LECTURE FIVE
THEVIRGINMARY
Though Mary figures rather prominently in the stories of Jesus’ birth recorded by
Matthew and Luke, she does not play an important role in his public life as depicted in
the Gospels, nor indeed, in the New Testament as a whole. Her virginity (also affirmed
in the Quran; so 9:21) was an element in Jesus’ messianic claim since it fulfilled the
prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, as Matthew points out (1:22-23). In the apocryphal Gospel of
James, Mary’s virginity is extended to include the periods duringand afterthe birth of
Jesus. This would necessarily mean the demotion of what the Gospels call Jesus’
“brother and sisters”(Mk. 6:3), like James, “the brother of the Lord,”to the status of
cousins.
This was precisely the issue between Jerome (d. 420) and his contemporary
Helvetius. In arguing against it, the latter may have been concerned that Mary’s lifelong
celibacy not only undermined the reality of her marriage to Joseph but downgraded
Christian marriage generally. It was Jerome’s view, however, upholding Mary’s “perpet-
ual virginity” that prevailed in the church.
There was a theological explosion early in the fifth century around the use of the
word “God-bearer” (theotokos) in reference to Mary, but the usage was confirmed at
the Council of Ephesus in 431, though the issue of Jesus’ divinity and humanity, which
lay behind the argument about Mary as theotokos, was not resolved until the Council of
Chalcedon.
Though there was no celebration of Marian holy days in the early Church, by the
sixth century there is evidence that her “Assumption,” that is her being taken up alive
into Heaven, was being celebrated, without controversy, among both Latin and Eastern
Christians, though it was not finally definedas dogma by the Roman Catholic Church
until 1950. Not so the doctrine of the “Immaculate Conception,” the view that Mary was
conceived, alone among humankind, without Original Sin. It makes its first appearance
in the ninth century, but it was strongly resisted by many theologians who thought that
it undermined the redemptive mission of Jesus, who had after all died for all.
These were the theologians; behind them was an extraordinary growth in the popular
devotion to Mary, in ritual celebration of her life, prayers addressed directly to her, cel-
ebration of her life and virtues in legend, art and literature. To the Reformers, this out-
pouring of veneration, with little or no basis in Scripture, seemed like superstition run
riot, and the cult of Mary, together with that of the Church’s saints of the post-Patristic
age, was disparaged, discouraged and eventually all but disappeared. However, this is
not so in Roman Catholicism. Counter-Reformation Marian piety lost none of the
medieval fervor, and the Church encouraged its spread. The climax of this growth was
the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception as Church dogma by Pius IX in 1854,
“by our own authority,” as his decree read.