A Marian Heresy: Mary as Messiah

[child_of_the_air]

While I should have been sleeping, I came up with what I think is an interesting--but deeply heretical--interpretation of some bits of Catholic theology.  The basic premise is that Mary, not Jesus, is the Messiah, but neither of them is God.

This interpretation begins with a significant reinterpretation of the nature of the Fall.  Traditionally, the Fall is understood as solely a matter of sin and punishment: Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and so they were cast out of Eden, became mortal, and cursed to reproduce but have this sin and its consequences passed on to their offspring.  At the same time, though, the nature of the universe seems to have been changed by the Fall: the post-Eden world is harsher, even for animals, than Eden was, and predation and other sources of pain enter the world universally.

My theory is that the Fall had two components, only one of which was punishment.  As shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with my theological tastes, I have my doubts about a personal God being a universal creator.  However, it is more reasonable to imagine him as the creator of humanity.  God was constrained to act in--and created intelligent life in--a universe in which entropy and natural selection had already established that life would be a painful struggle.  Eden can be understood as a sort of benevolent hallucination: a false consciousness God created to allow Adam and Eve to remain innocent of the pain of life.

When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, they did sin and that sin was heritable, but the appearance of mortality and a more painful universe were not punishment.  Rather, they came to know the true nature of the universe in which they had been created, and could no longer be kept in the nursery of Eden.  Their entry into the real world brought with it the consequences we associate with Original Sin, which may be thought of as a sort of adolescent rebellion, caused by a desire to return to the comfort of Eden without giving up their new freedom to exist within the real world.

This means that humanity's sinful nature was in part psychological damage that needed healing, but the fundamental impermanence and pain of life are not things God has the power to repeal, as they are part of the nature of a universe that predates God's creation, which we--and God--are powerless to completely eliminate.

Where does the New Testament drama come into this, then?  In my interpretation, its fundamental event--its crux of history--is neither the Incarnation (which is denied) nor the Crucifixion (which is reinterpreted), but rather the Immaculate Conception.  Mary was a human being, born of human parents, just like all of us.  However, she was miraculously conceived without Original Sin; without the fundamental angst over the loss of Eden that humanity inherited from Adam and Eve.

Why does Mary's Immaculate Conception matter?  Because she fills a role as a foster-mother for all of humanity, acting as a substitute for the corrupted inheritance of sin and an unresolvable sense of loss over an Eden we cannot return to that humanity inherited from Adam and Eve.  Although she is fully human in nature, she is conceived without this inherent sin and sense of loss, but instead with an acceptance and understanding of the knowledge Adam and Eve gained from the fruit of the Tree inherent in her soul.  By accepting her as their spiritual parent, all humans can receive this gift.

What role does Jesus and the virgin birth have, then?  Jesus is not God any more than--and if anything, is less God than--Mary is.  He is instead a prophet and a symbolic everyman figure.  If Mary is humanity's spiritual foster-mother, then Jesus is a symbol of what we can be.  Mary's parentage of humanity is adoptive and spiritual, not physical, thus her perpetual virginity.  However, her miraculous conception and birth of Jesus allows him to be her descendant alone, and a representative of what humans can be if they accept her lineage in place of the corrupted lineage of Adam and Eve.

Jesus's life and teachings, then, are intended to be understood as a model of how humans should live under the new dispensation.  The message of the Crucifixion is not a blood sacrifice, or a victory over death.  Instead, it is a reminder and a warning that the world as it actually is is still a place of pain and, inevitably, death.  Even a true son of Mary Immaculate must face and accept that he will die, and that the consequences of his efforts to live a good life may be an unpleasant and ignominious death.

This theology rejects the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven in favor of an Assumption in the manner of his mother's eventual Assumption.  Both Mary and Jesus are human, and fated to die but, after their deaths, they are bodily Assumed into Heaven to be Queen and Prince of Heaven, that they may continue to serve as moral guides and sources of strength for humanity.

Naturally, this interpretation contradicts a number of things in the New Testament; the best explanation of this that I can give is that the New Testament was written by men entrenched in the Patriarchy and in their culture who misinterpreted much of what they were seeing and hearing.

Comments

[wolby]

I really love this.

From a "it's no fun if you can't pick things apart and examine the underlying axioms" viewpoint, this reminded me of our Sorrowful Mother Gods conversation from the other day, and the still-problematic archetype of Mother.

Mothers in our society stop being human beings with pasts, futures, or interests independent of their offspring. Their offspring are treated as their only legitimate creations, which they will then be judged by.

(Just realized Demeter actually subverts this: she has interests/work independent of Persephone---e.g., making sure that the rain falls, the sun shines the proper number of hours in a day, and shit generally grows---and Persephone's presence in her life affects her ability to get not-Persephone-related shit done in a positive way.)

I guess what I'm saying is, I would read Mary action-adventure gen!fic about what it looks like to accept entropy.

[child_of_the_air]

Yay! I am glad you enjoyed it! And there is something of a thread between the two, honestly: this post led to the train of thought and to a couple of conversations that inspired me to want to write a prayer to Mary.

"Mothers in our society stop being human beings with pasts, futures, or interests independent of their offspring. Their offspring are treated as their only legitimate creations, which they will then be judged by."

This is an incredibly important point, and relevant to the distinction I was thinking of between Mother figures and Grandmother/Crone figures. Both can be nurturing, but Mothers are defined by their identity as the mother of specific children; Grandmothers tend to not be constrained this way.

And huh...good observation about Demeter! Especially since her role as Mother is more explicit than other examples I can think of of goddesses who have children but aren't defined solely as existing for them.

[wolby]

Also, Demeter will always make me think of the Isabella Gardner poem:

I am here with my bountiful womanful child
to be soothed by the sea not roused by these roses roving wild.
My girl is gold in the sun and bold in the dazzling water,
She drowses on the blond sand and in the daisy fields my daughter
dreams. Uneasy in the drafty shade I rock on the veranda
reminded of Europa Persephone Miranda.

[child_of_the_air]

Huh...I haven't heard of Isabella Gardner, and Google is only finding Isabella Stuart Gardner, who founded a strange art museum in Boston. I assume they're not the same person?

And *nods*...interesting. That is a good poem.

[child_of_the_air]

For some reason I feel I need to point out that the Homeric Hymns to Apollo, and I think to Artemis as well, focus a bit on praising Leto for bearing such wonderful children.