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.