Marian Imagery in the Old Testament

The Past Her Prelude: Marian Imagery in the Old Testament | Sandra Miesel | Ignatius Insight

St. Augustine said that "the New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old is fulfilled in the New." Like other Church Fathers he distinguished between the outer "literal" and the inner "spiritual" meaning of Holy Scripture. And like the others, he often preferred spirit to letter.

The categories into which various Fathers divided the spiritual sense need not concern us here, only their zealous attempts to read the figurative meanings of the Bible. They saw the New Testament foreshadowed in the Old through several devices. Types are persons, things, or events taken as historical (Adam is a Type of Christ); prophecies are predictions (the Messiah will be born of a virgin); and allegories are poetic comparisons, not limited to strict personifications (Holy Wisdom is a gracious woman). Our discussion will move freely across all these categories.

The Fathers saw every part of the Scriptures as linked to every other part. They believed that God had encoded patterns of similarities and contrasts into his Word to produce flashes of illumination. Making cross-comparisons rounds out our picture of what Salvation is--and is not. For instance, innocent, devout Abel is a Type of Christ while jealous, murderous Cain his Antitype.

Mary entered this web of associations early, when St. Justin Martyr (d. 165) contrasted her obedience with Eve's disobedience immediately after referring to Christ's symbolic titles in prophecy. His insight was repeated a generation later by St. Irenaeus of Lyons (d. ca. 200): "What the virgin Eve had bound in unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosed through faith." Thus Mary came to be called the New Eve and the Latin pun Eva/Ave for the reversal entered Christian lore.

Eve is the mother of all according to the flesh, but Mary according to the spirit. As universal spiritual mother and first Christian, Mary is also a Type of the Church, a parallel first noted by St. Irenaeus. Therefore, the same Biblical imagery used for the Church can also apply to Mary: she is the living Ark of the Covenant, the ultimate Temple, the new Jerusalem, and the perfected Israel as Bride of God.

These Old Testament prefigurations are brought forward into the Book of Revelation and amplify the Woman Clothed in the Sun (Rev 12:12), the "great sign" manifested immediately after the scene of the Ark in the celestial Temple. The pregnant Woman's body carries the Messiah as the Ark once held the Divinely sent Tablets of the Law, Aaron's rod that flowered, and a pot of manna Moreover, she is also the mother of all Christians. But this Woman flees from the threatening Satanic Dragon, unlike Eve who fatally lingered when the Serpent spoke.

The Woman does not, however, grapple directly with the Dragon, though some Marian devotees wish it were otherwise. Direct engagement with the Foe is left to other Marian Types. Deborah rallies the Israelite army (Jgs 4:4-16), Jael smashes the head of an enemy general (Jgs 4:17-22), Judith beheads Holofernes (Jdt 13), and Esther maneuvers Haman onto the gallows (Est 7), in each case saving their people from certain destruction.

Besides the typology of specific characters, Messianic Psalm 45 has been traditionally taken to represent Christ as the king with Mary as the queen who stands beside him adorned "in gold of Ophir". This Psalm is often quoted in the liturgy, including texts of Marian feasts such as the Assumption. There it refers to Our Lady's entrance into heaven and justifies showing her enthroned beside her Son.

The queen in the Psalm is the king's bride but the normal structure of a Semitic court gave the king's mother far more power than any wife. This situation, demonstrated by the relationship between Solomon and his mother Bathsheba (1 Kgs 2:12-25) does fit Mary, so Bathsheba was used as a Type of Mary. In the incident shown, however, Bathsheba's intercession gets the petitioner executed. The only other queen mothers shown in action, idolatrous Maacah (1 Kgs 15: 18) and murderous Athalia (2 Kgs 11), could be called Antitypes of Mary.

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Comments

[W.]

On the topic of St. Augustine, the OT, and imagery, I have a question for you Augustine scholars. There is an article this weekend with a quote from the Rev. Tony Campolo, "a progressive evangelical professor at Eastern University." The article is "Film takes on the issue of Christianity in America" and can be found here:
http://www.presstelegram.com/religion/ci_13178246.

From the article:

Campolo quotes St. Augustine as having said, "The Church is a whore, and she is my mother."

"Are you talking about unfaithfulness? You're talking about the church," Campolo says in the film. "... It's a whore. But she's also my mother. I wouldn't be a Christian today ... if it wasn't for this thing called `the church."'

I know of Luther and others having made a comment like this, but St. Augustine?

There is no reference to the quote. Doing a google search led to sites of former students of Campolo who say that he often made this same point in class ... once again without referencing where the alleged St. Augustine passage comes from.

Von Balthasar has an essay, "Casta Meretrix," that deals with a related theme, but in the bits I remember from it, he does not attribute a "Church is a whore" statement to Augustine. Perhaps I need to read it again.

Does anyone know if St. Augustine ever said this and what the source is?

[Carl E. Olson]

W.: It looks like a number of people have been puzzled by Campolo's statement.

I've never heard such a thing ever attributed to Augustine, and I doubt he ever said/wrote it. I have never been impressed with Campolo as a theologian or scholar (or even as a popular writer/speaker), and that goes back to when I was still an Evangelical. He tends to be flippant, glib, needlessly sensational, sloppy, and self-serving. Perhaps this is a case of some of those qualities at work?

[W.]

Thanks.

Balthasar's essay is a gem. I decided to go back to it and read it this weekend. Then I went through various Augustine works I could find. Still looking for a full copy of sermon 213. That might be the place where he comes closest to what Campolo said.

What I found from Sermon 213, which von Balthasar quotes:

"We are the Holy Church. ... Let us honor her, for she is the spouse of such a great Lord. What else can I say? Great and singular is the condescension of the Bridegroom. When he found her, she was a harlot. He made her a virgin. That she was a harlot we must not deny, lest we forget the mercy of him who set her free. How can we fail to call her a harlot, when we think how she lusted after idols and demons? There was fornication of the heart in all: in some, of the flesh; in all, of the heart. And he came and made her a virgin. He made the Church a virgin. In faith she is a virgin. In the flesh she has a few consecrated virgins. In faith all her members must be virgins, men as well as women." (Sermon 213.7 in "Casta Meretrix" from Explorations in Theology, vol. II, 245; emphasis added.)

This is after much documentation from biblical and patristic sources of Jerusalem as a harlot for having betrayed the Lord and of how the Church is born out of that and when she is born, she is remade a virgin, though mindful of her harlot past (through the sins and betrayal of her members). A sinner who is changed but remembers her past in an effort to not fall back into the sin, in an effort to remember from where she came, and to appreciate the new life given her.

The point, as I see it: The Church came from having been a harlot (before Christ) and (with Christ and Pentecost) is no longer a harlot in form but is now a virgin.

In St. Augustine's reply to the Manichean Faust, which VB quotes, Augustine uses words to the effect of "a harlot abandoning her fornication and being changed into a chaste spouse." (22.80; 265 in VB) There is nothing wrong with conversion!

[Carl E. Olson]

W.: Here is an interesting discussion about the passage from Explorations in Theology. I've not been able to find the exact source in Augustine's corpus either...