[Dialogue] Virgin2

[KroegerD@aol.com]

December 21, 2005 
The Virgin in the New  Testament -- Part 2 
Last week we looked at the New Testament's portrait of the mother of Jesus  
and the Virgin Birth. It is scant, late developing material filled with  
mythological details. That quick analysis served to make us aware that most of  the 
images we hold of the mother of Jesus are not biblical at all. They are the  
creations of Christian history and they incorporate many elements of the pagan  
goddess figures that thrived in Europe before Christianity became the 
dominant  religion of that region. Whether Christianity conquered these pagan ideas 
or was  conquered by them is a debate that is ongoing. What can be said without 
fear or  contradiction is that the Bible as we know it does not support the 
myth of the  Virgin as it was developed in Christian history. 
Today I trace the development of that myth very briefly. (If my readers want  
more details, I commend to their attention the book, "Alone of All Her Sex" 
by a  Roman Catholic scholar named Marina Warner.) Once Mary had been 
introduced as a  virgin, first in Matthew in the mid-eighties and later in Luke, the 
doors were  opened for the legends of the ages to be added to the Mary of 
history about whom  almost nothing was known. By the second century, the development 
of legends  about the mother of Jesus moved into high gear. 
Step number one was to change Mary from the simple Virgin Mother into a  
permanent or perpetual virgin. The passion to accomplish this was motivated  
primarily by negativity toward the body of women in general and toward women's  
role in reproduction in particular. The sacred womb of Mary, the 'fathers'  
argued, having been dedicated to the purpose of bearing the Holy Christ Child,  
could not have been polluted by other births for that would imply other sexual  
activity. Since both sex and childbirth were somehow "unclean," neither could 
be  thought of as activities in which the mother of Jesus ever engaged. By this 
 time, Christianity had moved substantially out of Judaism and into the 
Gentile,  Mediterranean world where dualistic, neo-platonistic thought was 
dominant. The  neo-Platonists divided the world into a spiritual realm of mind, soul, 
purity  and God, all of which they believed to be good, and a physical realm 
of body,  flesh, desire and humanity, all of which they believed to be evil. In 
this era,  human life appears to have been divided somewhere near the 
diaphragm. Everything  that involved parts of the body above the diaphragm was 
thought to be positive,  while everything that required the use of body parts below 
the diaphragm was  negative. The pure Virgin Mother could not therefore have 
been tainted with sex,  desire or childbirth once her lofty purpose of being 
the "theotokus," the  "Mother of God" had been achieved. This meant of course 
that the biblical story  had either to be adapted or changed. Matthew had said 
that Joseph "knew her not"  until she had delivered the Christ Child. Matthew's 
presumption was that after  that he "knew her" in the intimacy that a wife 
shares with her husband.  Imaginative re-interpretations were developed to cover 
this. 
Then James, the brother of Jesus, mentioned by Paul (Gal.1: 19), the named  
brothers of Jesus - James, Joses, Simon and Judas - and his unnamed sisters, 
all  of whom are referred to in Mark (6:3), had to be dealt with in some 
explanatory  way. Under pressure from this developing tradition, these siblings 
became  "cousins," or Joseph's children by a previous marriage. Some also suggested 
that  they were brothers and sisters only in the sense that someone might 
address  friends as "my brothers and sisters." It was hard work to amend reality 
but the  'Fathers' of the church were up to the challenge and the permanent or 
perpetual  virginity of the blessed Virgin entered history. This permanent 
virgin then  began to be referred to as the ideal woman. No one stopped to ask 
the obvious  question, namely to whom is a perpetual virgin an ideal woman? The 
answer is  clear, only to the celibate males who were guiding this 
theological development.  By this time the celibate male priesthood had become the 
dominant pattern of the  church's clergy. 
The build-up of the Virgin did not stop here. In the early middle ages a new  
passion developed to suggest that even the process of Jesus' birth did not  
compromise the virginity of this holy mother of God. That is, despite the birth 
 of Jesus, her virginity was still intact, the sacred hymen was not ruptured. 
 Stories began to circulate that perhaps Jesus was born out of Mary's ear. 
The  'Fathers' of the church began to search the scriptures to find biblical  
authority to support this claim. Not surprisingly they found it but in rather  
bizarre places. In the prophet Ezekiel (44:1), a book dating from the 6th  
century B.C.E., the words were written, "Behold, the gates of the city are  closed 
and only the Lord can come in and out." Without so much as an apology,  these 
"defenders of the faith" pointed to this text and proclaimed that even the  
prophets had predicted the post-partum virginity of the Blessed Virgin. To call 
 such a treatment of this text from the Hebrew Scriptures biblical 
scholarship is  both absurd and incompetent. That fact, however, did not stop or hinder 
these  Christian zealots, for biblical scholarship was not a major concern of 
the  medieval church. Church leaders had long before this begun to treat the 
Bible as  the literal word of God and they believed it was full of divine hints 
and  predictions that were literally fulfilled in history. 
The second text they used to ground this new post-partum development in  
scripture was from the resurrection narrative in John's Gospel (chapter 20). In  
that story the risen Christ had appeared to the disciples inside a locked and  
barred upper room. If the risen Christ could pass through the walls of that  
upper room without breaking the material out of which they were constructed,  
these leaders of the church declared, could not the infant Jesus also pass  
through the birth canal without disturbing the sacred hymen? With these tactics,  
it was not long before the post-partum virginity of the blessed Virgin became 
 fixed in Christian doctrine and tradition. 
The next stage in the myth's development came when the Vatican declared that  
the immaculate conception of the blessed virgin was now dogma to be believed 
by  the faithful. That proclamation came in December 1854. This idea, so often 
 incorrectly confused with the Virgin Birth, states that Mary herself was 
born  without the contamination of the fall into sin that was assumed to be the 
status  of all who were children of Adam and Eve. The womb of Mary's mother was 
 miraculously purified so that Mary was born without taint of original sin. 
This  clarification had been unnecessary until people in the early 18th century 
began  to understand the role of women in reproduction. Prior to the 
discovery of an  egg cell in the woman, from which the offspring received 50% of his 
or her  genetic code, it was assumed that the whole life of the baby existed in 
the  sperm of the male who planted it into the womb of the woman. The woman 
nurtured  the male seed to maturity just as Mother Earth nurtured the farmer's 
seed to  maturity. Since the woman contributed nothing but the warmth of her 
womb, the  original sin could be passed on only through the male. The Virgin 
Birth, which  removed the human father from the birth equation, was thought to 
have guaranteed  that Jesus was 'born without sin.' The discovery of the egg 
cell and the woman's  role in reproduction suddenly challenged that 
understanding. The woman was a  child of Adam too. She was, therefore, also the bearer of 
the corruption of  humanity, which was inevitably passed on to her offspring. 
Something had to be  done to repair this breach in orthodoxy. To give Mary a 
miraculous birth, an  immaculate conception, in which she was not corrupted by 
the fall into original  sin, was the answer. Mary's birth was now not human. 
Her rise to divinity was on  the way. 
The final step in this historic drama occurred in 1950 when Pope Pius XII  
declared the Virgin to have been bodily assumed into heaven. This meant that  
Mary did not go through the normal exit door of death to escape this world. She  
was transformed, this new dogma declared, or she went from earth to heaven  
without dying. There were other narratives in the biblical story that suggested 
 such a possibility. One was the story of Enoch, who according to the book of 
 Genesis (5:24), "walked with God and he was not for God took him." Another 
was  Elijah who was transported from earth to heaven by a magical fiery chariot 
drawn  by fiery horses. As part of the official apologetic from the church, 
the  argument was developed that the virgin's visionary appearances to people 
at  places like Lourdes demonstrated her bodily assumption, for that enabled 
her to  appear regularly to her faithful on earth. 
It was a fascinating process to watch. Holiness for the ideal woman was  
achieved first, by de-sexing her, that is she was a virgin mother, perpetual  
virgin and post-partum virgin, and then by dehumanizing her, that is by  asserting 
that she had neither a normal birth nor a normal death. Only as a  de-sexed 
and dehumanized woman was she then considered to be worthy to enter  into 
heaven. The question this raises for me is what is the definition of a  woman, 
alive in this religious tradition, that suggests that before a woman is  worthy to 
enter into God's presence, she must first have her sexuality removed  and 
then have her humanity removed. The other question that cannot be ignored is  
what does it do to women to be told that the ideal woman is a virgin mother?  
Since that is not a possibility for any other woman, does that definition not  
make the 'guilt of inadequacy' the daily bread of women in Christian  history? 
I submit that both of these ideas reflect the historic negativity that  
religion seems to harbor against women. One wonders just why it is that an all  
male institution has the right to define a woman in the name of a God called  
'father.' The time has come to recognize prejudice for what it is and to invite  
women to define what a woman is without any pejorative undertones. The Church  
will not be whole until that happens. The Virgin Mary, as she is presently  
defined, will also not survive as an icon when that occurs. 
— John Shelby Spong  
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Craig Dawson via the Internet writes:  
The subject is Children's Sunday school. The hypothesis is that Sunday school 
 is counter productive and marginally threatens the collective/progressive  
understanding of the Christian faith. Sunday School teaching is necessarily  
taught at a level that is understandable by children. Even in the more liberal  
churches, Old Testament scripture lessons include stories about Abraham and  
Sarah, Noah, Moses, King David, etc. My son at age 6 or 7 asked where Noah put  
dinosaurs on his boat. Regardless the dimensions of the boat, whether the  
animals were in pairs or sevens, or whether or not dinosaurs existed before  
"creation" - the simple fact is that the metaphorical message, or truth is  
abandoned in favor of a good tale. The same is true of the New Testament  
scripture, particularly with regard to miracles and Jesus - absent the cultural  and 
historical context. The concept that the Bible is a divinely inspired search  
for the human condition in relation to each other and to God is simply not a  
concept that is teachable to young children. Statistics and psychology tell us  
that teens abandon the Church as an act of independence and, if they return, 
it  is typically with their own children. They return more often than not with 
a  children's Sunday school understanding of their faith. Conservatives,  
fundamentalists, make them comfortable at this level. Christianity becomes  stuck. 
Would you please comment?  
Dear Craig,  
I think your analysis is essentially correct and I thank you for it. I too  
agree that to try to teach children that "the Bible is a divinely-inspired  
search for the human condition in relation to each other and to God" is to  
invite glassy eyed looks. Frankly, this phrase invites a glassy eyed look from  me. 
However, that is not the way I would teach the Bible to children. Children  
know about myths and stories that have symbolic meaning. I at least was raised  
on Humpty Dumpty who understood that when some things are broken they cannot 
be  repaired. We understand the magic mirror into which we gaze when we want 
to see  the person we yearn to be. Young girls instinctively know that Little 
Red Riding  Hood is about a young girl entering puberty who is told that in 
order to avoid  the wolf, she must stay on the straight and narrow path. 
Why can we not teach our children that the Bible is filled with that kind of  
story? The story of the Tower of Babel expresses our yearning to commune with 
 God. The story of the Virgin Birth gives voice to a Christian experience 
that  says human life could not produce the power we find in Jesus. The story of  
Easter proclaims that even death fades before the life and love that has been 
 met in Jesus. Miracle stories expressed the yearning that the kingdom of God 
had  been glimpsed in Jesus. Miracles were the signs of that kingdom. The 
Ascension  is not about Jesus being propelled into heaven. It is about the 
conviction that  God and Jesus cannot be separated. So if God is above the sky, 
Jesus must go to  where God is. Our problem is that we tend to read the Bible as 
history when it  is more like an interpretive portraits painted by Jewish 
artists. 
My sense has always been that we must first educate the adults before we will 
 do anything more than continue the destructive patterns of literalism into  
another generation. Religion yearns for certainty. However, if it ever 
suggests  that it has found it then it begins to sow the seeds of its own destruction 
Before the Church can think about living in the 21st century, the problem  
that you address so well in your letter must be confronted. Anyone who has been  
successfully doing this task might let us know. I will be happy to pass it 
on.  
— John Shelby Spong 
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