The Omega Factor(60)
The Council of Nicaea in 325 started the notion of Mary being a virgin, enthroned beside the Lord as a bridge between heaven and earth. It also bestowed upon her the title Mother of God. Theotokus in Greek. A fragment of a prayer found from then on papyrus proclaimed, Mother of God, hear my supplication, suffer us not to be in adversity, but deliver us from danger. Thou alone. The logic became easy. If Christ was God, then Mary was the Mother of God. The great theologian Saint Augustine reinforced this notion when he wrote that no one, save for Mary, had been born without sin.
She alone was pure.
For biblical support they looked to Revelation. Chapter 12. And there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. And she being with child cried, traveling in birth, and pained to be delivered. Further chapters noted that the child was to rule all nations, caught up unto God and to his throne, equating that with Christ, the crowned woman his mother.
By the fifth century divisions had arisen within Christianity that questioned whether Christ had been born of a woman, and whether any woman was worthy of such an honor. Some argued that divine nature cannot be born. It can have no mother. Mary may have been a good pious woman, but she was not the queen of heaven. The betrayal of Eve in the Garden had not been forgotten, Mary regarded as Eve without the fall—a figure from the past, just another part of Christ’s evolving story.
Nothing more.
The oldest surviving reference to her childhood was found in the Protevangelium, a second-century text possibly written by James of Ephesus. By the sixth century that account was deemed apocryphal, not part of official church dogma, a mere story, but it remained popular, providing Mary with a rich detailed life befitting her status as the supposed Mother of God. As time went on the account provided church theologians with fodder for the creation of a full-fledged Marian legend. Supposedly, she was born into a devout Jewish family in Galilee. Her parents were Joachim and Anne, whom Catholic tradition says angels visited separately to inform them that Anne was expecting Mary. By the time Mary was twelve, she was engaged to Joseph. It was during her engagement that she learned, through another angelic visitation, of the plans God had for her to serve as Christ’s mother. She responded with faithful obedience, despite the obvious challenges.
Matthew wrote that Mary and Joseph raised Christ, along with their other children. Protestant Christians think that those children were Mary and Joseph’s, born naturally after Jesus, and after they formally consummated their marriage. But Catholics thought that they were cousins, or Mary’s stepchildren from Joseph’s former marriage to a woman who had died before he became engaged to her. Catholics fervently believe that Mary remained a virgin her entire life.
By the Middle Ages, Mary had been allocated five holy days. Her cult of worship became rooted, flowing from the crusades, encouraged by contact with the Byzantine church, which had long idolized her. New art, poetry, and the romanticism of women helped with her elevation. The rise of monasticism also played a part. Mary became the heavenly helper to the vowed celibate, male or female. Eventually, Catholic teachings said that the quickest path to Jesus was through Mary, as he always did as his mother asked. She was planted above the angels, equal to her son, in a class by herself, accorded the title Blessed, which acknowledged her exalted state as the greatest among the saints. Those teachings also made it clear, though, that Mary was not divine. Any prayers were not answered by her, but rather by God through her intercession.
Five sacred dogmas regarding her emerged.
Her own Immaculate Conception, making her free of original sin. The Annunciation from the Archangel Gabriel. Her status as the Mother of God. Her perpetual virginity. And her final bodily Assumption into heaven.
The first and last of those became the most troubling.
Early on theologians purged Mary of personal sin, even the original sin that required baptism to eliminate. How? She was the Mother of God. Potuit, decuit, fecit. It was possible, it was fitting, therefore it was done. But for centuries theologians debated that point. Some argued that if Mary was free of original sin at her own conception then she would have no need of redemption, making Christ superfluous. Others reasoned that Christ was Mary’s personal redeemer, his birth and presence shielding her from original sin.
Her Assumption into heaven became equally problematic. Matthew wrote, Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom. Theologians took that to mean that an assumption was possible. Dead-yet-not-dead. Gone-yet-not-gone.
But nothing seemed clear.
So the church stepped in to erase all doubt.
In 1431 the Council of Basel declared Mary’s Immaculate Conception as a pious opinion consistent with faith and Scripture. During the Council of Trent, held in the early 1500s, she was exempted from the universality of original sin. In 1571 Pope Pius V set out an elaborate celebration of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, to be held on December 8 of each year. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Habsburg monarchs, who dominated Europe, demanded that the papacy elevate the immaculate conception to official dogma. Finally, in 1854 Pope Pius IX issued a papal bull, Ineffabilis Deus, that officially proclaimed Mary’s Immaculate Conception. He found support for the event in the ark of salvation, Jacob’s ladder, the burning bush at Sinai, the enclosed garden from the Song of Songs, and other biblical passages. Particularly Genesis 3:15. The most glorious Virgin was foretold by God when he said to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman.”