THE TRANSFORMATIVE PRESENCE OF THE THEOTOKOS: AID IN OUR

SUFFERING, ILLNESS, AND HEALING

Thesis

Submitted to

The College of Arts and Sciences of the

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

The Degree of

Master of Arts in Theological Studies

By

Rebecca Judge

Dayton, Ohio

August 2021

THE TRANSFORMATIVE PRESENCE OF THE THEOTOKOS: AID IN OUR

SUFFERING, ILLNESS, AND HEALING

Name: Judge, Rebecca

APPROVED BY:

Meghan Henning, Ph.D. Faculty Advisor

Silviu Bunta, Ph.D. Faculty Reader

Jana Bennett, Ph.D. Faculty Reader and Department of Religious Studies Chair

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ABSTRACT

THE TRANSFORMATIVE PRESENCE OF THE THEOTOKOS: AID IN OUR

SUFFERING, ILLNESS, AND HEALING

Name: Judge, Rebecca University of Dayton

Advisor: Meghan Henning, Ph.D.

This project seeks to approach how the person of Mary, the mother of Jesus, is an aid in our transformation toward wholeness in light of the human experiences of disability and suffering. From a disability studies hermeneutic, the term “wholeness” is reframed through an examination of Paul’s theology of weakness identified in 2

Corinthians 12 where he boasts of his thorn in the flesh. In this new framework, weakness, difference, and dependency are reimagined as sources of unity and as integral aspects of the human experience. From this perspective, wholeness and healing are not achieved by the return to a previous state of idealized health or the attainment of perfectly abled bodies, but through the indwelling of the crucified Christ in the believer.

For early Christians, illness, suffering, and death were intelligible through an integration with the ascetic way of life which maintained a mindfulness of death and an understanding that the believer was called to orient themselves fully to the cross in both times of illness and health. In dialogue with an ascetic framework, this concept of the indwelling of Christ found in 2 Cor. 12 is identified as a Christification of the human person, also known as deification or theosis. Bringing together a disability studies hermeneutic and the ascetic framework, wholeness is further clarified as the enfleshment of the crucified and transfigured Christ who transforms our sufferings into sources of life.

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After establishing that the fullness of the human person is accomplished through mystical union with the crucified Christ, this project brings into conversation the ancient conceptions of illness, suffering, and healing with early Christian devotion to Mary to uncover new ways to respond to the modern experiences of disability and suffering.

Through a survey of various biblical, extracanonical, and apocryphal texts throughout antiquity, this work explores Mary’s intercessory role in the lives of early Christians who called upon her in times of need or distress. Romanos’s hymnography from the sixth century portrays Mary as one whose voice penetrates both the heavenly and earthly realms. In the examined hymns, Mary speaks the joy of the resurrection even amid the crushing grief she feels in coming to learn of her son’s eventual death on the cross. The participatory nature of this early Christian devotional practice led believers to integrate their voices with the Virgin’s, uttering a collective cry of deep pain and resurrectional hope. This cry, merging both the agony of death and the joy of new life, serves as a movement toward a more complete restoration of the crucified Christ in the human person. Together in this dialogue, disability studies, early Christian asceticism, and

Marian studies upend our traditional notions of weakness and strength. These discourses challenge us to grasp that our call to transformation in this life and the next is not grounded in the removal of suffering and difference, but in the recognition of the glorified and crucified Christ within ourselves and among our communities.

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Dedicated to all who feel alone in their suffering

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe many thanks to the various mentors, friends, and organizations who have dwelled with me amid the tensions and sifted through the weeds with me over the years, culminating in this work. The strains between suffering, death, and new life – major themes in this work – were first experienced within my own family. Through the aches and pains, my family has been a major support system and source of deep joy in my life. I have been amazed by the new life and healing that have been realized after recurring loss and distance. I remain in a state of wonder and awe as I reflect on the many ways that my family experiences have informed my explorations in this work. Their endless encouragement for me to pursue my loves, to fly into unknown territory, and to fall into

God’s peaceful embrace has nourished me on this academic and spiritual adventure.

My time at Saint Joseph’s University significantly challenged and stretched my theological reflection. Through the faithful accompaniment of professors, campus ministers, and friends, I was encouraged to wholeheartedly articulate my entangled feelings and my faith that flickered from day to day. The dedicated assistance that Erin

Noonan, Tom Sheibley, Tinamarie Stolz, Dr. Bill Madges, and Dr. Brendan Sammon offered me during my undergraduate experience motivated me to continue asking questions even if simple inquiries were all I could muster at the time. Thank you for not offering me platitudes despite my longing for quick solutions.

I am deeply indebted to all those I encountered during my year of service with the

Bon Secours Volunteer Ministry. I was accepted, welcomed, and nourished in a safe space when I was forced to reckon both my stubbornness and my yearning. Thank you to

vi the BSVM staff and my mentors Steve DeLaney and Bob Shenk who listened endlessly as I found my voice and wrestled with concepts of healing and grief. My BSVM community stood with me in my growing pains and encouraged me to embrace the inner strength I had been suppressing. I am truly grateful for the patients I encountered in my hospital ministry as we shared Christ’s compassion, healing, and liberation with one another.

My experience at the University of Dayton has similarly been a voyage between sorrow and glory. Unexpected losses, tragic deaths, disease, and disappointments have overwhelmed my time here. Despite these sufferings, I have been sustained by my students in my ministry who explore with passion, search for harmony with God, and invite their peers to partake in the discovery of new joys in the faith. I am thankful for the lasting relationships I have cultivated here, especially for my friendships with my fellow campus ministry graduate assistants. In this space, I have tangibly seen how healing extends beyond the removal of illness or suffering and instead can entail the simple beauty of sharing stories over late night cones of ice cream. I am grateful for the mentors who encouraged me to study and minister from a true rootedness in Christ. Finally, thank you to my advisor, Dr. Meghan Henning, who has continuously affirmed my heart for ministry and theological studies. You have shown me how to merge reverence and dissonance in my scholarship while remaining unafraid to pursue important questions which shepherd me into deeper communion with the crucified Christ.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... iii

DEDICATION ...... v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... vi

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER ONE: A DISABILITY STUDIES PERSPECTIVE ON SUFFERING

AND WEAKNESS ...... 10

A Brief Introduction to a Disability Studies Hermeneutic ...... 11

The Recontextualization of Suffering ...... 15

The Universality of Suffering ...... 15

Facing Our Weaknesses ...... 20

Disability in the New Testament – Paul’s Skolops and His Christly Possession...... 22

Wholeness Discovered in Weakness ...... 23

Movement Toward the Cross through Christly Possession ...... 27

Implications of a Christly Possession – Transformed Individuals and

Community ...... 31

CHAPTER TWO: A FRAMEWORK FOR SUFFERING AND THE TRUE

HUMAN BEING ...... 36

Ascetic Framework ...... 37

Asceticism and the Function of the Body ...... 39

Purity of Heart ...... 42

Transformation: Martyrdom and Redemption ...... 45

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An Examination of John 6: The True Human Being and the True Food ...... 49

Origins of Illness and Disease...... 54

God Is Not the Author ...... 56

Disobedience, Not Personal Sin ...... 58

A Positive Spiritual Function of Illness? ...... 62

Wholeness as Deification into the Crucified and Glorified Christ ...... 67

TRANSITION TO MARIAN STUDIES...... 72

CHAPTER THREE: MARY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT AND EARLY

CHRISTIAN DEVOTION...... 74

Mary in the New Testament ...... 80

The Figure of Mary Beyond the New Testament ...... 84

Extracanonical Texts and the Patristics ...... 84

Reflections on the Eve-Mary Parallel ...... 87

Protevangelium of James ...... 88

Encountering Mary at the Foot of the Cross ...... 90

Reception History...... 91

Filial Concern ...... 93

The Beloved Disciple and Spiritual Motherhood...... 93

Hour Motif ...... 95

Christification at the Cross...... 97

CHAPTER FOUR: THE RESTORATIVE VOICE OF THE VIRGIN ...... 102

Romanos’s Kontakia and the Role of the Virgin ...... 106

Merging Lamentation and Joy ...... 111

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On the Nativity II ...... 113

On Mary at the Cross ...... 117

Grief as a Catalyst toward Christification...... 120

FRAGMENTED PRAYERS, CONCLUSIONS, AND MUSINGS ...... 125

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 133

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INTRODUCTION

Second grade was a momentous year in terms of my developing relationship with

Mary, the mother of Jesus. In some ways, I matured in this relationship, taking seriously the role of playing the Blessed Mother in my elementary school’s Christmas pageant.

Determined to play the part well, I imitated Mary by mastering my graceful pregnant waddle and my look of holy bliss as the Jesus baby doll emerged from under my wrappings and into my little arms. Yet despite my convincing performance, my relationship with Mary felt distant. I didn’t really know who she was or how she impacted my daily life as a second grader. After my starring role, I did not think about her much. But something happened later that year that quite literally felt like a shattering of our relationship.

One day I was packing up my bookbag as the clock inched toward the dismissal.

My eagerness to head home was on full display as I swiftly swung my bag over my shoulder with unknowingly great aim. While heading back to my desk, I heard a resounding crash. The end of day rustles of my peers immediately silenced, and I stopped in my tracks as I quickly realized that the crash was a result of my hastiness. I slowly turned around to see shards of glass scattered across the blue and white tiles. Cheeks flushed and eyes welling up, I counseled myself to stay calm. But all I could muster was hanging my head low with my hair sprawled across my face, shielding the bewildered and judgmental stares of my classmates. I had broken the Mary statue that had been resting atop our prayer table for the duration of that year.

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Despite my teacher’s efforts to simultaneously comfort me and clean up the mess

I had made, I felt deeply distressed. Not only was I embarrassed by the careless mistake I had made and worried about judgment from my classmates, but I was also concerned about my relationship with Mary. Did she feel any pain – either physical or emotional – when the statue broke? Was she angry with me? I was worried that I had hurt Mary, even though I could reason it was only a statue. I internally whispered, I’m so sorry, Mary. As a young girl, I remember thinking that Mary probably wasn’t too mad with me after receiving my genuine apology.

While this is a memory that makes me smile today, I am reminded of the ways it led me to ponder the way that I relate to Mary. For the first time, I felt like Mary was right there beside me. Even though I initially imagined her being disappointed about the commotion I had caused in the classroom, Mary’s presence felt tangible in my midst. In the Christmas pageant when assuming the role of the Blessed Mother, I imagined myself imitating Mary’s presence as she was pregnant and searching for a place to give birth.

While this reenactment was impactful, I did not necessarily relate to Mary in that experience. I was only eight years old after all! But the act of suppressing my tears and whispering my sorrows to Mary after breaking the statue led me to relate to her in a very direct way. For years I wondered what it might mean to relate to Mary. As I matured in my faith, I grew to turn toward her in similar moments of distress. Her assistance felt accessible, and calling upon her name came naturally to me.

Some years later, my family was unexpectedly faced with illness and division, realities which I thought would never plague my household. I was unprepared to answer some very deep and probing questions that challenged my faith in God. Why was this

2 illness taking such a detrimental toll on my family? What was God’s role in causing and healing the illness which impacted those I loved? And what does it mean to now have someone I love labeled by society as disabled? Many years of my high school and young adult life were consumed by wrestling with God and with myself as I struggled to process and express the anguish and fear which led me to close myself off to others.

As I found peace with some of these questions over time with the assistance of mentors, prayer, and counseling, I felt called to the work of ministry. Unsurprisingly, I encountered various students, patients, and coworkers with similar questions that had haunted me for years. When faced with any sort of illness, suffering, or tragedy, many of those with whom I ministered expressed feelings of spiritual abandonment. God seemed far from their suffering, for example, passively allowing their grandmother to die from cancer and sitting idly by despite the numerous prayers that had been offered. Was God even listening to their cries? Did God care? Conversely, I encountered those who reasoned their way out of the pain of suffering. Many believed that God, like a puppeteer pulling the strings of a marionette, caused or at the very least allowed their loved ones to suffer. I witnessed the ease with which my students in ministry reasoned their way through their pain: Even though I am devastated by the tragic loss of my friend, God must be trying to teach me a lesson because everything happens for a reason. I shouldn’t dwell in my pain; God brought my family closer together as a result of this loss.

While these reactions may seem exaggerated, they are very much real responses to illness, suffering, and death that I have encountered during my time in hospital and young adult ministry. The question of when and how to pray for healing in the midst of such experiences has caused immense spiritual unrest due to the inability to fully

3 comprehend the role of God in human suffering. Our modern temptation in making meaning of suffering, illness, and death is to reside in the extremes: either God is the cause of my suffering (meaning pain must be passively endured in accepting the will of

God), or God is completely removed from my experience of suffering since God is all- loving and merciful (which risks feelings of spiritual abandonment). This spiritual unrest is exacerbated further by the addition of the phenomenon of disability, an experience which has historically been named to be unfavorable, anomalous, and even sinful.

When dealing specifically with the phenomenon of disability, the question of

God’s role and the concept of healing become even more delicate since they involve the very identity and existence of persons. Within Christianity, there have been various disheartening attempts to uncover its nature and purpose: disability is (1) inflicted upon a person as a punishment for sin, (2) a physical or cognitive abnormality that must be eradicated and may even involve the work of demons, or (3) romanticized as signifying a closeness to Christ, resulting in infantilization and an invalidation of the real systemic barriers that cause difficulties for people with disabilities in our world. Although modern disciplines have made advancements in understanding and celebrating the phenomenon of disability, a collective disposition of disillusionment and fear remains for many.

When illness, suffering, and various forms of bodily and cognitive differences are brought into conversation with the experience of faith, many of us are conditioned to pray for the removal of pain and for the restoration of a previous, and very much idealized, state of “wholeness.” According to the modern conception, the “whole” human person is not the one who is dependent, vulnerable, or ill, but rather, the one who is independent, healthy, and rational. When the human person is conceived in this way and when God is

4 called upon only as healer, we may be left feeling empty and abandoned when we discover that our suffering cannot merely be prayed away. Our human desire to eradicate all pain, suffering, and difference has resulted in isolation from God as well as the exclusion of those in our society whose expression of life makes us face the painful reality of our own fragility.

In the search for meaning amid trial, we distort the nature of God, invalidate our pain, and misconstrue the very nuanced conceptions of wholeness and healing that are offered to us through our Christian faith. Attentive to the complexities of the phenomenon of disability, the following question is pertinent to the Christian who searches for meaning in the midst of trial: how might we as humans better understand the experiences of suffering, illness, and difference as movements toward transformation and liberation without invalidating the authentic experiences of pain and the barriers of systemic oppression that are often intertwined with the experience of disability?

Given the deep pain, confusion, and frustration surrounding wholeness and healing (and even the very elimination of people with disabilities in our society and in the

Church), I hope to arrive at a more comprehensive and hospitable understanding of suffering in the human experience. To help explicate this complex paradox between suffering and salvation present in the Christian tradition and in our modern conception of disability, I will bring the following discourses into dialogue with one another: disability studies, early Christian asceticism, and Marian studies. These three discourses, I believe, offer us a great deal of wisdom about how to lean into the tensions between suffering, death, and new life.

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I will begin this work by drawing upon literature in both disability studies and early Christian asceticism to restore a proper framework for understanding suffering.

After demonstrating that both suffering and disability cannot be avoided in the human experience, I will discuss how a new narrative is needed – one that acknowledges how our inherent dependency upon one another serves as the very pathway to transformation through Christ. To demonstrate this movement toward Christ and new life, I will examine the passage from 2 Corinthians 12 in which Paul speaks of his thorn in the flesh and boasts of his weaknesses. This passage is often foundational for scholars who seek to frame a disability studies hermeneutic for readers. Paul’s thorn serves a positive function which grants him access to the glorifying presence of the crucified Christ. Moreover, this passage displays how Christ upends our traditional systems of wholeness and healing, opening us up to the indwelling of Christ himself. Exploring the meaning of this indwelling of Christ, I will highlight in the second chapter the early Christian ascetic worldview which informed people’s conceptions of illness and healing in relation to God.

According to Christians in the first few centuries, suffering was believed to be an essential aspect of life as they hoped to achieve purity of heart through the transformation of one’s inner reality. By contextualizing illness, suffering, and healing within the ascetic framework which is deeply connected to Christ and a mindfulness of death, I propose that our true fullness as human beings is discovered through mystical union with Christ on the cross.

After exploring the concepts of illness, suffering, and death from a disability studies hermeneutic and ascetic worldview, the second half of this work will turn to the devotional practices of early Christians who called upon Mary in times of suffering or

6 need. Chapter three will begin with a brief survey of Mary’s portrayal in the Gospel accounts and how such preliminary stories developed into widespread devotion prior to the Council of Ephesus in 431 where Mary was proclaimed as Theotokos. Like disability studies and asceticism, the history of Marian piety and later Marian cult throughout antiquity was intimately tied to themes of the Christian’s relationship with suffering and the crucified Christ. I will turn to a biblical passage which fittingly encapsulates these themes: Mary at the foot of the cross in John 19:25-27. First addressing common exegetical questions which arise in this text, I will also discuss how the passage relates to our call to mystical union with Christ, or “Christification” as early Christians understood it. In conversation with scholars of the past and present, I will question if this passage serves either as an indication of Jesus’s filial concern for his mother or if it makes a case for Mary’s spiritual motherhood, two major interpretive lenses that have prevailed throughout this passage’s reception history. More importantly, this chapter will address how the passage concerning Mary and her son during the crucifixion calls us as

Christians toward a more intimate union with Christ and his ascent on the cross.

Expanding even further upon this image of Mary and Jesus at Calvary, I will conclude this study in my fourth chapter with examining a sixth-century form of hymnography by Romanos the Melodist. The two hymns which will be investigated in detail, On the Nativity II and On Mary at the Cross, authentically give voice to the tensions between suffering, death, and new life. We will quite vividly experience how

Mary was called upon uniquely as an authoritative intercessor – not as one who merely eradicated the suffering of those who called out to her, but as one who used her voice to speak the joy of the resurrection to all. In this work of embracing Mary as an intercessor

7 for all of God’s people, my concern is neither to explicitly grow in knowledge or theory of Mary, nor is my concern doctrinal. Rather, my aim in turning to the history of Marian devotion is to recover a relational Marian theology that impels us to recognize the indwelling of the crucified Christ in our world, others, and our very selves.

With a preliminary outline of this work in place, I return to my moment of distress after I knocked down the Mary statue in my second-grade classroom. Though this story reflects a moment of deep embarrassment and concern of mine as a child, this is the first memory I have of pondering the way that Mary and I related to one another. Even though

I was afraid that I had hurt her feelings, I called upon her for stability in the depths of my blushes and dread. This story seems so juvenile to me in some ways, and yet it also reveals a great deal about how we can relate to Mary in our experiences of pain and grief.

Although I tried to hold back my tears that day in second grade, I have learned to express my sorrows and frustrations in healthier ways beyond repression and avoidance. I have come to embrace that the expression of pain in the face of illness, suffering, and death is important and valid.

Yet simultaneously, we are called to orient ourselves completely toward Christ, even amid tragedy. If we accept that suffering is an inevitable aspect of the human experience, how do we begin to balance the debilitating pain and the sustaining hope that are intricately woven in this Christian life? If our aim is to lean into the tension between death and new life, we must work to confront and explore our widely held assumptions about God, the human family, and our very selves as God’s beloved. With the image of the Passion at the heart of this inquiry, this work will continuously return to how the crucified Christ inverts our traditional notions of power and weakness, applying not only

8 to the experience of disability, but also to all persons who will inevitably encounter various forms of suffering in the human experience. Let us begin this reorientation toward Christ and the cross by reflecting on what it means to be a full, flourishing human being from the perspective of a disability studies hermeneutic.

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CHAPTER ONE

A DISABILITY STUDIES PERSPECTIVE ON SUFFERING AND WEAKNESS

Through the prayers of the Mother of God, O Merciful One, blot out the multitude of my transgressions. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great mercy; according to the fullness of your compassion blot out my offence.

Tone 6. Having placed all your hope.

Sovereign and all-holy one, do not trust me to protection which is merely human, but accept the pleading of your supplicant, anguish has hold of me, nor can I endure the hostile demons’ arrows; no shelter can I find, no, nor place of refuge, wretch that I am, from every side I am assailed, and, save you, I find none that offers solace, Queen of all creation, Protection of the faithful and our hope, do not despise my entreaty, but take action for my good.

No one who has recourse to you goes from your presence put to shame and rejected, O Mother of God, pure Virgin, but asking for grace they receive gifts and benefits most advantageous to the plea they make. For the afflicted, transformation and liberation for the ailing are you, O Mother of God, most pure Virgin: save your City, save us all. To all those embattled, you are peace, you are calm to those tossed by the tempest the one Protection of the faithful.1

1 “Service of the Little Canon of Supplication to the Most Holy Mother of God,” trans. Archimandrite Ephrem and David Melling, Anastasis, updated November 3, 2008, https://web.archive.org/web/20160306075225/http://anastasis.org.uk/lit-parak.htm. 10

This except from the Service of the Little Canon of Supplication to the Most Holy

Mother of God, a ninth-century Orthodox composition, is a treasure preserved within the

Christian tradition which offers great wisdom for our exploration of suffering and salvation. Notice how the prayer calls upon Mary as one who provides protection, compassionate shelter, and deliverance. This plea of supplication does not dwell in a detached call for bodily healing. While the Christian does indeed ask for relief and a cure, the healing that is requested seems to be accomplished through Mary’s intercession and her transformative presence as opposed to complete eradication of the suffering itself.

The pleas in this hymn are grounded in a desire for accompaniment. Moreover, this prayer for healing is focused on the concept of transformation as opposed to the attainment of a former state of perfect health. The many nuanced ways that this prayer presents the Christian’s relationship to Mary and to healing are foundational to our exploration of our response to suffering. Before diving into the topics of healing and

Mary’s role in our suffering, however, we need to examine the human person who takes on this suffering. What qualities constitute the fullness of the human experience? If we are searching for “wholeness” in this life, does that mean we will necessarily be free of all suffering? To answer these preliminary questions, we will frame our inquiry within a disability studies hermeneutic which opens us to a genuine conception of the flourishing human being.

A Brief Introduction to a Disability Studies Hermeneutic

While many people view the experience of disability as an unlikely phenomenon or as inherently “other” to the true nature of the human being, a disability studies hermeneutic challenges this view. Instead, this discourse encourages us to reflect upon

11 our personal relationship with difference and to confront the assumptions present in our typical patterns of thought regarding what qualifies the true essence of the human person.

In this work, disability scholars have exposed the influence of a normate bias that impacts not only our daily social existence, but also our mode of theological reflection. This concept of a normate bias rests at the heart of this study’s initial inquiry regarding suffering.

Though pervasive, a normate bias often prevails as an inscribed, unconscious assumption. Its effects are most clearly expressed by the assumption which holds that the experience of non-disabled people is the primary model for embodying the true human life. The experience of a person with a disability therefore denotes a deviation from that norm. Amos Yong further clarifies this concept:

In other words, non-disabled people take their experiences of the world as normal, thereby marginalizing and excluding the experiences of people with disabilities as not normal. Normate perspectives are thus presumed to be adequate for measuring the experiences of all people, which then invalidates the points of view of those who don’t see or hear similarly, who do things differently, or who simply are different. In short, non-disabled people have a built-in normate bias against people with disabilities.2

Failing to meet such norms and expectations, people experiencing any form of disability are often marginalized by their families and communities. If the standard for the true human life is evaluated by the absence of disability, then those who deviate from this norm risk rejection and possibly the elimination of their very existence. From this

2 Amos Yong, The Bible, Disability, and the Church: A New Vision of the People of God (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012), 10-11. For a more expansive treatment of this concept, see Kerry H. Wynn, “The Normate Hermeneutic and Interpretations of Disability within the Yahwistic Narratives,” in This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies, ed. Hector Avalos, Sarah J. Melcher, and Jeremy Schipper (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 91-101. See also Rosemary Garland Thompson, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 8-9. 12 assumption, other forms of difference are dismissed, including the experience of suffering, as will be explored below.

Alongside this normate bias lies a hierarchy of values which has established an

“assumed norm for authentic human living.”3 This standard for the good human life, influenced by liberal, post-Enlightenment Western culture, is characterized by the following values: “reason, rationality, independence, and the capacity for self- advocacy.”4 Given this criteria which establishes the norm for authentic human living, we must ask how those who do not seem to possess such abilities may be viewed “as fully human.”5 With many people not fitting into this mold, the need for a more comprehensive and inclusive conception of the human person emerges. This new vision for the human being stems from a framework in which the virtues of dependence, vulnerability, and weakness are viewed not as deficiencies, but as integral features of the human condition.

Given the scope of this normate bias, a disability studies hermeneutic offers a rich foundation for understanding the human life in its fullness by incorporating experiences that our normate biases typically exclude. This perspective reveals often overlooked or ignored conceptions of the limited nature of the human person which influences the way we experience and process suffering. A disability studies hermeneutic recognizes disability not as a deviation from the norm, but as an experience that is integral to the flourishing of all human life. Amos Yong provides a more hospitable vision of people with disabilities upon which this study will build:

1) People with disabilities are created in the image of God that is measured according to the person of Christ…This is not to say that people with

3 John Swinton, ed., introduction to Critical Reflections on Stanley Hauerwas’ Theology of Disability: Disabling Society, Enabling Theology (New York: The Haworth Pastoral Press, 2004), 5. 4 Swinton, 5. 5 Swinton, 6. 13

disabilities don’t experience unique challenges in their lives; it is to say that all people are challenged differently, and that the struggles of people with disabilities shouldn’t be aggravated by the biases and prejudices of non- disabled people… 2) People with disabilities are people first who shouldn’t be defined solely by their disabilities. More particularly, people with disabilities are agents in their own right…People with disabilities should be allowed to define their own needs and wants, to the extent that such is possible, and should be consulted rather than cared for paternalistically as if they were completely helpless creatures. 3) Disabilities are not necessarily evil or blemishes to be eliminated.6

In these claims, Yong argues that people with disabilities live valuable, productive, and satisfying lives and thus should not necessarily be viewed as problems to be fixed or healed. These preliminary presuppositions must be recognized before turning to Scripture, as certain passages have historically been extrapolated and used to further marginalize people with disabilities. Establishing this foundation of a disability studies hermeneutic allows for an exploration of concepts like redemption, transformation, and suffering, all of which must proceed from the precept that the experience of disability is not something to be overcome or eliminated, but rather embraced.

Recognizing the phenomenon of disability as both valid and valuable is crucial to this study because scholars assert that it is a reality that touches all expressions of human life. Yong explains that the experience of disability, while only a present reality for some at this time, is one that all persons will be forced to confront at some point in their lifetime.7 To express this reality in more neutral terms, some scholars choose to employ the term “temporarily able-bodied.” While this study will retain the use of the term

“disability,” the significance of the term “temporarily able-bodied” reminds us that “we begin life more or less dependent on others, and if we are blessed to live long enough, we

6 Yong, The Bible, Disability, and the Church, 13. 7 Yong, 16. 14 will sooner or later return to such a state of reliance on others.”8 This distinction makes clear that such a state of dependence or reliance upon others, often associated with the experience of disability as a result of our normate biases, more accurately reflects the fragility of the human life that can be detected in all persons regardless of ability.

The Recontextualization of Suffering

The Universality of Suffering

All humans experience varying abilities that cannot be dismissed, and the experience of disability in any form is a potential reality for all. A disability studies hermeneutic thus attempts to envision and enact a more hospitable conception of the human person. Next, I will explore how suffering, like the experience of disability, will inevitably touch the lives of all, calling us to embrace suffering in its fullness rather than trying to ignore or sentimentalize it. The work of Stanley Hauerwas, a prominent theologian and disability scholar, will serve as the main interpretive lens for the following discussion on suffering.

Among Stanley Hauerwas’s most influential work lies his articulation of the intrinsic communal nature and dependency of the human person. He has presented a paradigm of the human being in community which challenges widely held exclusive models, such as the one described above which prizes rationality and independence.

Hauerwas’s alternative framework rests on an ontological conception of the human person as a relational and dependent creature:

As Christians we know we have not been created to be “our own authors,” to be autonomous. We are creatures. Dependency, not autonomy, is one of the ontological characteristics of our lives. That we are creatures, moreover, is but a reminder that we are created for and with one another. We are not just accidentally communal, but we are such by necessity. We were not created to be

8 Yong, 8. 15

alone...Our dependency, our need for one another, means that we will suffer as well as know joy.9

Rather than being characterized by autonomy, the true ontological essence of the human person is characterized by interdependence. This need for the other is not accidental, but innate. Most notably, Hauerwas asserts that this very communal dependency upon the other necessitates that we experience both joy and suffering. Yet, the Christian perception of authentic living which comes through knowing both joy and suffering runs “exactly contrary to our cherished assumptions.”10 Similar to the experience of disability, our understanding of the place and purpose of suffering in the human experience often stems from the progression of a normate bias.

In discussing these prevailing assumptions, Hauerwas begins by acknowledging the problematic yet widely held assumption that suffering should be avoided and its causes eradicated. He states that this is a belief “as deep as any we have.”11 Like Swinton who challenges the post-Enlightenment glorification of reason and rationality, Hauerwas attributes the assumption that suffering should be avoided to our preoccupation with independence. In particular, Hauerwas’s concern resides in the conflation of identity and independence. This conflation results in our obsession with self-possession and self- control. In this framework, suffering and death are subsequently viewed as threats to our very identities: “Thus death becomes our ultimate enemy – the intimation involved in every form of suffering – because it is the ultimate threat to our identity.”12

9 Stanley Hauerwas, “Timeful Friends: Living with the Handicapped,” in Critical Reflections on Stanley Hauerwas’ Theology of Disability: Disabling Society, Enabling Theology, ed. John Swinton (New York: The Haworth Pastoral Press, 2004), 16. 10 Stanley Hauerwas, “Suffering the Retarded,” in Swinton, Critical Reflections, 96. 11 Hauerwas, 92. 12 Hauerwas, 96. 16

While many may agree that suffering and death do indeed inhibit human freedom,

Hauerwas wonders why we assume that “existence is only valuable if it is free from suffering.”13 From his perspective, the good we often do comes from the endurance of pain. Moreover, he asserts that the elimination of suffering prevents the imagination from developing “new forms of care and cure.”14 To uncover this deeper aspect of suffering which enables us to care more deeply for the other, Hauerwas expounds the various kinds of suffering we may experience. Asserting that we actually have less of an understanding of the term than we think we do, Hauerwas explains that we are fooled by the universality of suffering.

At the heart of this debate once again is the work of assumptions. Although many would assume that they are familiar with the concept of suffering, Hauerwas asserts that it is a rather complex experience: “We assume we know what suffering is because it is so common, but on analysis, suffering turns out to be an extremely elusive subject.”15 While suffering is a universal phenomenon which will impact all persons, it manifests in various ways and is often a subjective experience. One attempt to understand its manifestation is by qualifying suffering as “those aspects of our lives that we undergo and which have a particularly negative sense.”16 Furthermore, it cannot be said that suffering only involves passivity or the inability to do something, for we also connote suffering with an active sense of permission or endurance either within ourselves or in community with another person.

13 Hauerwas, “Suffering, Medical Ethics, and the Retarded Child,” in Swinton, Critical Reflections, 139. 14 Hauerwas, 139. 15 Hauerwas, “Suffering the Retarded,” 93. 16 Hauerwas, 93. 17

Hoping to uncover “a wider meaning of suffering” that moves beyond negation or avoidance, Hauerwas makes a distinction between forms of suffering that merely happen to us and those that “we bring on ourselves or that are requisite to our purposes and goals.”17 With this distinction, a fuller scope of the suffering which touches the lives of all may be realized:

We not only suffer from diseases, accidents, tornadoes, earthquakes, droughts, floods – all those things over which we have little control – but we also suffer from other people, from living here rather than there, from doing this kind of job – all matters we might avoid – because in these instances we see what we suffer as part of a large scheme.18

From this passage, Hauerwas demonstrates that suffering takes many forms in the human experience and that our levels of control vary greatly depending on the circumstances and our subjective worldview.

For instances of suffering which feel particularly meaningless and uncontrollable,

Hauerwas notes that we are invited to reflect upon our mode of being in such a state.

When confronting suffering that we feel cannot be transformed – “those kinds of suffering that we do not feel can serve any human good” – Hauerwas advises the reader to focus more on being rather than doing.19 He explains, “The issue is not what we do, but rather who we ought to be in order to be capable of accepting all suffering as a necessary aspect of human existence.”20 Instead of arguing that all suffering and oppression must be endured passively or viewed as a challenge or a test, Hauerwas argues that we should look to deepen our presence in the midst of the suffering we will

17 Hauerwas, 93-4. 18 Hauerwas, 94. 19 Hauerwas, 95. 20 Hauerwas, 95. 18 inevitably encounter.21 In this section, Hauerwas attempts to bring greater clarity to the context of the human experience of suffering rather than offer “normative recommendations” or a blueprint for how to respond in every situation.22 His clarifications help us see that suffering calls us to deep reflection about the way we respond and search for meaning amid such trials.

His major concern is that we tend to avoid suffering and its consequences altogether, dismissing them as unnecessary and perpetuating the illusion that we can prevent suffering in the human experience. According to Hauerwas, suffering is more than just inevitable, but necessary: “In viewing our life narrowly as a matter of purposes and accomplishments, we may miss our actual need for suffering, even apparently purposeless or counter-purposeful suffering.”23 By focusing more on presence, suffering can be viewed as integral to the human experience when we move beyond seeing the human being strictly as an independent, rational creature.

But in what sense might suffering be necessary? Exploring this topic further,

Hauerwas states that in our attempts to escape suffering, we also escape the fullness of humanity. The following quote reveals Hauerwas’s curiosity about what we might miss out on in our efforts of avoidance: “Still, in the very attempt to escape suffering, do we not lose something of our own humanity? We rightly try to avoid unnecessary suffering, but it also seems that we are never quite what we should be until we recognize the

21 Hauerwas, 94. Hauerwas clarifies himself: “Please note: I am not suggesting that every form of pain or suffering can or should be seen as some good or challenge. Extreme suffering can as easily destroy as enhance. Nor do I suggest that we should be the kind of people who can transform any suffering into benefit. We rightly feel that some forms of suffering can only be acknowledged, not transformed.” These nuances regarding suffering and endurance will be discussed in the following chapter from the perspective of asceticism. 22 Hauerwas, 95. 23 Hauerwas, 95. 19 necessity and inevitability of suffering in our lives.”24 Hauerwas does not advocate that we seek out suffering for its own sake. Rather, his questioning shows that this concept of the necessity and inevitability of suffering fits into the human experience in ways that we like to overlook.

Discrediting suffering as an experience that randomly or meaninglessly is thrust upon us and has no place in the greater meaning of our lives might bring immediate comfort. Yet, Hauerwas’s investigation shows that this explanation is deeply unsatisfying to the human experience. His question, “do we not lose something of our own humanity?” shows that we risk losing a mysterious sense of fullness that we were made to encounter. What exactly constitutes this “fullness” that we risk losing will be discussed below in conjunction with 2 Corinthians 12 and in the following chapter in the context of asceticism and the cross. Might our discomfort with suffering lead us to miss an encounter with the transforming presence of the crucified Christ? For now, it will suffice to note that in Hauerwas’s opinion, our dependence upon the other in our times of need

“requires the cooperation and love of others from which derives our ability not only to live but to flourish.”25 Our neediness, challenging us to rely on the other, is ironically the force that helps us to flourish in life.

Facing Our Weaknesses

While focusing on our presence amid suffering, might we become more open to the transforming presence of Christ? These final few reflections on the concept of suffering will focus on this aspect of presence, or lack thereof. In his musings over why

24 Hauerwas, 96. 25 Hauerwas, 97. 20 we try so desperately to avoid suffering, Hauerwas settles on the idea that it is both fear and loneliness that distort this relationship.

Desiring to be pleasant in our relationships, we do not like risking “the loss of fellow-feeling on the part of others.”26 Even more distorted is Hauerwas’s note about our discomfort when we encounter the suffering of another person: “We resent those who suffer without apology, as we expect the sufferer at least to show shame in exchange for our sympathy.”27 Not only do we avoid our own sufferings in an attempt to maintain control, but many of us also become increasingly distant from or disgusted by those who suffer. Our resentment grows by failing to understand and accept the neediness of the other with tenderness and grace. At the heart of this repulsion to the sufferer is that we are forced to confront our own fragility as humans. We are reminded by those who suffer that no matter how fervently we attempt to keep up the façade of perfection and good health, we ultimately are finite creatures who one day will die. Thus, in situations where we must engage with our suffering or the suffering of another, fear has the potential to overcome and transform us in negative ways.

Related to the role of fear in suffering is the damaging impact of loneliness: “As much as we fear suffering, we fear more the loneliness that accompanies it.”28 Instead of embracing the reality of our sufferings, we attempt to muster up the strength to proceed on our own so that we do not have to admit that “we depend on others for our existence.”29 Losing sight of the important presences in our lives (dependency upon

26 Hauerwas, 102. 27 Hauerwas, 102. 28 Hauerwas, 102. 29 Hauerwas, 102. 21 others and God), we “seek to be self-possessed.”30 Our fear of being alone leads to our discomfort with suffering, yet acting out of this fear only leads to the reality of loneliness.

In denying our reliance upon the other and attempting to carry on alone, we find ourselves empty and abandoned.

Our avoidance of suffering through self-reliance, in addition to being transformed by fear, certainly makes it difficult to remain open to the presence of Christ. A transforming presence other than fear is needed, and a new narrative is long overdue.

Dependency need not be seen only as inevitable to the human condition, but also as the very pathway to transformation through Christ. While our transformation may be grounded in fear, distorting our helplessness and leading to dehumanization, a disability studies hermeneutic helps us recognize that our transformation may instead be grounded in humility, new life, and the cross of Christ. This new narrative is best exemplified by the revelation Paul receives as a result of his thorn in the flesh described in 2 Corinthians

12.

Disability in the New Testament – Paul’s Skolops and His Christly Possession

“7b Therefore, that I might not become too elated, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep me from being too elated. 8 Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, 9 but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. 10 Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”31

While leading us to the fullness of the human person, suffering also reveals our weakness, fragility, and dependency upon others. Hauerwas argues that we fear suffering

30 Hauerwas, 102. 31 2 Corinthians 12:7b-10 (New American Bible Revised Edition). The subsequent Bible verses quoted in this chapter will follow the NABRE translation. 22 because we assume our weaknesses will lead to loneliness. Yet, in this following section, we will explore how weakness leads to a deep companionship, or more specifically, to a

“Christly possession” as Candida Moss describes it. To explore this further, we will investigate 2 Corinthians 12:7b-10, quoted above, in which Paul boasts of his weaknesses due to his thorn in the flesh.

Recall the work of Stanley Hauerwas whose reflections have recontextualized suffering as an aspect of our integrity as humans. While the modern context commonly considers weaknesses as threats to our liberty, Hauerwas notes the ironic twist in which

“our neediness” as dependent creatures who experience suffering “is also the source of our greatest strength.”32 Similar to the way that Hauerwas views our neediness as a strength, readers of Paul have identified a theology of weakness in which the power of

God is paradoxically revealed by the fragility of the human person, represented in this case by Paul’s thorn. Most important is the connection Paul articulates between his thorn and the cross. Amos Yong directly highlights this interpretation of the passage, as he argues that “Paul’s approach was in accordance with the way of Christ and his cross…Weakness reflects the power of God revealed in Christ, and thus weakness provides a platform for the manifestation of divine power.”33 Given this interpretation, we will discuss how weakness provides such a platform for the manifestation of divine power and what this manifestation might entail.

Wholeness Discovered in Weakness

We will begin by establishing the context of this biblical passage. Looking more closely at the verses leading up to this passage in 2 Corinthians 12 will help uncover what

32 Hauerwas, “Suffering the Retarded,” 97. 33 Yong, The Bible, Disability, and the Church, 89. 23 led Paul to speak of his thorn or skolops in the first place.34 In the preceding chapters,

Paul is faced with the need to defend his authority as an apostle in response to the attacks made by a group of people that he sarcastically refers to as the “superapostles” (11:5).

These opponents say that his “bodily presence is weak” (10:10). Martin C. Albl notes that instead of Paul’s opponents using the Greek word for “flesh,” they instead use the word for “body” (sōma). This term can refer to one’s physical body, but more generally, it can also be translated as “self” (referring to one’s whole person) and even “embodiment”

(including one’s relationships with others).35 Thus, when the superapostles say that the presence of Paul’s body is weak, they are not only referring to his physical body, but also to his whole person.

According to Paul, his opponents are false apostles and “in league with Satan,” so he dares not compare himself with those whose boasting is out of bounds and excessive.36

Knowing that he must offer a response to the attacks but also fearing being called a fool by stooping to their level of boasting, Paul cleverly decides to embrace the role of the fool in what is considered to be a parody of the ancient “fool’s speech.”37 But unlike his rivals, Paul boasts of his sufferings as an apostle: “imprisonments, floggings, beatings, enduring hunger, thirst, cold, and various life-threatening situations (11:23-28).”38 David

34 What modern believers read in English as “thorn in the flesh” comes from the Greek translation skolops te sarki, in which skolops refers to anything pointed, and in particular, a stake or a thorn.34 The Latin, after the influence of Tertullian, was translated as stimulus carnis meae, in which stimulus is translated as the following: “for a goad,” a “sting,” a “stimulus,” or a “pointed stake.” Adela Y. Collins, “Paul’s Disability: The Thorn in his Flesh,” in Disability Studies and Biblical Literature, eds. Candida R. Moss and Jeremy Schipper (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 167. 35 Martin C. Albl, “‘For Whenever I Am Weak, Then I Am Strong:’ Disability in Paul’s Epistles,” in This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies, eds. Hector Avalos, Sarah J. Melcher, and Jeremy Schipper (Atlanta: The Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 156. 36 David E. Garland, “Paul's Apostolic Authority: The Power of Christ Sustaining Weakness (2 Corinthians 10–13),” Review & Expositor 86, no. 3 (1989): 374. 37 Arthur J. Dewey and Anna C. Miller, “Paul,” in The Bible and Disability: A Commentary, eds. Sarah J. Melcher, Mikeal C. Parsons, and Amos Yong (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017), 401. 38 Albl, “For Whenever I am Weak,” 156. 24

E. Garland claims that Paul’s unexpected boasting of his hardships can be interpreted as a kind of ironic parody of the boasts of the superapostles.39 Not only does Paul embrace his own weaknesses for the sake of Christ, but he does so for the “weaknesses of all

Christians (11:29).40 He concludes with the following: “If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness” (11:30). All of these examples illuminate the theme in the

Corinthian correspondence of Paul reversing the common conceptions of “foolishness” and “weakness” by showing that they are the true sources of “wisdom, strength, and power.”41

After these rebuttals, Paul narrates his visit to the “third heaven” (12:2) which leads into his discourse on his skolops in 12:7b. Paul goes on to tell about his “visions and revelations of the Lord,” (12:1) but in a vague manner and in the third person. In these visions, Paul explains that this person who visited the third heaven was caught up in paradise and heard things that were indistinguishable and not to be repeated (12:4). Paul again emphasizes that he will not boast, “except about [his] weaknesses” (12:5). In this way, Paul “distances himself from the claim that these events occurred due to his own power or ability.”42 After vaguely detailing his visions of the third heaven in response to the attacks of the superapostles, Paul states that the skolops was given to him so that he

“might not become too elated” (12:7). This line has led countless scholars to question and debate the function of the skolops, especially since Paul calls it an aggelos satana, a messenger or angel of Satan.43

39 Garland, “Paul’s Apostolic Authority,” 378. 40 Garland, 379. 41 Albl, “For Whenever I am Weak,” 150. 42 Albl, 156. 43 Candida R. Moss, “Christly Possession and Weakened Bodies: Reconsideration of the Function of Paul's Thorn in the Flesh (2 Cor. 12:7–10),” Journal of Religion, Disability & Health, 16:4, (2012): 319. 25

Although Paul pleads for the removal of the skolops three times, Christ tells him:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (12:9). In

Christ’s response, Paul understands the thorn to be a testament to God’s power being

“brought to completion in human weakness.”44 Whereas Paul’s vision of the third heaven in the beginning of 2 Cor. 12 provides nothing that could be uttered, the thorn communicates God’s grace and power.45 William Baird summarizes this irony well:

2 Corinthians 12, then, combines an apocalypse and a miracle story. The strange feature of the combination, however, is that the apocalypse does not do what it is supposed to do—provide a revelation; and the miracle story does not do what it is supposed to do—provide a healing. But, though the apocalypse provides no revelation, the miracle story that provides no healing does present a revelation.46

Baird’s explanation of the passage highlights the common modern dissatisfaction and confusion over the way that illness, suffering, and healing are presented in certain biblical texts. Modern readers are often surprised to hear how Paul boasts of his weaknesses after receiving this revelation from Christ because he does not receive physical healing. This irritant in the text causes readers to question why Christ did not heal Paul by removing his skolops. In examining Paul’s words that follow, a new dimension of his skolops is unveiled.

Paul’s revelation – that power is made perfect in weakness – leads him to boast even more of his weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell within him (12:9).

First seen as an obstacle, the thorn becomes a gateway for the grace and power of God.47

Paul is content with these weaknesses and does not seek healing, for he asserts that

44 Garland, “Paul’s Apostolic Authority,” 381. 45 Garland, 381. 46 William Baird, “Visions, Revelation, and Ministry: Reflections on 2 Cor. 12:1-5 and Gal 1:11- 17,” Journal of Biblical Literature 104, no. 4 (1985): 661. 47 Garland, “Paul’s Apostolic Authority,” 381. 26

“when I am weak, then I am made strong” (12:10). As Baird explains, this miracle story in which Paul does not experience a healing but rather a revelation provides deep insight into the way that early Christians understood suffering and the pathways it opened to meeting Christ. For early Christians, Paul’s encounter would have strongly pointed to the ultimate example of power being made perfect in weakness: the crucified Christ.

Movement Toward the Cross through Christly Possession

In order to understand the connection Paul is making to the cross and the way that his skolops allows for the indwelling of Christ, we need to explore the functionality of the skolops and what it represents for Paul. Throughout history, scholars have attempted to identify the very nature of Paul’s thorn in the flesh, resulting in three major hypotheses as defined by Margaret Thrall: “(i) an internal psychological state, whether of temptation or grief; (ii) external opposition; (iii) physical illness or disability.”48 While many historical critical scholars and countless figures throughout Christianity have debated the nature and function of Paul’s thorn, the approach of Candida Moss proves to be most relevant for this discourse.49

Rather than investigating the possibility of Paul’s thorn representing the modern experience of epilepsy which is a common interpretation among scholars, Moss instead wonders why most contemporary scholars reject the possibility that the thorn of which

Paul speaks was an actual thorn. Although a fascinating thought, she notes that this literal interpretation of the thorn does not coincide with the severity of Paul’s condition of

48 Margaret Thrall, II Corinthians, 2 vols, ICC (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), 2:809-18 quoted in Martin C. Albl, “‘For Whenever I Am Weak, Then I Am Strong:’ Disability in Paul’s Epistles,” in This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies, eds. Hector Avalos, Sarah J. Melcher, and Jeremy Schipper (Atlanta: The Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 156. 49 For a detailed account of the reception history of Paul’s thorn in 2 Corinthians 12, see Adela Y. Collins, “Paul’s Disability: The Thorn in his Flesh,” in Disability Studies and Biblical Literature, eds. Candida R. Moss and Jeremy Schipper (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 165-184. 27 which most scholars assert. Yet in posing this question, Moss explains that it seems useless to apply modern models and tools of medicine to make a diagnosis from an ancient metaphor.50

Moss’s perspective reflects an important aspect of disability studies and the Bible which cannot be ignored: the term that we understand today as disability “is anachronistic when applied to the Bible,” and so we must, therefore, proceed with caution and care so as not to read our own problems and conceptions of illness, suffering, and disability into the text.51 With this passage from 2 Corinthians 12, we can recall that the early Christian understanding of suffering as well as the categories of health and illness cannot be explained using our modern categories which are dominated by a disability/ability dichotomy. Instead of dwelling on the possibility of epilepsy or other modern conceptions of illness, Moss thinks it most prudent to explore the functionality of Paul’s metaphor in its own context.

Recall that Paul in v. 7 describes his skolops as resulting from an aggelos satana

(angel of Satan) which prevents him from becoming too elated – “hyperairoœ” or “full of air.”52 Moss claims this creates a double entendre. If Paul lies at risk of “remaining elevated in the third heaven,” then the skolops actually serves a positive function which brings Paul back down to earth.53 Hyperairoœ also has medical connotations, for the image of Paul swollen with pride being struck by a pointed object like a thorn would bring to mind the medical imagery of lancing, the most widely known form of ancient

50 Moss, “Christly Possession,” 322. 51 Yong, The Bible, Disability, and the Church, 1. 52 Moss, “Christly Possession,” 322. 53 Moss, 323. 28 surgery.54 This medical imagery of lancing which deflates the prolonged swelling of

Paul’s arrogance would thus indicate that the thorn serves a cathartic role.55 The thorn, in this sense, can be viewed positively in the way that Paul’s supposed weakness actually provides power. Instead of dwelling in arrogance or self-praise like his opponents seem to do, Paul allows the thorn to lance his pride.

Although Paul’s skolops serves a cathartic role and prevents the sin of pride, Paul still speaks of his own astheneia or weakness. This term most likely refers to a physical infirmity, but it can also connote a general weakness of the human condition, either physical or mental.56 Following the idea that astheneia refers to a physical disability,

Moss explains that in some ancient medical conceptions of the body, weakened bodies were considered to be porous and vulnerable to the attack of daimons and disease.57 The skolops would then make Paul even more vulnerable to intrusion. Moss, however, points to the work of recent scholars who interpret the use of Paul’s model of spirit possession as a pathway to a positive possession of the spirit of Christ. Although Paul pleads for the removal of the skolops which makes him more susceptible to possession, it also allows the power of Christ to dwell within him (v. 9). Not only is the skolops positive because it lances his pride, but it is also positive in the way that it enables the power of Christ to dwell in him. Moss explains that the power of Christ “is apparently attracted to astheneia and forges a close bodily relationship with the weak and disabled Paul, going so far as to set up camp inside him.”58 In this example of the skolops, Moss argues that for some in

54 Moss, 323. 55 Moss, 324. 56 Albl, “For Whenever I am Weak,” 146, 152. 57 Moss, “Christly Possession,” 325. 58 Moss, 325. 29 antiquity, weakness could paradoxically serve a positive function which offered special connection to the divine.59

This helps explain Paul’s response to his opponents, but it has even greater implications for the concept of weakness. Through Paul’s connection of his weakness to a general category of suffering or persecution in verse 10 (“weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ”), he aligns his physical weakness with the experience of alienation in connection with the cross. Moss further clarifies this claim about Paul’s suffering and what this connection to Christ entails:

[The claim to suffer] connects Paul and his congregations to Christ. Not just in the sense that Christ dwells in his followers, but also in the sense that in suffering the Jesus-follower resembles the Christ who suffers. The connection, of course, is the passion narrative and the crucifixion on the cross. Suffering, in the case of Christ, is not just persecution and social marginalization; it is the painful, immobilizing death on a cross. By experiencing social marginalization and pain, Paul argues, he is connected to Christ.60

Moss points out that Paul is not merely connecting his sufferings generally to those of

Christ, but that he is specifically referencing Jesus’s death on the cross. In this way, Moss explains that the thorn opens Paul up to a “Christly possession” in which Paul not only replicates the sufferings of Jesus on the cross but also contains the power of Christ.61 The emphasis here is on the follower who specifically imitates the crucified Christ which then allows Christ to dwell in the believer. Paul is so willing to boast of his weaknesses because through them, he “embodies the folly of the cross of Christ which reveals the power of God.”62 This recontextualization shows that Paul views his skolops positively as

59 Moss, 327. 60 Moss, 327. 61 Moss, 328. 62 Garland, “Paul’s Apostolic Authority,” 381. 30 something that connects his experience of weakness to the crucified Christ who provides both a power and a presence.

While Moss’s reflection on the passage directly connects Paul’s skolops to the

Passion, she does not explicitly explore what this notion of a “Christly possession” entails. She notes that Paul’s suffering “makes him physically proximate to Christ” and that he “contains Christ within himself and through suffering.”63 From these quotes, Moss indicates a level of physical connection in which Christ dwells within Paul and offers him strength. But how exactly is this manifested, and is this “Christly possession” accessible to modern believers today? Is this just a rhetorical device against the boastings of the superapostles? Could Paul be speaking figuratively, hinting at the spiritual strength or consolation received by this connection to the cross? Or, taking a lesson from Moss herself, why not take Paul at his word? This would indicate that when Paul speaks about the indwelling of Christ, he is referring to the fact that he has been fully transformed into a new creation by the crucified Christ who now literally dwells within him. Paul’s association with the sufferings of the crucified Christ as a result of his thorn in the flesh simultaneously accesses the power of Christ and makes Paul susceptible to a transformation in which his weaknesses become strengths.

Implications of a Christly Possession – Transformed Individuals and Community

Before further exploring the possibility of this literal transformation indicated in 2

Cor. 12, I will draw out the impact that this passage has upon the experience of disability and our notions of community. Amos Yong utilizes this passage among others to articulate what he calls an “inclusive ecclesiology” in which weakness is reimagined as

63 Moss, “Christly Possession,” 328-29. 31 strength in the same way that Paul’s skolops opens him up to the power of Christ. Yong’s inclusive ecclesiology holds the following tenets as central:

First, the church is constituted first and foremost of the weak, not the strong: people with disabilities are thus at the center rather than at the margins of what it means to be the people of God. Second, each person with disability, no matter how serious, severe, or even profound, contributes something essential to and for the body, through the activity and presence of the Spirit; people with disabilities are therefore ministers empowered by the Spirit of God, each in his or her own specific way, rather than merely recipients of the ministries of non-disabled people. Finally, people with disabilities become the paradigm for embodying the power of God and manifesting the divine glory.64

These conclusions about the place of people with disabilities within the Church are so deeply rich and timely. In our society and in our churches, we are seeing some movement toward greater belonging and invitation, but there are many ways in which people with physical or cognitive disabilities still sit in the margins of our places of worship, figuratively and literally. In addition to this passage inviting the people of God into greater friendships of inclusivity, it also invites all of us to challenge our assumptions about the source and makeup of God’s power. In the beginning of this chapter, we saw how we all are invited to embrace the potential reality of disability as well as the experience of suffering. These reflections on Yong’s inclusive ecclesiology aid us in challenging our normate biases so that we might begin to see ourselves as intrinsically connected to the experience of disability and acknowledge the need for its integration within our theological reflection and experience of worship.

Yong argues that people with disabilities fit seamlessly in the Christian way of life which calls us to offer our weaknesses and sufferings to Christ so that they may be transformed for the flourishing of the Church and for all the people of God. In this way,

64 Yong, The Bible, Disability, and the Church, 95. 32

Yong’s inclusive ecclesiology drawn from Paul’s theology of weakness transforms our hierarchy of values and subverts our “usually unquestioned presuppositions” regarding weakness and strength.65 Moving away from harmful conceptions of the term “weakness” which have been utilized in the past to marginalize people with disabilities and even eliminate the phenomenon altogether, Paul’s theology of weakness instead offers a liberatory model in which weakness is reimagined as a pathway to the transforming presence of Christ. Similar to Hauerwas’s reflections on the importance of dependency and suffering, we are led to see that through embracing our weaknesses, we become human and experience the fullness of what it means to be a Church comprised of the people of God who all possess unique challenges and abilities.

Lastly, this notion of transformation must be explored in light of the experience of disability. If we are transformed by the crucified Christ through our weaknesses, does this inherently lead to the conclusion that the experience of disability will be fully transformed? Furthermore, does the transformation of people with disabilities mean that the experience of disability will be eradicated altogether? While this conclusion may sound radical, scholars throughout history have posited that in the second coming, all imperfection will be made into a new creation, including the experience of disability. As

65 Yong, 96. It is important to note one caveat at the foundation of these conclusions. Yong explains “that those in the disability rights movement today resist defining their personhood in terms of weakness because that perpetuates discriminatory perspectives that have been handed down for generations. We must be vigilant against either sentimentalizing or valorizing weakness or disability, or putting people with disabilities on a pedestal or expecting them to teach the rest of the ecclesial body because of their disabilities. There is also a fine line between honoring the diversity of the body’s members, with and without disability, and overemphasizing either abilities or disabilities. Yet, while recognizing the potential of Paul’s theology of weakness to continue to burden people with disabilities with negative stereotypes, I hope enough has been said here to show that the marvel of St. Paul’s discussion is precisely to subvert usually unquestioned presuppositions. In other words, if we take Paul seriously, our understandings of strong and weak – and ability and disability – will themselves be transformed.” 33 a result of our normate biases, some have assumed that disabilities will be eradicated as part of this transformation at the end times.

In looking at Paul’s letters, Arthur J. Dewey and Anna C. Miller explain that Paul urges his people to become a “community of sufferers” and that “this experience will mean their own stunning transformation of resurrection in which they will inhabit imperishable (perfectly abled?) spiritual bodies.”66 Does this interpretation ring true given the previous reflections on Stanley Hauerwas and the passage of Paul’s thorn in 2

Cor. 12? Following Hauerwas’s reflections on disability and suffering, Paul’s theology of weakness, and Yong’s inclusive ecclesiology, I argue that this transformation to which we are called does not necessarily entail the erasure of disability, but rather, the reevaluation of our previous conceptions of disability. These three frameworks in their own ways disrupt our common conceptions of weakness and strength.

This disruption is identified in Yong’s disability-inclusive eschatological vision drawn from Paul in which he asserts that it is our present, disabled bodies that will be resurrected and transformed in the eschaton as opposed to adopting newly created spiritual bodies. While maintaining that the resurrected body will indeed be transformed and made anew, Yong argues that the “resurrected body does not necessarily have to be free of the marks of our present impairments; rather, the resurrection will transform not only our bodies but also the world’s scale of values as a whole.”67 He proposes that amid

66 Dewey and Miller, “Paul,” 382. 67 Yong, The Bible, Disability, and the Church, 122-23. 34 continuities and discontinuities, we will “remain marked somehow in the next life by who and what we are in this life.”68

If the transformation to which Paul refers does not involve the erasure of disability but the transformation of the world’s values, what else might this transformation entail? Returning to Candida Moss’s reflections, what exactly is meant by

Paul’s “Christly possession” as a result of his skolops? Does this notion of being transformed by Christ and its connection to the cross resonate anywhere else throughout the history of Christianity? In the following chapter, this conception of a “Christly possession” as a result of weakness or illness will be explored in light of the early ascetic worldview in which the telos of the Christian life resides in the transformation of one’s inner reality through following Christ to the cross.

68 Yong, 123. For more on this topic and for an exploration of the preservation of Christ’s sufferings in his resurrected body, see pp. 125-30. See also Nancy L. Eiesland, The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994).

35

CHAPTER TWO

ASCETICISM – A FRAMEWORK FOR SUFFERING AND THE TRUE HUMAN

BEING

Let us not become aggrieved that through weakness and plague of the body we are not able to stand in prayer or sing with our voices; all these things are accomplished to our advantage, toward the purification of desires…And this is the great ascetic practice, which perseveres in illnesses, and offers up thanksgiving songs to the powerful one…Does illness control our whole body? But the health of the internal person will greatly increase…Therefore receive with security the cross of Christ imprinted with virtues, that is, straight faith with holy acts.69

These striking words on illness, endurance, and the cross from the fifth-century vita attributed to Athanasius invite us into the sayings and teachings of St. Syncletica.

Withdrawing into the desert, Syncletica engaged in fasting, poverty, and the reorientation of the passions while living out the ascetic practice of endurance amid great illness. The way she rejoiced in her sufferings by offering hymns of praise gives us insight into the paradox of early Christian engagement with the spiritual dimensions of illness and healing. Rather than being consumed by her pain, Syncletica found refuge in conformity with Christ and the cross.

In this chapter, we will explore the ways that early Christians similar to Syncletica confronted the body, illness, and healing, all of which were intimately tied to one’s relationship with God. The ascetic approach follows the belief that both the true human being and Christ fully emerge on the cross. Furthermore, the unity with God for which we were created completely transforms our sufferings and restores us to new life as we

69 Elizabeth A. Castelli, trans., “Pseudo-Athanasius: The Life and Activity of The Holy and Blessed Teacher Syncletica,” in Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook, ed. Vincent L. Wimbush (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 305-06. 36 follow Christ by taking up our cross. I hope to bring greater clarity to what Moss calls a

“Christly possession,” moving beyond a figurative or spiritual unification with Christ, by showing that the human being is restored by allowing the image of Christ on the cross to fully consume us and our sufferings. This restoration of the human person, fully embodying a Christly possession, draws heavily from the teaching of the Eastern Fathers and Mothers who believed that our ultimate end involved a complete transformation through total unity with Christ – a process known to them as deification or theosis.

These topics will be explored below to help us see how suffering plays a role in the Christian journey toward unity with God and how we might begin to engage with such topics that may seem too mystical for the modern reader. These early Christian perspectives on healing and the true human being who experiences wholeness through the cross are strikingly similar to the way that many disability scholars articulate the fullness of humanity being realized through Christ’s transformation of our earthly categories of weakness and strength. Ascetic conceptions of the body resonate with the imagery of

Paul’s thorn in his flesh which opened him to the power of Christ. Both a disability studies hermeneutic and asceticism join together in one major point of unification: the full and flourishing human being is the one who learns how to situate suffering in his or her own context and acknowledge the experience in its reality, but who turns toward the transforming presence of God nonetheless.

Ascetic Framework

Before reviewing the origins of illness in early Christianity, I will establish some of the main aspects of the ascetic framework within which the restoration of the concepts of suffering, weakness, and healing will occur. This exploration will involve envisioning

37 the context that initially impacted the way that illness and healing were portrayed throughout Scripture and specifically in passages like 2 Corinthians 12 in which Paul boasts of his weaknesses. Early Christian asceticism provides this context for understanding the goal of human life, and without it, a reading of these biblical texts that involve healing would be incomplete. Topics covered will include the ascetic perception of the body, the goal of attaining purity of heart through transformation, a call to martyrdom, and its inseparability from the cross.

Rather than focusing on a specific geographical area in which asceticism developed, I will instead employ a more general ascetic framework at work in early

Christianity through late antiquity which influenced the believer’s conception of the body, illness, and healing. Broadly speaking, early Christian asceticism in response to illness provided a way of life that allowed the believer to redirect his or her experiences of sufferings so that union with God, eternal freedom, and joy might be attained. In some cases, illness and suffering were even seen as taking the place of ascetic practices themselves, consequently freeing the afflicted from the need for such practices.70 The following reflections should not be judged as pertaining to a “systematic way,” as the

Christian expression of asceticism reflected one’s ongoing efforts of “striving to re-direct every aspect of body, mind, and soul to God…”71 Early Christians embodied asceticism as a way of life as opposed to merely employing rigid principles with the hope of experiencing God.

70 Jean-Claude Larchet, The Theology of Illness, trans. John Breck and Michael Breck (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 66. 71 Benedicta Ward, trans., foreword to The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, rev. ed. (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984), xxi. 38

Benedicta Ward summarizes this sentiment by stating that the “essence of the spirituality of the desert is that it was not taught but caught.”72 This framework for understanding the human person in relation to God and the world has the potential to

“catch” us modern Christians as well, serving as a similar call to redirect the fullness of our beings to the presence of God in our midst. While explaining the ascetic framework and its various expressions, I will show that the aim of the Christian life was not asceticism itself, but rather, total union with God and transformation through the cross.

Asceticism and the Function of the Body

The Christian expression of asceticism can be “traced back to Christian beginnings in the cases of Paul, Jesus, and John the Baptist.”73 Within Greek and Latin

Christianity, prior to the formation of communal monasticism in the early fourth century,

“many held renunciation of sexual relations and abstemiousness in food, drink, and sleep as ideals.”74 Rather than promoting a rejection of the world, a disposition associated more with the movements of Gnosticism and Apocalypticism,75 these conceptions of the ascetic practice emphasized a devotional lifestyle which stressed the “transience of life and the ever-present threat of death” among the Greeks and “the superiority of sexual renunciation” among Latin Christians.76 In Syria and especially in Egypt in the third and fourth centuries, ascetic practices took the form of the desert hermit (anchorite) who

72 Ward, xxi. 73 James M. Robinson, foreword to Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook, ed. Vincent L. Wimbush (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), xiii. 74 Vincent L. Wimbush, ed., introduction to Ascetic Behavior, 4. 75 For a brief summary of the traditional categories in the scholarly literature on ascetic piety in Greco-Roman antiquity, including Gnosticism and Apocalypticism among others, see Wimbush, Ascetic Behavior, 3-8. 76 Wimbush, Ascetic Behavior, 4-5. 39 focused on simplicity, celibacy, and prayer.77 The communal asceticism of this period developed into institutional monasticism by the late fourth and early fifth centuries.78

In the context of the desert, the ascesis or hard work of the Christian monk involved slowly redirecting one’s passions as well as fighting off demons.79 In this way, the ascetic practice often involved anachōrēsis (withdrawal) and enkrateia (self-control).

Withdrawing into the desert had a “double aim” which involved meeting God and fighting demons.80 Kallistos Ware explains how this withdrawal from society was not selfish, but was an active attempt of the monk to protect other Christians – a “victory won on behalf of the human family as a whole.”81

While the ascetic lifestyle identified throughout the Christian tradition varied in practice, one major generalization and misconception about this way of life has prevailed by those who take its principles out of context. Without an attentiveness to this worldview, some may be tempted to mistakenly assume that Christian ascetics viewed the body as a worldly barrier to eternal life, suggesting that the body and soul function in a dualism in which the body remains inferior to the soul. In this understanding, the body would be conceived as an obstacle to be overcome. Recent scholarship, however, has challenged this negative understanding of the ascetic body.

In his own discussion of the redemptive role of the body in asceticism, Robert H. von Thaden turns to Peter Brown’s work to remind us not to read “Greco-Roman

77 Wimbush, 7. 78 Wimbush, 7-8. 79 Ward, Sayings of the Desert Fathers, xxvi. 80 Kallistos Ware, “The Way of the Ascetics: Negative or Affirmative?” in Asceticism, eds. Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 7. For a more positive reflection on these ascetic practices, see the full article. Ware emphasizes the world-affirming stance of such ascetic practices and highlights the role of transfiguration. 81 Ware, 7. 40 philosophical discussions about the nature of the body through the lens of Western

Enlightenment dualistic categories.”82 Instead, largely influenced by Judaism’s emphasis on Scripture, the ascetic lifestyle of early Christians was shaped by the idea that God created humans as both body and soul.83 Brown himself explains that the more prominent dualism at play in asceticism was not between the body and soul, but was rather characterized by the distinction between God and humanity as other and inferior.84

Not only does the body/soul dualism common to Enlightenment thinking incorrectly view the body as negative in the ascetic framework, but it also fails to recognize the integral function of the body. Castelli highlights the status of the body in this framework: “Every important dimension of early Christian thought and practice is mediated through language and ideas about and the material realities of the (human or mystical) body.”85 Furthermore, she asserts that although it is possible to isolate texts of early Christians that support this body/soul dualism, she contests that “there exists the equally compelling reality that the early Christians were absolutely obsessed with the fact of human-being-in-flesh.”86 This idea connects to von Thaden’s assertion of the early

Christian conviction that humans were embodied beings.87

Von Thaden explains that the early Christian ascetics did not display a hatred for the body. Rather, these Christians understood that extreme ascetic practices could even

82 Robert H. von Thaden, “Glorify God in Your Body: The Redemptive Role of the Body in Early Christian Ascetic Literature,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly: An International Review of the Monastic and Contemplative Spiritual Tradition 38, no. 2 (2003): 195. 83 Von Thaden, 196. 84 Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (Columbia University Press, 1988), 35. 85 Elizabeth A. Castelli, “Mortifying the Body, Curing the Soul: Beyond Ascetic Dualism in The Life of Saint Syncletica,” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 4, no. 2 (1992): 137. 86 Castelli, “Mortifying the Body,” 137. 87 For more on this topic, see Margaret R. Miles, Fullness of Life: Historical Foundations for a New Asceticism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981). 41 cause more harm to the extent that they prevented one from living a holy life.88

Recognizing the integral role of the body, von Thaden summarizes the writings of the ascetic monk John Cassian and his recognition of humans as embodied beings in noting that “the body can and indeed must be used in spiritual formation.”89 The body was not hated, nor was it the enemy of the ascetic. Rather, the body required discipline so that the ascetic could enter into full relationship with God and achieve purity of heart.90 Thus, the body itself was not an inherent obstacle, but something which required discipline so that one might focus on the needs of the soul to attain salvation.91 This is succinctly explained by Kallistos Ware who states that “natural asceticism has a positive objective: it seeks not to undermine but to transform the body, rendering it a willing instrument of the spirit, a partner instead of an opponent.”92 The emphasis here is on the integration of the body and the need for its transformation as opposed to a renunciation of the body.

Purity of Heart

Although the body was viewed with a general ambivalence, the early Christian ascetics understood the body to be a necessary component in their struggle to attain purity of heart and soul. Peter Brown explains that the human person was a “possessor of a

‘heart,’ that is, of a hidden core of the self, that could respond to or reject the will of its

Creator.”93 In the ascetic framework, the primary concern of the Christian was to achieve this purity or singleness of heart. Brown is clear that this goal of attaining purity of heart was deeply relational, as it “carried with it unmistakable social overtones.”94 He explains

88 Von Thaden, “Glorify God in Your Body,” 200. 89 Von Thaden, 200. 90 Von Thaden, 202. 91 Von Thaden, 204. 92 Kallistos Ware, “The Way of the Ascetics,” 10. 93 Brown, The Body and Society,” 35. 94 Brown, 35. 42 the balance of the inner manifestation of purity of heart and its subsequent social implications:

The heart should be all of one piece. No hidden motives should lurk within it. The believer should face others with a heart as transparent to their needs as it was to the will of God. “Singleness of heart” condensed a warm and eminently sociable ideal. It summed up the moral horizons of the average man. It formed the basis of a morality of solidarity, which stressed unaffected straight dealing and ungrudging loyalty to kin and neighbors.95

Purity of heart not only involved attentiveness to one’s inner reality, but also involved a consistent presentation of the human person in all situations. The integrity of the

Christian’s heart was inextricably tied with his or her action and presence in the world.

The transparency before God that was needed to transform one’s inner reality translated to the transparency needed in one’s social relations of kinship. In this way, purity of heart united the Christian with God and allowed for the expression of a genuine love and solidarity with one’s neighbor.

With this understanding of the social implications of purity of heart, Kallistos

Ware explains that the aim of the ascetic was to reorient and not reject his or her passions.96 In this ascetic worldview in which the passions needed reorientation and the body discipline, a person could only reach perfection through renouncing sin and transforming his or her inner reality. Apatheia (dispassion) allowed the ascetic to attain the desired state of inner freedom and integration, “in which we are no longer under the domination of sinful impulses, and so are capable of genuine love.”97 Adapting

Evagrius’s teaching on this topic who links it closely with agapē, John Cassian

95 Brown, 36. 96 Ware, “The Way of the Ascetics,” 12. 97 Ware, 12. 43 understood apatheia to mean puritas cordis (purity of heart).98 This longing to attain purity of heart was a call for the transformation of the inner self, where the reality of the human being was truly understood.99 This allowed for a more positive conception of the term, no longer seeing apatheia as a mortification of the passions but instead viewing it as “a state of soul in which a burning love for God and for our fellow humans leaves no room for sensual and selfish impulses.”100 We become so consumed with love for God and neighbor that our turning from sinfulness allows for greater authenticity and genuineness in relationships.

This turning toward God connotes a return to our original purpose. From this perspective of love, enkrateia or self-discipline can be viewed more affirmatively as “the reintegration of the body and the transformation of the passions into their true and natural condition.”101 In addition to puritas cordis and apatheia being tied to love, they have also been associated with the presence of peace. Jean-Claude Larchet explains that for “those who purify their passions by divine-human asceticism, the influence of the soul on the body becomes a source of purification. When the soul participates in divine peace and in the power of divine grace, it communicates this peace and this grace to the functions of the body.”102 Through the ascetic practice of purity of heart, the Christian participated in

98 Ware, 12. 99 Once again, it is important to recall that our post-Enlightenment dualistic categories like body/soul and inner/outer should not be applied to this framework. Even though the ascetics emphasized the need for an inner transformation to attain purity of heart, it should not be assumed that this work only involved one’s inner reality, thereby ignoring the outer expression which took the form of charity and martyrdom. For a detailed account of the inner/outer distinction throughout the history of Christianity, see Owen C. Thomas, “Interiority and Christian Spirituality,” The Journal of Religion 80, no. 1 (2000): 41–60. Thomas emphasizes the importance of the outer reality as primary and as a source of the inner. This leads him to call for a renewed emphasis on the body, the priority of communal and liturgical life, and participation in the reign of God. 100 Ware, “The Way of the Ascetics,” 12. 101 Ware, 12. 102 Larchet, The Theology of Illness, 52. 44 a divine peace that radiated in both body and soul. A closer reading of early Christian texts reveal that the Church Fathers and Mothers were not advocating for a repression of the body, but rather, for a transfiguration through right relationship and divine grace.103

In the following statement, Paul Ferderer summarizes the concepts discussed thus far: “This effort [asceticism] concerned the body and soul working together. The abstention from certain foods, sex, and pleasures of the secular world transformed the holy man as opposed to appeasing his God’s anger. The physical body, directed by the soul, manifested the state of ‘blamelessness’ that was the goal of the desert holy man.”104

In this summary, we see that early Christians embodied asceticism so that they might be transformed through their goal of attaining purity of heart. The body and soul worked together to usher in a transfiguration of the human being, not from a fear of God’s anger, but from a desire to reorient oneself toward the embodiment of genuine love.

Transformation: Martyrdom and Redemption

Early Christians understood the body and soul to be working in a partnership to achieve salvation through purity of heart which required internal transformation. We will now turn to this topic of transformation in greater detail and subsequently expound its connection to the concepts of death and martyrdom in the ascetic framework. In exploring the influence of Saint Syncletica and early Christian views of the body,

Elizabeth Castelli explains that martyrdom and asceticism were “the two dominant and most highly revered forms of piety in the first centuries of Christianity” and that they

“demanded complete engagement of the human body.”105 The connection between

103 Ware, “The Way of the Ascetics,” 12. 104 Paul Ferderer, “Uncertain Transformation: The Role of Asceticism in Death in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers,” April (2008): 5. 105 Castelli, “Mortifying the Body,” 137. 45 martyrdom and asceticism grew out of the eschatological and mystical outlook of early

Christians. Constantine Malandrakis explains how these “Christian communities of the primitive period were eschatological communities, awaiting the revelation of the glory of the kingdom of God, which will be the revelation of the glory of the faithful too, who are limb of Christ.”106 In this period of waiting in which early Christians looked forward to new life in Christ, they recognized that their time in the world was meant for preparation and transformation. The way out of this world and into new life was through death, and the believer was able to recognize this only through habitually surrendering to God and being freed from the fear of ruin and death.107

This freedom from the fear of death was connected to the sacrament of baptism and to Christ’s own victory over death on the cross. Malandrakis states: “Through the sacraments Christians appropriate for themselves the death of Christ. Thus while they are considered as spiritually dead till baptism, through this sacrament they acquire a substance in Christ and they are vivified while they die for this world.”108 This mindfulness of death was an ongoing practice and mentality as opposed to a prominent reality near the end of one’s life. In the same way that Christ defeated death through death itself on the cross, the Christian could defeat death and the fear of death through a constant mindfulness.

Since this phenomenon of the mindfulness of death was deeply Christocentric, the believer was called to imitate Christ’s sufferings.109 But this transformation through a

106 Constantine Malandrakis, “The Mindfulness of Death According to the Ascetic Patristic Tradition,” Theologia 59, no. 2 (1988): 346. 107 Malandrakis, 346. 108 Malandrakis, 346-47. 109 Malandrakis, 348. 46 mindfulness of death was more than mere imitation of Christ: “The believer experiences secretly in himself the mystery of the death and the resurrection of the saviour Christ.”110

Through union with Christ, the soul of the believer was resurrected from the dead and vivified in Christ. Thus, this remembrance of death was considered to be “one of the most essential virtues for the spiritual progress of a Christian.”111 Such a disposition toward death served as the best mode of purification from one’s passions and of the preservation of the virtues already acquired. Christ’s sufferings moved from a practice of imitation to a lived reality and presence for the Christian.

This connection between Christ’s death on the cross and the Christian’s transformation through a mindfulness of death led to an emphasis on enduring suffering and martyrdom. Brown states that it was important for the body, “through Christ and His

Spirit, to endure the devastating negative possession associated with the torments of a martyr’s fate.”112 The aim of life for the human person was to follow Christ in his death on the cross. Brown observes that Clement of Alexandria viewed the martyr as “the true human being in our race.”113 Becoming truly human was realized in the human person surrendering his or her life for the sake of Christ.

Other figures who exemplify this connection between the fear of death and martyrdom are Cyprian and Augustine. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, considered the fear of death and of physical pain to be “the most pressing enemy that the Christian must learn to overcome.”114 For Cyprian, following Christ meant “nothing less than a daily

110 Malandrakis, 348. 111 Malandrakis, 350. 112 Brown, The Body and Society, 69. 113 Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 7.14.88.2:3 in Alexandrian Christianity, trans. Henry Chadwick (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), 62 quoted in Brown, The Body and Society, 136. 114 Brown, The Body and Society, 195. 47 martyrdom.”115 Augustine is another figure who exemplifies this perfection of the human being in martyrdom, as Peter Brown explains: “For Augustine, martyrdom always represented the highest peak of human heroism.”116 These examples display the early

Christian belief that martyrdom represented the fullness of the human being. Under this framework, the concept of suffering and illness were viewed as fundamental aspects of one’s call to martyrdom.

Physical death and eternal life lie “at the heart of the Christian enterprise.”117

Many modern Christians who have grown averse to death, however, might misconstrue the ascetic concept of suffering as something that is endured merely “in exchange for a pardon from a vindictive God.”118 Believing that God is sending us a test in retribution and that we may attain God’s good graces if only we endure such suffering is a commonly held belief in our society. Paul Ferderer rejects this claim and instead articulates that the Desert Fathers and Mothers understood asceticism to be the “means of

Christians’ transformation as opposed to an end that allowed them to escape the wrath of an angry God.”119 Ferderer turns to The Sayings of the Desert Fathers translated by

Benedicta Ward to confirm this.120

Ferderer summarizes Ward’s conviction that “individual transformation and not divine pardon was the goal of such acts…Salvation was not a reward for a life spent in misery atoning for sin; it is a state of being.”121 With this proper understanding of the

115 Brown, 195. 116 Brown, 397. 117 Ferderer, “Uncertain Transformation,” 4. 118 Ferderer, 3. 119 Ferderer, 3. 120 See Benedicta Ward, trans., The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, rev. ed. (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984). 121 Ferderer, “Uncertain Transformation,” 3. 48 purpose of transformation, Ferderer states that “ascetic practices aid the monk in his quest to enter into a new state of being rather than atoning for sin.”122 Ferderer’s work serves to push against critics who believe that asceticism stems from hatred of the body, fear, shame, guilt, or atonement; rather, asceticism was grounded in the authentic hope for new life in Christ. Once again, there is major emphasis placed on the transformation of the human person in which the human embodies a new mode of being and becomes a new creation.

An Examination of John 6: The True Human Being and the True Food

Although the connection between Christ’s death and the human being’s suffering and martyrdom in following Christ has been identified above, we have not yet expanded upon the significance of Christ’s Passion and the ways it explicitly impacts what it means to embody the fullness of humanity. In particular, the perspective of the Johannine school of thought will be important for the following chapter which will examine John 19:25-27 and Mary’s presence at the foot of the cross. John Behr offers an extraordinary reflection on John 6 which will inform my exploration of illness and healing from the worldview of asceticism. Behr explains that for early Christians, the attributes that constituted the

“living human being” were inseparable from the martyr who became the glory of God through his or her earthly death. The call to martyrdom – becoming this living human being – was directly connected with the Eucharist. Partaking of the cup of salvation was to “share in the Passion of Christ by martyrdom.”123 This connection between the

122 Ferderer, 3. 123 John Behr, John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology (Oxford University Press, 2019), 195. 49

Eucharist, the Passion, and martyrdom within the Johannine community will be explained below.

I will begin with an exploration of Jesus’s discourse with his disciples about the bread of life in John 6:51-8,124 following the interpretation offered by John Behr who draws heavily from the work of early Christians like Ignatius of Antioch and Origen.

Behr notes that leading up to this passage, Jesus’s words about being the bread of life and the living bread from heaven are striking and even cause scandal among his disciples. To this disbelief and confusion, Jesus replies with multiple sayings about eternal life and references to the Son of Man.

First, Jesus calls himself the living bread that came down from heaven, saying that “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (6:51). When the disciples ask how they are to eat of his flesh, Jesus tells them that unless they “eat [φάγητε] the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood” (6:53), they will have no life. In the following verses, Jesus employs stronger language regarding his statements about the flesh. Three times, Jesus tells his disciples that they must eat his flesh, no longer using the verb φάγητε, but τρώγων which in Greek means to chew. To draw out this change of verbs, I will use John Behr’s translation of

Jesus’s responses which highlight his usage of the term τρώγων:

“he who chews my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day” (6:54); “he who chews me will live because of me” (6:57); and “he who chews this bread will live for ever” (6:58).125

124 The subsequent Bible verses quoted in this chapter will follow the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) unless otherwise notated. 125 Behr, John the Theologian, 150. 50

Behr explains that this shocking shift in vocabulary from eating bread to chewing flesh is also associated with Jesus calling himself the Son of Man, “a title which almost invariably in the Gospel of John applies to him as exalted and glorified, that is, upon the cross.”126 Following the scholarship of Maarten J. J. Menken,127 Behr illumines the ways that this passage refers to the death of Christ on the cross, arguing that his flesh to be consumed is that of the Son of Man who enters into new life through his death on the cross. Jesus says his followers must eat this flesh of the Son of Man – crucified and glorified – to attain eternal life.128

After this discourse which scandalizes the disciples, Jesus asks the following question: “Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” (6:62). Jesus’s question in 6:62 is the only time that the verb “to ascend” is used in John 6, highlighting a juxtaposition between his seven uses of the word “descent” throughout the chapter.129 This use of the term “ascend” is not contrasted with the descent of the Son of Man as the moment of the Incarnation, but rather, as the “descent of the life-giving flesh and blood which will be given through Jesus’ ascent on the cross.”130

Thus, Behr understands Jesus’s question in v. 62 about ascending to where he was before and receiving this life-giving flesh and blood as “that which is sacrificed, offered, ‘for the life of the world’ (6:51) and as that which brings recipients to share in the life-giving

Passion so that they too will be ‘raised up on the last day’ (cf. 6:39, 40, 44, 54), that is, through their death in conformity with Christ.”131 Behr associates this passage of John 6

126 Behr, 150. 127 For the full text, see Maarten J. J. Menken, “John 6:51c–58: Eucharist or Christology,” in Critical Readings of John 6, BIS 22, ed. R. Alan Culpepper (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 183–204. 128 Behr, John the Theologian, 151. 129 Behr, 155. 130 Behr, 155. 131 Behr, 155-56. 51 not with the Eucharistic elements themselves, but as referring to the Passion and the call of the Christian to follow Christ to the cross.

From these points, Behr turns to Origen who unites John 1:14 with John 6, the

Eucharist, and the Passion.132 He asserts that the consequences of the Word becoming flesh in 1:14 – “Christ’s dwelling in us and our beholding his glory” – “are here the result of our eating the flesh of Christ, the true food, the bread descending from heaven.”133

Similarly for Ignatius of Antioch, the call of John 6 to chew the flesh of the Son of Man was deeply connected to the martyr’s “public and often ritualized sacrifice in witness to

Christ.”134 Martyrdom, a reality for many during this time, served as a way to connect the sufferings of the faithful Christian to those of Christ himself. For example, Ignatius “saw his own impending death as a martyr as the occasion whereby he hopes to become ‘the pure bread of Christ,’ and ‘a word of God,’ and, indeed, ‘a human being’ (Rom. 4.1; 2;

6).”135 From these reflections on John 6, we see that early Christians believed that through offering his flesh by ascending the cross, Jesus descended as the Son of Man who offered his flesh and blood as the true food. His crucified and glorified flesh – the true food – was meant “to be chewed by Christians on their way to their own eucharistic martyrdom.”136 Through this embrace of martyrdom, the Christian was able to be born into new life and become the true human being, a point which will be explored below by turning once again to the writings of Ignatius.

132 For a detailed account of this connection, see Behr, John the Theologian, 156-58. Behr explains that Origen takes the “chewing” of John 6:51-58 to mean ruminating on Scripture. 133 Behr, 158. 134 Behr, 159. 135 Behr, 159. 136 Behr, 160. 52

Alluded to above through the sayings of Clement, Cyprian, and Augustine, it was believed that the fullness of the human being was realized in following Christ to the cross. Ignatius of Antioch is a figure who displays the ascetic understanding that it is through death that we not only become like Christ but also fully human. Ignatius tells those around him not to interfere with his impending martyrdom:

It is better for me to die in Christ Jesus than to be king over the ends of the earth. I seek him who died for our sake. I desire him who rose for us. Birth-pangs are upon me. Suffer me, my brethren; hinder me not from living, do not wish me to die…Suffer me to receive the pure light; when I shall have arrived there, I will be a human being, [ἄνθρωπος ἔσομαι], suffer me to follow the example of the passion of my God.137

John Behr explains Ignatius’s mindset: “Only by being a witness, a martyr, will Ignatius be born into life, receive the pure light, and, strikingly, be a human being, in the stature of

Christ, ‘the perfect human being’ (Smyrn 4.2) or ‘the new human being’ (Eph. 20.1)”138

Sharing in the “pathos of Christ,” the martyr becomes a new creation, is united with

Christ, and is renewed as a living human – “a word of God.”139

Behr connects the purpose of martyrdom with God’s original purpose for creation: “God’s purpose…is thus completed when the creatures give their own fiat to

God’s purpose, by following Christ, as Ignatius did, becoming witnesses, martyrs, no longer trying to secure one’s own lives, but rather taking up the cross and living by dying…”140 These references from Ignatius exemplify the early Christian belief that just as Christ became the true human being through his death on the cross, we too experience eternal life through our earthly death. The Passion was inseparable from the early

137 Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans 6, quoted in Behr, John the Theologian, 196-97. 138 Behr, John the Theologian, 197. 139 Behr, 273. 140 Behr, 216. 53

Christian’s view of suffering and his or her experience of the world itself. Embracing suffering and martyrdom as lived realities were pathways for sharing in the Passion of

Christ and becoming truly human.

Origins of Illness and Disease

Now that we have immersed ourselves in the ascetic worldview that produced and interpreted many of the scriptural texts which speak of the relationship between illness and healing, we can turn to the topic of illness and disease causality. First, we must be attentive to the ways that illness theodicies have marginalized people with disabilities throughout history. Many approaches to illness and healing have over-spiritualized suffering, indoctrinating at attitude of passive endurance amid oppression and in some cases, attributing sin to disability. These conceptions are still harmful for us today and need to be addressed. In this work, we need not be discouraged by certain details about healing and the body that seem problematic on the surface when compared to our experience today. Early Christian conceptions of disease and illness cannot be perfectly equated with our modern experience of disability nor our current models of medicine. We can, however, glean much truth from these reflections, evaluate our current notions of health, and integrate such wisdom into our present experiences of suffering, illness, and healing. This exploration will reiterate the notion that our current obsessions with perfect health are mere illusions, as articulated in the first chapter according to a disability studies hermeneutic.

Before examining the various illness theodicies at play in early Christianity, I would like to highlight the impact that modern medicine has had on our contemporary relationships with healing and wholeness. While early believers embraced suffering and

54 martyrdom as part of the way of Christ as described above, they also were more conditioned for endurance and the inevitability of suffering. Christians in antiquity faced incurable diseases and illnesses that today are either obsolete or manageable with modern medicine. While advances in technology and medicine have many benefits, Jean-Claude

Larchet posits that this progress is limited and has even failed us in the way that certain harmful ideologies have developed. The ideology that Larchet critiques is the framework which regards illness exclusively as a physiological phenomenon, completely detached from any spiritual meaning. This approach to illness leads to an equally detached approach to healing which relies solely on modern medicine and ignores the integrity of the human person. Larchet summarizes his critique:

By regarding sickness and suffering as autonomous realities of a purely physiological character - and consequently as susceptible to treatment that is purely technical, applied to the body alone - modern medicine does practically nothing to help patients assume them. Rather, it encourages patients to consider that both their state and their fate lie entirely in the hands of the physicians, that the only solution to their troubles is purely medical, and that the only way they can endure their suffering is to look passively to medicine for any hope of relief and healing.141

Larchet’s final line here is striking, for he draws attention to the way we often find the most comfort in relying on physicians and disassociating all illnesses from God altogether. While it is helpful to acknowledge that God does not cause us harm, we are led to wonder if removing God from all notions of health and illness, as we tend to do today, ignites further feelings of desolation and spiritual abandonment when suffering inevitably strikes. Devoid of a meaningful framework for assuming our sufferings, we may find ourselves alone when companionship is most needed.

141 Larchet, The Theology of Illness, 11. 55

Turning to the ascetic conceptions of illness and healing may assist us in reframing and reclaiming this illusion of wholeness that has become so deeply unsatisfying. Through reflections from the work of scholars who address illness and healing from an ascetic perspective, I will present early Christian engagement with these topics, all of which were inherently spiritual and relational, with the aim of recontextualizing suffering for us today. Recalling the disability studies critique of post-

Enlightenment thinking discussed in the previous chapter, we are reminded of the value that Western civilization has placed upon the rational, independent creature. It may be difficult for modern readers to even conceptualize a model in which suffering serves as a neutral – let alone positive – function due to the fact that we treat illness in such a detached manner. Anathema to this model of independence and self-sufficiency, suffering needs to be realistically reclaimed so that we might learn to draw upon true sources of hope and liberation in turning to God’s healing presence.

God Is Not the Author

At the foundation of early Christian engagement with disease and healing was the idea that God, while remaining the “Creator of all things visible and invisible,” was not the author of illness.142 Basil of Caesarea proclaimed in a homily that “It is folly to believe that God is the author of our sufferings” and that “God, who made the body, did not make illness, just as he made the soul but by no means made sin.”143 Larchet turns to other Church Fathers, like Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, and Gregory

142 Larchet, 17. 143 Basil of Caesarea, Homily: God is not the cause of evil 2, PG 31.332B quoted in Larchet, Theology of Illness, 17. 56

Palamas, to explicate the point that God did not initiate suffering.144 Not only did God not create illness, but God also was not the author of death, as Basil says above. According to our original creation, humans were made in perfect health without the capacity for suffering and death, thus making us incorruptible. Combining these points altogether, many believed that “man in the original state of his nature was also immortal.”145 Yet, these notions of incorruptibility and immortality – not properties of humans themselves – were highly nuanced and could not be separated from divine grace.146

For support of this idea, the Church Fathers and Mothers turned to Genesis 2:7 in which God breathed human beings into life: “…then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” In this breath, the Fathers and Mothers saw “the human soul as well as the divine Spirit.”147 Thus, God’s grace allowed the body and soul to be “penetrated with divine energies” and therefore possess perfect health.148 But in this preservation from illness through divine grace, a distinction was made between this state of paradise in which humans were placed in the beginning versus the natural state of the rest of the earth.149 Whether or not humans preserved this state of grace depended upon the human’s responsibility of free will. To maintain incorruptibility and immortality, humans needed to remain united with God. The Fathers and Mothers would “often say that man, in the

144 Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Discourse V.8-9. Maximus the Confessor, To Thalassios 61, PG 90.628A. Gregory Palamas, Homily XXXI, PG 151.396B, 396C, and 388B. 145 Larchet, The Theology of Illness, 20. 146 Larchet, 21. 147 Larchet, 21. 148 Larchet, 21. 149 Larchet, 22. 57 beginning and until the first sin, was in fact neither mortal nor immortal” in an attempt to capture the balance between divine grace and the human’s participatory responsibility.150

Disobedience, Not Personal Sin

According to the Fathers and Mothers, Adam’s poor use of his free will resulted in the sin that he committed in paradise.151 Humans were deprived of divine life after separating themselves from that which was good, thus opening the human soul and body to punishment, sadness, suffering, and death.152 The Eastern Fathers and Mothers believed that Adam and Eve deprived themselves of this divine grace by attempting to be like God – to even become “self-deifying.”153 As a result of this sin and disobedience through an attempt to become god, illness and sickness spread. Illness occasionally

“became ‘incarnated’ by the ‘powers of darkness and malice,’ the Devil and the demons, who thus became one of the chief sources of illness.”154 But even amid this demonic activity, God offered protection; humans, after all, were still made in God’s image and thus offered God’s grace.

Although it was believed that illness was introduced as a result of the personal sin of Adam and Eve and was often portrayed as a punishment, it was not assumed that suffering was inflicted at the hands of a “vengeful or cruel God.”155 This separation was a free choice that the human made and was thus predicted but not produced by God.156

150 Larchet, 24. 151 Larchet, 26. 152 Larchet, 26-28. 153 Larchet, 27. In his n. 72, Larchet explains that for many Church Fathers and Mothers, what is referred to as “original sin” was marked by an “attempt on man’s part to become self-deifying.” It was only those in the East, however, who affirmed that humans were “destined to become god,” in and by God alone. This topic of deification will be explored briefly below. 154 Larchet, 32. 155 Larchet, 34-35. 156 Larchet, 34. 58

Irenaeus is a figure whose writings display the idea that this separation from God was not necessarily a divine punishment:

Upon all those who separate themselves from Him, God inflicts the separation that they themselves have chosen. Now separation from God is death; separation from the light is darkness; separation from God means the loss of all good things that come from Him. Therefore, those who, by their apostasy, have lost all these things plunge themselves into all sorts of punishments. Not that God takes the initiative in punishing them, but punishment follows by the very fact that they are deprived of every good.157

This chosen separation from God and the subsequent loss of all that was good resulted not from God’s own initiative but as a consequence of human disobedience. Furthermore, it was believed that Adam and Eve transmitted this state to all fellow humans: “Death, corruption, illness and suffering thus become the legacy of the entire human race.”158

While it was held that this fallen state affected all humans, regardless of their own personal sins, the Eastern Fathers and Mothers understood this inheritance not as the sin of Adam itself, but rather as its consequences.159

Sharing in the consequences of this fallen human nature, all people were no longer able to attain incorruptibility or immortality. Personal sin did not create susceptibility to suffering and death, but rather came as a consequence of the disobedience of Adam and Eve. From this perspective, Larchet affirms that several passages of Scripture, especially from the Book of Job, “demonstrate that there exists no a priori link between a person’s illness or infirmity and any specific sin or sins which that person or his or her immediate ancestors might have committed.”160 While Larchet

157 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, V.27.2 quoted in Larchet, The Theology of Illness, 34. 158 Larchet, The Theology of Illness, 34. 159 Larchet, 35. See n. 119 on p. 35 in which Larchet explains how this conception differs from Augustine’s teaching in the West who affirmed “the hereditary character of the sin of Adam itself, or at least of his guilt.” 160 Larchet, 36. Cf. Jn 9:1-3; Mt 9:1-6; Mk 2:1-2; Lk 5:17-26. 59 confirms this confidently, he also shows the way that these declarations concerning the relationality between personal sin and sickness may seem entangled for the modern reader. Even the Fathers and Mothers admit in certain instances – although rare – that

“illnesses can very well be linked to the sinful state of those they afflict.”161 Other times, they reversed this traditional causality and thought it was possible that the suffering of the body and soul were “provoked by the health of the soul.”162 What can we do with these perspectives that don’t seem to fit our own today?

Similar to Castelli’s point earlier about being able to isolate passages that support a body/soul dualism in asceticism, we cannot ignore the biblical passages that have been extracted throughout history to link illness and sin in various ways. However, by locating them within the ascetic framework in which these passages were originally written and interpreted, we may begin to uncover the thread that unites these various perspectives which can still speak to us today. Most helpful in this reorientation is the acknowledgement that the ascetic worldview reframes the linkage of illness and sin. This perspective helps clarify the idea that in these passages – especially those rare ones in which afflictions arose as direct consequences of personal sin – illnesses were not viewed as punishments or products of divine wrath, but rather, as a means of salvation which led one to seek union with God.163 While illness arose as a “consequence of the sin of Adam and Eve and as an effect of demonic activity,” illness in itself did not cut one off from

God and was therefore viewed positively – even as a blessing.164 If responding appropriately, a person could draw spiritual benefits from their sufferings. In this way,

161 Larchet, 50. 162 Larchet, 50. 163 Larchet, 51. 164 Larchet, 56. 60 what was originally a “sign of mortality” became an “instrument of salvation” and could at times be viewed as a higher good than health itself.165 As we continue, we will see how this relationality between suffering and salvation, disagreeable to modern believers, actually evoked the presence of God who brought ultimate healing and wholeness to early Christians.

The extensive analysis of Darrel W. Amundsen and Gary B. Ferngren on the topic of disease causality offers a helpful framework as we move to discuss the spiritual significance of disease and illness. In evaluating the New Testament passages which involve sickness and physical conditions, these scholars classify the relevant passages into three categories:

1) Those for which an immediate causality is stated or implied, whether a divine purpose is specified or not. 2) Those for which no immediate causality is given and no specific divine purpose is stated or implied. 3) Those for which no immediate causality is given but for which a specific divine purpose is stated or implied.166

Out of the three categories, these scholars explain that the second case in which no causality or divine purpose is specified amounts to most of the narratives concerning sickness or disability in the New Testament.167 Most often, illness was not viewed as being directly caused by God or attributed to the work of demons. Rather, unless one of the rare cases explicitly attributed to the work of demons, disease was generally tied to natural causalities.168 However, depictions of disease were still understood theologically

165 Larchet, 56-57. 166 Darrel W. Amundsen and Gary B. Ferngren, “The Perception of Disease and Disease Causality in the New Testament.” ANWR 37.3 (1996): 2949. 167 Amundsen and Ferngren, 2951. 168 Amundsen and Ferngren, 2951. 61 in the lives of early Christians in the sense that the experience could either hinder or enhance one’s spiritual life and ascetic practices.

A Positive Spiritual Function of Illness?

Before turning to this spiritual dimension in more detail, it may be helpful to acknowledge that the modern reader is most likely deeply challenged and troubled by the assertion that suffering and illness might be tolerated, let alone denote a positive connotation in which one receives spiritual benefits and salvation. As mentioned above, our medical and technological developments have led us to view health and the eradication of suffering as ultimate goods. While early Christians did indeed see healing overall as a good and cared for the ill,169 their deep engagement with these topics and apparent paradoxes reveal the ways that the task of healing for us today has been stripped of its spiritual significance and placed solely upon the onus of the physician. But from the ascetic perspective, God was the true source of healing. Thus, rather than advocating for the elimination of the physical dimension of healing, I am instead exploring ways we might recover the spiritual which seems to have been lost on us today.

Throughout this whole discussion of illness and healing, Larchet maintains that even though suffering “can and should be spiritually transcended and transfigured in

Christ,” it should not be desired or pursued.170 The point is not that suffering is a greater

169 Many scholars explain the early Christian belief that God did not allow the Christian to endure excessive suffering (Cf. Larchet, The Theology of Illness, 79-83.) In addition to this, Christians believed that medicine and the ability to apply this knowledge ultimately came from God (Cf. Amundsen, “Medicine and Faith in Early Christianity,” 333-35; Larchet, The Theology of Illness, 79-130, especially p. 115). It is important to note that this study regarding the origins of illness does not lead one to disregard medicine or forgo healing. While emphasizing the need for greater attention on the spiritual dimension of illness and healing, Larchet explains that the Church Fathers and Mothers advocated for good health and pathways toward healing. In fact, we can recall that it was early Byzantine Christians in the fourth century who established the precursors of modern hospitals in which a public institution offered medical services to those in need. See Larchet, 106. 170 Larchet, The Theology of Illness, 79. 62 good above all, but that both health and illness should be “lived in God and for God.”171

The wisdom of the Church Fathers and Mothers show us that in times of illness, we must not take our hearts and minds away from the gaze of Christ. Furthermore, they understood from Scripture that Christ – “far from being resigned or indifferent in the face of illness”172 – was compassionately present and healed those who could no longer bear their pain. As Christus medicus, or “Christ the Physician,” Jesus brought healing to the soul and promised eternal life in heaven.173 More than a mere healer of bodily ailments,

Christ the great physician according to the hermit Antony (c. 251-356) offered healing to humanity who was “severed from its primal unity with god” and with the rest of humanity.174 As the physician of both the body and the soul, Christ had the power to heal and was even able to confer this power to those who became like him “through a divine- human asceticism.”175 This allocation of power is what we see in the saints who are called upon as mediators and intercessors with the ability to heal, a topic which will be explored in the final two chapters in regard to Mary, the Mother of Jesus.

Praying for healing or relief was certainly acceptable and common; what was not suitable was turning to God as a last resort after the aid of a physician had proven unsuccessful.176 Christians believed that the preservation of bodily health should not distract them from preserving the health of their soul and their relationship with God even

171 Larchet, 81. 172 Larchet, 81. 173 Andrew Crislip, “Shenoute of Atripe on Christ the Physician and the Cure of Souls,” Museon 122, no. 3–4 (2009): 248. 174 Andrew Crislip, Thorns in the Flesh: Illness and Sanctity in Late Ancient Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 52. 175 Larchet, The Theology of Illness, 84. 176 Amundsen, “Medicine and Faith in Early Christianity,” 340. 63 in the midst of illness. Whether the Christian called upon God for healing or endurance, the focus was nonetheless spiritual.

The Church Fathers and Mothers can speak to us today in the way that they emphasized the need for Christians to integrate their present illnesses deep within their search for unity with God rather than mindlessly hoping for a cure. They encouraged all to be “vigilant when illness strikes and not to trouble ourselves first of all with their natural causes and means to cure them.”177 Instead, we may be invigorated by placing such experiences within the framework of our relationship with God and even find comfort in the way that illness assists us in our movement toward eternal life.178 In this search for meaning, we are invited to raise our hearts and minds to God. Rather than allowing illness to crush us, we are called to draw near God who is the true source and end of all human life. In this turning, we receive wisdom – of the world, of the human person, and of God.179 With this reorientation to unity and integrity, illness has the power to reveal a sense of truth about the way we have been in relationship with God and others.

Simultaneously, even though early Christians mainly framed illness theologically to find a sense of spiritual meaning and purpose, they were not consumed with questions of causality as we are today. Amundsen and Ferngren explain that the New Testament writers did not tend to “theologize sickness,” meaning that they rarely gave “a theological explanation of individual occurrences of disease.”180 Andrew Crislip describes this contradictory approach to ascetic concepts of illness and health with the imagery of a pendulum since illness “paradoxically both hampers and encourages asceticism and

177 Larchet, The Theology of Illness, 58. 178 Larchet, 58. 179 Larchet, 60. 180 Amundsen and Ferngren, “The Perception of Disease,” 2952. 64 holiness.”181 On the one hand, early Christians brought illness into their theological reflection, and on the other, they were free to not make any meaning of it on a theological level or within the context of salvation.182 While the purpose and meaning of illness were relevant for Christians, they were not necessarily consumed with its causality.

In this complex process of making meaning of illness, the Church Fathers and

Mothers considered the disposition of the soul to be “philosophical,” for it is amid illness that we are to “discover the intentions and aims of God with regard to ourselves.”183

Spiritually, illness and suffering arouse our souls and lead us to encounter God in our prayer. Through this prayerful unification of petition and thanksgiving before God, the

Fathers and Mothers trusted that God responds to our needs. They understood, however, that God responds to our prayers with whatever is spiritually the most useful.184

Christians grasped that “the help God provides is not always that of healing or of relieving pain.”185 Instead of solely asking to be relieved of all suffering, those who called upon the presence of God in their ascetic endurance might request relief, but often they requested the strengthening of virtues, such as hope or patience.186 Far from experiencing spiritual abandonment, early Christians believed that they could be united to the presence of God through their prayer and possibly even transcend their suffering.187

The Christian might even rejoice in the spiritual benefits that were available through enduring suffering, a disposition which is reminiscent of Paul and his skolops.

181 Crislip, Thorns in the Flesh, 24, 35. 182 Crislip, 34-35. 183 Larchet, The Theology of Illness, 60. 184 Larchet, 57. 185 Larchet, 72. 186 Larchet, 69-72. 187 Larchet, 74-75. 65

While illness was not largely viewed as punishment for sin, latent connections between sin and sickness can still be identified in Scripture.188 Although contrary to our modern perspective, the Church Fathers and Mothers did indeed believe that illness occurred “as a means given by God for man’s purification from sin.”189 Larchet describes this conception of illness as serving more of a cathartic function, similar to the way that

Moss explains Paul’s skolops as positively lancing his pride in 2 Cor. 12. Amundsen puts this another way which resonates with the skolops preventing Paul’s excessive pride: “If

Christians were always healthy, they would grow self-confident.”190 This reflects the idea that illness is related to the health of the soul, as we noted above. Paul’s understanding of his skolops being used as a cathartic spiritual remedy and as a path to possessing the presence of Christ was deeply tied to the concept of transformation and the Passion. We can see this same line of thought in the early Church Fathers and Mothers who called us to participate in the Passion so that we could receive the indwelling of Christ who transforms our sufferings.

In examining a passage from Maximus the Confessor, Larchet highlights the early

Christian belief that Christ’s death on the cross ushered in the transformation of our sufferings. By participating in the death and resurrection of Christ, the human being

“receives from the Holy Spirit the power to work out a transfiguration of suffering in the context of his personal existence.”191 Through sharing in the sufferings of the cross, we experience intimacy and unity to the point that we completely reflect within ourselves the

188 Amundsen and Ferngren, “The Perception of Disease,” 2948. 189 Larchet, The Theology of Illness, 64. 190 Amundsen, “Medicine and Faith in Early Christianity,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 56, no. 3 (1982): 336. 191 Larchet, The Theology of Illness, 65. 66 crucified and transfigured Christ and experience a “Christly possession.” This, I believe, is what Paul truly means when he says in 2 Cor. 12:9 that “power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul’s skolops enables him to experience the indwelling of Christ who recontextualizes his supposed weakness as a strength. The Christian’s task, therefore, is to learn how to collaborate with God, like Paul does, so that we might be surrounded and overcome by the indwelling of the divine – Christ himself – rather than crushed by the pain of our sufferings.

Wholeness as Deification into the Crucified and Glorified Christ

Might we return to the concepts of incorruptibility, immortality, and deification of which the Eastern Fathers and Mothers spoke to underscore what is meant by this transformation and collaboration with God? The Church Fathers and Mothers understood the restoration of the original integrity of the human person as a return to “perfect and permanent health,” finally becoming incorruptible and immortal.192 Larchet explains that the aim of this restoration of body and soul was to free humans “once and for all from corruption and death by raising their bodies which, by the power of God, have become incorruptible and immortal, and to bestow upon them, in this new body as in their souls, true life for all eternity.”193 While the Fathers and Mothers agreed that this transformation did not mean we would “put on a body other than the one we had on earth,”194 they did think that a person’s body would be free of the corruptibility and mortality that marked its earthly nature. Can this notion of salvation hospitably incorporate our discussions on disability studies, the cross, and weakness? In these closing reflections, I hope to show

192 Larchet, 127. 193 Larchet, 126. 194 Larchet, 129. 67 that in placing these statements about new life within the ascetic framework, the restoration of Christ’s image in us does not result in the attainment of a new, unmarked body, but rather, in the enfleshment of Christ within us.

In exploring what it means to be truly human according to early Christians, we recall the aim of ascetic practices which aided believers in reorienting the passions and attaining purity of heart so that they might be so consumed with love of God and neighbor. This purification was tied to the belief that the archetype of the human was

Christ195 and that this movement toward love resulted in the indwelling of Christ:

The fact that Adam was created in the image of Christ implies that it was his vocation to be raised up to the Archetype or, more precisely, to be purified and to love God so much that God would come to dwell within him, that the Logos would enter into a hypostatic union with man, and thus appear in history as the Christ, be manifested as the God-man.196

Panayiotis Nellas explains that the aim of the Christian who was made in God’s image was to “become an ‘image’ in Christ,” fully transformed through this purification, united with God as the true human being, and raised as a new creation.197 Nellas explains further that this transformation or unification was a real anthropological change that resulted not only in an “external imitation” of Christ, but a real “Christification.”198 Thus, the Pauline conception of “life in Christ,” or what Moss calls a “Christly possession” was described by the Church Fathers and Mothers as a deification or theosis in which the human being experienced true fulfillment.199 This “Christification” of the human being is realized precisely through the cross.

195 Panayiotis Nellas, “Image of God,” in Deification in Christ: Orthodox Perspectives on the Nature of the Human Person, trans. Norman Russell (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987), 34. 196 Nellas, 35. 197 Nellas, 35-39. 198 Nellas, 39. 199 Nellas, 39-40. 68

From our reflection on John 6, we recall that Christ’s crucified and glorified flesh is the true food. As a result of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, we receive his life-giving flesh as we share in the Passion with him and become “the true human being,” as Ignatius says. This Christly possession in which we allow the crucified and glorified flesh of

Christ to completely conform to us transfigures our sufferings. This enfleshment through sharing in the pathos of Christ is where we step into our true identities as humans.200 In sharing Christ’s pain, “we not only die like human beings, but in fact become living human beings…”201 This transformation is only possible because it is a return to our “true condition,” as “living ones in the Living One.”202 This notion of the restoration of the human person goes back to our discussion on the origins of illness, in which the Fathers and Mothers believed that the breath of God breathed us into living beings, “penetrated with divine energies.”203

The restoration of the living human being that we experience through Christ’s ascent on the cross points to the truth of our own condition, just as the Fathers and

Mothers believed that our suffering revealed to us the reality of our relationships. We can understand the Passion as an “unveiling” of Christ and what it means to become the true human being through death.204 This unveiling, however, does not necessarily reveal something new, but rather the fullness of truth which we were previously unable to grasp.205 The unveiling on the cross allows us to truly see Christ, the glory of God, as the

200 Behr, John the Theologian, 314. 201 Behr, 318. 202 Behr, 320. 203 Larchet, The Theology of Illness, 21. 204 This concept of “unveiling” is discussed extensively by John Behr in his final chapter which follows both early Christians like Ignatius and Origen and the phenomenological work of twentieth century philosopher, Michel Henry. See Behr, John the Theologian, 306-31. 205 Behr, 318-19. 69

Living One who calls us to new life through following him in his Passion.206 By dwelling in the fullness of the Passion, our transformation into the crucified and glorified flesh of

Christ allows us to restore our original wholeness perfectly united in Christ. We are deified or “Christified” in this perfect unity with Christ on the cross, a state which the

Eastern Fathers and Mothers believed was our ultimate end. This concept of

Christification in which we are renewed and restored through Christ extends beyond the individual. The Church Fathers and Mothers believed that the salvation and deification of the human being included all persons as one Body of Christ.207 Maximus the Confessor writes that the human being, “while remaining fully man by nature in body and soul, becomes fully god in his soul and his body, through the divine grace and splendor of beatifying glory.”208 Through the cross, we allow this “beatifying glory” to transfigure us individually and as a whole people, meaning that we are perfectly united with Christ-in- us and Christ-among-us.

We have seen how the early Christian ideal of perfect health did not necessarily involve the removal of all illness but was rather grounded in total union with Christ.

Maximus the Confessor demonstrates this as he explains that through Christ’s death, God

“united us in Himself, rendering us in total conformity to Himself. Thereby he restored in us His image, pure and whole, which none of the symptoms of corruption could touch.”209 On the cross as the true food, this “pure and whole” image of Christ is revealed to us and reflected in us through conformity with Christ’s suffering. If the cross is the means of this unification, then perfection is realized not by the eradication of suffering,

206 Behr, 319. 207 Larchet, The Theology of Illness, 43. 208 Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua, PG 91.1088C quoted in Larchet, 131. 209 Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua, PG 91.1308D-1313B quoted in Larchet, 41. 70 but in the restoration of the image of the crucified Christ within the human person. The perfect revelation of wholeness is the crucified and glorified Christ within us in times of both health and sickness. When we become incorporated and united with Christ in this way, we ultimately experience the fullness of a Christly possession as our very own

Christification.

The Church Fathers and Mothers held that only in the “acquisition of a renewed nature in Christ” do we experience wholeness.210 In this renewal, we can better grasp

God’s revelation in the world, leading us to embrace our weaknesses and sufferings as

Christ did on the cross where he was unveiled as the true flesh. Instead of viewing incorruptibility as freedom from weakness or imperfection, I see more truth in understanding it as our ultimate deification into the crucified and glorified flesh of Christ, unveiled in the Passion, and offered to us in the Eucharist.211 Thus, the restoration of our original integrity in which we finally possess incorruptibility and immortality is marked by the indwelling of Christ – a Christly possession – where our weaknesses are not removed but embraced as sources of unification.

210 Larchet, The Theology of Illness, 42. 211 Behr, John the Theologian, 321. 71

TRANSITION TO MARIAN STUDIES

In the first two chapters of this work, I have attempted to bring clarity to the following questions that often arise when considering the topics of disability studies, suffering, and healing: What does it mean to be human? How can we begin to make meaning of our experiences of illness and difference, especially in the context of

Christianity? Does salvation and our entrance into new life with Christ result in the eradication of all traces of disability or illness?

We have seen how from both a disability studies hermeneutic and ascetic framework that the living human person is the one who orients the fullness of their being toward Christ and the cross in times of distress and peace. Our traditional notions of weakness and wholeness have been reimagined, moving away from harmful dichotomies between ability/disability, strength/weakness, wholeness/fragmentation, body/soul, and health/illness. In examining Paul’s skolops in 2 Cor. 12:7b-10, we saw that our nearness to Christ in the midst of our pain and difference opens us to experience the presence of

Christ within us. This Pauline theology of weakness calls us to see people with disabilities as integral to God’s earthly and heavenly community, leading us also to conclude that disability need not be eradicated from our eschatological vision.

Asceticism specifically has shown us that early Christians, while remaining attentive to the needs of their physical bodies, called upon the presence of the glorified and crucified Christ who made a home within their beings. Our consuming of the flesh of

Christ who we come to know through the cross mystically unites us to Christ’s very self.

This union was understood by the Eastern Fathers and Mothers as a “Christification”

72 which marked the complete restoration of the human person as the imago Dei. Rather than focusing on sin or vengeance, the ascetic framework guides us in reorienting our passions in sickness and in health so that we might experience the enfleshment of the transfigured Christ as a lived reality which directs us toward genuine love.

If we as Christians are called to embrace the inevitability of suffering, maintain a mindfulness of death, and continually move toward mystical union with Christ, how might we begin to do this in our own lives, especially as contemporary Christians? To answer this most important question, the last two chapters of this work will turn to the presence of the Theotokos who has assisted those in need since the beginning of

Christianity. We will explore how Mary has brought Christians to her Son – to the foot of the cross – by examining ways that believers engaged with the Virgin in piety and devotion through late antiquity. Our dive into the early Christian concept of

Christification allows for a different interpretation of the Marian sources, preserving the way that Mary allows for connection with Christ in our non-normative embodiedness.

The next part of this research invites modern readers to integrate such devotional practices into their own spiritual and devotional lives so that when encountering suffering and difference, they may not feel alone but fully accompanied by Mary in communion with her Son.

73

CHAPTER THREE

MARY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT AND EARLY CHRISTIAN DEVOTION

13 A new creation has the Creator revealed, manifesting himself to us, his creatures. From the seedless womb he came, preserving it chaste as it was before, 5 so that, beholding the miracle, we might sing her praises, crying: “Hail, flower of incorruption; Hail, crown of continence; Hail, you who shine forth the prefiguration of resurrection; Hail, you who show forth the life of the angels; 10 Hail, tree of glorious fruit on which the faithful feed; Hail, wood of fair shading leaves where many shelter; Hail, you who brought into the world the deliverer of captives; Hail, you who conceived the guide to those who wander astray; Hail, conciliation of the Righteous Judge; 15 Hail, forgiveness for many who have stumbled; Hail, robe of free intercession given to the naked; Hail, love conquering all desire; Hail, bride unwedded.”212

This hymn in praise of the Virgin depicts Mary as a place of refuge and celebrates her role in God’s plan of salvation. Taken from the Akathistos Hymn, this work plays a prominent role in the liturgy of the Orthodox Church and has influenced countless prayers and iconography throughout the centuries. This Byzantine Incarnation hymn remains anonymous, although many scholars have attempted to date the text. Scholars have often proposed that the hymn dates back to the sixth century (with many attributing it to the work of Romanos the Melodist) or to the seventh century (connecting it with the

212 Leena Mari Peltomaa, The Image of the Virgin Mary in the Akathistos Hymn, vol. 35 of The Medieval Mediterranean: Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 400-1453 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 11, 13. Peltomaa’s English translation of the Greek Akathistos Hymn is based on the following text: C.A. Trypanis, ed., Fourteen Early Byzantine Cantica, vol. 5 of Wiener Byzantinische Studien (Vienna, 1968), 17-39. 74 siege of Constantinople in 626).213 Yet, Leena Mari Peltomaa has skillfully argued for its composition somewhere between the Council of Ephesus (431) and the Council of

Chalcedon (451).

Peltomaa identifies the ways that the salutations reflect the triumph of the

Theotokos at Ephesus. But more significantly, Peltomaa’s argument rests on the fact that

Mary’s role in the Incarnation presented in the hymn comes through the Eve-Mary parallel.214 The Akathistos’s story of the Incarnation is grounded in the “Christian explanation of world history” which draws largely from Irenaeus’s theory of

“recapitulation” and oikonomia (the redemptive plan of God) found in his work, Adversus haereses, dating back to almost two centuries prior to the Akathistos Hymn.215 Mary is known by Irenaeus as the new Eve since her obedience became the cause of salvation for all humankind.216 This concept of Mary as the new Eve can be identified throughout the hymn’s salutations, such as in Strophe 13 listed above which proclaims Mary as the one

“who [shines] forth the prefiguration of resurrection” (13.7) and who is the “robe of free intercession given to the naked” (13.16). Prior to the Council of Ephesus, Mary’s significance was largely understood in terms of this idea of the Second Eve, as will be shown below in the writings of Irenaeus of Lyons.

The epithets found in this hymn in praise of Mary portray her as the Theotokos, the Virgin, and the Second Eve; some lines even reflect ascetic elements.217 If we follow

213 Peltomaa, xiii. 214 Peltomaa, 216. 215 Leena Mari Peltomaa, “Epithets of the Theotokos in the Akathistos Hymn,” in The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzantium: Texts and Images, ed. Leslie Brubaker and Mary B. Cunningham (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2011), 113. 216 Peltomaa, “Epithets of the Theotokos,” 113. 217 For a concise summary of these elements that appear throughout the hymn, see Peltomaa, Image of the Virgin Mary, 205-211. Peltomaa concludes that based on numerical data, the Theotokos 75

Peltomaa’s early dating of this hymn as being composed closer to the Council of Ephesus in 431, then this source marks an important milestone in the history of Marian piety and devotion. Yet, how do we arrive here in the fifth century where Christians are praising

Mary for her role in salvation as the Second Eve? How and why did Christians even begin to call upon Mary in the first place? The Eve-Mary parallel displayed in the

Akathistos Hymn involves a typological concern that moves well beyond the

Christological debate over Mary’s title as the Theotokos or God-bearer. Thus, the praises directed to Mary in this early Christian hymn reflect a devotion to the Virgin that may seem out of place for its time.

We are faced with many questions: What characterized Marian devotion prior to the Council of Ephesus, and was it purely Christological as we have been led to believe?

Furthermore, do these sources of Marian devotion give us any insight into the ways that early Christians called upon Mary as a source of strength or consolation during experiences of suffering, illness, or death? Before traveling back to the origins of Marian piety beginning with the New Testament, we first need to clarify why the focus of this study will extend beyond the development of doctrine and dogma to examine works that have been categorized as apocryphal.

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries (mainly from 1850-1950) experienced a tremendous explosion of Marian scholarship, especially within Roman Catholicism, and has thus been termed the “Marian Century.”218 This most recent scholarship has tended to overlook Marian devotion and cult and instead focuses on Mary’s role in the

elements represent “a clear minority in comparison with the two other main concepts, the Virgin and the Second Eve” (211). 218 Stephen J. Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 2. 76 development of Christian dogma and doctrine. In this approach, some have been tempted to read “modern Mariological dogmas back into the writings of the New Testament and the early church fathers.”219 Scholars like Peter Brown and Stephen J. Shoemaker admit that this approach may be appropriate for the Catholic Tradition and is thus worth exploring in such a context.220 Yet this approach which assumes that these modern

Marian dogmas also belonged to the ancient church “[fails] to shed any light on the actual emergence of Marian piety.”221 Both this overly optimistic approach often found in

Catholic apologetic works and the traditional Protestant approach of refuting any evidence of Marian devotion prior to the fifth century have resulted in much division among Christians and an incomplete record of the history of Christian devotion to Mary.

In the midst of these conflicting approaches, one false assumption has prevailed: that Marian devotion did not significantly impact the lives of believers until the Council of Ephesus in 431 which affirmed Mary’s title of Theotokos as the one who gave birth to

God. While it is true that “there is practically no evidence of any Christian devotion to

Mary prior to 150 CE (or, for that matter, to any other figure besides Jesus),” Stephen J.

Shoemaker has shown us through his examination of previously overlooked and newly translated texts that “devotion to the Virgin and even her cultic veneration had begun well before the Council of Ephesus had even convened.”222 While the council’s proclamation of the Theotokos certainly ignited an intense interest in Mary and her veneration, we will see how such sentiments did not merely emerge after the councils themselves. Rather, we

219 Shoemaker, 7. 220 Cf. Raymond E. Brown et al., Mary in the New Testament: A Collaborative Assessment by Protestant and Roman Catholic Scholars (New York: Paulist Press, 1978). See n. 477 on p. 215 which acknowledges that today, Catholics might admit that there is questionable basis for certain dogmatic evidence in Scripture, but that they can be identified in other sources of Christian tradition. 221 Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion, 7. 222 Shoemaker, 3. 77 can begin to trace the origins of Marian devotion well before the council to certain passages in the New Testament and more definitively in second century apocryphal texts.

This moves us to a helpful reminder about the development of doctrine and dogma and thus the appropriate use of biblically-inspired sources that are not found in

Scripture. While it is helpful to acknowledge that the judgments of councils provided

“indications of the discourse climate” and “defined what language was proper for

Christian believers,”223 councils did not invent such devotional practices that were being questioned. Rather, doctrinal discussions at councils reflected devotional trends and practices that were already held by early Christians themselves. Especially prior to

Ephesus, the doctrine and canon of the Church were not fully developed or conceived of in the same way that they are for us today. Following the devotional customs of the

Church or the ekklesia (the people, as opposed to an isolated hierarchy), doctrine was tested by the faithful and sanctified through practice.224 Niki Tsironis calls this a

“filtration process” in which the method of accepting or rejecting dogma “involved the whole Church, clergy, and laity as a single body.”225 Given this filtration process, early

Christians would not have considered extra-biblical material to be problematic; it would have been insignificant that such sources depicting Marian devotion were not canonical because they involved biblical themes and accurately represented the liturgical life of the ekklesia.

223 Thomas Arentzen, The Virgin in Song: Mary and the Poetry of Romanos the Melodist (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 36. 224 Niki Tsironis, “From Poetry to Liturgy: the Cult of the Virgin in the Middle Byzantine Era,” in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki, 91-102 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2005), 98-99. 225 Tsironis, 98. 78

Susan Ashbrook Harvey summarizes these points: “No Byzantine would have realized, let alone cared, that these stories were missing from the canonical New

Testament. Their affirmation was everywhere present, whether officially through the ecclesiastical calendar or particular churches, relics or shrines; or as continually legitimated by representation, exploration and retelling through various media.”226 She argues that extracanonical sources would have been viewed as valid and credible for

Christians in antiquity; Scripture itself was not the only source that was considered to be authentic. This approach, attentive to the historical experience of early Christians, invites a more holistic picture of Christian devotion to Mary so that we can engage sources that have been previously dismissed as failed canonical material.

In these reflections on the role of doctrine and dogma in early Christianity, we must admit that devotion to the Virgin did indeed emerge outside of the “proto-orthodox stream of early Christianity,”227 thus explaining why the early Church Fathers and

Mothers did not widely write about Marian devotion until the fifth century. Since the evidence of Marian piety is found primarily in extracanonical or apocryphal texts,

Stephen J. Shoemaker suggests that this is “perhaps a sign that Marian piety first developed in milieux outside the purview of the ‘orthodox’ church authorities, in heterodox and other theologically marginal communities.”228 This acknowledgement, however, does not preclude their importance in this narrative. Rather, the affirmation of a heterodox context further emphasizes the validity of Niki Tsironis’s explanation of a

226 Susan Ashbrook Harvey, afterword to The Reception of the Virgin in Byzantium: Marian Narratives in Texts and Images, ed. Thomas Arentzen and Mary B. Cunningham (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 342. 227 Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion, 25. 228 Shoemaker, 6. 79 filtration process for the establishment of Christian doctrine and dogma that were tested by the faithful. The sources discussed in this chapter are clear examples of early Christian communities that expressed devotion and veneration to Mary that were later embraced by

Church Fathers and Mothers in their writings and through the proclamations of ecumenical councils, such as Ephesus.

Now that we have established the need to examine extracanonical sources to better understand the development of Marian piety throughout the history of Christianity, we can turn to the New Testament texts which lay the foundations for such devotion.229

Since there have been a few comprehensive accounts of Mary in the New Testament in the last few decades, I do not feel that an extensive exploration of all these texts is necessary. Instead, I have chosen to focus on passages concerning Mary that give us insight into the beginnings of Marian devotion and which substantively connect to

Christian theology around suffering and the body. Thus, while the four Gospels will be briefly mentioned, I will conclude this chapter by focusing on John 19:25-27 in which

Mary is depicted at the foot of the cross.230

Mary in the New Testament

We first hear about the mother of Jesus in the earliest Christian writings found in

Paul, especially in his letters to the Romans, Galatians, and Philippians. Although the woman is unnamed, Paul’s famous phrase “born of a woman” from Galatians 4:4 emphasizes the humanity of Christ and is likely not a reference to the virginal conception.

229 For a comprehensive account of all the New Testament passages in which Mary appears, see Brown et al., Mary in the New Testament. See also Bertrand Buby, Mary in the New Testament, vol. 1 of Mary of Galilee (New York: Society of St. Paul, 1994). 230 Unless otherwise indicated, all biblical translations in this chapter will follow the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). 80

However, this identification of the woman as Mary was later read into the text by

Christians like Ignatius of Antioch who were aware of Mary’s status as a virgin.231 We can see in the letters of Paul that the person of Mary was not significant; the focus of such texts which alluded to Mary’s role as mother was largely Christological. The Gospel of

Mark does not reveal much more about Mary either. Written around 70 CE, a prominent passage in Mark’s Gospel is found in 3:20-35 which describes the conditions that constitute the eschatological family as those who do the will of God.232 While the editors in the collaborative work Mary in the New Testament have acknowledged that this passage is not meant to exclude Jesus’s physical family, there still is some tension identified in the text from v. 21 in which his family tries to restrain Jesus because they believe he is going mad.233 Shoemaker concludes that still in this Gospel, there is “little interest in Jesus’ mother beyond her biological and genealogical role.”234

Matthew’s Gospel, written between 80-90 CE, begins with Jesus’s birth where

Mary is featured more significantly than that in the Pauline corpus and Gospel of Mark.

This birth narrative is the first indication that Mary remained a virgin not only when she conceived but also when she gave birth.235 This allows Shoemaker to assert that

Matthew’s Gospel “marks the inception of Christian devotion to Mary, since the miraculous preservation of Mary’s virginity and her bodily purity quickly emerged as foundational elements of Marian piety both in early Christianity and in the centuries to

231 Brown et al., Mary in the New Testament, 43-45. 232 Brown, 54. 233 Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion, 31. For an exploration of this family tension, see pp. 40-43. Shoemaker posits that Mary’s absence from certain New Testament passages and her “occasional portrayal as an outsider or even an opponent to her son’s ministry possibly reflect the sectarian interests of Pauline Christianity,” 43. 234 Shoemaker, 31. 235 Shoemaker, 32. 81 come…”236 This introduction of Mary’s virginity in the Gospel of Matthew is significant because it became foundational to the devotional and liturgical practices of Christians in later centuries. By the time of Matthew’s Gospel, then, not only have Christological concerns about Mary emerged, but an interest in her miraculous virginity had also developed. These two interests are important because when taken together and paired with the practice of venerating the saints, we begin to see how devotion to Mary naturally progressed among Christians.237

Likely composed between 90 and 100 CE, John’s Gospel connects Mary to

Jesus’s ministry in the two major narratives where she appears: the wedding at Cana (2:1-

11) and the crucifixion of Jesus (19:25-27). The wedding at Cana initiates Jesus’s public ministry after he performs his first miracle. Mary’s recognition of the lack of wine and her response to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you” (2:5), prompts Jesus to listen and act. While many scholars have debated the significance of Jesus addressing his mother as

“woman” and the possible tensions present,238 we can nevertheless conclude “that the overall effect of this incident is to connect Mary of Nazareth with the beginning of her son’s public ministry.”239 Although this passage has been widely examined from an apologetic and dogmatic standpoint where scholars either confirm or deny Mary’s role as intercessor, we can acknowledge its foundational impact on the development of Marian piety. Christians grew to view this incident at Cana as a prime example of Mary’s

“maternal persuasion” which allowed her to intercede for believers with her son, “even

236 Shoemaker, 33. 237 Shoemaker, 14. 238 Many conflicting views have been proposed. Cf. Brown et al., Mary in the New Testament, 188-91; Edward Sri, Rethinking Mary in the New Testament (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2018), 153-56; Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 326-27. 239 Shoemaker, 34. 82 when he was not entirely willing.”240 Regardless of whether or not we determine if

Mary’s intercessory role in this narrative was the intent of the Gospel writer himself, we can still affirm that this story led Christians in antiquity to call upon Mary in times of need. Paired with Mary’s presence at the foot of the cross, she is depicted as a disciple of

Jesus who is attentive to his mission from beginning to end and who receives special attention from her son.241

The Gospel of Luke (80-100 CE) further emphasizes Mary’s purity and holiness which were first introduced in Matthew. Especially through the inclusion of the Nativity account, Luke highlights Mary’s virginal conception in the Annunciation scene more emphatically than Matthew’s mention of Mary conceiving through the power of the Holy

Spirit (Mt 1:18).242 Mary’s joyous encounter with her cousin Elizabeth leads her to proclaim the Magnificat through which “she positions herself at the axis between the two covenants, associating her condition both with God’s faithfulness toward Israel in the past and also with the fulfillment of God’s promises that will come to pass through her divinely conceived son.”243 In these opening scenes, Mary speaks prophetically and is presented as the first faithful disciple to “hear and receive the gospel message of salvation from the angel Gabriel”244 through her response: “Let it be with me according to your word” (Lk 1:38).

While the passages we know as the Annunciation and the Visitation are not the only appearances of Mary in Luke’s Gospel, they are most helpful in the way that they

240 Shoemaker, 34. 241 Shoemaker, 35. 242 Shoemaker, 35-36. 243 Shoemaker, 36. See also Brown et al., Mary in the New Testament, 137-43. 244 Shoemaker, 36. 83 help us see how Mary’s depiction in the New Testament has progressed within a few decades, from purely offering Christological insight to being her son’s faithful and holy disciple set apart from others. This notion of being set apart lies at the heart of Marian devotion. During the rise of the cult of the saints, Mary emerges as one who is set apart not only from other humans, but also from other saints due to her closeness with her son and her ability to intercede on behalf of the world. Although this veneration does not appear until later in antiquity, we can already begin to see in the stories of the New

Testament how Mary was uniquely revered, especially through the belief in her virginal conception which is imparted in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

The Figure of Mary Beyond the New Testament

With this brief and incomplete mapping of Mary’s appearance in the New

Testament, we get a glimpse of the way that the Gospel traditions allowed for the development of Marian devotion in later centuries which tended to reverence her intimacy with Christ, her miraculous conception, and her purity. We will continue this dive into early Christian devotion to Mary by examining how some of the ante-Nicene

Fathers and extracanonical texts expanded upon the New Testament traditions to further develop these Marian themes.

Extracanonical Texts and the Patristics

For a comprehensive account of the New Testament apocrypha that involve Mary,

I direct readers to Mary in the New Testament.245 Most important for our discussion here is the ability to trace the foundations and progression of Marian devotion. From the

Ascension of Isaiah, an early second-century apocryphal text, to the Odes of Solomon, a

245 See Brown et al., Mary in the New Testament, 243-53. 84 second-century compilation of Christian hymns, the belief in Mary’s virginal conception and birth is maintained and further developed. In the Odes, the hymns attest to Mary giving birth without experiencing any pain,246 and they describe her as “a mother with great mercies” who “loved with redemption, and protected with kindness.”247 While these traditions and sources seem to align with the way that Mary is later proclaimed as an intercessor and protector of Christians, Shoemaker is hesitant to assert that these passages should be interpreted as definitively prefiguring such devotion due to their early dating.

The patristics also expand upon Mary’s virginity and her exceptional status, especially within the context of the Eve-Mary parallel which we see explicitly in the

Akathistos Hymn referenced at the beginning of this chapter. As mentioned above, devotion to the Virgin is difficult to place before 150 CE, so many of the earliest patristic writings do not even reference Mary at all.248 The focus was solely on Christ. However,

Mary appears in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 35-107), as well as in the writings of Justin Martyr (ca. 100-165) and Irenaeus of Lyons (d. 202). Although Ignatius affirms the mystery of Mary’s virginal conception, the work of Justin Martyr further reflects upon her Christological and soteriological significance. His Dialogue with Trypho is likely the first indication of the “typological parallel between the virgin Eve and the virgin Mary.”249 In this context, Mary is portrayed as one whose obedience to God reorients Eve’s disobedience in the garden. While this parallel moves Mary towards becoming recognized as a figure in her own right and as playing a role in salvation, it also

246 For a discussion of the development of the meaning of virginity in early Christianity, see Brown, et al., Mary in the New Testament, 267-78. 247 Odes of Solomon 19, trans. James Charlesworth, 81-83 quoted in Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion (translation slightly modified by Shoemaker), 44. 248 Brown et al., Mary in the New Testament, 253. 249 Brown, 255. 85

“powerfully reinscribes patriarchal ideas of female virtue as chaste and submissive,” as if, for example, Eve alone was culpable for sin entering the world.250 Nevertheless, Justin’s work had significant theological impacts because he argued that Mary’s response at the

Annunciation and her willing participation “enables the destruction of sin and death that was unleashed by Eve’s disobedience.”251 Even though devotion to Mary cannot be explicitly determined here in Justin’s writings, we can once again recognize the beginnings of the idea that Mary played an active role in the salvation of the world.

The promotion of Mary as the new Eve is established even further in the writings of Irenaeus of Lyons and his understanding of salvation history. We mentioned above that the Eve-Mary parallel which comes through clearly in the fifth-century Akathistos

Hymn grew out of Irenaeus’s notion of recapitulation from the second century. Emerging from the belief in the renewal of humanity, recapitulation draws on the Pauline tradition which understands Christ to be the new Adam who ushers in the transformation and restoration of the human person to its original state of wholeness. In the same way that

Christ as the new Adam “repairs the damage done to humankind through the first Adam’s disobedience,” Mary as the new Eve makes Jesus’s work of the salvation of the whole world possible through her obedience.252 In this dogmatic concern with Mary, she is portrayed not only as the new Eve but also as “the person at the threshold of the new

250 Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion, 45. Note that the concepts of “the Fall” and “original sin” cannot be detected in the Genesis texts themselves but rather belong to later Christian interpretive traditions, particularly from Paul’s reference in Romans 5 and Augustine’s reading of Paul. John J. Collins explains how the story of Adam and Eve does not imply a doctrine of original sin: “The story of Adam is paradigmatic, insofar as the temptation to eat forbidden fruit is typical of human experience. One might also suppose that an inclination to sin is inherited from one generation to another. But there is no suggestion in the biblical text that guilt is transmitted genetically.” John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014), 76. 251 Shoemaker, 45. 252 Shoemaker, 46. 86 humanity, the mother of the new humanity in whom God made a new beginning.”253

These reflections on the person of Mary are important for the mapping of the origins of devotion, but specifically for this project, we can begin to connect these themes to our modern notions of illness and healing.

Reflections on the Eve-Mary Parallel

Attentive to the fact that this Eve-Mary parallel has been twisted to abuse and suppress women, I believe there remains an opportunity to reclaim the way that Mary in this typological perspective aids us in experiencing a transformation or a “new beginning.” Recall the goal of human life as outlined in the previous chapter: to experience mystical union with Christ which necessarily involves a transformation. As the mother of this new humanity, Mary accompanies us uniquely as one who dwells in this threshold of renewal and reorientation as the new Eve or the “new earth creature” if we hope to move beyond patriarchal categories. Rather than encouraging us to passively imitate her obedience, especially in our suffering, might we see how Mary’s persistence invites us to see ourselves as capable of transformation? Too often amid suffering we feel stuck, abandoned by God, or powerless. Yet in these reflections on Mary, she becomes known in the writings of Irenaeus as one who rescues “the human race from its bondage of death.”254 This movement toward new life with Mary’s assistance cannot be separated from our previous discussions of early Christians who maintained a mindfulness of death on their journey toward eternal life with Christ. While learning how to reorient our lives to see our weaknesses as sources of strength and unity, we may be sustained by the

253 Brown et al., Mary in the New Testament, 256. 254 Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion, 46. 87 encouragement that we can experience a new beginning even in moments of deep sorrow or alienation.

Protevangelium of James

Although there are a few texts and figures after the second century which mention

Mary outside the context of Scripture, the most remarkable is by far the Protevangelium of James, a second-century biography of Mary. Shoemaker critiques the title of this work and how it has been falsely perceived throughout history. Its name suggests that this work is a gospel, thereby depicting the life of Jesus and his ministry. Others have categorized this apocryphal work as an “Infancy Gospel” which concerns the early life of Jesus as a child. Both of these classifications, however, are inaccurate, as the Protevangelium focuses on the “miraculous life of Mary and her supernatural qualities prior to the birth of her son.”255 Since this work is a Marian biography, it should thus be categorized as a

“Marian apocryphon” rather than an “apocryphal Infancy Gospel.”256

Furthermore, Shoemaker questions whether the designation of “apocryphal” is even appropriate. While it is an extracannonical work in the sense that it “treats events and characters from the biblical tradition,” Shoemaker argues that its vast influence on the Christian tradition qualifies this work to be considered “quasicanonical.”257 While this text greatly impacted the Eastern Church and the work of figures like Clement of

Alexandria, Origen, and Justin Martyr, it was condemned in the West as heretical around

500 during the Gelasian Decree.258 Despite this condemnation, the Protevangelium was

255 Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion, 48. 256 Shoemaker, 48. 257 Shoemaker, 49. 258 Brown, Mary in the New Testament. 248. See also Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion, 49. 88 neither considered a canonical failure nor were its traditions rejected. Rather, Shoemaker asserts that “their traditions were received with a certain amount of authority, and they laid the textual foundation for Marian devotion in both the East and the West.”259 Given our discussion of the development of doctrine as more of a filtration process, this text can appropriately be conceived as “a valued supplement to the scriptures” and could be categorized as an important aspect of the Church’s Tradition.260

This text is groundbreaking for us today because it attests to the emergence of

Marian piety by the later second century. Although this work did not elicit any signs of cult or liturgical prayer to the Virgin, its “aim is first and foremost to glorify the Virgin

Mary” as a figure of her very own.261 Within a short period of time, beginning with

Paul’s Christological concerns and then with the Gospels of Matthew and Luke which especially highlight Mary’s purity, we have a text that further proclaims Mary’s unique holiness and soteriological significance.262 While it would be anachronistic to read the

Protevangelium’s description of Mary’s own divine conception as advancing the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, we can assert that this text furthers the belief in Mary’s extraordinary and exceptional nature.263

In the narrative after the description of Mary’s virginal birth to Jesus, a woman named Salome physically inspects Mary’s body to test if she is still a virgin. Upon inspection, Salome’s hand shrivels, “as if she had just inappropriately touched a sacred object.”264 While these details may sound disturbing to us today, for early Christians they

259 Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion, 50. 260 Shoemaker, 50-51. 261 Shoemaker, 53-54. 262 Shoemaker, 54. 263 Shoemaker, 57-58. 264 Shoemaker, 60. 89 confirmed “not only Mary’s virginity but also the inviolable sanctity of her person.”265

Unlike the Gospel of Luke where Mary is portrayed as an obedient yet relatively ordinary human being, in the Protevangelium, she is “exalted and revered as the personification of

God’s transcendent holiness” and portrayed as “perfect holiness embodied in a human being.”266 Despite this incredible depiction of Mary’s holiness, this text often confuses scholars because the Marian piety depicted here neither reflects other second-century trends in devotion nor trends in later centuries. Nonetheless, this text helps us to place the emergence of Marian piety well before the Council of Ephesus. Before exploring other sources of Marian devotion prior to Ephesus and beyond, I return to the passage in John which depicts Mary, the beloved disciple, and Christ at the crucifixion.

Encountering Mary at the Foot of the Cross

Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” 27 Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.267

In the first two chapters of this work, we journeyed through various ways of understanding the human person and concluded that it is in mystical union with the crucified Christ that we experience true wholeness and the fullness of our humanity. If we hope to find sources of consolation in this journey toward Christification as the ascetics called it, might we turn to a passage where these same themes of suffering and transformation are present? In looking at John 19:25-27, I will conclude these reflections by pondering how Mary’s role in the history of Christianity has aided believers in the

265 Shoemaker, 60. 266 Shoemaker, 60-61. 267 John 19:25-27. 90 past and remains relevant for us today. This passage which depicts Mary at the foot of the cross further grounds us in our journey toward wholeness through intimacy with the crucified Christ.

Reception History

While the reception history and the approach of historical-critical scholars are not the main interpretive lenses for this pericope, an introduction to the work of theologians throughout history may be a helpful place to begin before turning to the ascetic framework. Although we may be inclined to read this text in light of its ecclesiological and messianic themes, most Church Fathers and Mothers did not understand “these verses as a revelation of Mary’s spiritual maternity.”268 Rather, the major patristic interpretation focused on Jesus’s filial piety towards his mother in a moral sense due to the entrustment of his mother to the care of the beloved disciple who takes her into his home.269 With the writings of Ambrose and Ephrem around the fourth century, Mary was considered to be a “type” of the Church.270 Yet, for the first millennium, the moral interpretation (Jesus’s filial piety) largely reigned supreme.

Beginning with the work of Rupert of Deutz (1080-1130), this passage was interpreted in light of Johannine symbolism which “sees Jesus giving Mary as

‘Synagogue’ or ‘Faithful Daughter of Zion’ to the faithful and perfect believer, the

Beloved Disciple.”271 This is the point at which we can identify interpretations which attest to the spiritual motherhood of Mary for all Christians. During the Renaissance,

268 Ignace de la Potterie, Mary in the Mystery of the Covenant, trans. Bertrand Buby (New York: Alba House, 1992). 269 de la Potterie, 212. See also Buby, Mary in the New Testament, 133. 270 de la Potterie, 212. 271 Buby, Mary in the New Testament, 133. 91 however, this new trend in the scholarship faded and did not significantly reappear until the twentieth century.272

In recent decades, there has been much dissent over whether this passage reveals

Mary as the spiritual mother of all Christians, the new Eve, or the “woman” from

Revelation 12. Furthermore, scholars debate the significance of the parallels between this passage, the Cana narrative, and the birth allegory in John 16 which draws on the language of “woman” and Jesus’s “hour.” Many modern scholars weigh in on these inquiries differently. The link between the two major passages that involve Mary in

John’s Gospel mentioned above, the wedding at Cana (2:1-11) and the foot of the cross

(John 19:25-27), is held by many scholars today. Ignace de la Potterie argues that this

Johannine passage should be read “against the background of the Old Testament prophecies regarding the ‘Daughter of Zion,’” attesting to its messianic features.273

Edward Sri advocates for reading the Calvary scene in light of the wedding at Cana as well, leading readers “to see Mary as much more than just a background character in

John’s account of the crucifixion.”274 Bertrand Buby affirms that this text should be read within the framework of the Passion narrative.275 Brown et al., however, assert that all of these symbolic suggestions (spiritual motherhood, Eve/Mary parallel, woman of Rev. 12 parallel) cannot be proven, and are at best, possible interpretations.276 The overall interpretation of the passage according to this latter group of scholars is a testament to the

272 de la Potterie, 212. 273 de la Potterie, 214. 274 Edward Sri, Rethinking Mary in the New Testament (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2018). 275 Buby, Mary in the New Testament, 130. 276 Brown et al., Mary in the New Testament, 217. 92 formation of a “new eschatological family relationship to Jesus stemming from discipleship.”277

Filial Concern

In the exchange between Mary and the beloved disciple, de la Potterie, Sri, and

Buby all see the potential for an interpretation that goes beyond Jesus expressing a filial concern for his mother. Arguing that this moral interpretation is unlikely, Sri posits that this passage in John not only establishes a “new kinship relationship,” but also involves a revelation.278 In addition to Sri, Buby and de la Potterie attest to the significance of a fourfold pattern in John which involves the introduction of two or more characters, one character seeing the other(s), the expression “look” or “behold” (idou or ide in the Greek) prefacing a statement about the persons, and the reception of a new title or word that reveals something about that person.279 This literary schema evinced throughout the

Gospel of John and here in this particular passage at the cross highlights Mary’s title of

“woman.” Buby explains that since the reader would be familiar with the Cana narrative, the revelatory aspect of this title “woman” indicates the “beginnings of a community of faith represented in this mutual entrustment.”280 Thus, these scholars accept the hypothesis of Jesus’s filial concern, but they also believe something deeper theologically is revealed – the establishment of a new community grounded in love.

The Beloved Disciple and Spiritual Motherhood

277 Brown, 218. 278 Sri, Rethinking Mary, 178-80. 279 de la Potterie, Mary in the Mystery of the Covenant, 217. See also Sri, Rethinking Mary, 179; Buby, Mary in the New Testament, 135. 280 Buby, Mary in the New Testament, 136. 93

Another controversial aspect of this pericope is the identification of the beloved disciple. Ranging from being identified as the son of Zebedee, the writer of the Fourth

Gospel, or symbolic of all faithful believers, this figure was certainly close to Jesus.

Brown et al. accept that the beloved disciple is “presented as the ideal or model disciple of Jesus, the object of Jesus’ special love.”281 This affirmation and the entrustment we see between Mary and the beloved disciple lead these scholars to follow the interpretation that they believe is most plausible: that in this new mother-son relationship, we see

Christ’s eschatological family as a community of believing disciples to which both Mary and the beloved disciple belong.282 Brown et al. are comfortable with saying that at the foot of the cross, “Jesus gives his physical mother a spiritual role as mother of the disciple par excellence, and the disciple a role as her son. Thus there emerges a familial relationship in terms of discipleship.”283 This relates to the way that Sri speaks about the creation of a new kinship. Sri and others, however, draw out this theme a bit further.

Bertrand Buby affirms that in this exchange, the beloved disciple is the “symbol for all the faithful believing in the crucified Jesus” and that we are thus the brothers and sisters of this disciple with Mary welcomed as our spiritual mother.284 Sri maintains that the beloved disciple is a model for Christians “who represents all who faithfully follow

Christ, even in the face of the suffering of the Cross, and who believe in Jesus and bear witness to him as Lord.”285 Since the beloved disciple is representative of all faithful disciples, Sri concludes that Mary becomes the spiritual mother of all and that this

281 Brown et al., Mary in the New Testament, 211. Cf. Sri, Rethinking Mary, 182. 282 Brown, 212-14. 283 Brown, 213. 284 Buby, Mary in the New Testament, 137-38. 285 Sri, Rethinking Mary, 182. 94 spiritual motherhood initiates a new creation.286 Given the lenses of these major scholars in Marian studies, Buby and de la Potterie seem to encapsulate a balanced approach, articulating that more than one interpretation in valid – that both Jesus’s filial concern for

Mary and the establishment of a new kinship relationship are possible interpretations of this passage.

Hour Motif

We first hear about Jesus’s hour in the Cana narrative when Jesus states that his hour has not yet come (John 2:4). In questioning if Jesus’s hour indicates the beginning of his public ministry, Brown et al. recognize that Jesus’s hour comes only as the passion and death approach and thus think it probable that Jesus’s hour designates his “ultimate glorification” on the cross.287 Sri goes farther and argues that the fullness of Jesus’s hour is realized in John 12 when Jesus states that “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (Jn 12:23). Sri ties this statement regarding Jesus’s hour with the verses that follow:

Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (Jn 12:31-32)

According to Sri, the “ruler of this world” who will be driven out is the devil. Thus, Sri concludes that when Jesus ascends the cross to his death, the devil will be cast out.288

Arguing that John 12:31-32 resonates with the prophecy of Genesis 3:15 “where God foretold that the woman would eventually have a son who would crush the head of the serpent,” Sri states that “the Fourth Gospel reveals the hour of Jesus’s Passion as the hour

286 Sri, 183. 287 Brown, Mary in the New Testament, 191. 288 Sri, Rethinking Mary, 185. 95 of Satan’s downfall.”289 Not only is the hour of Jesus’s death “meant to be understood as the defeat of the devil,” but it also signifies the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15.290 These statements lead him to conclude that this connection with the woman in Genesis 3:15 reiterates the Eve/Mary parallel at the foot of the cross.

Sri’s idea might be an acceptable interpretation, possibly within the tradition of

Roman Catholicism, but his conclusions certainly take many liberal jumps. His conclusion that the Eve/Mary parallel is present in John 19 assumes that the “ruler” of

John 12 who will be cast down is synonymous with the serpent in Genesis, and that both are synonymous with the devil. These assumptions are fairly common conclusions that have a place in Catholic exegesis. However, his assertion that Genesis 3:15 is clearly in the background of John 19 with Mary at the foot of the cross goes too far. Most scholars would not agree that the clear interpretation of Jesus’s hour mentioned both in John 12 and John 19 is primarily the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15 (“he will strike your head”), let alone the intention of the Gospel writer himself. Furthermore, why take John 12 as the primary indicator of the meaning of Jesus’s hour? Does Jesus’s death on the cross primarily indicate the defeat of the devil?

From our reflections in the previous chapter, we saw how the glorification of

Jesus on the cross entails much more than atonement for sin or the defeat of the devil; this was not how early Christians understood Jesus’s death. Rather, they believed that the glory of God was fully revealed through the crucified Christ who transforms the human person through mystical union, the indwelling of Christ in the believer. Moreover, as we have already shown, this Eve/Mary parallel is not how the patristics ever read this

289 Sri, 185. 290 Sri, 186. 96 passage. Although the idea of Mary as the new Eve did emerge in writing around the second century, such a theme did not result from any reference to this passage or association with the appearance of the title “woman.” Mary and Eve were not connected by early Christians by the title “woman,” but rather, because they were both considered virgins. More significantly, this parallel grew out of Mary’s obedience to God, exemplified by her fiat in the Annunciation narrative and contrasted with Eve’s disobedience in Genesis.

While these reflections on the spiritual motherhood of Mary and a possible

Eve/Mary parallel are important, they are mainly dogmatic and apologetic in character.

Moving beyond these concerns, I would like to ground us in the ascetic framework which was established in the previous chapter. Recall that the overall silence from the patristics in regard to this passage was not surprising because the focus was solely on Christ at that time. The main interpretive lens of John 19:25-26 thus resulted in the affirmation of

Jesus’s filial piety as a moral obligation to his mother. There was one main exception to this trend, however, which can be found in the writings of Origen which capture an important aspect of this new relationship of kinship initiated at the cross.

Christification at the Cross

We have seen how various scholars have attested to the idea that Jesus’s words from the cross to his mother and the beloved disciple initiate a new eschatological family of discipleship. John Behr reflects on this new relationship in different terms, suggesting that Jesus introduces the beloved disciple “into his own familial intimacy and identity.”291

By this, Behr means that the beloved disciple is given to Mary as one who has put on the

291 John Behr, John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology (Oxford University Press, 2019), 183. 97 identity of Christ. This implication relates directly back to our discussions about what

Candida Moss calls a Christly possession or what the ascetics understood to be a

Christification of the human person. Behr makes this conclusion by drawing on the reflections of Origen who states:

We might dare say, then, that the Gospels are the firstfruits of all Scriptures, but that the firstfruits of the Gospels is that according to John, whose meaning no one can understand who has not leaned on Jesus’ breast nor received Mary from Jesus to be his mother also. But he who would be another John must also become such as John, to be shown to be Jesus, so to speak. For if Mary had no son except Jesus, in accordance with those who hold a sound opinion of her, and Jesus says to his mother, “Behold your son,” and not, “Behold, this man also is your son,” he has said equally, “Behold, this is Jesus whom you bore.” For indeed everyone who has been perfected “no longer lives, but Christ lives in him,” and since “Christ lives” in him, it is said of him to Mary, “Behold your son,” the Christ.292

In this rich excerpt, Origen takes Jesus’s words literally to mean that when Jesus says,

“Behold your son,” Mary receives the beloved disciple as Jesus himself, her very son.

Christ lives fully in the beloved disciple as he is presented to Mary. Not just speaking about a concern for Mary’s wellbeing, Jesus’s words on the cross “speak instead of the disciple’s adopted identity in, and as, Jesus.”293 At the foot of the cross, the beloved disciple is given to Mary as one who represents the model disciple because he has fully experienced mystical union with Christ. This new relationship with Mary established at the foot of the cross is thus a reminder of our call as Christians to allow ourselves to be transformed by the cross which makes us whole through the indwelling of the glorified and crucified Christ in us. We experience this indwelling in becoming Christ whose glorification is fully displayed through his suffering on the cross.

292 Origen, Commentary on the Gospel According to John: Books 1-10, vol. 80 of The Fathers of the Church, trans. Ronald E. Heine (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 1.23. 293 Behr, John the Theologian, 184. 98

To help us understand what this indwelling means, we turn to the woman mentioned in John 16. Many scholars link the “woman” references at Cana and the cross with the woman giving birth in this passage. In these verses, Jesus speaks about his death that is to come which will bring both joy to the world and grief to his disciples.294 Yet, this grief will be transformed, and they will soon rejoice. Jesus employs the imagery of a woman whose birthpangs produce pain but whose sorrow will be transformed through the birth of a new human being. John Behr translates this passage as the following:

Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy. When the woman [ἡ γυνὴ] is in travail she has sorrow [λύπην] because her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child [τὸ παιδίον], she no longer remembers the tribulation [θλίψεως], for joy that a human being is born into the world [ἐγεννήθη ἄνθρωπος εἰςτὸνκόσμον]. So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.295 (John 16:20-22)

Behr sees this passage about the woman in John 16 as bringing harmony and completion between Cana and the cross. In all three passages, the “woman” and “hour” themes emerge and speak to the experiences of pain and new life. Behr explains this link between the passages: “‘The woman’ whose ‘hour has come’ [in John 16] is the link between the

‘mother,’ addressed as ‘woman’ in Cana, when the hour has not yet come, and ‘the mother,’ again addressed as ‘woman’ at the foot of the cross, once the hour has come.”296

The woman in John 16 allows us to see how death and resurrection are bound in Jesus’s hour,297 for although we may lament, we will also rejoice in the birth of the new human

294 Judith Lieu, “The Mother of the Son in the Fourth Gospel,” Journal of Biblical Literature 117, no. 1 (1998): 71. 295 Behr, 185. 296 Behr, 185. 297 Lieu, “The Mother of the Son,” 70. 99 being (16:22). The human being, as we discussed previously, is established by becoming a witness or a martyr – experiencing complete unification with the crucified Christ.

Judith Lieu explains that through the mother as “woman” in John 16 who anticipates the mother as “woman” at the cross, we witness a “woman who mediates a beginning that is also an ending/an ending that is also a beginning.”298 This beginning that is also an ending – a living that is born from the pain of death – calls to mind the ascetic mindfulness of death which required Christians to reorient their full beings completely toward God and eternal life. Such a turn called Christians to be witnesses and martyrs of the glory of God. These reflections invite us to see that our becoming witnesses at the foot of the cross is realized by the indwelling of Christ through whom we experience the fullness of eternal life through our earthly deaths. Behr and Lieu show how the mother of Jesus as the “woman” in John’s Gospel mediates this melding of beginning and end through which the human being is restored.

This merging of beginning and end certainly brings about a new relationship between God and believers. John Behr summarizes this novel dwelling between the

Christian witness and Christ: “The household of God which is erected by Christ ascending the cross is precisely the assembly of faithful witnesses, martyrs…”299 As a new community who experiences the fullness of humanity through participating in the glory of the crucified Christ, we are brought into a kinship with one another and with

God who comes to dwell within the believer.300 With Mary as the mother and “woman” who merges this lament and joy with her son at the foot of the cross, we receive an

298 Lieu, 72. 299 Behr, John the Theologian, 189. 300 Behr, 188. 100 invitation to more completely reside in this tension with Mary wherein Christ precisely dwells. Such a tension between lament and joy aptly reflects the tension many Christians feel when experiencing hardship, suffering, loss, or death. With Mary situated at this intersection, we may discover a source of spiritual accompaniment and refuge as we strive to reorient ourselves to the fullness of God’s love amid spiritual, emotional, or physical distress.

In this chapter, we have laid some of the foundations for how and why Mary became a figure upon whom early Christians called. Mary was revered for her exceptional purity, holiness, and obedience to God’s plan of salvation. Additionally, she emerged as a figure in her own right prior to the Council of Ephesus, a period in which we begin to see Christians establishing a relationship with Mary as a result of her close intimacy with her son. While this devotion to the Virgin was largely grounded in piety and reverence toward Mary’s exceptional status among humans, we will see in the following chapter how these foundations in the first few centuries eventually led to more instances of liturgical and intercessory aspects of Marian devotion in antiquity.

101

CHAPTER FOUR

THE RESTORATIVE VOICE OF THE VIRGIN

We take refuge beneath the protection of your compassion, Theotokos. Do not disregard our prayers in troubling times, but deliver us from danger, O only pure and blessed one.301

The full text of the Sub tuum praesidium quoted here is a small fragment of a prayer directed to Mary that has been traced back to the late third or early fourth century.

Translated in English as “Beneath your protection,” this prayer is a prime example of the development of Marian piety in this era as the focus shifted from Mary’s sacred purity and virginity to her intimate relationship with Christ, esoteric knowledge of cosmic mysteries, and intercessory powers. Such a plea to Mary as the Theotokos which called upon her compassion and refuge in times of trouble attests to the emergence of a Marian cult among Christians in Egypt who professed belief in her intercessory presence. Likely used in a congregational setting, this prayer serves as a reminder that devotion and ritual directed to the Virgin primarily developed within popular piety among Christian communities themselves (namely, heterodox communities) as opposed to emerging purely in doctrinal and theological contexts.302

Despite its brevity, this fragment displays a rich understanding of Mary as one whose compassion provides great refuge and assistance to those in need. In this final chapter, we will further explore the movement toward Marian intercession by turning to popular devotional material from the sixth century. But first, let us fill in the gaps of

301 Sub tuum praesidium, quoted in Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion, 69. See Stegmüller, “Sub tuum praesidium” for a reliable reconstruction of this text. 302 Shoemaker, 70. 102

Marian piety after the Protevangelium of James (ca. late second century) to the Council of Ephesus in 431 and beyond. These “gaps” give us insight into the ways that Christians began to call out for Mary’s assistance in situations of great need. In particular, we will see how Marian devotion slowly brought in more liturgical aspects which were grounded in Mary’s assistance in the work of salvation.

Thus far, we have seen how Mary served as an exemplary model of discipleship and purity in the devotional lives of early Christians, beginning with the New Testament texts and developing quite unexpectedly in the Protevangelium. After the second century, devotion to Mary advanced further, but works which feature Mary as prominently as the

Protevangelium did not emerge until the fourth century. In the third century, Church

Fathers largely remained silent regarding Mary. While Tertullian (160-225) upholds

Mary’s virginal conception and furthers the Eve/Mary typology, he does not support the idea that Mary remained a virgin after giving birth.303 Clement of Alexandria (150-215) aligns mostly with the views expressed in the Protevangelium, and Origen’s (184/185-

253/254) homilies portray a view of Mary that is not very consistent, although he may have been the first person to call Mary “Theotokos.”304

Mary’s portrayal beyond the Gospel traditions, the early Church Fathers, and the

Protevangelium eventually developed into early cult to the Virgin. We see this progression in the Liber Requiei Mariae (Book of Mary’s Repose), one of the earliest

Dormition and Assumption narratives of Mary. While this text covers Mary’s life and her entrance into heaven, the Marian apocalypse detailed at the end offers a unique witness to

Marian piety as she undergoes a brief tour of hell and hears the cries of the damned who

303 Shoemaker, 66. 304 Shoemaker, 66-67. 103 call out to her for assistance.305 In response, Christ grants them relief and attributes the aid to the supplications of Mary, the angel Michael, and the apostles.306 While this confirms evidence of Marian intercession by the end of the third century, Mary’s mediating powers in this text do not seem to be as authoritative as her intercessory powers that we witness in later texts.307

An example of developed Marian cult can be found in the Six Books Dormition

Apocryphon. Attesting to annual feasts, miracles, and apparitions attributed to Mary, this

Dormition narrative “provides compelling evidence for an early Marian cult nearly a century before the events of the Council of Ephesus.”308 In addition, unlike Liber Requiei

Mariae, this account developed within a more orthodox context, first in popular proto- orthodox circles and later in the fifth century among the church hierarchy.309 This

Dormition narrative once again depicts the damned crying out for Mary’s help. Upon hearing their cries, she is saddened and goes before her merciful son to intercede on their behalf. With Mary as their mediator, early Christians believed that their petitions should be paired with liturgical offerings, thus resulting in three annual feasts which included bread offerings made in her honor.310 Likely the earliest example of a liturgical commemoration to Mary, this apocryphal narrative is an important development in early

Christian devotion to Mary as it portrays her as one who is able to mediate between the heavenly and earthly realms.

305 Shoemaker, 126. 306 Shoemaker, 127. 307 Shoemaker, 127. 308 Shoemaker, 130. 309 Shoemaker, 133. 310 Shoemaker, 141. 104

In the fourth century, the cult of the Virgin was more firmly established, especially in the writings of the Church Fathers who emphasized Mary’s Divine

Maternity and her role as Theotokos.311 Paired with the rise in the ascetic movement,

Mary “was quickly identified as the exemplar of the virginal life, offering an ideologically conservative role model for female virginity.”312 Still in the later fourth century, themes of Marian intercession became incorporated into the hymns on Sunday in

Jerusalem churches, confirmed by the Armenian Lectionary and the Jerusalem Gregorian

Lectionary.313 These expressions of Marian devotion serve as an indication that popular piety to the Virgin spoke of Mary’s ability to intercede on behalf of humanity and to provide access to the holy. Moreover, the addition of Marian hymns in lectionaries confirms an explicit liturgical setting for such devotion. All of these sources attest to the ways that early Christians saw Mary as a trusted and accessible advocate upon whom they could call.

The aforementioned examples of Marian devotion prior to the Council of Ephesus lead us directly to the examination of more fully developed Marian cult dating back to the sixth century. Like the previous sources detailed above, this Marian hymnography depicts

Mary as one whose intercessory powers intimately reach both heaven and earth. This time, however, Mary’s mediation comes through most fully using her voice, embodying a boldness of speech. Recall our discussion of John 19 in which we reflected on how

Mary’s presence brought lamentation and joy into balance. This merging of emotions in times of distress is highlighted even more explicitly in these Marian hymns. In this way,

311 Shoemaker, 167. 312 Shoemaker, 203. 313 Shoemaker, 186-203. 105 these participatory and emotive hymns offer the opportunity for modern readers to enter a deep mode of contemplation. As twenty-first century readers, we too are invited to enter the dramatic expression of Marian veneration which brought believers in antiquity into direct relationship with Mary and her all-embracing voice. The other integration we will experience in these hymns involves that of death and resurrection. These sources lead us further in the Christian life which fuses a beginning and an end – our earthly death merging into new and eternal life with Christ. The voice of the Virgin who powerfully speaks to this resonant tension in rebirth constitutes an appropriate conclusion for this study.

Far from promoting mere imitation of Mary, the brilliant hymnography dating back to the sixth century cult of the Virgin invites readers to relate to Mary. In this relationality, she simultaneously expresses the suffering of the cross and announces lasting resurrectional joy. Not only does the Virgin’s voice speak salvation into the hearts of Christians, but her voice also provides a vehicle for the congregation themselves to profess their own voices. In our modern context where suffering easily leads to alienation and feelings of spiritual abandonment, the voice of the Virgin which touched the lives of

Christians in antiquity can offer a refreshing example of how we might reorient our complete beings to speak the pain of our suffering and give voice to our hope in the transformative love of the cross.

Romanos’s Kontakia and the Role of the Virgin

We find captivating Marian hymns from Romanos the Melodist who was a prominent sixth-century poet and composer who lived in Constantinople throughout the

Justinianic era (518-565). His songs were widespread in this liturgified Byzantine city

106 where the Church and the empire were largely integrated.314 By 641, Romanos was venerated as a saint on his feast day, October 1, throughout the city of Constantinople.

His epithet “Melodist” or Melōdos in Greek “indicates that he was not only a poet but also a singer in church, who performed his own hymns.”315 Romanos’s hymns made

Mary accessible to the people in Byzantine society, as they were largely directed to those who lived in the world (laity and clergy members) as opposed to those living in monastic communities.316

Filled with biblical themes and dialogue between various characters, these hymns constitute a genre known as kontakion which differs from both homiletics and typical hymnography. The word kontakion only begins to appear in the ninth century and is thus an anachronistic term since Romanos himself did not use it to describe his compositions.317 This term is not meant to be employed as a strict genre label, but rather, indicates that “his stories were sung and performed.”318 While kontakia contained homiletic elements, these sung performances were distinct from sermons. Thomas

Arentzen clarifies the difference between Byzantine homilies and kontakia: “Homilies might constitute a part of the Divine Liturgy, and a bishop or a presbyter preached it with clerical authority. Kontakia, on the other hand, were not normally performed during the liturgy and not by the higher clergy; as a rule, male singers sang them during nocturnal

314 Roger Haight, Christian Community in History Volume 1: Historical Ecclesiology (New York: Continuum, 2004), 216-17. 315 Thomas Arentzen, The Virgin in Song: Mary and the Poetry of Romanos the Melodist (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 5. Arentzen’s English translation of the kontakia is from the most widely accepted version of the Romanos corpus. Paul Maas and C. A. Trypanis carried out the first and only complete critical edition of Romanos’s kontakia, Sancti Romani Melodi cantica: Cantica genuina (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963). This paper will follow the OE text and numbering used by Arentzen. 316 Arentzen, 27, 32. 317 Sarah Gador-Whyte, Theology and Poetry in Early Byzantium: The Kontakia of Romanos the Melodist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 9. 318 Arentzen, The Virgin in Song, 10. 107 services.”319 Following a prewritten text, the performers of kontakia made use of metrical patterns, refrains, and acrostics.320 Both the content and the creative performance of the kontakia were vivid and captivating. The clever dialogue and animated characterization paired with the participatory nature of the kontakia made them very effective in comparison to other forms of homiletics.321

The main setting for the performance of kontakia was the cathedral night vigil that preceded major and minor feast days. As Christians gathered to prepare for the feast or special event, Romanos used his compositions to “expound the scriptures and educate his listeners about the demands of the Christian life.”322 While it is unclear if the kontakia were connected to a specific service, they were likely tied to the festal calendar of the church.323 The kontakia performed at these night vigils reached a wide lay audience and served as an effective means of theological instruction.324

Active participation among the laity is a major attribute of this form of Christian piety and one which clearly distinguishes it from homiletics. The gathered congregation was far from passive. They were actively involved by singing their own refrains often placed at the end of each strophe.325 The level of participation among the laity drew them into relationship with the characters in the narrative. They believed that the performances evoked the character’s real presence among the group gathered, as if, for example,

Mary’s literal voice came through the words of the performer. In this way, “Romanos made it possible for Christians in Constantinople to sing of Mary, to her, as well as with

319 Arentzen, 11. 320 Arentzen, 11. 321 Gador-Whyte, Theology and Poetry, 6. 322 Gador-Whyte, 5. 323 Arentzen, The Virgin in Song, 11. 324 Gador-Whyte, Theology and Poetry, 6. 325 Gador-Whyte, 11. 108 her.”326 The fact that this performance within the walls of the church could evoke such an encounter between the congregation and Mary is significant; an authentic and mediatory relationship was established.

The emotion evoked among the congregation in their participatory responses was accompanied by the emotional portrayal of the Theotokos in the hymn itself. She was considered to be a dynamic character who fulfilled various roles in Byzantine society,

“including those of human guarantor of Christ’s incarnation, intercessor and defender of orthodox Christians.”327 In particular, she was conceived as a person to whom individuals

“could appeal for help and healing.”328 This invocation to Mary embedded within the kontakia “displayed an unshakeable conviction that Mary was engaged and active in the lives of her devotees.”329 In this relationship between devotees and Mary, the believer experienced constancy, intimacy, and trust.330

Romanos portrays Mary as a woman whose voice bridges the gap between the narrative world of the kontakia and its performance in the church nave. This performance was so effective and authentic that the voices of the singer and the characters became one: “The singer’s voice and the Virgin’s fictive voice merge into one through the performance. Romanos generates the illusion, ultimately, that Mary is speaking directly to the sixth-century crowd.”331 In this way, Mary was able to “transcend the limits” of the

326 Georgia Frank, “Singing Mary: The Annunciation and Nativity in Romanos the Melode,” in The Reception of the Virgin in Byzantium: Marian Narratives in Texts and Images, eds. Thomas Arentzen and Mary B. Cunningham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 170. 327 Thomas Arentzen and Mary B. Cunningham, eds., introduction to The Reception of the Virgin in Byzantium: Marian Narratives in Texts and Images (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 13. 328 Arentzen and Cunningham, 13. 329 Susan A. Harvey, afterword to The Reception of the Virgin in Byzantium: Marian Narratives in Texts and Images (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 342. 330 Harvey, 342. 331 Arentzen, The Virgin in Song, 131. 109 literary universe through her voice.332 This ability to transcend limits and offer tangible access to her voice in the performance was one way that Mary granted access to Christ who was believed to be “somewhat passive or indistinct.”333 While Christians could relate to Mary, Christ was understood in the kontakia to be more distant from the congregation. In contrast to Christ, Mary was accessible and approachable.

Mary’s ability to relay the presence of the holy from Christ to his people on earth reveals the extent of which Marian intercession developed in just two centuries. In the kontakia, Mary’s voice and presence are trustworthy and authoritative, possessing the power to intercede from her privileged place of honor. This role of Mary as mediator for early Christians is strikingly similar to the concept of the “holy man,” a figure whom

Christians believed offered access to the holy. The holy man was a “clearly-defined locus of the holy on earth” who was overshadowed by the presence of the Lord.334 In late antiquity, the holy man was usually a monk or hermit who acted as an intercessor with

God. Rather than the Christian offering their hopes and fears to “the distant vault of heaven,” they believed that the holy man could “sway the will of God” through his ability to communicate with Christ through his ascetic efforts.335 While the holy man could be approached directly by the people, the presence and power of Christ himself was not as attainable “in the distant empire of heaven.”336 The holy man was able to intercede in this way because he had “gained a ‘boldness’ to speak up successfully for his protegés before the throne of Christ.”337 This boldness of speech was known as parrhesia.

332 Arentzen, 131. 333 Arentzen, 161. 334 Peter Brown, “A Dark-Age Crisis: Aspects of the Iconoclastic Controversy,” English Historical Review 88, no. CCCXLVI (1973): 12. https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/LXXXVIII.CCCXLVI.1. 335 Brown, 12-13. 336 Brown, 12-13. 337 Brown, 13. 110

The holy man was able to speak with such boldness due to his intimacy with

Christ, the heavenly ruler.338 Not only could the holy man intercede, but he could also offer legitimate help to conflicting parties or to those in distress. This conception of the holy man serving as an intercessor between Christians and Christ resonates with the language that Romanos uses to describe the Virgin’s relationship with Christ. Arentzen notes that there is one significant variance which differentiates the Virgin from the holy man: “The difference is that the Mother of God wins her intimacy with God through her motherhood rather than through ascetic endeavors.”339 Mary’s relation to her son allows her to equally straddle both the human and the divine realms, granting her people access to Christ and answering their pleas.

The Theotokos, neither merely human nor merely divine, represented the earthly and heavenly dominions; she was at home in both. In this way, her voice intimately reached humans and Christ: “her voice takes part in – or itself constitutes – an ongoing dialogue between human and divine realms.”340 Thus, Mary replaced and outshined the figure of the holy man known to Christians in antiquity. Arentzen explains that as “the mediating Holy Woman,” Mary “fills the space between God and the created world.”341

Simultaneously, Mary was able to speak with authority among the congregation on earth and with humility when addressing Christ. In the sixth century, the Theotokos occupied a privileged role as one who mediated between heaven and earth and whose intercession served as a bridge to the holy.

Merging Lamentation and Joy

338 Arentzen, The Virgin in Song, 140. 339 Arentzen, 140. 340 Arentzen, 141. 341 Arentzen, 141. 111

We have discussed how Mary merged both the earthly and divine realms in an ecclesiological sense as a sort of “Holy Woman.” We also see this merging of realms in

Mary’s actions in the kontakia themselves, mainly in On the Nativity II and On Mary at the Cross by the way that she partakes in the salvific drama of death and new life.

Beginning with On the Nativity II, we meet Adam and Eve who dwell in Hades longing for new life. This hymn juxtaposes Mary’s fertile abilities to give life with the absence of fertility in Hades after Adam and Eve become alienated from the fruitful garden.342

Although this is a Christmas hymn, the contents also point toward the Resurrection.343

Through the use of various metaphors involving breath, the vine, and other Edenic images, the identities of Mary and Christ fuse together to become indistinguishable from one another.344 Romanos’s tactic of blurring identities results in Adam and Eve hearing the voice of Mary as they cry out for relief.

In On Mary at the Cross, the resurrection theme is even more prominent, as we encounter a dialogue between Mary and Christ as he prepares for his ascent on the cross.

Mary questions why Christ must die, to which he replies that Mary herself must use her voice to profess the joy of the resurrection since his task is to save Adam and Eve. In these two kontakia, Mary communicates salvation to Adam and Eve and to the whole world as she uses her voice to take “active part in the process of resurrection by going down to Hades, mimicking her Son’s physical descent, and by following him to the peak of the crucifixion.”345 Turning to the hymns themselves, we will explore how Mary’s

342 Arentzen, 123. 343 Arentzen, 124. 344 Arentzen, 125-28. 345 Arentzen, 120. 112 authoritative and powerful voice made room for the expression of crushing grief as well as for the joy of salvation.

On the Nativity II

To draw out the way that Mary’s voice communicates salvation, let us begin with

Mary’s praises to the Christ Child where her voice first emerges with powerful authority:

— You, my fruit, you, my life, from whom I know I am what I was; you my God; seeing the seal of my virginity intact, I proclaim [κηρύττω] you immutable Word made flesh; I know no sowing, I know you as deliverance from corruption; for I am pure, as you came forth from me; you left my womb as you found it, preserving it unharmed; hence the whole of creation dances together, crying [βοῶσα] to me: “Graced One!” (II 1.3– 11)

This passage from On the Nativity II displays Mary’s voice confidently proclaiming her own virginity. The congregation’s refrain at the end, “Graced One!” harkens back to the angel’s address (kecharitōmenē) in Luke 1:28. Recall the story from the Protevangelium of James where Mary’s virginity is doubted and must be tested by a woman named

Salome. In contrast, Romanos depicts the Virgin here as already enjoying her own “seal of authority” and as one who possesses a voice of authority in her own right.346 In this reflection on the birth of Christ, Mary directs the congregation to rejoice in the arrival of this new life which comes through the fertility of her womb.

In a later stanza, Mary, heard through the male’s voice at the ambo, transcends the narrative realm by shouting to the congregation, “celebrate with me!” (II 2). Not only does the congregation receive this invitation to rejoice, but Mary’s proclamation also reaches down to Adam and Eve in Hades. We might recall the early Christian devotional

346 Arentzen, 129. 113 trends which presented Mary as the new Eve, first comparing the two women since they were considered to be virgins but then contrasting them as a result of Mary’s salvific obedience to God’s plan. While Eve’s words were regarded as those which fell to the serpent’s temptation, Mary’s words in response to the angel in Luke were regarded as those which expressed faithfulness to God.

With this typological trend in place, we might expect Mary’s voice in the kontakia to obey this pattern of reserved obedience. After all, according to Christians in antiquity,

“ideal femininity was associated with silence, chastity, and seclusion.”347 Yet, the words spoken by the Virgin in On the Nativity II deviate from this early Christian perspective.

In the exchange where Mary’s voice reaches the depths of Hades, we receive a completely different presentation of the Virgin as one whose authoritative voice has the power to speak salvation to Adam and Eve who have been held captive under a death-like slumber. Eve is the first to hear Mary’s voice of restoration, and after convincing Adam to heed the voice, they arise from their slumber. With Adam and Eve finding new hope in

Mary’s presence, Romanos presents a Nativity story that is fused with themes of new life and the joy of redemption.348

Next in the dramatic narrative, we receive a speech from Mary where she calls upon Adam and Eve to abandon their lamentations so they may step into the hope of new life:

— Cease your lamentations, and I will be an ambassador [πρέσβις] for you to the one who is from me, and you must push away the calamity as I have given birth to joy; for to pillage all sorrows, I have come now,

347 Arentzen, 121. 348 Arentzen, 134. 114

the Graced One. (II 10.7– 11)

Descending down to Adam and Eve, Mary sees their suffering and compassionately speaks hope to them, as she has given “birth to joy.” Calling herself an “ambassador” invokes social and political imagery that would have been familiar to sixth-century

Christians, effectively portraying Mary as a trusted advocate, a protectress who makes sacrifices for her people, and an empress who governs on behalf of the emperor (Christ, in this analogy).349

Witnessing the sorrows of Adam and Eve, Mary goes to the Christ Child and delivers their pleas. In response, Jesus reveals to Mary that he will eventually experience a similar kind of suffering through his death on the cross. Upon receiving this news,

Mary is devastated and gives voice to her own suffering:

[She] groaned from the depths [ἐκ βάθους ἐστέναξε], crying out [βοῶσα]:— Oh, my grape- bunch, the lawless cannot crush you. (II 17.5– 6)

While Mary holds the sorrow of Adam and Eve as they await restoration and new life, she must now face her own suffering as she learns of her son’s unjust death. In these exchanges, Romanos locates Mary “in the middle of an emotional struggle with death.”350

Crying out from the very depths of her being, Mary then chooses to turn to the difficult situation plaguing Adam and Eve, a remembrance which causes her to cease her own crying.

Although we see Mary grieving, this story does not end tragically. Arentzen summarizes this movement from fear to joy by emphasizing how Mary’s knowledge about her son’s Passion allows her to turn to Adam and Eve with newfound hope: “With

349 Arentzen, 135-41. 350 Arentzen, 136. 115 new insight she turns to Adam and Eve again and speaks with authority. Mary’s grief shows her empathetic passion. It reveals that even though the Mother has to act resolutely, she is deeply compassionate.”351 While this new information about her son’s eventual death brings crushing grief to Mary, she simultaneously reorients herself toward the work of salvation. Furthermore, this revelation allows her to engage with tenderness while still maintaining her authoritative and resolute voice. Moving away from crushing fear and sorrow, Mary speaks new life to Adam and Eve in the narrative, and thus, to the congregation gathered in the church. The kontakion ends with Christ telling Mary to arise and announce this promise of new life to all people. Thus, we experience Mary herself emotionally and verbally rising from the dead as she also proclaims the hope of the resurrection to all who call upon her for aid.352

This dramatic dialogue between Mary and Jesus as well as their interactions with

Adam and Eve would have evoked an emotional response from the audience who were active participants throughout the whole performance. Can you imagine partaking in such a theatrical demonstration which not only offered theological instruction, but also authentic connection with Mary herself? This performance, while representative of a narrative world, invited Mary to enter into the very time and space of sixth-century

Byzantium in that moment. With both her grief and her compassion, Mary advocates for

Adam’s and Eve’s restoration. In the liturgical performance of the hymn, Christians were not called to imitate Mary, but rather, to relate to her as one who truly experienced the painful tension between death and new life.

351 Arentzen, 136. 352 Arentzen, 136-37. 116

The elevation of both lamentation and joyful hope in the performance attests to the early Christian understanding that pain, suffering, and death remain inescapable, even for Mary and her son, Jesus. Additionally, Christians listened and participated with the poet who sang about Mary in arresting imagery and verse. Throughout these night vigils during which On the Nativity II was proclaimed, the congregation grew to relate to Mary as an effective advocate not only for Adam and Eve in the narrative, but also for themselves in the present. Calling upon her presence in the church, early Christians sang of a woman who courageously merged agony and joy through the use of her voice. The faithful received this Marian voice through the poet at the ambo, and this emotive and participatory form of devotion taught them to consider Mary to be an accessible advocate in their own times of need.

On Mary at the Cross

In On Mary at the Cross, we experience an even more vivid depiction of Mary embodying the intersection of death and new life through her accompaniment with her son to the cross. While this song does not give explicit witness to the intercessory powers of Mary that we see in On the Nativity II, we do encounter the intense suffering of a mother whose son endures the pain of the cross.353 Since we examined John 19:25-27 in the previous chapter, we will see how Romanos takes the story much farther than the

Gospel narratives, possibly offering his own theological reflection with this passage. In the fictive dialogue, there is no beloved disciple present, and thus, no one to become

Mary’s son. Instead, we receive a portrait of a mother who fears losing her son. Thomas

353 Arentzen, 141. 117

Arentzen’s summary of the hymn provides a helpful outline of the main events and will help us move beyond the contents of the hymn:

Prelude: Invitation to praise the crucified Christ Stanzas 1– 3: Mary weeps as she addresses Christ on the road to Calvary Stanzas 4– 6: Christ replies that she should not weep but rejoice Stanzas 7– 8: Mary raises questions— without tears Stanzas 9– 10: Christ explains why he must die Stanza 11: Mary asks if she will see him again Stanzas 12– 14: Christ comforts her Stanza 15: Mary asks him if she can come all the way to the cross Stanza 16: Christ accepts but warns her Stanza 17: Concluding prayer to Christ354

More so than in On the Nativity II, On Mary at the Cross invites the congregation not to imitate Mary, but to relate to her. This comes across most explicitly in stanzas 7 and 8 where Mary asks Jesus why he must suffer and die if he has previously healed and raised others from the dead without dying before. Christ affirms this truth, but he then explains that the healing that is required now is more complicated.355 Instead, she must be the voice of salvation since Christ himself will be going down to Hades to heal the souls of Adam and Eve. After receiving this task, Mary wonders in stanza 11 if she will ever see Christ again. He comforts her by saying that she will be the first to see him in the resurrection and that she will attest to his glory by crying out with joy:

— You will see Eve, Mother, living as before, and you will cry out with joy: “He has saved my forebears, my son and my God.” (XIX 12.7– 10)

— See how I, stripped naked as a doctor, arrive where [Adam and Eve] lie and treat their wounds ......

354 Arentzen, 142. 355 Arentzen, 147. 118

I will use [the cross], Mother, so you may sing [ψάλλῃς] with discernment: “Afflicted [πάσχων] he abolished affliction [πάθος], my son and my God.” (XIX 13.1– 3, 8– 10)

So run, Mother, announce [ἀνάγγειλον] to all that: in suffering he strikes the one who hates Adam, and victorious he comes, my son and my God. (XIX 14.7– 10)

After hearing that she must use her voice to “proclaim paschal joy” to all, Mary asks if she might accompany Christ to the cross, as she fears being separated from him.356

Although he consents, Christ calls upon her to cease her weeping. In her uniqueness,

Mary does not belong with those who lament (XIX 7). Jesus offers a somewhat conflicting message to his mother:

— So if you come with me, do not weep [κλαύσῃς], o Mother, no, and do not be scared [πτοηθῇς], if you see the elements shaken, for the shamelessness agitates all of creation; the firmament will be as blind, and not open its eye until I say; the earth and the sea will hasten to flee at that time; the temple will rend its tunic against those daring [these audacities] at that time; the mountains will shudder, the tombs be emptied; when you see these things, if you are terrified [πτήξῃς] as a woman, scream out [κράξον] to me, ‘Spare me, my son and my God!’ (XIX 16)

Christ begins by telling her she must cease her weeping if she is to leave the others and accompany him to the cross. But by the end of his message, he acknowledges that if she becomes scared, she may cry out, “Spare me, my son and my God.” Arentzen explains that Christ’s words affirm that lamentation itself is acceptable, but that in her

356 Arentzen, 149. 119 differentiation from the others, Mary is called to use her voice for another purpose.357

Similar to On the Nativity II, Mary is asked to use her voice to speak redemption to all even while Christ acknowledges that she may despair. While those in the drama and in the congregation continue to mourn throughout the narrative, Mary must use her voice to

“pull the voices of the congregation toward the joy of resurrection.”358 While Mary is given the space to grieve in the beginning of this kontakion and in On the Nativity II, the hymn comes to a close with her “full acceptance of the sacrifice” where her tears are transformed into joy.359 In this exchange, “Christ shows his mother a way to overcome fear in this most extreme of situations, so extreme that even she may tremble…”360 The fear that Mary overcomes in these moments is not the fear of death, but the fear of being separated from her son.361 Once again, Romanos paints us a picture of Jesus and Mary as being completely united to one another, so much so that Mary fears their separation.

Through Mary’s accompaniment and her cry, her voice becomes a “death-transcending dialogue.”362 Thus, the congregation witnesses Mary not only accompanying Jesus to his death but also partaking in the act of redemption with her own voice.

Grief as a Catalyst toward Christification

Romanos creates a scene with Mary located in its center, emphasizing her unity with her son as she cries out in despair. Most intriguing in these two kontakia is the way that Christ calls Mary to arise out of her anguish to proclaim salvation to all with her voice. Although Christ advises Mary to cease her crying, he still allows for her to express

357 Arentzen, 155. 358 Arentzen, 155. 359 Arentzen, 157. 360 Arentzen, 157. 361 Arentzen, 157. 362 Arentzen, 157. 120 her deepest sorrows with her voice in both narratives. The balance between crushing grief and resurrectional joy emerges in both of these hymns and has great implications for us

Christians today who experience similar tensions with life and death.

As a mediating voice for the people of God, Mary honestly expresses very real questions and concerns that modern readers still ask themselves today in the midst of suffering: Why is God allowing this to happen? No matter how theologically formed, many of us are tempted to ask such a question when we experience violence and death in our families, communities, or world. We sincerely wonder how a good and just God might condone, allow, or overlook our suffering. This is a natural part of the grieving process that we as humans have not yet mastered, and likely, never will. Mary’s questioning highlights the palpable tension that we humans encounter amid suffering, and her inquiries suggest that this tension is inescapable. Even Mary, intimately connected to

Christ, wrestles with the pain of losing her child despite knowing the resurrectional joy that will result.

Mary’s questions posed to Christ very vividly mirror our own. In modern society, we have learned in some ways to rationalize death as something that is inevitable in the human experience. Yet, most of us grapple with intense feelings that involve fear, sadness, indifference, and many other conflicting emotions either on or below the surface of our “rational” explanations. Throughout this text, Romanos promotes the idea that the

Virgin is not meant to be imitated, but one with whom a person can relate.363 Mary’s need to voice her questions and concerns about her son’s death are certainly relatable when we ourselves experience the debilitating tension within suffering, death, and new life.

363 See for example Arentzen, 139, 149, 152, and 173. 121

When we find ourselves overwhelmed by grief, Romanos’s depiction of Mary shows us that we do not have to summon a vision of hope and salvation on our own.

Mary’s voice which speaks of the paschal joy not only for the future but also for the here and now may assist in pulling us out of our despair so that we may orient our full beings toward Christ and the cross. Moreover, Mary shows us that this reorientation to Christ need not keep us from authentically expressing our grief. As we cry out with the fullness of our emotions, Romanos’s Mary and her voice of salvation revive us to see Christ within and among us in times of both illness and health.

The realignment toward mystical union with Christ that we discussed in the second chapter may feel overwhelmingly inaccessible for us today, especially when considering the impact of suffering which has the potential to draw us even further away from God and our loved ones. Yet, when we look to the devotional practices of Christians in antiquity, such as those who participated in these night vigils in the sixth century, we are offered the opportunity to unite ourselves with those who very tangibly felt the mediatory presence of the Virgin in times of great need. We can treasure the image of the faithful congregation who sings out the refrain, “My Son and my God,” transforming the audience’s words to become the “actual voice of the Marian words.”364 Although

Romanos largely portrayed Mary as one to whom we are to relate, the refrain proclaimed by the crowd served as an invitation to “intermingle with her vocally” so that her voice and that of the congregation became one.365 In this merging of lamenting voices, Mary and Christians cried out together in agony at the pain of witnessing the suffering of

Christ.

364 Arentzen, 151. 365Arentzen, 152. 122

Lamenting and praising Christ in these cries with the Virgin herself powerfully expressed pain and joy at the same time. Such a dramatic and cathartic act was likely freeing. This devotional practice involving the performance of these scripturally-based hymns serves as an extraordinary example of how we may practically engage in the work of unification with Christ. In a way, this devotional practice constitutes an aspect of the

Christly possession we are all called to embody. Exclaiming the refrain, “My Son and my

God” in union with Mary, the crowd experiences the suffering of Christ firsthand with those in the narrative and with those gathered in the church. Since they are united with

Mary’s voice which allows her to partake “in the event of regeneration,” the crowd “takes part in her partaking and shares the insights that she gains.”366 Through this collaborative lament, both Mary and her people inaugurate a new level of intimacy with Jesus on the cross and with all of humanity who cry out in solidarity. Moreover, this corporate cry provides access to the Virgin’s vision of resurrectional hope.

Is this not an aspect of what we have termed a Christly possession or

Christification? We have explored how the call toward mystical union with Christ necessarily involves our transfiguration through the beatifying glory of the cross. The resonating voices of lament proclaimed by the sixth-century voices in the congregation embody this reality. Their suffering in unity with Mary and her son were very much real for them. While a fictitious narrative world was created through the proclamation of these hymns, their emotion and passion became alive and crossed the boundaries of the narrative world. Thus, while the congregation lamented with and as Mary who has lost her beloved son, might the image of the crucified Christ be restored more fully in those

366 Arentzen, 153. 123 gathered through their collective cry? In this raw exclamation of deep pain over the events of the cross, how could these Christians not be transformed by their cries?

If we learn to sing with and as Mary in this way in our own devotional lives today, we might grow to more completely express both our pain and our joy, never dismissing or invalidating our sorrow, but also holding the hope of resurrectional joy within our purview. In this Marian devotion, we see how the congregation continues to cry out with the refrain, “My son and my God” while Mary proclaims the good news of the resurrection. In times where we cannot connect to this resurrectional joy, we may find consoling strength in Mary’s continuous proclamation of salvation, carrying us through the depth of our despair. We need not feel any pressure to summon this hope on our own.

Her mediating voice, wholly united to her son, guides us into deeper union with Christ himself who brings about healing through the cross. This healing, as we have discussed previously, does not constitute the eradication of suffering. Rather, the healing that we experience through Christ, announced to us through Mary’s voice, is that of revitalization. Her voice moves us to encounter Christ in our non-normative embodiedness, radically embracing our pain and grief as they come. In this movement, we learn to orient the fullness of our beings toward Christ in times of health and illness and during seasons of our lives marked by crushing loss and resurrectional joy.

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FRAGMENTED PRAYERS, CONCLUSIONS, AND MUSINGS

“Tensions”

Unravel secrets Bend to heat Discard variants Pack it neat Unwind with precision Constraint complete. …

Consuming rigidity

_____

Discover with delight Arise to behold Echoing agony Expressive soul Dwell in discord Restoration whole. …

Discerning harmony

______

Can we escape the tensions which permeate the human condition and our experience of the holy?

Notice the strains among the human consumed with suffering, the human consumed with perfect health; the human settling for insular answers, the human settling for desertion of the spiritual; the human calling out in fear, the human calling out in hope.

Tension is seemingly unavoidable in our mundane tasks and especially so in our reveries of life and death.

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The contradictions in this work may be glaring. Yet, discovery is foundational to this query, and I am both amazed and perplexed by the conclusions that can still be made among the weeds of this project. Though I might prefer to remain entangled in the weeds,

I will close this work with a succinct discussion of the major themes and conclusions throughout each of the four chapters.

We began with asserting that the phenomenon of disability and the more general experience of suffering are not to be avoided or erased, but embraced, as they allow for the flourishing of all human life. Paradoxically, suffering reveals the fullness of the human person while also revealing our weaknesses and dependencies upon the other. The fullness of the human experience is offered to us through learning how to accept such experiences and by reflecting upon our own presence and the presence of Christ in our suffering.

Rather than our transformation being grounded in fear or loneliness, we are all offered the opportunity for our transformations to be grounded in the sufferings of the crucified Christ whose power is perfected in weakness, as demonstrated by Paul’s thorn in the flesh in 2 Cor. 12:7b-10. Through association with the sufferings of Christ, we are, like Paul, vulnerable to a “Christly possession” in which we find ourselves made anew through the indwelling of Christ.

Amos Yong’s inclusive ecclesiology developed in light of Paul’s theology of weakness allows for a more authentic and hospitable vision of a social and ecclesial community in which people with disabilities no longer reside on the margins or are seen as deviations from the norm, but rather, fully encapsulate what it means to be God’s beloved. Both in our earthly lives and in the eschaton, Christ’s transformative presence

126 does not result in the elimination of disability, but in a radical shifting of the world’s hierarchy of values.

In chapter two, we saw how Paul’s notion of the indwelling of Christ in 2 Cor. 12 is consistent with the ascetic concept of Christification or mystical union with Christ. The

Eastern Fathers and Mothers understood that the fullness of the human experience was discovered in reorienting one’s whole being toward the cross, not only in times of illness, but also in times of health. This restoration of the human person necessarily involved suffering and illness, and early Christians maintained a mindfulness of death as they learned to direct their passions toward genuine relationship with God and community.

This way of life called for the transformation of the person through ascetic practices in which the body and soul were directed in harmony to bring the believer into deeper unity with Christ and the cross. Such a journey went beyond mere imitation of the sufferings of

Christ and was instead a lived reality and presence.

Our reading of John 6 from the ascetic framework reinforces that the true human being is realized through the integration of the crucified and glorified flesh of Christ into our very beings. For early Christians, this call of the cross was directly connected to the reality of martyrdom, recognizing that one’s earthly death leads into eternal life with

God. Moreover, early Christian engagement with illness was inherently spiritual and relational. While God did not initiate illness, suffering, and death, humanity’s state of incorruptibility and immortality depended upon divine grace and proper orientation of free will. The consequences of Adam’s and Eve’s chosen separation from God resulted in the understanding that suffering served a cathartic function, like Paul’s skolops, which brought the Christian closer to the indwelling of Christ. Even though suffering and illness

127 were inherently spiritual for early Christians, they largely did not theologize such experiences in the way that we modern readers attempt to do today.

In this chapter, we were once again reminded that the restoration of our original state as immortal and incorruptible beings is realized not through the attainment of new and perfect bodies, but through the enfleshment of the crucified and transfigured Christ who transforms our sufferings into sources of life. Thus, “wholeness” can be reimagined to signify the human being’s fulfillment of mystical union with Christ on the cross, our very own Christification. Weaknesses, differences, and dependencies in this framework are also reimagined as sources of unification.

This rich ascetic framework allowed us to explore early Christian sources of

Marian devotion and piety in new ways which connect to our examination of Christian conceptions of the body, suffering, and illness. Through a survey of various texts and prayers in the third chapter, we detected early stages of devotion to the Virgin long before the Council of Ephesus in 431, often understood to be the definitive marker for the explosion of Marian piety and cult. An examination of early Christian engagement with these biblical, extracanonical, and apocryphal texts revealed the ways that believers called upon Mary’s intercessory presence in times of need due to her status as being exceptionally set apart.

Exploring how Mary’s presence served as an aid to those suffering throughout antiquity, we saw how John 19:25-27 has been interpreted as revealing Jesus’s filial concern for his mother as well as initiating a new eschatological vision of discipleship.

Yet, from the ascetic framework, we also argued that this passage has and can still be

128 read as indicating a Christification – the beloved disciple is given to Mary as one who has embodied the indwelling of Christ.

Tying together the Cana narrative in John 2, the woman with birthpangs in John

16, and Mary addressed as “woman” at the foot of the cross in John 19, we see that these three passages explicitly incorporate the themes of “woman” and Jesus’s “hour.”

Accordingly, these passages merge the pain and joy involved in both death and new life.

This experience of new life born from death is reminiscent of the ascetic mindfulness of death and call to martyrdom. Mary as the “woman” in the Gospel of John merges this beginning and end in the cross through which we experience restoration. Invited into this tension between lamentation and joy with Mary as our mediator, we are further opened to the indwelling of Christ.

Continuing to examine Christian devotion to Mary through antiquity which attests to Mary’s role as intercessor between the heavenly and earthly realms, we experienced narratives and hymns in chapter four which depicted Christians calling upon Mary for assistance in their experiences of suffering and illness. Diving into hymnography from the sixth century, we saw how Romanos portrayed Mary in On the Nativity II as one whose powerful voice penetrates the despair of Adam and Eve all the way down in Hades as they cry out for relief. Speaking compassionate salvation to Adam and Eve, Mary restores them to new life with the promising hope of the resurrection. After being told about Jesus’s eventual death on the cross, Mary releases her own despairing cry which allows her to turn to the fate of Adam and Eve with both tender compassion and resolute authority.

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In On Mary at the Cross, Mary is similarly depicted as one who speaks the joy of the resurrection despite her own crushing grief as she comes to understand the reality of her son’s death on the cross. The congregation was invited to relate to Mary (even speaking with and as her voice) as one who truly encountered the tension between death and new life. These hymns show us that even while expressing our grief, we are invited to identify the transfigured Christ more fully within and among us. When we feel stuck in our own grief, we may trust in the resonant voice of Mary who dwells with us in the tension and pulls us out of despair into the glory of the cross. This collective cry with

Mary constitutes a movement toward a Christly possession in which the image of the crucified Christ is more completely restored in us.

When brought into dialogue with one another, disability studies, asceticism, and

Marian studies all point us to the cross. Each discourse has a particular orientation to the experiences of suffering, illness, difference, and death. Yet, unity is discovered in recognizing that these three perspectives aid us in making sense of loss, not by

“theologizing” in a detached manner, but by integrating the fullness of our experiences with the abundant mercy of our God as well as with the varying gifts and abilities of those in our communities. These discourses call us to cohesion, challenging us to reconnect with certain aspects of others, ourselves, and even God which we try to ignore or eradicate. As relational beings called to mystical union, we are not made “whole” by the attainment of perfect health, by the elimination of disease and difference, or by a complete understanding of the tragedy which inevitably strikes. Instead, our sources of wholeness blossom most brilliantly as we recognize and welcome the abandoned, marginalized, and crucified Christ into the chaos of our fragile lives.

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…

“Illness has the potential to destroy and to transform the self: to lead painfully and inconsolably to the unmaking of the self, yet also to open up new realms of experience and to create a new self, or at least to create the space for the sufferer to do so.”367

Suffering can lead us inward, grounded in fear and loneliness. Yet suffering can also be rooted in communion and relationship. The transfiguration of the human person through the cross is deeply relational, as it disposes us to the presence of Christ accompanied by his mother, Mary, who shouts the joy of salvation from her very own crushing grief.

When applied to daily existence, the creation of the new self is the newness of Christ dwelling within me. Not a new creation in which my tensions are hidden or eradicated. Transformed and restored, indeed, but not erased, encompassing the facets I cherish as well as the facets which make me wonder. And yet, overwhelmingly, Christ pervades completely. This saturation of a Christly possession provides the fullness that I desire, the fullness toward which we all long. How might we behold the crucified and glorified presence of Christ as our very own integrity? The presence which restores joy through loss, an emptying which penetrates our deepest prides and fears, furnishing our heart spaces with vibrant exuberance amid excruciating despair.

In the pain of this journey toward the cross – with all our differences and dependencies which society conceives as weakness – we may find consolation in the presence of Mary. We are urged to call upon her roots of hope and to invoke her authoritative voice which rises from the depths of her own anguish. When we cannot voice our pain, we can place our lives in Mary who pulls us toward hope in the darkest dwellings of our grief, knowing that the hope which Mary draws us into is the very being of her son, Jesus Christ.

367 Andrew Crislip, Thorns in the Flesh: Illness and Sanctity in Late Ancient Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 167. 131

Our aversion to difference, suffering, and death is very much alive in our societies and in our expressions of faith. This tension, too, seems to be inescapable. Yet, this deeply relational course toward mystical union with Christ restores our collective mourning and our communal rejoicing in this life and the next. May our voices resound with the boundless voice of the Virgin who merges and emerges in the tensions.

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