kin and in his own house” (Mark 6:4). The scene gives
support to the contention that Jesus’ own natural family neither under-
stood nor honored him, a tradition that, even though Mark emphasizes it
the most, appears also in other gospels. These family tensions and Jesus’
sharp disengagement from his mother and brothers during his ministry
have good claim to a historical root. Remembering that after Easter Mary
shared the faith of the earliest Christian community, the ecumenical team
of Mary in the New Testament reasons that “since she was from the first a
member of the post-Easter community, it is unlikely that her earlier mis-
understanding of her Son is simply a creation of Mark or of the tradition
he repeats; for it is hard to believe that such a misunderstanding would
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 219

have been attributed to the believing mother of the risen Lord if there had
been no basis for such an attribution. The basis seems to have been that, in
fact, she did not follow Jesus about as a disciple during the ministry.””°
It is instructive to watch how Matthew and Luke edit this scene accord-
ing to their own interests. Toning down the rejection a bit, Matthew omits
the information that Jesus’ family has come to seize him because they think
he is beside himself. They just show up. However, Matthew still describes a
strong contrast between natural family and disciples in Jesus’ rhetoric and
gesture: “Who is my mother and who are my brothers? And stretching out
his hand toward his disciples, he said, Here are my mother and my broth-
ers...” [Matt. 12:46-50]). By contrast, Luke shifts the whole event into a
positive mode (8:19-20). Not only does he too omit the damaging infor-
mation about the family’s motivation for their trip, but by omitting the
question “Who are my mother and my brothers?” and the replacement
answer “Here are my mother and brothers,” he drops the outside—inside
contrast. While the criterion for belonging to the community of disciples
is the same, namely, hearing the word of God and acting upon it, Jesus’
mother and brothers now meet that criterion. Any implication that the
family is hostile or does not understand is avoided. Instead, they are
counted among the disciples. Biblical scholars desiring to defend the good
name of Jesus’ family point out that there is nothing in Mark’s original sce-
nario that would prevent mother and brothers from becoming part of the
eschatological family, eventually. Still, in the Markan account they are
clearly “outside.”
Traditional mariology that glorified Mary never knew what to do with
this text and as a consequence largely ignored it. In my judgment, it is an
irreplaceable antidote to distortions of the tradition as well as a contribu-
tion to the memory of Mary in its own right. Here Jesus’ mother and
brothers arrive as a family and are disowned together. Whether these boys
are her natural children, stepchildren, or nephews, their close association
in this crisis places her in maternal relationship to more than one child.
Here, too, the relationship between mother and her firstborn son is
strained, pouring cold water on the multitude of traditional sentimental
reflections about Jesus’ relationship with his mother. Psychologically, to
reach maturity men cannot stay fixated on their mother but must move
out to form relationships within their own peer group. We see a healthy
development in this episode.
A feminist interpretation does not seek to change Jesus’ critical attitude
220 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

toward his family, but sees Mary in a different light. Standard commen-
taries on this passage hold that at the very least Jesus’ mother and brothers
misunderstood him. Perhaps they did, this being an instance of a truly
gifted person soaring beyond the vision and expectations of a typical fam-
ily. It might just as well be the case, though, that they understood him only
too well and sought to forestall what they saw as inevitably disastrous con-
sequences. Parents whose children take risks to follow their dream in dan-
gerous situations know the feelings well: the fear, the pride, the effort to
protect. In Miriam of Nazareth’s case, as one Jewish writer observes, “This
son ... roams around through the country and creates unrest. He does
things that are dangerous: danger threatens from the Jewish authorities
and from the hated occupying power of the Romans. He puts the whole
family at risk.”*! Making this trip, the unnamed mother of Jesus gives the
lie to passive obedience as the key to her nature. Who better to have orga-
nized such a family expedition? In response to his behavior, which not only
“rejected village norms for eldest sons””? but also opened the door to dis-
aster for himself and his kin, she and his brothers took action that they
considered to be for his own good. They set out to fetch him home. Pro-
pelled by the Spirit to follow his own calling, however, Jesus meets their
initiative with his own. He moves on without them.
In her feminist analysis of evil, ethicist Nel Noddings criticizes classical
notions of evil that have equated it with sinful disobedience to the patri-
arch and his representatives, human and divine. Such an understanding,
she argues, is not adequate to women’s experiences. When women are con-
sulted, it becomes clear that evil is defined as that which harms or threat-
ens to harm them and those they love. Chief among the basic evils,
considered phenomenologically, that women experience are useless,
intractable pain along with the failure to alleviate it; separation or neglect
of relation; and helplessness along with the mystification that sustains it.
By contrast, moral good and the virtues that promote it are best expressed
in an ethic of care that gives powerful impetus to building and remaining
in loving relations.” Continuing this kind of analysis, Sara Ruddick points
to three great interests that govern the actions of those who mother the
young: preserving the life of the child, fostering its growth, and shaping an
acceptable child. Rather than follow the dictates of law and society were
these to threaten the young, maternal thinking issues in ethical action to
preserve and protect, regardless. In this light, a feminist perspective
espies the exercise of female power in the action of Miriam of Nazareth,
who, no stranger to Roman violence and the havoc it could wreak on
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY ol

human lives, goes to persuade her child out of the line of fire. I am
reminded of an essay in the New Yorker after John F. Kennedy Jr. died along
with his wife and her sister while piloting a small aircraft. While she lived,
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis disapproved of her son’s wish to fly. The
lessons, the license, and the new plane arrived only after her death. Moved
by sorrow and aggravation at the loss of these promising young lives, the
essayist wants to scream on the wind: Listen to your mother!*°
My point is not to undo or reconfigure the events that Christians believe
brought about salvation, central to which are the miserable death and sur-
prising resurrection of Jesus the Christ. A whole new appreciative belief in
God-for-us welled up historically out of those events. What happened,
happened, and in the end we call it grace. In retrieving this Markan scene
as a valuable chip for the memory mosaic of Mary, however, we gain a
glimpse of a moment in time before these events took place. Full of con-
cern for one she loves, Miriam of Nazareth does not have the New Testa-
ment to help her interpret God’s designs. Embarking on a mission that
ultimately fails, she stands “outside” with an anxious mind and heart, the
frustrated, angry mother of Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel’s image, mal-
adapted to the shedding of blood. We should be wary about judging this
scene as evidence of lack of faith. The scholars of Mary in the New Testa-
ment rather sweepingly declare that the event behind this scene took place
before “the time at which Mary’s belief began,” by which they mean more
precisely the post-resurrection understanding of Jesus that she shared with
the Jerusalem community. While this may be true in a Christian sense, her
faith in God did not begin only after Easter, as witnessed by this scene,
where her faith is at full pitch. Believing in God, Creator and Redeemer of
the world, this Jewish woman partners the divine work of love by seeking
to preserve and protect a precious life. No submissive handmaid, her mem-
ory moves in solidarity with women everywhere who act critically accord-
ing to their best lights to seek the well-being of those they love.

IN THE COMPANY
OF THE UNCONVENTIONAL FOREMOTHERS
(MATTHEW 1:1-17)

Turning to Matthew’s gospel, we find that the infancy narrative that forms
the first two chapters offers four new tesserae for the marian mosaic. The
first stone is the genealogy that opens the gospel. This list of ancestors
 DIS) MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

traces Jesus’ lineage from Abraham through King David down to Joseph,
“the husband of Mary, of whom was begotten Jesus, who is called the Mes-
siah.” Locating Jesus deep within the Jewish tradition, it has the purpose of
introducing him as the fulfillment of messianic hopes. When this text is
read in liturgical assembly, eyes tend to glaze over with the repetition of the
“Degats,” A was the father of B, B was the father of C, and so on, with the
heritage passed on by men of mostly unpronounceable names. Raymond
Brown proposes the captivating idea that the church needs to read this text
during Advent to remind ourselves that just as most of these people were
ordinary folk who nevertheless advanced God’s plan, so too ordinary peo-
ple in the church today can contribute to God’s coming into the world by
fidelity in the midst of everyday life.
In view of seeking the memory of Mary, there is an even more interest-
ing aspect to consider. This genealogy is terribly androcentric, with the lin-
cage passing down through the fathers in orderly progression. The women
who did the work of bearing the sons of each generation go largely
unnamed, hidden by the patriarchal construct that considers women only
vehicles of reproduction rather than historical agents in their own right.2’
Even Mary is subsumed into Joseph’s story in this manner. In Matthew’s
rendering she neither speaks, nor receives divine revelation, nor expresses
a point of view. Yet this overall androcentric pattern of history breaks
open
when the genealogy lists four female ancestors by name and goes
on even
more dramatically to change the paternity pattern in Mary’s case.
In Elaine
Wainwright's evocative metaphor, the five women together “open
a small
fissure in the symbolic universe that the patrilineage constructs. Into
this
fissure can be drawn the memory of all the mothers and daughters
who
were likewise ancestors of Jesus.”28
It is a matter of interest that the four named female ancestors
are not the
revered Israelite matriarchs from Genesis, who would include Sarah,
per-
haps Hagar, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel. Instead the text
names Tamar,
Rahab, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah. These women all found
themselves at
some point outside the patriarchal family structure, and
consequently in
danger. Their stories show how in the midst of their precar
ious situations
they took unconventional initiatives to improve their
lot. Furthermore,
their enterprise becomes the vehicle for advancing
the divine plan of
redemption. In these instances, as Phyllis Trible says,
“the brave and bold
decisions of women embody and bring to pass the
blessings of God.”29 In
the genealogy these four women foreshadow the mothe
r of the Messiah,
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 223

who found herself in a similarly perilous situation. She belongs in the

company of these unconventional foremothers.
“Judah [was] the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar.” A childless
widow, Tamar poses as a prostitute by the side of the road to seduce her
father-in-law, Judah, who had reneged on his responsibility under the law
of levirate marriage to continue his son’s line.*° Her resulting illegitimate
pregnancy brings the terrible sentence of death by burning. This is over-
turned only when Judah finds out about her ruse. Realizing that she had
risked her life to continue the family line, he declares, “She is more right-
eous than I” (Gen. 38:26). She lives and brings forth twins. This is a pow-
erful story of a woman’s initiative and loyalty in the face of grave personal
danger. As Jane Schaberg interprets the point, “Tamar herself has acted to
secure her rights and demonstrate her righteousness. Suspected of bring-
ing death and disgrace, she has in the end brought life,”?! life in the form
of the continuation of Judah’s name and of the covenant promise of
descendants for Abraham.
“Salmon [was] the father of Boaz by Rahab.” A prostitute in Jericho,
Rahab shelters the Israelite spies as they reconnoiter the city on their way
back to the promised land. They had most likely sought her out initially
in her professional capacity. In return for her hospitality and assistance in
their escape, she secures a promise of safety for herself and her whole
household when the Israelites finally attack. Basically “a survivor in the
world of men at war,”*? this Canaanite woman, though unfaithful to her
own people, uses her ingenuity to ensure life for her loved ones along with
success for Israel. Motivated by a measure of faith in Israel’s God, she
enters the list as a foremother in the blessed lineage of the Messiah. Even
the New Testament holds her up as a model of faith and good works (Heb.
tiie Tas. 2°25).
“Boaz [was] the father of Obed by Ruth.” This young Moabite woman,
widowed, childless, and poor, joins her aged mother-in-law Naomi in the
struggle for survival in the patriarchal environs of Bethlehem. She secures
a wealthy husband after crawling under his blanket and spending the night
with him on the threshing floor, a story that has overtones of trickery and
levirate obligation. It also carries a taint of scandal analogous to that of
Tamar, who is, tellingly, mentioned by name in the people’s blessing after
Ruth gives birth to a son (Ruth 4:12). Though there is no clear evidence of
seduction, Ruth risks an accusation of harlotry and is praised for taking
that risk. She reverses her fortune, restores life to Naomi’s line, and brings
another measure of Gentile blood into the heritage of the Messiah.
 224 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

“David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.” This beautiful
woman was the object of David’s lust. Procuring her for himself, he com-
mits adultery and has her husband killed on the front lines in war. The
widow of a murdered man, she becomes pregnant with her lover’s child. As
punishment for David, this baby dies. Unlike the previous three women,
Bathsheba does not at first exercise initiative but seems trapped in this
appalling story, where her motives, feelings, rights, and love count for
nothing before the power of the king. Her passivity changes, though, when
she bears her next child, Solomon. Then as queen she acts to secure the
throne for him from a dying David over the rights of an older brother,
thereby also ensuring her own status for the rest of her life. As Schaberg
points out, this foremother shows that God’s providence goes forward
overall in what happens in history, if not in every detail of the sordid,
heartbreaking story.
Scholars have long sought a common point among these four ancestra
l
women that would link them with the fifth woman named in Matthew’s
genealogy. One theory, first proposed by Jerome in the fourth
century,
holds that they were all sinners, in contrast to Mary. This, however
, does
not seem to be Matthew’s point, because in the Jewish piety of the
first cen-
tury these women were looked upon with respect and praised for
their
deeds. Another hypothesis, popularized by Luther, proposes that
they were
all Gentiles, thereby indicating the scope of Jesus’ redempt
ive mission
beyond the Jewish people. But this is not necessarily the case
for Tamar or
Bathsheba, nor does it provide a point of similarity with
Mary. A number
of contemporary thinkers argue that the link among the women
consists
in the fact that (a) there is something extraordinary,
irregular, even scan-
dalous in their sexual activity, (b) which places them
in some peril, (c) in
view of which they take initiative, (d) thereby becoming
participants in the
divine work of redemption. Unexpectedly, God works
through, with, and
in them in a providential way to bring forth the Messiah
. Pointing out that
“in post-biblical Jewish piety these extraordinary unions
and initiatives
were seen as the work of the Holy Spirit.” Raymon
d Brown argues that the
genealogy presents these women and their actions
as vehicles of divine
providence, examples of how God moves in and through
the obstacle of
human scandal to bring about the coming of the
Messiah.*4 “Tamar was
the instrument of God’s grace by getting Judah to propaga
te the messianic
line; it was through Rahab’s courage that Israel
entered the Promised Land;
it was through Ruth’s initiative that she and Boaz
became the great-grand-
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 22>

parents of King David; and it was through Bathsheba’s intervention that

the Davidic throne passed to Solomon.”*> Through these unions, in which
the woman was often the heroic figure, God carried forward the divine
promise and plan. In straitened conditions the foremothers each dreamed
of a future and acted to bring it about, thereby partnering God’s redemp-
tive work in history. Reading from a critical feminist perspective, Elaine
Wainwright underscores the significance of the point that at the outset,
none of these women is properly related to a man as wife or daughter. The
fact that these foremothers, whether widowed, unmarried, prostitute, or
separated from a spouse, exist independently outside traditional domestic
arrangements makes them “dangerous to the patriarchal system.” As they
act, their stories encode aspects of women’s power. And “God’s messianic
plan unfolds in and through such power.** Jesus is as much the son of
Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba as he is of Abraham and David.
The presence of these anomalous women in Jesus’ ancestry within the
history of Israel frames the unconventional image of Mary as Matthew will
describe her. In the genealogy she too exists outside the patriarchal family
structure as the startling rupture of the patrilineage declares, “Jacob [was]
the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who
is called the Messiah” (1:16). Something odd is signified here. It is not
Joseph who begets but Mary who gives birth. The patriarchal pattern is
shattered, but as the foremothers show, “outside” this norm is not an easy
place to dwell. Mary became pregnant without having had sex with Joseph,
to whom she was betrothed in a legally binding relationship. In the eyes of
society her pregnancy is a scandal damaging to the social order since she
had not yet lived with her husband. She is vulnerable to the sanctions of
the law and liable to receive rigorous punishment. Providentially, her story,
like those of the women before her in the genealogy, has an outcome that
ensures the birth of a child to carry on the covenant promise. In terms of
giving us a picture of Mary’s initiative or creative action in the midst of
great danger, Matthew disappoints. She is voiceless in his narrative, which
focuses on Joseph. Nevertheless, in her precarious predicament, she, along
with her predecessors, “becomes the arena of sacred history and the locus
where the divine promises to Israel” are carried forward and fulfilled.”
It is precisely here, in the image of Mary as a scandalous woman with
whom God identifies, that Jane Schaberg finds a powerful biblical theol-
ogy. In a word, God acts as “one who sides with the outcast, endangered
woman and child.”38 Throughout the rest of Matthew’s gospel, a stream of
226 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

characters, from the hemorrhaging woman and crowds of other sick and
disabled people to the Canaanite woman agitating for her little daughter’s
health, from the demoniac of Gadarene to the tax collector Matthew and
his socially repugnant friends, will amplify this message first embodied in
the genealogy’s foremothers and in the mother of the Messiah. Insignifi-
cant, illegitimate, defenseless, tabooed people are beloved of God and may
become agents of divine action in history.*? Jesus himself is the most rad-
ical instance of this divine compassion. Born of a non-Davidic woman yet
messianic king, crucified by the state yet risen and ever present in the
Spirit, Jesus illuminates in his life the presence of grace in people and situ-
ations branded sinful and shameful. “In a world racked with injustice,”
observes Donald Senior, “where the lament of promises never fulfilled and
the frustration of hopes doomed to despair are the bitter bread of millions,
the unconventional dimensions of the gospel portrayals of Mary seem to
have more substance and appeal than ever before.”4? Outside patriarchal
expectations, looked upon askance by others, in danger for her life, her
participation in the birth of Jesus is acclaimed as holy. Her female power is
subversively linked to divine power and presence. In company with the
four unorthodox women who act in the genealogy, she stands in solidarity
with others in tragic or impoverished situations. Her memory bears the
revolutionary gospel assurance that the God of Israel, the God revealed in
Jesus, God’s own Spirit, is with them.

SCANDAL AND THE SPIRIT

(MATTHEW 1:18-25)
The whiff of scandal surrounding Mary in the genealogy becomes full-
blown in the next episode, which recounts how she and her husband nego-
tiate her unexpected pregnancy. Although the story is focused on Joseph
and says nothing about Mary’s action or faith, the “kernel” within the nar-
rative is the female situation of Mary’s conception of Jesus through the
Spirit without reference to male begetting and the birth of the Messiah in
these anomalous circumstances.*!
Recall that according to Jewish marriage customs of the day Mary and
Joseph were bound together in a legally ratified marriage. The text is
replete with references to “his wife,” “your wife” and “your husband.”
Before they came to live together, Mary was found to be with child. Joseph
knew he could not be the father. Her pregnancy would seem to be the
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY Da}

result of adulterous behavior. Being a just man, upright and observant of

Torah, he faced a searing dilemma. According to the Law, if a young
betrothed woman is found, on first coming to her husband, to have previ-
ously lost her virginity, she shall be stoned to death. In the words of
Deuteronomy, “they shall bring the young woman out to the entrance of
her father’s house and the men of her town shall stone her to death because
she committed a disgraceful act. ... So you shall purge the evil from your
midst” (Deut. 22:20-27, at 21). The one exception is if a young woman is
raped in the open country as opposed to the city, for out there no one
could hear her cries for help. Although this dictate was not carried out
assiduously in first-century Palestine, its religious judgment on the non-
virginal bride would still wield power over an upright man. Mercifully,
Joseph decided to divorce his wife quietly, thus sparing her any exposure to
public shame, or worse. Just when the couple was on the verge of breaking
up, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream encouraging him
not to be afraid to take his wife to his home for “the child conceived within
her is of the Holy Spirit.’ Here Matthew inserts a formulaic citation to
show that this conception fulfills Isaiah’s prophecy: “the virgin shall con-
ceive and bear a son, and they shall call him Emmanuel” (Isa. 7:14). Faith-
ful to his revelatory dream, Joseph completed the home-taking of the
pregnant Mary: “he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with
her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.” By exercising the
father’s right to name the child, he acknowledged his wife’s son as his own
in the legal and public sense. The child born within this marriage will be
regarded as his.
This narrative spells out the odd circumstances of Jesus’ begetting
hinted at in the genealogy. Like the four unconventional foremothers,
Mary’s situation is irregular. Her pregnancy is suspicious; socially and
legally within patriarchal culture there is more than a hint of disrepute. Yet
in the midst of this dangerous trouble something holy is going forward.
God’s Spirit moves amidst the threatening situation to bring about the
birth of the Messiah. Both elements together, scandal and the Spirit, pro-
duce a tessera colored by the dialectic so characteristic of the gospel whose
consummate event is the resurrection of the crucified one.

Historicity

Biblical scholars of all stripes think with more or less assurance that
Matthew inherited an older, pre-gospel tradition that something was irreg-
220 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

ular about Mary’s pregnancy. As Raymond Brown delicately puts it, peo-
ple remembered that Jesus was born too early after his parents started to
live together. There is a reasonable likelihood that this was the case, for why
would the evangelist invent an embarrassment that he would then have to
explain away? While the evangelist emphasizes that despite the scandal this
child is the fruit of the action of the Holy Spirit, from earliest times read-
ers have also wondered what the nature of the scandal actually was. Search-
ing for the historical nucleus of the tradition of this too-early birth, present
also in Luke’s infancy narrative, thinkers from the second century onward
have endorsed four different options. First, Joseph was the biological father
who conceived Jesus with Mary while they were in the betrothal stage of
their marriage. Second, an unknown man seduced Mary and committed
adultery with her. Third, a Roman soldier, usually given the name Pan-
thera, forcibly violated Mary, rape not being an unknown behavior in the
Roman army. Fourth, it was a physical, biological miracle, the Holy Spirit
of God causing the genesis of the child in Mary’s womb in the absence of
any human biological father. This last position, technically known as the
virginal conception of Jesus, became and remains the official teaching of
the Catholic Church, giving rise to the ancient appellation of Mary as Vir-
gin Mother.
Contemporary scholarly discussion that attempts to assess the histori-
cal validity of each of these options gives them unequal weight. The
Joseph-was-the-father thesis was first held by the Ebionites, an early group
of mainly Jewish Christians who held that Jesus was not the Son of God
from the beginning. Rather, he started his life simply as the son of Joseph,
but in the course of time God adopted him as his own Son. This position
has little backing in oral or written evidence. Indeed, Matthew’s descrip-
tion of Joseph’s quandary would seem to omit it out of court. By contrast,
the charge of Jesus’ illegitimacy by adultery or rape is clearly documented
from the second century in both Jewish and Christian sources. It became a
mainstay of anti-Christian polemic for centuries and also appears in
Christian rebuttals. So well established did the paternity of the Roman sol-
dier become in Jewish circles that simply the reference Ben Panthera, or
son of Panthera, was sufficient to designate Jesus without mention of his
given name. Raymond Brown and other exegetes argue that there is no way
of knowing whether this charge arose before Matthew wrote, so that he
was responding to it with the affirmation that Jesus was conceived by the
Spirit, or whether in fact it originated as a derogatory interpretation of
Matthew’s gospel itself.”
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 229

In an intensely thoughtful, respectful study of this charge, Jane Schaberg

proposes that both Matthew and Luke inherited the tradition that Jesus the
Messiah had been conceived in an illegitimate manner outside of mar-
riage, along with the theological understanding that the Holy Spirit was in
some way present and active in this event. “Both evangelists worked fur-
ther with this potentially damaging and potentially liberating material,”
spinning it so artfully and with such theological astuteness that Christians
soon became unaware of the illegitimacy that lay behind their infancy nar-
ratives. Trying to discern the contours of Mary’s original trouble, Schaberg
reads Matthew’s text as a story “of a dangerous pregnancy outside the
structures of patriarchal marriage—a situation as ancient as it is com-
mon,” with chilling results on women’s well-being throughout history.
This reading draws the infancy narratives into the shadow of the cross, the
larger scandal of the gospel. The good news, as already explored in the
genealogy, is that God sides with the outcast, endangered woman and her
child. God does this not by intervening directly to stop events of human
violence and betrayal, to stop rape or conception after rape, but by being
present “as one who reaches into that history to name the messiah.”
Through the creative power of the Spirit it comes about that “this child’s
existence is not an unpremeditated accident, and it is not cursed; the preg-
nant Mary is not to be punished.” Rather, conceived of the Holy Spirit, this
child has a special relation with God. Jesus is the Son of God, come to save
his people from their sins. More profoundly than human beings could ever
bring about by themselves, this disgrace turns out to be grace.
Schaberg admits that a major objection to her interpretation lies in the
fact that we cannot prove that any early Christians read the infancy narra-
tives as affirming an illegitimate conception.** Arguing from a historical
perspective, Amy-Jill Levine reasons that since Jewish charges of Jesus’ ille-
gitimate birth come from a time later than the composition of the gospel,
it is unlikely that Matthew was interested in combating them in his open-
ing chapter.*® While commending Schaberg’s exegesis for challenging
readers to pay attention to the perspective of women’s experience, Barbara
Reid demurs, “There is no doubt that her interpretation is possible, but the
question remains whether the texts demand such an interpretation’; she is
doubtful whether they do.*° In a similar vein Luise Schottroff, while
respecting the healing power for violated women released by this exegesis,
writes that “measured against the texts, I find that Schaberg’s thesis fails to
fit. As the text indicates, it was Joseph’s mistaken belief that Mary had been
seduced or sexually assaulted. Divine revelation corrects this false assump-
230 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

tion,” leaving us with a story that carries a profound critique of patriarchal

dominance and violence.*” In my view, there is valuable insight in Scha-
berg’s exegesis even if we grant that the critics are correct. She limns so
clearly the consequences for a woman of that culture getting pregnant out-
side patriarchal social norms that even with belief in the virginal concep-
tion we begin to see the dangerous dilemma in which Mary was trapped
according to Matthew’s telling. Until Joseph’s dream and his generous
response, nothing but public disgrace, endless shame, perhaps a life of beg-
ging, perhaps even death loomed before her. The terror of her situation
should be allowed once again to fertilize the Christian imagination, which
has tended to “wrap Mary in an aura of romantic joy” at finding herself
pregnant.*®
Contemporary persons have vastly differing reactions to this ancient
charge of illegitimacy. Brown notes disapprovingly that some sophisti-
cated Christian believers appreciate it as an example of the depths to which
Christ descended when he “emptied himself” in becoming human. As an
illegitimate son, Jesus would be counted among the outcasts for sure. It is
not only worldly-wise Christians, however, who may find something reli-
giously valuable in this interpretation, but women who are victims of sex-
ual assault and all those in solidarity with them. Violence against women
is a chief tool in the maintenance of patriarchy, one of whose defining
tenets is man’s right to woman’s body. In traditional societies this right has
been codified in law and custom to the extent of allowing honor killings of
women pregnant outside of marriage. In contemporary democratic soci-
eties the struggle for women’s right to the integrity of their own bodies, for
the right to say no and be taken seriously, challenges patriarchal privilege
at its core. In both situations, physical and psychological violence serves
the cause of male domination and the litany of abuse is long and terrible,
from witch burning to forcible rape (stranger rape, acquaintance rape,
date rape, rape in marriage), from lesbian bashing to sadomasochistic
pornography, from domestic abuse to serial murder, and yes, to slitting the
throat of a young Tuareg girl found to be pregnant while betrothed.*? That
the Spirit of God would be with a woman who suffered such violence, able
to bring good from an inestimably painful situation, embodies the gospel
in miniature and is a deep source of hope.
Devout persons unaware of early Christian history, on the other hand,
may well find the charge that Jesus was conceived by seduction or rape
utterly shocking. Dom Sebastian Moore recounts his own “devastating”
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 21

experience when he first realized this theory had merit. “I lay awake all
night, not even dozing, while a voice in my head kept saying over and over
again, ‘She’s nothing but a whore, and the Church has made her into a
Madonna, it’s all a huge fake!’ I felt my faith draining away.””° His crisis was
resolved only when at a deep level he began to realize that to God “our
petty social categories are nothing”; that while we have prettified the story
of Jesus’ conception, reducing it to something of a fairy tale, its reality
points to a woman’s faith, terrifying in its totality, in the mystery of God,
who speaks from vast silence saying, “My ways are not your ways.” We can-
not begin to deal with the question of whether the virginal conception of
Jesus is to be taken literally, he concludes, until we have recovered its spir-
itual significance from the travesty which the sexual immaturity of the
Christian tradition has made of it, namely, a mother—son pattern from
which the phallus is banished. This in turn has “powerfully reinforced the
split image of Christian man, sexually dominating and spiritually sexless,
and of Christian woman as virgin and mother but never as spouse.”*!
While insisting emphatically that a woman who has been raped is not a
whore, I find Moore’s analysis of the debilitating antisexual ethic that this
story of Jesus’ conception has buttressed to be astute. It runs on a parallel
track to feminist existential if not political critique.
What then of the fourth position, the virginal conception? Critical bib-
lical methods make it difficult simply to assume that miraculous concep-
tion by the Holy Spirit is historically the case, though they certainly do not
rule it out either.*? To begin with, there is the troubling fact that there is no
explicit reference to the virginal conception outside of the infancy narra-
tives of Matthew and Luke. The astounding silence of the rest of the New
Testament, including Paul, Mark, and John, indicates that this belief was
not known, or if known, was not considered an important part of Chris-
tian kerygma in the early decades of the church. In addition, the infancy
narratives themselves are brilliant literary creations embellished with folk-
loric elements such as astrology, dreams, and visionary messages and
enriched with creative adaptations of material from the Hebrew scriptures;
their very genre precludes relying on them as accurate renderings of his-
tory. The fact that the infancy narratives are replete with post-resurrection
titles for Christ indicates, furthermore, that they were composed more
with theological intent than with desire for historical facticity in the sense
that dominates modern discussion. Then too, in Galatians, Isaac is said to
be “born according to the Spirit” without implications for his mother’s
2352 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

virginity (Gal. 4:29). As a result of translation issues, furthermore, biblical

scholars eschew an appeal to the prophecy of Isaiah to settle the issue of
historicity. In its own time Isaiah’s text did not point to a messiah but gave
the sign of an imminent birth of a child who would illustrate God’s prov-
idential care for people under threat. In the original Hebrew, the ‘alma
who will conceive refers to a young woman of marriageable age, perhaps
the current queen. The word itself does not primarily signify virginity, a
point reinforced elsewhere, for example, in the Song of Solomon, where it
refers to young women in the king’s harem (Song 6:8; also Prov. 30:19). In
the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, ‘alma is ren-
dered as parthenos, a word that normally does mean biological virgin. Even
here, however, the word is not clinically precise, being used twice of Dinah
after Shechem has raped her (Gen. 34:3). Most tellingly, the grammatical
structure of Isaiah’s prophecy points to a virgin who will conceive. The
future tense implies that the girl now a parthenos will get pregnant, pre-
sumably in the normal way. Matthew’s use of Isaiah’s text to explain Jesus’
being conceived of the Holy Spirit gives this ancient prophecy an utterly
new interpretation in light of his own theology.
To raise the question of the nucleus of Matthew’s conception story is to
discover that there is no absolutely satisfactory answer on historical
grounds alone. Most scholars agree that this evangelist intends to declare
the virginal conception in a biological sense, ruling out any human father.
Many also hold that this is the tradition he received. But as to what lies
behind that tradition at the first stage of gospel formation, contemporary
scholarly approaches to the gospels simply cannot settle the issue. Ray-
mond Brown, who argues that both Matthew and Luke think Jesus was
conceived without a human father, points out that they were just not inter-
ested in the historical facticity of this question with the intensity of our
post-Enlightenment minds. In an early essay on the virginal conception,
he concluded that “the totality of the scientifically controllable evidence,
the kind of evidence that stems from eyewitnesses and flows through a
traceable tradition without contradiction with other reliable tradition,
“leaves an unresolved problem.” At the end of his mammoth work The
Birth of the Messiah, he reiterates this position: “the resurvey of the evi-
dence necessitated by this commentary leaves me even more convinced of
that,”** namely, that the core evidence in the New Testament about how
Mary conceived is inconclusive at a historical level. Similarly, the ecu-
menical scholars of Mary in the New Testament summarize: “we see no way
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 2353

in which a modern scientific approach to the gospels can establish the his-
toricity of the virginal conception (or, for that matter, disprove it).”*° Con-
sequently, acceptance of the historicity of the virginal conception rests on
other grounds, most notably, belief in biblical inerrancy for Protestants or
in the teaching of the church for Catholics, both of which authorities
squarely maintain the biologically miraculous nature of Jesus’ conception.
In reaching their conclusions about the unprovability of the virginal
conception, biblical scholars are wise enough to point out that the assent
of faith cannot be equated with affirmations of history. The morality of
historical knowledge requires that if one asks a question about a historical
event, the answer must be arrived at and verified by the canons of the dis-
cipline of history itself. The intellectual responsibility of the investigator
into history, as into science, lies in respecting this ethic, in all honesty.°°
Faith has to do with a different kind of knowledge, an awareness of God’s
gracious, saving intent and action in the world, along with trust that this is
the ultimate meaning of the universe and of our lives. Biblical proclama-
tion of this belief is carried in the ideas of ancient cultures from which our
own culture departs in many instances. Addressing the question of scien-
tific and historical discrepancies in the biblical text, Vatican II taught a
clarifying principle. Faith requires that we believe not every literal detail,
but what God wanted placed in the scriptures “for the sake of our salva-
tion.”>” Thus, the account in Genesis of creation in six days does not have
to be interpreted as historically factual. So long as we believe that God
alone ultimately created the world and everything in it, evolutionary the-
ory can explain the origin of species without threatening faith. So too with
the gospels. Their point is not to teach scientifically controlled history but
to proclaim the good news of salvation coming from God through Jesus in
the power of the Spirit and to evoke our life-defining response. In com-
posing his birth narrative Matthew had this purpose clearly in mind.
Despite the ambiguity of its history, the theological significance of this
narrative of socially irregular pregnancy is the heart of the matter.

Theology
Placed at the opening of Matthew’s gospel, the story of Jesus’ irregular con-
ception has as its purpose to inform the reader that Jesus is the Son of God.
This the evangelist does by employing a motif that recurs throughout the
New Testament, namely, that Jesus’ divine sonship is revealed through the
action of the Spirit. These two go together like fife and drum in a march-
234 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

ing band: through the Spirit, Jesus is the Son of God. This belief arose in
connection with the resurrection and then was read progressively back
into the Messiah’s life. The “backwards development””® of this christolog-
ical trajectory can be traced in specific texts. Paul first played this tune in
view of the resurrection: Christ “was descended from David according to
the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the
Spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:3—4). Mark next
sounded the tune at Jesus’ baptism, where the Spirit descends like a dove
while a voice from heaven declares, “You are my Son, my beloved; with you
I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). By the latter part of the first century when
Matthew and Luke wrote, Christians were affirming that Jesus was the Son
of God not only since his resurrection, and not only since his baptism, but
from the very beginning of his human life. Both evangelists present this
belief through the same music of the Spirit as the divine agent of Jesus’
conception. The idea that Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit thus
pushes affirmation of his divine sonship, already expanded from resurrec-
tion to ministry, back to conception and birth. John will extend Jesus’
divine sonship back even further, to before his earthly conception, declar-
ing, “In the beginning was the Word .. .” (John 1:1). It will take until the
Council of Nicaea in 325 before a clear decision is made about how far
back this “beginning” goes, namely, to all eternity.
Begetting through the Holy Spirit, then, is first of all a theological way
of describing divine sonship. Jesus is from God. This being the key to the
text, scholars are virtually unanimous in ruling out any interpretation that
would have the Spirit acting as a male sexual partner to Mary. In the scrip-
tures the Spirit is the agency of God’s creative power and presence. Unlike
what happens in Hellenistic myths, the Spirit does not function as a male
partner in a sacred marriage between a deity and a woman. Indeed in this
Matthean story, while the author gives no indication of how the concep-
tion actually took place, there is no hint of divine intercourse of any sort
and no language that would suggest the birth of a hero after a male god
impregnates a human woman. As Brown writes, “there is never a sugges-
tion in Matthew or in Luke that the Holy Spirit is the male element in a
union with Mary, supplying the husband’s role in begetting. Not only is the
Holy Spirit not male (grammatically feminine in Hebrew; neuter in Greek),
but also the manner of begetting is implicitly creative rather than sexual.”>?
This intuition is borne out in Christian vocabulary, which does not call the
Spirit the father of Jesus. Despite a scenario all too frequently entertained
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 235

by the literal imagination, it is simply not the case that God the Father or
his Spirit inseminates Mary. Conception by the Spirit signifies rather that
God is the creative origin of Jesus’ being. This nonsexual theological inter-
pretation of creation by the Spirit is strengthened when we employ the
female symbolism of the Spirit in Jewish, Syrian, and Christian traditions.
Raah, the vivifying power in the universe, “the great virginal, life-engen-
dering mother of all the living,’ becomes in this instance the “divine
mother of Christ” in collaboration with the endangered woman from
Galilee. Spirit-Sophia and Mary together bring in the Christ.
In this light, Mary’s being with child of, from, or through (ek in Greek)
the Holy Spirit affirms Jesus’ christological identity in analogy with the
resurrection and baptism stories. These, in turn, draw their power from
the creation stories in Genesis, redolent with the same pneumatological
power. Just as the Spirit of God moved over the chaotic waters and danced
a whole world into being, the same creative Spirit moved over the dead
Jesus, the unknown Jesus at the start of his ministry, and the womb of
Mary to create a new world. Gerhard Delling explains, “As the Spirit of God
hovered over formless matter when the miracle of creation took place, so
there is a new creative act of God when Jesus is born.”*! In addition to
revealing the identity of Jesus as Son of God, the theological significance of
Jesus’ being conceived by the Holy Spirit now becomes profound. This
story signals that God freely takes the initiative in the advent of the Messiah.
The Savior’s coming depends not in the first place on human decisions but
on God’s own incalculable desire to be among suffering, sinful human
beings in the flesh. Ontologically Jesus’ origin lies in God the Most High.
His existence has its foundation in God. He is born wholly of grace, wholly
of promise, God’s gracious gift to humankind. The novum of his approach
lies in the incomprehensible depths of the mercy of God. That this requires
the human cooperation in different ways of a poor Galilean couple at first
vastly troubled by the gift does not diminish the power of divine initiative
that blesses the world with a new act of creation by the Creator Spirit.
This line of reasoning leads a number of theologians to conclude that
neither the New Testament nor magisterium of the church fundamentally
teaches that the virginal conception is first of all a miracle of nature. To do
that, you would have to argue that Matthew and Luke had this one essen-
tial purpose in mind when they were writing their infancy narratives,
which they clearly did not. Frans Jozef von Beeck makes the fine distinc-
tion that “calling the virginal conception and birth a miracle is a conclu-
236 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

sion from the data of faith, not an article of faith in and of itself.” Given
the commonly available understanding of the physiological processes
leading to conception in their day, whereby the mother supplied the phys-
ical mass, the father supplied the vital spirit that ignites it to form an
embryo, and God supplied the soul, the evangelists told their infancy sto-
ries as “missionary theophanies.”® Using the cultural assumptions of the
day, they intended to say that Jesus was a child of his mother, and hence
fully human, while affirming that God’s own holy will is the sole true ini-
tiator of this child who is the world’s Savior: “in loving mercy, God and
God alone takes the initiative in having the divine Power and Wisdom
dwell among us as one of us.”
Granted that in scripture and the creeds “conceived by the Holy Spirit”
is not in the first instance a biological but an evocative theological state-
ment, our minds, imbued with contemporary scientific knowledge of how
conception takes place, inevitably return to the historical issue and ask
How? Where did the Y chromosome come from? With what sperm did
Mary’s egg unite to initiate a new human being? Theologically, the answer
is that in a new act analogous to the creation of the world, the Creator
Spirit created the Y chromosome ex nihilo and caused it to appear in
Mary’s body without sexual intercourse. As Brown reiterates, “It was an
extraordinary action of God’s creative power, as unique as the initial cre-
ation itself’°> Contemporary debate arises when some scholars query
whether this is really necessary. Given the biblical witness to divine modes
of acting whereby divine agency normally works in tandem with human
agency—through secondary causes, in scholastic terminology—the Spirit
of God can be seen to work in and through what happens in the world to
lure it toward fulfillment. Divine and human fatherhood are not necessar-
ily mutually exclusive. The action of God does not have to replace or can-
cel natural sexual activity so as to render the human role superfluous.
Indeed, since sex is God’s own good design for procreation, would it not
be more suitable that God use it in this instance?
In thinking this through, it is important to note that the virginal con-
ception is not necessary to account for the sinlessness of Jesus, which is
present in other layers of New Testament tradition that know nothing of
this belief. Later developments will link sex with sinfulness, but in the
infancy narratives there is no trace of antisexual bias that would demean
ordinary conception in marriage as less than holy. Later Christian teaching
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 237

will use the virginal conception as imaginative shorthand for the doctrine
of two natures, picturing that God the Father gave Christ a divine nature
while Mary his mother gave him a human nature. But in orthodox Chris-
tian belief Jesus would be God’s beloved child no matter how he was
conceived because his sonship is eternal and independent of earthly incar-
nation. Joseph Ratzinger explains this clearly, beginning with the differ-
ence between birth stories of heroes in the history of religions and the
birth story of Jesus in the gospels:
The main contrast consists in the fact that in pagan texts the Godhead
almost always appears as fertilizing, procreative power, thus under a more
or less sexual aspect and hence in a physical sense as the “father” of the
savior-child. As we have seen, nothing of this sort appears in the New Testa-
ment: the conception of Jesus is new creation, not begetting by God. God
does not become the biological father of Jesus, and neither the New Testa-
ment nor the theology of the Church has fundamentally ever seen in this
narrative or in the event recounted in it the ground for the real divinity of
Jesus. ... According to the faith of the Church the Sonship of Jesus does not
rest on the fact that Jesus had no human father; the doctrine of Jesus’ divin-
ity would not be affected if Jesus had been the product of a normal human
marriage. For the Sonship of which faith speaks is not a biological but an
ontological fact, an event not in time but in God’s eternity.”

A begetting by divine power through the Holy Spirit always remains anal-
ogous to human begetting and needs to be understood by appreciating the
myriad ways Spirit-Sophia works in the world. In this light, the gospel
story of the conception of the Messiah by the Holy Spirit places Mary with
the life-giving powers of her body at the heart of Sophia-~God’s approach
to the world. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, the Messiah was born of the
virgin Mary.

Scandal and the Spirit

The historical and theological issues of Matthew’s conception story receive
yet another reading in feminist interpretation. The text of Matthew’s birth
narrative is filled with tension. While on the surface this is a story shaped
by patriarchal law, the narrative is encircled by female images, from the
creative Spirit evoked by grammar and imagery to the endangered preg-
nant woman.® It features Joseph as the recipient of divine revelation while
at the same time honoring a woman’s conception of a child outside of
238 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

patriarchal norms. It underscores the disgrace that surrounds her condi-

tion but affirms emphatically that God stands with the endangered woman
and her child to the point where they are the fulfillment of divine promise.
Feminist insight into both the scandal and the power of the virgin woman
fruitful with the Spirit uncovers unsuspected empowerment for women in
this story and gives reason to honor the virginal conception in full strength.
This story of illicit pregnancy places Mary in solidarity with women
who suffer violence or the threat of violence from patriarchal authority,
affirming against all social consensus that God is with them. Even with the
emphasis on Joseph’s upright and good-hearted actions, Mary is in danger
from her irregular pregnancy. When the story opens, she has no guarantee
of her own safety. Then as now in patriarchal society, female virginity
functions in a masculinist system of exchange which women violate at
their own risk. The story resolves the problem by having her husband ulti-
mately offer safety and legitimacy to his wife and the fetus growing within
her, thus bringing them back into the male-dominated order upheld by
society.© At the same time, and here is the major twist, it demonstrates that
patriarchal logic fails to do justice to God’s ways. Mary is in jeopardy, but
God stands with her to fulfill the ancient promise. Her child appears to be
illegitimate but is called holy, the one who will save the people from their
sins. Bearing the Messiah outside of patriarchal norms, Mary yet moves
within the divine plan of salvation. While reverberating with a tone of
scandal, the narrative thus subtly challenges the biased social patterns that
create the scandal to begin with. In the end, Mary’s validation shows that
“the reproductive power of woman and her role in the birth of the Messiah
are affirmed outside the patriarchal structure.”’? Not only that, but being
“outside” is precisely where the encounter with the Holy One takes place.
“Mary is a woman who has access to the sacred outside the patriarchal.
family and its control”;’’ in her precarious state she helps to birth the work
of the Spirit. Matthew is no feminist, but it would be hard to write a story
that more strongly honors the importance to God of a woman at severe
risk for violating the expectations of patriarchal marriage. The shadow cast
by her scandalous situation connects in hope with oppressed women
struggling by the power of God’s Spirit to survive patriarchal violence and
the threat of violence. Elaine Wainwright proposes that because of the way
it speaks to women’s situation, this story itself was kept alive in house
churches where there was a living praxis of women in leadership.”
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 239

This tessera also plays into the current retrieval of the meaning of vir-
ginity as a symbol of female autonomy. As we have seen, the symbol of vir-
ginity does not necessarily refer in the first instance to the absence of
sexual experience. Historians of religion have discovered a raft of virgin
goddesses who take lovers but are still considered to be virgins in the sense
that they are free from male control, not accessories to men or dependent
on their protection. To be virgin is to be one-in-yourself, free, indepen-
dent, unsubordinated, unexploited, a woman never subdued.” In this
sense, the virginal conception is valuable in bearing a message of revolu-
tionary female empowerment. The virgin Mary’s conception of the Messiah
without male begetting epitomizes in its own strange way women’s strong
abilities in collaboration with divine Spirit. The male is excluded. The end
of the patriarchal order is announced. In her often quoted “Ain't I a
Woman?” speech, Sojourner Truth voices this insight with unsurpassed
eloquence. I quote here from the account published in the “National Anti-
Slavery Standard” in 1863. After insisting on her own humanity as a
woman in the face of dehumanizing experiences of slavery and male prej-
udice, she continues:

“That little man in black there, he say a woman can’t have as much rights as
a man, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman. Where did your Christ come from?”
Rolling thunder could not have stilled that crowd as did those deep, won-
derful tones, as she stood there with outstretched arms and eyes of fire. Rais-
ing her voice still louder, she repeated, “Where did your Christ come from?
From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with him!” Oh, what a
rebuke she gave the little man.”

This emancipated slave, abolitionist, and independent preacher, illiterate

but steeped in wisdom, recognized anti-woman nonsense being spouted
by a clergyman and stood up to set the record straight. God and a woman
together brought the Messiah into the world. They did so in partnership,
divine riah and a woman of low social status collaborating together,
without the intervention of men. All the placid, sentimental paintings of
madonna and child cannot rob this gospel story of its raw, subversive
implications. It supports the integrity of women’s spiritual power when
they listen to the blowing of the Spirit in their lives. It affirms their abili-
ties to create new, saving possibilities outside of patriarchal structures and
in the teeth of reactionary violence. The account of Mary’s being with
240 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

child from the Holy Spirit adds the color of danger to the marian mosaic,
tinted with a striking hue of female power in partnership with God.

WISDOM FROM THE EAST

(MATTHEW 2:1-12)

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem a group of magi, number unknown,

followed a star from the East to pay homage to this newborn king of the
Jews. Their route took them through the capital city Jerusalem, where their
encounter with Herod the Great, Rome’s client-king of the Jews, filled the
palace coterie with alarm. Pushing on, “they rejoiced exceedingly with
great joy” when they saw the star stop. “Going into the house they saw the
child with Mary his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage,”
offering gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Warned in a dream not to
let Herod know where the child was, they went home by another route.
The Christian imagination has long conflated the infancy narratives of
Matthew and Luke, but the two are very different at this point. Luke’s story
begins in the northern village of Nazareth and uses a Roman-ordered cen-
sus to move Mary and Joseph south to Bethlehem, David’s ancestral home
and therefore the birthplace of the Messiah. Matthew works in reverse. His
account begins in Bethlehem, then brings the family up to Nazareth by a
circuitous route laid down by his theological interest, moving them into
and out of Egypt. Matthew knows nothing of a census or of birth in a sta-
ble, of being laid in a manger, of shepherds keeping watch over their flocks
and angels singing. Instead, this family already dwells in Bethlehem, seem-
ingly as long-term inhabitants. A sign that they are settled rather than
transient is that they live in a house, a secure residence, which the magi
enter when they reach the goal of their quest. There is no scholarly agree-
ment over which account, Luke’s or Matthew’s, is more factual, if either,
but that is not the point. Their intent is to inform us, as their gospels open,
of the christological identity of this child, and they go about it in different
ways. Three elements color this tessera of the marian mosaic.
The presence of danger from patriarchal law that ran through the story
of Mary’s conception grows stronger here with the introduction of Herod,
who embodies the menace of the state. Recall his tenure as Rome’s point-
man in Palestine, to whom the interests of his own people mattered little.
His ostentatious living, opulent building projects, excessive taxation, and
extravagant cruelty laid a more than heavy burden on the peasant popula-
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 241

tion. Would such a tyrant care to hear that there is a contender for his
throne? Indeed, the messianic title King of the Jews appears here in its sole
appearance outside the passion narrative, where it was nailed to the cross
of Jesus. Suffering looms on the horizon.
The presence of wisdom is signaled by the arrival of seekers from the
East, knowledgeable about a wisdom tradition that has led them to search
for the new liberator. Although pictured as kings in the popular imagina-
tion, they are technically magi, a term that referred historically to people
engaged in the mystic, supernatural arts. These included astronomers,
priestly augurers, fortune tellers, and magicians of varying plausibility.”
Whichever mode of discernment they used, magi in general carried out the
religious function of trying to interpret the will of the gods. Wainwright
offers the feminist suggestion that Matthew’s magi may evoke the wisdom
tradition of scripture with its many points of contact with foreign religion,
including female images of God. They could be following the star of Sophia
God, a suggestion made more cogent because Holy Wisdom is used to
interpret Jesus in key places later in this gospel.’ In Brown’s opinion, the
magi represent the wise and learned among the Gentiles who come to
believe in Christ. They epitomize “the best of pagan lore and religious per-
ceptivity which has come to seek Jesus through revelation in nature,””” that
is, through the star. On their journey their wisdom is enriched by the reve-
lation in the Jewish scriptures uncovered by Herod’s scribes, and completed
by finding the Messiah himself. Like some of the foremothers of the geneal-
ogy, they signal that Jesus is destined for Gentiles as well as Jews. Taking a
less literary, more political view, Richard Horsley notes that since magi
served as priestly advisers to kings in the Roman-occupied eastern territo-
ries, they would stand in opposition to the tyranny of the empire. It was not
only the Jewish people who resisted Roman rule. Hence their following the
star and giving obeisance to a new and different kind of king expresses their
hope for liberation from oppressive rule.’* Jesus is attended by wise ones
whose wisdom makes them figures of resistance; their tribute signals the
attraction of the coming reign of God, which will bring about salvation as
liberation. Whichever interpretation one chooses, the appearance of these
exotic strangers is a mixed blessing. It is the first public acknowledgment of
the messianic identity of Mary’s child, but it brings in its wake a drumbeat
of peril. The visit of the magi has drawn the unwelcome attention of the
powerful to the existence of this young, vulnerable family.
The presence of the house in this episode signals an ideal for the church.
The drama of good and evil being played out between the danger of Herod
242 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

and the wisdom of the magi focuses on the house wherein is found “the
child with Mary his mother.” Recognized by her own name and her rela-
tionship to the messianic child, Mary along with her husband receives
these seekers, their gifts, and their wisdom from the East. Allied with
unconventional foremothers, surviving the scandal of an irregular preg-
nancy, now nurturing a young child, she is linked from the outset to the
core of the new thing God is doing in this world. Unfortunately, Matthew
gives her no words to say or actions to take. But we can read her presence
in this climactic revelatory scene as an “extraordinary inclusion””’ with
subversive implications for women’s participation in the Jesus movement.
After Jesus’ death and resurrection, the primary locale for this movement
throughout the first century was the house church. Members of different
social classes, races, and genders gathered in houses across the Greco-
Roman world to remember, ritually celebrate, and proclaim the good news
of salvation in Christ and to test its implications for the way they lived. In
this context Matthew employs the “house” as a continuous metaphor for
the church. What goes on in the house in various passages of his gospel
evokes the ideal for his community, at the center of whose life lay the house
church.®° The magi with their gifts enter the Bethlehem house and find
Christ. As a result, relationships are realigned. In terms of class and social
status, “aristocrats acknowledge a child, and resources are shared when the
rich give to an ordinary Judean family, one which probably represented the
majority of Jewish families impoverished by Herodian, Roman, and tem-
ple taxation.”®! So too, implies Matthew, should economic resources to
sustain life be shared in the house church. In terms of gender, the magi find
Mary in the house, named and at the center of the scene. So too, implies
_the story, visited by the liberating wisdom of Christ, the church should
realign old patriarchal patterns of relationship that marginalize women
and move to partnership in the following of Christ. Wainwright suggests
that this message was heard in house churches where women took active
roles, at least “in the Matthean households who did not take offense at such
a challenge.”* Readers today can still hear this radical invitation.

REFUGEES FROM SLAUGHTER

(MATTHEW 2:13-23)

This tessera places Mary at the center of an experience of terror and dis-
placement. Herod stalked the trail of the magi, a menacing reminder that
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 243

“while the star of the newborn King has shone forth in purity and sim-
plicity, there are those who will seek to blot out that light.”®? In a towering
rage Herod sought to kill his newborn rival. Warned in a dream, Joseph
took “the child and his mother” and went fleeing by night into Egypt. Back
in Bethlehem, soldiers butchered all the male children under two years of
age. After Herod died, Joseph, guided by yet another dream, returned with
“the child and his mother” to the land of Israel. Warned again in a dream
that despotic Archelaus had inherited his father’s rule in Judea, Joseph
headed the family north to Galilee, where they made their home in the
town of Nazareth. Riveting images impress themselves on the imagination:
terrible fear propelling escape in the dark from oncoming murder with no
guarantee of success; the iron swords, the baby blood, the red pavement
stone, the empty look of mothers mute with shock, their piercing wails of
inconsolable grief; a young family’s life in exile in a foreign land, negotiat-
ing strange language, customs, and institutions, all the while carrying
memories of horror and a feeling of pain for those who did not escape; the
recognition that you can’t go home again and the brave setting out ina new
direction.*
This story lifts up a memory of Mary with her husband and child in
agonized solidarity with the millions of refugees struggling to survive ina
harsh world even today. War is “pure hell on earth” for civilian victims,
reads a letter from the U.N. High Commission for Refugees; those partic-
ularly at risk are children, late-term pregnant women, and the elderly. The
twentieth century, continuing into the twenty-first, has witnessed “a stag-
gering tide of uprooted people”® stretching from Afghanistan to Sudan to
Chechnya to Palestine to East Timor to Haiti, a flood of fleeing millions on
five continents. Their basic survival is at stake as hunger, dehydration, and
lack of shelter and medical care take their toll, along with the trauma of
violence, separation from family members, and ongoing fear and anxiety.
This is a crisis that does not last only a day but drags on in the chronic
poverty of refugee camps and the blockading of hope for the future. “Over
2,000 years ago, Mary and Joseph sought shelter far from their homeland.
Today, millions like them continue to search for a safe place to rest,” writes
the Catholic Relief Services newsletter. “There are few things more trau-
matic than losing your family’s home.” Even if home is a modest shack, it
is where people come for refuge and rest, the place where they keep their
possessions and cooking utensils, the place where they raise their children
and keep the family safe. “Losing the home will put a family on a down-
244 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

ward slide into deeper poverty and vulnerability.’*° Millions of lives are
uprooted this way because of political disaster. In a similar way, Joseph and
Mary fled their house and their homeland with their baby for political rea-
sons, to escape the murderous wrath of their country’s ruler. Sri Lankan
theologian Tissa Balasuriya makes the astute observation that once arrived
in Egypt, Joseph would be akin to a migrant worker, a non-national will-
ing to do even the most menial tasks in order to survive. “For many years,
Mary along with Joseph would have experienced tribulations by being for-
eign workers in Egypt. In this, too, she experienced personally the prob-
lems which many of the underprivileged people even in rich countries
have to face. ... It is a pity that popular devotions to Mary do not recall her
in this experience as a poor, courageous woman.”®”
Later apocryphal gospels sought to make the flight into Egypt into a tri-
umphal procession for the Son of God. Native African lions and leopards
in a docile mood led the caravan through the desert: “wherever Joseph and
holy Mary went, they went before them, showing them the way and lower-
ing their heads in worship; they showed their servitude by wagging their
tails, and honored Him with great reverence” (Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew
19.1).88 Palm trees bent down to refresh the weary pilgrims with fruit;
springs of water appeared in the desert. Their arrival showed Egyptian reli-
gion with its 365 gods and goddesses to be false: “But it came to pass that
when blessed Mary entered the temple with the child, all the idols fell to
the ground, so that they all lay on their faces completely overturned and
shattered. Thus they openly showed that they were nothing” (Gospel of
Pseudo-Matthew 23). The respect of the native Egyptians, including their
military commanders, followed. Would that every refugee had it so good.
Matthew’s original text gives no hint of such an easy escape but positions
this young family on the road of exile and deprivation.
Even if not historically factual, the narrative of infant massacre and
escape to Egypt reflects the historical situation that prevailed in Jewish
Palestine under Roman and Herodian rule. Using death and destruction as
a means of intimidating people, the imperial occupiers and their client-
kings created thousands of refugees. When military action commenced,
people were forced to flee from their homes if they wanted to avoid being
killed. The text also accurately mirrors the character of Herod, who
indulged in well-attested acts of ruthless cruelty. He had three of his own
children put to death on various pretexts. To ensure proper mourning at
his own funeral, he instructed his soldiers to kill notable political prison-
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 245

ers upon news of his death: “So shall all Judea and every household weep
for me, whether they wish it or not.” The brutality gene was passed on to
his son Archelaus, who ushered in his reign with a massacre of three thou-
sand people and was so despised for his dictatorial ways that he was finally
deposed by Rome. Carnage, upheaval, loss of home and neighbors, chil-
dren caught in a web of violence, parents in despair—this story was all too
intelligible to readers in Matthew’s time, and in our own.
By the way the evangelist shapes this sequence, artfully inserting fulfill-
ment citations from the Hebrew scriptures, he inlays announcements
about the christological identity of this child into this story of narrow
escape from death. Jesus recapitulates the formative history of the people
of whom he is the new, redemptive flowering. Recall how Israel went down
to Egypt at the instigation of Jacob and there found refuge from famine.
Recall the rescue of the infant Moses from the evil intent of Pharaoh to kill
the male babies. Recall the liberating exodus of the enslaved Hebrew peo-
ple from Egypt. “Out of Egypt I have called my son,” the gospel quotes the
prophet Hosea (Hos. 11:1), referring now to Jesus but harking back to the
original exodus of the people who were God’s beloved children. Jesus is the
king of the Jews in a theological way that Herod never could be.
A second citation positions this family in relation to the violence. Recall
how in the course of Israel’s history first the northern and then the south-
ern tribes were led away into exile, a state of banishment from which only
a minority returned. “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud
lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled,
because they are no more,” the gospel quotes the prophet Jeremiah (Jer.
31:15), referring now to the Bethlehem mothers but evoking the captivity
and deportation centuries earlier of the tribes descended from their
ancient foremother. This infancy story thus deliberately echoes the two
great paradigmatic events in Israel’s history, exodus and exile, connecting
the endangered Messiah with the history of the Jewish people. Tellingly, it
affirms the manner in which God’s salvific power operates, namely, in the
midst of and not above the struggles of history. Emmanuel, his mother,
and her dreamy, practical husband retrace the biblical pattern of exile and
exodus and end up in Nazareth according to God’s salvific design.
In an intense and unusual way, there are multiple references to “the
child and his mother” throughout this episode. The repetition of this
phrase in verses 13, 14, 20, and 21 establishes a powerful connection
between mother and child in this situation of peril. Both are threatened.
246 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

Mary has already faced down danger from patriarchal virginity laws, but
now her life is once again at risk from the brutal power of the state. The
vulnerable child being hunted is never alone but is always in the company
of his mother, surrounded, the text implies, by her fierce care, which
exposes her to the same peril. Jesus here is indeed “Miriam's child?!
Repeated allusions to her presence, furthermore, keep punctuating the
story with a female center of interest which serves to decenter the exercise
of male military and political power that governs this narrative. Her char-
acter once again opens a fissure in the symbolic universe of patriarchy.
“The infant Jesus is located throughout in the presence of the woman |
Mary, designated in the text as ‘his mother’ but evocative of those women |
whose anomalous stories challenge patriarchal family structures.’”? Con- |
nected with the genealogy, the continuously named presence of Mary in
this scene evokes the power and presence of women in Israel’s history and
the birth of its Messiah. Empowering hearers of this gospel who struggle
for women’s full participation in the Christian mission, this interpretation
allows those threatened by patriarchal violence to themselves constitute an
internal counterthreat to the status quo.
Neither Mary nor the Bethlehem mothers speak aloud or otherwise
react to the slaughter of the children. The voice of Rachel weeping
resounds in this silence. Long a symbolic figure of the suffering mother,
more specifically of the nation mourning its lost peoples, even more pre-
cisely of Jewish mothers, whose children were murdered on a mass scale,
this ancestral figure enters the story to send up their lament to God. They
bond together as she articulates their grief, allowing their outrage to cry to
heaven. Her tears and loud lamentation rip still another fissure in this well-
ordered text. “It is the raised voice of Rachel that pierces the male world of
power, of slaughter, and of divine favor,”?’ rejecting even the divine plan
that would rescue one special child but ignore the rest. Her tears gush forth
as resistance to such brutality, her shouts as a challenge to this violent way
of running the world. Subverting the patriarchal pattern, this “female
image of the compassionate, inconsolable mother provides a counterpoint
to the extreme violence of the holocaust of the male children at the hand
of the male ruler, Herod.” Since the later verses of this Rachel poem in
Jeremiah depict divine compassion in female imagery as the love of a
mother for the child of her womb, Rachel also points to the motherly God
who weeps inconsolably in protest with those who are bereaved (Jer.
31:20).99
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 247

One day the authority of the imperial state will get Mary’s son too. His
close, heart-in-the-mouth brush with death in infancy will turn all too real
in his thirties, and his mother’s lament will take a newly sharp, personal
turn. The good news of the gospel is that the advent of God focused in
Jesus, who is descended not only from Abraham and David but also from
the defiantly lamenting Rachel and the threatened, fleeing, defiantly sur-
viving Mary, compassionately overcomes the worst outrage. This is the
Christian hope. But given the river of deaths of millions of children due to
military and domestic assault and the institutional violence of poverty,
“Rachel still weeps in every country of the world.’ Borrowing phrases
from Mary’s Magnificat, one contemporary poet imagines her resonating
with her grieving ancestor, saying:
Wail, mourn aloud, sister Rachel...
Unleash grief’s force, sister Rachel, to change what made you grieve...
Unleash grief’s force, sister Rachel, the mighty to bring down, the wealthy to
chase out, the hungry to fill up...
Of your child you are deprived; let no one steal your rage.”

ANNUNCIATION: CALL OF THE PROPHET

(LUKE 1:26-38)

As we begin to examine the tesserae painted by Luke, one color runs

through them all. Mary is a disciple, not in the historical sense that she
accompanied Jesus during his ministry, but in the existential sense that she
heard the word of God and acted upon it. This view comes to the fore in
an exchange unique to this gospel. Moved by Jesus’ preaching, an admir-
ing woman in the crowd raised her voice to cry, “Blessed is the womb that
bore you and the breasts that you sucked!” This was a typical Mediter-
ranean expression that praised a mother for the fine qualities of her son. In
reply Jesus emphasized qualities of spirit, saying, “Blessed rather are those
who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Luke 11:27—28). Some few inter-
preters think that with the word “rather” Jesus set up a contrast between
true believers and his mother. This explanation does not hold up, however,
in view of the positive way Luke presents Mary in all other scenes of his
gospel. Instead, the intensifier “rather” means yes, what you said is true as
far as it goes, but there is more to be said.”* In effect, Jesus’ beatitude echoes
that of Elizabeth, who early on had saluted the young woman pregnant
248 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS
a ete a

with the Messiah with the words, “Blessed is she who believed. . .” (Luke
1:45). In Luke’s theology the faith that marks a genuine disciple consists in
hearing and acting upon God’s word. The next five mosaic stones, taken
from his work, present Mary as just such an exemplary disciple in ever
varying scenarios.
The annunciation scene, which appears after the announcement of the
birth of John the Baptist, depicts Mary with a mood of celebration as a
hearer and doer of God’s word. The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a
young, unlettered woman in Nazareth, a poor village in the oppressed
peasant region of Galilee. The girlis betrothed to a man named Joseph, but
in accord with Jewish marriage customs has not yet moved into his house
to share life together. The heavenly messenger announces God’s desire that
Mary bear a child who will be great, the Messiah, the holy Son of God.
Assured that the Spirit will empower and protect her, she gives her free
consent, casting her lot with the great work of redemption in the belief that
nothing is impossible with God.
The overarching purpose of this story, as with Matthew's opening nar-
rative, is to disclose to Luke’s readers at the outset the truth about Jesus’
messianic identity. Using christological titles and language developed by
the church after the resurrection, the scene vividly dramatizes the theolog-
ical point that Jesus did not just become the Son of God after his death
(Paul) or even at his baptism (Mark) but is the Son of God from his very
conception in this world. At the same time, by making Mary the central
character, Luke’s text invites reflection on her faith and action in her own
right. Indeed, throughout centuries of translation and reflection, no other
text has had more influence on the development of mariology, for better
or worse. At its worst, the emphasis of some interpreters on the phrasing
of Mary’s response, “be it done to me according to your word,’ has led to
that ideal of woman as an obedient handmaid, passively receptive to male
commands, which women today find so obnoxious. But other interpreta-
tions are possible. By examining three facets of this text, namely, its liter-
ary structure, language about the Holy Spirit, and the import of Mary’s
consent, we can draw this rich scene into a liberating memory replete with
“lessons of encouragement.”

Literary Structure
In this scene Luke deftly combines two conventions of biblical narrative,
the birth announcement and the commissioning of the prophet. Both
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 249

types of stories follow the same literary structure, which in its complete
form comprises five standard elements. First, an angel or some other form
of messenger from heaven appears with a greeting. Next, the recipient
reacts with fear or awe and is encouraged not to be afraid. Third, central to
the story, the announcement itself declares God’s intent and gives a
glimpse of what the future outcome will be. Fourth, the recipient then
offers an objection: How so? Fifth, the story ends with a sign of divine
power that reassures the recipient. This story pattern is used at significant
junctures in Israel’s history both to announce the coming birth of a signif-
icant child and to describe the call of adult persons into collaboration with
God’s designs. The scriptures are replete with examples. A birth story:
when the Israelites were groaning under a foreign oppressor, an angel of
the Lord appeared to a barren woman, wife of Manoah, to declare that she
would conceive and bear a son who would deliver Israel from the hand of
the Philistines. The dynamism of the structured story line runs on, ending
with the sign of the angel ascending in the flame of the sacrificial altar, fol-
lowed by the birth of Samson, in whom the Spirit stirred at an early age
(Judg. 13:2—23). In a similar fashion, the classic birth announcement her-
alds the coming of Ishmael to Hagar, Isaac to Abraham and Sarah, John the
Baptist to Zechariah and Elizabeth, and Jesus to Joseph (in Matthew’s
gospel).? The Christmas morning gospel presents a familiar example in
the story of angels appearing to the shepherds, which follows the pattern
of appearance, fear and reassurance, message about the birth of the Mes-
siah, and the sign of a babe in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. By using
this fixed literary pattern to announce the birth of Jesus to Mary, Luke is
linking mother and child to the great sweep of God’s gracious history with
Israel and heralding the significance of this child in that history.
Luke fuses this function of the announcement story with the second
scriptural use of this literary form, which is to call and commission a
prophet. One particularly telling example is the story of Moses (Exod.
3:1-14). While he is shepherding flocks in the desert, (1) the angel of the
Lord appears to him in a burning bush; (2) Moses takes off his shoes, hides
his face in fear; (3) then comes the message: God has seen the misery of the
people enslaved in Egypt, has heard their cries, feels what they are suffer-
ing, and has come down to deliver them: “Come I will send you to Pharaoh
to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt”; (4) Moses’ objection fol-
lows as the night the day: “Who am I?” too slow of speech; (5) finally, God
gives assurance with the indelible words “I will be with you,” coupled with
250 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS
CN a ee eee

a sign in the form of a future promise that, once freed, the people will wor-
ship on this very mountain. Here the five-point pattern of the announce-
ment story narrates the moment when Moses, prophet and liberator,
an enslaved
enters into his life’s vocation. It signals God’s intent to deliver
people, for which task a human being is chosen and for which this person’s
free assent is essential. Once the die is cast, the presence of God will guide
this person through thick and thin, and the community will remember
him with gratitude for the ways in which his response brought blessing
upon the oppressed people. In the beginning, though, it is a religious
encounter that transpires in the solitude of the heart before God: the exiled
shepherd, the flaming bush, the prophetic call, the free response, all
embedded in the tradition of a community now struggling for freedom.
Another clear instance of this pattern at work is the story of Gideon, set
in a time when the people were groaning under conquerors from the land
of Midian (Judg. 6:11—24).!° The angel of the Lord appears under an oak
tree; Gideon’s fear is met with the classic reassurance, “The Lord is with
you”; then comes the message that Gideon is to deliver Israel from the
oppressive hand of Midian: “I hereby commission you”; but, objects
Gideon, my clan is the weakest of all; nevertheless, “I will be with you,” and
the sign is fire that consumes his sacrificial bread and meat. The call of
other prophets and liberators in the history of Israel often follows this pat-
tern, Jeremiah being another memorable example.
Luke’s artistry welds the announcement of Jesus’ birth to the call of
Mary as a woman commissioned by God. Biblical scholars point out that
in this scene she is engaged for a prophetic task, one in a long line of God-
sent deliverers positioned at significant junctures in Israel’s history.'°! All
five elements of the literary convention march in full, vigorous display. The
angel appears with the classic greeting “Hail, favored one, the Lord is with
you,” a formula often used to greet a person chosen by God for a special
purpose in salvation history. Mary reacts with a troubled heart and receives
the classic encouragement not to be afraid. The messenger announces that
she will conceive a child who will be great, son of the Most High, inherit-
ing the throne of David in a kingdom without end. Her objection “How
can this be?” is met with the promise that the Holy Spirit will be with her.
The promise is underscored with the sign of old Elizabeth’s pregnancy.
Replete with angelic voice, fear and reassurance, message, objection, and
sign, this is a story of Mary being commissioned to carry forward God’s
design for redemption. The announcement of her impending motherhood
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 251

is at the same time her prophetic calling to act for the deliverance of the
people. She now takes her place “among those prophets called to give word
and witness to the hidden plan of God’s salvific activity not yet seen by
other members of the community of faith.”!©* Her affirmative response to
this divine initiative sets her life off on an adventure into the unknown
future. The divine presence will be with her through good times and bad,
and ultimately the community will remember her life with gratitude. In
this scene the whole story is captured in its beginning: it is a prophetic
vocation story of a Jewish girl and her God, set within the traditions of her
people struggling for freedom.

Holy Spirit
At the center of this story lies a powerful declaration of the relationship
between this peasant woman and the Spirit of God. In good standard fash-
ion Mary has objected, “How can this be since I do not know man?” The
angel replies, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the
Most High will overshadow you,” and thus the child will be called holy, Son
of God. By the fourth and fifth centuries, once church councils had
declared the doctrinal identity of Jesus Christ to be that of one person in
two natures, human and divine, the Christian imagination interpreted this
Lukan text in a literally sexual way. Mary the virgin was somehow impreg-
nated by the Spirit of God, which resulted in Jesus’ having a human mother
and a divine father; this ensured the truth of his two natures. The difficulty
with this interpretation, however, lies partly in the fact that nowhere in
scripture is the Spirit’s action that “comes upon” and “overshadows” a per-
son analogous to sexual intercourse. Rather, these verbs indicate the pres-
ence of God who empowers and protects:
* Eperchesthai (“come upon”) in Greek literally signifies the coming
and going of persons or things such as ships. This rootedness in physical
movement in space equips the word to function figuratively to point to the
intangible approach of the living God. Carrying the notion of onrushing,
overpowering vitality, it tells of divine presence on the move creating
something new. A prime example is Jesus’ saying in Acts that assures his
disciples after his resurrection, “You will receive power when the Holy
Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8). When this does indeed happen, the
women and men of his circle are empowered to preach the good news to
the ends of the earth. This same sense of empowerment is well attested in
252 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

the Hebrew Bible. After Samuel’s anointing, “the Spirit of the Lord came
mightily upon David from that day forward,” beginning his march toward
kingship (1 Sam. 16:13). Isaiah foretells devastation “until the Spirit comes
upon us from on high,” when a period of blessed refreshment will begin
(Isa. 32:15). These and other biblical examples make clear that the Spirit
“coming upon” someone is not sexual but creatively empowering in a
broader sense. It connotes the approach of the power of God in a decisively
new way.
* Episkiazein (“overshadow”) in Greek literally means to cast a shadow
on something. In contemporary Western parlance this may have a nega-
tive, ominous ring. In the Middle East, however, where the sun is so strong
it can fry your brains, the cooling shadow of a little tree or even the wall of
a building is much appreciated. When used in scripture with reference to
God, “overshadowing” thus has the positive meaning of manifesting pow-
erful divine protection over a person or even the whole people. The word
is often coupled with concrete images such as a moving cloud or shelter-
ing wings under whose shadow persons find refuge, figurative ways of
speaking about God’s protection from harm. John Calvin thought the
cloud was a particularly “elegant metaphor” for divine presence insofar as
it conceals as much as it reveals, covering over divine glory with a haze of
brilliance.’”’ With this nuance, the overshadowing cloud resonates with
allusions to the Shekinah, the indwelling, saving has of the Holy One
in later rabbinic writings.

Two other instances closely parallel this verb’s meaning in the annunci-
ation text. In the exodus story a cloud settles on the tent of meeting that
Moses pitched in the desert: “the cloud overshadowed it and the glory of the
Lord filled the tabernacle” (Exod. 40:34ff.). When the cloud rose, the peo-
ple followed it and trekked on; when it settled down on the tabernacle, they
rested. Casting a shadow by day, shot through with fire at night, “the move-
ment of the cloud directs the journey toward freedom.”!* What is being
spoken of here is the presence of God. Signified by the cloud, this presence
protects, refreshes, directs, liberates. Again, all three Synoptic Gospels use
the same verb in their account of Jesus’ transfiguration: “Then a cloud
overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice . . ” (Mark 9:7;
Matt. 17:5; Luke 9:34). As in the Sinai story, the action of the cloud, itself a
metaphor of divine presence, brings God close to the scene with gracious,
redemptive intent. The voice speaks the same message about Jesus’ being
the Son of God as was already heard at the baptism, and the two scenes are
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 253

parallel. The Spirit descends like a dove, the cloud of glory overshadows,
and Jesus’ messianic identity is revealed.
Overshadowing, then, always means the Spirit of God drawing near and
passing by to save and protect. Given this usage, given that neither in sec-
ular nor religious language does the word ever function as a euphemism
for sexual intercourse, it is clear that the Holy Spirit’s overshadowing Mary
in the annunciation story is, as Carsten Colpe insists, “the opposite of
human procreation.”’®° What is being described is not a god impregnating
a mortal woman such as occurs in Hellenistic stories of sacred marriage.
Luke does not mean that God acts as a substitute male sexual partner.
Indeed, Paul can write of Isaac that he was “the child who was born accord-
ing to the Spirit” (Gal. 4:29) without implying that Abraham’s sexual
paternity was absent. As the ecumenical authors of Mary in the New Testa-
ment teach, “the overshadowing of 1:35 has no sexual implication.” Rather,
the term comes from a tradition “where no sexual import is possible. God
is not a sexual partner but a creative power in the begetting of Jesus.”!
Remembering the female imagery used in scripture of the Holy Spirit—
rtiah, mother, Sophia—further strengthens this philological insight. The
Spirit does not mate with Mary.
Hence, the angel does not answer Mary’s objection with a satisfactory
description of the mechanics of “how shall this be.” Joseph Fitzmyer’s
judgment about what happened historically is the baseline from which all
theologizing should proceed: “What really happened? We shall never
know." In view of the religious meaning of Mary’s pregnancy, however,
we know a great deal. The text declares that the creative presence of God’s
Spirit will be with her. As Schaberg explains, “What is the essence of this
second angelic response? It is this: You should trust; you will be empow-
ered and protected by God. The reversal of Elizabeth’s humiliation shows
that nothing is impossible for God.”'®* Recall how in the opening scene in
Genesis, the Spirit of God blows like a mighty wind over the dark waters
and the world came into being. Just so, in this new moment of the renewal
of creation, the Spirit is on the move again. Recall, furthermore, the Easter
proclamation that it is by the Spirit that Jesus is raised from the dead and
made Son of God in power. Just so, the same life-giving Spirit creates him
as Son of God at his conception.!” The point for our remembering here is
that both in its structure as a commissioning story and in its metaphors of
the Spirit’s coming upon and overshadowing, this scene with its primary
christological interest is a theophany. It places this woman in deep, atten-
254 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

tive relation to the Spirit of God. Mary belongs in the company of those
whom Spirit-Sophia approaches: “From generation to generation she
enters into holy souls and makes them friends of God and prophets” (Wis.
7:27). We do not have access to Mary’s religious experience, but can sim-
ply say that by the power of the Spirit she encountered the mystery of the
living God, the gracious God of her life, the saving Wisdom of her people.
In that encounter, the die was cast for the coming of the Messiah.

Consent

All of this takes place as a result of God’s free initiative. As always in bibli-
cal portrayals of divine interaction with human beings, divine freedom
does not override created freedom but waits upon our free response,
which, in a theology of grace, God has already made possible. Hearing the
divine call, Mary decides to say yes. Casting her lot with the future, she
responds with courage and, as the next scene of the visitation will show,
with joy and prophecy to this unexpected call: “And Mary said, ‘Behold the
handmaid of the Lord. Be it done to me according to your word.” Here
Luke innovates by adding Mary’s verbal consent as a sixth, climactic ele-
ment to the literary structure of the announcement story, whose design
normally has five points whether used for prophetic commissioning or
foretelling birth. “In none of the twenty-seven Hebrew Bible commission-
ings, none of the ten nonbiblical accounts, none of the fifteen other com-
missionings in Luke-Acts, and none of the nine other New Testament
commissionings . . . are the commissioned ones depicted as assenting ver-
bally and directly to their commission,” Schaberg analyzes.!!° Luke’s inno-
vation is meant to underscore Mary’s conscious and active faith as one who
hears the word of God and keeps it. Here I am. Fiat. Her stance is one that
affirms her own identity in the act of radical trust in God, based on a bed-
rock conviction that God is faithful. Over the centuries many persons have
understood and been inspired by this.
In our day, however, Luke’s intention is subverted by the language of
slavery. In the original Greek of the gospels the word doulé, which is usu-
ally translated “handmaid,” literally means female slave girl; kyriou means
literally “master” or “lord.” The relationship signified by this phrase “hand-
maid of the Lord” is thus enormously problematic in feminist and
womanist theology. As we already criticized, centuries of patriarchal inter-
pretation have labeled Mary’s response as submissive obedience and have
held up this stance as the proper ideal for all women in relation to men, a
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 255

view antithetical to women’s hopes for their own human dignity. The bias
involved becomes clearer by contrast, as Luise Schottroff points out: when
Paul uses doulos to describe himself (Rom. 1:1), interpreters think of min-
istry and office rather than of humble obedience.!" Traditional demands
for conformity to patriarchal order and for obedience to male religious
authority figures, be they God, husband, or priest, make women shudder
before this text and reject it as dangerous to physical and psychological
health as well as to a liberating spirituality.
One might argue to the contrary that obedience, which word in fact
does not appear in the text, comes from the Latin ob-audire, meaning “to
listen,” in this case to listen to the word of God. One might also point out
that Luke is here depicting Mary as the ideal disciple, whose chief charac-
teristic is hearing the word of God and keeping it, doing it, acting upon it,
responding to it, this being the model for both women and men disciples
without distinction. Again, one might take doulé in its most literal mean-
ing, a female slave, connect it with the Pentecost story where Mary also
appears, and interpret it as an instance of the glorious freedom of the last
days when God’s Spirit will be poured out upon all flesh, yes, “even upon
my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit,
and they shall prophesy” (Acts 2:18, citing Joel 2:28-32). This interpreta-
tion has the advantage of showing how the advent of the Spirit lifts up the
lowly, reverses their low estate, unseals their lips, and empowers them to
prophesy. Again, one may even translate the term doulé not as handmaid
or female slave but as the generic “servant,” thereby linking Mary to the
whole lineage of distinguished faithful servants of God including Abraham
and Moses, Deborah and Hannah, culminating with the Servant of Yahweh
in Isaiah.'!? But helpful though such moves may be, they do not get at the
root of the problem, which is the master-slave relationship, now totally
abhorrent in human society and no longer suitable as a metaphor for rela-
tionship to God, certainly not in feminist theological understanding.
African American women who write theology out of the heritage of slav-
ery and subsequent domestic servitude stress this repugnance even more
strongly in unmistakable terms. Slavery is an unjust, sinful situation. It
makes people into objects owned by others, denigrating their dignity as
human persons. In the case of slave women, their masters have the right
not only to their labor but to their bodies, making them into tools of pro-
duction and reproduction at the master’s wish. In such circumstances the
Spirit groans with the cries of the oppressed, prompting persons not to
obey but to resist, using all their wiles.
256 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

Rather than defending this master-slave metaphor as written by Luke in

a world where it was not questioned, a more satisfying strategy allows us to
criticize it and then look for the liberating reality at the core of Mary’s
response. Very carefully we peel off the layers of saccharine humility and
forced subordination. This young peasant girl discerns the voice of God in
her life commissioning her to a momentous task. Exercising independent
thought and action, she asks questions, takes counsel with her own soul. In
a self-determining act of personal autonomy, she decides to go for it. This
is her choice and it changes her life. Awoman of Spirit, she embarks on the
task of partnering God in the work of redemption. African American the-
ologian Diana Hayes describes Mary’s action here as one of “outrageous
authority”; standing alone, she yet had enough faith in herself and in her
God to say a powerful and prophetic yes.'!° From a Latin American view-
point, Ana Maria Bidegain argues that far from signifying “self-denial, pas-
sivity, and submission as the essential attributes of women,” Mary’s
consent is a free act of self-bestowal for the purpose of co-creating a new
world. In this light, “Mary’s humility consists in the daring to accept the
monumental undertaking proposed to her by God”; her consent is a free
and responsible act, “not the yes of self-denial.”!'4 In consort with other
Asian thinkers, Chung Hyun Kyung emphasizes the risk this decision
involved. Mary’s initial hesitation was well founded, for her choice turned
her world upside down. She was not a heroic superwoman but a village
woman of the people, albeit one who was attentive to God’s calling, and
this calling drew her from her own private safety. “With fear and trembling
she takes the risk of participating in God’s plan out of her vision of
redeemed humanity. . . . Jesus was born through the body of this woman,
a liberated, mature woman, who had a mind and will of her own, capable
of self-determination and perseverance in her decisions.”!5
Women note that in this scene God speaks directly to Mary, the message
not being mediated through her father, betrothed spouse, or priest. In
addition, she does not turn to any male authority figure either to be
advised or to seek permission regarding what is to be done. Indeed, the set-
ting is not the temple with its priestly cult, where Zechariah earlier received
his announcement, but her own lay, female space, in the village. While still
operating within a patriarchal text, she is portrayed in terms of her rela-
tionship to God independent of men’s control, a stance that in itself under-
mines patriarchal ideology. Poet Kathleen Norris notes how in this scene
Mary finds her voice, rather than losing it. Like any prophet, she asserts
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 257

herself before God saying, “Here am I.” This picture of a young woman
courageously committing herself in turn “may provide an excellent means
of conveying to girls that there is something in them that no man can
touch; that belongs only to them, and to God.”!!®
Existentially, Mary’s response carries with it a fundamental definition of
her personhood. Facing a critical choice, she sums herself up “in one of
those great self-constituting decisions that give shape to a human life.”!!”
In a by now classic analysis of the human situation, Valerie Saiving observed
that, conditioned as we are by patriarchy, the traditional “temptations of
woman as woman are not the same as the temptations of man as man.”
Unlike men, women experience temptations that “have a quality which can
never be encompassed by such terms as ‘pride’ and ‘will-to-power.’ They
are better suggested by . . . underdevelopment or negation of the self.”!!®
Drifting, overdependence on the judgment of others, and self-sacrificing
in order to please are but a few examples of feminine traps. The memory
that this young woman’s decision is not a passive, timid reaction but a free
and autonomous act encourages and endorses women’s efforts to take
responsibility for their own lives. The courage of her decision vis-a-vis the
Holy One is at the same time an assent to the totality of herself. Remem-
bering Mary’s fiat in this light, Dutch theologian Catharina Halkes writes
that far from the passivity imposed on women by a patriarchal society and
church, Mary’s stance is one of “utmost attentiveness and the creativity
which flows from it, based on a listening life.”!!? Far from being the
“proper” attitude of a slave girl, such a grasp of oneself in the world forges
a way of integrity in the midst of society’s dissipating demands. In the par-
adigmatic commissioning narrative of the annunciation, encountering
God’s redemptive grace and empowered by the Spirit, Mary was not forced
to bear the Messiah. Acting as a responsible moral agent, she made her own
choice.
The annunciation is a faith event. Dramatically, this poor, unconven-
tional peasant woman’s free and autonomous answer opens a new chapter
in the history of God with the world. “It is Mary’s faith that makes possi-
ble God’s entrance into history,” writes Ruether,’”° in the sense that hence-
forth God will be at home in the flesh of the world in a new way. Brazilian
theologians Ivone Gebara and Maria Clara Bingemer note that annuncia-
tions keep on happening, bringing into the ordinariness of life a message
of God’s gracious care and desire to repair the world. Touching the root of
our humanity, these messages reveal hidden possibilities within the limits
258 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

of our existence, revive our hope in the midst of struggle, and summon our
energies for creative action.!?! Seen in this light the particulars of Mary’s
call, unique in that only one woman conceives and delivers Jesus, illumi-
nate the fundamental dynamic of everyone’s vocation through the ages.
The Holy One calls all people, indeed all women, and gifts them for their
own task in the ongoing history of grace. In the midst of family, work, and
social life in village, suburb, and city, it begins with an encounter in the
solitude of the heart before God: everywoman, the voice, the call, the
courageous response, in the context of a world struggling for life.
The disclosive power of the structure of the annunciation story, along
with its central elements of the Spirit’s presence and the woman’s response,
place Miriam of Nazareth in the company of all ancestors in the faith who
heard the word of God and responded with courageous love. Now like
Abraham, she sets out in faith, not knowing where she is going. Now like
Sarah, she receives power to conceive by this faith, considering the One
who promised to be worthy of her trust. Listening to the Spirit, rising to
the immense possibilities of her call, she walks by faith in the integrity of
her own person. Inspired by Spirit-Sophia, women who make their own
decisions before God claim her into their circle.

VISITATION: JOY IN THE REVOLUTION OF GOD!”2

(LUKE 1:39-56)

Fresh from her encounter with the angel, “Mary arose and went with haste
into the hill country” to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth, herself swelling
with a pregnancy in her old age. Filled with the Spirit, both women burst
into glorious speech. Elizabeth salutes Mary, who in turn sings out a
prophetic song of praise to God. Known as the Magnificat from its open-
ing word in Latin translation, this canticle can barely contain her joy over
the liberation coming to fruition in herself and the world through the cre-
ative power of the Spirit. As noted earlier, classical mariology rarely dealt
with this prayer. Its radical depiction of Mary’s no to oppression completes
her earlier yes to solidarity with the project of the reign of God. By sealing
this page of scripture, such theology managed to suppress the portrait of
Mary as a prophet and to forestall the upheaval that would ensue from
oppressed peoples, including women taking a similar stance. Yet as
Schaberg rightly describes, “the Magnificat is the great New Testament
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 259

song of liberation—personal and social, moral and economic—a revolu-

tionary document of intense conflict and victory. It praises God’s actions
on behalf of the speaker, which are paradigmatic of all of God’s actions on
behalf of marginal and exploited people.”!”? Evoking the powerful mem-
ory of God’s deliverance of enslaved Israel from Egypt, it praises God’s
continuing actions throughout history to redeem the lowly, including the
speaker herself and all marginal and exploited people. Rooted in Jewish
tradition, Mary stands as the singer of the song of justice of the coming
messianic age. Tracing the contours of this scene and its theology from a
critical biblical and feminist perspective places a dazzling, unmistakably
prophetic tile in the mosaic of the critical remembrance of Mary.
Early church writers already interpreted this scene with a prophetic
gloss. Ambrose saw in Mary’s hurried journey through the hill country of
Judea an analogy to the church’s stride across the hills of centuries. He con-
nected both travelers to the itinerant prophet of glad tidings depicted by
Isaiah who wrote, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the
messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces
salvation” (Isa. 52:7). Ambrose then exhorts, “Watch Mary, my children,
for the word uttered prophetically of the church applies also to her: “How
beautiful thy sandaled steps, O generous maid!’ Yes, generous and beauti-
ful indeed are the church’s steps as she goes to announce her gospel of joy:
lovely the feet of Mary and the church.” Irenaeus, after showing how
Christ became a human being so that human beings might become chil-
dren of God, depicts Mary’s song leading the way for the church’s response:
“Therefore Mary rejoiced, and speaking prophetically in the church’s name
she said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord?” !*° Finding Mary the prophet in this
text thus develops an ancient tradition. In our day new dimensions emerge
when this text is read with biblical scholarship through women’s eyes.

Two Women Meeting

First, the encounter. The house is Zechariah’s but he has been struck dumb.
No other men are around. Such quieting of the male voice is highly
unusual in scripture. Into this spacious silence two women’s voices
resound, one praising the other and both praising God. This is a rare bib-
lical vignette of a conversation between two women. Despite the overall
androcentric literary context, this story is told in an entirely gynocentric
manner.!*° The outpouring of the Spirit on Elizabeth and Mary happens
in traditionally female domestic space. Women are the actors who hold
260 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

center stage; women are the speakers who powerfully convey the resound-
ing good news; women themselves embody the mercy of God which they
prophetically proclaim. And they do so in the context of meeting and
affirming one another.
Both personal and political insights weave their threads into the texture
of this scene. In Just a Sister Away, African American biblical scholar Renita
Weems notes how pregnant women have an almost physical need for the
company of others in the same condition to share their fears, find courage,
express hopes, and learn practical wisdom about how their bodies are
changing.'” Being singled out as mothers of redemption made Elizabeth
and Mary need each other for this and much more. Having resigned her-
self to living with disappointment over never having had a child, Elizabeth
now has to deal with an “unexpected blessing.” Mary in turn has to figure
out how to live with a blessing that causes more problems than it solves.
How explain this to Joseph? This was not how she had planned heer life.
Each needed to talk with another woman who knew what it meant to grap-
ple with God’s intentions. Their mutual encouragement enabled them to
go forward with more confidence and joy despite the struggle that still
faced them.
Focusing on “the politics of meeting,” Tina Pippin sees that by connect-
ing with each other, these two women are empowered to speak with
prophetic voices.'*® They meet, and the force of their meeting leads them
to proclaim in the midst of their history that God blesses the lowly and
overthrows oppressive institutions. Through their discourse they image
power by setting forth the political meaning of their pregnancies, namely,
hope for the dispossessed people of Israel. Here is a rare glimpse of female
reproductive power as both physically nurturing and politically revolu-
tionary. “The two pregnant women beat the drum of God’s world revolu-
tion,”!”? starting with the option for debased women and then including
all the starving, powerless, and oppressed. A pregnant woman is not the
usual image that comes to mind when one thinks of a prophet, yet here are
two such spirit-filled pregnant prophets crying out in joy, warning, and
hope for the future. Clearly this is a picture of Mary that is the complete
opposite of the passive, humble handmaid of the patriarchal imagination.
Susan Ross envisions yet another way this text is dangerous: it portrays
women looking to each other for validation of their authority rather than
to men. This experience of female solidarity is unequaled in its ability to
support women’s struggles for equal justice and care, for themselves and
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 261

for others.'*° Whether one sees Elizabeth and Mary as “women of Spirit
birthing hope,’’*! or as the Spirit-approved “pregnant crone and the
unmarried, pregnant bride suspected of adultery,”!** their meeting is pow-
erful and potentially empowering. It brings the theme of women’s solidar-
ity and mutual female empowerment into the mosaic of the memory of
Mary.

Elizabeth’s Song
This older woman had been faithfully walking in the way of God for many
long years. Luke draws her portrait using the paint of the Hebrew scrip-
ture’s barren matriarch tradition, especially the stories of Sarah, Rebekah,
Rachel, Samson’s mother, and Hannah, and the symbol of the barren
Jerusalem.'*? The parameters of this tradition are patriarchal: a woman’s
worth resides in her ability to bear sons for her husband and her people.
Rooted in their time and place, the biblical writers seem unable to envision
any other kind of world, such as one where women would exercise other
social functions and equal value would be given to the birth of daughters.
Within their own limited context, however, they signal God’s compassion-
ate vindication of the lowly with stories of humiliated women being
blessed by conceiving and bearing a son. Long childless but called right-
eous nevertheless, Elizabeth lives such a story. In the annunciation, her
pregnancy has already been used as a sign to encourage Mary at her call-
ing. Now, “filled with the Holy Spirit,” she greets the younger woman with
exuberant blessing.
Seeing deep wisdom in this passage of one woman blessing another,
Barbara Reid calls attention to the back story. Earlier when Elizabeth had
first conceived she said, “So has the Lord done for me” (Luke 1:24).!*4
Compared to her husband’s difficult, doubting dialogue with the angel, it
is striking how easily she recognizes the grace of God coming into her life.
A long life of attentiveness to the Spirit enables her to see that this child is
not a gift for Zechariah or her people alone, but signifies God’s gracious
regard of herself as a loved and valuable person: “so has the Lord done for
me.” Then, sequestered for six months “alone with God and her silent hus-
band,” she nurtures the life within her while contemplating the divine
compassion she is experiencing. Elizabeth names the grace in her own life
so well that when Mary comes calling, she is prepared to recognize and
name the grace of another.'*° Her experience of God’s fidelity is used to
give confidence to another:
D4ad MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And
why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For
behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my
womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a
fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.

Luke does not give Elizabeth the title of prophet, but “filled with the Holy
Spirit” she functions like one. She blesses Mary as a woman in her own
right first, then her child, then her faith. Her words echo the praise
addressed to other women famous in Israelite history who have helped to
deliver God’s people from peril. When Jael dispatches an enemy of the peo-
ple, the prophet Deborah utters, “Most blessed be Jael among women”
(Judg. 5:24). After Judith’s spectacular defeat of the enemy general, Uzziah
praises her, “O daughter, you are blessed by the Most High God above all
other women on the earth” (Jdt. 13:18). The scholars of Mary in the New
Testament caution that the fact such blessings have been invoked upon
other women “prevents us from taking it too absolutely, as if it meant that
Mary was the most blessed woman who ever lived.”!*° The “alone of all her
sex” syndrome cannot be inferred from this verse, taken in context. Rather,
Elizabeth’s exuberant praise shouted with unrestrained joy joins Mary to
solidarity with a long heritage of women whose creative action, under-
taken in the power of the Spirit, brings liberation in God’s name. More-
over, this blessing weds her historic pregnancy to her faith, again depicting
her as someone who hears the word of God and acts upon it even in her
own body.
Mary remained with Elizabeth for about three months. During that
time before the birth of John, Zechariah remains silent. Luke does not
depict their time together, but in women’s reflection Elizabeth takes Mary
in and nurtures her, affirms her calling, nourishes her confidence. Together
they chart the changes taking place in their bodies and affirm the grace in
their own and each other’s lives. Their gladness hails the advent of the mes-
sianic age. The support they share with each other enables them to mother
the next generation of prophets, the Precursor and the Savior of the world.
On balance, the figure of Elizabeth stands as a moving embodiment of the
wisdom and care that older women can offer younger ones, who, brave as
they are, are just starting out on their journey through life. A Spirit-filled
woman, she exudes blessing on others. Preceding Mary in childbirth and
in theologizing, her presence assures the younger woman that she does not
face the uncertain future alone. Her mature experience sustains the new
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 263

venture. What emerges with undoubted clarity from their interaction is

women’s ability to interpret God’s word for other women.

Mary’s Song
Swelling with new life by the power of the Spirit and affirmed by her
kinswoman, Mary sings the Magnificat, a canticle that joyfully proclaims
God’s gracious, effective compassion at the advent of the messianic age. It
should be noted at the outset that as the longest passage put on the lips of
any female speaker in the New Testament, this is the most any woman gets
to say. Other women have life-changing visions of angels, most signifi-
cantly at the empty tomb on Easter morning, but while we are told that
they proclaim the good news, we unfortunately do not get to hear their
own words. The cadences of this canticle stand in righteous criticism
against such scriptural silencing of “the lowly.” While Luke may silence the
voice of Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and others, our interpretation today
reads against his intent, to find in Mary’s song a protest against the sup-
pression of women’s voices and a spark for their prophetic speech. Follow-
ing the logic of her praise, who can dare tell women they cannot speak?
And Mary said:
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his handmaid.
For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed,
for the One who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
And his mercy is from generation to generation on those who fear him.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts;
he has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and exalted those of low degree;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent empty away.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his posterity forever.

The Galilean woman who proclaims this canticle stands in the long Jew-
ish tradition of female singers from Miriam with her tambourine (Exod.
264 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

15:2-21) to Deborah (Judg. 5:1-31), Hannah (1 Sam. 2:1-10), and Judith ~

(Jdt. 16:1-17), who also sang dangerous songs of salvation.'*’ Their songs
are psalms of thanksgiving, victory songs of the oppressed. In particular,
the song’s form and even whole phrases are explicitly modeled on the can-
ticle of Hannah in the book of Samuel. From Hannah’s opening lines, “My
heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God,” to her
prophetic verses, “The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird
on strength; those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but
those who were hungry are fat with spoil,” the parallelism links both
women in their vocal response to the peculiar mercy of Israel’s God, who
graciously chooses to be in solidarity with those who suffer and are of no
account in order to heal, redeem, and liberate.
Composed according to the overall structure of a thanksgiving psalm,
which first praises God and then lists the reasons for gratitude, the Magni-
ficat has two main stanzas or strophes. The first praises divine mercy to the
speaker and the second reflects the Holy One’s victorious deeds for the
oppressed community. Far from being separate pieces, the two stanzas are
linked theologically by a profound sense of God’s faithful compassion,
existentially by the atmosphere of joy that results in the lives of the liber-
ated, and socially by virtue of the speaker Mary’s being herself a member
of the oppressed people who experience redemption. The unity in distinc-
tion of the two stanzas, one praising God with deep personal love and the
other proclaiming God’s justice, can be seen to reflect a way of life basic to
Jewish and Christian traditions: love of God and love of neighbor in gospel
terms, or spirituality and social justice according to the prophets, or con-
templation and action in the tenets of traditional spirituality, or mysticism
and resistance in the terms of contemporary theology.!** By attending to
the way this canticle resonates with the rich biblical traditions that cele-
brate God’s liberation, we add the prophetic Mary, now singing her song
of salvation, to our mosaic.
1. God’s mercy to the peasant woman: The canticle begins with a poor
woman's cry of joy. Mary’s soul magnifies the Lord and her spirit rejoices
in “God my Savior.” This lyric mood, so characteristic of intimate experi-
ence of relationship with God, pervades the Jewish biblical tradition. The
psalmist sings: “Then my soul shall rejoice in the Lord, exulting in his
deliverance” (Ps. 35:9); the prophet Isaiah encourages: “This is the Lord for
whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation” (Isa. 25:9);
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 265

even the natural world is caught up in the gladness: “Let all the earth cry
out to God with joy” (Ps. 66:1). What does it mean to rejoice in God your
Savior? This is not a superficial joy but is written against the whole canvas
of the world’s pain. It is messianic joy, paschal joy, aware of the struggle
unto death yet hopeful that the great “nevertheless” of God leads to life. In
the midst of suffering and turmoil, the sense of divine presence in com-
passionate care offers strength, leading one to be glad that God is great.
Mary magnifies God her Savior, which in formal Elizabethan English
means to celebrate the greatness, or sing and dance in praise of the good-
ness of someone wonderful.!*? Her soul and her spirit do this, meaning her
whole self, her whole being, with body, mind, and strength. Hers are not
the words of half-hearted appreciation. She is caught up, feels herself lifted
up into God’s good and gracious will. With a foretaste of eschatological
delight, she breaks forth in praise and singing.
Mary’s song is the prayer of a poor woman. She proclaims God’s great-
ness with her whole being because the Holy One of Israel, regarding her
low estate, has done great things for her. The term for lowliness, tapeindsis
in Greek, describes misery, pain, persecution, and oppression. In Genesis it
describes the situation in the wilderness of the escaping slave woman
Hagar, whom God heeds (Gen. 16:11); in the exodus story it describes the
severe affliction from which God delivers the people (Exod. 3:7). Mary’s
self-characterization as lowly is not a metaphor for spiritual humility but
is based on her actual social position. Young, female, a member of a peo-
ple subjected to economic exploitation by powerful ruling groups, afflicted
by outbreaks of violence, she belongs to the semantic domain of the poor
in Luke’s gospel, a group given a negative valuation by worldly powers. Yet
it is to precisely such a woman that the call has come to partner God in the
great work of redemption. Just such a woman will mother the Messiah
because God has regarded her, has turned the divine countenance toward
her and let divine pleasure shine upon her. It is not just that God often
chooses unconventional people for a task, not just that Mary is among the
inconsequential poor of the earth, like unlettered women in any poor vil-
lage on this planet. It is the combination that is revolutionary: God has
regarded her precisely as a lowly woman. Her favored status, declared by
Gabriel, Elizabeth, and now herself, results from God’s surprising and gra-
cious initiative. Rejoicing follows. Here the background picture of a poor,
first-century Galilean peasant woman living in occupied territory, strug-
gling for survival and dignity against victimization, imbued with Jewish
266 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OEF SAINTS

faith, aptly coalesces with this biblical portrait of Mary, singer of the song
of justice in the name of God.
In his commentary on this canticle, Martin Luther sought to place its
sentiments squarely at the center of the church’s life. Mary’s song gives all
of us confidence in God’s grace, he teaches, for despite our lowliness God
has a “hearty desire” to do great things for us too. What we need is faith,
trusting in God as Mary did with “her whole life and being, mind and
strength.” Then we will be caught up in God’s good and gracious will,
which operates with kindness, mercy, justice, and righteousness. True, this
always involves a reversal of values, “and the mightier you are, the more
must you fear; the lowlier you are, the more must you take comfort.”!“° But
just as the Spirit overshadowed Mary, inspiring her joy and fortitude, so
too the Spirit imbues us every day with rich and abundant grace to follow
our own calling. The important thing to remember is that Mary had con-
fidence in God, finding in God her Savior a wellspring of joy and comfort.
“Thus we too should do; that would be to sing a right Magnificat.”!4!
2. God’s mercy to the oppressed people: What begins as praise for divine
loving-kindness toward a marginalized and oppressed woman grows in
amplitude to include all the poor of the world. The second strophe of the
Magnificat articulates the great biblical theme of reversal where lowly
groups of people are defended by God while the arrogant end up losers. All
through scripture the revelatory experience of the character of God who
liberated the Hebrew slaves from bondage finds ongoing expression in
texts that praise divine redemptive care for the lost. In the psalms and the
prophets, the Holy One of Israel protects, defends, saves, and rescues these
“nobodies,” adorning them with victory and life in the face of despair. Pro-
claiming the Magnificat, Mary continues this deep stream of Jewish faith
in the context of the advent of the Messiah, now taking shape within her.
The approach of the reign of God will disturb the order of the world run
by the arrogant, the hard of heart, the oppressor. Through God’s action,
the social hierarchy of wealth and poverty, power and subjugation, is to be
turned upside down. Jubilation breaks out as the proud are scattered and
the mighty are pulled from their thrones while the lowly are exalted and
mercy in the form of food fills the bellies of the hungry. All will be well, and
all manner of thing will be well, because God’s mercy, pledged in covenant
love, is faithful through every generation.
In all the gospels, Jesus preaches and acts out this vital message of rever-
sal. The Asian women theologians at the Singapore Conference note with
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 207

unassailable logic that “with the singer of the Magnificat as his mother, it
should not surprise us that Jesus’ first words in Luke’s account of his pub-
lic ministry are also a mandate for radical change.”!4* The beatitudes
encapsulate this message in especially dramatic form: “Happy are you poor
... you who hunger now... you who weep now.... But woe to you rich...
who are full now... who laugh now” (Luke 6:20-26).!3 Through his own
death and resurrection this same reversal is embodied in Jesus himself,
who becomes the mother lode of God’s life-giving mercy for the world. By
placing the Magnificat on the lips of Mary, Luke depicts her as the spokes-
woman for God’s redemptive justice, which will be such a part of the gospel.
She proclaims the good news by anticipation, and she does so as a Jewish
woman whose consciousness is deeply rooted in the heritage and wisdom
of the strong women of Israel. Knowledgeable about the liberating tradi-
tions of her own people and trumpeting them with “tough authority,’!4
this friend of God stands as a prophet of the coming age. “The song of
Mary is the oldest Advent hymn,” preached Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the
German theologian killed by the Nazis:
It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most
revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy
Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings; this is the passionate, surren-
dered, proud, enthusiastic Mary who speaks out here. This song has none of
the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols.
It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about collapsing thrones and
humbled lords of this world, about the power of God and the powerlessness
of humankind. These are the tones of the women prophets of the Old Tes-
tament that now come to life in Mary’s mouth.'*

A dispute about the origin of this canticle sheds light on the material
significance of this second strophe. Based on its form and religious con-
tent, some biblical scholars think that the song was written by the early
church in Jerusalem. Its christology, which interprets Jesus as the Davidic
Messiah, has Jewish overtones, and its piety is redolent of the prayer of the
anawim, a term meaning “poor ones.” Raymond Brown argues forcefully
that the early church in Jerusalem saw themselves as anawim, combining
as they did material poverty with temple piety.'*° Along with other canti-
cles in Luke’s infancy narrative uttered by Zechariah and Simeon, he
believes, the Magnificat formed part of the “hymn book” of this Jerusalem
community described at the beginning of Acts. For Luke to place the song
on Mary’s lips, adding the verse about God’s regard for his lowly hand-
268 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

maid, is artistically and theologically apt, given her Jewish faith, her mate-
rial poverty, and her probable participation in this post-resurrection com-
munity of disciples.
To the contrary, other scholars think that the milieu in which the Mag-
nificat originated was not the religious life of the Jerusalem community
but the political struggle of the people of Palestine against their oppres-
sors. The song portrays intense conflict. The six central verbs that describe
God’s help to Israel denote forceful action: show strength, scatter, pull
down, lift up, fill up, send away. There are close parallels between this
hymn and other Jewish hymns from the period of arduous resistance to
imperial rule, including the Qumran War Scroll and hymns celebrating the
victory of the Maccabees (today’s feast of Hanukkah).'*” Richard Horsley
argues that the core subject of the song is God’s revolutionary overthrow
of the established governing authorities who are squeezing the life out of
the people, a view made even more cogent when we recognize that “the
words and phrases used throughout the Magnificat are taken from and
vividly recall the whole tradition of victory songs and hymns of praise cel-
ebrating God’s victorious liberation of the people of Israel from their
oppressive enemies.”'** Correlatively, there are no anawim as a spiritual
group; the term applies to the people generally, caught in bad and worsen-
ing socioeconomic conditions.
It may be that both views are right in their own way. The Jerusalem
community may have taken a preexisting victory hymn already in circula-
tion and adapted it for their own use. Brown notes, furthermore, that the
first followers of Jesus were Galileans; that Galilee was the spawning
ground of first-century revolts against repressive Roman occupation and
the heavy tax burden it laid on people’s backs; and that there was real
poverty among those who became the nucleus of the post-resurrection
church. In this setting, the spiritual themes of the Magnificat have real eco-
nomic and political resonance as the song declares that these poor people
are ultimately the blessed ones, not the mighty and the rich who oppress
them.
The value of this debate lies in the way it alerts us to the presence of a
memory that is truly dangerous. The history of interpretation contains
many instances of thinkers who opt to spiritualize this text, to take away its
political teeth, to blunt its radical tone by appeal to the eschatological
reversal promised for the last day. Rooted in the biblical heritage of Pales-
tinian Jewish society, however, the song’s provenance makes clear that it is
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 269

a revolutionary song of salvation whose concrete social, economic, and

political dimensions cannot be blunted. People are hungry because of
triple monies being exacted for empire, client-king, and temple. The lowly
are being crushed because of the mighty on their thrones in Rome and
their deputies in the provinces. Now, with the nearness of the messianic
age, a new social order of justice and plenty is at hand. Like the beatitudes
Jesus proclaims for the poor and brokenhearted, Mary’s canticle praises
God for the kind of salvation that involves concrete transformations.
People in need in every society hear a blessing in this canticle. The bat-
tered woman, the single parent without resources, those without food on
the table or without even a table, the homeless family, the young aban-
doned to their own devices, the old who are discarded—all who are sub-
jected to social contempt are encompassed in the hope Mary proclaims.
Working amid the poor in India, R. J. Raja reflects that Mary portrays the
God of Israel, who will “not stop short of subverting all satanic structures
of oppression, inhuman establishments of inequality, and systems which
generate slavery and non-freedom,” including those that debase people on
account of their birth, caste, sex, creed, color, religion, tenets, weakness,
and poverty.! It is precisely in this way that God is established as Savior
of the people in the face of human degradation. The church in Latin Amer-
ica more than any other is responsible for hearing this proclamation of
hope in a newly refreshed way. The Magnificat’s message is so subversive
that for a period during the 1980s the government of Guatemala banned
its public recitation.'°° Seeing the central point of this song to be the asser-
tion of the holiness of God, Peruvian Gustavo Gutiérrez argues, “Any exe-
gesis is fruitless that attempts to tone down what Mary’s song tells us about
preferential love of God for the lowly and the abused, and about the trans-
formation of history that God’s loving will implies.”!?'
This message will not appeal to those who are satisfied with the ways
things are. It will also be ignored by those who seek to restore intact some
past epoch in the history of culture or religion. Even affluent people of
good will have difficulty dealing with its shocking, revolutionary ring.
Doesn’t God love everyone? Indeed yes, but in an unjust world, the form
this universal love takes differs according to circumstance. The language of
this canticle makes clear that divine love is particularly on the side of those
whose dignity must be recovered. God protects the poor, noticing their
tears, while challenging the comfortable and the proud to conversion, to
genuine discipleship, even at the loss of their own comfort. The divine
 270
sat de MARYA IN
ee THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS
ie ee ee ee ee
intent is not to take revenge and so create a new order of injustice but to
build up a community of sisters and brothers marked by human dignity
and mutual regard. Only thus is the coming reign of God rendered gen-
uinely historical. Addressing his economically privileged compatriots,
John Haught offers a valuable insight. For those who have little, for the
destitute and dispossessed, for the wretched of the Earth, for the anawim
of Yahweh, he writes, there remains only the ever-coming God of the future
to sustain their lives and aspirations. “A major part of the message of
prophetic religion is that the dreams that arise among the poor are not
naive illusions but compelling clues to the nature of the real... . Perhaps
only by allowing our own lives to be integrated into the horizon of their
dreams and expectations, that is, by our own solidarity with victims, can
we too make ourselves vulnerable to the power of the future”? Rather
than legitimate or ignore the miserable circumstances of the afflicted,
those who are affluent need to dream with the poor the dream of God’s
future that their suffering opens up, and thus be transformed themselves.
For both poor and affluent, the Magnificat is a vehicle of that dream.
3. Both stanzas together. This is a profoundly theocentric canticle, cen-
tering the singer on God’s gracious goodness for personal and commun
al
reasons. In Edward Schillebeeckx’s inimitable phrase, it is a “toast
to our
God,”’»? offered in jubilant thanksgiving in the midst of the tragic history
of the world. The point for our remembering is that Mary not only sings
of God’s liberating transformation of the social order in redemptive acts
of
mercy, but she herself embodies the oppressed people, who have
been
exalted through God’s compassionate action. Like those enumerated
in her
song, she occupies a position of poverty and powerlessness in
her society,
and does so with the added oppression that accrues to being a
woman of
little account. Hence her song puts her in solidarity with other women
who
strive for life: “Mary appears in its strains no longer as the sweet
mother of
traditional piety. She is now made to speak in concert with
the oppressed
wives and the famished mothers of the world”154 She sings pregnan
t with
hope, bearing the Messiah, embodying the historic reversal
she proclaims.
Who shall mother the Messiah? Not a well-protected queen,
not someone
blessed with a bounteous table and a peaceful life, not
a well-regarded
woman of influence. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with
these things;
peace and abundant nourishment are among the blessings
hoped for in the
messianic age. But the world is distorted by sin. People
accumulate power
and wealth at the expense of others. Suffering is rampant.
And the pattern
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY we |

persists through the generations. Into this unjust situation comes the
choice of God, Creator and Redeemer of the world. Hearing the cries of the
oppressed, seeing their misery, knowing well what they are suffering, com-
ing down to redeem, the Holy One aims to turn the unjust order of things
upside down and make the world right again, being faithful to the cov-
enant promise. In the deepest revelatory insights of Jewish and Christian
traditions, there is no other God. Thus God’s choice of Mary to give birth
to the Messiah is typical of divine action. As Janice Capel Anderson
explains, just as “God has chosen a female servant of low estate to bring the
Lord into the world and exalted her, so will God overturn the proud, rich
and mighty and exalt the pious, hungry, lowly.’!°° Read through these eyes,
Mary’s song of God’s victory over the powerful becomes a song about the
liberation of the most nondescript poor people on this earth. Imagine the
world according to the defiant Mary’s Magnificat, invites African writer
Peter Daino: a heavenly banquet and all the children fed.!°°

Through Women’s Eyes

This visitation scene, with its high point in the Magnificat, garners rich
attention in women’s theological reflection. Once the analysis of patriarchy
is in place, Mary’s song of God’s victory over those who dominate others
rings with support for women in the struggle against male domination as
well as against racism, classism, heterosexism, and all other demeaning
injustice. “Mary’s song is precious to women and other oppressed people,”
Schaberg writes, “for its vision of their concrete freedom from systemic
injustice—from oppression by political rulers on their “thrones” and by
the arrogant and rich.” Mary preaches, she continues, as a prophet of the
poor and those who are marginalized. “She represents their hope, as a
woman who has suffered and been vindicated.”!*”
The Spirit who vivified Mary and empowered her prophetic voice is the
same Spirit who inspires and vivifies women of all ages. Remembering her
in the cloud of witnesses, women draw many and varied lessons of encour-
agement in her company. One of the strongest and most unusual in the
light of traditional mariology is the right to say no. “Men toiling in the ser-
vice of male power interests represent Mary only as the woman who knew
how to say yes.”!°8 Indeed, at the annunciation Mary uttered her yes to the
call of God’s Spirit, a consent to adventure that has been used so abom-
inably to promote the passive submission of women. Here her fiat finds its
home in her defiant resistance to the powers of evil. She takes on as her
ed MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

own the divine no to what crushes the lowly, stands up fearlessly and sings
out that it will be overturned.'*’ No passivity here, but solidarity with
divine outrage over the degradation of life and with the divine promise to
repair the world. In the process she bursts out of the boundaries of male-
defined femininity while still every inch a woman. Singing of her joy in
God and God’s victory over oppression, she becomes not a subjugated but
a prophetic woman.
Catholic women in whose tradition Mary has been a significant figure
wrestle with the significance of this canticle for their own subordinate
position in current church structures. With no little irony, Gebara and
Bingemer cite the homily preached by Pope John Paul II in Zapopén,
Mexico, where he pointed to Mary of the Magnificat as a model for those
“who do not passively accept the adverse circumstances of personal and
social life and are not victims of alienation, as they say today, but who with
her proclaim that God ‘raises up the lowly’ and, if necessary, ‘overthrows
the powerful from their thrones.”!® If this is applied to women’s struggle
for full participation in governance and ministry in the church, the rever-
sals of the Magnificat become rife with significance for ecclesial life. “How
is it possible,” Marie-Louise Gubler writes, “to pray Mary’s song each night
at Vespers without drawing spiritual and structural consequences for the
church?”!°! Indeed, Mary’s prophetic speech characterizes as nothing less
than mercy God’s intervention into a patriarchal social order. Not only
Mary but the women disciples in Luke, “believing sisters of Jesus’ believing
mother,” grasp that God is no longer to be sought in the clouds, as the men
of Galilee once thought, but here on earth, in the flesh, in birth, and in a
grave, however surprisingly empty. God is to be sought and found in daily
encounters with suffering, in tears and in the laughter of the poor, in the
hungry of this earth, and in the groaning of creation. “Mary’s prophetic
song stands at the beginning of all this. How is it, then, that the body of the
resurrected one, in the dual sense of sacrament and the church, has ended
up exclusively in the hands of men?”!® Susan Ross’s critique spells out the
implications. In many ways in the church, the mighty still occupy their
thrones; the lowly still await their exaltation. “Women’s very real lack of
power in the church today stands as an indictment of the power structures
as they exist. . . The scandal of women’s exclusion from power cannot be
overlooked. Therefore any discussion of the empowerment of women
must be juxtaposed with our lack of political and symbolic power and the
failure of the leadership of the church to rectify this scandal.”!® In addi-
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 7)

tion to hope against their dispossessed status, women glean from this text
grains of encouragement for their own creative behavior. Ruether sees in
this canticle an example of a woman becoming a theological agent in her
own right, actively and cooperatively figuring out the direction of the
Spirit in the crisis of her time.'®* Norris treasures Mary as an original bib-
lical interpreter, linking her people’s hope to a new historical event.!® In
the context of hierarchal power that has silenced women’s voices through
the centuries, Schaberg casts Mary positively as a preacher. Noting the
powerful proclamation of the good news that issues from her mouth, she
writes, “Without an explicit commission to preach, she preaches as though
she was commissioned,” that is, with authority.’® In the struggle against
sexism in the church, the great reversals roll on, their tone of judgment and
promise resounding in the voices of prophetic women today.
It is above all in the reflections of women in the church of the poor that
the profound dimensions of Mary’s prophecy become clear. The Puebla
Document, issued by the bishops of Latin America, describes the situation:
“The poor do not lack simply material goods. They also miss, on the level
of human dignity, full participation in sociopolitical life. Those found in
this category are principally our indigenous people, peasants, manual
laborers, marginalized urban dwellers, and in particular, the women of
these social groups. The women are doubly oppressed and marginal-
ized,”!*” not only because they are poor but because they are women in a
society where machismo reigns. So described, Latin American women in
base Christian communities recognize a striking analogy between their
own situation and that of Miriam of Nazareth. Both dwell in poverty as a
result of structural injustices in the economic order; both inhabit worlds
organized around the idea of masculine superiority and the inhibition of
women’s gifts; indigenous women suffer added indignities due to their
racial heritage and culture. Appreciation grows: Mary is one of us. This
context becomes a “sound box” that amplifies the Magnificat.'°° Mary
sings this song as a woman of the people, like millions of poor peasant
women in Latin America, doubly and triply oppressed, old before their
time. God regards her lowliness, as God regards theirs. Pregnant with new
life, she cries out for transformation of the old order, as do they. She
belongs to the tradition of women who beget their people amid suffering
and despair.!® Who but a strong decisive woman would call down God's
justice on the heads of the oppressors of the poor? Her song sets out the
game plan of the coming reign of God. It reveals that women fully partic-
274 MA N THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

ipate in the mission of announcing and bringing about these redemptive

changes. And it keeps hope alive that poor women themselves, the least of
the least, will taste justice on this earth according to the promise that God’s
“mercy is from age to age, on those who fear him.” “Mary’s song is a war
chant,’ write Gebara and Bingemer with perhaps too much enthusiasm for
a military metaphor, “God’s battle song enmeshed in human history, in the
struggle to establish a world of egalitarian relationships, of deep respect for
each individual, in whom godhead dwells.”!”° In solidarity with her song,
women on every continent find a key source for their spiritual journey and
practice of the reign of God.
The multi-hued mosaic chip of the visitation scene gives us an image of
Mary, reassured and applauded by another woman, speaking with pro-
phetic authority a liberating hymn of praise. Regarding this canticle,
Luther made a wise observation: “She sang it not for herself alone but for
all of us, to sing it after her.”!”! Doing so places us in intense relationship
to the living God, overflowing source of hope and joy, who regards the suf-
fering world with utmost mercy and summons us together into the strug-
gle to build a just and human world.

“AND SHE GAVE BIRTH”

(LUKE 2:1-20)

This tessera shines with the quintessence of both bodiliness and spiritual-
ity. Mary’s pregnancy ended when she gave birth, an experience that con-
nects her with women around the world who bring forth the next
generation of human beings out of their own bodies. The scene in Luke is,
after the cross, the most widely recognized image in Christianity. In Beth-
lehem Mary gives birth to her firstborn son and lays him in a manger;
angels sing the revelatory canticle announcing that this child is the Savior,
Christ the Lord; shepherds visit, marvel, and return praising God; Mary
ponders the meaning of it all in her heart. From much of the great art of
the European Renaissance to popular commercial depictions, this birth
has been bathed in a golden light commensurate with the glory of God in
the angels’ song. All too often it has elicited responses that range from deep
to shallow sentimentality. More than any other biblical scene it has tradi-
tionally played into the ideology that sets parameters around women’s lives
with the dictate that their one and only God-given vocation is to be moth-
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF Magy 275

ers. To restore this tessera to its original colors for our mosaic, we look at
its elements of lowliness, bloodiness, and thoughtfulness.

Among the Poor

In Luke’s story a number of elements flag the difficulty of this birth, start-
ing with the uprootedness of its setting. Joseph of Nazareth leaves home
with “Mary his betrothed,” who is far along in her pregnancy. Their jour-
ney is undertaken because of a decree of the Roman emperor Caesar
Augustus that all should be enrolled in their ancestral towns. Biblical
scholars, finding no evidence of such an edict in Roman records that
would fit the time frame of Jesus’ birth, normally conclude that Luke has
used an actual registration that occurred later in 6 C.£. and crafted it for his
own purposive storytelling.!”” In terms of a marian portrait, the disloca-
tion that this trip requires becomes but the first in a series of signals that
this is not a powerful family but one ranked among the lowly. The purpose
of the census is to count heads for tax purposes. The Roman emperor can
command tribute; the colonized villagers must hustle to obey. Thus does
dominating authority ever bestride the earth, pushing around the poor of
the land who have little power to change their status, unless they want to
take up arms.
Far from home, these expectant parents are depicted in lowly circum-
stances. With “no room for them in the inn,” they take shelter in a cave or
stall where animals were stabled. And there “the time came for her to be
delivered.” In this unfamiliar, uncomfortable situation, she gave birth. It is
not a great stretch of the imagination to see Mary and Joseph as transients,
“equivalent to the homeless of contemporary city streets, people who lack
adequate shelter,’!”> or as marginalized persons pushed to the edge, “like
squatters living in the shanty towns of many big cities of the third
world.”!”4 In this setting, Mary, a young woman in a patriarchal society,
brought her child into the world in the manner of enormously disadvan-
taged people, without the security of a home. She wrapped him in swad-
dling clothes, the traditional Palestinian way of securing a newborn, and
laid him in a manger. Mentioned three times in this passage, a manger was
a feeding trough for domesticated animals. It could be a movable wooden
container or a low curved depression on a rocky ledge.'”” While it served
the purpose of cradling a baby, as do cardboard boxes and other such arti-
facts creatively appropriated by poor people today, its previous use
276 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

removes any romantic pretense about the ease of this birthing scene.
Meanwhile, the first to hear the message were shepherds, themselves a
group of laborers of low economic and social rank, busy with their flocks.
Commentators point out that the fields around Bethlehem, being rela-
tively dry and sparsely vegetated, are “shepherd country.” Proximity to
Jerusalem, furthermore, might mean that shepherds worked the estates of
the priests, supplying livestock for temple sacrifice. In any event, even if
they owned their own flocks, shepherds were poor by definition, ranked
among the lowly of Palestinian society. Hurrying with haste to Bethlehem,
they “found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger.” The dis-
placed couple, the manger, and the shepherds together form a clear signal:
the Messiah comes from among the lowly people of the earth.

She Gave Birth

Luke’s laconic “and she gave birth” evokes a female bodily experience of
profound suffering that can issue in equally profound joy. For nine months
Miriam of Nazareth had been knitting her child together in her womb,
sheltering a mystery of unfolding genes, developing tissues, growing
movement, aiming toward viability. Now came the moment to deliver. The
risk of death in childbirth in ancient Israel, as in any premodern society,
was very real. Its occurrence kept the average life expectancy for women to
approximately thirty-five years. Whenever possible a midwife and several
female helpers were on hand. According to ancient sources, the midwife
brought a birthing stool that had “bars for handgrips on each side, a back
to lean against, and a crescent-shaped hole cut into the seat through which
the infant could pass. In the absence of a stool, the woman was to sit on the
lap of another woman who was strong enough to hold her during con-
tractions. The midwife knelt on the floor in front so that she could see both
the mother’s face and the emerging child.”!”6 After wiping mucus from the
baby’s mouth and nose, allowing it to gasp its first breath, and after tying
and cutting the umbilical cord, the midwife would bathe and swaddle the
baby from head to toe. Then she would assist in the discharge of the
mother’s placenta.
Was there a midwife in the stable? How long did Miriam’s labor last?
With what bodily wisdom did she handle the ever-stronger contractions?
When did her water break? When did she transition into the final, wrench-
ing stage of active labor where pushing, breathing, and waves of pain fuse
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY Dis

into an utterly concentrated moment from which there is no going back?

No details are given. But the words “she gave birth” evoke that event of
almost cataclysmic stress by which women bring forth new life. The phrase
recalls women’s pain and strength involved in laboring, sweating, counting
contractions, breathing deeply, crying out, dilating, pushing hard while
riven to the very center of one’s being with unimaginable bursts of pain,
until slowly, slowly, the baby’s head finally appears and with more pushing
the little creature slips from the birth canal, to be followed by the discharge
of the placenta, with much bleeding, and then deep fatigue, breasts swollen
with milk, and unpredictable hormonal swings. Thinking to honor Christ
and his mother, later apocryphal gospels will present a picture of an effort-
less delivery with Jesus arriving as a ray of light or passing through Mary’s
womb the way the risen Christ passed marvelously through walls and
locked doors (Protoevangelium of James 17-19).'”’ The authors assume
that natural bodily processes are not worthy of the Creator, as if womb and
breasts, flesh and bleeding are outside the sphere of the sacred. In the late
fourth century, Ambrose would develop the theological meaning of the
birth of Jesus with strange new emphasis on the physical integrity of
Mary’s body. As Mary T. Malone paraphrases, “Nothing of the mother was
broken, changed, or altered in this birth.”'”* The utter intactness of her
body, never penetrated or torn, will come to stand for the purity of the
church, sealed against its enemies. Mary’s virginity in childbirth will enter
into church doctrine as part of her threefold virginity before, during, and
after the birth of Christ, a doctrine open to multiple interpretations, as we
have seen.
But Luke knows nothing of this idea. “She gave birth” has no inkling of
such escape from the human condition. Later generations will honor this
woman for the fact that she brought forth and nurtured the Savior; indeed,
in faith language, her prophetic mothering is a charism, a gift given by God
to an individual for the good of the community.'” For Luke this religious
interpretation does not counteract the idea that Mary traveled deep into
the experience common to women who bring forth a new person out of
their own bodies, even at risk of their own death. Biblical scholars point
out that otherwise the scene that comes next in Luke’s gospel, where Mary
offers sacrifice after childbirth, would make no sense. She would not need
to be purified from uncleanness if this were a miraculous birth.'®° Real
blood was shed at this delivery, by a poor woman of peasant society far
from home, laboring in childbirth for the first time. And it was holy.
278 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

Pondering in Her Heart

In addition to arduous physical engagement, this scene also depicts Mary
intensely ruminating over the word of God. After the shepherds leave, hav-
ing shared what the angels said, “Mary kept all these things, pondering
them in her heart.” Twelve years later she is described thinking again, after
Jesus was lost and found in the temple: “his mother kept all these things in
her heart” (Luke 2:51). Both of these scenes have to do with the revelation
of the identity of this child. The fullness of his significance is not immedi-
ately apparent, and so Mary keeps on mulling things over. To “keep” in the
sense Luke uses the word, syntérein and diatérein in Greek, means to pre-
serve, to remember, to treasure these events. To ponder, symballein, means
to puzzle out their meaning, to toss things together until they make sense.
Experiencing things she does not fully understand, this woman turns them
over in her mind, weighs them. As the ecumenical authors of Mary in the
New Testament write, “This would mean that Mary did not grasp imme-
diately all that she had heard but listened willingly, letting events sink into
her memory and seeking to work out their meaning.”!*! No mindlessness
here. She is trying to interpret her life. She is seeking to understand diffi-
cult matters concerning the lives of those she loves. She is hoping to dis-
cern how the divine Spirit is moving in their midst. She ponders in order
to fathom the meaning and keep on the right path. Following Luke’s image
of Mary as an exemplary disciple, later generations will see here a woman
at prayer, actively contemplating the word of God. Hers is a life in the
process of becoming—no final answers yet available.

FULFILLING TORAH
(LUKE 2:21-40)

Every religious tradition observes customs surrounding the birth of a child

that welcome the new life and initiate the child publicly into the commu-
nity. Usually called the “presentation in the temple,” Luke’s next tessera
depicts Mary and Joseph as religiously observant Jews who carry out these
rituals after Jesus’ birth according to the Law of Moses. With the Messiah
now present, the text itself is focused on the manifestation of this child as
“a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel,”
two equal dimensions of the one salvation that God has made ready. In this
context, we gain a piece for our mosaic by observing how the acting sub-
 THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 279

jects of the text are “the child’s father and mother.” Here we glimpse Mary,
a young daughter of Israel, now decidedly part of a married, parenting
couple, growing into the long line of mothers in Israel,'®’ celebrating her
childbirth in accord with prescribed ritual.
Even though the episode roughly follows common practice, biblical
scholars point out that this narrative contains several inaccuracies, such as
implying that both parents need to be purified rather than just the mother,
she being the only one who had bled in childbirth.'* This confusion is
probably due to the fact that Luke, being Gentile, had a general knowledge
of Judaism while being unfamiliar with the intricacies of how customs
actually worked. Scholars concerned for gender equality today also raise
obvious questions about the particulars of this part of the Law of Moses,
such as the higher valuation of male children as seen in their consecration
to God, the doubled time for purification made necessary by a female
child, and the status of ritual impurity attached to a woman after child-
birth.!8* No other episode, however, better portrays Mary and Joseph of
Nazareth as active parents committed to the heritage of their ancestors.

Fulfilling the Law

The scene is pervaded with an atmosphere of traditional Jewish piety, with
the couple embodying the spirit of religious fidelity.'®° After eight days
they circumcise the baby, cutting the covenant into his very flesh in the tra-
dition of Abraham. They name him Jesus. Forty days after his birth, they
go up to the temple in Jerusalem to present him to God and to carry out
the required ritual of purification. It is not hard to imagine them climbing
the great staircase, babe in arms, emerging into the Court of the Gentiles,
buying a pair of birds under the portico, heading into the Court of
Women, Joseph going forward into the Court of the Israelites, Mary hand-
"ing over her sacrifice to a Levite, both following the actions of the priest
who kills and offers the birds, the great fire roaring on the altar. The senti-
ments of this young woman’s prayer, expressed so clearly in her fiat and so
powerfully in her Magnificat, find expression in this dramatic moment of
ritual offering now that she has delivered her baby. Here the young friend
of God called to a prophetic work, who has sung her Magnificat, given
birth, and pondered the meaning of it all, carries out with her husband the
law of the covenant in ceremonies imbued with their people’s profound
gratitude for the living God’s gracious and liberating care. Depicting so
clearly Mary’s religious engagement in temple worship according to Torah,
280 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

this text offers a strong antidote to a remembrance that would erase her
Jewish identity and paint her as a Gentile Christian.
Once again these parents are portrayed as among the poor of the land.
Leviticus instructs the woman to bring a first-year lamb; but “if she cannot
afford a sheep, she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons, one for a
burnt offering and the other for a sin offering; and the priest shall make
atonement on her behalf, and she shall be clean” (Lev. 12:8). According to
these criteria, their very offering reveals their social location at the insignif-
icant lower ranks of society. Nevertheless, two charismatic older people,
emblems of maturity and wisdom, intercept their progress across the great
court. Simeon, who is led by the Spirit to show up on this day, and Anna,
called a “prophet,” who remained always in the temple, joyfully proclaim
in this sacred space of Jewish worship that salvation has come in this child.
Cradling the baby in his arms, Simeon sings a canticle that praises God for
allowing his old eyes to see this coming of redemption to Israel and the
Gentiles; now, he prays, he is ready to die. Eighty-four-year-old Anna’s
response is particularly intriguing. Rather than getting ready for death, she
goes to work spreading the good news. We never hear her actual preach-
ing, but are told that she kept on praising God and “speaking about the
child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.” Once
again, we get a glimpse of Mary being encouraged to go on with her life’s
work through the ministry of a woman.

The Sword of Discernment

The tone of the scene changes suddenly as Simeon utters an ominous ora-
cle declaring that a price will be paid. The child will be a sign of contra-
diction, and as for his mother, “a sword will pierce your own soul too.” Soul
and spirit stand for the whole self, the heart, the personal ‘being’ with
which Mary proclaimed the greatness of the Lord. What is the meaning of
the prophecy that her whole person would be run through with a sword?
Long-standing popular interpretation has taken the sword to refer to the
sorrow she would experience under the cross when Jesus suffered, died,
and then was pierced with a lance. Part of the difficulty with this view,
however, is that “there is no evidence that Luke or his community ever
thought that Mary was present at Calvary.”!®° Her absence from the group
who witnessed Jesus’ death, burial, and empty tomb, whom Luke indicates
were “Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other
women with them” (Luke 24:10), indicates that in this gospel the sword
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 281

does not symbolize this particular suffering. Raymond Brown points out
that starting with theologians in the early church numerous other mean-
ings of the sword have been suggested, including a scandalized doubt that
pervades Mary’s soul during the crucifixion, or her own violent death, or
she herself being rejected, or her pregnancy being illegitimate, or the fall of
Jerusalem which she lived to see, or the word of God, or her enmity with
the serpent from the garden in Genesis. Because they are extraneous to
Luke’s text, these explanations are as implausible as the popular idea that
the sword stands for her sorrow at the cross. Drawing on the image of the
sword in Ezekiel 14:17, where a sword of judgment passes through the
land, Brown suggests that a more plausible interpretation is that for Luke
this sword signifies spiritual discernment. Hearing the word of God and
keeping it will not happen easily but will require struggle to arrive at wis-
dom. Miriam of Nazareth will be tested in the depths of her faith. As Reid
writes, “What Simeon intimates is that Mary, like all disciples, will experi-
ence difficulty in understanding God’s word. She was not given automatic
knowledge and insight about her son and his mission.”'*” In truth, as
Norris reflects, far from embodying a passive, submissive femininity, Mary
wrestled with the living God as something of a biblical interpreter, hear-
ing, believing, and pondering the word of divine promise even when it
pierced her soul like a sword. This is hardly passivity, but faith, the strong
faith of a peasant woman.!**

Blessed Together
Woven through this scene that portrays Mary fulfilling Torah and walking
her journey of faith are also distinct threads of her partnership with
Joseph. As Luke writes, “they” brought the child up to Jerusalem; “they”
offered sacrifice; Simeon encountered “the parents” doing for Jesus what
was customary under the law; “the child’s father and mother” reacted with
awe to his revelatory words. And in a moment little depicted in Christian
art, “the child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him;
and Simeon blessed them .. . .” What a striking development, the young
married couple wrapped in blessing from this wise old elder, prayed over
and remembered before God, together. It is not Mary alone who is blessed
here, nor Joseph on his own. The two are bonded in marriage, adjusting to
the care of a new baby, and divine favor is invoked upon “them” as such.
Ambivalence dogs our reflection. Feminist scholars point out that accord-
ing to the custom of the times, this was an arranged, patriarchal marriage
282 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

and thus not something that women searching for equality would aspire to
today. Furthermore, Mary is here incorporated into a patriarchal text
rather than subverting it as in the annunciation and visitation stories. At
the same time, in a church tradition that has long ignored Mary’s married
status in favor of an idealized portrait of the virgin mother and, more to
the point, has used that image to relegate married women to subordinate
status, it is surely liberating to give Mary back her marriage, to give her
back her relationship with the man with whom she shared her life, for bet-
ter or worse. And to know that this is blessed.
This episode as a whole ends with a summary statement that implies
years of partnership in parenting: “When they had finished everything
required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town
of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and
the favor of God was upon him.” Jesus grew up not in a vacuum but in the
circle of his Galilean family. It is more than likely that at least some of his
understanding of God’s power to save came from his Jewish parents who,
during the decisive years of his growth, taught him about the compassion-
ate, liberating God of the Hebrew scriptures.

LOSING AND FINDING

(LUKE 2:41-52)
In the final scene of the infancy narrative, Luke brings the reader back once
more to the temple in Jerusalem twelve years later. After the Passover feast
Jesus remains behind, only to be found by his terribly worried parents after
a three-day search. Their reunion sets the stage for the high point of the
story, where Jesus declares that his primary allegiance is to God’s business,
to being “in my Father’s house.” This narrative has all the earmarks of a
typical Hellenistic biographical tale in which a childhood incident fore-
shadows the greatness of the person in adulthood. Its point is christologi-
cal, borne in the pronouncement of the deep relationship between Jesus
the Jew and the God he experiences in a most intimate way. At the same
time, both the language and content of the story give us another memory
of Miriam of Nazareth in action. From this we glean one more tessera for
our mosaic, a complex picture of parenting.
Note that this family is once again depicted as observant of Jewish tra-
dition, traveling up to Jerusalem for the most important pilgrimage feast
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 283

in the calendar. The firstborn son is now old enough to accompany them,
taking another step in growing into his religious heritage. They travel in
the company of “their relatives and acquaintances,” a typical pilgrimage
party of family members and village neighbors sharing the joyful spirit of
the festival as well as giving each other safety in numbers. Their return
begins “when the feast was ended,” indicating they had all observed the full
custom of purification, sacrificing a lamb, eating the Passover meal, and
observing the days of unleavened bread that followed. One day into the
return journey, disaster strikes. Anyone who has ever loved a child in dan-
ger can fill in the blanks of this narrative, which overlooks the intervening
search and skips to the parents’ finding the boy “after three days.” Their
dramatic reunion after a frantic search is again redolent of Jewish custom.
They find Jesus in the temple in the midst of the teachers of the Law, “lis-
tening to them and asking them questions,” while giving back answers
filled with insight. This young man on the brink of adulthood has studied
Torah and takes delight in debating it. Give credit to his parents.

Human Anguish
Parenting well, besides demanding an enormous amount of intelligence
and energy, places the heart in a vulnerable position. Running through the
joy of relationship with children in daily life and through all the milestones
of their growth, there is also the background fear that harm may befall
these young creatures, injuring them in ways that parents cannot prevent
however responsible they may be. The joy and the suffering together are
facets of love, which is expressed in the paradoxical mix of relief and anger
that parents experience after danger has passed. The confrontation between
Jesus and his parents in this story plays out this theme. “When his parents
saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, ‘Son, why have
you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been so worried look-
ing for you.” The verb Luke uses for worry, odynasthai in Greek, connotes
severe mental pain or sadness, overwhelming anxiety. Two other scenes
where Luke uses this term underscore its heaviness. In the parable of the
rich man who ignores the poor man starving at his gate, both eventually
die; the rich man cries out to Abraham, “have mercy on me and send
Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am
in agony in these flames” (Luke 16:24). In Acts, Paul takes leave of the elders
of the church in Ephesus; “there was much weeping among them all; they
embraced Paul and kissed him, grieving especially because of what he had
284 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

said, that they would not see him again. Then they brought him to the
ship” (Acts 20:37-38). The anguish of a soul in hell, the heart-wrenching
sorrow of saying a final goodbye—these are analogies for the torment felt
by Mary and Joseph looking for their lost boy. It is no wonder that when
they find him, her words carry an unmistakable tone of rebuke and
reproach accompanying their relief. She corrects him, scolds him, com-
plains about his behavior. Jesus’ response in turn, far from being contrite,
distances himself from his parents’ concern. He reproaches them for
searching with such anxiety. Brown points out that Jesus’ answer even car-
ries a tone of grief that his parents have understood him so poorly. Intel-
lectually curious about matters religious and enamored of the whole
temple experience, this is a village boy discovering his vocation. His calling
lies in the service of God, which takes priority over family ties. The world
beyond the village beckons.
When Jesus finished explaining himself to his parents, “they did not
understand what he said to them.” Biblical scholars warn against toning
down their incomprehension. It functions in Luke as a narrative necessity
because Jesus’ divine sonship, while announced from his conception,
becomes fully appreciated only in the christology of the post-resurrection
church. Before then, scope for pondering and deciding is given to every
character in the narrative. This literary reason, based in the actual course
of the historical development of Christian faith, can be accompanied by
existential interpretation. It is never easy to raise a child. When children are
precocious, navigating the waters of parental love and responsibility
becomes ever more complex, the more so as they get older. The tension and
upset between parents and child in this scene are palpable. The boy went
off to chart his own course. The parents did not understand—no idealiza-
tion possible here.

“Your Father and I”

As in the presentation in the temple, Mary and Joseph are depicted in this
story as a full-fledged married couple and parents of this son. The scene
begins with their joint action: “Now his parents went to Jerusalem every
year at the feast,” and ends with Jesus’ returning to their common home:
“And he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to
them.” In between, the pronoun “they” occurs eight times with the verbs
that move the action: they sought him, they did not find him, they found
him, they were astonished, they did not understand. In an unusual depar-
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 285

ture from patriarchal protocol, this story depicts Mary rather than her hus-
band speaking in the name of both parents when she reprimands their son.
This is odd, because overall in this infancy narrative Joseph acts as the
rightful, legal, even if not actual, father of Jesus. Commentators note the
likelihood that Luke received this temple story, in which Joseph appears
straightforwardly as Jesus’ parent, from a source that knew nothing of the
annunciation story or its implied point that Joseph was not the biological
father of Jesus. This literary artist lets the inconsistencies stand, just as in
the coming chapters he will at one point slip in a restriction to paternity—
Jesus began his ministry “being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph” (Luke
3:23)—-while at the same time having the Nazareth villagers respond to the
preaching of their native son by exclaiming “Is this not Joseph’s son?”
(Luke 4:22) with no qualifications. The point to remember is that Luke
portrays Mary having a partner in parenting, at least for twelve years.
Reflecting on the significance of these years, Indonesian theologian
Marianne Katoppo recalls a cartoon on the wall of the World Council of
Churches’ editorial office in Geneva. It depicts an obviously pregnant
Mary and a young Joseph, who says to her, “When you're the Mother of
God, will you still be my Mary?” Underneath, the caption reads: “Do we
ever think that they loved each other? ‘Joseph my husband, ‘Mary my wife.
A child listens. And grows. And becomes the lover of humankind.”'*’ Mary
and her husband are companions in faith and married collaborators in
child-raising. In this relationship, furthermore, she is no passive partner
but speaks out and takes initiative, as this scene depicts. Together they cre-
ate a home that nurtures life.

Thinking Mother
In this scene Jesus has reached the brink of maturity, physically and spiri-
tually. In its aftermath he returns to the family fold in Nazareth, not to be
heard from again until he starts his ministry at around the age of thirty.
Once again we are told that Mary “cherished all these things in her heart.”
And, as Luke summarizes the years that roll by, “Jesus increased in wisdom
and in stature, and in favor before God and human beings.” It takes so
much parenting for this to happen! It takes so much nourishing care for a
newborn to negotiate the hazards of infancy and reach the second year of
life. Even today, in countries with a high rate of infant mortality, the first
birthday is a great cause for celebration. Each year after that brings new
challenges of survival and growth, the whole marvelous panoply of a
286 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

developing human being. The person or persons charged with watching

over this progress are committed to long-term love in action. So much
practical care, providing nourishment, cleaning up, providing clothing for
a changing body; so much teaching, encouraging, disciplining; so much
holding, providing intuitive psychological support, wiping away tears. So
much loving. The summary statements about Jesus’ growth cover over the
enormous amount of mothering he received, and the fathering, without
which he would not have reached adulthood physically, emotionally, and
spiritually as the person he became. And through it all Mary of Nazareth
kept pondering, kept thinking about the meaning of her life and the lives
of those she loved, kept walking her journey of faith with God.
I want to be very careful here, since holding up Mary’s motherhood as
a model for all women is one of the neuralgic points in traditional mariol-
ogy. Social customs surrounding the family are undergoing epochal shifts
in our day. It becomes clear that not all women want to be mothers, nor
need they be in order to be true women. Women who do bear children are
finding ways to combine career and family with more or less satisfaction.
Some men are staying home to raise their children. In wealthy societies,
thanks to longer life expectancy, even women who assume traditional
maternal roles will spend more years without children at home than with
them. Here is where the principle that the circumstance of Mary’s life
provides no paradigm for all women bears critical fruit. There are many
avenues along which women may rightly live out their human vocation,
traditional motherhood being but one. Even if Mary is to function as an
exemplar, Paul VI’s teaching becomes ever more germane: she is an exem-
plar not in the particular social conditions of the life she led, but in the way
in her own life she heard the word of God and kept it. By implication,
responding to this word of God may take many creative forms in women’s
lives.
The question we are pursuing is the slightly different one of how to
remember her in a liberating way in the midst of the community of the
church. This episode presents her as a married woman and a mother,
thinking, praying, full of initiatives, living out her familial relationships in
Nazareth, which village summons up the peasant culture, economic
stresses, and political oppression that formed the context of her hard-
working life. In this time and place, year in and year out, far from temple,
priesthood, and sacrificial ritual, she walked faithfully with her God.
Respecting her particularity, we remember her in solidarity with women
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 287

everywhere whose life energies literally mother the next generation, and
with all who use their generative powers to nurture and build up healthy
lives in the social and natural worlds.

WINE AT THE WEDDING

(JOHN 2:1-11)

The sounds of feasting fly through the next tessera with robust joy, halt for
a tense spell, then resume with even greater merriment. “There was a wed-
ding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus with his
disciples had also been invited to the wedding.” Amid the feasting, danc-
ing, and singing, unfortunately the wine gave out. When the mother of
Jesus noticed and brought this to his attention, he declined to get involved
for “my hour has not yet come.” Disregarding his hesitation, she bid the
servants to follow his word, which they did, filling to the brim six stone
water jars with a capacity of twenty-plus gallons each. When the chief
steward tasted the liquid it had changed into excellent wine, a point on
which he complimented the groom. The text itself concludes by pointing
out the significance of this extravagance: “Jesus did this, the first of his
signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed
in him.”
In the view of biblical scholarship, the story of the wedding feast at Cana
has all the earmarks of a popular story or folktale. It originally circulated
to express people’s interest in the early, hidden life of Jesus, the finding of
the twelve-year-old boy in the temple probably being another example.
Given the existence of different types of literature in the Bible, Raymond
Brown observes, “there is no reason why, alongside inspired history, one
could not have inspired fiction or inspired popular narrative.” Scholarly
techniques determine the literary genre one is dealing with, but for any
story to become scripture, whether historically based or not, it must
become a vehicle of God’s message of salvation. “The evangelist is not
responsible for the origin or historicity of the story; he is responsible for
the message it serves to vocalize.”!” As the closing remark of the Cana nar-
rative explains, its main purpose is christological, to reveal the person of
Jesus gifted with the glory of the Messiah. Like virtually every other scene
in the Gospel of John, it does this through rich use of symbolism. Both
wedding feast and banquet are well-known biblical themes that symbolize
288 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

the coming messianic days. Abundance of wine is also a consistent figure

for the joy of the last days, promised in many prophetic utterances: “the
mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it” (Amos
9:13). In this gospel the wine, more than one hundred gallons of it, signi-
fies the abundant gift of salvation for which light, water, and food are other
Johannine symbols. The motif of Wisdom’s presence in this scene also car-
ries a christological message. In Proverbs Holy Sophia prepares a banquet,
inviting people to eat of her bread and drink of her wine. The very act of
drinking her wine is a symbol for accepting her message. Those who do so
lay aside immaturity and find fullness of life, walking in her way of insight
(Prov. 9:1-6).!?! Here in Cana we have Jesus, already revealed in John’s pro-
logue as the incarnation of divine Wisdom, providing wine in abundance
to drink and eliciting belief from the disciples.
Given this plethora of christic symbolism, it would be surprising if the
figure of the mother of Jesus, never given her personal name, did not also
have a symbolic function. While affirming this to be the case, scholarly
opinion is deeply divided over the significance of her words and actions in
this scene.'** She is an image of the true believer because of her faith in
Jesus; no, she has good intentions but imperfect faith, seeing him only as a
wonder-worker; no, she is an example of unbelief because she overrode his
preferences; well, there is no. reference to Christian faith here, but only a
portrait of a mother with exuberant belief in the ability of her offspring.
Again, Jesus’ initial resistance to her request is a rebuke; it is not a rebuke
but the Johannine version of the Synoptic saying that hearing the word of
God and doing it are more important than physical family ties; it is neither
of these but part of the typical gospel pattern of request-resistance-
persistence-granting, as can be seen in the second Cana miracle, where
Jesus cures the official’s dying son only after being repeatedly petitioned
(John 4:47—50). Again, the mother of Jesus here is a collective personality,
a symbol of the church; no, she is an individual personality with an impor-
tant symbolic function; no, she is an inessential figure whose function of
getting the action rolling could have been filled by anyone else. Mary’s
presence in this scene ties Cana to the cross, the other Johannine scene in
which she appears and where Jesus’ hour has now come; no, the two scenes
are not clearly related. Mary’s function here is either so unique as mother
of Jesus or universal as an ideal disciple that it offers little insight regard-
ing women’s participation in church leadership roles; to the contrary, her
words and deeds offer an intriguing portrait of a woman as leader and cat-
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 289

alyst in the mission of Jesus rife with implications for women’s empower-
ment. Navigating my way through this exegetical minefield, I clarify once
again that my purpose is not to adjudicate these disputed interpretations
in the rich field of Johannine scholarship, let alone write yet another com-
mentary on John. We are seeking answers to the question, How do we
remember her? What does this Cana story, this little colored stone tile, con-
tribute to the marian mosaic of dangerous memory being constructed
here from a liberating, feminist perspective? Taking this narrative as a
whole, I glue this tessera in to catch and reflect back the strong light of the
two sentences attributed to the mother of Jesus at the wedding.

They Have No Wine

While highly symbolic, this story is surprisingly grounded in the historical
reality of the times. About nine miles north of Nazareth, Cana was a simi-
lar small village of mostly peasant farmers struggling under Roman and
Herodian rule. The wedding celebrated the second stage of marriage, when
the bride traveled to her husband’s home, often in a quasi-formal proces-
sion. A festive wedding supper with friends and relatives followed, some-
times lasting through the night into the next day. It is doubtful whether the
full week of feasting reported of wealthy urban families could be afforded
in the straitened economic circumstances of these villagers. The six stone
jars “for the Jewish rites of purification” sound a further authentic note,
being found today in archaeological digs in Galilee and interpreted as evi-
dence for the Jewish character of the Galilean population. According to
levitical purity laws, stone jars were to be used instead of common clay
pots because the latter more easily absorbed contamination.
“They have no wine.” This was more than an embarrassment to the
providers of the feast and the couple whose union was being celebrated,
though it was certainly that. It was a concrete, painful reminder of the pre-
carious economic situation in which the wedding guests all lived. Acting in
a decisive and confident manner, Mary named the need and took initiative
to seek a solution. Because she persisted, a bountiful abundance soon
flowed among the guests. Feminist reflection espies here the kind of
woman whose movements typically run counter to the expectations of
idealized femininity. Far from silent, she speaks; far from passive, she acts;
far from receptive to the orders of the male, she goes counter to his wishes,
finally bringing him along with her; far from yielding to a grievous situa-
tion, she takes charge of it, organizing matters to bring about benefit to
290 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

those in need, including herself. Her words ring with the tones of
prophecy, deploring and announcing hope at the same time. From this
angle, she stands in solidarity with women around the world who struggle
for social justice for themselves and their children, especially daughters.
“They have no wine,” nor security from bodily violation, nor equal access
to education, health care, economic opportunity, nor political power, nor
cultural respect because of their race or ethnic heritage, nor dignity due
their persons as created in the image and likeness of God herself. Uttering
these words, women can be empowered to turn away from socialized lack
of self-esteem and docile acceptance of marginalization to engage instead
in critical praxis on behalf of their own good. Every step to secure these
human blessings, starting with the cry “we do not have it, we should have
it,” shares in God’s own compassionate desire to establish the divine reign
of justice on this earth.
As it works out in the churches, wherever an entrenched clerical system
wielding specious arguments keeps women from the ecclesial leadership of
the altar, the pulpit, and the decision-making chamber, “they have no
wine’ reverberates with critical hope for women’s full participation in the
ministries of the church. Where this restricting of women’s Spirit-given
gifts, as well as the gifts of men who are married to them, consequently
renders whole communities deprived of the Eucharist, “they have no
wine,’ literally no consecrated bread or cup of salvation, calls for the old
water of outmoded, patriarchal practice to be transformed into renewed
and fruitful sacramental life.
Reflecting with the poor in third-world contexts, theologians discover
yet further profound insight in this portrait. In Brazil, Gebara and Binge-
mer note that in this scene Mary stands among the people, herself a mem-
ber of the group without wine, and speaks the hope of the needy. And that
night the poor community of Cana in Galilee “becomes the place where
God’s glory is made manifest as men and women drink wine, make merry,
and celebrate the wedding feast.”!° The story continues today as the figure
of the mother of Jesus accompanies the poor in their ongoing struggle for
bread and human rights. In view of the symbolism of the story, her words
reverberate with the deep desire people feel today for their own messianic
liberation. Her cry as spokeswoman from among the people energizes
their hope: “They have no wine, nor peace, freedom, rights, food, housing,
jobs, health ... .”!"* In India a similar reflection places the mother of Jesus
in solidarity with people who are humiliated. Then as now, “they have no
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 291

wine” resonates among the voiceless, empowering those who are margin-
alized “on account of economic colonialism, colour prejudice, caste dis-
tinction, racial discrimination, religious fanaticism.”'®° Extrapolating to a
global context, Mary’s strong impulse to call for relief corresponds to God’s
own dearest desire, giving us in the Cana story an enacted parable of the
coming of the reign of God’s hospitality. As part of the dangerous memory
of the mother of Jesus, this challenging plea addresses the conscience of the
body of Christ today, especially in the richest nations on earth. “They have
no wine, no food, no clean drinking water”: you need to act.

Do Whatever He Telis You

With these words the mother of Jesus alerts the servants to listen to his
word and follow his way. In order to grasp the significance of this point, we
need to step back and understand that women play surprisingly significant
roles in the gospel of John as a whole, both in the number of incidents
recounted and their theological consequence. Filled with the Spirit, they
exhibit deeply wise knowledge of Jesus, take steps to support and encour-
age his mission, and act to witness his message to others. Feminist scholars
credit these powerful portraits to the situation of John’s church commu-
nity, where women were “enabled by the communal prophetic experience
which made every believer a source of spirit and life,” where “leadership
and structure ... [seem] to have been dynamic and charismatic in charac-
ter”” and where despite struggle women exercised apostolic leadership
functions.!% This context in turn shaped John’s robust presentation of
women’s ministerial actions. In addition to the Cana story, where Jesus
begins his public ministry in response to the initiative of a woman, the
gospel includes numerous others.
* The Samaritan woman, who enters into theological conversation at
the well, whom Jesus also addresses as “Woman” and to whom he reveals
his messianic identity, acts on her own initiative to bring news of this
Messiah to her townspeople. Many people “believed in him because of the
woman’s testimony” (John 4:39), marking her as a highly successful early
missionary to the Samaritans.
* Martha of Bethany, whose word summoned Jesus to the grave of her
dead brother, acts as a primary spokeswoman for her community’s faith.
To Jesus’ revelation that he is the resurrection and the life, her confession
“you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world”
292 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

(John 11:27) parallels that of Peter in Matthew’s gospel, marking her as the
leader in this gospel responsible for articulating the community’s christo-
logical confession.
* Mary of Bethany, anointing Jesus’ feet with costly, fragrant ointment
and wiping them with her hair, flags the end of Jesus’ public ministry. Her
faithful love stands in sharp contrast to the betraying heart of Judas, one of
the Twelve. Jesus himself discredits male objection to her ministry of
anointing with the words “Leave her alone!” (John 12:7). Her deed stun-
ningly anticipates his command to wash one another’s feet as a sign of fol-
lowing his path of love, marking her as an exemplary disciple.
* Mary Magdalene, who stood by the cross of Jesus, was first to the
tomb on Easter morning, and called Peter and the beloved disciple to wit-
ness the emptiness of the grave. Even more striking, she herself was the first
among the disciples to experience an appearance of the resurrected Christ.
Addressed as “Woman” by the risen Lord, her commission to preach this
good news to others was carried out so powerfully, and her words “I have
seen the Lord” (John 20:18) bore so unmistakably the technical formula of
revelation as the basis of one’s witness, that centuries later the church was
still calling her apostolorum apostola, the “apostle of the apostles.”!°” Sandra
Schneiders underscores the importance of the Mary Magdalene material
in this gospel:
It shows us quite clearly that, in at least one of the first Christian communi-
ties, a woman was regarded as the primary witness to the paschal mystery,
the guarantee of the apostolic tradition. Her claim to apostleship is equal in
every respect to both Peter’s and Paul’s, and we know more about her exer-
cise of her vocation than we do about most of the members of the Twelve.
Unlike Peter, she was not unfaithful to Jesus during the passion, and unlike
Paul, she never persecuted Christ in his members. But, like both, she saw the
risen Lord, received directly from him the commission to preach the Gospel,
and carried out that commission faithfully and effectively.!8

Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza sums up the result of extensive research into

women in the Johannine gospel with the insight that “at crucial points of
the narrative, women emerge as exemplary disciples and apostolic wit-
nesses,”'”? and this despite the androcentric nature of the traditioning
process itself.
What, then, of the mother of Jesus at Cana? “It could be that this woman
too, who knows of Jesus’ powers and instructs others to obey him, is to be
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 293

seen as an apostolic figure,’ Adele Reinhartz suggests.” Jesus calls her

“Woman, which seems to place her on the same level as the Samaritan
woman and Mary Magdalene, whom he also addressed with this appella-
tion; her actions show that she is of the same mettle. Her instruction “Do
whatever he tells you” charges the servants at the wedding to turn believ-
ingly to Jesus, and they do so on the strength of her testimony. For the orig-
inal readers of this gospel in John’s ecclesial community, this injunction
resonated with symbolic overtones. As with every apostolic exhortation,
the grounds for accepting this are not because it comes from Jesus’ mother
per se, but because it is given by a believing disciple.”?' Without abandon-
ing her relationship as mother of the Messiah, and even while exercising a
mother’s influence, Mary of Nazareth joins the company of her sisters the
Samaritan woman, Martha of Bethany, Mary of Bethany, Mary of Mag-
dala, and a host of other women, remembered and forgotten, as an exem-
plary woman disciple among other disciples, recognized by the love and
apostolic witness to Christ that they give.
This tessera reflects the picture of a celebrative woman calling for more
wine at the wedding, a spokeswoman of the hope of the disenfranchised
and the poor, and an apostolic witness who leads others to Christ. These
images are not mutually exclusive. By overlaying them we gain a powerful
memory that gives impetus to women’s vocation in church and world in
mutuality with men living the Christian faith today in all its complexity.

NEAR THE CROSS (JOHN 19:25-27)

Death. Irreversible, irrevocable, shutting down a person’s time forever.

Worse when it occurs as the result of an act of violence. Causing unname-
able grief in the hearts of those who love and lose another. Worse when the
loss occurs as the result of an act of violence. Decisively, incredibly final.
In John’s gospel the scene is described in brief shorthand: “standing
near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the
wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” The dying Jesus, seeing his mother
and the disciple whom he loved, addressed them both: “Woman, behold
your son.... Behold, your mother.” From that time on the beloved disciple
took her into his home. Then Jesus knew that everything was finished.
After crying out his thirst and sipping sour wine, “he bowed his head and
gave up his spirit.” He died. The subject of countless works of art, this scene
294 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

conjures up all the anguish and desolation a woman could experience who
had given birth to a child, loved that child, raised and taught that child,
even tried to protect that child, only to have him executed in the worst
imaginable way by the power of the state. It is interesting to note that the
gospel never describes Mary holding the body of her dead son when he is
taken down from the cross. Yet the artistic image of the pieta truly captures
the existential tone of inexpressible sadness at the heart of this event.
As with Cana, biblical scholars question whether the scene as written is
actually historical or whether its origin lies in the evangelist’s symbolic
imagination. Jesus’ death on the cross is clearly a historical event, men-
tioned even by Roman and Jewish writers. Similarly, the presence of women
at the cross has historical warrants. All four gospels agree that a group of
women kept vigil, standing firm in the face of fear, grief, and the scattering
of the male disciples. Women standing near the cross or at a distance kept
the death watch, their faithfulness a sign to Jesus that not all relationships
had been broken, despite his feeling of intense abandonment even by God.
The names of the women differ in the different gospel accounts, but the
fact that they are mentioned in every gospel eloquently strengthens the
argument that their presence at the cross is historically accurate in general
outline.*°* What counts against the historicity of this particular Johannine
scene of the mother and the beloved disciple are its overt symbolism along
with two critical considerations. First, there is no mention in the Synoptic
gospels of the mother of Jesus being among the women at the cross. Luke,
who places her in Jerusalem with the community of disciples at Pentecost,
would likely have named her among the Galilean women if he knew that
she was present at the crucifixion. His silence indicates that she was not
there. Second, the gospels stress that all the male disciples fled or scattered,
which leaves little room for the continued presence of one believing,
beloved male disciple. This unnamed beloved disciple, not one of the
Twelve, plays a role that is utterly peculiar to John’s gospel. He is the wit-
ness who guarantees the validity of the Johannine community’s under-
standing of Jesus. Their christological views might be different from those
of the petrine churches, but they were still utterly authentic, a point under-
scored by the way the profound faith of the beloved disciple is frequently
contrasted with Peter’s stumbling belief.
The symbolic theological importance of the crucifixion scene in John
surfaces in the idea that at the end of his life Jesus brought into being a
community in the very Spirit that flowed from him on the cross. Two great
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 295

figures without a name appear, the mother of Jesus and the beloved disci-
ple. Both were historical persons but are not named here because they are
functioning as symbols of discipleship. Standing by the cross they are
turned toward each other by Jesus’ words and given into each other’s care.
Henceforth they “represent the community of true believers it is Jesus’
mission to establish.”*° The formula “Behold” or “Look” indicates that a
revelation is to follow, such as John the Baptist’s cry “Behold the Lamb of
God” (John 1:36) and Pilate’s statement “Behold your King” (John 19:14).
Beholding each other in a new relationship, the mother of Jesus and the
beloved disciple mark the birth of a new family of faith founded on the fol-
lowing of Jesus and his gracious God. The mother/son language indicates
that, just as in the Synoptic scene with the mother and the brothers, Jesus
is reinterpreting family in terms of discipleship. Many biblical scholars
today also note that the symmetry of the beholding between the woman
and the man signals that neither is to be elevated above the other. Both are
equal partners in the family of disciples, reflecting the Johannine commu-
nity as a whole where to a great extent “women and men were already on
an equal level in the fold of the Good Shepherd.””™ In a word, the mother
and the beloved disciple are representative of a larger group, the church.
Symbolically Jesus provides a communal context of mutual love and egal-
itarian regard in which they shall all live after he is gone.” Regarding Mary
herself, the scholars of Mary in the New Testament offer a counterintuitive
insight: “Paradoxically, if the scene is not historical and the presence of the
mother of Jesus and the beloved disciple reflects Johannine theological
inventiveness, that may enhance the importance of Mary for the Johannine
community.” It is not likely that she would signify the fundamental
vocation of the community if they did not already remember her as an
exemplary disciple and apostolic witness, an insight supported by having
Jesus address her once again as “Woman.”
Uncovering the symbolism of the mother/beloved disciple scene in
John’s gospel leads to rich insight into the theological links between Jesus’
death, the gift of the Spirit, and the foundation of the Christian commu-
nity. In terms of our project, its legitimate designation of Mary as a pre-
cious symbolic figure also has the unfortunate effect of deleting her
human reality as a historical woman with a crucified son. Even if she did
not stand at the foot of the cross, even if she was still in Nazareth, which
seems likely, news would have reached her. Then she joined the desolate
cadre of women through the centuries who experience the terrible human
296 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

condition of outliving one’s child. There is no speaking this racking sor-

row. It is out of the natural order of things. Worse yet, this death itself did
not occur in the natural order of things but was violently inflicted, pre-
ceded by excruciating torment and carried out with public shame. One
never really gets over the pain when someone you love is a victim of vio-
lence. Mater Dolorosa is not a theological concept or a symbolic image or
an archetypal experience, but a real person who got hit one day with the
terrible fact that her firstborn son was dead by state execution.
Crucifixion, a particularly cruel manner of killing, was a Roman death
penalty reserved for slaves and noncitizens. It was inevitably carried out in
cases where people had been involved in revolt against the empire. The
notice of Jesus’ crime tacked to his cross read “King of the Jews,” thus plac-
ing him among the dregs of messianic hopefuls who had threatened the
political power of Caesar. Thousands of others were dispatched the same
way—recall Josephus’s account of the crucifixion of two thousand Jewish
men during the uprising after Herod’s death. From the purely historical
point of view, Jesus suffered and died in a broad political context of Jewish
suffering and death at the hand of the Romans. Mary in this tessera is a suf-
fering Jewish mother. Her sorrow for her dead son places her in the com-
pany of her contemporaries in Galilee and Judea whose children also fell
victim to the imperial power of the empire, and in the company of their
descendants through the ages, including horrifically those touched by the
Christian Crusades, the Russian pogroms, and the Nazi Holocaust, whose
children’s lives were extinguished. Emphasizing this connectedness of the
historical mother of Jesus, David Flusser observes, “She belongs to the
countless Jewish mothers who lament their cruelly murdered children. ...
It would not be such a bad Mariology that did not forget these sisters of
Mary in the flesh.”?°”
This particular, unappeasable pain also places her memory more
broadly in solidarity with mothers of children dead by state violence every-
where, for it remains horrifically the case that the life given from women’s
bodies keeps on being taken away by brutality, war, and terrorism. Asian
women strongly identify Mary with today’s “mothers who suffer as their
children are being massacred and taken as political prisoners for their
actions on behalf of justice and love.”*°* Calling on her memory, grieving
mothers, wives, and daughters find strength in their bitter struggle against
state repression and personal despair. Latin American women theologians
speak of the “shared Calvary” women suffer with Mary in the civil wars and
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 297

political repression that feed on their own children’s lives.”°? Muslim Pales-
tinian, Bosnian, and Afghani women, mothers of criminals executed in the
United States, surviving mothers of Cambodian and Rwandan genocides,
the mothers and grandmothers of Argentina’s Plaza de Mayo still demand-
ing to know the fate of their disappeared loved ones—all drink from the
same cup of suffering. Like them, Mary suffered the anguish of not being
able to save her child from the hand of torturers and executioners.”!° The
fact that Christian imagination can picture Mary standing with desolated
people under all the crosses set up in the world is due to the history of her
own very real grief. This memory finds its liberating effectiveness when it
empowers the church’s women and men to say, STOP IT. No more killing
of other people’s children. No more war, brutal greed, and tyranny. This is,
of course, a utopian wish, a hope for a world shaped according to God’s
reign which will be a world with no more sorrowing mothers. On the way
to this world, the memory of Mary near the cross abides, galvanizing non-
violent action to stop the violence as the only appropriate expression of
faith.

“ALL FILLED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT”

(ACTS 1:14-15 AND 2:1-21)

With this tessera we arrive at the center of this book’s proposal to enfold
Mary into the communion of saints. For here she dwells in the post-
resurrection company of Jesus’ disciples gathered in the upper room to
await the coming of the Spirit. They are all praying, remembering, expect-
ing. This scene appears at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, which
was composed by Luke as the second volume of his story of Christian ori-
gins. While “the first book” he wrote was a gospel that dealt with Jesus’
words, deeds, and destiny, this sequel is a companion volume that tells the
story of the church and its increasingly successful mission to the Gentiles
throughout the Roman empire.
Following Jesus’ ascension into heaven from the Mount of Olives, the
disciples returned to the upper room in Jersualem where they were staying.
The text names eleven leading men in the group, and then continues, “All
these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the
women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.” Obviously a
mixed group of women and men comprised of Jesus’ Galilean disciples
298 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

and some of his family members, “the company of persons was in all about
a hundred and twenty.” The tessera might end there with Mary at prayer
among the followers of Jesus after Easter. She is not mentioned again by
name. However, the subsequent Pentecost story opens with the words
“they were all together in one place,” when the sound from heaven came,
and the rush of a mighty wind filled the house, and tongues as of fire
“rested on each one of them.” While no names are given of members of this
group, biblical scholars presume that the “all” refers back to the earlier list
of Jesus’ disciples and family members in the upper room. Hence Mary is
present when “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak
in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” As part of the com-
munity that was gathered in Jesus’ name, this older Jewish woman, marked
by the struggles of a hard life, receives a new outpouring of the Spirit of
God and raises her voice again in inspired praise and prophecy.
There is good reason for accepting this picture of Mary enfolded into
the nascent Jewish-Christian community as reliable tradition. It is highly
unlikely that Luke would have cast her as such an exemplary disciple from
the annunciation on, someone who heard the word of God and kept it, if
the community did not remember her as part of their circle. Furthermore,
since Luke does not mention her among the women at the cross, the sur-
prise of her reappearance in the Jerusalem community after Jesus’ death
and resurrection indicates a historical memory that she was indeed there,
at least for a time. The presence of Jesus’ brothers, too, is validated by the
fact that James, “the brother of the Lord,” became a key leader of the
church in Jerusalem. This scene is constructed with beautiful artistry.
Brown points out that just as Luke begins his gospel by walking the faith-
ful Jews Elizabeth and Zechariah, Anna and Simeon, right out of the
Hebrew Scriptures to witness to Jesus the Messiah, so too he gathers three
groups from the gospel and walks them into Acts to bridge Jesus’ ministry
and the later story of the church: Mary, who witnesses to Jesus’ infancy, the
Twelve who witness to his ministry, and the women who witness to his
death and burial (although it should be noted that the women, too, witness
to his ministry).*' Both of Luke’s volumes begin with the startling
promise that the Holy Spirit will come upon main characters in the story:
Mary in the gospel, the community of disciples in Acts. When the Spirit
does descend, the result is new birth that comes from God: Jesus in the
gospel, the church in Acts. The literary virtuosity of this author, however,
does not negate the validity of the memory reflected in his work. Histori-
cally, Mary very likely belonged to the early Jerusalem church.
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 299
Sa
i

To have a liberating appreciation of this mosaic tile, we must correct a

popular distortion. Traditional artistic depictions of Pentecost portray the
Spirit descending upon thirteen figures, one woman, Mary, surrounded by
twelve male apostles. The product of an androcentric imagination that
erases women and insignificant men, this picture hardly does justice to
Luke's text with its one hundred twenty persons. These all must be restored
to the scene. We need especially to attend to “the women” present in that
upper room. They are depicted not as extras but as an integral part of the
praying community in Jerusalem. Although they are not named in this
passage, biblical scholars assume, reasonably enough, that they are the
women mentioned in Luke’s gospel account of the passion. There we read
that when Jesus died on the cross, “the women who had followed him from
Galilee stood at a distance and saw these things” (Luke 23:49). These
women were disciples, as the technical meaning of “follow” makes clear.
Their function was not that of the idle crowds “gazing at” the spectacle, but
that of witnesses who “saw” what happened, as the technical meaning of
“see” makes clear. Their role as witnessing disciples continued when
Joseph of Arimathea wrapped Jesus’ corpse in a shroud and laid it in the
tomb: “the women who had come with him from Galilee followed and saw
the tomb and how the body was laid” (Luke 23:55). At early dawn on Sun-
day morning they returned to the tomb with spices and ointments to per-
form a final, merciful anointing, only to find it empty. Now the legitimacy
of the whole Christian message hinges on their observation and interpre-
tation. The women disciples “play an absolutely essential role in the gospel
accounts ... the identity of Jesus’ tomb with the empty tomb depends on
their testimony.’’!* Two dazzling messengers relayed the news of the res-
urrection, whereupon the women “remembered” Jesus’ words. Returning
to the city, they announced their discovery “to the eleven and to all the
rest.” At this point Luke finally names some of the women involved in this
momentous revelation: “Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and
Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who kept
repeating this to the apostles” (Luke 24:10)—a whole cadre of female wit-
nesses to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In wrenching
patriarchal fashion, the women’s words seemed to the men “like an idle
tale, and they did not believe them” (Luke 24:11). The term for idle tale,
léros in Greek, “could scarcely be more condescending,” forming the root
of the English word delirious.*’? It was as if the women were spouting non-
sense, so much delirious humbug. Peter even ran to the tomb and saw that
it was empty as the women had said; but he went home “wondering” what
300 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

was going on, rather than believing in the risen Christ on the strength of
the women’s testimony—a not unfamiliar scene even today.
When the leader of a messianic movement dies, the movement fre-
quently dies too. In the case of Christianity, however, something happened
that changed this local Jewish movement into a worldwide religion. Many
factors contributed to this development, but, as Jewish scholar Tal Ilan
observes, “the initial momentum seems to have begun with the people who
interpreted the events following Jesus’ death as a resurrection. The gospels
unanimously agree that these people were women.”*4 They saw angels
where the men saw nothing.”!> Consequently, women were not only
extremely instrumental at the most critical moment of Christian history,
but the basic creed of Christianity, namely, that after his death Jesus was
raised to life, was initiated by women’s testimony. They were the first to
understand the resurrection faith that is the foundation of the church. Ear-
lier in his gospel, Luke had depicted some of these same women traveling
with Jesus around Galilee, including Mary Magdalene and Joanna, the wife
of Chuza who was Herod’s steward, along with Susanna “and many others”
(Luke 8:2-3). This group of women disciples constitutes a moving line of
continuity, from Galilee to the cross to the full tomb and the empty tomb
and now to the upper room at Pentecost. All this history of these women’s
vocational choice in response to Jesus, their experiences of following, their
brave fidelity, their outspoken witness, and men’s rejection of their word,
is present in that upper room. Now they are filled with “power from on
high” and emboldened to speak out with more power than ever.
The gender inclusiveness of the gift of the Spirit comes to the fore when
Peter speaks out to explain Pentecost to the gathering crowd. He quotes the
prophet Joel:
And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy. (Joel 2:28—29, cited in Acts 2:17-18)
Feminist insight would expand Joel to include young women having
visions and old women dreaming dreams as well. The point is that a sign
of messianic times occurs when not only men but women receive the
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 301
a ee
Spirit; when not only free persons but slaves, even slave women who rank
at the lowest rung of the social ladder, pour forth prophetic speech in the
power of the Spirit given to them in like measure. This scene, key to the
birth of the church, dramatically sounds the opening bell: it has begun.
Witnessing to Christ, bearing Christ forward in history, the church is the
creation of the Spirit firing up the hearts and loosening up the tongues of
even the most insignificant person, moving the whole community to speak
and act on behalf of the reign of God. It is interesting to note that this is
not the only time the Spirit is given. Later on, in the shock of the first per-
secution, the early community prayed for courage; “and when they had
prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and
they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with
boldness” (Acts 4:31).
The text of Acts is a site of conflict. Given this Pentecost beginning, one
would expect many stories to follow of women’s leadership in preaching
and prophesying. Such is not the case. Luke focuses instead on the deeds of
Peter and Paul with little regard for women’s ministry. Even where women
are mentioned, incidentally and sporadically, as building up the church, we
never hear them speak. Virtually every woman biblical scholar who deals
with Acts makes the same point: the author selected his stories with andro-
centric interest. Desiring to impress his readers in the Roman empire with
the trustworthiness of this new movement, he consistently depicted men
in public leadership roles and, in order to conform with the empire’s stan-
dards, kept women decorously under control in supportive positions. Hav-
ing eyes mainly for elite men, he fudged women into an insignificant
background ignoring the leadership roles they in fact held. “Luke is above
all a gentleman’s gentleman, and Acts is his book,”?!° is the telling judg-
ment of Gail O’Day, echoed throughout women’s exegesis. Consequently,
Acts does not contain a representative picture of church leadership in the
early decades. It tells only part of the story.
To reconstitute a fuller history, feminist scholars look to a broader spec-
trum of texts.*!” They read the story of women’s discipleship and apostolic
witness across the canonical gospels, as we saw in the tessera of John’s
account of the cross. They take account of the letters of Paul, whose salu-
tations give a vibrant picture of women’s extensive participation in min-
istry, one that stands in contrast to women’s marginalization in Acts. Recall
Paul’s salutation to the deacon Phoebe, leader of the church of Cenchreae;
and to Junia, outstanding among the apostles in Rome; and to the wife and
302 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

husband team Prisca and Aquila, leaders of a house church in Rome; and
to beloved Persis, who “worked hard in the Lord” for the same community,
working hard being a code phrase for leadership (see Rom. 16:1—16). They
also consult second- and third-century apocryphal gospels, which take fig-
ures from Jesus’ ministry and place them in situations reflective of the later
church. One telling incident occurs in the apocryphal Gospel according to
Mary.?'® The scene opens with Mary Magdalene encouraging the disheart-
ened, terrified male disciples by preaching to them what the risen Lord had
taught her. In anger Peter interrupts asking, “Did he really speak privately
with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to
her? Did he prefer her to us?” Troubled at this disparagement of her wit-
ness and faithful relationship to Christ, Mary responds, “My brother Peter,
what do you think? Do you think I thought this up by myself in my heart,
or that I am lying about the Savior?” At this point Levi breaks in to medi-
ate the dispute: “Peter, you have always been hot-tempered. Now I see you
contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made
her worthy, who are you, indeed, to reject her? Surely the Lord knew her
very well. That is why he loved her more than us.” The story ends with the
apostles gaining courage from Mary Magdalene’s testimony and going
forth to preach. Acting like detectives, scholars piece together these bits of
evidence to understand that this incident reflects the second- and third-
century conflict over women’s ministry as an ascendant male leadership
tried to suppress them. Slowly such scholarship is restoring the historical
picture of women’s leadership in the early church and the ensuing struggle
to defeat it.
I have not forgotten Mary the mother of Jesus. But the Christian tradi-
tion of art and liturgy has forgotten the Galilean Jewish women with her
who were all filled with the Spirit at Pentecost and were moved to invalu-
able and authoritative ministerial commitments. Reducing them to only
glancing significance while focusing on the glories of Mary has robbed the
whole church of the full story of its founding and deprived women of their
heritage of female leadership in the Spirit. It also lies at the root of the
damage androcentric mariology has done to women’s spirituality and
equal participation in ministry in the church. Here at Pentecost, both his-
torically and in the text of Acts, Mary lives among the women founders of
the church as well as the men. She is the mother of Jesus, who gave birth to
him in troubling circumstances, taught and nurtured him, and let him go
to his destiny with very great love. Other women there, Mary Magdalene,
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY 303

Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and many unnamed others, are Jesus’
friends and disciples who supported his ministry, witnessed his death and
burial, and bore the earth-shattering responsibility of being chief wit-
nesses to his resurrection whether the men believed them or not. Each
woman brings her own history of relationship to Jesus. None is reducible
to the other. With their particular gifts and history, all are vital in different
ways. Their believing discipleship and varied leadership roles form a con-
stitutive part of the apostolic church. Mary cannot be separated from the
rest of this community. They are all essential to one another. This text does
not portray Mary at the center of the community, as mother of the group,
or as the one and only ideal member. Nor does it allow her presence to
overshadow the distinctive witness and ministry of the other women.
Rather, it positions her amid the community as one unique member
among other unique members, the whole group living by the power and
presence of the Spirit and seeking to bring that warmth and light to the
world.?!?
Mary’s presence in the Jerusalem community allows for some imagina-
tive questions. What was the conversation like between her and Miriam of
Magdala, leading witness of the risen Christ? What stories did she swap
with Joanna, who followed Jesus despite having wealth and social prestige
to spare? What memories, hopes, and strategies did she share with the
other women in this community? Perhaps she lived peaceably as a beloved
old woman revered as the mother of the Messiah. Perhaps during the
breaking of the bread, when listening to the women and men around the
table ponder the meaning of her son’s life, death, and resurrection, she
shared her own wisdom, such as it was. Perhaps, too, she was an outspoken
elder, weighing in with creative opinions about the incipient problems
with the Gentiles and supporting the leadership in the community of
women such as Mary Magdalene. She may have been concerned about the
destitute among them, especially the widows; or caught by the inevitable
sadness that never quite goes away after violence; or full of proclamations
about what God was doing to set right the world; or encouraging the cre-
ative efforts of the young; or on fire with the Spirit in a mystic’s old age. All
of these scenarios are seriously imaginable.
This final tessera allows us to remember that the life of the historical
woman Miriam of Nazareth was indeed a journey of faith, with signifi-
cance for people struggling to negotiate the challenges of faith today. From
her peasant domicile in Nazareth to the house church in Jerusalem, both
304 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

of which labored to survive under oppressive economic and political cir-

cumstances; from youth to marriage to widowhood; from the birth of her
firstborn to his horrendous death to hearing him proclaimed Lord, Mes-
siah, and Savior—she walked her life’s path keeping faith with her gracious
God, the Holy One of Israel. Now she is an older woman wise in the Spirit.
All her years of suffering and joy, danger and risk-taking, questioning and
pondering, anxiety and hope, hard work and sabbath rest, intimate rela-
tionships and losses, coalesce in a new quickening. Inconceivable though it
may be, the God of Israel in whom she believed has acted to fulfill the
ancient promise made to her people. All creation is headed for a vivifying
transformation. Death does not have the last word. “Afire with some
unnamed energy,” she like “all of them” is empowered to witness with
boldness, bequeathing a legacy still capable of igniting hearts with hope in
the living God in the midst of a world of suffering.
 I]
hahsralareyinewalaoneel“Ga
Mary, Friend of God
and Prophet

A ssembled together, the individual biblical portraits of Mary of

Nazareth form a mosaic image of a woman of Spirit. Honed by the
historical background of Galilean Judaism and interpreted by
women’s sensibilities, this mosaic delivers a glimpse of an actual woman, a
first-century member of an oppressed peasant society, whose walk with
the Spirit at a pivotal moment in salvation history made a unique contri-
bution to the good of the world. Within the overarching picture of God’s
redeeming action in Christ, each tessera adds a different aspect to the
church’s memory of her life. Our final task is to weave this living memory
into that of the great company of friends of God and prophets which is the
communion of saints. In the process, we need to keep doing our God work,
understanding that female imagery rightly belongs in our discourse about
the divine mystery: the living God herself is our mother of infinite mercy.
And we need to keep doing our anthropology work, shucking off gender
definitions of the feminine that confine women to subordinate roles. With
our flanks thus continually safeguarded, we step back from a close focus on
the marian mosaic to espy the sweeping vista of which it is a part.

THE SPIRIT WHO WEAVES CONNECTIONS

The key to our theologizing is this: Mary is a woman of Spirit. She

entrusted her life to the utterly gracious reality of the transcendent God
ever-present to vivify, renew, and make holy the world. Whether she was
taking initiative, rejoicing, criticizing, pondering, suffering, or otherwise
finding her way through ordinary days, her loving partnership with Spirit-

305
306 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

Sophia inscribes in our history a story of grace. In this she is sister to all
who respond to the gift of the Spirit in their own lives, in ways seen and
unseen. Together they form the communion of saints.
Classical theology characterizes the Spirit most often as Love, a love that
unites while preserving difference. The presence of Spirit-Sophia brings
about the fruits of love: blossoming life, engagement against suffering and
evil, renewal when things get broken and ruined, and energy for new
beginnings. If the first person of the Trinity signifies God as unoriginate
source of all, and the second person refers to God who becomes incarnate
in history to save, then the third person names the living God who is still
here, the ever-coming power of the future acting to bring all things to ful-
fillment. This she does in many and varied ways. One of her signature
works is the creation of community. As Creator Spirit, she vivifies the uni-
verse and energizes the community of life with its long, evolutionary
development. As Holy Spirit, God’s own self-communication in grace, she
vivifies human beings with divine life, consecrating them at their core and
welding them into a company whose ideal is to walk a godly path, even if
they often miss the mark. Dwelling at the heart of the world, Spirit-Sophia
empowers profound interconnection between all manner of creatures as
history rolls on.
The communion of saints is one of the abiding creations of Spirit-
Sophia’s artistry. Somewhat abstract in itself, this community comes to
birth in a river of holy lives, a great intergenerational company of persons
in the matrix of the natural world, itself the original sacred community of
life. While the phrase “communion of saints” itself arises in a Christian
context and often functions as shorthand for Christians themselves, the
Spirit does not limit divine blessing to any one group. Within human cul-
tures everywhere God calls every human being to fidelity and love, awak-
ening knowledge of the truth and inspiring deeds of compassion and
justice. Happily, those who respond are found in every nation and tongue,
culture and religion, and even among institutional religion’s cultured
despisers. Indeed, where human participation in divine holiness disap-
pears, the opposite appears: barbarity, cruelty, murder, and unspeakable
despair. At its most elemental, then, the communion of saints does not
refer to Christians alone but affirms a link between all women and men
who have been brushed with the fire of divine love and who seek the living
God in their lives. From this angle the symbol of the communion of saints
shows itself to be a most inclusive belief. It crosses boundaries, breaking
MARY, FRIEND OF GOD AND PROPHET 307
a

down social lines of division and building up a vastly diverse people by the
play of the Spirit through the ages and across the wide world.
A rich metaphor in the biblical book of Wisdom introduces fresh
vocabulary for this company. This metaphor is found in a passage that
describes the deeds of Sophia or Holy Wisdom, here functioning as a
female image of the Spirit of God:
Although she is but one, she can do all things,
and while remaining in herself, she renews all things;
in every generation she passes into holy souls
and makes them friends of God, and prophets. (Wis. 7:27)!

* To be a friend of God is to enter into mutual relationship with God,

freely, with trust and affection; knowing and letting yourself be known in
honest intimacy; taking time to savor the relationship with its delights and
challenges in prayer and contemplation; caring passionately about what
God cares about; clinging together even in harsh adversity, even in the dark
night; allowing divine presence to be the foundation of your life even when
it is experienced as wrenching absence; living with the experiential knowl-
edge that we are, as Jesus said, no longer servants but friends.
* To be a prophet is to raise your voice in criticism against injustice
because, being God’s friend, your heart loves the world the way God loves
it; your imagination sees how it should flourish; when this collides with the
social arrangements people make at one another’s expense or at the
expense of the earth, you are moved to speak out and act in service of the
reign of God, thus creating possibilities for resistance and resurrection. In
the worst moments, being a prophet also means to comfort others with
words of hope, because, in view of God’s life-giving power, this pain is not
forever. Either way, acting critically or consolingly, being a prophet often
entails, as Jesus said, being without honor in your own country and among
your own people.
Down through the centuries as Spirit-Sophia graces person after person
in land after land, they form together a grand company of the friends of
God and prophets, a community of redeemed sinners. This community
stretches backward and forward in time and encircles the globe in space,
crossing boundaries of language, culture, race, gender, class, sexual orien-
tation, religion, and all other human differences, stretching into eternity.
The inmost depth and outermost horizon of this communion of holy ones
remains God’s Holy Spirit, who vivifies creation, weaves interconnections,
308 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

saves what is lost, and makes holy the world. This is the way we will think
about the communion of saints: it refers to the great and diverse multitude
of people who are continually being connected to God and one another in
graced relations of friendship and prophecy. Interpreting Mary with her
unique history within this great company locates her significance for faith
amid multiple relationships of mutuality formed by the Spirit.
Within this pneumatological framework, five dimensions that mark the
communion of saints contribute layers of meaning to a contemporary
theology of Mary.

THE GRACE OF THE LIVING

The first, irreplaceably important truth is that the communion of saints

refers to the graced lives of human beings who are alive today. To call Mary
blessed is to recognize the blessedness of ordinary people who are called to
participate in the work of God in our own day. If the Christian community
in the twenty-first century does not grasp this point, then the proposal to
view Mary within the communion of saints loses its foundation and liber-
ating power. You cannot celebrate the work of the Spirit in the life of
another person if you do not recognize the Spirit’s blessing in your own
life. Unfortunately, for many long centuries the consecrated character of
the baptized people of God was given short shrift as institutional struc-
tures seemed to transfer holiness from the nave of the church up into the
restricted sanctuary. Discussions of the saints focused only on deceased
paradigmatic figures, who then became the real saints to the detriment of
average persons who were never assured that God’s grace also made them
holy. Patriarchal theology tarred women with the brush of the supposed
sinful colors of Eve while exalting the sinlessness of Mary. All these devel-
opments woefully shortchange the breadth and depth of the Spirit’s strat-
egy, which is to consecrate the whole community in grace and truth.
It was not always this way. The early church understood themselves
called together to be a holy people, a theme with deep roots in the Jewish
tradition. Inspired by the common waters of baptism and the shared
eucharistic meal, they came to realize that the power of the Spirit who had
raised Jesus from the dead was forming them into a holy community of
disciples. As in the Jewish tradition, their holiness was more than simply
an ethical matter, being holy as being either innocent of sin or being
 MARY, FRIEND
SSeiseheiy oh.S irene saathOFAbshabicAthattich
GOD AND PROPHET
torent scl aie a
309
cic
morally perfect. Rather, it consisted in being blessed with the very life of
God through Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit. The mission to bear
good news into the world arose as an outflowing expression of this core
consecration. Early Christians expressed this sense of being a holy com-
munity with interesting vocabulary. They called everyone “saints,” hagioi
in Greek, a term that appears over sixty times in the New Testament. Paul’s
letters witness to the widespread use of this term. “To all God’s beloved in
Rome, who are called to be saints” (Rom. 1:7), he writes; and, “To all the
saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi” (Phil. 1:1); and, “To the church
of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called
to be saints” (1 Cor. 1:2); and again, “Greet one another with a holy kiss.
All the saints greet you” (2 Cor. 13:12—13). This extensive use of “saints” to
refer to the church reflects the vigor of the people’s sense of their own
graced lives.
There was as yet no highly structured sacramental system, ordained
priesthood, or monastic life such as would develop in the course of later
centuries. Thus there was no assignment of degrees of holiness based on
persons’ state of life, a practice with terribly damaging effects. Instead, the
lay prophet Jesus, who was never in his own lifetime a priest, is the only
priest named for the Christian community in the New Testament. Meta-
phorically speaking, he performed the service of merciful and faithful high
priest by his sacrificial death. Everyone else is consecrated in virtue of the
grace of the Spirit: “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
a people belonging to God” (1 Pet. 2:9). This identity inheres in the com-
munity and every person belonging to it without distinction. Since all are
baptized the same way into the death and resurrection of Jesus and all have
received the gifts of the Spirit, then all share in the holiness of God. This
does not level out differences: “there are varieties of gifts but the same
Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:4). But these distinctions are not the occasion for the
saints to divide themselves in the usual oppressive ways of humankind,
subordinating some and elevating others. Rather, the foundation of the
community’s holiness is Jesus Christ, which point carries a subversive pro-
gram: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed your-
selves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and
female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:27—28).” All together
and without discrimination, Christians gathered here or gathered there,
women and men equally, are a community of saints.
On this score Vatican II made a remarkable breakthrough, retrieving the
310 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

ancient awareness of the holiness of the whole living community. At the

very center of the council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen
Gentium) lies a chapter entitled “the call of the whole church to holiness.”
Here it is emphasized that through baptism human persons are put right
with God in Christ. Receiving the Spirit, they become sharers in the divine
nature. Lest anyone doubt the result, the council says it plainly: “In this way
they are really made holy” ($40). This holiness, furthermore, is essentially
the same for everyone. There is not one type of holiness for lay persons and
another for those in religious life or ordained ministry. There is not one
kind of indwelling of the Spirit for office-holders in the church and another
for unnoticed, faithful members. Rather, “in the various types and duties
of life, one and the same holiness is cultivated by all who are moved by the
Spirit of God” ($41). One and the same holiness: this is a radically biblical
idea. The church is not divided into saints and non-saints by office or gen-
der or any other marker. Vivified by grace, all women, men, and children
are consecrated at the core of their being as part of this community of
redeemed sinners. When this Constitution on the Church goes on to treat
the subject of Mary, it places her within this company as herself a sharer in
the same divine grace.
This, then, must be lifted up as of primary importance: the holiness of
so-called ordinary persons including women, sometimes overheard to say
“I’m no saint” but in reality called and gifted in the Spirit. This truth also
underscores the importance of everyday life as the milieu for living out a
holy life. The phrase “heroic sanctity,” used in official language as a crite-
rion for canonization, reflects the value given to a certain kind of spiritual
achievement attained by intrepid acts. It customarily points to bloody
martyrdom, stringent asceticism, renunciation of family and worldly pos-
sessions, or lifelong dedication to the sick, the poor, the imprisoned. Noble
these titanic acts may be, but praising them in a church that has lost its
sense of the holiness of the whole people only serves to reinforce the
unsaintliness of most whose lives do not measure up to such epic propor-
tions. Understanding the communion of saints first of all as a company of
the friends of God and prophets alive today reclaims the ordinary milieu
of grace and the nobility of everyday struggle despite failure and defeat. It
locates a holy life not only or even chiefly in mighty deeds, though these
may indeed be someone’s vocation, but in creative fidelity in the midst of
everyday life. Thus is room created, in the living community’s acknowl-
edgment of the saving grace so generously poured out on themselves, for
MARY, FRIEND OF GOD AND PROPHET 3 it

appreciating that Mary is blessed among women and men who are them-
selves blessed.
From generation to generation the great Spirit of God, Holy Wisdom
herself, passes into holy souls and not so holy ones and makes them friends
of God and prophets. We who are alive today are bearers of this holiness,
connected to each other around the world in all our differences. But we do
not live forever. At some point, having made our own contribution, we
pass through the shattering of death into the life-giving hands of God, to
be followed by the fresh young faces of a new generation of saints.

A CLOUD OF WITNESSES

The second dimension of the communion of saints that affects inter-

pretation of Mary is the fact that it includes persons who have died. Given
later Christian usage, it is interesting to note that in the New Testament no
one who has died is called a saint, that nomenclature being reserved for the
living. In short order, however, the living saints began to count the dead as
among their own company. Drawing on their Jewish belief that God would
raise the dead at the end of the world and witnessing to the resurrection
already, in advance, of Jesus who was crucified, early Christians extended
membership in their community of saints to those who had died. Teasing
out the logic of this early intuition of faith, we see that they forged a cer-
tain syllogism. If living persons share in the life of God, and if the dead are
likewise still clasped by the living God, then both the living and the dead
are united to each other, forged into one community by the same vivifying
Spirit. Paul puts this insight succinctly: “whether we live or whether we die,
we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and rose again, that he might
be Lord of both the living and the dead” (Rom. 14:7—9). Thus the idea grew
that the community of sinful yet redeemed followers of Christ not only
extends across spatial boundaries to include those living in different lands
at the present moment, but, as the past recedes, also stretches across time
boundaries to include those living in different historical periods. The com-
munion of saints thus expanded to include the dead according to the logic
of hope in the fidelity of God.
The Letter to the Hebrews, written in the late first century, presents a key
example of how the early church envisioned its relationship with those
who had gone before. Writing in a persuasive style, the author reels off a
a2 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

roll call of Jewish ancestors who responded in faith to God’s call. Some are
mentioned by name: Abel, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, the parents of Moses,
Rahab, David, some nineteen persons in all. The litany then expands to
include whole groups of people who walked by faith: prophets, those who
administered justice, who received promises, who won victories, who were
tortured, scourged, stoned, cut in two, who were afflicted and destitute.
Finally, having assembled all these people in memory, the author reaches
the dramatic high point:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us
also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run
with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer
and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured
the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of
the throne of God. (Heb. 12:1—2)

The dynamism of this passage moves from the narrative of faithful indi-
viduals to groups in the past to enthusiastic exhortation for the contem-
porary community. The movement of the text expresses a strong sense of
solidarity between the living and the dead, with the latter surrounding the
former like a cloud of witnesses. Commentators note that the background
metaphor here refers to a sports arena. Up in the stands a crowd of specta-
tors, each of whom once ran the race, now cheers for those exerting them-
selves on the tarmac. Here the faithful dead are proposed not as exemplars
to be imitated or helpers to be invoked, but as witnesses whose journey
encourages those who are still on the way. It is a matter of being inspired
by the whole lot of them and the wonderful testimony of their lives to the
living God. It is interesting that this lineup penned by a Christian author
honors figures who were important in the history of Israel but does not
include persons such as Mary Magdalene, first apostolic witness of the res-
urrection, or Stephen, first Christian martyr, or even Mary the mother of
Jesus. Reflecting reverence for the history of God’s holy people before the
Christian community came into existence, the passage sees its own audi-
ence as participants in this tradition now configured in Jesus, pioneer of
faith, whose advent does not discredit but rather enhances the history of
holiness of his own people.
The community of saints embraces persons who live and breathe at the
present moment along with those who have passed into eternal life. The
two groups are related by a common life in the Spirit and by a common
history of call and response to God amid the ambiguities of human his-
MARY, FRIEND OF GOD AND PROPHET 313

tory. As centuries pass by, millions upon millions more join the company
of saints in heaven. As in Hebrews, some few are remembered by name;
some belong to groups that have made an impact on public life; all too
many are untimely dead, their lives ruined in godforsaken incidents of ter-
ror, war, and mass death. Most are anonymous. The point is that in their
own unique ways, in different times and places, they struggled to be faith-
ful, leaving an imprint in the heritage of life in the Spirit that we inhabit.
People alive today who celebrate the feast of All Saints salute this vastly
diverse company of the redeemed, which includes also their own beloved
dead. It is in this great cloud of witnesses that Mary belongs. Her histori-
cal life having ended, she died and passed into the unimaginable, life-
giving embrace of the living God. Now she joins the company of loving,
faithful people who encourage those still running the race.

PARADIGMATIC FIGURES

Within the great cloud of witnesses, specific persons emerge whose lives
embody one or more central values of the faith in a strikingly concrete
form. When such persons are recognized by the common spiritual sense of
the community, they become publicly significant for the lives of many oth-
ers. These paradigmatic figures are the persons traditionally and all too
narrowly called “saints,” though in actuality they are a subset of the whole
company. They have no essential spiritual advantage over the rest of the
church, who are saints in the biblical sense. All are touched by the fire of
the Spirit and called to a life of friendship and prophecy with God, which
renders grace a general and constant phenomenon in the sinful church.
But certain unique personalities interact with historical conditions to give
such outstanding witness that they assume a distinct function in the wider
circle of their fellow pilgrims. The direct force of their example acts as a
catalyst in the community, galvanizing recognition that, yes, this is what we
are called to be. Because Christianity is a way of life, their concreteness
leavens and nurtures the moral environment, drawing others to greater
commitment according to the dynamic expressed by William James: “one
fire kindles another.”°
Mary is one such paradigmatic figure. As the first dimension made clear,
she is first and foremost a real human woman of our history, graced by
God with the gift of the same Spirit given to all. The second dimension
314 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

emphasizes that even though she has now passed from history, she remains
connected to the community by the loving fidelity of God who holds even
the dead in life. What is surprising about this third dimension, and it is the
surprise of the gospel that lifts up the lowly, is her function as a paradig-
matic figure in the church. The tether of historical concreteness makes
clear that Miriam of Nazareth belonged to the world of the poor who are
overlooked in the telling of history: those who lived in the colonial situa-
tion of the Roman province of Galilee, in hunger and hard work and
oppression, whose villages were fiercely attacked, but who hoped for more.
The gospels add theological insight. She bore a poor woman’s life with
faith in the living God of Israel, believed in a gospel for the downtrodden,
found a way to bring forth the Messiah, and journeyed into the new com-
munity that spearheaded Jesus’ vision to the world. Through it all she was
led by the Spirit, the life-giving power of Sophia God, who entered into her
soul and made her a friend of God and prophet. Her distinctiveness lies in
being the mother of Jesus. No one else has this bodily, psychological, social
relationship to the Messiah and, as with all human beings, the relationship
is irreplaceably important for both mother and child. All the gospel tesse-
rae note this relationship but do not leave it there. Her own faithful part-
nership with the Spirit, by which she heard and enacted the word of God,
places her in the company of ancestors whose memory the community
celebrates and finds challenging. Now she is part of the church’s procla-
mation of the healing, redeeming, liberating salvation coming from God
through Jesus, a story which also includes the witness of numerous other
women and men. In view of the torrent of misogyny that has flowed from
traditional mariology, her historical and gospel specificity with its liberat-
ing potential must serve as a criterion for the legitimacy of her paradig-
matic status. So anchored, the narrative of her life can teach, inspire, and
cheer on the lives of the people of God today. It can defy, protest, and resist
active wrongdoing that blocks rather than serves the coming of the reign
of God. Across the centuries, kindred spirits find her encouraging their
discipleship.
Paradigmatic saints, among them Mary the mother of Jesus, form one
vector of the larger reality of the communion of saints. To interpret them
in such a way that their memory liberates rather than diminishes the dis-
cipleship of others, we must make sure that they stay connected to the
whole graced company. By the power of Spirit-Sophia generations upon
generations of redeemed persons are joined in a living tradition of friend-
MARY, FRIEND OF GOD AND PROPHET 315

ship with God and compassion toward the world. No one of them alone or
no one group, even the paradigmatic saints, can ever monopolize what it
means to be holy. “The definition is never complete,” writes David Matzko
of sainthood. “A single, a few, a dozen lives of the saints will not complete
what it means to love God and neighbor or to be in the community of
heaven. The definition can be given only by the whole communion of
saints.”* Cheered on by this great, richly varied cloud of witnesses, includ-
ing the woman from Nazareth, the people of God today run their own lap
of the race on the track of discipleship as legacy for future generations.

THE COMPANIONSHIP PATTERN

Over the centuries two different patterns have characterized the relation-
ship between the living and the dead in the communion of saints. The
more ancient, biblical pattern is one of companionship whereby the two
groups relate as mutual partners in the Spirit. The later, by now more
familiar pattern of patronage casts the saints in heaven as benefactors who
act as patrons for earthly petitioners. The boundaries between these two
models are not absolute. In the companionship model people gladly pray
for one another, and in the patronage model some may muster equal
regard for one another. However, the overall shapes of the relationships,
crudely described as a circle of companions or a pyramid of patrons
respectively, are different enough to warrant considering them as two dis-
tinct models. A crucially important task for a contemporary feminist the-
ology of Mary is the retrieval of the companionship model of interaction.

The Patronage Model

This pattern of relationship gained influence when the Christian church
became an established religion of the Roman empire in the fourth century.
Reeling from persecution and seeking to shore up its legitimacy, the
church then began to model itself on the structures of empire. Key among
these was the institution of patronage, which pervaded both urban and
rural life. In sociological terms, patronage is a system of exchange founded
on asymmetrical relations between persons of unequal status—the
antithesis of friendship between equals. It arises when concentrations of
wealth and political power in the hands of the few, coupled with neediness
of the many and lack of democratic processes, conspire to create perma-
316 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

nent social stratifications. Basic to all patronage arrangements is inequal-

ity, marked social and economic inequality accompanied by pronounced
differences in privileges and honor. As the system works, the patron does
favors for clients, which clients repay with loyalty and the giving of honor.
Given the church’s inculturation into this social system, it is perhaps not
surprising that patronage began to govern its transactions not only on
earth but also with the realm of heaven. By the late fourth century the term
patrocinium (patronage) was applied to the activity of the apostles and
martyrs in heaven on behalf of the faithful. Just as the terrestrial patron is
asked to use his influence with the emperor, so now the celestial patron is
asked to use his or her influence with the Almighty. These mediators,
though subject to God themselves, have their own spheres of influence in
descending order and may prove to be benefactors in return for devotions
such as prayer, pilgrimage to their tombs, or reverence for their relics. The
saints were seen in various ways, writes Stephen Wilson, “as advocates
pleading causes before a stern divine judge, as mediators, as go-betweens,
as intriguers or wire-pullers at the court of Heaven—all metaphors were
used. It is significant also that the saints themselves were arranged in a
hierarchy, in both the liturgy and official iconography, with the Virgin
Mary as the arch-intercessor through whom petitions of other saints were
directed.”” Such a religious arrangement would not be foreign to those
who had grown up in a world pervaded with the patronage system.
The patron—client pattern gained ascendency through the period of late
antiquity, becoming the predominant feature of medieval devotion to the
saints. Mary the mother of God sat at the pinnacle
of influence, able to
impact her Son’s judgment even over a soul’s eternal destiny in heaven or
hell. It seems clear that the abuses in the cult of the saints that drew such
withering criticism from the Reformers were the result of this patronage
model run wild. While the reforming Council of Trent reined in the more
egregious offenses, it defended the patronage model as if it were the only
possible way to honor the saints. Consequently, ever new patron-client
practices became a feature of Catholic spirituality in the post-Reformation
period, an exuberance checked by Vatican II. The patronage pattern still
waxes strong wherever social and spiritual forces conspire to rob the living
community of its identity in the Spirit as a holy people, but wanes with the
weakening of those forces. In a study of both earthly and heavenly patron-
age as practiced in Malta, Jeremy Boissevain observes that “both types
seem to have thrived in periods when power was concentrated in the hands
MARY, FRIEND OF GOD AND PROPHET O77

of a few, when economic and political uncertainty prevailed, when wide-

spread poverty induced dependency.” Because of changing circumstances,
he concludes, “In Malta, as elsewhere in Europe, the saints are marching
out.Ӣ I would suggest rather that in our democratic, egalitarian culture the
patronage system is marching out. People may be losing their client status,
but they do not need to be bereft of their cloud of witnesses.

The Companionship Model

A very different pattern of relationship, found in scripture and early Chris-
tian tradition, promotes mutual companionship in Christ between the liv-
ing and the dead. Already observed in the “cloud of witnesses” passage in
Letter to the Hebrews, this pattern perdured through the age of the mar-
tyrs in the first three Christian centuries. It can be heard in the account of
the martyrdom of the beloved bishop Polycarp:
Little did they know that we could never abandon Christ, who alone suf-
fered for the redemption of those who are saved in the whole world, the
innocent one dying on behalf of sinners. Nor could we worship anyone else.
For him we worship as the Son of God. But the martyrs we love as disciples
and imitators of the Lord, and rightly so because of their matchless affection
for their own king and teacher. May we too become their comrades and fel-
low disciples.’
The living members of the church were partners, companions, comrades,
co-disciples with Polycarp and other outstanding exemplars of faith. The
martyrs gave their witness; those struggling to live faithfully on earth loved
them; and both were encompassed by the saving grace of God on the path
of discipleship.
Augustine’s preaching over the span of many years provides an exten-
sive vocabulary for the companionship model. “Blessed be the saints in
whose memory we are celebrating the day they suffered on,” he exclaimed;
“they have left us lessons of encouragement.”® The best lesson they have
left us is their actual lives. When we celebrate their memory, the effect is
like opening a fragrant flagon of perfume in a small room. Then their wit-
ness pervades our community with reassurance and deep hope. While
human just like ourselves, they struggled through very severe testing with
the help of God. This acts as a beacon of light in our own troubles because
God’s help hasn’t dried up; it flows toward us still. Cherishing their mem-
ory, we are inspired to follow in the footsteps of their example. “By passing
 318 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

along the narrow road they widened it, and while they went along, tram-
pling on the rough ways, they went ahead of us.”? Augustine was aware of
how indebted each present generation is to those who went before. The
earliest generations of Christians, he thought, deserve special appreciation,
for they pioneered a whole new way of life: “When numbers were few,
courage had to be great.”!° Since then, many others who believed before us
had no idea that one day we would gather in this place, a church of the
future praising God: “they weren't yet able to see it, yet they were already
constructing it out of their own lives.”! To realize that we are the heirs of
the tradition shaped by such persons makes us grateful and rejuvenates
our desire to contribute to this heritage for the next generation. Their
adventure of faith opened a way for us, and now we go ahead of others in
an ongoing river of companions seeking God. And when our own journey
grows hard, we can draw strength from the memory of our forebears’ suf-
ferings and victories: “How can the way be rough when it has been
smoothed by the feet of so many walking along it?”!* The communion of
saints in this companionship model forges bonds across time that sustain
faith in strange new times and places. Surrounded by this cloud of wit-
nesses, we cherish in very different circumstances what they cared enough
to live and die for.
An underlying sense of companionship pervades this pattern of rela-
tionship. The living and the dead together are a holy people, redeemed sin-
ners, at different stages of the journey. Each one gives and receives what is
appropriate, while the whole group of friends of God and prophets is cen-
tered on the incomprehensible mystery of divine lové poured out in Jesus
Christ for the sake of the world. Without ignoring differences, the com-
panionship model structures relations along the lines of mutuality, not
hierarchy. To use a spatial metaphor, here the saints in heaven are not sit-
uated between God and those on earth, with some more and some less
powerful in intercessory pull. Rather, they are with their sisters and broth-
ers in the one Spirit. It is not distance from God’s throne, nor fear of “his”
judgment, nor the impression of “his” cold disinterest, nor the need for
grace given only in small portions, nor a sense of one’s own utter unim-
portance in the hierarchy of power, nor any other such motivation that
impels the community to turn to the saints in heaven. Rather, gratitude
and delight in this cloud of witnesses with whom we share a common
humanity, a common struggle, a common faith, and a common destiny
commend their memory to our interest. We thank God for their victory,
MARY, FRIEND OF GOD AND PROPHET 319

learn from their example, and share their friendship on the road of disci-
pleship. Vatican II took this approach when, appealing to the experience of
friendship in the church, it taught that “just as Christian communion
among wayfarers brings us closer to Christ, so our companionship with
the saints joins us to Christ, from whom as from their fountain and head
issue every grace and the life of God’s people itself” (Lumen Gentium $50).
The ancient companionship model offers a road not often taken, but
experienced anew by women in their relationship with newly discovered,
encouraging foresisters, and they recommend it to the whole church. The
living church of women and men now bears the heat of the day; it is their
turn to contribute to the repair of the world amid multiple struggles for
justice and fullness of life. But solidarity with those who have gone before,
including the Spirit-filled Mary the mother of Jesus, releases energies for
ongoing fidelity. The relationship among those living on earth and those
with God in glory is fundamentally mutual and collegial. They form a cir-
cle of friendship centered on the graciousness of the living God.

COMPANIONS IN MEMORY AND HOPE

In the companionship model, the core practice that connects the living
with the dead friends of God and prophets is the act of remembrance. This
is a very particular kind of remembering. It does not revisit the past in
order to dwell there with nostalgic sentimentality. Rather, it brings the wit-
ness of past lives forward into the present as challenge and source of hope.
Telling the stories of our forebears, it releases the power of their “lessons of
encouragement.” This is memory with the seed of the future in it. By dar-
ing to evoke the suffering, the beauty, the defeats and victories of people
who struggled before us, it nourishes our own wavering commitment in
the present. By connecting us with their unfinished agenda, it sparks the
idea that something more is still possible. By prodding our religious imag-
inations with concrete examples of love and courage, it releases surpris-
ingly creative energies.
As J. B. Metz has never tired of pointing out, this kind of remembering
functions with an edge of danger insofar as it prevents any easy settling-
down with an unjust status quo. Instead, by lifting up the discipleship of
others it turns our hearts toward those who are suffering and quickens
hope that “all will be well,” despite the world and the church itself lurching
320 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

on in such stubbornly unredeemed ruts. In the process, those who are

companions in memory become also companions in hope. Recalling those
on the far side of death carries with it the conviction that their lives have
not been snuffed out like a candle but transformed in the unimaginable
glory of God. The living press forward with the unfinished business of car-
ing for the world while those who have entered the vast silence of death but
are alive in God become themselves part of the community’s vocabulary of
hope. This fifth dimension of the communion of saints bears directly on
practice. Remembering the saints operates as a practical, critical, liberating
force that energizes our resistence and protest, imagination and love.
This practice is connected with the central act that shapes Christian
identity, the liturgical memorial of the life, passion, death, and resurrec-
tion of Jesus Christ. As with every critical memory, remembrance of the
crucified and risen Jesus Christ is “dangerous” in a very particular way.
Since God sided with this victim of unjust execution rather than with his
judges, this memory subverts the expectation that the powerful will always
win. Instead, God is in solidarity with those who suffer, galvanizing hope
for salvation. This creates a moral and social force that propels the church
out of passivity into active engagement on behalf of all those in agony, in
particular those brought low by human injustice. The effective power of
this memory with its hope in the future, promised but unknown, has sus-
tained the church’s efforts to live with passion and compassion in the
world, and continues to do so even now.
Woven into this paradigmatic memory of Jesus Christ are the lives of all
disciples and seekers in the Spirit, persons who reveal the face of God while
disfigured with suffering, alive with resistance, beautiful with love, com-
passionate to heal, in other words, all the saints. Their dangerous memory
can galvanize the church. The pallid state into which the traditional roster
of saints has fallen can be measured by the degree to which the official
memory of this company now fails to function in such a life-giving way.
Part of the problem lies in issues already identified above: loss of the com-
munity’s sense of its own holiness; the patriarchal patronage relationship;
and the focus on heroic virtue which casts ordinary persons into the shad-
ows. These problems are exacerbated by the system of canonization in the
Catholic Church, which since the twelfth century has produced a list of
official saints who are mostly male, clerical, celibate, and aristocratic; a
group, furthermore, that is created in response to large investments of time
and money and thus generally exclusive of lay persons, including women
and poor persons.
MARY, FRIEND OF GOD AND PROPHET 52)

Groups on the margins of officialdom, however, are rediscovering the

power of critically remembering the friends of God and prophets. One
striking example comes from the church in Latin America, where in the
late twentieth century people drank anew from the crucible of martyrdom.
To the litany of the saints, recited now as a roll call of the martyrs—Oscar
Romero, Ita Ford, Ignacio Ellacuria, Celina Ramos, young catechists, com-
munity workers, and religious leaders of the pueblos—the people respond,
“Presente.” This is a multivalent term asking that the saint be present, trust-
ing that the saint is present, and implicitly affirming the life-giving Spirit
of God, who makes it possible for the saint to be present. The prayer sum-
mons a strong, concrete memory that commits the community to emulat-
ing their lives. Circles of women are also pioneering critical memory of the
saints as a liberating element in the practice of faith. Through ritual, art,
song, and story in the context of prayer, they foster connection with fore-
sisters who walked faithfully and imaginatively with their God. Naming
women whose witness was largely erased by patriarchal transmission of
Christian culture and celebrating exemplars who encourage greatness of
spirit, they experience the power that the companionship model can
deliver. “Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have
seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her”
(John 20:18);!4 “Mary McLeod Bethune, with $1.50 and a prayer, started a
school for girls in Daytona”: these are memories with the seed of the
future in them. Solidarity with such a cloud of witnesses brings strength
and comfort in the struggle for greater life and freedom. No atrophied con-
nection, this, but a touching of spirit in the Spirit that empowers and
blesses in the face of strong indifference and opposition.
In this context, women have been actively creating a discourse of Mary,
friend of God and prophet, from female experiences and especially the
lives of poor women. Instead of using her to develop a new theology of
“woman” or stressing her stereotypical feminine virtues, this theology
opens up space for women to claim their concrete faith history and equal
participation in the church. Instead of separating her out as an unreach-
able paragon, it connects her with the human race, women in particular,
seeing her blessedness as a sign of the capacity of all women to bear the
image and likeness of God. Positioning her among our ancestors in the
faith, it seeks to set loose the power of her critical memory and be
enlivened by the lessons of encouragement that flow from her life. Miriam
ofNazareth: Presente! In a world still structured by patriarchal injustice, the
logic of this approach taps the power of her memory to work dangerously
322 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

against the status quo of women’s marginalization. Mary is socially

insignificant yet highly favored: this spills over to raise the dignity of other
women with minimum worldly power. She is endangered yet God is with
her, as with other women who risk or suffer violence at the hands of patri-
archal power. She is impoverished, at times homeless, a refugee in a strange
land, yet blessed, as are women and their families to whom sinful injustice
also denies a full plate and a safe dwelling. Unconventional woman though
she be, God has done great things for her, as for others similarly outside the
pale. She knows sorrow enough to break a human heart, losing a loved one
to violence; yet, hoping against hope “amid the ruins,”!® she experiences
along with the company of disciples the advent of God in the event of suf-
fering itself, bringing life. Together with Mary Magdalene the first witness
of the resurrection, Joanna, and many other women, she is filled with the
Spirit and speaks out God’s word: women who speak with authority in the
power of the Spirit today, even at risk of ridicule, are borne up by the Pen-
tecost company of disciples, singly and together. She sings her joy in God
because the mighty are brought down and the hungry fed: the revolution-
ary energy of her words inspires the song to go on in countless hamlets and
cities where women struggle against their own diminishment and for the
flourishing of the world. Her courageous response to the Spirit’s call charts
lessons of encouragement for both women and men and nurtures the
spirit of the whole community. Faithful to God through all uncertainty,
she becomes part of the community’s story. Companion in memory, she
becomes through solidarity with the struggles of women a companion in
hope. She is truly, subversively, our sister.

A PRAYER FOR A SEASON OF STRUGGLE

Throughout the centuries prayer has been one venerable expression of

people’s regard for Mary. Beautiful antiphons of praise and fierce petitions
for help well up through the generations, many not workable in this para-
digm of Mary as friend of God and prophet. Aware of the difficulty as he
was, Paul VI made a strong case that the rosary, while its origins lay in
medieval times, could still function in a beneficial way. The heart of this
prayer, he noted, entails meditation on the gospel scenes announced for
each decade. Indeed, without this focus the prayer becomes merely repet-
itive rote. The rosary’s repetition of the Hail Mary itself, though, has its
MARY, FRIEND OF GOD AND PROPHET 323

own value. In a busy, frantic world, it acts as something of a mantra to

quiet and make gentle the mind so that meditation can take place. The two
together, external repetition and internal focus, function as an “excellent”
way to lift the mind and heart to God. In addition, the portability of the
rosary and its adaptability to time and place outside of official church
functions commend it to our use.'”
Creative women are also contributing to the prayerful remembrance of
Mary by employing new forms and filling traditional genres with new
insights. The Pax Christi “Litany of Mary of Nazareth” addresses her with
new encomiums as a marginalized woman, seeker of sanctuary, and
mother of an executed criminal.'® Miriam Therese Winter’s feminist lec-
tionary and psalter imaginatively retells gospel stories from the perspective
of Mary and other women and composes psalms that lift up women’s
yearnings to God.’ Ann Johnson’s series of new Magnificats of prophecy,
of waiting, of desolation, and of hope sweeps the reader along in the com-
pany of Mary to praise the God of Israel.”° All of these prayers honor Mary
not by getting lost in admiration of her virtue but by bringing her in as a
companion to the historic search for God’s reign, including justice for
women, now under way.
In that spirit, I close this book’s exploration into Mary as friend of God
and prophet in the communion of saints with her own gospel prayer, the
Magnificat. While this canticle is a first-century Jewish-Christian hymn,
like all good prayers it contains a dynamism that bridges the gap between
past and present, between first and twenty-first centuries. A recent study of
the use of the biblical psalms in prayer sheds light on how this dynamism
works. The psalms of the Hebrew scriptures clearly reflect the ancient reli-
gious and cultural milieu in which they were composed. Yet when a com-
munity or an individual prays them today, time stretches and becomes
fluid. Later generations slip into the role of the Israelites of old, participat-
ing in their world and relating to God along the lines of their experience.
For example, some psalms recall the historical plight of the Hebrews
enslaved in Egypt. These psalms then go on to rejoice in the way God led
the people out toward freedom; to wonder at the providential guidance
that got them through a dry and trackless desert; and to praise God for
entering into covenant relationship with them. Millennia later, the experi-
ence of praying these psalms creates a dynamism whereby what God did
for “them” becomes what God has done for “us.” Rather than leaving these
events in the past, the prayer form becomes an invitation to experience
324 MARY IN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

God’s gracious acts for ourselves and be transformed into persons of the
covenant here and now. Again, after being accused of adultery by the
prophet Nathan, David the king cries for mercy beginning with the mem-
orable words, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions” (Ps. 51:1).
Communities and individuals who pray that psalm today do not think that
they are simply repeating David’s plea as though in a theater production.
Rather, identifying with his sinfulness, they allow these words of sorrow for
a past historical misdeed to flow through the centuries and shape their
own repentant relationship to God. The same holds true for psalms of
lament, where someone under persecution cries out in agony. Those who
pray them now identify experientially with those who suffered in the past
and hope for the same help in time of trouble. In each of these examples,
the dynamism of prayer connects us, even identifies us, with certain his-
torical figures. But “biblical events refuse to be relegated to the past.”*! The
prayer form itself draws us into their religious world and thereby we find
ourselves situated in a certain relationship with God in our own day.
Unlike past events that are simply reported, these situations remain con-
tinually relevant through the experiential connection set up by the
dynamic of prayer. The oft-repeated invitation in Catholic liturgy to “say
the prayer that Jesus taught us” reflects the same phenomenon, transport-
ing people today into the position of the first-century Galilean disciples
where they hallow God’s name and ask for daily bread and forgiveness as
if no time at all had passed.
In a similar manner, the Magnificat, claimed anew as a prophetic prayer
by poor people across cultures and interpreted anew by women as a liber-
ating word, structures a religious world. Like other great biblical prayers,
Mary’s song refuses to be relegated to the past. Entering into its cadences,
the community at prayer identifies with Mary of Nazareth bearing the
Messiah, pregnant with hope. We enter into her faith stance and relate to
God along the lines of her witness. Time becomes permeable. Her pas-
sionate joy, protest, and hope flow through the centuries and become ours.
Rather than praising her, we join with her in praising God and the sur-
prising divine compassion poured out on a world run amok. In the
process, our relationship to God takes on an intimate, liberating character
which energizes action on behalf of justice. “And Mary said,” and with her,
this woman of Spirit, mother of Jesus, friend of God and prophet, we the
community of disciples say:
MARY, FRIEND OF GOD AND PROPHET 325

My soul proclaims your greatness, O my God,

and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.
For your regard has blessed me, poor, and a serving woman.
From this day all generations will call me blessed,
for you, who are mighty, have done great things for me;
and holy is your Name.
Your mercy is on those who fear you, from generation to generation.
You have shown strength with your arm.
You have scattered the proud in their hearts’ conceit.
You have put down the mighty from their thrones,
and have lifted up the lowly.
You have filled the hungry with good things,
and have sent the rich away empty.
You have helped your servant Israel,
remembering your mercy,
as you promised to Abraham and Sarah,
mercy to their children forever. (Luke 1:46-55)””
 Notes

CHAPTER 1
FRAGMENTS IN THE RUBBLE

1. The best compendium of this tradition remains Hilda Graef, Mary: A His-
tory of Doctrine and Devotion (London: Sheed & Ward; Westminster, Md.: Chris-
tian Classics, 1990; orig. two volumes, 1963, 1965). Excellent thematic charts of
this tradition include: in theology, George H. Tavard, The Thousand Faces of the
Virgin Mary (Michael Glazier Book; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1996); in
spirituality, Sally Cunneen, In Search of Mary: The Woman and the Symbol (New
York: Ballantine Books, 1996); in culture, Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary through the Cen-
turies: Her Place in the History of Culture (New Haven and London: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1996). Marina Warner, in Alone ofAll Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of
the Virgin Mary (New York: Knopf, 1976), provides a wealth of historical detail
coupled with judgment from a feminist perspective. For a more concise historical
and systematic treatment, see Richard McBrien, “Mary,” in Catholicism (San Fran-
cisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 1077-1121; and “Mary,” in Handbook of Cath-
olic Theology, ed. Wolfgang Beinert and Francis Schiissler Fiorenza (New York:
Crossroad, 1995), 444-72.
2. This is the thesis of Georg Kretschmar and René Laurentin, “The Cult of the
Saints,” in Confessing One Faith: A Joint Commentary on the Augsburg Confession
by Lutheran and Catholic Theologians, ed. George Forell and James McCue (Min-
neapolis: Augsburg, 1982), 279-80.
3. Els Maeckelberghe, Desperately Seeking Mary: A Feminist Appropriation of a
Traditional Religious Symbol (Kampen, The Netherlands: Kok Pharos, 1991), 42.
4. The careful biblical work done by a team of ecumenical scholars led by Ray-
mond E. Brown, Karl Paul Donfried, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and John Reumann
remains foundational; see Mary in the New Testament, ed. Raymond Brown et al.
(New York: Paulist; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978). Two of the most important dia-
logue studies are The One Mediator, the Saints, and Mary: Lutherans and Catholics
in Dialogue VIII, ed. George Anderson, Francis Stafford, and Joseph Burgess

326
NOTES 327

(Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1992); and the Groups des Dombes, Marie dans
le dessein de Dieu et la communion des saints (Paris: Bayard Editions & Centurion,
1999).
5. Vatican II, Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian
Religions (Nostra Aetate) $3. All citations from the Second Vatican Council are
from The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter Abbott (New York: America Press,
1966). For the Islamic view of Mary, see Tavard, Thousand Faces of the Virgin Mary,
32-45 (“Mariyam of Arabia”); R. J. McCarthy, “Mary in Islam,” in Mary’s Place in
Christian Dialogue, ed. Alberic Stacpoole (Wilton, Conn.: Morehouse-Barlow,
1982), 202-13; and Aliah Schleifer, “Maryam in Morisco Literature,” Islamic Quar-
terly 36 (1992): 242-61.
6. Maria Reis-Habito, “Maria-Kannon: The Mother of God in Buddhist Dis-
guise,” Marian Studies 47 (1996): 50-64; Kwok Pui-lan, Chinese Women and Chris-
tianity (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1992), 29-64; and Judith Martin, “Theologies
of Feminine Mediation,” Journal of Dharma 6 (1981): 384-97.
7. Vasiliki Limberis, Divine Heiress: The Virgin Mary and the Creation of Chris-
tian Constantinople (New York and London: Routledge, 1994); and A. Cameron,
“The Cult of the Theotokos in Sixth Century Constantinople: A City Finds Its
Symbol, Journal of Theological Studies 29 (1978): 79-108.
8. Barbara Corrado Pope, “Immaculate and Powerful: The Marian Revival in
the Nineteenth Century, in Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image
and Social Reality, ed. Clarissa Atkinson, Constance Buchanan, and Margaret
Miles (Boston: Beacon, 1985), 177.
9. Robert Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian
Harlem, 1880-1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
10. Nicholas Perry and Loreto Echeverria connect the American version of this
phenomenon to the broader tradition of militant marianism with roots in Byzan-
tium and Rome (Under the Heel of Mary (London: Routledge, 1988]); see also
Thomas Kselman and Steven Avella, “Marian Piety and the Cold War in the
United States,” in Modern American Protestantism and Its World, ed. Martin Marty
(New York: K. G. Sauk, 1993), 175-96; and Michael Cuneo, The Smoke of Satan:
Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), chapter 5, “Mystical Marianism and
Apocalypticism,” 121-77.
11. Ronald B. Taylor, Chavez and the Farm Workers (Boston: Beacon, 1975).
12...See.n. 1
13. John XXIII, Pacem in Terris $41, in The Gospel of Peace and Justice, ed.
Joseph Gremillion (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1976), 209-10.
14. Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Mistress of Heaven: The Meaning of Mariol-
ogy,” in her New Woman, New Earth: Sexist Ideologies and Human Liberation (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1975), 50; to my knowledge this is the earliest sustained
feminist analysis of the subject.
328 NOTES

15. Margaret Cuthbert, Cape Town, South Africa.

16. Sabina Lopez de Hernandez, Oaxaca, Mexico.
17. Warner, Alone ofAll Her Sex, xxi. The title is taken from a poem by Caelius
Sedulius (fifth century):
She ... had no peer
Either in our first mother or in all women
Who were to come. But alone of all her sex
She pleased the Lord.
18. Ibid., 338.
19. Mary Hines, Whatever Happened to Mary? (Notre Dame, Ind: Ave Maria
Press, 2001), 8.
20. Hilda Buhay, O.S.B., “Who Is Mary?” in Women and Religion: A Collection
of Essays, Personal Histories, and Contextualized Liturgies, ed. Mary John Manan-
zan (Manila: St. Scholastica’s College, 1992), 55.
21. Cited in Chung Hyun Kyung, Struggle to Be the Sun Again: Introducing
Asian Women’s Theology (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1994), 124 n. 12.
22. Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, “Mary and Women,” Sobornost: Eastern Churches
Review 23 (2001): 25.
25, tbid,, 32.
24. Rosa Maria Gil and Carmen Inoa Vazquez, The Maria Paradox: How Lati-
nas Can Merge Old World Traditions with New World Self-Esteem (New York:
Putnam, 1996), 266; Ten Commandments on p. 8. See also Evelyn Stevens, “Mari-
anismo: The Other Face of Machismo in Latin America,” in Female and Male in
Latin America, ed. Ann Pescatello (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
1973), 89-101.
25. Mary Gordon, “Coming to Terms with Mary,” Commonweal (January 25,
1982): 11.
26. Rosemary Haughton, The Re-creation of Eve (Springfield, Ill.: Templegate,
1985), 119.
27. Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press,
1964), 53-67.
28. Mary Jo Weaver, New Catholic Women: A Contemporary Challenge to Tra-
ditional Religious Authority (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1986),
203.
29. Gordon, “Coming to Terms with Mary,” 12.
30. Maria Pilar Aquino, Our Cry for Life: Feminist Theology from Latin Amer-
ica (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1993), 159.
31. Ivone Gebara and Maria Clara Bingemer, Mary, Mother of God, Mother of
the Poor, trans. Phillip Berryman (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1989)
32. Cunneen, In Search of Mary, 14.
33. Diana Hayes, “And When We Speak: To Be Black, Catholic, and Womanist,”
NOTES 329

in Taking Down Our Harps: Black Catholics in the United States, ed. Diana Hayes
and Cyprian Davis (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1998), 113-14.
34. Jeanette Rodriquez, Our Lady of Guadalupe: Faith and Empowerment
among Mexican-American Women (Austin: University of Texas, 1994), xxi; see also
Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz and Yolanda Tarango, Hispanic Women: Prophetic Voice in the
Church—Toward a Hispanic Women’s Liberation Theology (San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1988).
35. Mary DeCock, “Our Lady of Guadalupe: Symbol of Liberation?” in Mary
according to Women, ed. Carol Francis Jegen (Kansas City, Mo.: Leaven Press,
1985), 113-41. The question becomes more complex when Christian differences
are taken into account: Nora Lozano-Diaz, “Ignored Virgin or Unaware Women:
A Mexican-American Protestant Reflection on the Virgin of Guadalupe,” in A
Reader in Latina Feminist Theology, ed. Maria Pilar Aquino, Daisy Machado,
Jeanette Rodriguez (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 2002), 204-26.
36. “Final Statement: Asian Church Women Speak,” in We Dare to Dream:
Doing Theology as Asian Women, ed. Virginia Fabella and Sun Ai Lee Park (Hong
Kong: Asian Women’s Resource Centre for Culture and Theology, 1989), 149.
37. Singapore Conference, “Summary Statement on Feminist Mariology,” in
Feminist Theology from the Third World, ed. Ursula King (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis,
1994), 272.
38. From Nancy Fackner and Kathy Britt, C.S.J., Christmas 1987.
39. Pauline Warner, “Mary: A Two-edged Sword to Pierce our Hearts?”
Epworth Review 18 (1991): 77. After this book had gone to press, a substantial new
contribution appeared: Blessed One: Protestant Perspectives on Mary, ed. Beverly
Roberts Gaventa and Cynthia Rigby (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox,
2002).
40. Cited in Kathleen Hurty, “Mary, Luther, and the Quest for Ecumenical
Images,” Midstream 30 (1991): 62.
41. Dorothee Soelle, “Mary Is a Sympathizer,” in her The Strength of the Weak,
trans. Robert and Rita Kimber (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), 47—48.
42. See the programmatic essay by Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, “Breaking the
Silence, Becoming Visible,” in The Power of Naming: A Concilium Reader in Femt-
nist Liberation Theology, ed. Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis,
1996), 161-74.
43. Mary Catherine Hilkert, Speaking with Authority: Catherine of Siena and
the Voices of Women Today (New York: Paulist, 2001).
44, John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, §§39-45.
45. Karl Rahner, “Mary and the Christian Image of Woman,’ in Tiheological
Investigations, volume 19, trans. Edward Quinn (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 217.
330 NOTES

CHAPTER 2
WOMEN’S THEOLOGICAL WORK

1. Mary Farrell Bednarowski thus identifies the ambivalent position in which

women discover themselves due to being excluded from significant sectors of a
religious community to which they deeply belong (The Religious Imagination of
American Women [Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1999], chapter 2).
A particularly readable account of the problematic position of women in Chris-
tianity is Karen Armstrong, The Gospel According to Woman (New York: Double-
day, 1987).
2. The critical principle of feminist theology articulated by Rosemary Radford
Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon,
1983), 18.
3. For a survey of feminist theology on all continents, see Rosemary Radford
Ruether, Gender and Redemption: A Theological History (Minneapolis: Fortress,
1998), chapters 6, 7, and 8. International writings are collected in Feminist Theol-
ogy in Different Contexts, ed. Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza and M. Shawn Copeland
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1996); and Power of Naming (see chap. 1, n. 42).
4. For feminist theory as it intersects with theology, see Religion and Gender,
ed. Ursula King (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995); Horizons in Feminist Theology: Identity,
Tradition, and Norms, ed. Rebecca Chopp and Sheila Greeve Davaney (Min-
neapolis: Fortress, 1997); Serene Jones, Feminist Theory and Christian Theology:
Cartographies of Grace (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000); and Feminism in the Study of
Religion: A Reader, ed. Darlene Juschka (New York: Continuum, 2001).
5. The Beijing Declaration and The Platform for Action (New York: United
Nations, 1996), 2.
6. Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution
(New York: Norton, 1976), 56. See extended definitions in Dictionary of Feminist
Theologies, ed. Letty Russell and J. Shannon Clarkson (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster
John Knox, 1996); and Bonnie J. Fox, “Conceptualizing Patriarchy,” in Feminism in
the Study of Religion, ed. Juschka, 314-33.
7. Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1986), 239.
8. Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, “To Follow the Vision: The Jesus Movement as
Basileia Movement,” in Liberating Eschatology: Essays in Honor of Letty M. Russell,
ed. Margaret Farley and Serene Jones (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox,
1999), 127; Schiissler Fiorenza coined the neologism kyriarchy. See the sharp crit-
ical analysis by M. Shawn Copeland, “Toward a Critical Christian Feminist Theol-
ogy of Solidarity,” in Women and Theology, ed. Mary Ann Hinsdale and Phyllis
Kaminski (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1995), 3-38; and Elizabeth Spelman, Inessen-
tial Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought (Boston: Beacon, 1988).
NOTES 331

9. Lerner, Creation of Patriarchy, 238. See also Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Use-
ful Category of Historical Analysis,’ American Historical Review 71 (1986):
1053-75; and Jones, Feminist Theory and Christian Theology, 22—48. For the con-
trary idea that sex, too, is socially constructed, see Judith Butler, Gender Trouble:
Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), esp. chap-
ter 1.
10. Sandra Schneiders, Beyond Patching: Faith and Feminism in the Catholic
Church (New York: Paulist, 1991), 15.
11. Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, En la Lucha, In the Struggle: Elaborating a mujerista
Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 189.
12. Diverse positions are described by Serene Jones, “Women’s Experience
between a Rock and a Hard Place: Feminist, Womanist, and Mujerista Theologies
in North America,” in Horizons in Feminist Theology, ed. Chopp and Davaney,
33-53; and Anne Clifford, Introducing Feminist Theology (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis,
2001), chapter 1.
13. Rita Nakashima Brock, Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power
(New York: Crossroad, 1988); Elisabeth Schtissler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A
Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad,
1983); Anne Carr, Transforming Grace: Women’s Experience and Christian Tradi-
tion (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988).
14. Cunneen, In Search ofMary, 269 (see chap. 1, n. 1).
15. Warner, Alone ofAll Her Sex (see chap. 1, n. 1).
16. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 3.31.1. See the studies by Walter Burghardt,
“Mary in Western Patristic Thought,” in Mariology, ed. Juniper Carol (Milwaukee:
Bruce, 1957), 1:110-17, and “Mary in Eastern Patristic Thought,” in Mariology,
2:88—100; and Robert Murray, “Mary, the Second Eve in the Early Syriac Fathers,”
Eastern Churches Review 3 (autumn 1971): 372-84.
17. Tertullian, De cultu feminarum (The Dress of Women), in Corpus Chris-
tianorum, Series Latina, volume 1 (Turnholt: Typographia Brepols, 1954), 343.
18. Susan Ashbrook Harvey, “Eve and Mary: Images of Women,” Modern
Churchman 24 (1981): 135; see also Nehama Aschkenasy, Eve’s Journey: Feminine
Images in Hebraic Literary Tradition (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1986).
19. William Cole, “Thomas on Mary and Women: A Study in Contrasts,” Uni-
versity of Dayton Review 12 (1975-76): 25-64.
20. Edward Schillebeeckx, Mary, Mother of the Redemption (London: Sheed &
Ward, 1964), 172.
21. Leonie Liveris, “Time to speak: The voice of feminism in the Orthodox
Church,” in Freedom and Entrapment: Women Thinking Theology, ed. Maryanne
Confoy, Dorothy Lee, and Joan Nowotny (North Blackburn, Victoria, Australia:
HarperCollins, 1995), 198.
22. Ruether, “Mistress of Heaven,” in New Woman, New Earth, 36-62 (see
332 NOTES

chap. 1, n. 14); also “Mariology as Symbolic Ecclesiology,” in her Sexism and God-
Talk, 139-58.
23. René Laurentin, “Mary and Womanhood in the Renewal of Christian
Anthropology,” Marian Library Studies 1 (1969): 78.
24. Tissa Balasuriya, Mary and Human Liberation (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Cen-
tre for Society & Religion, 1990), 191, 7; being published as two volumes of Logos,
vol. 29, nos. 1 and 2. See also Mary and Human Liberation: The Debate, ed. Helen
Stanton (Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1997).
25. Kari Borresen, “Mary in Catholic Theology,” in Mary in the Churches, ed.
Hans Kiing and Jiirgen Moltmann (Edinburgh: T & T Clark; New York: Seabury,
1985),.05%
26. Clarice Martin, “Womanist Interpretations of the New Testament,” Journal
of Feminist Studies in Religion 6 (1990): 41-66; see her “The Haustafeln (House-
hold Codes) in African American Biblical Interpretation: ‘Free Slaves’ and ‘Subor-
dinate Women,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical
Interpretation, ed. Cain Hope Felder (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 206-31.
27. Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-
Talk (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1993). See the lucid philological analysis of this term
applied to marian texts by Marianne Sawicki, Seeing the Lord: Resurrection and
Early Christian Practices (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), chapter 5, “Son of God’s
Slavewoman, 95-118.
28. Shawn Copeland, “Wading Through Many Sorrows: Toward a Theology of
Suffering in Womanist Perspective,” in A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspec-
tives on Evil and Suffering, ed. Emilie Townes (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1993), 122.
29. Jacquelyn Grant, “The Sin of Servanthood and the Deliverance of Disci-
pleship,” in A Troubling in My Soul, ed. Townes, 199-218.
30. Texts in Hilda Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, 48-55 and
77-101 (see chap. 1, n. 1); and Elizabeth Clark, Women in the Early Church (Wil-
mington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1983). The groundbreaking essay is Rosemary
Radford Ruether, “Misogynism and Virginal Feminism in the Fathers of the
Church,” in Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Tra-
ditions, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974),
150-83. See also Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual
Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988);
Margaret Miles, Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the
Christian West (Boston: Beacon, 1989); and Mary T. Malone, Women e& Christian-
ity, volume 1, The First Thousand Years (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2001), 144-72.
31. Ute Ranke-Heinemann, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sex-
uality, and the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 5; she notes that
Michael Schmaus in his influential Catholic Dogmatics (5:109) argues that this
assertion bears witness to “the unanimous teaching of the church” (Katholische
Dogmatik [Munich: Max Heuber, 1958]).
NOTES 333

32. David Hunter, “Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary in Late
Fourth-Century Rome,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 1 (1993): 70-71. See
Ranke-Heinemann, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, 46-63; and “Notes on
Mariology,” 340—48; Warner, Alone of
All Her Sex, 68-78; and Maurice Hamington,
Hail Mary? The Struggle for Ultimate Womanhood in Catholicism (New York and
London: Routledge, 1995), 53-87.
33. Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Mothers of the Church: Ascetic Women in
the Late Patristic Age,” in Women of Spirit: Female Leadership in the Jewish and
Christian Traditions, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 71-98.
34. Peter Brown, “The Notion of Virginity in the Early Church,” in Christian
Spirituality, volume 1, Origins to the Twelfth Century, ed. Bernard McGinn and
John Meyendorff (New York: Crossroad, 1985), 427-43.
35. Jo Ann McNamara, A New Song: Celibate Women in the First Three Christ-
ian Centuries (New York: Haworth Press, 1983), 5.
36. Malone, Women & Christianity, 1:145. See also Elizabeth Castelli, “Virgin-
ity and Its Meaning for Women’s Sexuality in Early Christianity,” Journal of Femi-
nist Studies in Religion 2, no. 1 (1986): 61-88; and Elizabeth Clark, Ascetic Piety
and Women’s Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin
Mellen Press, 1986).
37. Sydney Callahan, “Mary and the Challenges of the Feminist Movement,’
America 169 (December 18-25, 1993): 14.
38. Susan Roll, Toward the Origins of Christmas (Kampen, The Netherlands:
Kok Pharos, 1995), 219.
39. Sister Bernard Mncube, “Sexism in the Church and in the African Con-
text,” in Women Hold Up Half the Sky: Women in the Church in South Africa, ed.
Denise Ackerman, Jonathan Draper, and Emma Mashinini (Pietermaritzburg,
South Africa: Cluster Pub., 1991), 358-59.
40. James Preston, “Conclusion: New Perspectives on Mother Worship,” in
Mother Worship, ed. James Preston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1982), 335.
41. Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Everywoman: A New Psychology of
Women (New York: Harper, 1984), 36. See Jennifer Dines, “Mary and the Arche-
types,” The Month (August-September 1987): 288-94.
42. Marianne Katoppo, “Woman’s Image of Herself,’ in The Emerging Chris-
tian Woman: Church and Society Perspectives, ed. Stella Faria, Anne Vareed Alexan-
der, and Jessie Tellis-Nyak (Ishvani: Satprakashan Sanchar Kendra, 1984), 72; and
Rita Monteiro, quoted in Exploring Feminist Visions, ed. Frances Maria Yasas and
Vera Mehta (Bombay and Pune, India: Streevani; Ishvani: Kendra, 1990), 224-25.
43. Catharina Halkes, “Mary in My Life,” in Mary, Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow,
by Edward Schillebeeckx and Catharina Halkes (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 75.
44. Augustine, City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (New York: Random House,
334 NOTES

1994), 22-23: “Of the Violence Which May Be Done to the Body by Another’s Lust,
While the Mind Remains Inviolate” (1.18).
45. Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) $64.
46. Chung Hyun Kyung, Struggle to Be the Sun Again, 77 (see chap. 1, n. 21),
citing Marianne Katoppo, Compassionate and Free: An Asian Woman’s Theology
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1981), 20.
47. Barbara Jane Coleman, personal correspondence.
48. Harvey, “Eve and Mary,” 134.
49, René Laurentin, The Question ofMary (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Win-
ston, 1965), 72ff.
50. Elizabeth Johnson, “Mary as Mediatrix,” in The One Mediator, the Saints,
and Mary, ed. G. Anderson et al., 311-26 (see chap. 1, n. 4).
51. Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1986); and Motherhood: Experience, Institution, Theol-
ogy, ed. Anne Carr and Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza (Edinburgh: T & T Clark,
1989).
52. See a good description in Sallie McFague, “God as Mother,” in her Models
of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987),
97-123.
53. Kathleen Norris, Meditations on Mary (New York: Penguin Putnam, 1999),
Pilg
54, Ranke-Heinemann, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, 346.
55. See the powerful essay endorsing the religious worth of herself as a child-
less woman by Mercy Amba Oduyoye, “A Coming Home to Myself: The Childless
Woman in the West African Space,” in Liberating Eschatology, ed. Farley and Jones,
105-20.
56. Jean Galdt, L’église et la femme (Gembloux: J. Duculot, 1965), 57. See the
review of this issue by James Mackey, “The Use and Abuse of Mary in Roman
Catholicism,” in Who Needs Feminism? Male Responses to Sexism in the Church, ed.
Richard Holloway (London: SPCK, 1991), 99-116; and Una Cadegan and James
Heft, “Mary of Nazareth, Feminism, and the Tradition? Thought 65 (1990)
169-89.
57. Megan Walker, “Mary of Nazareth in Feminist Perspective: Towards a Lib-
erating Mariology,” in Women Hold Up Half the Sky, ed. Ackerman et al., 145.
58. Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, 157; for the whole discussion, see pp.
139-58.
59. Weaver, New Catholic Women, 201-11 (see chap. 1, n. 28).
60. Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey: Per-
spectives on Feminist Theology (New York: Crossroad, 1985), 194; see also her
“Motherhood or Friendship,” in Mary in the Churches, ed. Kiting and Moltmann,
17-22:
61. Sarah Coakley, “Mariology and Romantic Feminism: A Critique,” in
NOTES 335

Women’s Voices: Essays in Contemporary Feminist Theology, ed. Teresa Elwes (Lon-
don: Marshall Pickering, 1992), 97-110.
62. Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father (Boston: Beacon, 1973), 84; see pp.
82-90.
63. Julia Kristeva, “Stabat Mater,” in The Kristeva Reader, ed. T. Moi (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1986), 160-86; see Phyllis Kaminski, “Kristeva and the Cross,” in
Women and Theology, ed. Hinsdale and Kaminski, 234-57.
64. Leonardo Boff, The Maternal Face of God: The Feminine and Its Religious
Expression, trans. Robert Barr and John Diercksmeier (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis,
1987), 79.
65. Ibid., 13.
66. Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, Jesus: Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet (New
York: Continuum, 1994), 168.
67. Ibid., 174.
68. Els Maeckelberghe, Desperately Seeking Mary (see chap. 1, n. 3).
69. Aquino, Our Cry for Life (see chap. 1, n. 30); Isasi-Diaz, En la Lucha: Elab-
orating a Mujerista Theology.
70. Mary according to Women, ed. Jegen (see chap. 1, n. 35).
71. Mary Grey, “Reclaiming Mary: A Task for Feminist Theology,” The Way 29
(1989): 334-40; and Patricia Noone, Mary for Today (Chicago: Thomas More
Press, 1977).

CHAPTER 3
CUL-DE-SAC: THE IDEAL FACE OF WOMAN

1. In the Embrace of God: Feminist Approaches to Theological Anthropology, ed.

Ann O’Hara Graff (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1995); and Jane Kopas, “Beyond Mere
Gender: Transforming Theological Anthropology,” in Women and Theology, ed.
Hinsdale and Kaminski, 216-33 (see chap. 2, n. 8).
2. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, q. 92, a. 1.
3. Jerome, Comm. In epist. ad Ephes. 3.5 (in Patrologiae cursus completus: Series
latina, ed. J. P. Migne [Paris, 1857-66], 26:567). See Kari Vogt, “Becoming Male: A
Gnostic and Early Christian Metaphor,” in The Image of God: Gender Models in
Judeo-Christian Tradition, ed. Kari Elisabeth Borresen (Minneapolis: Fortress,
1995), 170-86; Kari Elisabeth Boressen, Subordination and Equivalence: The
Nature and Role of Woman in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas (Lanham, Md: Uni-
versity Press of America, 1981); and Eleanor McLaughlin, “Equality of Souls,
Inequality of Bodies: Woman in Medieval Theology,” in Religion and Sexism, ed.
Ruether, 213-66 (see chap. 2, n. 30).
4. Aschkenasy, Eve’s Journey, 13 (see chap. 2, n. 18). See also the programmatic
 336 NOTES

study by Elizabeth Clark, “Women, Gender, and the Study of Christian History,”
Church History 70 (2001): 395-426.
5. Carol A. Newsom, “Woman and the Discourse of Patriarchal Wisdom: A
Study of Proverbs 1-9,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed. Peggy L. Day
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 142-60.
6. Sarah Grimké, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of
Woman (1838; New York: Burt Franklin, 1970), 3-4; quoted in Carolyn DeSwarte
Gifford, “American Women and the Bible: The Nature of Woman as a Hermeneu-
tical Issue,” in Feminist Perspectives on Biblical Scholarship, ed. Adela Yarbro Collins
(Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985), 19.
7. Catherine LaCugna, “God in Communion with Us: The Trinity,” in Freeing
Theology: The Essentials of Theology in Feminist Perspective, ed. Catherine LaCugna
(San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 99.
8. Janet Soskice, “The Virgin Mary and the Feminist Quest,” in After Eve:
Women, Theology, and the Christian Tradition, ed. Janet Soskice (London: Collins
Marshall Pickering, 1990), 168.
9. See the exegesis of Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadel-
phia: Fortress, 1978), 1-30.
10. These anthropological constants are adapted from Edward Schillebeeckx,
Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord, trans. John Bowden (New York: Seabury,
1980), 731-43; see also Colleen Griffiths, “Human Bodiliness: Sameness as Start-
ing Point,” in The Church Women Want: Catholic Women in Dialogue, ed. Elizabeth
Johnson (New York: Crossroad, 2002), 60-67.
11. The importance of women’s difference from each other is delineated in
Katherine Zappone, “‘Women’s Special Nature’: A Different Horizon for Theolog-
ical Anthropology,’ in The Special Nature of Women? ed. Anne Carr and Elisabeth
Schiissler Fiorenza (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991), 87-97; all the
essays in this collection contribute excellent insight.
12. Natalie Angiers gives a marvelous tour of female biology (Women: An Inti-
mate Geography [Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999]).
13. By now classic studies include Jean Baker Miller, Toward a New Psychology
of Women (Boston: Beacon, 1976); Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychologi-
cal Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1982); Mary Field Belenky, Blythe McVicker Clinchy, Nancy Rule Gold-
berger, and Jill Mattuck Tarule, Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of
Self, Voice, and Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1986); Embodied Love: Sensuality
and Relationship as Feminist Values, ed. Paula Cooey, Sharon Farmer, and Mary
Ellen Ross (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987); and especially Catherine Keller,
From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism and Self (Boston: Beacon, 1986).
14. Margaret Farley, “New Patterns of Relationship: Beginnings of a Moral
Revolution,” Theological Studies 36 (1975): 627-46; see also Weaving the Visions:
New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality, ed. Judith Plaskow and Carol Christ (San
NOTES Dor

Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989); and Katherine Zappone, The Hope for Wholeness:
A Spirituality for Feminists (Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third Pub., 1991).
15. Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (Boston: Bea-
con, 1989); Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Edu-
cation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
16. Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, 159-92 (see chap. 2, n. 2). The initial trum-
pet was sounded by Valerie Saiving, whose essay on sin and grace as experienced
differently by women and men pioneered this paradigm shift: “The Human Situ-
ation: A Feminine View,’ Journal of Religion 40 (1960): 100-112.
17. Boff, Maternal Face of God, 2, 18 (see chap. 2, n. 64).
18. Ibid., 54.
19. Ibid., 91.
20. Ibid., 189.
21. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mary for Today, trans. Robert Nowell (San Fran-
cisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 62-63, 74.
22. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol-
ume 1, Seeing the Form, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press; New York: Crossroad, 1982), 338-65. For insightful analysis, see Walter
Brennan, “The Issue of Archetypes in Marian Devotion,” Marianum: Ephemerides
Mariologiae 52 (1990): 17-41.
23. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone: The Way of Revelation (London: Burns
& Oates, 1968) 63, with reference to parastésai (2 Cor. 11:2 and Eph. 5:27) and
kecharitomené (Luke 1:28).
24. The von Balthasar Reader, ed. Medard Kehl and Werner Léser, trans. Robert
Daly and Fred Lawrence (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 228 (cited from Klar-
stellungen, 59-64).
25. Hans Urs von Balthasar, “The Marian Principle,” Communio 15 (1988): 129.
26. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theodramatik II/2, 326, cited in Antonio Sicari,
“Mary, Peter, and John: Figures of the Church,” Communio 19 (1992): 200.
27. Balthasar, Reader, 213 (cited from Der antirémische Affekt, 115-23).
28. Balthasar, in Theodramatik III, cited in Edward Oakes, Pattern of Redemp-
tion: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (New York: Continuum, 1994), 262,
with clarifying discussion, 250-73.
29. James Heft, “Marian Themes in the Writing of Hans Urs von Balthasar,”
Communio 7 (1980): 127-39. For further analysis of the patriarchal feminine, see
Rosemary Radford Ruether, “The Female Nature of God: A Problem in Contem-
porary Religious Life,” in God as Father? ed. Johannes Baptist Metz and Edward
Schillebeeckx (New York: Seabury Press, 1981), 65; eadem, “Mariology as Sym-
bolic Ecclesiology: Repression or Liberation?” in her Sexism and God-Talk, 139-58
(see chap. 2, n. 2).
30. John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Mulieres dignitatem (On the Dignity and
Vocation of Women), Origins 18, no. 17 (October 6, 1988), $6.
338 NOTES

31. Ibid., $30. For background, see Richard Leonard, Beloved Daughters: 100
Years of Papal Teaching on Women (Melbourne, Australia: David Lovell Pub.,
1995):
32. John Paul II, Mulieres dignitatem §29. Christine Gudorf presents clarifying
background (“Encountering the Other: The Modern Papacy on Women,” in Fem-
inist Ethics and the Catholic Moral Tradition, ed. Charles Curran, Margaret Farley,
and Richard McCormick [New York: Paulist, 1996], 66-89).
33. John Paul Il, Mulieres dignitatem §§29, 10.
34. Ibid., $26.
35a lbids $5:
36. John Paul II, Theotokos: Woman, Mother, Disciple: A Catechesis on Mary,
Mother of God (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2000), 45, 43.
37. John Paul II, Encyclical Redemptoris mater (Mother of the Redeemer), Ori-
gins 16, no. 43 (April 9, 1987): $46.
38. John Paul II, Mulieres dignitatem §27 and n. 55.
39. John Paul II, Theotokos, 18.
40. John Paul II, Redemptoris mater §26.
41. John van den Hengel, “Mary: Miriam of Nazareth or the Symbol of the
Eternal Feminine?” Science et Esprit 37 (1985): 319-33.
42. Raimundo Panikkar, “The Marian Dimensions of Life,” Epiphany 4 (sum-
mer 1984): 4.
43. John Macquarrie, “God and the Feminine,” The Way: Supplement 25
(1975): 9.
44, Pelikan, Mary through the Centuries, 223 (see chap. 1, n. 1). See also his The
Eternal Feminine (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990), especially
101-19.
45. Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, “Feminist Theology as a Critical Theology of
Liberation,” Theological Studies 36 (1975): 623. |
46. See the essays in Sexual Diversity and Catholicism: Toward the Development
of Moral Theology, ed. Patricia Beattie Jung and Joseph Andrew Coray (College-
ville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2001).
47. Suzanne Pullon Fitch and Roseann M. Mandziuk, Sojourner Truth as Ora-
tor: Wit, Story, and Song (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997). The authors
present three different versions of this speech (pp. 103-8), with literary analysis of
differences between texts (pp. 72-75).
48. Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, 174.
49. Newsom, “Woman and the Discourse of Patriarchal Wisdom: A Study of
Proverbs 1-9,” 155.
50. Gebara and Bingemer, Mary, Mother of God, Mother of the Poor, 1-19 (see
chap. 1, n. 31).
51. Irene Zimmerman, “Liturgy,” in Womenpsalms, compiled by Julia Ahlers,
NOTES 339

Rosemary Broughton, and Carol Koch (Winona, Minn.: St. Mary’s Press, 1992),
55-56.

CHAPTER 4
CUL-DE-SAC: THE MATERNAL FACE OF GOD

1. These quotations are taken from Teilhard de Chardin’s letters, quoted in The
Eternal Feminine: A Study on the Poem by Teilhard de Chardin, ed. Henri de Lubac,
trans. René Hague (London: Collins, 1971), 126 and 125. This chapter is adapted
from Elizabeth Johnson, “Mary and the Female Face of God,” Theological Studies
50 (1989): 500-526.
2. John Paul II, “Letter to Women,” Origins 25, no. 9 (July 27, 1995): 137-43,
no. 3; on the occasion of the U.N.-sponsored Beijing Conference on Women.
3. For this evocative metaphor of mining the marian tradition I am indebted
to Lawrence Cunningham, Mother of God (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982),
103.
4. Hugo Rahner, Greek Myths and Christian Mysteries, trans. Brian Battershaw
(New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 13.
5. Jean Daniélou, “Le culte marial et le paganisme,” in Maria: Etudes sur la
Sainte Vierge, ed. D’Hubert du Manoir (Paris: Beauchesne et ses Fils, 1949),
159-81.
6. The thesis is explored further in Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, passim (see
chap. 1, n. 1); Gail Paterson Corrington, Her Image of Salvation: Female Saviors
and Formative Christianity (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1992); Joan
Chamberlain Engelsman, The Feminine Dimension of the Divine (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1979), 122-33; Stephen Benko, The Virgin Goddess: Studies in
the Pagan and Christian Roots ofMariology (Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1993);
and R. E. Witt, Isis in the Graeco-Roman World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1971), 269-81. Witt concludes his study of the influence of the Egyptian
goddess Isis on mariology with the observation that Christians should acknowl-
edge that the roots of their religion were abundantly watered not only by the
Jordan but also by the Nile (p. 280).
7. Leonard Moss and Stephen Cappannari, “In Quest of the Black Virgin: She
Is Black Because She Is Black,” in Mother Worship, ed. Preston, 53-74 (see chap. 2,
n. 40).
8. Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, 48 (see chap. 1, n. 1). See
linguistic analysis of Greek and Latin versions by Gerard Sloyan, “Marian Prayers,”
in Mariology, ed. Juniper Carol (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1960), 3:64—-68.
9. Akathistos: Byzantine Hymn to the Mother of God, trans. Paul Addison
340 NOTES

(Rome: Mater Ecclesiae Centre, 1983); an accessible translation appears in the

Appendix of Limberis, Divine Heiress, 149-58 (see chap. 1, n. 7).
10. “Great indeed, after her brief eclipse, was Diana of the Ephesians”—wry
comment of Geoffrey Ashe, The Virgin (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976),
mr
11. Epiphanius, Panarion 79.4, 7; see Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and
Devotion, 70-73. Ashe develops the thesis that this sect, with its attractive worship
of Mary, was a threatening rival to the developing Catholic Church (Virgin,
149-71 [“The Seventy-Ninth Heresy”]).
12. See Jaroslav Pelikan, The Growth ofMedieval Theology (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1978), 158-74; Walter Delius, Geschichte der Marienverehrung
(Munich: E. Reinhardt Verlag, 1963), 149-70; and Heiko Oberman, The Harvest of
Medieval Theology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), 281-322,
especially “Mariological Rules” (pp. 304-8).
13. Anselm of Canterbury, “Prayer to St. Mary (3),” in The Prayers and Medi-
tations of St. Anselm, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York: Penguin Books, 1973), 121.
14. Psalm 96/97, in The Mirror of the Blessed Virgin Mary and The Psalter of
Our Lady, trans. Sr. Mary Emmanuel (St. Louis: B. Herder Book, 1932), 254.
15. Ibid., 294-95.
16. For this and the following examples see Jaroslav Pelikan, Reformation of
Church and Dogma (1300-1700) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984),
38-50; and Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, 241-322.
17. Gen. 1:2; and Pss. 17:8; 36:7; 57:1; 61:4; 91:1, 4; Isa. 31:5; and Exod. 19:4;
Deut 32:11-12.
18. Robert Murray, “The Holy Spirit as Mother,” in Symbols of Church and
Kingdom (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 315.
19. Schillebeeckx, Mary, Mother of the Redemption, 113-14 (see chap. 2, n. 20);
a similar approach is found in Andrew Greeley, The Mary Myth: On the Feminin-
ity of God (New York: Seabury, 1977).
20. Edward Schillebeeckx and Catharina Halkes, Mary: Yesterday, Today,
Tomorrow (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 12-42. See Elizabeth Johnson, “Mary and
Contemporary Christology,” Eglise et Théologie 15 (1984): 155-82, which traces
retrenchment in Schillebeeckx’s and Rahner’s approach to Mary as a result of their
immersion in contemporary christology.
21. Thus A. M. Allchin, The Joy ofAll Creation: An Anglican Meditation on the
Place of Mary (Cambridge: Cowley Pub., 1984); John Macquarrie, “God and the
Feminine,” The Way Supplement 25 (1975): 5-13; and Catholica-Arbeitskreis der
VELKD, “Maria: Evangelische Fragen und Gesichtspunkte: Eine Einladung zum
Gesprach,” Una Sancta 37 (1982): 184-201.
22. Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, volume 1, trans. David Smith
(New York: Seabury, 1983), especially 159-66; and his Christ, Our Lady, and the
NOTES 341

Church: A Study in Eirenic Theology, trans. Henry St. John (Westminster, Md.:
Newman Press, 1956); René Laurentin, “Esprit Saint et théologie mariale,” Nou-
velle Revue Théologique 89 (1967): 26-42; Heribert Mithlen, Una mystica persona:
Die Kirche als das Mysterium der Identitit des Heiligen Geistes in Christus und den
Christen (Munich: Schéningh, 1968), 461-94; and Leon Cardinal Suenens, “The
Relation that Exists between the Holy Spirit and Mary,” in Mary’s Place in Christ-
ian Dialogue, ed. Stacpoole, 69-78 (see chap. 1, n. 5). But see the feminist critique
of Congar by Sarah Coakley, “Femininity and the Holy Spirit?”in Mirror to the
Church: Reflections on Sexism, ed. Monica Furlong (London: SPCK, 1988),
124-35.
23. Elsie Gibson, “Mary and the Protestant Mind,” Review for Religious 24
(1965): 397.
24. Boff, Maternal Face of God, 93 (see chap. 2, n. 64).
25. Borresen, “Mary in Catholic Theology,” in Mary in the Churches, 54-55
(see chap. 2, n. 25); Jean Galdt, “Marie et le visage de Dieu,” Marianum 44 (1982):
427-38; J.-M. Hennaux, “L Esprit et le féminin: la mariologie de Leonardo Boff,’
Nouvelle Revue Théologique 109 (1987): 884-95.
26. Major collections through the 1990s include Frontiers of Hispanic Theology
in the United States, ed. Alla Figueroa Deck (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1992); We Are
a People! Initiatives in Hispanic American Theology, ed. Roberto Goizueta
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1992); Justo Gonzalez, Voces: Voices from the Hispanic
Church (Nashville: Abingdon, 1992); Hispanic/Latino Theology: Challenge and
Promise, ed. Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz and Fernando Segovia (Minneapolis: Fortress,
1996); Teologia en Conjunto: A Collaborative Hispanic Protestant Theology, ed. José
Rodriguez and Loida Martell (Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox, 1997); and
From the Heart of Our People: Latino/a Explorations in Catholic Systematic Theol-
ogy, ed. Orlando Espin and Miguel Diaz (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1999).
27. Virgil Elizondo, Guadalupe: Mother of the New Creation (Maryknoll, N.Y.:
Orbis, 1998), 126.
28. Ibid.; 127.
29. Virgil Elizondo, “Mary and the Poor: A Model of Evangelizing,” in Mary in
the Churches, 64; and his “Our Lady of Guadalupe as a Cultural Symbol: The
Power of the Powerless,” in Liturgy and Cultural Religious Traditions, ed. Herman
Schmidt and David Power (New York: Seabury, 1977), 25-33.
30. Orlando Espin, The Faith of the People: Theological Reflections on Popular
Catholicism (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1997), 8.
31. Ibid., 9; see especially 6-10, 73-77.
32. Orlando Espin, “An Exploration into the Theology of Grace and Sin,” in
From the Heart of Our People, ed. Espin and Diaz, 121-52, at 150 n. 37.
33. Miguel Diaz, On Being Human: U.S. Hispanic and Rahnerian Perspectives
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2001), 125.
342 NOTES

34, Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, “Feminist Spirituality, Christian Identity, and

Catholic Vision,” in Womanspirit Rising, ed. Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979), 136-48.
35. McFague, Models of God, 97-123 (see chap. 2, n. 52).
36. John Paul I, Osservatore Romano, September 21, 1978, 2. See the metaphor
of God as Mother in Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Femi-
nist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 170-87.
37. Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, 31-71 (see chap. 3, n. 9).
38. Patricia Fox, “Mother of Mercy: Reclaiming a Title for God,” Listen: Jour-
nal of the Sisters ofMercy of Australia 14, no. 1 (1996): 25-30.
39. Both this and the preceding title are taken from the Litany of Loreto; see
also the Akathistos Hymn for similar titles.
40. Examples abound in Paule Bétérous, Les Collections de Miracles de la Vierge
en Gallo et Ibéro-Roman au XIII Siécle, Marian Library Studies 15-16 (Dayton,
Oh.: University of Dayton Press, 1983-84); and Johannes Herolt [Discipulus],
Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary, trans. C. Bland (London: Routledge, 1929).
41. Anselm, “Prayer to St. Mary (2),” in Prayers and Meditations of St. Anselm,
trans. Ward, 110.
42. John Paul II, Encyclical Redemptor hominis (Washington, D.C.: United
States Catholic Conference, 1979), §22.
43. A Hopkins Reader, ed. John Pick (Garden City, N.Y:: Doubleday, 1966),
70-73.
44. Ibid., 56-57. See analysis of symbols that connect Mary with natural life by
René Laurentin, “Foi et mythe en théologie mariale,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique
89 (1967): 281-307.
45. Anselm, “Prayer to St. Mary (3),” in Prayers and Meditations of St. Anselm,
trans. Ward, 120. .
46. “Mary of Nazareth, Sign of God’s Liberation,” in Celebrating Women Wit-
nesses (Cleveland: FutureChurch, 2000).

CHAPTER 5
A MODEST PROPOSAL

1. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Mary, Redemption, and Unity.” Una Sancta

[Chicago] 24, no. 1 (1967): 62-68.
2. Raymond E. Brown, “The Meaning of Modern New Testament Studies for
an Ecumenical Understanding of Mary,’ in his Biblical Reflections on Crises Facing
the Church (New York: Paulist Press, 1975), 105. Patrick Bearsley develops Brown’s
idea in “Mary the Perfect Disciple: A Paradigm for Mariology,” Theological Studies
41 (1980): 461-504.
NOTES
e 343
e

3. Brown, Biblical Reflections, 107.

4. Karl Rahner, Mary, Mother of the Lord, trans. W. J. O’Hara (New York:
Herder & Herder, 1963), 30.
5. Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), $63.
6. Vatican II, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium),
$103. The habit of referring to the church with a female pronoun is highly prob-
lematic, rooted as it is in the patriarchal masculine—feminine gender system.
7. United States Catholic Bishops, Behold Your Mother: Woman of Faith, pub-
lished in Catholic Mind 72 (May 1974): 26-64; citations from $§35 and 111.
8. Max Thurian, Mary, Mother of the Lord, Figure of the Church (London: Faith
Press, 1963); and Lukas Vischer, “Mary: Symbol of the Church, Symbol of
Humankind,” Mid-Stream: An Ecumenical Journal 17 (1978): 1-12.
9. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Mary, The Feminine Face of the Church (Phila-
delphia: Westminster, 1977).
10. Elizabeth Johnson, “The Symbolic Character of Theological Statements
about Mary,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 22 (1985): 313.
11. Ibid., 327; see Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil (Boston: Beacon, 1967).
12. U.S. Catholic Bishops, Behold Your Mother, $102.
13. Ibid., $61.
14. Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), $68.
15. John van den Hengel presents a good survey of these two options (“Mary:
Miriam of Nazareth or Symbol of the Eternal Feminine,” Science et Esprit 37
[1985]: 319-33).
16. Karl Rahner, “Christianity’s Absolute Claim,” Theological Investigations,
volume 21, trans. Hugh Riley (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 176.
17. Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), $58.
18. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (London: Longman, 1972), 391,
emended for inclusivity; see full discussion on pp. 388-97.
19. Schillebeeckx, Christ, 641 (see chap. 3, n. 10). In this discussion of the creed
I am borrowing liberally and with gratitude from his description of the four struc-
tural elements of Christian faith (pp. 629-44).
20. Ibid., 641.
21. See essays by Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (Freedom, Calif.: Crossing Press,
1984), especially “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” (pp.
114—23). See also Anne Pattel-Gray, “Not yet Tiddas: An Aboriginal womanist cri-
tique of Australian Church feminism,” in Freedom and Entrapment, ed. Confoy et
al., 165—92 (see chap. 2, n. 21).
22. Lisa Cahill, “Feminist Ethics, Differences, and Common Ground: A
Catholic Perspective,” in Feminist Ethics and the Catholic Moral Tradition, ed.
Curran et al., 184 (see chap. 3, n. 32); see, however, the ongoing critique of white
racism in feminist thought by Ellen Armour, Deconstruction, Feminist Theology,
and the Problem of Difference: Subverting the Race/Gender Divide (Chicago: Uni-
344 NOTES

versity of Chicago Press, 1999).

23. M. Shawn Copeland, “Toward a Critical Christian Feminist Theology of
Solidarity,” in Women and Theology, ed. Hinsdale and Kaminski, 3 (see chap. 2, n.
8); see also her “Difference as a Category in Critical Theologies for the Liberation
of Women, in Feminist Theology in Different Contexts, ed. Schiissler Fiorenza and
Copeland, 141-51 (see chap. 2, n. 3).
24. Lorde, Sister Outsider, 111-12. This idea is developed by Sharon Welch, “An
Ethic of Solidarity and Difference,” in her A Feminist Ethic of Risk (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1990), 123-51.
25. Bernadette Brooten, “Jewish Women’s History in the Roman Period: A
Task for Christian Theology,’ Harvard Theological Review 79 (1986): 29—an
insightful programmatic essay.
26. Rahner, Mary, Mother of the Lord, 52. This approach is fruitful for Chris-
tian dialogue, as affirmed by Harding Meyer, “The Ecumenical Unburdening of
the Mariological Problem: A Lutheran Perspective,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies
26 (1989): 681-96. Critique of my previous effort to retrieve this doctrine appears
in Hamington, Hail Mary? 164-66 (see chap. 2, n. 32).
27. Roger Haight, “Sin and Grace,” in Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic
Perspectives, ed. Francis Schiissler Fiorenza and John Galvin (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1991), 110; what follows adapts the points made in this essay in pp.
77-141.
28. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, trans. William Dych (New
York: Seabury, 1978), 120.
29. This lovely metaphor of mapping grace comes from Serene Jones, Feminist
Theory and Christian Theology: Cartographies of Grace (see chap. 2, n. 4).
30. Rahner, Foundations, 226.
31. Rahner, Mary, Mother of the Lord, 78.
32. Raymond Brown gives references to medieval and later thinkers who
insisted that Mary’s knowledge was not limited; but this is not the testimony of
scripture (The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in
Matthew and Luke (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977], 492 n. 45).
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., 50.
35. Thérése of Lisieux, Pourquoi j'aime Marie (1887), cited by René Laurentin,
“Holy Mary,” in Models of Holiness, ed. Christian Duquoc and Casiano Floristan
(New York: Seabury, 1979), 64.
36. Boff, Maternal Face of God, 130 (see chap. 2, n. 64).
37. Karl Rahner, “I Believe in Jesus Christ: Interpreting an Article of Faith,”
Theological Investigations, volume 9, trans. G. Harrison (London: Darton, Long-
man and Todd, 1972), 166.
38. For a thoroughgoing christology from a historical perspective, see Roger
Haight, Jesus Symbol of God (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1999); for detailed analysis of
NOTES
d 345
e
Jesus’ human psychology, see Karl Rahner, “Dogmatic Reflections on the Knowl-
edge and Self-Consciousness of Christ,” in Theological Investigations, volume 5,
trans. Karl Kruger (New York: Seabury Crossroad, 1975), 193-215; for summary,
see Elizabeth Johnson, “The Word Was made Flesh and Dwelt Among Us: Jesus
Research and Christian Faith,” in Jesus: A Colloquium in the Holy Land, ed. Doris
Donnelly (New York: Continuum, 2001), 146-66.
39. John Paul II, Encyclical Redemptoris mater, Origins 16, no. 43 (April 9,
1987): $§14 and 17.
40. Noone, Mary for Today, 62 (see chap. 2, n. 72).

CHAPTER 6
PRECEDENTS

1. Mentioned by Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 1.7.2; see 3.11.3. This dispute is

recounted in Mary in the New Testament, ed. R. E. Brown et al., 270 (see chap. 1, n.
4).
2. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 144-46, 332-38 (see chap. 5, n. 18); the phrase
“born of the Virgin Mary” was placed into the old Roman creed around 175 C.k.
3. Augustine, Sermons, 10 vols., ed. John Rotelle, translated with notes by
Edmund Hill (Brooklyn, N.Y.: New City Press, 1990-95), 3:288 (Sermon FONT).
4. Ibid., 3:287.
5. Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, 94-100 (see chap. 1, n. 1);
Kim Power, Veiled Desire: Augustine on Women (New York: Continuum, 1996),
171-211 (part 5: “Mary”); and E. Ann Matter, “Women,” in Augustine Through the
Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999),
887-92.
6. Augustine, Sermons, 3:288 (Sermon 72A.8).
7. E. Ann Matter, “The Virgin Mary: A Goddess?” in The Book of the Goddess,
Past and Present, ed. Carl Olsen (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 81.
8. Leo Scheffczyk, Das Mariengeheimnis in Frommigkeit und Lehre der
Karolingerzeit (Leipzig: St. Benno Verlag, 1959).
9. Pelikan, Growth ofMedieval Theology, 158-74 (see chap. 4, n. 12); Oberman,
Harvest ofMedieval Theology, 281-322 (see chap. 4, n. 12); and Elizabeth Johnson,
“Marian Devotion in the Western Church,” in Christian Spirituality, volume 2,
High Middle Ages and Reformation, ed. Jill Raitt (New York: Crossroad, 1987),
392-414.
10. Peter Damien in Patrologiae cursus completus: Series latina, ed. J. P. Migne
(Paris, 1857-66), 144:761; in Graef, Mary: A History ofDoctrine and Devotion, 207.
11. Bernard of Clairvaux, “Sermo in Nativitate B.V. Mariae (De aqueductu),”
in Patrologiae cursus completus: Series latina, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1857-66),
183:441.
346 NOTES

12. Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, 289.

13. Bernardine of Siena, “Sermo 5 de nativitate B.M.V,” chap. 8, in Opera
Omnia (Lugduni, 1650), 4:96.
14. René Laurentin, Queen of Heaven: A Short Treatise on Marian Theology
(London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1956), 60.
15. P. Nigido, Summa sacrae Mariologiae pars prima (Panhormi, 1602); see
Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, 2:43. The exaggeration associ-
ated with this word explains today’s preference for the phrase theology of Mary;
see Donal Flanagan, The Theology of Mary (Hales Corner, Wis.: Clergy Book Ser-
vice, 1976).
16. Patrick Bearsley, “The Metamorphosis of Mariology,’ Clergy Review 69
(1984): 67.
17. The Papal Encyclicals: 1740-1981, volume 2, ed. Claudia Carlen (Wilming-
ton, N.C.: McGrath Pub., 1981).
18. Laurentin, Question of Mary, 10 (see chap. 2, n. 49); this book has an excel-
lent analysis of the marian movement and the two opposing mariological tenden-
cies on the eve of the council.
19. Writing at the time of the Second Vatican Council, Laurentin underscores
the shock of these retrievals:
It is only necessary to recall the position of the Bible in the life of the
Catholic Church thirty years ago. Not only was it neglected, but the opinion
was still current in certain Catholic circles that the Old Testament (or even
the whole Bible) was on the Index. When I was young I heard this opinion
repeated even by priests. Only a little more recently the papers, even the
Catholic ones, reported without the slightest upset the words of an over-
enthusiastic convert who threw a dagger and a “Protestant Bible” at the feet
of Pius XII, saying: “This is the weapon with which I wanted to kill you, and
the book in which I learnt my false teaching.” At that time, the publishing of
Catholic Bibles was at a very low ebb, in sharp contrast with the position
among Protestants. What a long way we have come! (Question of Mary, 33)
20. Rahner, Mary, Mother of the Lord, 35 (see chap. 5, n. 4).
21. Ibid., 35-36.
22. Ibid., 40. The original essay is his “Le principe fondamental de la théologie
mariale,” Recherches de Science Religieuse 42 (1954): 481-522.
23. For complete documentation, see Commentary on the Documents of Vati-
can II, volume 1, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (New York: Herder & Herder, 1967),
especially Gérard Philips, “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: History of the
Constitution” (pp. 105-37); and Otto Semmelroth, “Chapter VIII: The Role of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, in the Mystery of Christ and the Church”
(pp. 285-96). Also History of Vatican II, volume 3, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and
Joseph Komonchak (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2000), 95-98, 366-72, 425-28. Eye-
witness accounts are recounted by Karl Rahner, “Zur konziliaren Mariologie,”
 NOTES
Se Oe a ee a es 347ig
Stimmen der Zeit 174 (1964): 87-101; and René Laurentin, La Vierge au
Concile
(Paris: Lethielleux, 1965).
24. Laurentin, Question of Mary, 136.
25. Philips, in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. Vorgrimler,
i125.
26. Rahner, cited in History of Vatican IT, ed. Alberigo and Komonchak, 97-98.
27. Laurentin, Question of Mary, 137.
28. For details, see Elizabeth Johnson, “Mary as Mediatrix: History and Inter-
pretation,” in One Mediator, the Saints, and Mary, 311-26 (see chap. 1, n. 4).
29. Mary Hines, “Mary and the Prophetic Mission of the Church, Journal of
Ecumenical Studies 28 (1991): 289.
30. Anne Carr, “Mary in the Mystery of the Church: Vatican Council II? in
Mary according to Women, ed. Jegen, 5-32 (see chap. 1, n. 35).
31. Borresen, “Mary in Catholic Theology,” in Mary in the Churches, ed. Kiing
and J. Moltmann, 54 (see chap. 2, n. 25).
32. Stefano De Fiores, “Mary in Postconciliar Theology,” in Vatican II: Assess-
ment and Perspectives I, ed. René Latourelle (New York: Paulist, 1988), 478.
33. Van den Hengel, “Mary: Miriam of Nazareth or the Symbol of the ‘Eternal
Feminine,” 320.
34. Paul VI, Apostolic Letter Marialis Cultus (Devotion to the Blessed Virgin
Mary), in The Pope Speaks 19 (1974-75): 49-86.
35. Donal Flanagan notes that this papal invitation to a new vision was made
to a mariology in shock, if not in decline, and it has not been taken up to any sig-
nificant degree (“The Impact of Feminism on Mariology,” One in Christ 21 [1985]:
75-78).

CHAPTER 7
GALILEE: THE POLITICAL~-ECONOMIC WORLD

1. Critical notes and the full text of The Protoevangelium of James appear in
New Testament Apocrypha, ed. E. Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemelcher
(Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1991), 1:426—-39; citation from p. 378. For
discussion of the apocrypha, see Mary in the New Testament, ed. R. E. Brown et al.,
241-82 (see chap. 1, n. 4); Beverly Gaventa, Mary: Glimpses of the Mother of Jesus
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995), 100-125, with full text of
the Protoevangelium, pp. 133-45.
2. Protoevangelium of James 19.3 (New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Hennecke
and Schneemelcher, 1:385).
3. Jonathan Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-examination of the
Evidence (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2000), 19. I also draw here
348 NOTES

from What Has Archaeology To Do with Faith? ed. James Charlesworth and Walter
Weaver (Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1992); John Rousseau and
Rami Arav, Jesus and His World: An Archaeological and Cultural Dictionary (Min-
neapolis: Fortress, 1995); and Archaeology and the Galilee: Texts and Contexts in the
Graeco-Roman and Byzantine Periods, ed. Douglas Edwards and C. Thomas
McCollough (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), especially James Strange, “First Cen-
tury Galilee from Archaeology and from Texts” (pp. 39-48).
4, A groundbreaking work is Sean Freyne, Galilee: From Alexander the Great to
Hadrian, 323 B.C.E. to 135 C.E.: A Study of Second Temple Judaism (Wilmington,
Del.: Michael Glazier; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980).
This present chapter draws especially on chap. 3, “Galilee under the Romans” (pp.
57-97).
5. Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels (Philadel-
phia: Fortress, 1973); John Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus,
volume 1, The Roots of the Problem and the Person; volume 2, Mentor, Message, and
Miracles; volume 3, Companions and Competitors (New York: Doubleday, 1991,
1994, 2001); John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediter-
ranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991) (the debate
generated by this work can be followed in Sean Freyne, “Galilean Questions to
Crossan’s Mediterranean Jesus,” in Sean Freyne, Galilee and Gospel [Tiibingen:
Mohr-Siebeck, 2000], 208-29); E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1985); Jesus’ Jewishness: Exploring the Place of Jesus in Early Judaism, ed.
James H. Charlesworth (New York: Crossroad, 1996); Bernard Lee, The Galilean
Jewishness of Jesus (New York: Paulist, 1988); Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth,
King of the Jews (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999). Theological implications of
this research are debated by Marcus Borg and N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus:
Two Visions (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2000); and in Jesus: A Collo-
quium in the Holy Land, ed. Donnelly (see chap. 5, n. 38).
6. With interreligious respect, standard academic usage marks the years before
and after Christ as B.c.£. and C.£., for “before the common era” and “common era.”
7. Flavius Josephus, Jewish War 3.42—44. Josephus (37-100 C.E.) was a member
of a Jewish priestly family who operated first as a military commander and later as
a historian. His writings, while needing critical interpretation, give a fresh and
often eyewitness view of first-century events in Palestine. In addition to Jewish
War, he wrote Jewish Antiquities, Against Apion, and his Life. See Anchor Bible Dic-
tionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 3:981-98.
8. John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity (San Francisco: Harper-
SanFrancisco, 1998), 219.
9. Josephus, Jewish War 3.517-19.
10. Crossan, Historical Jesus, 17.
11. Ibid., 16, citing Eric Meyers and James Strange, Archaeology, the Rabbis,
 NOTES
os Re SS EE ENE Sa ae an ee oe ena 349
2 Ed
and Early Christianity: The Social and Historical Setting of Palestinian Judaism and
Christianity (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981), 56.
12. “From Jewish literary texts, then, across almost one thousand five
hundred
years, nothing” (Crossan, Historical Jesus, 15).
13. Richard Horsley, Archaeology, History, and Society in Galilee: The Social
Context ofJesus and the Rabbis (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International,
1996),
110; see this work for further descriptions and excellent maps.
14. For the following discussion, see the lucid presentation by Meier, Marginal
Jew, 1:255-68; Horsley, Archaeology, History, and Society, 154-75; Freyne, Galilee
from Alexander the Great to Hadrian, 144.
15. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus, 153. For good description of these
houses and their significance, see Marianne Sawicki, Crossing Galilee: Architectures
of Contact in the Occupied Land of Jesus (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press Interna-
tional, 2000), 13-22.
16. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus, 159.
17. Ibid., 148-60.
18, Ibid., 313-32.
19. Ibid,, 132.
20. Douglas Oakman, “The Countryside in Luke-Acts,” in The Social World of
Luke-Acts: Models for Interpretation, ed. Jerome Neyrey (Peabody, Mass.: Hen-
drickson, 1991), 155.
21. Ibid., 156.
22. Gerhard Lenski, Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification (New
York: McGraw Hill, 1966), 228. I am following here with gratitude the presenta-
tion of Lenski’s model given by Crossan (Historical Jesus, 43-46), where I first
came across it. Nuance has been added to Lenski’s view of traditional agrarian
society by John Kautsky’s idea of a commercializing agrarian society in The Poli-
tics ofAristocratic Empires (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982).
The Lenski-Kautsky model now appears in numerous studies of Galilee. See also
Sean Freyne, “Herodian Economics in Galilee: Searching for a Suitable Model,” in
his Galilee and Gospel, 86-113.
23. Lenski, Power and Privilege, 266 and 270.
24. Ibid., 281.
25. Ibid., 210, italics his.
26. Richard Horsley, Galilee: History, Politics, People (Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity
Press International, 1995), 204; hereafter Galilee. I draw here from Horsley,
Galilee, chap. 9, and his Archaeology, History, and Society in Galilee, chap. 3; also
K. C. Hanson and Douglas Oakman, Palestine in the Time of Jesus (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1998), chap. 4; and Ekkehard Stegemann and Wolfgang Stegemann, The
Jesus Movement: A Social History of Its First Century, trans. O. C. Dean (Min-
neapolis: Fortress, 1999), chaps. 1-5.
350 NOTES

27. Sean Freyne, Galilee, Jesus and the Gospels: Literary Approaches and Histor-
ical Investigations (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1988), 172.
28. Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:279.
29. Ibid., 281.
30. Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Social Relations, 50 B.C. to A.D. 384 (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 107-8; cited in Crossan, Historical Jesus, 29.
31. Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:282.
32. Ibid.
33. Irene Brennan, “Mother of Justice and Peace,” New Blackfriars 69 (1988):
228-36.
34. Gebara and Bingemer, Mary, Mother of God, Mother of the Poor, 113 (see
chap. 1, n. 31).
35. Ibid., 120-21.
36. For a chronology of Jesus life, see Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:372-433.
37. Although Herod was originally appointed king by the Romans in 40 B.C.£.,
it took three years before he could quash popular resistance to his reign, especially
in Galilee, where they already knew of his brutality. See Peter Richardson, Herod,
King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1996).
38. Stegemann and Stegemann, Jesus Movement, 112.
39. Josephus, Antiquities 17.271-72.
40. Ibid., 2.75
41. Ibid., 17.289.
42. Horsley, Archaeology, History, and Society, 32 and 112.
43. Horsley, Galilee, 123.
44, Crossan, Birth of Christianity, 233.
45. Josephus, Antiquities 18.27.
46. Ibid., 18.36.
47. Paraphrase of Horsley, Archaeology, History, and Society, 89-90.
48. Horsley, Galilee, 219; see also Sean Freyne, “Town and Country Once More:
The Case of Roman Galilee,” in his Galilee and Gospel, 59-72.
49. Sawicki, Crossing Galilee, 90.
50. E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE-66 CE (London: SCM
Press; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1994), 157-69.
51. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus, 97.
52. Josephus, Life 374-84, cited in Crossan, Birth of Christianity, 231.
53. Josephus, Life 65-67.
54. Ibid., 384.
55. Horsley, Galilee, 221.
56. Philo, Legatio 38.302, described and cited in Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth,
King of the Jews, 171.
NOTES 351

57. John L. McKenzie, “The Mother of Jesus in the New Testament,” in Mary in
the Churches, ed. Kiing and J. Moltmann, 9 (see chap. 2, n. 25).

CHAPTER 8
SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM: THE RELIGIOUS WORLD

1. Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, 62 (see chap. 7, n. 6).

2. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief (see chap. 7, n. 50), is a treasure-trove
of information to which the following pages are indebted. See, however, critique
of Sanders’s idea of a single, unitary Judaism by Bruce Chilton and Jacob Neusner,
Judaism in the New Testament: Practices and Beliefs (New York: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1995), 10-18. Primary sources for individual and temple piety are presented
in Faith and Piety in Early Judaism: Texts and Documents, ed. George W. E. Nick-
elsburg and Michael Stone (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983).
3. Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, 201. A critically enlightening
discussion of these purity laws’ effect on women’s social position is presented by
Shaye Cohen, “Menstruants and the Sacred in Judaism and Christianity,” in
Women’s History and Ancient History, ed. Sarah Pomeroy (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1991), 273-99; see also Sanders, Judaism: Practice and
Belief, 71.
4. Amy-Jill Levine, “Second Temple Judaism, Jesus, and Women: Yeast of
Eden,” Biblical Interpretation 2 (1994): 16, critiquing Ben Witherington III,
“Women (NT),” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1992), 6:957-61.
5. Paula Fredriksen, “Did Jesus Oppose the Purity Laws?” Bible Review 11
(June 1995): 22.
6. Norman Pittenger, Our Lady: The Mother of Jesus in Christian Faith and
Devotion (London: SCM Press, 1996), 33.
7. Horsley, Galilee, 122 (see chap. 7, n. 26).
8. Crossan, Birth of Christianity, 575-86 (see chap. 7, n. 8); also Horsley,
Galilee, 111-27.
9. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus, 53 (see chap. 7, n. 3).
10. Ibid., 23-61. For a clear explanation of ossuaries, see Crossan, Birth of
Christianity, 543-44.
11. Horsley, Archaeology, History, and Society, 131-53 (see chap. 7, n. 13); see
also his Galilee, 222-37 (“Synagogues: The Village Assemblies”).
12. Josephus, Antiquities, 14.235, 260.
13. Horsley, Galilee, 236
14. See the fascinating research by Bernadette Brooten, Women Leaders in the
Ancient Synagogue (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1982), especially 103-38.
$3) NOTES

15. Horsley, Galilee, 237; also Crossan, Birth of Christianity, 159-65; and
Sawicki, Crossing Galilee, passim (see chap. 7, n. 15).
16. Here I am following closely Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,
54-61.
17. Robert Aron, The Jewish Jesus (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1971).
18. Josephus, Against Apion 2.175.
19. Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, 61.
20. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 275.
21. Horsley, Galilee, 144-47.
22. Meir Ben-Dov, In the Shadow of the Temple: The Discovery of Ancient
Jerusalem (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 77. For the following description I am
drawing mainly on Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, chaps. 5 and 6; also
Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, 42-50; and Sawicki, Crossing Galilee,
48-54.
23. Josephus, Jewish War 5.199.
24. Ibid., 5.219.
25. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 79-81.
26. Aristeas 92-95, cited by Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 80.
27. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 81.
28. Ibid.
29. This scenario is a gloss on Sanders’s imaginative example (Judaism: Prac-
tice and Belief, 112-16) with credit also to Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the
Jews, 42-50.
30. Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, 47.
31. Mary in the New Testament, ed. R. E. Brown et al., 284 (see chap. 1, n. 4).
32. Ibid., 173-77.
33. Stegemann and Stegemann, Jesus Movement, 215 (see chap. 7, n. 26).
34. See Carolyn Osiek, “Women in House Churches,” in Common Life in the
Early Church, ed. Julian Hills (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1998),
300-315, with other examples that include Lydia (Acts 16:14, 40) and Nympha
(Col. 4:15).
35. James D. G. Dunn, The Partings of the Ways: Between Christianity and
Judaism and their Significance for the Character of Christianity (Philadelphia: Trin-
ity Press International, 1991), 152-59. For this complex history, see also Claudia
Setzer, Jewish Responses to Early Christians: History and Polemics, 30-150 C.E.
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994); Stephen Wilson, Related Strangers: Jews and Chris-
tians 70-170 C.E. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995); and essays in Interwoven Des-
tinies, ed. Eugene Fisher (New York: Paulist, 1993).
36. Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, 12-17.
37. See the explanation in Daniel Harrington, “Retrieving the Jewishness of
Jesus: Recent Developments,’ in The Historical Jesus Through Catholic and Jewish
NOTES 353

Eyes, ed. Leonard Greenspoon, Dennis Hamm, and Bryan LeBeau (Harrisburg,
Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2000), 67-84.
38. See the excellent discussion in Mary Boys, Has God Only One Blessing?
Judaism as a Source of Christian Self-Understanding (New York: Paulist, 2000).
39. Dunn, Partings of the Ways, 230.
40. Alan Segal, Rebecca’s Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman
World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987).

CHAPTER 9
WOMEN: THE SOCIAL-CULTURAL WORLD

1. Rosemary Radford Ruether’s early analysis in, New Woman, New Earth, 64
(see chap. 1, n. 14); see her Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-
Semitism (New York: Seabury, 1979).
2. Amy-Jill Levine, “Second Temple Judaism, Jesus, and Women,” Biblical
Interpretation 2 (1994): 11.
3. Judith Plaskow, “Christian Feminism and Anti-Judaism,’ Cross Currents 28
(1978): 306; reprinted as “Blaming the Jews for the Birth of Patriarchy,” Lilith 7
(1980/5741): 11-13. Her analysis is further developed in “Anti-Judaism in Femi-
nist Christian Interpretation,” in Searching the Scriptures, volume 1, A Feminist
Introduction, ed. Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza (New York: Crossroad, 1993),
117-29.
4. Susannah Heschel, “Anti-Judaism in Christian Feminist Theology,” Tikkun
5, no. 3 (May, June 1990): 25-28, 95-97, at 97; see her edited work, On BeingaJew-
ish Feminist: A Reader (New York: Schocken, 1983).
5. Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical
Interpretation (Boston: Beacon, 1992); and her Jesus and the Politics of Interpreta-
tion (New York: Continuum, 2000), 115-44; see also Deborah McCauley and
Annette Daum, “Jewish-Christian Feminist Dialogue: A Wholistic Vision,” Union
Seminary Quarterly Review 38 (1983): 147-90; and Katherina von Kellenbach,
Anti-Judaism in Feminist Religious Writings (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1990).
6. Plaskow, “Christian Feminism and Anti-Judaism,” 308. Many feminist
scholars credit the early work by Leonard Swidler, Women in Judaism: The Status
of Women in Formative Judaism (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976) with
focusing on the question of women, although they take issue with his use of
sources.
7. Tal Ilan, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine: An Inquiry into Image and
Status (Tiibingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1995); and eadem, Mine and Yours Are Hers:
Retrieving Women’s History from Rabbinic Literature (Leiden: Brill, 1997); her
work attempts a critical use of rabbinic sources to glimpse women’s actual lives.
354 NOTES

Judith Romney Wegner also makes connections between later law and earlier Jew-
ish practice (Chattel or Person? The Status of Women in the Mishnah [New York:
Oxford University Press, 1988]). Contrary to simply reading off first-century con-
ditions from the Talmud, these studies use careful methodology to sift and judge
at every point.
8. Barbara Geller Nathanson, “Toward a Multicultural Ecumenical History of
Women in the First Century/ies C.E.,” in Searching the Scriptures, ed. Schiissler
Fiorenza, 1:272—89, with excellent notes.
9. Randall Chesnutt, “Revelatory Experiences Attributed to Biblical Women,”
in“Women Like This”: New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman
World, ed. Amy-Jill Levine (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1991), 107—25; a different
take is offered by Ross Shepard Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph: A Late Antique
Tale of the Biblical Patriarch and His Egyptian Wife, Revisited (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1998).
10. Ross Shepard Kraemer, “Jewish Women and Christian Origins: Some
Caveats,” in Women and Christian Origins, ed. Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary
Rose D’Angelo (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 44; see also Kraemer
“Jewish Women and Women’s Judaism(s) at the Beginning of Christianity,” in the
same volume, pp. 50-79.
11. Brooten, Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue (see chap. 8, n. 14).
12. Ross Shepard Kraemer, Maenads, Martyrs, Matrons, Monastics: A Source-
book on Women’s Religions in the Greco-Roman World (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1988); see also her analysis in Her Share of the Blessings: Women’s Religions among
Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1992).
13. Bernadette Brooten, “Jewish Women’s History in the Roman Period: A
Task for Christian Theology,” Harvard Theological Review.79 (1986): 22-30—an
insightful programmatic essay; and her “Early Christian Women and Their Cul-
tural Context: Issues of Method in Historical Reconstruction,’ in Feminist Per-
spectives on Biblical Scholarship, ed. Yarbro Collins, 65-92 (see chap. 3, n. 6).
14. Barbara Geller Nathanson, “Reflections on the Silent Woman of Ancient
Judaism and her Pagan Roman Counterpart,” in The Listening Heart: Essays in
Wisdom and the Psalms in Honor of Roland Murphy, ed. Kenneth Hoglund
(Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), 273; also “Women Like This”: New Perspectives on
Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World, ed. Levine; and Cheryl Ann Brown, No
Longer Be Silent: First Century Jewish Portraits of Biblical Women (Louisville, Ky.:
Westminster John Knox, 1992).
15. Schtissler Fiorenza, Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation, 137.
16. Carol Meyers, “Everyday Life: Women in the Period of the Hebrew Bible,”
in Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. Carol Newsom and Sharon Ringe (Louisville,
Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 256.
NOTES 555

17. Schalom Ben-Chorin, “A Jewish View of the Mother of Jesus,” in Mary in

the Churches, ed. Kiing and J. Moltmann, 12 (see chap. 2, n. 25).
18. Jane Schaberg, The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpreta-
tion of the Infancy Narratives (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 42-45; and Brown,
Birth of the Messiah, 123-24 (see chap. 5, n. 32). For background, see Bruce
Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (Atlanta:
John Knox, 1991), 94-121 (“Kinship and Marriage”); for a critical assessment of
Malina’s approach, see Mary Ann Tolbert, “Social, Sociological, and Anthropolog-
ical Methods,” in Searching the Scriptures, ed. Schiissler Fiorenza, 1:255-72; and
Joel Green, “The Social Status of Mary in Luke 1:5-2:52: A Plea for Methodologi-
cal Integration,” Biblica 73 (1992): 457-72.
19. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 304.
20. Ibid., 305. Brown makes the important distinction that “unanimity of the
Fathers has value in interpreting God’s revelation, but the Fathers of the Church
had no more knowledge about Mary’s historical intentions than we have and no
other way of gaining that knowledge than we have” (p. 304 n. 24).
21. Meyers, “Everyday Life,” 253.
22. Miriam Peskowitz, “Family/ies in Antiquity: Evidence from Tannaitic Lit-
erature and Roman Galilean Architecture,” in The Jewish Family in Antiquity, ed.
Shaye Cohen (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 33, citing D. Fiensy, The Social His-
tory of Palestine in the Herodian Period (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991), 145.
23. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “Saint Joseph in the New Testament,” Josephinum Jour-
nal of Theology 7, nos. 1-2 (2000): 18-30.
24. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 503.
25. Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:318 (see chap. 7, n. 5); see his “The Brothers and Sis-
ters of Jesus in Ecumenical Perspective,’ Catholic Biblical Quarterly 54 (1992):
1-28, where he suggests using the Vatican II teaching on the “hierarchy of truths”
to remove this disputed question from the path to unity, given its marginal impor-
tance in scripture and the obscurity of data available for resolving it.
26. Mary in the New Testament, ed. R. E. Brown et al., 87 (see chap 1, n. 4).
27. Ibid., 66 n. 124.
28. Ben-Chorin, “Jewish View of the Mother of Jesus,” 13.
29. Ranke-Heinemann, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, 341 (see chap. 2,
Dy SL)
30. The sign is that of a dove that flies out of his staff (his staff“blooms”), lead-
ing to traditional artistic portraits of Joseph with a lily (see chap. 7, n. 1).
31. Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:326; for a full, lucid discussion, see pp. 316-32.
32. McKenzie, “The Mother of Jesus in the New Testament,” in Mary in the
Churches, ed. Kiing and J. Moltmann, 6.
33. Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:331. It should be noted for Catholic readers that this
book bears the imprimatur. Meier points to the groundbreaking study by Rudolf
356 NOTES

Pesch, Das Markusevangelium (Freiburg: Herder, 1976), which created contro-

versy in Germany over its claim that these were biological brothers and sisters, yet
was not censured.
34. John McHugh discusses all three ancient positions at length (The Mother
ofJesus in the New Testament [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975], 200-254).
35. Leo Gafney, “Jesus at Home,” America 175, no. 3 (August 3-10, 1996): 17.
36. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.199-203; see discussion in Meier, Marginal
Jew, 1:57—-59. There may be another extrabiblical witness to this brother in an Ara-
maic inscription discovered in 2002. Found on an ancient bone box, called an
ossuary, it reads, “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”; see André Lemaire, “Bur-
ial Box of James, the Brother of Jesus,” Biblical Archaeology Review 28, no. 6
(November—December 2002): 24.
37. Meyers, “Everyday Life,” 251-59. See also Amy Wordelman, “Everyday Life:
Women of the New Testament Period,” in Women’s Bible Commentary, ed Newsom
and Ringe, 482-88, which provides background from the wider Roman empire.
38. Meyers, “Everyday Life,” 254.
39. Ibid.
40. Jacob Neusner, Judaism in the Beginning of Christianity (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1984), 59.
41. Luise Schottroff, Lydia’s Impatient Sisters: A Feminist Social History of Early
Christianity, trans. Barbara Rumscheidt and Martin Rumscheidt (Louisville, Ky.:
Westminster John Knox, 1995), 85. Levine argues to the contrary that in the sym-
bolic universe of Judaism and the early church, yeast represents moral corruption
(“Second Temple Judaism,” 2425 [see chap. 8, n. 4]).
42. Meyers, “Everyday Life,” 255.
43. Ibid.
44, Ibid., 256. See also O. Larry Yarbrough, “Parents and Children in the Jew-
ish Family of Antiquity,” in Jewish Family in Antiquity, ed. Cohen, 39-59.
45. Meyers, “Everyday Life,” 256.
46. Ibid., 257. Kathleen Corley also argues the thesis that lower-class women
long enjoyed more freedom in the public realm (Private Women, Public Meals:
Social Conflict in the Synoptic Tradition |Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1993]).
47. Klaus Schreiner, Maria: Jungfrau, Mutter, Herrscherin (Munich: Hanser
Verlag, 1994), 116, in a chapter entitled “Maria, die Intellektuelle.”
48. Horsley, Archaeology, History and Society in Galilee, 156 (see chap. 7, n. 13).
49. Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:255—-56.
50. Crossan, Birth of Christianity, 234 (see chap. 7, n. 8).
51. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus, 131 (see chap. 7, n. 3).
52. Horsley, Galilee, 246 (see chap. 7, n. 26).
53. Robert Hughes, “When Beauty was Virtue,” Time 158 (December 24,
2001): 60-62.
54. Norris, Meditations on Mary, 16-17 (see chap. 2, n. 53).
NOTES 357

CHAPTER 10
THE DANGEROUS MEMORY OF MARY:
A MOSAIC

1. There are additional brief allusions to Mary in other Gospel scenes as well
as implied references to her in passages in Paul’s letters where the subject is Jesus’
birth according to the flesh. For a full listing, see the Table of Contents in Mary in
the New Testament, ed. R. E. Brown et al., ix—xi (see chap. 1, n. 4).
2. The most developed treatment available in English is Raymond E. Brown,
The Birth of the Messiah (see chap. 5, n. 32), especially 25-41 (“Scholarship and the
Infancy Narratives”).
3. Vatican II’s presentation of Mary follows this pattern; see the Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), chapter 8.
4. Some translations say “besides women and children,” others, “to say noth-
ing of women and children”; see Megan McKenna, Not Counting Women and Chil-
dren (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1998).
5. Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical
Interpretation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2001). In what follows I draw on this lucid
introduction to feminist methods and their interpretive power. For earlier work-
ing of these methods, consult the bibliographic essay by Janice Capel Anderson,
“Mapping Feminist Biblical Criticism: The American Scene, 1983-90,” Critical
Review of Books in Religion 4 (1991): 21-44.
6. Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, “Transforming the Legacy of The Woman’s
Bible,’ in Searching the Scriptures, ed. Schiissler Fiorenza, 1:11 (see chap. 9, n. 3).
7. For the significance of this scene for the question of women’s ministry; see
Raymond E. Brown, “Roles of Women in the Fourth Gospel,” in his The Com-
munity of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Paulist, 1979), 183-98; and Sandra
Schneiders, “Women in the Fourth Gospel and the Role of Women in the Con-
temporary Church,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 12 (1982): 35-45.
8. Barbara Reid, Choosing the Better Part? Women in the Gospel of Luke
(Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press/Michael Glazier, 1996), 160; see also the
groundbreaking interpretation of Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, “A Feminist Criti-
cal Interpretation for Liberation: Martha and Mary: Lk 10:38—42,” Religion and
Intellectual Life 3 (1986): 21-36, reprised in But She Said, 57-76 (see chap. 9, n. 5).
9. Reid, Choosing the Better Part? 54.
10. Mary Rose D’Angelo, “Women in Luke-Acts: A Redactional View,’ Journal
of Biblical Literature 109 (1990): 461; her “Re-presentations of Women in the
Gospel of Matthew and Luke-Acts,” in Women and Christian Origins, ed. Kraemer
and D’Angelo, 171-95 (see chap. 9, n. 10); and Turid Karlsen Seim, “The Gospel
of Luke,” in Searching the Scriptures, volume 2, A Feminist Commentary, ed. Elisa-
beth Schiissler Fiorenza (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 728-62.
358 NOTES

11. Jane Schaberg, “Luke,” in Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. Newsom and
Ringe, 380 (see chap. 9, n. 16).
12. D’Angelo, “Women in Luke-Acts: A Redactional View,” 461.
13. The relevant biblical passage will be noted at the beginning of each scene.
Readers are encouraged to read the passage in full. Unless otherwise noted, direct
quotations used in each tessera can be found within the passage cited at the begin-
ning.
14. Mary Ann Tolbert, “Mark,” in Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. Newsom
and Ringe, 358-59.
15. Joan Mitchell, Beyond Fear and Silence: A Feminist-Literary Reading of
Mark (New York: Continuum, 2001), 63.
16. Ben-Chorin, “A Jewish View of the Mother of Jesus,” in Mary in the
Churches, ed. Kiing and J. Moltmann, 14 (see chap. 2, n. 25).
17. Donald Senior, “Gospel Portrait of Mary: Images and Symbols from the
Synoptic Tradition,” in Mary, Woman of Nazareth, ed. Doris Donnelly (New York:
Paulist, 1989), 93.
18. Joanna Dewey, “The Gospel of Mark,” in Searching the Scriptures, ed.
Schtissler Fiorenza, 2:478.
19. Hisako Kinukawa, Women and Jesus in Mark: A Japanese Feminist Perspec-
tive (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1994).
20. Mary in the New Testament, ed. R. E. Brown et al., 284.
21. Ben-Chorin, “A Jewish View of the Mother of Jesus,” 15-16; emphasis in
the original.
22. Dewey, “Gospel of Mark,” 482.
23. Nel Noddings, Women and Evil (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1989).
24. Sara Ruddick, “Maternal Thinking,” Feminist Studies 6 (1980): 342-67;
eadem, Maternal Thinking (see chap. 3, n. 15).
25. Daphne Merkin, “A Mother’s Influence,” New Yorker 75, no. 21 (August 2,
1999): 28.
26. Mary in the New Testament, ed. R. E. Brown et al., 284.
27. Elaine Wainwright, “The Gospel of Matthew,” in Searching the Scriptures,
ed. Schiissler Fiorenza, 2:641—44; and Amy-Jill Levine, “Matthew,” in Women’s
Bible Commentary, ed. Newsom and Ringe, 340-41.
28. Elaine Wainwright, Shall We Look for Another? A Feminist Rereading of the
Matthean Jesus (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1998), 56.
29. Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, 195 (see chap. 3, n. 9).
30. While this law dealt with the marriage of a widow to a brother of her
deceased husband, it was also interpreted more widely to include the obligation of
other male family members.
31. Schaberg, Illegitimacy of Jesus, 24 (see chap. 9, n. 18).
32. Ibid., 26.
NOTES 359

S3ibid., 32:
34. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 73.
35. Mary in the New Testament, ed. R. E. Brown et al., 82.
36. Wainwright, “Gospel of Matthew,” 642, 643. Amy-Jill Levine argues in a
different vein: what is important is not extramarital sexual activity but Matthew’s
recognition that these women are examples of higher righteousness that chal-
lenges and teaches the men in powerful positions (“Matthew’; see n. 27 above).
See also Katherine Doob Sakenfield, “Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and the Wife of Uriah:
The Company Mary Keeps in Matthew’s Gospel,” in Blessed One: Protestant Per-
spectives on Mary, ed. Gaventa and Rigby, 21-31 (see chap. 1, n. 39).
37. Senior, “Gospel Portrait of Mary,” 102.
38. Schaberg, Illegitimacy ofJesus, 74; see pp. 32-33 for precise logical connec-
tions between the four foremothers and Mary.
39. Senior, “Gospel Portrait of Mary,” 103.
40. Ibid., 107.
41. Wainwright, “Gospel of Matthew,” 643.
42. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 534—42 (Appendix V, “The Charge of IIllegiti-
macy”); and Mary in the New Testament, ed. R. E. Brown et al., 256, 261-62.
43. Schaberg, Illegitimacy of Jesus, 1, 18, 74, 67, 199.
44, Ibid., 193. Not all criticism of Schaberg has been temperate or intelligent,
charitable or wise. See her account of abusive reactions to her scholarship, “A Fem-
inist Experience of Historical-Jesus Scholarship,” in Whose Historical Jesus? ed.
William Arnal and Michel Desjardins (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University
Press, 1997), 146-60. Based on the axiom that the personal is political, she offers
astute analysis of how the fierce reaction to her feminist scholarship carries a reac-
tionary agenda.
45. Levine, “Matthew,” 340.
46. Barbara Reid, review of The Illegitimacy ofJesus, Catholic Biblical Quarterly
52 (1990): 364-65.
47. Schottroff, Lydia’s Impatient Sisters, 201 (see chap. 9, n. 41).
48. Reid, Choosing the Better Part? 84.
49. The problem is detailed in Women Resisting Violence: Spirituality for Life,
ed. Mary John Mananzan et al. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1996); see especially
Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, “Ties that Bind: Domestic Violence Against Women,”
ibid., 39-55; Violence against Women, ed. Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza and Shawn
Copeland (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1994); and Violence against Women and Chil-
dren: A Christian Sourcebook, ed. Carol Adams and Marie Fortune (New York:
Continuum, 1995).
50. Dom Sebastian Moore, “The Bedded Axle-Tree,” in Jesus Crucified and
Risen: Essays in Spirituality in Honor of Dom Sebastian Moore, ed. William Loewe
and Vernon Gregson (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1998), 220.
51. Ibid., 223.
360 NOTES

52. For a survey of the discussion in Europe and North America, see Joseph A.
Fitzmyer, “The Virginal Conception of Jesus in the New Testament,” in his To
Advance the Gospel: New Testament Studies (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 41-78,
with extensive bibliography; and Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 517-33 (Appendix
IV, “Virginal Conception”), with bibliography.
53. Raymond Brown, The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection ofJesus
(New York: Paulist, 1973), 66.
54. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 527.
55. Mary in the New Testament, ed. R. E. Brown et al., 96.
56. Van Austin Harvey presents an excellent discussion of this issue of intel-
lectual integrity with regard to the quest for the historical Jesus (The Historian and
the Believer [New York: Macmillan, 1966]).
57. Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum)
§11.
58. Elaine Wainwright disagrees with the majority scholarly opinion that
Matthew attributes divine sonship to Jesus in this text (Shall We Look for Another?
59).
59. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 124; also Fitzmyer, “Virginal Conception of
Jesus in the New Testament,” 54.
60. Jiirgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic
Dimensions, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 83; see pp. 82-87
(“Christ’s Birth in the Spirit from a Theological Perspective”).
61. Gerhard Delling, “parthenos,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testa-
ment, ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977),
5:835.
62. Frans Jozef von Beeck, “Born of the Virgin Mary: Toward a Sprachregelung
on a Delicate Point of Doctrine,” Pacifica: Australian Theological Studies 14 (June
2001): 128. '
63. Ibid., 139.
64. Ibid., 142.
65. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 531.
66. Schaberg, Illegitimacy ofJesus, 2.
67. Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (New York: Seabury, 1968),
207-8.
68. Levine, “Matthew,” 341.
69. Janice Capel Anderson, “Mary’s Difference: Gender and Patriarchy in the
Birth Narratives,” Journal of Religion 67 (1987): 183-202.
70. Wainwright, “Gospel of Matthew,” 2:643.
71. Schaberg, Illegitimacy of Jesus, 199.
72. Wainwright, “Gospel of Matthew,” in Searching the Scriptures, 2:676; see
also her Towards a Feminist Critical Reading of the Gospel according to Matthew
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991).
NOTES 361

73. Ibid., 10, 198.

74. Sojourner Truth at the Woman’s Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio, May 28,
1851; in Sojourner Truth as Orator, 103-4 (see chap. 3, n. 47).
75. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 167.
76. Wainwright, Shall We Look for Another? 61-62.
77. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 168; see this section for fascinating historical
examples of envoys from the East coming to Palestine or to Rome with gifts.
78. Richard Horsley, The Liberation of Christmas: The Infancy Narratives in
Social Context (New York: Crossroad, 1986), 53-58.
79. Wainwright, Shall We Look for Another? 63.
80. See Michael Crosby, House of Disciples: Church, Economics, and Justice in
Matthew (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1988) for analysis of the house as a key
metaphor in this Gospel.
81. Wainwright, Shall We Look for Another? 63.
82. Ibid.
83. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 232.
84. See graphic reflections in Peter Daino, Mary, Mother of Sorrows, Mother of
Defiance (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1993); and Megan McKenna, Mary, Shadow of
Grace (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1995), 62-77.
85. Letter from U.N. High Commission for Refugees, May 2002.
86. Catholic Relief Services, The Wooden Bell 13 (October 2002): 1, 4.
87. Balasuriya, Mary and Human Liberation, 126-27 (see chap. 2, n. 24).
88. See New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Hennecke and Schneemelcher, 1:410
(see chap. 7, n. 1).
89. Ibid., 413. Though railed against by Jerome and condemned by popes, this
literature was immensely popular up through the Middle Ages.
90. Josephus, War 33.6 $600; Jewish Antiquities 17.6.5 §$174-78; cited in
Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 226.
91. Comment by Wainwright, Shall We Look for Another? 58, glossing Schiissler
Fiorenza, Jesus, Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet (see chap. 2, n. 67).
92. Wainwright, Shall We Look for Another? 66.
93. Tbid., 65.
94. Wainwright, “Gospel of Matthew,” 2:644. .
95. See Trible, God and the Rhetoric ofSexuality, 31-59, for the exegesis of com-
passion as womb-love; Wainwright draws on this work to interpret both fulfill-
ment citations in this pericope in an original feminist way as bearing female
images of God.
96. McKenna, Mary, Shadow of Grace, 76.
97. Daino, Mary, Mother of Sorrows, Mother of Defiance, 14-15.
98. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., The Gospel According to Luke I-IX, Anchor Bible 28
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981), 927-28; Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 316-19.
99. See chart in Mary in the New Testament, ed. R. E. Brown et al., 112.
362 NOTES

100. J. P. Audet shows how closely the annunciation to Mary follows the call of
Gideon ( “L-Annonce a Marie,” Revue Biblique 63 [1956]: 346-74).
101. See the development of this argument by Schaberg, Illegitimacy of Jesus,
101-30; Klemens Stock, “Die Berufung Marias (Lk 1:26-38),” Biblica 61 (1980):
457-91; Ignace de la Potterie, Mary in the Mystery of the Covenant, trans. Bertrand
Buby (New York: Alba House, 1992), 7-10; M. Miguens, Mary, The Servant of the
Lord: An Ecumenical Proposal (Boston: St. Paul, 1979); and B. Hubbard, “Com-
missioning Stories in Luke-Acts,” Semeia 8 (1977): 103-26. While noting the mar-
velous birth motif, all also interpret the annunciation scene as a prophetic calling
comparable to that of some prophets of the Hebrew Bible.
102. Richard Sklba, “Mary and the ‘Anawim,” in Mary, Woman of Nazareth,
ed. Donnelly, 124.
103. John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew,
Mark, and Luke, volume 1, trans. William Pringle (reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker
Book House, 1989), 42.
104. Schaberg, Illegitimacy ofJesus, 115; see also pp. 112-17.
105. Carsten Colpe, “ho huios tou anthropou,” in Theological Dictionary of the
New Testament, ed. Kittel and Friedrich, 7:400; see also Exegetical Dictionary of the
New Testament, ed. Horst Balz and Gerhard Schneider (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1991), 2:34-35.
106. Mary in the New Testament, ed. R. E. Brown et al., 121; Brown, Birth of the
Messiah, 309-16.
107. Fitzmyer, Gospel According to Luke I-IX, 335.
108. Schaberg, Illegitimacy of Jesus, 111.
109. This theme is developed by Mary Callaway, Sing, O Barren One: A Study
in Comparative Midrash (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 91-114.
110. Schaberg, Illegitimacy of Jesus, 131.
111. Schottroff, Lydia’s Impatient Sisters, 194ff.
112. Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgi-
cal Press, 1991), 38.
113. Diana Hayes, And Still We Rise: An Introduction to Black Liberation Theol-
ogy (New York: Paulist, 1996), 173.
114. Ana Maria Bidegain, “Women and the Theology of Liberation;’ in
Through Her Eyes: Women’s Theology from Latin America, ed. Elsa Tamez (Mary-
knoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1989) 34.
115. Chung Hyun Kyung, Struggle to Be the Sun Again, 78-79 (see chap. 1,n.21).
116. Norris, Meditations on Mary, 32 (see chap. 2, n. 53).
117. Schaberg, Illegitimacy of Jesus, 134, quoting Soares Prabhu.
118. Saiving, “The Human Situation: A Feminine View,” 108-9 (see chap. 3, n.
16).
119. Catharina Halkes, Mary: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, 68 (see chap. 4,
n. 20).
NOTES 363

120. Rosemary Radford Ruether, “She’s a Sign of God’s Liberating Power,” The
Other Side 104 (1980): 18; see also Marie-Louise Gubler, “Luke’s Portrait of Mary,”
Theology Digest 36 (1989): 19-21.
121. Gebara and Bingemer, Mary, Mother of God, Mother of the Poor, 67 (see
chap. 1, n. 31). See Anne Thurston, “Mary and the Intelligence of the Heart,” Doc-
trine and Life 51 (2001): 337-45.
122. The phrase comes from Jiirgen Moltmann’s essay “Joy in the Revolution
of God,” in his The Gospel of Liberation (Waco, Tex.: Word Books, 1973), 113.
123. Schaberg, “Luke,” 284.
124. Ambrose, De institutione virginis 14.87; in Hugo Rahner, Our Lady and
the Church, trans. Sebastian Bullough (New York: Pantheon Books, 1961), 9; see
also Alois Grillmeier, “Maria Prophetin,” in his Mit ihm und in ihm: Christologische
Forschungen und Perspektiven (Freiburg: Herder, 1975), 198-216.
125. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 3.10.2—3; cited in Hugo Rahner, Our Lady and the
Church, 7-8.
126. Schottroff, Lydia’s Impatient Sisters, 191.
127. Renita Weems, Just a Sister Away: A Womanist Vision of Women’s Rela-
tionships in the Bible (San Diego, Calif.: Lura Media, 1988), 113-25.
128. Tina Pippin, “The Politics of Meeting: Women and Power in the New Tes-
tament, in That They Might Live: Power, Empowerment, and Leadership in the
Church, ed. Michael Downey (New York: Crossroad, 1991), 13-24.
129. Schottroff, Lydia’s Impatient Sisters, 193.
130. Susan Ross, “He Has Pulled Down the Mighty from Their Thrones and
Has Exalted the Lowly,” in That They Might Live, ed. Downey, 145-59.
131. Reid, Women in the Gospel of Luke, 55.
132. Schottroff, Lydia’s Impatient Sisters, 200.
133. Callaway, Sing, O Barren One, 100-114.
134. The ideas in this section come from Reid, Choosing the Better Part? 55-85.
135. This phrase was coined by Mary Catherine Hilkert, Naming Grace: Preach-
ing and the Sacramental Imagination (New York: Continuum, 1997).
136. Mary in the New Testament, ed. R. E. Brown et al., 136.
137. We follow those scholars who attribute the whole victory hymn in Exo-
dus to Miriam and the women, though it was later attributed to Moses; see Reid,
Women in the Gospel of Luke, 76; Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 466 n. 63. See also
Walter Vogels, “Le Magnificat, Marie et Israél,” Eglise et Theologie 6 (1975): 279-96;
and Aschkenasy, Eve’s Journey, 13 (see chap 2, n. 18), where it is noted that ancient
representations and figurines show women holding tambourines.
138. Dorothee Soelle, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance, trans. Barbara
Rumscheidt and Martin Rumscheidt (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), as well as
Schillebeeckx, Christ, 790-839 (chap. 3, n. 10).
139. Samuel Terrien, The Magnificat: Musicians as Biblical Interpreters (New
York: Paulist, 1995), 11.
364 NOTES

140. Martin Luther, The Magnificat (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1967), 20.

141. Ibid., 23. See Donal Flanagan, “Luther on the Magnificat,” Ephemerides
Mariologicae 24 (1974): 161-78; and Kathleen Hurty, “Mary, Luther, and the Quest
for Ecumenical Images,” 61-74 (see chap. 1, n. 40).
142. Singapore Conference, “Summary Statement on Feminist Mariology,” in
Feminist Theology from the Third World, ed. King, 272-73 (see chap. 1, n. 37).
143. Luise Schottroff suggests that the Beatitudes provide the immediate the-
ological context for the Magnificat in Luke (“Das Magnificat und die alteste Tra-
dition tiber Jesus von Nazareth,” Evangelische Theologie 38 [1978]: 298-313).
144. Schaberg, “Luke,” 373.
145. Sermon preached by Bonhoeffer on the Third Sunday of Advent in 1933;
in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Mystery of Holy Night, ed. Manfred Weber (New York:
Crossroad, 1996), 6 (translated by Peter Heinegg from Bonhoeffer, Werke, vol-
ume 9).
146. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 350-55; see also Sklba, “Mary and the
‘Anawim,” 123-32.
147. Horsley, Liberation of Christmas, 63-67 and 110-14.
148. Ibid., 110. Horsley draws attention to the chart of parallels in Brown,
Birth of the Messiah, 358-60.
149. R. J. Raja, “Mary and the Marginalized,” Vidyajyoti 51 (1987): 223.
150. Norris, Meditations on Mary, 14.
151. Gustavo Gutiérrez, The God of Life, trans. Matthew O’Connell (Mary-
knoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1991), 185; see the whole essay on the Magnificat, pp. 164-86.
152. John Haught, God after Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press, 2000), 98. Note the following from the New York Times Magazine:
“The average household in America now pulls in about $42,000 a year. The aver-
age household headed by someone with a college degree makes $71,400 a year. A
professional degree pushes average household income to more than $100,000. If
you are, say, a member of one of these college-grad households with a family
income of around $75,000, you probably make more than 95% of people on this
planet. You are richer than 99.9 percent of the human beings who have ever lived.
You are stinking rich” (David Brooks, “Why the U.S. Will Always Be Rich,” The
New York Times Magazine [June 9, 2002]: 88). Meanwhile, the gap between rich
and poor grows increasingly large even in the United States (Paul Krugman, “The
End of Middle-Class America,” The New York Times Magazine [October 20, 2002]:
62-67, 76-78, 141-42).
153. Edward Schillebeeckx, God Among Us: The Gospel Proclaimed (New York:
Crossroad, 1983), 20—26.
154. Terrien, The Magnificat, 52.
155. Anderson, “Mary’s Difference: Gender and Patriarchy in the Birth Narra-
tives,” 197; and Rosemary Radford Ruether, “She’s a Sign of God’s Liberating
Power,” 17-21.
NOTES 365

156. Daino, Mary, Mother of Sorrows, Mother of Defiance, 90.

157. Schaberg, “Luke,” 373.
158. Boff, Maternal Face of God, 33 (see chap. 2, n. 64).
159. Gebara and Bingemer, Mary, Mother of God, Mother of the Poor, 168.
160. Ibid., 165.
161. Gubler, “Luke’s Portrait of Mary,” 23.
162. Ibid.
163. Ross, “He Has Pulled Down the Mighty from Their Thrones ...,” 145.
164. Ruether, Mary, The Feminine Face of the Church, 33-34 (see chap. 5, n. 9).
165. Norris, Meditations on Mary, 16.
166. Schaberg, Illegitimacy of Jesus, 130; see 92-101.
167. Puebla §1135n, cited in Gutiérrez, God of Life, 165.
168. Boff, Maternal Face of God, 192.
169. Gebara and Bingemer, Mary, Mother of God, Mother of the Poor, 159-71.
170. Ibid., 72; and Julia Esquivel, “Liberation, Theology, and Women,” in New
Eyes for Reading: Biblical and Theological Reflections by Women from the Third
World, ed. John Pobee and Barbel von Wartenberg-Potter (Bloomington, Ind.:
Meyer Stone Books, 1987), 21-24; and Feminist Theology from the Third World, ed.
King, 204-8, 271-74.
171. Luther, Commentary on the Magnificat, 19.
172. This registration took place when Herod the Great’s son Archelaus was
deposed; Judea was to be turned into a Roman province, so property needed to be
newly assessed; Quirinius, governor of Syria, was in charge of the event; the peo-
ple of Judea again revolted; see Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 547-56 (Appendix
VII).
173. Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 52.
174. Balasuriya, Mary and Human Liberation, 123.
175. Charles Homer Giblin, “Reflections on the Sign of the Manger,” Catholic
Biblical Quarterly 29 (1967): 87-101.
176. Amy Wordelman, “Everyday Life: Women of the New Testament Period,”
in Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. Newsom and Ringe, 486.
177. New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Hennecke and Schneemelcher, 383-85 (see
chap. 7, n. 1).
178. Malone, Women & Christianity, 1:158 (see chap. 2, n. 30).
179. Gutiérrez, God of Life, 175.
180. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 153 n. 344; Fitzmyer, Gospel According to Luke
I-IX, 421.
181. Mary in the New Testament, ed. R. E. Brown et al., 150-51.
182. J. Cheryl Exum, “Mother in Israel: A Familiar Story Reconsidered,” in
Feminist Interpretation of the Bible, ed. Letty Russell (Philadelphia: Westminster, .
1985), 73-85.
183. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 447-50.
366 NOTES

184. Judith Plaskow, “Bringing a Daughter into the Covenant,” in Womanspirit

Rising, ed. Christ and Plaskow, 179-86 (see chap. 4, n. 34); also Reid, Women in the
Gospel of Luke, 87.
185. Luke mentions fulfillment of the Mosaic Law or Torah in five verses: vv.
22, 23, 24, 27, and 39; references are to Lev. 12:2-8 and Exod. 13:2, 12.
186. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 462; see pp. 462—66 for what follows.
187. Reid, Women in the Gospel of Luke, 88.
188. Norris, Meditations on Mary, 16.
189. Katoppo, Compassionate and Free, 23 (see chap. 2, n. 46).
190. Brown, “The Meaning of Modern New Testament Studies for an Ecu-
menical Understanding of Mary,” 100 n. 99 (see chap. 5, n. 2).
191. See Richard Dillon, “Wisdom Tradition and Sacramental Retrospect in
the Cana Account (Jn 2:1-11),” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 24 (1962): 268-96.
192. Raymond Brown presents an extensive discussion of the genre, sources,
and multiple meanings of this passage (The Gospel According to John I-XII, Anchor
Bible 29 [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966] 97-112). See also Raymond Collins,
“Mary in the Fourth Gospel: A Decade of Johannine Studies,” Louvain Studies 3
(1970): 99-142; and Judith Lieu, “The Mother of the Son in the Fourth Gospel,”
Journal ofBiblical Literature 117 (1998): 61-77.
193. Gebara and Bingemer, Mary, Mother of God, Mother of the Poor, 80; this
liberation analysis is marred by a latent anti-Judaism that equates the Law of
Moses with the wine that has run out.
194. Juan Alfaro, “The Mariology of the Fourth Gospel: Mary and the Strug-
gles for Liberation,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 10 (1980): 14.
195. Raja, “Mary and the Marginalized,” 227; see also Balasuriya, Mary and
Human Liberation, 184.
196. Mary Rose D’Angelo, “(Re)presentations of Women in the Gospels: John
and Mark,” in Women and Christian Origins, ed. Kraemer and D’Angelo, 136.
197. See the groundbreaking study by Jane Schaberg, The Resurrection of Mary
Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament (New York: Contin-
uum, 2002); and Katherine Ludwig Jansen, “Maria Magdalena: Apostolorum Apos-
tola,’ in Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity, ed.
Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1998), 57-96.
198. Sandra Schneiders, Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in
the Fourth Gospel (New York: Crossroad, 1999), 113.
199. Schiissler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 326 (see chap. 2, n. 13).
200. Adele Reinhartz, “The Gospel of John,” Searching the Scriptures, ed.
Schiissler Fiorenza, 2:568.
201. Schiissler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 327.
202. Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI, Anchor Bible
29A (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970), 904; see comparative chart of these
NOTES 367
women in idem, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave: A Com-
mentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels, 2 volumes, Anchor Bible
Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 2:1016.
203. Pheme Perkins, “Mary in Johannine Traditions,” in Mary, Woman of
Nazareth, ed. Donnelly, 114; see Gail O’Day, “John,” in Women’s Bible Commen-
tary, ed. Newsom and Ringe, 381-93.
204. Raymond Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York:
Paulist, 1979), 198; see pp. 183-98 (Appendix II, “Roles of Women in the Fourth
Gospel”).
205. Brown, Gospel According to John XIII-XXI, 926; Schiissler Fiorenza, In
Memory of Her, 331-36.
206. Mary in the New Testament, ed. R. E. Brown et al., 210.
207. David Flusser, “Mary and Israel,” in Jaroslav Pelikan, David Flusser, and
Justin Lang, Mary: Images of the Mother ofJesus in Jewish and Christian Perspective
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986).
208. Chung Hyun Kyung, Struggle to Be the Sun Again, 79; and We Dare to
Dream, ed. Fabella and Park, 149 (see chap. 1, n. 36).
209. Consuelo del Prado, “I Sense God Another Way,” in Through Her Eyes, 143.
210. Balasuriya, Mary and Human Liberation, 143-44.
211. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 431 n. 76.
212. E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (New York: Penguin Books,
1993), 124.
213. Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 388; Johnson continues, “There is a definite air
of male superiority in this response.”
214. Tal Ilan, “In the Footsteps of Jesus: Jewish Women in a Jewish Movement,”
in Transformative Encounters: Jesus and Women Re-viewed, ed. Ingrid Kitzberger
(Leiden: Brill, 2000), 116.
215. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman’s Bible, part 2, 143, cited in Mary Jo
Weaver, New Catholic Women, 208 (see chap. 1, n. 28).
216. Gail O’Day, “Acts,” in Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. Newsom and Ringe,
401.
217. The literature is vast; for a sampling, see Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza’s
classic In Memory of Her, 160-284; O’Day, “Acts,” 394-402; Clarice Martin, “Acts
of the Apostles,” in Searching the Scriptures, ed. Schiissler Fiorenza, 2:763-99; Mary
Rose D’ Angelo, “Re-presentations of Women in the Gospel of Matthew and Luke-
Acts” in Women and Christian Origins, ed. Kraemer and D’Angelo, 171-95.
218. For the following citations, see “The Gospel according to Mary,” in New
Testament Apocrypha, ed. Hennecke and Schneemelcher, 1:340-44; and Karen
King, “The Gospel of Mary Magdalene,” in Searching the Scriptures, ed. Schiissler
Fiorenza, 2:601—34.
219. René Laurentin, “Mary: Model of the Charismatic,” in Mary, the Spirit
and the Church, ed. Vincent Branick (New York: Paulist, 1980), 30-32.
368 NOTES

220. Anne Johnson, “Pentecost,” »

in her Miryam of Nazareth: Women of
Strength & Wisdom (Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave Maria Press, 1984), 117-20.

CHAPTER 11
MARY, FRIEND OF GOD AND PROPHET

1. For extensive discussion of these principles, see Elizabeth Johnson, Friends

of God and Prophets: A Feminist Theological Reading of the Communion of Saints
(New York: Continuum, 1998). The point of this condensed presentation is not
only to fill in background for those who have not read that book, but to lift up the-
ological principles that shape this chapter’s marian theology.
2. Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza analyzes how this text expresses the self-
definition of the early church, with sociological ramifications: “Justified by All Her
Children: Struggle, Memory, Vision,” in The Power of Naming, ed. Schiissler
Fiorenza, 339-57 (see chap. 1, n. 42).
3. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Longmans,
Green, 1923), 358.
4. David Matzko, “Postmodernism, Saints and Scoundrels,” Modern Theology
9 (1993): 36 n. 36.
5. Stephen Wilson, “Introduction,” in Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Reli-
gious Sociology, Folklore, and History, ed. Stephen Wilson (London and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1983), 23; and Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets,
86-93.
6. Jeremy Boissevain, in Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies, ed.
Ernest Gellner and John Waterbury (London: Duckworth, 1977), 94.
7. “The Martyrdom of Polycarp,” in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed.
Herbert Musurillo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 16-17.
8. Augustine, Sermon 273.2, in Sermons, 8:17 (see chap. 6, n. 3).
9. Augustine, Sermon 306c.1, in Sermons, 9:37.
10. Ibid., 9:36-37.
11. Ibid.
12. Augustine, Sermon 306.10, in Sermons, 9:24.
13. Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society, trans. David Smith (New
York: Seabury, 1980), especially “The dangerous memory of the freedom of Jesus
Christ” (pp. 88-99) and “Categories: Memory, Narrative, Solidarity” (pp. 184-237).
See also Walter Brennan, The Sacred Memory of Mary (New York: Paulist, 1988),
which argues for the importance of the church’s liturgical memory of Mary, but
with fewer political ramifications.
14. For the tradition that ensued from the silencing of Mary Magdalene’s
NOTES 369

voice, see Mary Catherine Hilkert, “Women Preaching the Gospel,” in her Naming
Grace, 144-65 (see chap. 10, n. 135).
15. In Our Own Voices: Four Centuries ofAmerican Women’s Religious Writing,
ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether and Rosemary Skinner Keller (San Francisco:
HarperCollins, 1995), 179-81.
16. David Power, The Eucharistic Mystery: Revitalizing the Tradition (New
York: Crossroad, 1992), 312-51.
17. Paul VI, Apostolic Letter Marialis Cultis §§42—55 (see chap. 6, n. 34).
18. Published by Pax Christi USA, 348 East Tenth Street, Erie, PA 16503.
19. Miriam Therese Winter, WomanWord: A Feminist Lectionary and Psalter ~
Women of the New Testament (New York: Crossroad, 1990); eadem, The Gospel
according to Mary: A New Testament for Women (New York: Crossroad, 1993).
20. Ann Johnson, Miryam of Nazareth, Woman of Strength and Wisdom;
Miryam of Jerusalem, Teacher of the Disciples; Miryam of Judah, Witness in Truth
and Tradition (Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave Maria Press, 1984, 1987, 1991).
21. Harry Nasuti, “Historical Narrative and Identity in the Psalms,’ Horizons
in Biblical Theology 23 (2001): 132-53, at 148.
22. The People’s Companion to the Breviary: The Liturgy of the Hours with
Inclusive Language (Indianapolis: Carmelites of Indianapolis, 1997), printed on
the inside back cover.
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Index of Subjects and Names

annunciation, 26-27, 38, 58, 96, 247- Brown, Raymond, 96, 191, 194, 222,
258, 261, 271, 282, 285, 298 224-2235 2305232, 234, 236;
anthropology, 69, 105, 305 241, 267- 268, 281, 284, 287, 298
classical/patriarchal, 52
cultural/cross-cultural, 31, 139 Cana, 58, 115, 137, 195, 287-293
dualistic/complementarity, 47-48, Carr, Anne, 21, 130
51-52, 55-58, 63-64, 66-67 Chung Hyun Kyung, 31, 42, 256
egalitarian/partnership, 47, 50-54, church
67, 70 early, 178, 186, 189, 195, 197, 210,
theological, 43, 47, 108 DVAS259/5267 761,202,908, a 11
apocryphal writings, 100, 137, 188, in Jerusalem, 298, 303
197, 244, 277, 302 Orthodox,
3-4, 10, 25, 197
archaeology, 164, 206, 210 Protestant, 3-4, 15, 39, 76, 79-80,
of Galilee, 138-144, 167 91, 96-98, 122, 124, 127, 196,
Augustine of Hippo, 4, 24, 32, 118- Loo
LI9RL91,. 317 Roman Catholic, 3-5, 10, 15, 30,
40-41, 76, 79-81, 84-86, 89, 91,
Balasuriya, Tissa, 26, 244 95-99, 102, 108, 114, 116, 122,
Ben-Chorin, Schalom, 190 124, 127, 131-132, 162, 197-198,
Bingemer, Maria Clara, 38, 41, 69, 2A3; 228, 253; 27 29165:320, 324
149, 257, 272, 274, 290 Coakley, Sarah, 37, 39
birth in Bethlehem, 240, 274-278 communion of saints, 43, 70, 91, 95,
Boff, Leonardo, 39, 55-57, 62, 64, 81- 101-102, 105-107, 112, 129,
82, 86, 110 131-132, 137, 161, 206, 297,
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 267 305-306, 308, 323
Borresen, Kari, 26, 130 companionship pattern, 315-319
Brooten, Bernadette, 107, 168, 188- cloud of witnesses, 115, 209, 217,
189 271; 3¥94313931573.1753185;321
brothers and sisters of Jesus, 29, 195- paradigmatic figures, 313-315
199 whole community, 308-311

371
372 INDEX OF SUBJECTS AND NAMES

Congar, Yves, 80, 86, 127 Fox, Patricia, 88

Copeland, M. Shawn, 27, 106 Fredriksen, Paula, 158, 164-165, 170,
Corrado Pope, Barbara, 5, 42 176, 182
cross, 8, 58, 60, 70, 96, 100, 108, 111,
115, 149, 229, 241, 274, 280- friends of God and prophets, 3, 254,
281, 288, 292, 298-301, 312 305, 307, 310-311, 318-319, 321
Crossan, John Dominic, 140, 153, 158, Mary as, 85, 104, 134, 206, 209,
166, 204 305-324
Cunneen, Sally, 13, 22
Galilee
Daino, Peter, 271 economic structures of, 144-149
Daly, Mary, 38, 41 everyday life of, 162, 166-171, 199-
D’Angelo, Mary Rose, 215 206
dangerous memory, 43, 320 geography of, 140-144
of Mary, 209-304
political structures of, 149-161
Diaz, Miguel, 85 Gebara, Ivone, 38, 41, 69, 149, 257,
disciples
272, 274, 290
circle of, 104, 112, 115
gender, 13, 19-22, 25, 34-35, 37, 39,
community of, 43, 92, 104, 115,
42, 47-51, 53-54, 58, 61-62, 64-
217, 219, 268, 294, 298, 308, 324
69, 86, 102, 139, 164, 190, 199,
discipleship of equals, 21, 36, 40,
203-204, 212, 215, 217, 242,
92
279, 300, 305, 307, 310
women, 37, 160, 178, 185, 188, 218,
goddess, 31, 38, 41, 73-76, 83, 118
272, 299-300
Gordon, Mary, 10, 12
Dunn, James, 181, 184
gospels, 3, 29, 37, 58, 84, 96, 101, 105,
Elizabeth, 70, 247, 249-250, 253, 298 115, 118, 137-139, 141, 147-148,
and the visitation, 254, 258-274 156, 167, 183, 187-188, 193,
Elizondo, Virgil, 82, 85 195-199, 206, 210-297
embodiment, 43, 54, 81, 262 grace, 3, 11, 21, 24, 42, 58-60, 62, 78-
Espin, Orlando, 83-85 80, 85, 97-99, 108-112, 118,
eternal feminine, 47, 64-66, 99, 101 121-122, 124-126, 130, 138, 171,
Eve, 23-25, 29, 65, 88, 108, 117, 130, 193-194, 209, 221, 224, 226,
134, 186 229, 235, 254, 257-258, 261-262,
266, 306, 308-310, 313, 317
feminist hermeneutics, 104-113, 209- Graef, Hilda, 75
D209, 237; Guadalupe, 5, 14, 82-84, 92
feminist theology, 9, 19, 85, 95, 97, Gutiérrez, Gustavo, 269
105, 315
finding in the temple, 282-287 Halkes, Catharina, 31, 41, 257
Fitzmyer, Joseph, 253 Hayes, Diana, 13, 256
flight into Egypt, 242-245 Herod, 139, 151, 163, 165-166, 172,
foremothers of Jesus, 221-227, 241- 182, 193, 241-246, 296, 300
242 Agrippa I, 160-161
INDEX OF SUBJECTS AND NAMES 373

Antipas, 153-159 Jesus

the Great, 151-153 the Christ, 14, 16, 18, 23-24, 29, 32,
Hilkert, Mary Catherine, 16 35-37, 39-40, 49, 51, 54, 57, 59-
holiness 60, 63, 66, 74, 77-82, 86-88, 96-
of the community, 308-311 100, 103, 105, 108, 111, 114,
of God, 165, 270, 309 116-125, 128-132, 134, 165,
universal call to, 129, 310-311 178-179,
186, 199, 210
Holy Spirit, 28, 32, 56, 59, 80, 82, 84- as messiah, 35, 57, 70, 101, 179-
85, 89, 109, 121-122,
130, 179, 179, 181, 183-184, 193-194,
184, 209, 228, 261-262 204, 211, 214, 222-230,
232,
at the Annunciation, 247-258 234-235, 237-241, 245-246,
as framework for the communion 248-249,
254, 257, 265-267,
of saints, 305-308 270-271,
276, 278, 287, 291,
and Mary’s pregnancy, 227-240 293, 298, 303, 314, 324
as paradigm for theology of Mary, as redeemer, 3, 62, 79, 129-130,
101-104, 112 4s
22 271
at Pentecost, 63, 178, 297-304 as savior, 23, 28, 35, 39, 56, 77, 119-
Spirit of God, 16, 47, 78-79, 84, 90, 120, 211, 235-237, 262-266, 269,
102, 109, 216, 230, 235-236, 274, 277, 302-304
251, 253-254,
298, 307, 310-311, in the Scriptures, 217-303
a2 as son of God, 24, 30, 56, 117, 120,
Spirit-Sophia, 104, 209, 235, 238, 215, 228-229, 233-235, 244, 248,
254, 258, 306-307,
314 251-253,
291, 317
theology of, 81 John Paul II, 61-64, 89, 111, 272
in the Trinity, 39, 71, 81, 116, 306 Joseph, 29, 116, 138, 147-148, 156,
Horsley, Richard, 157-158, 167-168,
190-198,
200, 222, 226-230,
241, 268 237-238,
240, 243-244, 248-
249, 260, 275-276, 278-279,
idealized feminine, 47-70
281, 284
Ilan, Tan, 300
Josephus, Flavius, 140, 152, 153, 158,
incarnation, 77, 81, 108, 117, 120, 237,
168, 170; 173;.182,;
199, 296
288
Judaism, 139, 162, 185-191, 279, 305
injustice,
14, 51, 68, 105, 210, 226,
going to Jerusalem, 171-177
270-271, 30753205322
in village life, 166-171
Isasi-Diaz, Ada Maria, 21, 42
split with Christianity, 177-184
James the brother of the Lord, 195,
199, 298 Kraemer, Ross Shepard, 188-189
Jerusalem church, 195, 267, 298
Jerusalem temple, 129, 148, 150-151, Laurentin, René, 26, 80, 121-122, 125-
162, 282-287 126
description, 163-164, 172-177 Lenski, Gerhard, 145-148
destruction of, 182-183 Lerner, Gerda, 20-21
Mary in, 138, 278-282 Levine, Amy-Jill, 165, 186, 229
374 INDEX OF SUBJECTS AND NAMES

liberation, 14, 21, 26, 41, 56, 61, 171, 243, 245, 248, 282, 284-286,
241, 258, 262, 268, 271 289, 295, 303
and feminist theology, 4, 47, 53, 65, Noone, Patricia, 42, 111
85 Norris, Kathleen, 206, 256, 273, 281
Luther, Martin, 4, 224, 266, 274
O’Day, Gail, 301
Maeckelberghe, Els, 4, 41-42 oppression, 11-14, 19-21, 56, 63, 106,
magi, 240-242 166, 186, 206, 258, 265, 269-
Magnificat, 14-15, 36, 38, 56, 65, 149, D2 260.504
247, 258-259, 263-264, 266-274, Palestine, 139-141, 150, 152, 154, 160,
279, 323-325 162, 189-190, 199, 204, 227,
Malone, Mary T., 277 240, 243-244, 268
marian devotion, 71, 85-86, 91-92, papal teachings, 4, 28, 61-64, 87, 89,
121, 131-133 111, 122, 131-134, 272, 286, 322
Paul VI, 131-134 patriarchal feminine, 22-36, 50, 54,
Martha and Mary of Bethany, 100, 66-70
198, 213-214, 292-293
patriarchy, 20-21, 32, 38-41, 50, 69,
Mary 72, 85, 92, 185-187, 212, 230,
as historical woman, 5, 104-107, 246, 257, 271
295, 303
Paul VI, 131-134, 286, 322
as human woman, 8, 13, 107-112, Pelikan, Jaroslav, 65
onl)
Pentecost, 63, 129, 160, 171, 178, 199,
Mary Magdalene, 37, 60, 99-100, 115, 210, 255, 294, 297-304, 322
178, 263, 280, 292-293, 299-300, Pilar Aquino, Maria, 13, 42
302-303, 321-322 Pittenger, Norman, 165
maternal face of God, 14, 39, 43, 99, Plaskow, Judith, 186-187
71-92
prophetic calling
contemporary insights, 79-91 of the church community, 319-322
history of concept, 73-79 of Mary, 32, 42, 56-57, 250-251,
McKenzie, John L., 161
256, 258, 260, 263-264, 271-272,
mediatrix, 78, 80, 82, 120, 126 274, 277
debate at Vatican II, 126-131
Meier, John, 147-148, 158, 195, 198, Rahner, Karl, 4, 17, 97, 101, 108-109,
204 124-125
models of mariology, 17, 84, 96, 120, Ranke-Heinemann, Ute, 34, 196
122-125, 127, 131-132, 211, 219, Ratzinger, Joseph , 237
2985271286; 302; 3.14 Reed, Jonathan, 138, 142-143, 158,
liberation models, 36, 38, 41 166, 205
patriarchal models, 47-70 refugee, 14, 242-244, 322
women’s theological work, 18-43 Reid, Barbara, 215, 229, 261, 281
mujerista theology, 19, 68 Rich, Adrienne, 20
Rodriguez, Jeanette, xvii, 14, 85
Nazareth, 141-144, 146-148, 153, 155, Ruether, Rosemary Radford, 4, 7, 25,
159, 167, 170, 203, 218, 240, 36, 38, 41, 54, 97, 257, 273
INDEX OF SUBJECTS AND NAMES O75
a
a

Sanders, E. P., 158, 171, 174 Theotokos, 3, 5, 75, 95, 117-118

Sawicki, Marianne, 159 Thomas Aquinas, 4, 24, 49
scandal, 158, 223-240, 242, 272 Torah, 141, 155, 162-164, 167, 170-
Schaberg, Jane, 215, 223-225, 229-230, 171, 173-174, 177, 179-181, 183,
253-254, 258, 271, 273 189, 192-199, 201, 204, 227,
Schillebeeckx, Edward, 24, 79, 86, 270 279-281
Schottroff, Luise, 201, 229, 255 Trible, Phyllis, 87, 222
Schiissler Fiorenza, Elisabeth, 21, 39- Truth, Sojourner, 68, 239
41, 65, 212, 292
Senior, Donald, 226 Vatican II, 233, 309-310, 316, 319
sexism, 11, 19-20, 98, 186, 273 clash of the titans, 126-131
shepherds, 240, 249, 274, 276, 278 teaching on Mary, 32, 39, 66, 79,
sin, 23-24, 29, 50, 88, 90, 99, 103-104, 99, 101, 115, 128-131
108-112, 118, 120, 165, 174, violence, 8, 13, 27, 56, 212, 293, 296-
DAD DAGS 257, 270, 3089312 297, 303
slaughter of the innocents, 242-247 against women, 112, 229-230, 238-
Soelle, Dorothee, 15 239; 2430247 O22.
suffering, 8, 11, 14, 16, 27, 37-38, 69, during Roman occupation of
103-106, 112, 133, 149, 153, Palestine, 138, 151-159, 220,
163, 209, 216, 235, 241, 249, 245-246, 265
265, 2/0, 274, 276, 281, 283, visitation, 254, 258-274, 282
296-297, 304-306, 319-320, 322 von Balthasar, Hans Urs, 57-60, 62-63
symbol von Beeck, Frans Jozef, 235
function of, 11
of Mary, 6-8, 11-12, 16, 22, 36, 60, Wainwright, Elaine, 222, 225, 238,
72, 76, 82, 85-85, 90, 95-101 241-242
in Paul Ricoeur, 98 Warner, Marina, 8, 42
in Paul Tillich, 11-12 Weems, Renita, 260
womanist theology, 19, 68, 106, 254
Tavard, George, 5 women
theology of Mary, 9, 15, 23, 27, 85, 95, creative insights, 36-42
97, 101-105 critical judgments, 22-36
apostolic letter of Paul VI, 131-134 ministry of, 100, 215, 280, 301-302
early use in Christology, 115-117 sociocultural world, 185-206
first millennium, 114, 117-119 theological work, 18-43
medieval period, 120-121 voices of, 6-12, 16, 42, 259, 263,
second millennium, 114, 120-123 Dip
Vatican II, 126-131
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Index of Ancient Sources

Hebrew Bible 13:2—23 249 Isaiah

2:40 180
Genesis Ruth 7:14 227
1:26-27 51 412 223 25:9 264
16:11 265 32205 252
34:3 232 1 Samuel 52:7 259
38:26 223 2:1-10 264
16:13 252 Jeremiah
Exodus 30:22 163
3:1-14 249 SiS 245
337. 265 Judith 31:20 246
3:7-8 103 13:18 262
Ezekiel
15:2-21 263-64 16:1-17 264
14:17 281
40:34 ff. 252
Psalms Hosea
Leviticus 35:9 264 TAA 245
11:45 165 Ssh 324
12:8 280 66:1 265 Joel
19:10 170 82:3-4 166 2:28 214
19:18 171 96/97 Hd 2:28-29 300
26:12 163 122:1-4 172 2:28-32 255

Deuteronomy Proverbs Amos

6:4-5 163, 169 9:1—-6 288 9:13 288

14:2 163 30:19 22

22:20-27 227 Jewish Apocryphal
22M 227 Song Writings
6:8 22
Joseph and Aseneth 188
Judges
5:1-31 264 Jubilees 188
5:24 262 Wisdom
6:11-24 250 TD, 254, 307 Testament ofJob 188

S17
378 INDEX OF ANCIENT SOURCES

New Testament 1337 43 19:25-27 293-97

1:38 134 20:18 292,321
Matthew 1:39-56 258-74
1:1-17 221-26 1:45 248 Acts
1:16 1935225 1:46-55 36, 325 1:14 177
1:18 191 2:1-20 274-78 1:14-15 297-304
1:18-—25 226-40 227, 150, 196 iets 178
1:25 196 DAD 91 1:18 251
2:1-12 240-42 2:21—40 278-82 2:1 63
2s 245 2:38 214 2:1-21 297-304
2:13-23 242-47 2:41-52 282-87 2:4 63
2:14 245 Di 278 DAW, 214
2:20 245 3225 194, 285 2:17-18 300
DA 245 4:22 148, 285 2:18 255
12:46—50 119, 219 5:8-10 89 2:46-47 180
13:33 201 SHS: 143 3:1-16 179
13:55 148 6:20—26 267 4:3] 301
13:55-56 195 Hees) 156 12:1-2 160
14:21 212 8:2-3 300 12212 180
1735 252 8:19-20 219 15:21 168
23:37-39 88 9:34 252 17:28 90
26:56 160 10:38—42 214 19:23-24 75
26:73 142 11:27-28 247 20:37-38 284
27:56 160 13:32 155
16:24 283 Romans
Mark 19:26 149 Ts 255
As 1 234 23:6-12 160 1:3-4 234
2:4 143 23355 299 A: 309
3:20-21 217-21 24:10 178, 280, 299 11:2 184
3:31-35 217-21 24:11 299 11:17 184
5:41 141 24:53 Whe, 14:7-9 311
6:3 148, 195 15:25-26 181
6:4 218 John 16:1-16 302
7:24-30 218 alt 234
7:34 141 1:16 78 1 Corinthians
SPV) 252 1:36 295 1:2 309
14:3-9 218 1:46 144 3:16-17 182
14:36 141 2:1-11 287-93 12:4 309
15:34 142 25 58 1522 23
15:40 218 3:16 77 16:1—4 181
15:41 100 4:39 291
15:47 218 4:47-50 288 2 Corinthians
6:23 155 13:12—13 309
Luke G7 214, 292
1:24 261 11:47-50 177 Galatians
1:26-38 247-58 127 292 1:18-19 199
1335 253 19:14 295 1:19 195
INDEX OF ANCIENT
ee SOURCES
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oe
Galatians (cont.) 4:15 111 Protevangelium ofJames
2:10 181 HES! 223 137, 138
3:27-28 309 12:1-2 o12 o2 197
4:29 2327253 17-19 277
James
Ephesians /SepBD) 225
5:24 55)
1 Peter
Colossians 29 309
29 78
4:10 198 Christian Apocrypha

Philippians Gospel of Mary Magdalene

i: 309 302
2:5-11 78
Gospel of Pseudo—Matthew
Hebrews 19.1 244
2:18 Ne! 23: 244
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inthe great cloud of witnesses that sur-

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