What do you do with a problem like Mary?

The Quest for Comprehending the Virgin Birth

I sat with clergy and seminary students about a year ago. In an offhand joking manner, when bantering about why they had invited me to join them on their retreat, a rather precocious minister said, "Well, Edward wants you to explain the virgin birth to us." After a few nervous chuckles from the group, I responded.

“Well, just remember this is all symbolic language. We get in trouble when we go down the road of literalism.”

An awkward silence came over the room before someone suggested we tackle a more manageable problem, like aging boilers in church basements.

I realized later that day my answer might have been received as a flip dismissive response, though I'd not intended it that way. Here we are a year later, and I'm finally getting to a more complete answer, though no answer to such questions is ever finished.

Before getting to the question about the virgin birth, let's tackle a basic assumption I hold about religious matters. When reading the scriptures of any religious tradition, including the Bible of Christianity, I’m firmly in the camp of embracing them as inspired as opposed to inerrant. The inerrant view is also known as the literalist view. This is the view that what is written is the way it is, just the facts. It is literally true. For example, the literalist view counts the biblical listing of generations to determine the universe's birthday as 4700 years ago. Any learnings about evolution, astronomy, and physics are dismissed because the scripture is inerrant (meaning without error.)

I'm of the inspired view of sacred literature. Namely, these stories have power, depth, and meaning. They convey a more profound truth than simply a type of historical record. I increasingly use the phrase symbolic faith or symbolic religion as a condensed version. Symbolic Christianity might be another phrase I'd use, and I’ve got in mind a book by that title down the road. The church historian John Dominic Crossan captures it well in this oft-cited quote:

“My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”

― John Dominic Crossan, Who Is Jesus? Answers to Your Questions About the Historical Jesus

A common rebuttal or follow-up question to this quote might be:  “Does that mean none of this ever happened in real-time?” I believe that events happened, but we don't know the full details. They were oral traditions told for a generation, sometimes many generations, before being written down. But something did happen that caused people to respond and change their worldviews, lives, and priorities. These people experienced metanoia, a Greek word that means world-altering, head-spinning, 180 turnabout. CHANGE happened!

That brings us to the question about Mary and The Virgin Birth. The virgin birth of Jesus, which is more accurately labeled the virginal conception of Jesus, teaches that Jesus Christ was born apart from the normal process of procreation but supernaturally conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit. The teaching stems from two of the four gospel accounts of Jesus' life, Matthew and Luke, likely written between the years 80 and 95 of the first century, roughly fifty years after the events of his life in ancient Palestine. Mark skips Jesus' childhood entirely, and John has a Ph.D. dissertation on cosmology, but Mary’s role is minimal in his gospel.

Joseph Campbell, the well-known 20^th-century teacher of world mythologies, has pointed out the numerous ancient narratives of virgin birth from antiquity. The virgin birth motif appears in Greek mythology, Celtic tales, Native American folklore, Hindu and Buddhist traditions. A common theme involves a son born without a human father who then spends his life searching for his father.

These stories comprise symbolic language for an internal human quest. The extraordinary lifelong journey to find the pot of gold, the holy grail, or what we might refer to today as a place of wholeness and some might call it the soul. It all begins in this miraculous birth, the beginning of a spiritual birth. The German Dominican Mystic Meister Eckhart translates this concept well for us.

We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is begotten in us. ~Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)

In the Eastern Orthodox communion, the Virgin Mary is named Theotokos, which the Church recognized at the Third Ecumenical Council in AD 431. The title Theotokos (Θεοτόκος) is a Greek word that means Birth-giver to God or God-bearer. The most common of these translations is Mother of God. The Orthodox Church calls the Theotokos Panagia (all-holy) not because she is equal to God. Instead, they claim her as a supreme example of synergy, or cooperation, between God and humanity.

In 1950, the Roman Catholic church venerated the Virgin Mary with a doctrine of her assumption into heaven. Carl Jung found great significance in this event from a psychological perspective. He believed that events such as these reflected our inner quest for wholeness. Here, the godhead is completed in a foursome and includes a feminine aspect.

 "But anyone who has followed with attention the visions of Mary, which have been increasing over the last few decades and has taken their psychological significance into account, might have known what was brewing. The fact, especially, that it was largely children who had the visions might have given pause for thought, for in such cases, the collective unconscious is always at work ...One could have known for a long time that there was a deep longing in the masses for an intercessor and mediatrix who would at last take her place alongside the Holy Trinity and be received as the 'Queen of heaven and Bride at the heavenly court.' For more than a thousand years, it has been taken for granted that the Mother of God dwelt there.”  Carl Jung in Answer to Job p. 99

It's depicted in the painting Coronation of Mary by the Holy Trinity by französisch Handschrift from 1457. I find it curious that the artist grasped something five hundred years before the church’s recognition. (See the image below)

All of this begs the question in these days before Christmas Eve, when religious and non-religious might find themselves in a church hearing the reading from Luke’s Gospel.

In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.  This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.  And everyone went to their own town to register.  So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.  He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.  While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, , and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. (Luke 2:1-7)

If you are sitting there and wondering what this is all about, one way to explore that question might follow Meister Eckhart. We could ask, "We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself?”

Until Next Time,

P.S. I’ll be on a brief pause for writing these Notebooks until the middle of January.

James Hazelwood, writer, bishop, and spiritual director, is the author of Weird Wisdom for the Second Half of Life and Everyday Spirituality: Discover a Life of Hope, Peace, and Meaning. He has a new book in process, a collection of essays on the two realms of life. It is due out this winter. His website is www.jameshazelwood.net