Dogmas Aren't Enough to Make a Movie About Mary

The requirements of a coherent story undermine long-held traditions.

Dec 16, 2024

There was a good bit of apprehension leading up to the release of Mary, the Netflix film based on the life of the mother of Jesus, and a fair bit of controversy since its release. Most of the concern I observed beforehand came from the Catholic quarter of social media, and while the film has a Catholic director, there was a good bit of concern that the portrayal of the relationship between Mary and Joseph might be overly romantic. Having seen the film, I can say that while the critics were justified in their apprehensions, the movie leaves enough to the imagination for concerned parents to dispel any notions of amorous behavior between Joseph and Mary.

When you consider the Hollywood angle, it’s a valid concern. Moviegoers have come to expect a little bit of romance from holiday films. Last Christmas season, I made a video noting that in popular culture, the more ‘romantic’ version of the Holy family’s tale has already won.

In light of the new film, I thought I would reexamine the story from another angle, this time focusing on what I like to call Story Logic - a topic I go over in great depth in my book, Tents Before Temples. The idea behind story logic is that narratives based on discrete “facts” will either stand or fall when they are told in the form of a narrative story. It will either be a story that seems right, true, plausible, and believable, or it will require the kinds of narrative interventions we regularly find in weak alibis, childhood fibs, and just-so stories.

The description from Netflix summarizes the attempt to incorporate some elements of the Catholic tradition on the life of Mary:

Mary, a young Jewish girl who lives in Nazareth with her parents, Anne and Joachim, is presented at the temple in preparation for her marriage to Joseph. Following the incarnation and birth of Jesus, Mary is forced into hiding. When Herod the Great orders the Massacre of the Innocents, Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt with Jesus.

Most Evangelicals are not concerned with arguing about the parentage of Mary, nor are they familiar with the traditional names Anne and Joachim. For those Sola Scriptura advocates, it doesn’t jive with the oft-cited idea that one of the two genealogies of Christ in the Gospels records the line of Mary, a potential resolution of the discrepancies between Matthew and Luke’s list - a problem also solved through interpretation as different kinds of genealogies, or through levirate marriage; for the sake of property inheritance, Perez the son of Judah, and Obed the son of Boaz are technically considered the sons of their mother’s deceased husbands.

It’s also unclear what exactly the nature of the business of Mary being presented in the temple entails. Tradition seems to paint a picture of something very similar to the later institutes of nunnery taking place in the Temple of Jerusalem, and this is exactly what the film portrays. The only problem is the lack of provision for such an order within the Hebrew scriptures, and any evidence of the practice outside traditions surrounding Mary.

As the Catholic pundits feared, the movie veered from both tradition and scripture in certain areas for the sake of plot. Mary being forced into hiding after Jesus’ birth does provide a clever way to avoid the chance of intimate moments between her and Joseph, who do not so much as exchange a kiss, although it’s really used as an excuse to interject several action sequences into the film.

Contrary to the Biblical story, in which the existing betrothal of Mary and Joseph allows the couple to marry without facing questions of Jesus’ legitimacy, knowledge of Mary’s pregnancy is quite public, leading to several mobs who want to stone her for impurity.

To increase the drama, the timeline regarding Herod and the Magi is also shortened. Bethlehem is full not due to the census, but because the unwashed masses are all present in anticipation of the birth of the Messiah. Thus, the Magi arrive at the time of Christ’s birth, with the goons hot on their heels, ready to slaughter the innocents.

Despite these inaccuracies, at the end of the day, the film did not significantly alter the character of Mary, Joseph, or the significance of Jesus’ birth. It does import ideas of Mary’s supernatural significance from non-biblical traditions, but it doesn’t create any true obstacle to the faith.

The untold story

To return to the concerns originally expressed, what is the story they are not telling, and why are people concerned that it is not being told? For one thing, the casting has Mary being too old, and Joseph being too young to go with the details provided to explain the marian traditions. There are actually two sets of issues in dealing with the story of Mary. First, are the dogmas.

The four Marian dogmas of the Catholic church are (1.) Divine Motherhood, (2.) Perpetual Virginity, (3.) Immaculate conception, and (4.) Bodily Assumption. For Protestants, only the immaculate conception is a real theological sticking point, though many have problems with the assumption, and others with the perpetual virginity. Mary’s role as mother of God should not be contested by protestants if properly understood, though it often is, especially by low-church Evangelicals, Baptists, and Pentecostals.

However, despite its acceptance on the part of the early reformers and magisterial protestants, it is Mary’s perpetual virginity that causes the breakdown in logic between dogma and tradition.

Much of the Marian tradition comes from the Protoevangelium of James, a fairly early document, (depending on whom you ask), though still written significantly later than the gospel accounts. Around this time, there is a great deal of creative interpretation going on in regards to the life of Jesus. Some of this follows the great Jewish tradition of midrash; a means whereby interpreters would flesh out the sparse details of the biblical narrative in an effort to make sense of disparate or seemingly contradictory details.

Almost all interpretation requires some element of midrash; this is the basis for understanding the idea of story logic. A common example would be the insertion of an apple in the garden of Eden. The text does not tell us what the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil looked like, but the fact that it was pleasing to the eye led many to imagine the high-contrast picture of a bright red apple on a field of green leaves. The nature of stories is that we flesh out the details through our own subjective experience; but once an artist begins to depict it such, that detail becomes part of the framework for later assumption.

Nobody’s eternal salvation is in peril because they misunderstood the nature of the fruit in the garden. The Sunday school teacher who said it was an apple to satisfy an overly inquisitive student was right in recognizing that the type of fruit was not the crucial point of the story.

This is where the tradition surrounding Mary begins to pick up problems. To support the narrative that upholds the dogmas, a great deal of special information is required to circumvent the possibility of normal people reading common words through their own subjective experience. These words include “betrothed”, “married”, “divorce, “virginity”, “until”, “brother”, “sister”, “husband”, and “wife”. Because according to the traditional interpretation of the nativity tale, none of these words mean what a typical reader would assume them to mean.

According to the tradition, the faithful version of the Mary movie would follow a plotline something like this:

Mary, a sinless, adolescent orphan entrusted to the care of the Temple nuns, is under the guardianship of Joseph, an elderly man, possibly a widow with several children from a previous marriage, or a man with many nephews and nieces. Joseph has already decided to marry Mary, knowing that their relationship will be a sexless union, because Mary has pledged her virginity to God.

When Mary discovers that she is to be the mother of the Messiah, Joseph initially plans to divorce her, seemingly suspicious about the child’s origins. He then reconsiders after receiving a vision in a dream from the Lord. The child is miraculously born without exiting the birth canal.

The Holy couple spends the rest of their lives devoted to raising the Christ child in complete celibacy. Despite the fact that the couple has sworn off sex and romance for the sake of their child, the sole object of their attention, they somehow manage to lose him in the City for three days when he is twelve years old.

Now let’s imagine that Hallmark decides to make a contemporary Christmas movie not about the actual holy family, but a couple in similar circumstances. Imagine an orphaned teenage girl finds out she is pregnant; the circumstances are unexplained, but it’s not her fault. Then a kindly older gentleman adopts her. Such a story is not absent from the Bible, it’s close to the story of Esther and Mordecai. But for some reason, Mary and Joseph take on the roles of foster father and daughter, while being called husband and wife.

The experimental midrash presented by the Gospel of James seeks to solve problems that the text does not present. The immaculate conception seeks to answer the question of how Jesus could inherit a sinless nature while his mother is a member of fallen humanity. The author simply takes the story of Jesus' conception, and pushes it back another generation. “within the Gospel of James, the conception occurs without sexual intercourse between Anne and Joachim, which fits well with the Gospel of James' persistent emphasis on Mary's sacred purity, but the story does not advance the idea of an immaculate conception.”^[1] This dogmatic position is held within the Catholic church.

Of course, this problem then leads to questions about the parent’s of Mary’s parents, and it’s not surprising that “some devotees went so far as to hold that Anne had conceived Mary by kissing her husband Joachim, and that Anne's father and grandmother had likewise been conceived without sexual intercourse,” This logically leads to an infinite recursion of asexual reproduction. However, a contradictory report arose from one of the great sources of authority within Catholic theology, a Marian apparition. “Bridget of Sweden (c. 1303–1373) told how Mary herself had revealed to her that Anne and Joachim conceived their daughter through a sexual union which was sinless because it was pure and free of sexual lust.”^[2]

This follows the stance of the Eastern Orthodox church, which holds that “Mary is conceived by her parents as we are all conceived” This eliminates the notion of an immaculate conception, as Paul states, “...sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” (Romans 5:12) If Mary was the daughter of Joachim, the curse of sin and death unleashed by Adam was inherited by her as well.

But the nuance here does not mean that the same circumstance must apply to Jesus; “through one man” hints at something particular about the gendered nature of heredity. Some genes are recessive, and their traits are masked in the presence of a dominant gene. For a child to have blue eyes, they must receive a blue-eyed gene from both parents. If they have one brown gene and one blue, their eyes will be brown. But that blue-eyed gene doesn’t go away; it can still be passed on to the next generation. Sometimes two parents with brown eyes have blue eyed children, because they both pass on a masked recessive gene.

Female sex works the same way, and it’s always the father who determines sex. In fact, the logic of Romans 5:12 can also apply to male sex and the Y chromosome. “sex chromosomes came into the world through one man, and gendered sex came through the male sex chromosomes, so gendered sex spread to all humanity because all inherited sex chromosomes from their father.” The sinful nature inherited by Mary through Joachim (or whoever her father was) would have expressed itself the same way it does in everyone else, but it also could have masked a recessive potential for sinlessness passed down through the female line from Eve herself.

Though Paul does speak of Mary in particular, he does remind us that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman” (Galatians 4:4), an important distinction that challenges the gnostic disdain for the material world (matter, from the same root as mother). This gnostic thinking creeps into the later gospel of James with its insistence that Christ passes supernaturally from the womb of Mary, directly into her arms, bypassing the natural means of birth, and the shedding of blood. “... as they stand at the mouth of the cave, a cloud overshadows it, an intense light fills it, and suddenly a baby is at Mary's breast.”^[3]

When the midwife Salome seeks to examine Mary, “her hand withers as a sign of her lack of faith”, a punishment for questioning the veracity of this miracle, which is subsequently healed by touching the Christ child. This is used as “evidence” of Mary’s perpetual virginity, where “virginity” seems to describe the physical status of the intact hymen, which would be “lost” during the normal birthing process.

While it will be some centuries before Augustine articulates the theological conclusion that “chastity is not identical with bodily integrity, but a virtue of the soul”, the principle was founded on the basis of scripture as it was revealed and interpreted since the beginning. “Virginity” in the spiritual sense cannot be lost or stolen; it can only be given willingly. This is the manner in which Mary consented to give birth to the messiah, but as a betrothed woman, she had already consented to give her virginity to Joseph.

The natural assumption was that it was through the natural act of sex that the messiah would be conceived, which brings up the biggest problem with the doctrine of perpetual virginity. As my friend Jacob says, “Virgin birth is a Greek idea, not a Jewish one.” Rod Dreher just posted his own article^[4] on the upcoming Mary film, addressing the complaints that an Israeli Jewish woman was cast in the role of Mary, rather than an Arab Palestinian.

While also dancing around the various Christian interpretations regarding Mary, he seeks to emphasize that this particular attack is part of an ongoing mission to “de-Judaize Christianity”. Unfortunately, this particular line of attack is not recent, but has been ongoing since the time of the church fathers, and it is a project deeply intertwined with the Marian dogmas.

The Nestorian debate, settled with the declaration that Mary should be called Theotokos, Greek for "Carrier of God", rather than Christotokos, meaning "Carrier of Christ", was settled in the city of Ephesus, a city long associated with the Virgin mother. Tradition held that Mary was brought to live in Ephesus by the apostle John, the adoptive son in whose care Christ committed her on the cross. But in the Roman world, Ephesus was famous for another virgin, Artemis, the goddess of the hunt.

Among the pagan gods and goddesses mentioned in the New Testament, none are so clearly threatened by the coming message of the Gospel as Artemis of the Ephesians. The silversmith Demetrius sees the writing on the wall long before his peers, stating that

“not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship.” - Acts 19:26-27

He rightly perceives that the coming Kingdom of God represents a change in the world order, that will eventually challenge the stability of the whole roman economy. In an understated miracle, the ensuing riots come to a peaceful end with no lasting consequences. But as the city peacefully transitions from a Paganism to Christianity, many of the virtues of Artemis seem to attach themselves to Mary, notably associations with the moon, and the title “queen of heaven”, but also her perpetual virginity.

In the book Nobody’s Mother, Dr. Sandra Glahn seeks to exegete a passage that has long caused trouble for women already troubled by infertility; 1 Timothy 2:15, “Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.” Written to Timothy in the same city of Ephesus, Dr. Glahn presents a definitive case that the verse is polemical in nature, written to contradict the fearful messaging spread by devotees of Artemis.

Biblical scholars had lazily assumed that Artemis of the Ephesians was a fertility goddess, associated with cult prostitution much like Aphrodite in Corinth. But this is not the case. Artemis, (or Diana, as the Romans called her,) was both the goddess of the hunt, and the patron of midwives. Her perpetual virginity was based out of a great fear of childbearing. The firstborn offspring of Leto and Zeus, the goddess was born with a divine consciousness, whose first memory was witnessing the terrible suffering of her mother, as she labored for nine days to birth her younger twin, Apollo. With the memory of this terrible ordeal seared in her eternal memory, the goddess vowed to never let a man impregnate her, but also to relieve the suffering of mothers in labor.

Thus, Artemis was a popular goddess among the female population of the Roman empire, who were always in danger of dying in childbirth, but had little recourse against becoming pregnant. As the original Girl-Boss, devotion to the cult of Artemis, if possible, was characterized by a lifestyle free from entanglements with men.^[5] For those less fortunate, their prayers to Artemis would contain a two-fold request, either a smooth birth, or a quick death.

Dr. Glahn provides convincing evidence that Paul’s words to Timothy were an entreaty to trust that God would save them from physical death, through the ordeal of pregnancy and delivery. It was an entreaty to trust in the same God who promised the Israelites “None shall miscarry or be barren in your land;” - Exodus 23:26

The controversy over Paul’s words to the childbearing women in Ephesus has long existed in tension with the Marian dogmas. When it is used to promote and encourage large families, it clashes with the spiritual example of Mary as the perpetual virgin. The creation of holy orders freed unmarried women from the stigma of childlessness, but created a two-tier system where wives and mothers become second-class Christian, and the infertile among them become spiritual outcasts.

Between these two polar opposites, there is ample room for a sex-negative attitude to grow. The fact that sex can be pleasurable is evidence enough that it is sinful, though it is a necessary compromise for the sake of procreation. While the Catholic church has dealt with these issues more concretely, they occurred in the east as well. At the time of Constantinople’s fall, there were more monks than men at arms, and more nuns than childbearing mothers.

Such issues have never arisen within Judaism, at least within the strains of Judaism that have survived. The essenes, who practiced asceticism and lived without wives, went extinct, as did the celibate Shakers in North america. The strain of rabinnic judaism that survives to this day comes from the same rootstock from which the Apostle Paul learned to study scripture. If any Rabbi, or educated Jew from the time of Christ till the present were to read Paul’s letter to Timothy, they would immediately conclude that the command of elders to be “the husband of one wife,” was not just a prohibition against bigamy, but a requirement that leaders must be married.

This is made clear in the following verses: “He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church?”^[6] Celibate priesthood was not made mandatory until the 11th century, and while the arguments used are based more upon the status of Christ, (a bridegroom in anticipation, not a celibate) and Paul, (likely only single because he was a widower,) it never would have occurred without the dogma of Mary’s perpetual virginity.

When we take a close look at the Hebrew scriptures, which preceded the advent of Christ, we are hard-pressed to find evidence of a sacred order of virginity. Isaiah 7:14, the verse most commonly cited as referring to the virgin birth, is hotly debated. While the Greek translation commonly used at the time of Christ contains the word Parthenos, which refers explicitly to a virgin, the Hebrew alma is more ambiguous, and can simply refer to a young girl. While I believe in the virgin birth, and that God inspired both versions of the text, it must be said that it was not a particularly important concept among the Jews.

Instead, they embraced the natural means through which God brought salvation to the world wholeheartedly. While The Gospel of James casts St. Anne in the role of Hannah (from whom the name likely derived), dedicating Mary at the temple, the gospel of Matthew invites us to compare the virgin herself to the mother of Samuel. The magnificat echoes the song of Hannah, as Mary herself seemed to connect with the barren mother.

But what was the reward for Hannah’s faithfulness? “Indeed the Lord visited Hannah, and she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters.” For her devotion, the Lord blessed Hannah with many more children. The same blessing is seen as the consolation of Leah, the true matriarch of Israel. These women claimed the promise made to Eve as part of their inheritance; and like Eve, they had multiple children; some good, and some not.

But the lineage of Christ is also filled with women who used any means necessary to find themselves in the place to potentially bear the promised seed of the Woman. Tamar turned deception towards righteousness to bear Perez; Rahab perceived the omnipotent nature of Israel’s God, and forsook her own tribe to live among strangers. Ruth was a barren widow of ten years, taken out of a barren land, who used her feminine charms to provide new sons for old Naomi. And whatever role we assign to Bathsheba, we aren’t using the means to justify the ends, but Solomon was the ancestor of the one “Greater than Solomon.”

Then there are the pragmatic implications of the dogmatic interpretation. For one thing, why would Joseph consider quietly divorcing Mary when he discovered she was pregnant, if he was an aged gentleman who did not expect to fulfil his husbandly duty? Divorce had become cheap and easy for men to obtain, but Joseph’s plan required that he still go through the marriage.

The purpose of betrothal was to prove the woman’s virginity; the average year-long time span provided ample time for any “surprises” to work themselves out. This is why Esther was brought to the King “after being twelve months under the regulations for the women, since this was the regular period of their beautifying, six months with oil of myrrh and six months with spices and ointments for women” The real goal was the make sure she wasn’t knocked up; which meant the timing had to be precise.

But if Joseph wanted to divorce Mary quietly, it would mean doing so after the birth; and to protect her from questioning, he would have to provide the blood that proved her virginity. This shows him to be a good and decent man, but it doesn’t point to someone who was looking for a chaste and sexless marriage. If he needed a wife to help raise his other children, why would he choose a young girl? Why the charade of normal marriage to fulfill these odd circumstances? Cui bono?

Next, consider the life of Christ as he is raised by young Mary and ancient Joseph, in their chaste household. Jesus getting lost as an only child is a serious problem. What were they doing, if they had no other concerns but tending to Jesus? Psychologists can give us definite proof of what many parents have long known; the most emotionally healthy children are raised by parents who love each other. Children gain feelings of security when they witness their parents being affectionate towards one another. Children also do best when they are not the sole object of their parent’s attention. It is more beneficial for children when parents spend time with each other, and when they have multiple siblings.

Indeed, when we look at the life of Samuel, his mother’s sacrifice robbed him of the opportunity to live with a loving father and mother. He had the poor example in Eli, and while Samuel never strayed from the path of righteousness, his sons did. (1 Samuel 8:3) Of course, Jesus didn’t need perfect or ideal parents to fulfill his role as the messiah; when you are dealing with the incarnate Son of God, nature overrides nurture.

But since that’s the case, why bother to dogmatize the sexless bed of Joseph and Mary? Instinctively, we understand that there is meant to be some connection between the environment that hosts the miracle of the incarnation, and the normative role of mothers and fathers and children. The desire to project a platonic ideal of dispassionate holiness on the parents of Jesus is understandable. We aren’t good at separating the messiness and sinfulness of human emotions, jealousy, lust, and desire from the holy procreative aspects of sex and marriage. But retconning perpetual virginity as a societal norm is not the answer, and it causes more problems than it solves.

The dogmas

Which leads to the main reason why the Marian dogmas are problematic for today. My recent course of study has made me far more sympathetic to the Catholic position on the perpetual virginity of Mary.

The confounding of the sacred and profane is an evergreen problem. Cultural interest in piety and religiosity ebb and flow, resulting in ever shifting social mores. Our society has been on a downward trajectory since the sexual revolution in the 1960’s. In our porn-saturated modern world, we are constantly bombarded with tarnished images of feminine beauty. The arresting quality of the imago dei at its most aesthetically pleasing shines through in illuminated motion on our phone screens and monitors, but in almost every instance, it is used to draw our eyes down to hades, rather than propelling our vision heavenward.

Having finally sunk to the bottom of this moral slough, younger generations, and men in particular, are looking to rebuild the stability of the past. These young men crave the weight of responsibility, and are finding it in the most ancient forms of Christianity. This movement is often accompanied by an embrace of martial discipline. Embodied by the Gym Bro’s, this striving for excellence and mastery in the physical domain hearkens back to middle ages.

Yet there is something lacking in this movement that was vital to the success of medieval Christianity; something to do with Mary. It’s the reason that the code of chivalry succeeded in eliminating the barbarism of pagan Europe, but also why the good knights went extinct.

The spiritual life of men flourished under the code of chivalry, which lent all women an air of the sacred. It encouraged them to see all women as spotless creatures, not in a delusional way, but in the way Christ views his own bride, the Church. “Though their sins are scarlet, they are washed as white as snow.” In imitating the God who “calls into existence the things that do not exist,” the noble Knights shaped an environment in which women could choose to live accordingly.

This noble vision propelled good men towards righteous action. As the middle ages wore on, the Kingdom of God conquered the last vestiges of paganism, via the sword, the word, and economic innovation. But it was not possible to maintain belief in the vision by power of will alone. Without the threat of external danger, the immediacy of life between men and women began to shape the vision of reality, and the impetus for living aspirationally began to wane.

Chivalry endured, but in name only, as a means of delineating class. The labels and forms of courtly romance were robbed of their underlying meaning, until every romantic gesture was accompanied by a wink and a nudge. When the upper crust spoke of making love, they meant nothing greater than what the peasants called a roll in the hay. So the age of the knights fell to the same point as our present day.

The men seeking to rebuild Christendom are reluctant to embrace the true path of Chivalry. They have swallowed too much of the Red Pill’s poison. They do not possess the ability to see the untarnished beauty of Eve beneath the scarlet stains of a high body count. Unwilling to refute the “evidence based” claims of evolutionary psychology (a trojan horse for bronze-age morality), the trad revivalists have replaced the moral center of medieval chivalry with something more native to the quran.

What has evaporated from this culture is a belief that women have ever, or can ever, live up to any of the feminine ideals. Modern women are not seen as creatures worthy of love or devotion, and they are certainly not to be trusted. Men who think otherwise are simps or cucks, inhabitants of the lowest rungs of the masculine hierarchy. The late medieval readers inserted their ‘winks and nudges’ when the knights proclaimed their love. The modern reader sees them in the gratitude of rescued maidens.

Marriage and reproduction still endure, but the relationship between men and women is seen as an uneasy truce. As secular society has provided women with the legal firepower, Christianity must equip its masculine soldiers with the spiritual weapons to hold their own. Though the trads would never admit it, the tension in their worldview breeds masculine fragility.

In replacing affection and desire with discipline, the Trad men believe that while both partners say “for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part,” only the man truly means it. In seeking the means to secure and protect his Trad life, the man loses his sense of self. If after perfecting his body, achieving status, and securing income and capital, including the means to support a household, a man finds himself married, how will he face the prospect of any of it being stripped away?

This reality reveals two things about the nature of men and women. First, is that the way a woman views a man affects him deeply. The self-sufficient Trad husband amasses an abundance of material goods and circumstances to keep his woman happy, in hope that he never has to face up to what his wife thinks of him as a man. The second thing is that the code of chivalry was correct in its assertion that women will live up to the expectations created by men.

The problem is that men and women find themselves in an inescapable feedback loop of cynical distrust.

Yet despite this cynicism, the masculine longing for transcendent beauty, integrated with the good and true, still remains. With the visual imagery of feminine beauty so thoroughly associated with the lust of the eyes and the flesh, the image of the perpetual virgin provides a balm for the soul. She has never dabbled in the dirtiness and filth that typifies romantic entanglements in the internet age.

It should be said that while the red pill has poisoned the Trad conception of femininity, it’s far better than swallowing the red pill without religion. Outside the four walls of the church, society has been poisoned by the black pill of Satanic misogyny. This is the active ingredient that must be removed from the red pill completely, though its effects are attenuated in the presence of Christian tradition.

The vision of Mary allows the trad minded man to recapture some of his self worth, as it redeems motherly love, and thereby allows him to trust the affection of his own mother. Without the attenuating effects of Christianity, the black pill of satanic misogyny projects an image of complete self interest onto women. Women have sought liberation from the power of overbearing husbands since the times of Abigail and Nabal; the affordance of choice was a virtue of Chivalry, demonstrated in the stories of Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady, and The Wife of Bath’s tale.

But the material and cultural advances of the twentieth century, contraception, abortion, feminism and sexual liberation, have unleashed a horrific new vision about the nature of men and women. The code of chivalry tells us that women are deceived into abandoning their offspring; the black pill preaches that it’s a woman’s most basic instinct.

Thus, the positive impact of Marian devotion is that it provides a means for men to trust some women, in some aspects. If Mary was ever faithful to her son, then women are capable of living up to a motherly ideal. A husband may not be able to trust his wife’s devotion to himself, but he can trust her devotion to their children. He can also trust his own mother’s affection; his childhood was not a sham.

But this worldview provides no compassion for women who fail to become mothers. Many men who proclaim the name of Christ believe that God desires a world in which a woman who procures an abortion is punished by death. Death is also the solution to rid the world of harlotry, promiscuity, and adultery. They fail to recognize the words of Adam on their own lips, “it was the woman you put here with me.’’ In an effort to truly believe the lies they have imbibed, that the root cause of their inability to resist pornography and sex is due to the innate nature of women, they cast stones as evidence that they are without sin.

The Problem with Mary

What then was the problem with the chivalrous route? Devotion to Mary led the fair knights into the ditch on the other side of the road. The code of chivalry did not denigrate women, but elevated them to such a lofty status, that no man was worthy of their affection. Epitomized by Dante’s devotion to fair Beatrice, the code of chivalry transformed women into angelic beings too noble and pure to fraternize with the likes of mortal men.

The spiritual tone of the middle ages was heavily influenced by the monastic movement, which emphasized a life of sacrifice. To accept a life of celibacy in service to God can be a beautiful act of worship, and should be embraced as a potential path for those who are called to it. But in elevating the priests and monks to the highest place in the social and spiritual hierarchy, celibacy was elevated as a higher virtue than the broader category of chastity, which refers to the proper use of sex according to any given circumstance. Forbidden for the unmarried, but a vital practice within marriage. This hierarchy of values influenced the conduct of those under the code of chivalry. The knight errant served his lord as the clergy served God- through voluntary self-sacrifice - and the ladies were revered like the blessed virgin.

Like all celibate movements, their reproductive pathways were limited to conversion and mimesis. When some great external threat lingered, the call to a life of service held an appeal to young men, and the practice of chivalry could swell. But in the times of peace, when fathers would typically focus on their sons, there was less opportunity to transfer the wisdom gained through a life of service by knights who forsook families. Or to put it another way, the elevated status of knighthood prevented the code of chivalry from spreading among the peasantry.

Marriage was seen as a lesser path, but married people are the ones who reproduce, so as the population of the ignorant overwhelmed the elite, the values of chivalry began to fade. The critical error lies in the reason why celibacy was elevated above marriage; the invisible qualities of the “spiritual” were viewed as more holy than the physical and material. Much like the misogyny that plagues the “traditionalists”, this gnostic error finds its roots in the satanic hatred of embodied life; born from the prideful disdain for the Incarnate Christ.

How did Mary understand marriage?

How can we recover the best parts of chivalry, necessary to combat the misandry and misogyny that result from patriarchy enforced by might, without falling into the trap of asceticism? I believe that Mary is the one who shows us the way forward. Mary was a Jewish woman, and while marriage is not unique to Judaism, the book of Genesis is uncommon among creation myths in the importance that it places on marriage.

The marriage theme runs throughout the entire corpus of the Hebrew scriptures and the Greek New Testament, with Christ fulfilling God’s role as the bridegroom, with redeemed humanity as his bride. The church has held fast to this imagery, but it has done so with a critical error. As the early church began to grow among the gentiles, an early stream of nominalist error slipped in. It is a classic error of cultural translation. The words for wedding, marriages, husbands and wives, could easily change from Hebrew to Greek. But the underlying concepts beneath the words did not make the crucial change.

The Christian concept of marriage over time waffles between the austere, rational and philosophic concepts of Platonic ideals, and the brutal superstitions of pagan anthropology, that categorized women as the ontological inferiors of men. Holding these two sides in tension, the latter could suffice for the households of the laity, but it was adherence to the former view that set apart the marriage relationship between Christ and his bride. This “spiritual” ideal of a perfect metaphysical union between opposing forces provided the pattern, which was then mapped onto the relationship between Mary and Joseph.

But this concept is utterly foreign to the Hebrew meaning of marriage, laid out in the Old Testament. The metaphor consistently applied throughout the Hebrew scripture is of a coming wedding between God and Israel. The second chapter of Genesis provides the microcosm of everything that unfolds after; the bridegroom searches throughout all of creation, uncovering every stone and cataloging every creature before reaching the conclusion that God wanted him to understand; no partner was sufficient to be the man’s equal. After putting him in a deep sleep, God crafts a woman from the bones of the man; a creature simultaneously more familiar and unique than any other being in existence. The vision of her beauty results in spontaneous praise.

This early story, complete in its cyclical pattern of a problem discovered, explored, and resolved through a symbolic act of sacrificial death and resurrection, occurs in its entirety before the entrance of sin and death into the story. It is recapitulated in the escape and rescue of the flood, the exodus, and the exile, and the reunification of Israel, but at every point, the strongest symbolic reminder of this pattern is seen through the lens of marriage. Idolatry is adultery, faithfulness leads to consummation and rebirth. It’s seen in the liturgy of the temple, the cycle of the annual feasts, and the ministry of the prophets.

For one to properly understand the worship of the God of Israel, across all its symbols and metaphors, they must first understand the significance of marriage.

What marriage is

The biblical concept of marriage is very simple, and it is laid out in very few steps, right from that second chapter.

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”^[7]

I include the concluding verse from Genesis 2 because it is equally important to understanding the quality of the first marriage, which was very good. In the first part, marriage is defined by the separation from the household of one’s parents, from childhood to adulthood, and the union of man and wife. This separation and unification is symbolized by being united under one roof, a simple tent covering the bride and groom. For Adam and Eve, the garden of Eden was provided as a home of their own by their father, God.

To become “one flesh” is to be united bodily. It is completed through the consummation of sex, accompanied by a private sign of blood (the privately held proof of virginity, a blood stained sheet kept by the parents of the bride to protect against false accusation) and the later public proof is the fruit born of the womb.

The marriage ceremony is as simple as that. When a man took a woman into his tent and made love to her, she became his wife. But without those very simple elements, there is no marriage. A husband is not a husband, and a wife is not a wife.

To be certain, there are details about the marriage of Mary and Joseph that are unique. But to insist that they never consummated their union is to insist that they were never married. It is the deceptive appearance of marriage, one that makes the Gospel untrue to every reader of the first century.

The bible neither gives us a verse that states “Mary remained in a state of perpetual virginity throughout her marriage to Joseph” nor one that explicitly says “Mary and Joseph consummated their union eight weeks after the birth of Jesus.”, but in the context of that time and place, the naturally understood interpretation is fairly obvious:

When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.

This verse has been tread and retread, and while there is a loophole to be wriggled through with the word “until”, I think there is later evidence that provides a clearer picture of Mary’s understanding of marriage.

The Miracle

In the Gospel of John, Mary is introduced as the catalyst that launches the ministry of Jesus and brings about his first miracle. The setting is a wedding feast that has run out of wine. The fact that Mary would see this as a crisis worthy of requesting a miracle from the Son of God should cause us to consider her attitude towards such things. As a good Jewish woman, she viewed marriage as a time for robust celebration, and a wedding without wine was a tragedy.

To resist the urge of theologians (this time Baptists) to impart a superficial veneer of piety on the inhabitants of ancient Israel, it should be noted that this wine was used for the normal purposes people use wine, to intoxicate and “to gladden the heart of man,”^[8] not simply to enjoy the complex taste, but to make use of its effects. This is made clear by the words of the host, who responds to Jesus' miracle by saying “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.”^[9]

But to step back, let’s examine the beginning of this event:

When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew)^[10]

At His mother’s request, Jesus’ initial response is “my hour has not yet come.” What does this mean? What hour? The hour to begin his ministry? He contradicts that notion by fulfilling her request. It is not yet his hour to fulfill his ultimate role as the bridegroom, which occurs just like Adam in concert with his death and resurrection; the formation of his bride (the church) from the blood and water, spilled from his side.

But in another sense, he does fulfill a role seeded just as deep in scripture. Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, about whom Jacob prophesied

Binding his foal to the vine

and his donkey's colt to the choice vine,

he has washed his garments in wine

and his vesture in the blood of grapes.

His eyes are darker than wine,

and his teeth whiter than milk.

There are allusions to many later moments of scripture; First is the mention of the colt, a foal of a donkey, an image restated by the prophet Zechariah in anticipation of the triumphal entry, a moment which precedes a coronation.

But the most striking image is found in John’s apocalypse: “He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God.”^[11] This occurs when “the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready;”^[12]

The water used by Jesus was for purification, which was used to bathe the body and wash clothing that were ceremonially unclean. Within this miracle, the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, and the crucifixion, there is a unification of water and wine, blood and wine, and blood and water.

What this miracle provides is a taste of what is yet to come. A taste of the best wine, and the occasion for serving the best wine is at the last, the ultimate moment, the ultimate wedding feast.

But why did Mary push for Jesus to perform this miracle, and why did He bring up the questions about timing? One thing to realize is that Hebrew women are not ignorant of their own scriptures, and in the years prior to marriage, (or in the absence of children), they often make astute observations of the patterns in scripture.

Consider again Hannah, the closest analogue to Mary in the Hebrew Scriptures.

And she vowed a vow and said, “O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.”

Not only is she smart enough to realize that the omniscient God of the universe does not require words to be spoken audibly to for prayers to be heard, but what she asks for specifically reflects an understanding of the Hebrew scripture; invoking the vow of the Nazirite from the book of Numbers.

When God grants her request, she sings a prophetic song, which concludes with these phrases:

The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces;

against them he will thunder in heaven.

The Lord will judge the ends of the earth;

he will give strength to his king

and exalt the horn of his anointed.^[13]

This is spoken at a time when Israel has no king. Her newborn son will be the one to anoint the first two Kings of Israel. But other phrases bear an unmistakable similarity to the words of Mary’s magnificat. Hannah speaks:

The bows of the mighty are broken,

but the feeble bind on strength.

Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread,

but those who were hungry have ceased to hunger.^[14]

While Mary echoes:

he has brought down the mighty from their thrones

and exalted those of humble estate;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich he has sent away empty.^[15]

Hannah’s words were a revelation of understanding, pointing to the pattern of fulfillment woven throughout the first acts of scripture that were still developing in her day. The instructions for choosing a King in deuteronomy presuppose the eventuality of his future coming. Yet Mary has been told that her son will be the king, the ultimate king. And she has a wealth of writing to draw upon that Hannah did not. So she speaks of the pattern in its entirety, spanning from the time of Abraham to the present.

He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,

as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”^[16]

And Mary continued to observe a great many things, from the prophecies of Simeon and Anna, to the coming of the wisemen, their sojourn in Egypt, their return to Nazareth, and the remarkable encounter in the temple at the time of Jesus adolescence. “And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.”^[17]

Mary had a long time to consider the implications of all the scripture. The custom of the day was for the male students to study the Torah, and the commentaries on the torah. But the women were more likely to study the latter writings; not only the narratives of Samuel and Kings, but the songs, psalms and poems as well. When she thought of her son as the future king, she would have had to studied Solomon, the greatest king, and his writings, and perhaps she would have considered that the gifts of the wise men where pointing to something written by that wisest of Kings:

What is that coming up from the wilderness

like columns of smoke,

perfumed with myrrh and frankincense,

with all the fragrant powders of a merchant?^[18]

And what was it that was coming out of the wilderness?

Go out, O daughters of Zion, and look upon King Solomon, with the crown with which his mother crowned him on the day of his wedding, on the day of the gladness of his heart. ^[19]

In this scripture, Mary saw that her presence was required for a special moment, the moment when the King would be revealed, her son’s coronation, would occur on his wedding day, and that it would be a day of gladness of the heart. The obvious symbol for such gladness was an abundance of wine.

The coincidence of finding herself at this wedding feast, with her son, in the presence of his followers, and his public baptism, where her nephew the prophet presided over a divine anointing performed by the Holy Spirit, must have seemed extremely serendipitous.

But in that moment, her son refused to acknowledge the greater significance of what she was perceiving. When Jesus opposed her, perhaps she remembered the words spoken to her by Simeon decades earlier;

“Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”^[20]

And while the guests of the wedding received a taste of the ultimate fulfillment, Mary received the foretaste of “the sword” that would later pierce her soul. Some years later, she would be present to see a crown placed upon her sons head, but while “King Solomon made himself a carriage from the wood of Lebanon.”,^[21] The carpenter’s son would arrive at the place of his coronation upon a cross made from rougher timber, to ransom a captive bride.

What is yet to come?

It’s not perfectly clear what Mary expected at that moment, but it was something that more closely reflected the type of excess we typically connect to the wine gods of Greece and Rome. Yet while the worship of those gods are typified by reckless abandon, and a destructive liberty, enjoyed by the strong at the expense of the weak, both Hannah and Mary look forward to a day of justice when the powerful and wealthy are sent away, when God fills the hungry and exalts those of humble estate.

This is the kind of feast that occurs in a land of promise; a land flowing with milk and honey. This is the imagery of redemptive creation. Things that are corrupted are not lost; swords and spears can be reshaped into plowshares and pruning hooks; lions become vegetarians, and water turns into wine. “Wine is a mocker and beer a brawler”- but when there is only peace and goodwill between men, alcohol finds no reason to mock or quarrel; no purpose remains other than gladdening the heart.

Unfortunately, our world is not yet fully immersed in such a reality. Alcohol presents a serious danger if it is not handled with care and wisdom. Relying on scripture alone, Baptists and Pentecostals who preach total abstinence have a hard time defending the teetotaling position. Many of them rely on useful fiction to sell their point to those in doubt. “The wine in the Bible wasn’t as strong as wine today; it was basically juice; it didn’t really have much alcohol in it.” But Welch’s grape juice does little to gladden the heart; too much can lead to diabetes and heart disease.

The dangers of alcohol and its abuse are intrinsic to its great power and potential for glory. Wine without alcohol presents little danger, but also serves little purpose. The same principle is even more true of sex. The horrible consequences of its abuse have plagued humanity since the days of Noah, inspiring warnings in the myths and stories of every tribe and tongue. Yet to remove the risks of sex from the marriage bed is to rob it of the very power of creation.

We have been living through the disaster of sex without consequences provided by the pill and the sexual revolution for nearly a century. Returning to its ancient analog may fix some problems about how men view women, by clearing away the smut stains from their eyes. But seeking to repair the crisis around relationships, marriage and childlessness with increased devotion to the sterile tradition of a celibate Mary seems akin to trusting in the faith and logic of the prophets of Baal.

Instead, let us recapture the story of Mary and Joseph, and redeem it to live within the context of the world in which they lived. The temporary sacrifice of abstaining from consummation then becomes an act of true devotion to God; one that gives Jesus the lived experience that prepares him for the ministry. Instead of a chaste couple devoted solely to their son, the son witnesses the abundant joy of parents who love each other in the fullest sense; a love that multiplies and grows. He learns that their uncommon happiness is the result of waiting until the fullness of time, but that when that fullness arrives, it is to be embraced without reservation.

Which brings us to the final point. Why did God choose Joseph to raise Jesus? In calling him the carpenter, who was also the son of a carpenter, we know that Jesus learned at the side of his earthly father. But Jesus’ primary purpose was not sawing lumber or building houses. He had a more important mission to complete. Joseph’s absence at the wedding of Cana, and the rest of Jesus' adult ministry points to the conclusion that he has already passed away. Perhaps this is one of the data points suggesting an advanced age. But perhaps, in some other untold story, he taught his son and his apprentice a final lesson; the kind that can only be taught once.

Jesus told his disciples “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Devotees of Mary love the idea that Jesus’ grace is a maternal inheritance. Yet his love is distinctly masculine, and sacrificial. When Pauls speaks of Christ’s love, he uses it as an example for husbands; “love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her”. We know of one sanctifying act on the part of Joseph; his willingness to go through with the marriage, and accept Jesus as his own son. But perhaps we can infer that God chose Joseph to teach Jesus’ how to fulfill his ultimate purpose; how to die well, and for whom.

In the Biblical tradition, when the eldest brother dies without issue, the duty falls to the next son to raise up children in his name. Joseph fulfilled that role by raising a son that both was and was not his own, and he raised Jesus to live up to the name of his Father in Heaven. The blessed mother suffered the death of a son who bore no sons of His own, so that we could be brought into the family of God. Jesus’ sacrifice provided us with the opportunity and the responsibility to partake of what he did not. He told the blessed Mary, “My hour has not yet come.” For us, the path forward has been cleared. The wine is poured, our bride is waiting. What would Mary want us to do?

^[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception

^[2] Ibid

^[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_James

^[4]